My Dragon Masters

by Krystal Shannan

  “Stop! She’s back. Stop chanting.”

  The voices in the background stopped and whatever had held back my husbands vanished. Eli reached for me first and dragged me into his lap. He smoothed back my damp hair and used his shirt to wipe the grime from my face.

  “Are you okay, Love? You were screaming as if something was killing you. We couldn’t get to you. It kept us out,” Eli mumbled faster than I could keep up as he kissed all over my head and face.

  I could feel Miles’ presence, too. His hand was on my lower back and he was rubbing his knuckles up and down, slowly, soothing the tension from my body. I relaxed into the caress and leaned over onto Eli’s shoulder.

  Exhaustion was overtaking me and I yawned. Nothing had changed. I still couldn’t remember what exactly had happened. My nightmares had only gotten longer and created even more questions.

  “It won’t come right away,” Meredith said.

  I listened, trying not to let sleep steal me away.

  “It could come back in an hour, three hours, a few days,” Hannah added. “But when it does, it will hit with the force of an ax to a wood block. She will be incapacitated while the memories repopulate.”

  “And she will be in horrible pain, boys,” their father added, his voice soft, but clear. “Be ready for that pain. That is the point where she can be lost to you.”

  Bloody hell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  MILES

  When she’d fallen asleep in Eli’s arms, he’d carried her back to my room and put her into the bed. We’d taken warm washcloths and cleaned her before crawling into bed on either side of her.

  Every time she murmured or whimpered, I woke up.

  So did Eli.

  I heard his breathing change. We were both waiting for the shoe to drop, for her to combust like Harrison had warned. And we were both terrified that we would lose her all over again.

  Except this time she would be right in front of us.

  I’m not sure I could handle that. Losing her.

  “She’s going to make it through this, Miles.”

  It was like he’d read my mind. “She has to,” I whispered back, my voice catching in my throat.

  Another whimper came from the back of Diana’s throat and then she seized. Her body shook and her jaw snapped open and shut.

  “Shit!” I jumped up, looking for anything to put between her snapping teeth.

  Eli pulled off his t-shirt, twisted it tight and tied it around her head like a gag. It looked horrible, but it was better than her biting her tongue in half. We turned her on her side and watched carefully in case she vomited, but her mouth remained clear and we continued to hear breath sounds through the episode. When her body calmed, he pulled the t-shirt out of her mouth and she sat up in the center of the bed screaming “please give him back.”

  When I reached out to touch her, she scratched my arm and continued to scream. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anything. Terror took root in my heart and I feared that we’d already lost her. Her voice grated on my ears and the pain in it was like a knife to the gut.

  I glanced up at Eli and he shook his head. She wouldn’t let us touch her and she wouldn’t respond to anything we said.

  When her screams turned to moans of pain and she started begging “please don’t do this” and “please, no,” I rushed from the bed to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. I remember those screams like it was the day it happened. I could remember the bite of the whip and the sound of them taking turns with her on the altar in front of the stone thrones of Orin.

  I heaved again and again, until there was nothing left inside of me. But her screams still echoed through the room. My bottom lip trembled and I sank to the floor next to the toilet, sobbing into my hands. I knew she would remember, but I hadn’t counted on it being like this—like it was actually happening again.

  Noise across the bathroom caught my attention and I looked up, my vision blurry and my nose congested. I hadn’t cried like this since the day we’d ended up on the other side of the gate without her. Eli wasn’t faring much better, and I drew in a deep breath as I listened to him heave into the trashcan near one of the sinks.

  Another bloodcurdling scream tore through the room and I leaned over the toilet again, dry-heaving a half-dozen times before I was able to stop. She shouldn’t have to relive this. She shouldn’t have had to live it in the first place!

  It was our fathers’ faults. They were too trusting. They let themselves be taken advantage of and be murdered in their own beds. We had been beaten nearly to death and our wife raped and beaten in front of us. I slammed my head back against the wall and grimaced as pain shot through my head and neck. Something wet ran down my neck. Blood. I could smell it. I’d probably grazed myself on a nail in the wall.

  Fuck it.

  The screams continued. They were getting worse, not better.

  “Eli,” I choked out. I needed him to heal the cut on my head before I returned to her. She didn’t deserve to be alone. Not again.

  I saw him wipe his mouth and look up at me in the dark. “What?” he croaked.

  “Come heal the cut on my head. I’m going to go sit with her. She can’t be alone. Not again. We need to stay with her.”

  He nodded and set down the trashcan full of vomit. I turned around and he walked up to my back. His warm breath seared at first and then I felt the cut quickly knit itself back together.

  “The pain,” he whispered, audibly grimacing when another chilling one sliced through the room. “I never thought I’d hear that sound come from her lips again. I lived so many years hearing those screams in my sleep.”

  “I know. It all came rushing back.”

  “Miles, what if she hates us? After everything comes back. What if she can’t stand to be near us? We let that happen. We left her.”

  I turned and embraced my brother. “We have to go to her. She can come out of this. We can’t let it take her.”

