Games of Fate (Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon #1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She curled her fingers around Ladon’s shoulder and covered the wound as she leaned against his side. Exhausted, she’d have to wait to finish healing the bite, but the blood had stopped oozing. He hadn’t turned.

  Derek chuckled and shook his head. He slapped Ladon’s other shoulder. Wincing, Ladon frowned.

  “Big baby.” Derek pointed at Dragon. “They both are.”

  Dragon blew a line of flame at the Russian’s hat.

  Derek looked Rysa up and down before poking his chin at the beast. “They pout when they don’t get their way.” He rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand as he nodded toward Ladon.

  Ladon signed something she didn’t recognize.

  Derek laughed again. “See? Baby!”

  Frowning, she weaved her fingers into Ladon’s. “What’d you say?”

  He pulled her flush against his chest and trailed kisses across the slope of her ear. “We’ll teach you Russian Sign Language.” More kisses moved down the curve of her neck.

  A small bounce escaped. “Oh! When?” No boredom with them. From the way he nuzzled her neck and held onto her backside, she guessed she wouldn’t get a lot of sleep, either. Which was fine. Grinning, she nibbled on his earlobe.

  His skin brightened.

  Her grin turned to a smile, happy to see his color returning. “No fading away, Mr. Monochrome.”

  Dragon nudged Ladon and touched Rysa’s cheek, his hide brilliant with burgundies, a rich glimmering reflected in the puddles and off the building’s glass.

  “He says that you need not worry. We’re fine.” Another kiss, gentle but deep. “You’re with us.”

  And she would be, for as long as they wanted her.

  Derek’s phone rang. He dug in his pocket and flipped it to his ear. “Cousin!” He winked at Rysa. “You think her father is a Shifter? And why is that?”

  Ladon chuckled.

  Derek covered the phone. “He found a healer. Her name is Lucinda de la Turris. She’s flying in from Spain.” He listened for a moment. “Cordoba. Lovely city. She says you may remember her.”

  Ladon’s eyebrows arched.

  “What?” Derek scoffed. “He wants to know if it’s true the de la Turris clan can hear the dragons. He says he’s jealous.”

  AnnaBelinda snorted.

  “de la Turris? It means ‘of the tower.’” Ladon laughed and kissed Rysa’s cheek. “Your father must be part of her clan. That explains your connection.”

  “My clan?” But she knew it wasn’t the only reason she heard Dragon. Frowning, she looked at the bracelet on her wrist. Damned chaos blanketed all her abilities.

  “Alessandro Roberto de la Turris, you say? Hmm.” Derek gestured toward his wife and pointed at one of the neighboring buildings.

  AnnaBelinda tugged on Ladon’s arm. “We must leave. You need rest.” The RV waited next to the low-slung offices.

  The dragons sauntered ahead, knocking each other’s shoulders. They dimmed their hides but continued to shimmer and their light caught something resting in a puddle a few feet away.

  Ladon said something but Rysa didn’t hear. She let go of his hand, drawn to the sparkle.

  Her knees buckled. They both almost toppled to the pavement but AnnaBelinda steadied them, one arm around Ladon, the other around Rysa.

  “We will call you back,” Derek said to Dmitri. “No, no. I will call you back in about half an hour.” He tucked the phone into his pocket.

  Dragon’s talon, the one which had broken free while they fell, refracted in the puddle. All of Dragon’s colors played over its surface. At least six inches long, it altered, blending with her skin and the night, when she carefully laid it on her palm.

  Rysa’s sense of tentacles, of grossness and monsters, of other—they all vanished. “Nasty” no longer applied. She blinked, staring at the glimmer in her hand.

  The past, present, and future became distinctly oriented in the same way that she knew up from down, back from front, and left from right. Her healer, her Shifter part, also oriented to her seers, in the same way she knew her hands from her feet.

  For the first time since she activated, she felt whole. She might bounce still, and talk too much, and get distracted, but her new parts had stopped whipping. They no longer hurt.

  In the street in Minnesota, when she activated, she wore the burnmetal shackles. But she’d also been held in the air, in Dragon’s forelimbs.

  And no one knew what compounds were in his talons.

