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

by Ophelia Bell

  “I still want you,” Aurum said. She reached out to touch him, hesitating with her long, delicate fingers close to the edge of his face. She tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear and let her palm rest on his cheek.

  His eyes clenched tighter and he turned away from her touch.

  When he opened his eyes, he stared hauntingly down over the edge of the rooftop, watching the churn of the river beneath. He let out a sigh that reached Evie’s ears a second too late. Forgive me, my love, for I am yet unworthy of you, was what Evie heard on the Wind.

  Then he stood and in only a few swift strides, he vaulted off the rooftop.

  They ran to the edge in time to see his body splash into the violently churning water of the rapids far below.

  Before Evie’s eyes, Aurum shifted and let out a roar. Her massive gold-scaled shape swooped out over the ravine and down toward the river, following it until she was no longer visible.

  They all stood there, still as statues. Evie took comfort in the touch of her mates, but they couldn’t keep the tears from falling.

  “How could he survive that?” Evie asked. The man hadn’t even sprouted wings when he leaped off the roof. He’d just plummeted straight into the churning rapids of the river below.

  “He’s a satyr,” Numa said in her melodic voice. “The last nymphaea male. The water won’t let him die, if he’s returning home.”

  A moment later, a dripping wet Aurum landed and shifted in front of them. “I lost him, but I’m going to find him. He’s in the water now, so I’m going to the source. You’ll help me, won’t you, brother? I need you. I need all of you to help me find him.”

  “That looked like a suicide jump to me,” Marcus said. “That was Calder. The mad goat, we always called him because he always spoke in weird riddles and indecipherable prophecies.”

  “He’s a water elemental. A nymphaea,” Ked said. “It explains his state of mind the first time I met him, but Numa’s right—a leap into any body of water wouldn’t have killed him. We have more immediate concerns, though.” He pulled away and moved to crouch beside the other man who was still incoherent, but had calmed under Numa’s touch.

  “We have to leave now,” Aurum said, frantic and pacing around them. “If we get to the source, we can find him, but we can’t waste time.”

  “The source is protected.”

  They all stared at the man who had spoken. The white-haired stranger lying between them opened his eyes and looked around for the first time. He struggled to a sitting position and bowed his head, taking a deep breath, his bare, broad shoulders shuddering. Tangles of white hair fell over his bearded face. His voice and posture were weary, reinforcing Evie’s sense that he was even older than the white hair suggested. But when his gaze landed on her, she saw no lines around his eyes and his skin was perfectly smooth and pale. It was then that she understood what he was.

  The color of his features wasn’t due to age, though he was no doubt much older than she was. He was so pale he seemed nearly translucent, the way a plant might when deprived of sunlight. The lack of sunlight had made her own skin paler, but her hair and wings had darkened over the past five decades in captivity. Not so for one of his kind, as bound to the Earth as the ursa were.

  He glanced at all of them before his gaze fixed on Aurum when he spoke.

  “Solstice. That’s when we go. What day is it today?”

  “November twentieth,” Evie said.

  “My mother will help us find him,” he said. “You must take me home on Solstice.”

  “And who, pray tell, is your mother?” Numa asked.

  Evie answered for him, the Wind already whispering the surprising name in her ears.

  “His name is Stonetree. His mother is the Ursa Queen, Maia Stonetree.”

  His gaze shot to her again and he studied her, as though trying to understand how she knew. When a breeze blew past, whipping his hair around his head, he closed his eyes. The cock of his head and the imperceptible whisper Evie heard caused her eyes to widen in disbelief. He was most certainly an ursa male, and yet the wind was speaking to him just then. She glanced toward her brothers, who both stared back at her in shock.

  Evie’s fascination with the exchange was interrupted by Ked rising again and pushing her away.

  “This is Aurum’s ordeal, not yours. Be careful.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s different. How can he hear the Wind the way I can? He’s an ursa, not a turul!”

  “I am many things,” the man called to her and Evie pulled away from Ked’s tight grip.

  “Please tell me,” she said.

  “My mother knew when I was born that I was more than just an ursa child. She gifted me with all my secrets when I was a baby, before they took me away from her.” He stood to his full height then, towering broad shouldered and as tall as any of the dragons.

  Turning his back toward Evie, he tugged the waist of his pants down low enough to display an intricate, bear-shaped scar near the base of his spine that glimmered faintly with power. When he turned around again, he focused intently on Evie. “I was conceived inside a place like this, hundreds of years ago. My father was an ursa male—a Windchaser—who was mutated with the blood of a turul before he was given to my mother to service her through her estrous. After she escaped, my father was destroyed for the sake of the Ultiori’s cruel experiments. You carry a child like me inside you now, so you understand more than anyone what I am. Guard that child with your life when it is born, for the Ultiori will hunt you down to reclaim it if they learns that it exists. I know that if they could have killed my mother when they stole me back, they would have, but my mother was far too powerful, and the Ultiori dared not capture her as well, or she would have destroyed every last one of the hunters in her rage.”

