“Yes, they are; I know that all too well. Tell me, do you know anything about who your birth parents might be?” Aegis asked.
Ashlyn shook her head, her mane shifting in golden waves about her face. “I don’t know a thing, really. They were English, but that’s all I was ever told. Even my adoptive parents were never given information about them. When I was discovered as a baby, I was in a burnt-out farmhouse. Apparently I was still in my crib, the remnants of the house all around me in piles of smoking charcoal. So I’ve always assumed that I was the only survivor. I can only figure that my parents died. But don’t ask me why there were knives and…other items…with me.”
“I would say that I’m surprised to hear that you survived a fire, but after seeing you in action, Ashlyn, nothing surprises me,” Aegis all but whispered. Hearing her name on his lips forced a surge of liquid warmth through her body. She could listen to him say it a million times.
The big man sat back in his chair. “Well, I’m very glad that you came out of it unscathed. But tell me, why are you in England?”
“I thought you were going to tell me things,” she protested, unsure of how much she should really divulge. “About…what you were talking about before.”
“I will. But answer me my one question, and then you may ask me anything you want.” His voice was silk. “Tell me why you’re really here.”
Ashlyn sighed, her eyes fixed on a spot on the stained pub carpet. “I came to learn more about my real parents, as I told you. I just want to know where I come from.” The words were true, but there was a lie in them as well, and she wondered if he knew it.
“I see. Well, that’s understandable,” Aegis said, leaning forward again and reaching over to tuck a lock of blond hair behind her left ear. She looked into his eyes, seeing nothing but kindness. How could any man be so close to perfection? “I suspect that there’s more to your tale, but you don’t have to reveal it, of course,” he added. So he did read the lie. He knew that there was more to her story.
“I have to ask you something now,” she said, changing the subject even as she felt his fingertips caress her cheekbone. He pulled back, an attentive expression on his face.
“Go ahead.”
“Tell me about the half-breeds.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Well, you said they’re a cross between a shifter and a vampire. I hope you’ll forgive me if I repeat that you sound a little like you’re joking about that part. Shifters and vampires don’t exist.”
Aegis took a last swig of his beer. Man, this guy could down a pint fast. “Are you willing to come outside with me for a second?” he asked as he set the glass down on the table, eyeing the back door a few feet away. “I’d like to show you something in private. It’ll answer your questions better than words could.”
“Show me something in private, you say? That’s pretty forward of you,” she said, cracking a smile. “But fine. I suppose if you’d wanted to try anything untoward, you’d have done it by now.” She rose to her feet to follow him out. When Aegis had pushed the door open to reveal a sizeable courtyard, he held it, looking around for something to prop at the base of the frame to keep it open.
“Your satchel,” he said. “Could I borrow it?”
Ashlyn pulled the bag close, her eyes narrowing for a moment. “No!” she shot him in a more hostile tone than she’d intended. “Sorry. But no. It’s got…stuff in it that’s breakable.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, an amused smirk on his face. Women and their precious purses. “Grab me a big rock then, would you?”
Ashlyn looked around for a moment until she found a fist-sized stone, then picked it up and handed it his way. He placed it on the ground and let the door swing most of the way shut.
“Right, then,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “You might want to move aside for this.”
“O—kay,” she replied, stepping back. And here she’d thought that maybe he was going to try and kiss her. “What are you going to do, perform a juggling act or something?”
Aegis gave her a huge grin, his white teeth gleaming in the pale light. “It’s more along the lines of something.” His eyes shifted upwards, his expression turning serious and determined. After a moment the sound of dry tree branches cracking underfoot met Ashlyn’s ears, though there were no trees anywhere to be seen. It only took a second to realize that the sound had come from the man in front of her.
“What the…” she gasped.
Aegis had disappeared. No, not disappeared, not exactly. He may very well have been concealed behind the enormous, scaled beast who now filled the courtyard.
