Immortal Dragons: The First Four: Prequel + Books 1-3

by Ophelia Bell

  A light breeze flowed through the room, and in the blink of an eye, Evie’s Nanyo was gone, the wizened, maternal woman sinking into the small frame and someone far more intimidating rising to the surface.

  Evie sat up straighter, clutching the pillow. She never knew whether to be excited or terrified when her grandmother used her magic, but when Sofia North spoke, Evie listened.

  “Denying your one true mate is tantamount to denying the stars in the sky. You know they’re always there, even when you don’t see them.”

  Her grandmother reached out and squeezed Evie’s bare foot. Evie nodded.

  “Your true mate is out there, but Fate likes a meandering path, so how you find him may not be easy. If you feel a connection with this man, don’t deny it. Even though he may not belong to you, he may lead you to where you need to go. You may wind up leading each other.”

  Evie sat up and stared at her grandmother. “You’re saying I should use Marcus to find the man I’m supposed to be with? Isn’t that cruel?”

  Her grandmother leaned toward her and cupped her chin in one dry, cool hand. Evie’s breath caught as he stared into her grandmother’s swirling violet eyes.

  “You have to remember that you are his path, too. Sometimes when you cross paths with a person who affects you deeply, you wind up entwined, until your paths diverge and you go your separate ways. Or not.”

  The older lady grinned and patted Evie on the cheek.

  “Or not what?” Evie asked, irritated by the flippant ending to what she’d thought was a deep vision her grandmother was in the midst of.

  “Maybe you’ll stay together. Who knows? Do you want some ice cream?” The older woman stood up and walked to the kitchen, leaving Evie gaping at her.

  “I thought you were making breakfast,” she said, following with a distinct sense that what had just happened had all been a dream.

  “I want dessert for breakfast. I’m fifteen hundred years old. I should get to have dessert for breakfast.”

  Evie laughed. “You should. I’d love some ice cream.”

  When her grandmother handed her the bowl, she held it back out of Evie’s reach for a moment. Evie raised an eyebrow, curious about her grandmother’s reluctance.

  “Your new friend needs to come here. Not right away, but when you feel the time is right. Bring him home… June. Summer Solstice would be right.”

  Her grandmother nodded emphatically and let Evie have her ice cream.

  * * *

  The next week Evie sang even stronger in the park, attracting a bigger crowd than before. Her brothers barely managed to keep up with her enthusiasm. They didn’t falter, but she could sense their irritation. She was too eager to see Marcus again.

  Near the end of their show, she spied him holding a bouquet of daisies at the edge of the crowd.

  “Another fan?” Lukas asked her when she rushed to get their gear together.

  “The same fan,” she said. “I like him. A lot.”

  “But he’s not the One, is he?” Iszak asked, a hint of warning in his tone.

  “So what?” she said. “He’s amazing enough to be the One. Maybe he is and I just don’t know it yet.”

  “It’s supposed to be instantaneous,” Lukas said. “When you lay eyes on your One… you just know.”

  Evie laughed. “You guys still believe that? What if it’s bullshit? This guy is… well, he’s holding a bouquet of daisies, for one thing.”

  “So why isn’t he bringing them to you personally?” Iszak asked, eyeing Marcus skeptically.

  “Because you guys are jerks.” She shot Iszak a dirty look and picked up her satchel containing some small toiletries and a change of clothes.

  “We’re trying to protect you,” Iszak grumbled and sulked. In spite of his large, powerful frame, sometimes he still resembled the same sensitive boy she remembered from their childhood. When they were kids, he’d always worked so hard to appear tough. Now, he was much harder on the outside than he used to be, and rarely let his sweet, inner core show in public, but Evie knew it was still there. It came out in his music enough to be undeniable. She wondered briefly if he envied her connection with Marcus.

  “You think I can’t handle myself with one human male who loves making me happy? He is harmless!”

  Lukas jumped in and soon enough she found herself embroiled in an argument with the two of them. The same frustrating argument she always had. They loved her and wanted to protect her—she knew that—but by the Winds could they just let her live her life for once?

  “Evie.”

  It took her a second to register the deep voice speaking her name over the hubbub between herself and her brothers. Finally she turned to see Marcus standing behind her with furrowed brows.

  “Marcus… ah… hi?”

  He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I hope I didn’t cause this.”

  Evie shook her head, but her brothers’ scowls betrayed the truth. Marcus squared his shoulders.

  “My name is Marcus Calais. I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with your sister. I really just wanted to give her these flowers, nothing more.” He held the flowers out to Evie. She took them, smiling, her heart beating profusely.

  Iszak pushed himself between Evie and Marcus, staring into the man’s eyes. “Men don’t just fall in love with our sister. What’s your game?”

  Evie bristled and pushed herself in the middle again before Marcus could respond. “What the hell? You have ears, you ass. He said it. It’s the truth, and you know it.” She glared at Iszak, daring him to challenge her. He knew as well as she did that Marcus wasn’t lying or hiding anything. Iszak was just being a supreme asshole for the sake of intimidating someone Evie wanted to be with.

