by Leela Ash
“Not everywhere, he’s not,” Luke said. “A dragon is very large and very visible. When they approach enemy territory, they would all have to go in human form, safer that way.”
“Are they absolutely certain the Tiara in that Isle is the exact one Nabradia wants? And how sure are they that she won’t get there first?”, Jeanine asked, voicing the questions that had been uppermost on her mind.
She hadn’t met Nabradia but the woman sounded like a very shrewd witch. Would she leave the Tiara in such an easy-to-find location? And what if it wasn’t the right Tiara? Grandma Nana had been schooling her in a lot of things recently and she had learned, among other things, of the powerful, legendary Tiaras in the witch world, including the Tiara of Cleopatra and the Tiara of Philippi. Grandma had even told her of the ancient folklore about the Tiara of Oistrophe, although that had been destroyed a million years ago in dragon breath.
“You know nothing about anything. So stuff it,” Luke grated.
“I’ve had it with your rudeness and your snide comments,” Jeanine snapped, slamming her salad bowl onto the coffee table. “You don’t know the first thing about me and yet somehow you seem to think you can mouth off whatever nonsense creeps into your head at the drop of a hat. If you’re rude to me one more time, I’ll backhand you into the next county.”
Luke regarded her with frowning eyes, “Such language! Does Bo know you have a violent streak?”
“Leave him out of it,” she spat.
“Luke, stop it,” Joshua wheezed. “Jeanine is our guest and Bo won’t like it that you’ve quarreled with her.”
“He’ll survive,” Kelly announced.
Everyone looked at her in surprise. She also froze in surprise as though she hadn’t planned to let quite those words slide out. Then she shot Jeanine an apologetic look, “Listen, it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I remember what a hard time Bo gave me when we first met because I was human and therefore not good enough for Derek, according to him. And now he’s gone and fallen in love with a human too. I think that’s where Luke is coming from,” she finished.
The explanation made perfect sense, Jeanine admitted to herself. But that didn’t mean she intended to suffer fools gladly. “Wel,l I’m sorry you had a rough welcome from Bo, but your problem should be with him and not me. I’m afraid I still won’t stand for being insulted.”
And who said Bo had fallen for her? Kelly was jumping to conclusions.
“Fair enough,” Luke agreed, his eyes mocking.
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Kelly intoned.
The salad tasted like chalk in her mouth, Jeanine thought. She had been so worried since the men had gone off. She had forced herself to eat some salad but for the life of her, she had not been able to enjoy a single taste of the thing.
“I’ll be outside,” she said, rising to her feet restlessly.
“No, it might not be wise for you to be all alone outside,” Joshua returned. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather see Bo’s childhood pictures and laugh at how long his arms and neck were until he grew into them? You can poke fun at him when he returns.”
Jeanine chuckled, pleased at the prospect of dampening Bo’s cool élan. Joshua was right, that sounded like fun. “Thank you, Joshua,” she said with feeling.
Few minutes later, in the study, she realized that Joshua was not just a sentimental old man who wanted to weep over old pictures and the fond memories they represented. He was actually a wily old man and unless she’d completely misunderstood the thrusts of his questions, he wanted to discover for himself whether she loved Bo or not. Her eyes misted as she realized that this old man was as fiercely protective of Bo as she was. He loved Bo too.
She suddenly felt very close to him. Her hands shook as she took one more picture of Bo from the pile.
Bo looked to be about thirteen as he smiled tremulously at the camera. Another boy of similar age and build was beside him, they looked so alike they might as well be twins.
“Is Bo a twin?” she asked in a dubious tone.
Joshua’s hand stilled on the pile of pictures and he seemed to age some more in mere seconds as he heaved a weary sigh. “Not exactly. Joseph was his younger brother. They were apart in age by eleven months.”
“Were?” she questioned.
Joshua fell silent, his face ashen.