  Evie had certainly heard stories about the fearsome power a female ursa could wield in order to protect her cubs. Turul mothers were protective, but their mates shouldered as much or more of the responsibility of ensuring their offsprings’ well-being. Still, she reflexively placed her hands over her abdomen and was comforted by the solid presence of Marcus and Ked as they moved close to her sides.

  “Was there no sign of the Lamia after Nikhil left you? Calder was supposed to be the lure to draw her in.”

  “She was here long enough to taunt us and cut off the power so we couldn’t leave the cell. Then she did something to Calder so his powers wouldn’t work—the words she said sounded like the ocean in my ears, but they made him go mad for a day and when he was himself again he couldn’t let us out the way he used to be able to. We were trapped. We thought we would starve until you came.”

  Evie’s skin prickled with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the chilly air. Words that sounded like the ocean, and mention of the Lamia made a sinking dread fill her belly. This creature they were after was more powerful than they had first believed.

  “The Ultiori gave up on Calder a long time ago. I think they hoped for more from me, but when I refused again to share the secrets my mother bestowed on me, I was tortured.” His eyes fell on Evie again. “Nicholas is the name Nikhil gave me because I was their first successful attempt toward breeding a hybrid. He treated me differently than the scientists did, at least when his mind was clear. I think he thought of me as a son. My mother did not have the chance to give me my ursa name before I was taken from her. I need to go home so I can learn my true name. And if you take me, I can help find Calder.”

  * * *

  Evie watched with a pounding heart as the four dragons she’d come to love rose into the air. Nicholas rode on Numa’s back, his pale shape stark against her shining green scales.

  The wind swept around them, carrying the dragons up the second they stretched their wings.

  “Why are you crying?” Ked asked, sliding his thumb down her cheek.

  Evie sank into him and let her tears flow. “T
o be taken from his mother so young and not even know his true name must have been horrible.”

  “She gave him what magic she could to protect him. It was the wisest thing she could do for a child born outside of the Sanctuary.”

  Evie nodded and accepted Marcus’s large hand in hers, squeezing back. She hadn’t considered names for her baby yet, but suddenly knew that she needed to go home before the baby was born. If the ursa were anything like the turul, they would have a naming ceremony, too, and Maia Stonetree would not have wanted to give her son his ursa name until she could do it in their sacred place.

  “I need to go home,” she said.

  “We can be back at the Monastery within the hour,” Ked said.

  “No,” she said looking up at him. “I need to go to the Enclave where I was born. My family will be there for the winter. Plus, when our baby is born, she can be named on the mountain peak where I was named, with the North Wind to bless her. Belah and my brothers can join us.”

  “In that case, we’d better get moving if we want to reach the Enclave by dawn. Aodh needs to return with the others, so we’ll be flying.” Ked released her and in a cloud of swirling shadow shifted into his majestic black-scaled true form.

  As Marcus helped Evie climb onto Ked’s back, he asked, “Will your grandmother have breakfast ready for us? I’ve missed her cooking like you can’t even believe.”

  Evie laughed. “I’m sure she can accommodate you if you ask nicely. Just don’t make demands while she’s in the kitchen. She’s scary with a carving knife.”

  Beneath them, Ked let out a deep rumble of laughter. “I will never again argue with that woman while she’s cooking.”

  Still vibrating with humor, Ked spread his wings and launched into the air, and with the rise in altitude Evie’s spirits rose. She leaned back against Marcus and closed her eyes, happier than she’d been in as long as she could remember.

  Epilogue

  Marcus

  Turul Enclave, the Appalachian Mountains

  Present Day

  After a few weeks at the Monastery, followed by the even more rustic amenities of the turul Enclave, Marcus was a little ashamed to admit he missed some features from his life as an Ultiori Elite. Hot, running water and electricity were two of those things. Evie and Ked didn’t seem fazed by the change, and adapted swiftly to the otherwise comfortable quarters the three of them had been given in one wing of the rambling stone lodge that was the focal point of the turuls’ community.

  The building seemed to have sprouted organically from the earth and trees of the mountain, part stone and part wood, added on bit by bit over the centuries, so he’d heard, until it was a warren of cozy nooks and crannies mixed with huge rooms for larger gatherings. Every room seemed to have a huge window looking out over the rolling hills of the Appalachian mountain range that was now covered in its first dusting of snow.

  Their rooms were warmed by a huge fireplace that burned day and night. Unlike at the monastery, they weren’t waited on. As Evie explained when they arrived, they were expected to be self-sufficient, and so he and Ked took it in turns to ensure they were well supplied with everything Evie would need to be comfortable and cared for.

  Most days, she insisted on spending her waking hours among the other turul, usually helping her grandmother in the communal kitchen, playing music with her parents and her brothers and whichever other extended family chose to participate, and sharing meals in the huge, communal dining room with them in between the other activities.

  He and Ked sat alone together at their regular dinner table, silent and immersed in their own thoughts. Evie would get her fill of socializing and join them, but until then, they both had taken to brooding over their own worries again.

  They weren’t the only strays in residence in the Enclave, though Marcus and Ked were given the widest berth of any of the outsiders, and he was sure it wasn’t only because they were so new. Marcus was still an Elite, in spite of now being marked and mated by one of the most powerful dragons on Earth. Ked, being that dragon, was avoided as much out of fear as respect. So they often found themselves isolated from the bustling community with only Belah and Evie’s brothers for occasional company once they arrived and announced their intention to stay until their own child was born.