  She shivered inside at the realization that Marcus really hadn’t been lying when he’d said he’d fallen in love with her. But hadn’t she told him the week before that she was going to fall in love with him?

  She turned back to Marcus, her skin tingling at the very idea of him being here so close. He made her feel so good on the surface. But underneath… she shoved that idea down. There was something missing, but that didn’t matter—there’d been something missing her entire life. It wasn’t his job to fill that one void, not when he managed to satisfy every other part of her.

  “Thank you for the flowers,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him. She’d intended to kiss him chastely on the cheek, but at the last minute, decided to piss off her brothers more.

  Gripping the sides of his face, she pressed her lips against Marcus’s and latched on. He didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her and devour her mouth like he’d been starving since they parted. Her daisies dropped to the ground, forgotten in her confusion of desire, the same questions popping up again. How could he make her feel so good if he wasn’t the One?

  He pulled away first, chuckling and glancing over her shoulder.

  “I think I pissed them off,” he murmured.

  “Fuck them.”

  She grabbed his hand and called blithely to her brothers, “Don’t wait up!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ked

  Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean

  Present Day

  Throughout the flight, Ked kept sending periodic breaths to Evie to maintain a mental connection with her. Thanks to his blood in the man he carried, he had a solid connection to Marcus, but Evie was still remote to him.

  The pair of lovers came together in his mind as though meant to be there. Evie’s memories fell into line with Marcus’s so perfectly, Ked had no reason to doubt either of them, or their bond to each other.

  Ked had only the smallest twinge of envy that Marcus had reached Evie first, for being there in that first moment she’d seen her true mate, though he knew it was his own blood running through Marcus’s veins that had drawn her to him.

  Deep inside Marcus’
s mind, Ked sensed the regret. In spite of his deep love for Evie, Marcus would have given everything up to spare her the ordeal of the last five decades. Marcus was letting go, bit by bit, as they traveled. Ked sensed the man’s crumbling constitution with every mile, but not because he was dying. Because he was wishing more and more for death, as though he were ready for it, willing it to come to him, willing himself to let it take him because he didn’t deserve her love anymore—because he didn’t deserve life, either.

  That wasn’t how their world worked, though. And whether Marcus knew it or not, he’d been a part of their world since before his birth. As a Blessed, he’d been marked in the womb to someday become a dragon’s mate. How he found that dragon was up to Fate to decide.

  Now that Marcus had been irrevocably altered, thanks to the Ultiori ritual to create an Elite, there was only one dragon he could belong to. And Ked wasn’t about to let him give up. Not when he knew how tightly bonded Marcus and Evie were, all thanks to his blood.

  He knew from the memories he witnessed that Marcus had, indeed, been no more than Blessed when he’d first met Evie, but somehow that had changed. Yet even before it had changed, Marcus’s blessing had drawn the pair of them together so swiftly only magic or Fate could be responsible.

  Ked would bet his soul that Fate was the bigger player in the scenario. If Ked was Evie’s true mate, Fate would not have simply delivered her to his doorstep. She’d make him work for it. He and his siblings had been in seclusion for too long. It would take dire circumstances to draw them out. Making them dream about their mates was what had done the trick, finally.

  Just any mate wouldn’t do, however. It had to be someone special. Evie’s brothers had been the first to be mated, by Ked’s sister, Belah. The North siblings were more than just eligible turul. They were essentially turul royalty, the descendants of Boreas, one of the four Winds. Just as Ked was the son of the Mother of Fire, he was meant to mate a descendant of another elemental goddess. The Goddess of the North Wind.

  Marcus was unexpected, though not surprising. Fate enjoyed her tricks, that was certain. Ked was no longer fazed by them. Marcus may have belonged to the enemy before, but he’d belonged to Evie first, and he belonged to Ked now. Both of them did.

  Saving the man might be a challenge, however, if his dark dreams were any indication. In spite of the passion and love in those first few dreams Ked witnessed, there was an undercurrent of dread, one that couldn’t have only revolved around the human war Marcus had once expected to fight in. Blessed humans had always been somewhat prescient. Marcus may have believed his dread related to that old human war, but likely, it was related to the change he would be forced to endure at the hands of the Ultiori.

  The dread grew ever stronger as they flew, with Marcus’s ordeal unfolding more every moment, and Evie’s along with it.

  Ked picked up his pace and let out a trumpeting roar, urging his brothers on faster. He needed to reach the monastery before Marcus sank too far into his despair to bring him back out.

  Behind him, Evie’s brothers let out similar cries and rose up high in the air, swooping down to land on Aodh’s back. With the surge of power he and his brothers had put forth, the turul wouldn’t be able to keep up for long. If they wanted to be there when they all landed, they would need to ride rather than fly.

  Day faded into night as the sun traversed a path over them, and they flew on, the starlit darkness ahead of Ked bright in comparison to the dark pit he sensed in the soul of the man he carried in his claws.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marcus

  Dragon Monastery, Sunda Islands

  Present Day

  Marcus didn’t have the strength to move, or even open his eyes, when the rush of wind stopped and his body was gently relinquished from his clawed cage onto a soft surface.