  She pulled the burnmetal link from her wrist and whipped it across the street.

  “Rys, what are you—”

  An image of her mother’s talisman bracelet flashed from the beast.

  Ladon’s eyes widened. “How can that be?”

  All this time, her seers hadn’t meant to siphon. They’d been using her Shifter connection to Ladon and Dragon to reach her true talisman—the beast himself. The chaos of the burnmetal she wore on her wrist had only disrupted her already frazzled mind and kept her from integrating properly.

  She held the talon to her chest. “I’m…” She wasn’t Ambusti. She wasn’t locked to the damned Burners. “I’m the new Draki Prime.” The Fate-Shifter healer.

  Ladon swung her into his arms. “You’re ours,” he whispered, his lips on her temple.

  “Put me down! You’re wounded.” The bite might open if he carried her to the RV. He’d bleed again. “Caveman.”

  Dragon pushed through the door first, squeezing his head through, then his limbs. He curled into the corner of the big bed filling the back of the vehicle.

  Ladon chuckled as he carried her through the door and set her down next to the beast. “Ah, but it is an excellent cave. One suitable for both dragons and beautiful women.”

  Derek grunted as he went forward to drive, Sister-Dragon squeezing in behind him. “That it is, my friend!”

  AnnaBelinda appeared, a med kit in her hand. “Ignore the idiots.” She smiled as she bandaged Ladon’s shoulder, then checked Rysa’s pulse. “Your heart’s beating fine.” She pressed a palm to Rysa’s forehead. “But you’re feverish.”

  Dragon cupped her upper back. Yes, he signed. Your temperature is elevated.

  Fevers were to be expected in the newly activated. The bed felt comfy and all Rysa wanted was sleep. She’d be fine, resting with Ladon and Dragon.

  AnnaBelinda handed her a bottle of water. “Drink this.” Then she wagged a finger at Ladon. “She’ll need food when she wakes up. Shifters are always hungry when they come out of activation.”

  He nodded and kissed the top of Rysa’s head. “I’ll make sure she eats.”

  “And watch her fever.”

  Rysa sipped the water. She felt safe between Ladon and Dragon. She even felt safe with AnnaBelinda, Sister-Dragon glimmering like an ocean behind Derek. There was no other place she wanted to be but with them.

  Ladon touched her shoulder and her cheek. “Thank you, my love.”

  “You’re welcome.” She cuddled close. “Will you really buy a house near campus?” She’d live with them, even though they hadn’t been together long enough for that. But she knew they’d insist. She didn’t foresee either Ladon or Dragon accepting any other arrangement.

  He kissed her cheek. “And another later, if you decide to go to graduate school.”

  The level of commitment he offered shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. “You know, in a couple of weeks you may decide you don’t like me.” She stroked his arm. “I can be demanding. And hyperactive.” He hadn’t been around her enough to start making the faces.

  She felt her body pull away in the same unconscious reaction she’d had to every guy who offered affection. She didn’t mean to. Ladon wouldn’t do that to her.

  “Look at me.” He cupped her chin. “You’re not high strung.” He sniffed as he nodded toward the front of the RV.

  A giggle escaped before she caught it and he grinned as he leaned back and pulled her close.

  “We are more concerned about you.”
/>
  “Why?” Her seers didn’t scream bad or be scared. Just the opposite. She saw only happiness.

  “I will explain my entire twenty-three centuries and what I have done and why I did it.” He paused, watching her face. “You can ask me any question and I will always tell you the truth.”

  “I know.” After what he’d given her already, she wasn’t worried. The wars he’d fought were in the past.

  “Thank you.” He kissed the top of her head.

  Rysa settled, her head on Ladon’s shoulder and Dragon’s hand draped over her hip. They fell into a rhythm, Ladon breathing in as she breathed out, Dragon’s patterns matching their respirations. His lights reflected off the walls of the RV and moved in soft waves as if pushed by a gentle breeze.

  Her body embraced true calm for the first time since the Burners found her. She drifted off, her new talisman under her palm.

  The stars and waves passing by her eyes shone like the future, strong and smooth. No fire haunted her soul. Rysa slept, tranquil, with only visions of sunshine and oranges filling her dreams.