Holy shit. That was a Dragon standing before her, its gargantuan talons digging into the cobblestone.
The scent of charcoal and embers filled the air, but something else accompanied it: him. The erotic scent of the divine blond man still permeated the air despite the beast standing in her presence, huffing plumes of grey mist through massive nostrils. Eyes of yellow-gold met her own, a narrow, vertical pupil sizing her up. Dark blue scales, each one of them as large as her head, shone like gems in the dim light. The creature’s shoulder must have been ten feet high, its shapely head larger than her entire body.
Great. Ashlyn was hallucinating as she had so many times in her youth; it was the only explanation. This was nothing but a vision fabricated by her delusional mind. But why did this particular delusion feel so different? The Dragon was so real, and every one of her senses confirmed it.
After a moment the creature pivoted its head to face her, two bright pupils dilating as they sized her up. Ashlyn stepped back again, telling herself that she should react with horror. She should feel fear. If this was real it was weird, right? It was scary.
Or at least it should have been.
But it all made sense, somehow. As though she’d been waiting her whole life for this revelation; everything that had ever happened had led her to this very moment. He made sense, this strange, beautiful, sexy man who walked the streets of London with a beast buried deep inside him. And more than anything else, it made sense that she’d found him.
For some insane reason, she wanted nothing more than to reach out and to touch him. So she moved forward, taking two, three steps, a hand outstretched towards his face. She stroked the Dragon’s muzzle despite the threatening smoke rising from either side of it. From somewhere deep in the beast’s chest, a low sort of growl erupted. She pulled back quickly, wondering if she’d committed some sort of faux pas.
But the Dragon pushed his face towards her, encouraging, and she stroked again. Once again, the growl came. No, not a growl. It was something else entirely. Ashlyn managed a laugh when she realized that he was making his best attempt at a purr.
So, this was a shifter. A man who could move between the body of a human and a winged, fire breathing creature of legend. This was a real thing. She’d read about them years earlier, somewhere, in some book. Strange, cryptic ramblings about shapeshifters that she’d always thought were myths concocted by someone with an overly active imagination.
But it was no myth. It was the truth, and now she knew it. She understood the significance of this moment, of what Aegis was showing her.
“You’re so gorgeous,” she said in spite of herself as she stroked his muzzle. She wasn’t sure if she was saying it to the Dragon or to Aegis the man, or both. And she didn’t know if the beautiful beast could understand. But she needed to say it. Both sides of the shifter were perfect.
But a moment after she uttered the words something happened. The hand that had been stroking Dragon scale, mesmerized by its texture, found itself petting nothing more than empty air. And Aegis, now in human form, stood a few feet away, laughing at her trance-like state. By some magic he was fully dressed; it seemed that the Dragon hadn’t robbed him of his clothing.
Embarrassed, Ashlyn pulled back and thrust the hand into a pocket. “Should I be frightened of you?” she asked quietly, her eyes looking to the ground for comfort.
Aegis shook his head silently, his smile fading as he moved closer. “No. I would never hurt you,” he said, his voice as soft as hers had been. He wasn’t laughing anymore. And when he was near enough, he slipped his hands onto her waist and pressed his forehead to hers. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Ashlyn Raleigh. Not for anything in this world.”
For a moment she let him stay there, closing her eyes and savouring his touch. Her sex pulsed with desire for him, her body taken over once again by pure need. She knew now that he understood how much she wanted him. She needed him to know. She wanted this man more than she’d ever wanted anything in the world.
“Who are you?” she asked, her hands slipping up to touch tentative fingertips to his muscular stomach, sliding them over the hard, ridged surface towards his chest.
“I’m one of the Kindred,” he replied. “A descendant of an ancient line of shifters. I am Aegis, a member of the Guild of Dragons. And I think, Ashlyn, that I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”
Questions
“Looking for me? What do you mean?” Ashlyn lifted her chin to look into the Dragon shifter's eyes. “Why would you look for me?”