  “Miles! Eli! Please help me! Miles!”

  I shuddered and let go of my brother. I hadn’t been able to go to her the first time, but I’d be damned if I would let her suffer alone a second. Eli followed closely behind me and we crawled into bed on either side of her twisting body.

  She was drenched in sweat and lashed out at just the lightest touch, but I knew that’s what she needed. The feel of our bodies pressed to hers, the connection of our bond flowing between us, it was what would make this time different than the last.

  I grabbed for her arms and hugged her torso tight to my chest. “Get close behind her and put your leg over her hip to hold her still.”

  He did as I said and I felt the magick of our bond flow between us like a living electric current. She stilled almost immediately and her screams died down into whimpers. Every few minutes she would struggle violently and scream, but we just continued to hold her. Eli stroked her body, up and down, kneading at the tension in her neck.

  By the time the morning light was peeking through the half-open curtains, she had fallen fast asleep. Eli and I, however, were still wide awake and waiting. Waiting for that moment when she would open her eyes again.

  ***

  More time passed. Still she didn’t stir. I still held her tightly and Eli’s leg was still draped over her hip. She was snugly secured between the two of us.

  Her breathing was more even as the morning slid by. Around ten, she began to squirm and a few moments later her eyes opened.

  “Miles?”

  “Yes, Love.” I answered, pulling back just enough to meet her gaze.

  Tears formed in her eyes and for the first time, they ran down her face without freezing. She had complete control of her powers again.

  “Did you find what you were looking for, my sweet wife?”

  She nodded and buried her face in my chest. “Someone took our son.”

  My heart fell in my chest and I met my brother’s broken gaze over her shoulder. It was likely the boy
wasn’t even alive. There would’ve been no reason for Kevan and Leif to let a son of ours grow to maturity. And if he did live, he would be a man. Grown and nearly a thousand years old, still young for a Drakonae, but the odds were very much against him.

  “Do you know who took him?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t place her voice and they kept my face covered for the whole birth. But she told someone in the room that he had to be hidden. Over and over she said, “You have to hide him”.”

  I allowed myself a sliver of hope. Perhaps a nursemaid still loyal to our family was able to whisk our son away from Orin and raise him away from the prying eyes of the Incanti family.

  “He could be alive,” she whispered. “We can use the dagger to go look for him.”

  I shook my head. “We’re bound to stay here. We took an oath to protect the Sisters.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “Then I will go,” she yelled, squirming and slithering in our arms, trying to get loose. “Diana. You know you can’t do that. If one of us dies—”

  She stopped struggling and started crying again. “But he’s our son. How can we just leave him there with those monsters? What they did to me … to you … was … How can you leave him to a fate possibly worse than death?”

  “So you would ask my brother and I to break an oath and leave over a hundred women to be raped and taken hostage for a one man who might still be alive?”

  “Your son! Not just a man.”

  Her cries pulled at me so hard, but I shook my head. “We cannot let Xerxes get the Sisters. If you think that Kevan and Leif are monsters, you won’t have words to describe Xerxes Amir Hilah. I love you with my whole heart, Diana, but you must consider our position rationally. The fate of both worlds depends on it.”

  “If he’s lived a thousand years without us,” Eli started. “It’s likely he will survive a few more until we can get to him.”

  Her body was shaking and super-cooled air was flowing from her like a restaurant-grade freezer unit. “Diana, please. Perhaps if you spoke to one of the Sisters. To the Oracle. Maybe they could give you some peace. We never asked about a child—only you.”

  She turned and stared at me, her blue-gray eyes pain-filled and heartbroken. She was a wife, but she was a mother now, too.

  We couldn’t deny that fact any longer. As much as it hurt to imagine, I knew our son had not likely survived to adulthood. Even if a nurse had managed to sneak him away, it was still unlikely.

  “Fine.” She slid from the bed and ran her hands through her damp, mussed up hair. With a few expert twists and tucks, and she had it in a long braid straight down her back like Eira wore hers. It was strange. Diana had always kept her hair loose. To see it in a braid was strange. But she was different now, even with her memories, she had changed—become harder. She’d always been a warrior, but now she was a pissed off warrior.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  DIANA

  I followed Miles and Eli down the dimly lit hallway, out a set of French doors, to a stairwell that led down into a green space in the center of the Castle. The winter wind bit at my bare legs, but to me it was only a caressing kiss. I was of ice and winter. It ran in my blood the same way water ran through humans.

  I remembered everything—every tiny, painful, sordid detail about the slaughter of the Blackmoor House. How they had tortured Miles and Eli. Raped me. How a woman had hidden my pregnancy from them, and stolen my baby away in the night.

  Miles and Eli were right, though. As much as I hated to admit it, I never saw or heard that woman again after that night. There was no guarantee that my son even made it out of the prison tower alive—except a mother’s intuition. Something deep down said he was still there.

  We walked along a rock pathway through the winter-dead green space toward a set of white French doors. Before either of them could knock, they opened and a pink face peered out.