Jeanine got the unmistakable feeling that she had finally found a key to unraveling the mystery that was Bo. This Joseph and whatever had happened to him was a very important part of who Bo had become.
“Joshua?” Jeanine prodded.
He looked back at her and her breath caught in her throat. He had tears in his faded blue eyes. Jeanine sank to her knees beside his chair, her heart twisting in her chest at the genuine sorrow etched into Joshua’s features.
“Tell me, what happened?” she pleaded.
“Bo had a very rough childhood. His mother was… well she was a whore. She drank a lot and she slept with every man that crossed her path. If that was all she did then that would have been alright, but she abused her only two kids every chance she got too.”
Jeanine’s throat went dry with horror.
But Joshua wasn’t done painting the horrible picture.
“Bo was older than Joseph, even if just by a few months. So, he tried to protect his younger brother from his mother and her boyfriends which meant he got beaten up more times than I care to count. One night, she broke a bottle on Joseph’s head because he’d thrown a tantrum demanding food and scaring off her date. Bo managed to make it out of that home alive with Joseph that night. I found them beneath a bridge. They had trekked through three towns just to put some distance between them and her. Joseph had nearly bled to death. I took them to the hospital and they came home with me. They were the first of all the boys to come live with me.”
“Then what happened?” Jeanine whispered.
Joshua looked up at her and offered a smile, “You know the rest.”
She looked back at him blankly. No, she didn’t. Bo had never talked about himself.
“The boys met Drake. He had been born a shifter and was rejected and feared, even by shifters, because he was a shifter-dragon. He needed love and support and when they brought him home with them, I accepted him at once. One day, all of them got into some mischief, trying to steal mangoes from an old witch. They heard her torturing her husband and they all tried to save him. But she hexed them. Because Drake was with them when it hit, they all turned into shifters. The other boys came up to live with us and they became the Damaged Pack, a formidable force.”
“Wow,” she breathed picturing the scene.
“Yes. Well, Joseph was a fine lad and Bo’s world revolved specially around him. He loved the other boys too, but Joseph was his blood. Joseph fell in love with a white wolf, but she was from the Archstone Tribe. It was really puppy love, but you know teenage hormones can exaggerate feelings until they seem to be life itself. The Archstones are eternal rivals of Weirna shifters and the feud was too great to surmount. I tried to get Joseph to leave the girl alone but he wouldn’t listen. Bo tried, too. But, Joseph was determined to fight for his love. Finally, he discovered the girl had been leading him on for a mere lark. He was so angry, he shoved her into a river. She hit her head on a stone as she fell and she stayed down.”
“Oh no,” Jeanine cried.
“Her family came for vengeance. They caught Joseph and killed him in the most violent way possible. They did not give him an honorable death, they killed him like a common animal by tossing him into a pit for target practice and shooting a thousand poisoned arrows into his body. Bo was tied up nearby and he watched as his brother was killed mercilessly.”
Jeanine tried to look into Joshua’s eyes, but everything was blurry. She was weeping profusely, she realized.
Joshua lifted a hand and touched her head with aching tenderness, “After that day, my child, I think a part of Bo died. He no longer loved his supernatural abilities, he dreaded them. He thinks he
only has to lay a finger on a human or another shifter to kill them and so he fears himself. And worse, he and Joseph were the only bears in the pack and he watched Joseph die for a careless display of his strength. So even though he is with the others, he thinks he is different somehow. I think he secretly thinks he is a monster.”
Jeanine bent her head against his armrest, weeping her heart out for the little boy whose entire life had been changed by violence. Now she understood why he had so much power but seemed almost afraid to use it. Now she understood a lot of things. She even understood why he kept pushing her away, why he seemed almost afraid to love. He was afraid of losing control as much as he was afraid of loving and losing. Joseph wrapped his arms around her weeping form.
It all made sense now, she thought, as she wept in the arms of an old man who had been a perfect stranger until a few minutes ago.
Joshua laid a comforting hand on her head, as he also wept.