Aegis pulled back suddenly, pushing the hands that had been holding her waist into his jacket pockets. What the hell had he just done? He hardly knew this woman, but for a moment he'd convinced himself that she was his mate. She was American, for fuck's sake, and it sounded as though she only planned to be in England temporarily. She wasn't his; she couldn't be, whatever his idiot Dragon was trying to tell him.
“I…I don't know why I said that,” he replied, stammering the words as he pivoted to turn his back to her.
Lumen and Lyre had each found their mates recently. Maybe he'd just gotten carried away in the fantasy that his own time had come. But then again, maybe he wasn't meant to find a mate. Those other men were Kindred just as he was. But unlike him, they had each been destined to search for one of the Dragons' Relics.
Aegis had never seen himself among their ranks. He didn't come from the line of Fire, Earth, Water or Air. He was just Aegis Dunkirk, nothing and no one special. A Dragon shifter with deep roots, but hardly the sort of noble breeding of the top shifters of their Guild.
But what he'd told Ashlyn was the truth. He'd been alone for a long time. And the moment he'd set eyes on her he'd felt the powerful draw of a shifter who was meant to bond, and had found his mate at last. Something about her felt so right; she fit into his world like a puzzle piece that had been missing for years. Over decades of solitude he'd wished for someone, a partner, a lover, a soul mate. And he'd all but given up hope that such a being was out there. She—whoever she was—had always been a mere construct of his mind.
He'd been with women now and then, of course, to abate his loneliness. But he'd never bonded as Dragon shifters were meant to. Had never given himself over body, mind and soul to another being. Had never understood the link that could exist between two people.
Until now.
The beautiful American woman stood silent behind him, no doubt as confused as he was. Rolling his hands into white-knuckled fists Aegis turned to face her, his shoulders and jaw tightening. Ready for whatever mockery she might throw his way for what he'd said. He'd shifted in front of her—already an intimate act to put on for a human stranger—and then all but told her that she was meant to be with him. He'd opened himself up entirely, but now he had no choice but to chastise himself for being so reckless with his own heart.
And yet when he turned to face her she didn't back away. Didn't flinch at the strange turn that her own life was taking on this bizarre night. Those turquoise-coloured eyes of hers were looking up into his with nothing but kindness and understanding. But how the hell could she possibly understand? How did she see him as anything but an overly eager freak of nature?
“I think that maybe we should go back inside,” she said quietly.
“Right. Let's do that,” Aegis answered, turning to lead her to the propped-open door. She was going to tell him that she needed to leave, that she'd had enough of his nonsense.
But she didn't. Instead she walked over and sat back down in one of the armchairs.
“Have a seat,” she ordered. He did so silently, his body tense as an iron rod.
Maybe he should just change the subject and let his embarrassment dissipate into the air. In spite of feeling like an absolute arse, he still wanted to know more about her. “Now you've seen what I am,” he told her. “But tell me—what are you?”
The young woman looked down at her fingers, which were intertwining nervously. “I'm just me,” she muttered. “Nothing more.”
“You are many things. You are everything.” In spite of the intimacy of his words, his voice had gone a little hard and distant, fighting off the risk of rendering himself vulnerable again.
Ashlyn went silent for a moment, biting her lower lip in the sexiest way. It was as though she were trying and failing to come up with an answer to a very complicated question. “I would feel like more if I understood where I’d come from. That’s why I want to know where I was born. I want to understand some things about myself.”
“And perhaps learn who your parents actually were.”
“Yes, I'd like that. I suppose I want to know if they're still alive.”
“But how could they be?" said Aegis. "They'd have found you by now; you're their daughter.”
“I don't know. Maybe they were deliberately far from the house when it burned to the ground. Maybe…” Ashlyn shuddered, and Aegis didn't need to read her mind to deduce what she was thinking. Maybe her own parents had set the fire that had nearly killed her. It was too horrific a thought to speak aloud. “Anyhow, in spite of it all I wanted to find myself,” she said, “if that’s not too much of a cliché.”