  “Come in,” the small brunette said with a smile. “The Oracle is eager to meet your wife.”

  Miles and Eli stepped aside and let me enter first. My feet were bare, just like the Sisters scattered through the large sitting area. Even the white dress I wore was just like theirs.

  “Please, sit, Mistress,” the brunette spoke again.

  I sank into the chair she indicated. Miles and Eli moved quickly to stand behind me, refusing the offer to sit down.

  “Always stubborn,” an old woman in the chair next to me spoke up. She turned and placed her hand over mine. “They never do as we ask.”

  I gasped at the touch, but didn’t withdraw. A spark of something passed between us and I knew she was the Oracle.

  She smiled. “It is good to finally meet you, Diana Karlson of Blackmoor House. These boys have waited a long time for your return. It seems you have fully returned to yourself as well.” She patted my hand and then leaned back in her chair, her sharp blue eyes studying me. “You seek another, though. One who was lost to you many centuries ago.”

  “My son,” I whispered.

  “He will choose his own fate.”

  Tears welled in my eyes. If he was choosing a fate it meant he was alive!

  “Will I see him again?”

  The old woman paused, as if trying to decide how to answer. She finally sighed and said, “Yes.”

  I leaned forward. “Why do you hesitate to tell me good news?”

  “His fate is twisted up with ours. There is not a single pleasant path that I can see for him to reach you.”

  “But you said I will see him again. That means he will come here? Or do I go to him?”

  “You cannot cross into the Veil while Xerxes still breathes. We would all die,” the Oracle replied, her voice as calm as a summer breeze. “Our fates are knotted together, ice-breather. The fates of both worlds.”

  It was pig slop! All of it. These women were just rambling about visions to keep themselves safely protected in this fortress. They’d certainly been doing a good job so far. They had a whole town that would lay down their lives for them.

  “What’s so special about you?!”

  “The Sisters of Lamidae are the only beings left in the world that can procreate with a Lamassu.”

  “All the Lamassu are dead,” I objected. “Everyone knows they died when Babylon fell.”

  The old woman looked past me, up to Miles and Eli. Then she looked back at me. “Rose Hilah, here in Sanctuary, is one of two surviving Lamassu Sentinels.”

  I felt vomit creep into the back of my mouth. Lamassu and Drakonae hated each other. Our races had fought since time began. There were stories and poems about our battles. How could Miles and Eli be working with one?

  “The other survivor is their betrayer from Babylon, her brother-in-law, Xerxes Amir Hilah. He sought to take us then, and he still seeks to take us now. He would use us to create a powerful new species—part Lamassu part Seer. It would spell the end of both worlds if he succeeds.”

  I leaned back against the headrest of the chair. I may have missed a thousand years of history, but even I knew what they said was the truth. The Lamassu male could not be allowed to take even one of these women.

  “You stand with the Lamassu female because alone she cannot defeat one of her own.” It was a statement more than a question, but both men whispered a quiet “yes.” It was a noble vow they’d taken. One I would have expected them to find honorable, even if it was with a Lamassu.

  My stomach rumbled and I shifted in my chair. I wanted to eat, but I also wanted to hear what else they had to say about this Lamassu female and this strange town.

  “I understand your reasons for recruiting my husbands, and agree that this is a noble fight. But why haven’t we simply gone after this Xerxes and taken him down?” I turned to face Miles and Eli. “Between both of you and the Lamassu female, he wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Life is not so simple here on earth, Diana,” Miles said, his voice soft and without displeasure. “So much time has passed. We’re unable to shift to fight Xerxes. We
must find a way to defeat him privately without the general public witnessing anything. The soldiers you encountered on your journey here were only the beginning of what the humans have control of now.”

  “Xerxes also has the Djinn helping him control human armies. He has worked for decades to build his influence in the SECR and looks to soon extend his reach into the Washington Republic as well,” Eli added. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but think about how many people used to live in Orin when we married, now multiply that by ten-thousand.”

  I took in a quick breath and leaned back in my chair. That would mean there were … millions of humans. And the Djinn. They bowed to no one. How was he controlling them?

  “No one can control the Djinn, and how do that many people even fit in the world?”

  The Oracle smiled, her blue eyes sparkled. “The world is a lot bigger than people thought a thousand years ago. As for the Djinn, he blackmails their king.”

  “And the humans have weapons now that can cut us down from the sky, from our dragon form. How did they become so powerful? They almost killed me. I know that were it not for our bond, I would be dead now.”

  “Science has given them the ability to compete on a more equal level with us. Though we have magick and more strength, it is not enough anymore,” Eli answered. “They have machines that fly in the sky and can shoot us down. It is not safe to shift. Ever. Not on earth.”

  “Never?” I turned back to look at both my mates. “We cannot ever shift? How have you lived this way for so long?”

  “You grow accustomed to the cage. Find other ways to soothe the beast. Eventually, we will find a way back to our home. Until then, our true nature must be kept a secret at all costs. Most humans in this country have laws against us existing within their borders. You can be executed on sight,” Miles answered.