  His ears worked, however. As did his nose and his sense of touch.

  Evie’s lilac fragrance hit his nostrils as her soft fingertips brushed his cheek.

  “We made it out,” she said. “You did this for me, didn’t you? I will always love you, Marcus Calais. I will never forget you.”

  Her velvet lips pressed gently against his, and he wished for nothing more than to be able to kiss her back—to reach up and embrace her. But his arms didn’t work, and she was better off if he were dead, anyway, after what he’d put her through.

  He just wished he had the power to ask Ked why the hell he wasn’t dead.

  A moment later, whatever he was lying on lifted up and he felt himself moving. A stretcher? After traveling for several minutes, he heard a door open and was awash in calming aromas and the sounds of windchimes and trickling water. The air grew slightly warmer and he realized he’d been chilled from the flight, though he hadn’t been aware until now.

  Strong hands lifted him and laid him down gently on a soft bed.

  Then the voices spoke, too familiar and heartbreaking to his ears. Voices he wished he could respond to.

  “Watch him. He may be a danger to himself and we can’t let him die. If he wakes up, get me or my brother or Ked. We need to speak to him.”

  Evie’s brothers.

  If Marcus had the strength now, he would try to reassure them yet again that he’d never meant to harm her. But that would be useless, wouldn’t it? Not when he’d promised them she was safe, only to find her so damaged when they reached her.

  They would need to hear from their sister that she was the one who had begged Marcus to run away with her at the beginning, and that she was the one who had begged Marcus to send her blood-soaked feather to her brothers to make them believe she was dead.

  Right now, all he really wanted to do was beg them to do what he knew they must desire most. To kill him.

  If that were even possible.

  They’d wanted to, fifty years ago. He didn’t blame them now. They probably should have. He was no good for Evie, but he hadn’t known at the time how bad he would wind up being for her. If he’d known then, he would have stepped off that proverbial train and thrown himself onto the tracks beneath it.

  * * *

  New York

  Midsummer 1965

  The subtle glares Evie’s brothers kept giving Marcus didn’t bother him as much as the stories they told about their grandmother.

  They were on the subway, heading toward Evie and her brothers’ neighborhood from Central Park. By her brothers’ accounts, the woman he was about to meet had antler horns, spouted poison smoke, and could change your gender with a single look.

  He kept one hand cupped casually over his crotch and his other hand linked with Evie’s because she seemed to take comfort in his contact, but stayed alert for her brothers to make a move. He’d never dated a girl with older brothers who were this hostile. Hell, he’d never dated a girl with brothers. Or for that matter, one with a grandmother who was apparently the devil incarnate.

  Who was he kidding? He’d barely dated anyone. He had no clue what he was doing. All he knew was that he wasn’t letting go of this girl if his life depended on it. Brothers or no brothers. Devil or no devil. It had taken him several weeks after Evie’s first invitation to warm up to the idea of actually spending time in the same room with her family. Evie was so amazing, he worried he’d fuck it up somehow.

  “You can relax,” Evie whispered. “She’ll love you. I promise.”

  Marcus wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t exactly been an outcast growing up, but he hadn’t been popular, either. He gravitated toward athletic pursuits as much as academic, which hadn’t endeared him much to either group. He’d rarely had girlfriends, and had no practice interacting with families unless he counted his own distraught mother.

  He’d started college on an athletic scholarship, but threw himself into his studies as hard as he trained with his football team. He’d succeeded, so far. Gotten his degree just before meeting Evie. But now he was likely on the verge of
being drafted, and not by a pro team, like he’d hoped, but by the United States military.

  He couldn’t tell Evie that, though. He’d only just found her. The Vietnam War was ever-present, a ticking time bomb that could change his life the second his number came up. He was amazed it hadn’t happened already.

  He just hoped he had time, though time for what, he wasn’t sure. Time to fall even deeper in love with Evie? It had been a couple months since they’d met, and every day, he fell more in love with her. Her brothers still gave him dirty looks, but had reluctantly accepted that he wasn’t going anywhere. They still did love to give him hell, from time to time, which Marcus had begun to understand was their way of keeping him on his toes. The first time he ribbed them back, he’d earned himself a smile from the gruffer one—Iszak—and a laugh from Lukas. Evie had rolled her eyes and warned Marcus not to encourage them.

  The train came to a stop and Evie stood. She tugged at his hand and smiled at him. Marcus had a hard time not letting his eyes drift over her bare shoulder and the top of her breast. She did love wearing clothes that seemed on the verge of falling off her at any moment. Her dark brown hair fell over her other breast and he resisted the urge to push it aside, just to make sure that glorious, creamy mound was unobscured.

  “You’re such a perv,” she said, laughing at him. “We’re here. Come on.”

  He took a deep breath and stood, letting her lead him out into the noisy heat of the subway platform.

  “I’m not a perv,” he murmured in her ear. “I just prefer you naked.”

  He relished the soft shiver of her body against him and the way she clung to him for a moment. He was sure she was trying to catch her breath. Even more sure when she reached up to grip his cheeks and pull him down into a luscious kiss.