“Not in the least. But I'm curious…how did you end up in the United States? Tell me about your adoptive parents.”
Ashlyn smiled then, a genuine, full-fledged grin that denoted the purest sort of love and affection. Pressing her back into the chair, she spoke, and this time the nervousness seemed to fade away. “They were wonderful,” she said. “They lived in London but moved to Massachusetts because my father had secured a job there. They were so generous with me; they adopted me fairly late in life—my mother was already in her late forties, my father in his 50s. He always referred to himself as my ‘old dad.' But he seemed so young and vital. The most kind, funny person I've ever known.” She looked at Aegis. “You would've liked him a lot.”
“I take that as a compliment.” Finally the Dragon shifter cracked a smile, his body beginning to relax again.
“Well, you should. He was amazing. So was my mom; I miss them both a ton. Every day I think about them and what they did for me for all those years. They always supported the idea of my finding out about my birth parents. They understood that it didn't mean I loved them any less. But I waited, because I never wanted them to feel abandoned by their only child. And then my mother passed away a few years ago. My father followed a few months ago. I don’t think he ever got over losing her; I always got the impression that he couldn’t wait to see her again.”
“I’m sorry,” Aegis said softly.
“Thank you.”
“So they raised you on the east coast of the U.S.," the Dragon shifter said after a moment of silence, "and somewhere along the way you developed insanely good reflexes. I'd like to know more about where those came from.” Not to mention the body that screams for my mouth to taste every morsel of it. Even if common sense tells me that you're not, and never will be, mine.
“To be honest with you, my reflexes—what you saw in that alley—surprised me as much as you. I'm fairly athletic, but not speed-of-light athletic.” Ashlyn let out a nervous laugh, disturbed by whatever force had possessed her in that alley.
“Well, whatever may have brought it on, it's a shame that you don't plan to stay here long. I know a certain group of Hunters that could use your services were you ever to seek emp
loyment here.”
“Hunters?” Ashlyn shook her head. “I wouldn't fit in. I don't kill animals.”
Aegis let out a deep laugh, relieved to have an excuse to let his jaw relax.
“No, they're not that sort. They hunt the Forsaken and the Lapsed.”
“Okay, you're going to have to fill me in here. The Lapsed? Are those more half-breeds? Monkey and shrimp, perhaps?” Ashlyn cracked a smile, and it was a thing of beauty. Her lips had a sort of glossy pink hue, and her teeth were perfect. She was perfect. How was Aegis ever going to walk away from such a woman, or let her walk away from him?
He let out a sigh, a reaction to the absolute frustration of knowing that he couldn't have her. Every second spent staring at her revealed a new, desirable quality. “Not exactly,” he said. “They're shifters who have been robbed of any will of their own and have come under the control of others. They've lost their humanity and are little more than roving corpses who move about and do their masters' bidding. Like the Forsaken and shifters like me, they go largely unnoticed by the human population.”
“Unnoticed? I noticed you.”
“Well, you're special.” Aegis couldn't help but smile again. “Perhaps you noticed me because you knew how much I…” His expression faded.
“How much you what?”
“It's not important. Suffice it to say that the Lapsed are mindless but nevertheless threatening.”
“And who are their masters?”
“The Forsaken,” Aegis said. “And as you know from your own experience, they're far from mindless. Whereas the Lapsed are more animal than human, the Forsaken are very much dominated by their vampire side. Bloodthirsty, ruthless, strong. They rely on consuming human blood for their strength, and they rarely shift.”
Ashlyn shivered visibly at the horrific image conjured by his words, and Aegis wanted nothing more than to wrap her in a tight embrace. To remind her that he was watching over her, and that he would continue to do so as long as she remained on this side of the Atlantic.
Dragon's Lover: Part One Page 5