  Evie seemed to thrive in the attention of her fellow turul, so he and Ked subsisted with each other’s company during the days, making sure to get their fill of the woman they loved in the evenings.

  There was only one thing missing, something that had nagged at Marcus since the day Ked had marked them both. Those marks meant that he and Evie belonged to Ked, a fact that Marcus couldn’t deny. Their shared blood was the connection to Evie through the bond as her fated mates. Yet Marcus had known her and loved her since long before he’d been turned into an Elite and become an extension of the dragon he was mated to.

  He still couldn’t shake the memory of the day he’d decided to run. The day that would have gone so differently, had he not received that letter.

  It wasn’t until Marcus sensed an amused presence in the corner of his thoughts that he glanced up to see Ked watching him with a half-smile over his dinner plate.

  “You still want to propose marriage to her. Why didn’t you share this detail before?”

  Marcus’s cheeks heated and he stared back down at his meal – yet another gourmet concoction from Evie’s grandmother that left his mouth watering more with each bite. He chewed and swallowed, enjoying it enough to savor it the way Evie would, then took a breath.

  “It’s a little late for something so human and frivolous, don’t you think?”

  “Yet you kept the ring all this time. Was that what took you so long to come back out of the enemy’s compound when we were there? You went back for it, didn’t you?”

  “It was the only thing of value I’d left behind. Even if I never gave it to her, I wanted a keepsake to remind me of when I first fell in love with her.”

  As Ked studied him, Marcus had the strongest sense of deep understanding. Sometimes the dragon surprised him with the well of wisdom he possessed, though he shouldn’t have been surprised. He still wasn’t quite sure how old Ked really was, but was occasionally privy to the most primal memories that must have predated civilization.

  Today, Ked’s ever-present connection to him somehow managed to discern the precise source of that hesitant tangle in Marcus’s gut.

  “She won’t say no, and you know it,” Ked said. “And she won’t think it’s a ridiculous question, either. She grew up among humans. She loves human traditions as much as any of us. Dragons rarely celebrate their matings publicly, but the other races do. She won’t get a traditional turul mating ceremony because she shouldn’t shift at this stage in the pregnancy. Not to mention, you can’t fly. Sharing breath with you that night is enough for her, but I know she would love a more public ritual if you offered her an excuse.”

  Marcus only stared across the room to where Evie sat chatting with some new friends—two of the other dragons in residence and their human mate, a blonde woman who glowed as much from her own pregnancy as from the adoration of her mates. Melody was another Blessed, like him, but her mates had been less than hospitable to Marcus, just like almost everyone else at the enclave. He was less concerned about the others’ opinions than he was about how Evie would respond if he actually managed to find the balls to propose to her for real.

  “Turul love a good excuse for a celebration. Besides, the weight of that ring in your pocket is only going to get heavier the longer you wait. It’s starting to weigh me down, too.”

  “Fuck, I feel like I’m back in high school, trying to get up the nerve to ask out my crush. Like it doesn’t even matter that I woke up this morning with my dick halfway down her throat because she’s decided I am breakfast for the foreseeable future.”

  Ked chuckled. “You aren’t alone. In fact, I’m goin
g to give you a little push.”

  Before Marcus could object, the world abruptly went pitch black, causing the entire dining hall to erupt in alarm. He cursed under his breath, but was acutely aware that the darkness covering them now was the cozy, cuddly version of Ked’s power, though he doubted the rest of the enclave, aside from Evie, and perhaps Belah, realized it.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Ked said through the thick, velvety blackness. “This is only a friendly nudge to my mate to take care of some long overdue business.”

  Around him the darkness lifted, light seeping in from a source Marcus couldn’t discern. It was enough to illuminate him entirely, as though he sat in a spotlight. Around him, the others all stared from the darker shadows.

  Across the room, Evie’s startled face came into view in a similar circle of light. She turned and gave Marcus a bewildered smile.

  “Marcus? What is this?”

  Taking a deep breath, Marcus stood. He spent a moment trying to gather his thoughts, mostly sending a barrage of rude words to Ked, whose grin was almost bright enough to glow.

  “Evie,” he said, moving to walk toward her. “I think I have loved you since the first day I laid eyes on you, singing with your brothers in Central Park. It was spring in 1965, and it took me about a week to work up the nerve to even talk to you. The day you sang to me, I knew my life had changed. I had no idea what I was then, or what I would become. All I knew was that my life would only have meaning with you in it.”

  Evie’s eyes widened and she turned in her seat to face him as he walked closer. God, could it have been any longer a journey to get to her? She was so beautiful, illuminated the way she was on that dark backdrop. A few faces were visible in the shadows around her, but Marcus only had eyes for her. In his mind, Ked was similarly enthralled, and Marcus sensed that the light that surrounded both him and Evie could only have been given to the two of them in that moment. He felt bathed in love so complete, it spurred him on to finish what he needed to do – what he had needed to do for five decades.