  Rysa and Ladon’s story continues in Flux of Skin….

  1

  Bumps and divots and tactile non-sequiturs wrenched across Ladon’s abdomen. The RV bounced and reflections of Dragon’s patterns whirled against the ceiling and a damned dream turned his gut into a cauldron.

  He rubbed his midsection. They’d be home soon. The Jani Fates may have put them through hell—he could think of a thousand safer ways to activate his beloved Rysa’s healer abilities than the fight they’d just endured in Salt Lake City—but that was done. In less than two hours he’d be in his own bed, under the solidity of the cave’s dome, his woman where she should be—pressed against his side and free of her family’s torture.

  Ladon wanted to sleep off his wounds in comfort and peace, all his nightmares be damned.

  Yet a sour sense of foreboding grated at his insides. The fractured emotions of the dream still chafed his body raw.

  Rysa lay between him and Dragon, asleep again. He rolled against her back and snaked an arm around her waist, his fingers splaying over her belly. He laid his forehead against the nape of her neck, breathing her in her mist-under-the-moon scent.

  She sighed and rolled slightly, her body unconsciously molding against his. He shifted, closing the gap, and the sourness seeped away.

  This, with her, filled more holes in his long life than any other moment he’d experienced. Yet he couldn’t shake the thought the dream’s menace was backwash from her Fate’s future-seer. Her abilities saw something bad coming and through the connection they shared, so did he.

  Except it felt familiar. It felt like him. Twenty-three centuries he’d walked this earth and rolling dread only pierced his gut before the universe decided to reduce his life to rubble.

  Dragon’s patterns flickered to warmer tones. Unease filtered through the river of energy Ladon shared with the beast. Or it filtered from him to Dragon. After over two millennia sharing a psychic connection, sometimes neither of them could tell to whom an emotion belonged.

  We are safe, the beast pushed into his mind. A slow ocean of disconnected patterns moved across the beast’s hide. You must not worry. Rysa will be distressed by your mood.

  Ladon willed his muscles to loosen. Even if his body screamed to pay attention, to keep his eyes open and his senses primed, she didn’t need to see his unease.

  She sighed.

  The beast nuzzled her shoulder. Yawning, she wiped away sleep with the back of one hand while scratching Dragon’s jaw with the other.

  Ladon forced a bright grin as much to bury his discomfort as to mask it from her. Even without her abilities to see past, present, and future, she picked up more than she realized. The beast was right—she’d sense his anxiety if he wasn’t careful.

  He stroked a stray hair from her forehead.

  “Hmm… Where are we?” She scooted closer.

  Before they left Salt Lake City, they’d both changed into some of his brother-in-law Derek’s extra sweats. She cuddled against Ladon’s side and the big-eared, big-eyed Russian cartoon character emblazoned across the t-shirt she wore stretched tight between her perfect breasts.

  All his life and he’d never found a woman with such exquisite balance. One breast was slightly fuller than the other—just a fraction and not enough a normal would notice—but her other had a small mole on the center top. When she held her arms out to him, it formed a perfect line between her shoulder and her nipple and balanced the slight extra roundness of her other breast perfectly.

  He traced his finger over the cartoon character’s ear, gently circling the mole under the fabric.

  Her fingers traced the grooves of his bicep.

  Every inch of his skin, every muscle and every tendon, sighed under her touch. Four days they’d been together. Four days and his body only felt whole when she pressed herself against his side.

  “We’re almost to Rock Springs,” he whispered.

  Her fingers caressed his forearm, her touch light but warm. Her seers danced along the borders of his consciousness with the rhythm of her movements, tender but solid, in a lovely and sure cadence.

  He let it flow over him. The music of her Fate abilities wove into the edges of his mind like her fingers wove around his hand. He breathed under the completeness of her caress—both mental and physical—soothed more than he should allow himself.

  He glided his lips over her brow, then down the bridge of her nose to land a gentle kiss on the tip. Another kiss followed, a sweet touch of his lips to hers. Her jasmine and mist-under-the-moon scent curled into him, but this close, a hint of something new added a deeper note to her bouquet: ‘Acceptance.’