Jeanine and Joshua were both so wrapped in comforting each other, they didn’t hear the study door draw closed.
Outside the door, Luke leaned against the wall, expelling the breath he had been holding in. It would be damned hilarious if those two found him sobbing in the corridor too. It would also be damning evidence that he had been eavesdropping.
He felt his heart settle on the conviction that Bo hadn’t made a mistake after all. Jeanine seemed tough and she was human, but she loved Bo with all her heart. No woman could weep like that for what a man had been through, unless she was truly head over heels and mindlessly in love with him.
His decision was made. Jeanine was good for Bo and he would do everything in his power to see that they got together and stayed together.
19.
“Bo, move faster,” Drake whispered, the sound little more than a breath.
Bo tried to nod but all the muscles in his neck had gone stiff from holding his hands above his head to find support in the roof of the long cave they were crawling through. The cave was the stuff of nightmares. It had a mushy floor that had the crawlers sinking up to their stomachs, which meant simply walking through it, was out. The cave took at least an hour to cross. Someone had painstakingly dug out handholds in the low roof of the cave and the brothers had been walking in a single file, their hands grabbing for the handholds as they went.
They were very close to the Isle of The Cursed because they were crossing The Isle of Thrones, which meant their best camouflage was their human skin. Witches could sense shifters when they were in their animal form from miles away but the human form of shifters provided a little more protection. They had had Drake touch down on one of the mountains just before the Isle of Thrones.
“This is a shithole,” Bo complained.
Derek was up ahead, leading the way and he was moving as fast as though he were simply crossing the street for coffee. Bo grit his teeth as he tried to keep up. One of these days he would have to ask Joshua what he had fed Derek when they were growing up. The guy was always stronger, faster, and everything else ‘more’ than the rest of them or at least it always seemed that way since he tended to do everything with ease.
As though he’d read Bo’s mind, Jack grunted, “Derek’s not complaining.”
“He never does,” Bo countered. “Listen how much farther before we burst out of this fuck?” he demanded.
Jack could see through solid objects. It was a gift he rarely employed because of the headaches that came with it, but it was there alright. “Two miles,” he deadpanned.
Everyone ground to halt — even Derek — and turned around to glare at Jack. Their expressions were so comical he had to hold back a shout of laughter. Alright, so now wasn’t the best of times to joke.
He sighed, “Almost there, guys. Scout’s honor, less than five minutes.”
Everyone relaxed and returned to gripping and sliding until they reached a dead-end.
“Jack,” Derek murmured.
Jack stared at the wall hard until he could see clear through it. “That’s the end of the cave. It opens up outside, but a stone was rolled over the mouth.”
Derek pressed against it. It was heavy. He looked over his shoulder, the command silent, and at once, Bo materialized beside him. Together they put their shoulders to the heavy bit of rock. Bo’s phenomenal strength shoved it hard and it gave at once.
Derek and Bo stumbled through the open hole and fell onto the grasses below. Jack and Drake came out more sedately, but they were grinning, their faces shining with perspiration.
“Wow. This place is… strange,” Bo whispered looking around. Somehow, as they got closer to the Isle of the Cursed, they had resorted to speaking in very low tones by unspoken consent.
“It should be. No one comes here, not even dragons,” Drake replied.
Derek looked at him, “Do you know any other dragons?”
Drake shifted uncomfortably and didn’t respond. Derek’s eyes narrowed. Had Drake found other dragons? If so, why had he felt the need to hide it? He would deal with that later, he thought, facing forward with a frown.
They came out of nowhere. Five Archstone Tribe warriors, armed to the teeth in poisoned arrows, shields and whistles.
One minute, the four men were trudging along in companionable silence and the next minute an arrow had zinged past Derek, missing him by inches.
Jack threw Derek a look, “You didn’t perceive them?”
Derek usually could sniff out a person’s scent from miles away.