  Her Shifter half had brought more than healer abilities—she exhibited burgeoning close-range enthraller pheromones as well. Scents he could only smell when he was within inches of her body. Scents her body made just for him. Scents that said she loved him.

  He could let his focus change. Concentrate on her skin and her touch and the wonders she shared with him. He could cover her with his body and kiss the sleepiness from her mouth. Give back to her all that she’d given him and let everything else fall away.

  He nibbled her earlobe, nuzzling and kissing. The lumps lessened as he pressed himself against her and he felt, for the first time since opening his eyes, that maybe he’d only had a bad dream. A reaction to what had happened, not what will. He lay now next to perfection. What bad could happen?

  She tickled the furrow between his abdomen and his hip and he squirmed, chuckling against her lips. “Woman, you will be my end.” A rumble threatened to escape from his chest—his rolling dragon vibration that emanated from the spot below his heart. It had happened with other women, but never as loud as it did with Rysa, and never as frequent.

  And she seemed to enjoy it. If they were quick, they’d be dressed again before Sister drove the RV into the all-night grocery in Rock Springs. He worked his hand up her thigh to the firm curve of her bottom.

  A sly twinkle moved from her grin to her eyes, though she yawned and leaned her head against his shoulder. “You’re going to have to wait until I feel better.”

  He pulled back. That’s not what she said outside of Salt Lake City. She’d crawled on top of him, the activation of her Shifter half priming all her appetites, and rubbed against his groin until he couldn’t take it anymore and flipped her on her back.

  He pushed himself up on his elbow. She did still feel hot to the touch. He hadn’t thought about it—she might take longer than other Shifters to come out of activation—but now he wondered. And she hadn’t asked for food since they left—not even an apple or a drink of water in the five hours they'd traveled.

  The dream’s dread resurfaced and scoured a new trench across his stomach.

  Behind Rysa, discordant patterns swirled across Dragon’s hide.

  Rysa rolled away. “I feel everything you two pulse back and forth between each other, you know.” She rubbed the
beast’s snout. “I’m fine. I’m still activating, that’s all. Who knows what kind of Shifter I’ll be, huh? Since I’m an active Fate, too.” A weak grin appeared—the corners of her mouth lifted, but nothing else. Ladon could tell she didn’t believe her own words.

  How could he have missed this? He’d been so wrapped up in his own desires, so amazed by the newness of her Fate-Shifter combination he’d failed to consider the potential danger of a double activation.

  There were probably good reasons half-breeds were only activated as either Fate or Shifter. Probably very good reasons.

  Rysa’s skin had taken on the tone of ash. Her fever hadn’t diminished and still flushed her face and neck, but a pallor had set over her cheeks and eyes.

  He felt along her forehead with the back of his hand. She felt warm yet clammy.

  “Ladon, I’m okay.” Her brows knitted and the corners of her mouth dropped down. She looked like she did when she worried about him. “When my aunt gets here, she’ll take care of it. I’ll be alright.”

  She lied—fear sparked across their connection. Her aunt may be a class-one healer, but Rysa knew her double-activation was destroying her body. She was trying to conceal it from him.

  “Rys, if you’re hurting, don’t hide it. Don’t—”

  Dragon flattened his digits and retracted his talons. Lucinda de la Turris comes, Rysa, he signed in American Sign Language so she understood, one big eye level with Ladon’s face. She is a good healer and will help.

  The beast pulsed calm as his big hand returned to her hip. You are increasing her anxiety, Human.

  Ladon sat up. She’s sick. Dragon’s accusatory tone wasn’t helping.

  Rysa rolled onto her back, one palm on Ladon’s stomach and the other on Dragon’s snout. Anger flitted across her face. “Quit fretting! You’re both worse than my mother.” She rolled onto her front and closed her eyes.

  Dragon’s hide pulsed in his version of a frown and Ladon stared at Rysa’s back, not understanding why she acted this way. It didn’t make sense. He would do whatever was necessary for her to be healthy. He’d go anywhere and acquire anything, even if he had to fight every Fate, Shifter, and Burner on the planet to do it.