With a howl on the same level as a battle cry, Derek morphed into a wolf. Jack roared as he became a lion and Drake turned back into his dragon form. Bo also changed into his bear and the fight was on.
He charged at their rivals without mercy. All five of them had turned into wolves and bears too. They began to fight and tangle. Bo dealt a fatal blow to one’s eyes, blinding the Archstone fighter. It howled and ran off, blood gushing. In quick motions, the entire Archstone Tribe were defeated. Three had been killed outright by Bo and Drake, only one more escaped, his feet running and sliding on the grasses as he put distance between him and the brothers.
They crept on towards the Isle of the Cursed and encountered no one anywhere else. By the time the Isle rose up in front of them, Bo was exhausted and so were all the others.
The Isle of the Cursed was a strange place; it was frequently buried underneath the ground and invisible to travelers. It only came up out of the ground when those looking for it arrived specifically at the spot where it was hidden.
The Isle was the original home of the very first shifter ever and according to the lore, the very first witch, Oistrophe, had fallen in love with him and bore him children. He wouldn’t have her though, she wasn’t good enough for him he’d thought. In a fit of rage, Oistrophe had cursed him and his descendants and had given birth to her twin boys and eaten them up in his presence. Then she had dipped her Tiara in their blood and placed it atop her head. The entire land was thrown into instant darkness and every living thing came under her absolute power because she had conquered death using the blood of innocents.
But her actions brought a terrible fate. She was cursed and the entire Isle plunged into darkness until she took her own life weeks later.
The Isle was made of shards of glass, beautifully crafted and constructed together and the brothers stared in awe for a minute.
“I can see it,” Jack whispered.
“Then you should fetch it while the rest of us stand guard at the entrance,” Derek told him.
The Isle was a strange place. It was uninhabited and no one had been there for ages but somehow it seemed almost as though it had its own energy, as if every single thing were alive, even the blades of glass.
“I’ll go in with him,” Drake volunteered. “The both of you can stand guard here,” he added to Bo and Derek.
“Hurry,” Derek whispered, signaling his agreement.
Drake and Jack seemed as though they had been inside the shards of glass forever, Bo thought, some minutes later, casting a surrepti
tious glance at his watch. His heart clutched when he realized they had been away for over five hours already. Something about the Isle of the Cursed made time seem…infinite.
“It’s her isn’t it? She’s the one you’re so worried about,” Derek observed, his lids half-shut as he stood guard.
Bo looked at his brother, knowing at once who the “her” in question was. Every time he thought of Jeanine, his heart twisted inside of him. He wanted her with a passion that defied all logic. And even now surrounded by danger, the mere thought of her was enough to make his blood boil and his dick to tent in his pants.
“You love her, don’t you?” Derek demanded.
Love. Bo looked at his brother. How could he talk to him about love? And worse, how could he do that right now? With danger all around, standing right in the open when they could lose their lives at the drop of a hat, Derek wanted to talk about love?
“This is neither the time nor place Bo,” Derek said easily. “But sometimes these things must be said. What if something went wrong and heaven forbid you didn’t make it? What would you want her to know? That you only wanted to slake your lust with her body?”
Bo shifted angrily and looked away, a muscle grinding in his jaw. He really didn’t want to have this conversation; and especially not with Derek. Sometimes he felt the other man saw entirely too much for his own good. He knew what he felt for Jeanine was an aching tenderness. He wanted to… protect her. He wanted to keep her safe and shower her with gifts and pamper her until she wept from sheer joy. He wanted to see her expressive blue eyes darken with passion and something else. He wanted to plant his hands in her short, soft auburn curls and make love with her until she was branded with him all over again.
He wanted… he wanted dangerous things, he thought yanking his thoughts away. Jeanine was human, which meant she was fragile. He could hurt her very easily just as Joseph had hurt his white wolf and then he would not be able to live because he would surely have to kill himself, just like Joseph had.
Bo looked down at his hands.
