by G. A. Aiken
He smiled at his sister. “Dinner.”
It had gone on for days. The two of them constantly “at it.” Like two mating beasts. Gwenvael shook his head in disgust. He understood lust. Actually, he appreciated lust greatly. But love? A strictly human emotion. And although he enjoyed gallivanting around town as human, he had no intention of making a muddle of his life as they all seemed to.
Of course, he would never have thought Fearghus the Destroyer would either. If there was one thing he could always count on from his large, less-than-social brother, it was his seemingly innate ability to feel nothing for anyone. So, to now watch him moon over some slip of a girl made Gwenvael question all his beliefs.
His head snapped up and he studied the sky. For a moment he thought he’d heard the flap of large leather wings. But as he searched the sky he saw nothing. He dismissed it and went in search of his sister. The soldiers from the previous night were not sitting well in his stomach and he needed one of her soothing concoctions.
She always did have a tendency to overcook their food.
* * *
Annwyl followed the sounds of retching. She found Morfyd by the stream. Her arms around Gwenvael’s shoulders as he vomited into the water.
“He all right?”
Morfyd shrugged. “He ate too much. But he’ll be fine. And I have a message for you from”—she cleared her throat—“Brastias.”
Annwyl frowned. Did Morfyd just blush? “What message?”
“Your brother plans to attack the closest village in three days time. Maybe less. I tried to tell you last night but you were sound asleep.”
Annwyl shrugged. “All right. Thank you.” She’d already planned to return to her troops in the next day or two.
“Is that all your brother warrants? A shrug and a thank you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Annwyl snapped, unable to help herself. “I have other things on my mind besides him. Oh . . .” she waved her hand. “I’ll come back later.” Annwyl made to go, but Morfyd stopped her.
“Wait. Annwyl. What is it?”
“I can’t go on like this.”
Morfyd dropped Gwenvael, his head slamming into the stream. Annwyl grinned as Gwenvael cursed the woman.
Morfyd moved over to Annwyl and looked at her. “You can’t go on like what?”
“My days with the knight. My nights with the dragon. It’s becoming impossible.”
“Annwyl, talk to him.”
“I tried that. I can’t think when I’m around him. He does this thing with his tongue. . . .”
“Annwyl! I mean the dragon. Talk to the dragon.”
“I tried last night, but . . . I think he grows tired of me. And what if he laughs?”
“He hasn’t. And he won’t.” Morfyd smiled. “Trust me.”
“But . . .”
“No. I don’t want to hear it. Just tell the big bastard how you feel. How you feel about him. He needs to hear it. And you need to say it.”
“But the knight . . .”
“Don’t worry about him. Talk to the dragon. The knight can wait.”
Annwyl took a deep breath. She had to do something. Soon she would face her brother and most likely death. She didn’t want to go to her grave knowing that her weakness held her back from the one thing that truly mattered to her.
She nodded and headed back to the cave. Back to her dragon.
Fearghus followed the sound of retching. He found his brother doubled over and Morfyd patting him on the back.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He ate too many soldiers last night.”
“Soldiers? Here?”
Morfyd nodded. “Lorcan’s men. Don’t worry. I took care of them.”
“But this means they know Annwyl is here.”
Morfyd shook her head as she rubbed Gwenvael’s sweaty brow. “Not necessarily. It looked more like they were just checking the area. You know, a scouting party.”
Morfyd looked up at her brother and frowned. “Why are you here?”
“What do you mean why am I here?”
“I just sent Annwyl to find you. She wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” He pointed to himself. “Or to me?” He pointed toward his cave.
Morfyd laughed and seemed about to answer when she stopped and stared off behind him.
Fearghus turned around. “What are you doing here?”
Briec, next in line behind Fearghus, leaned against a tree and watched his siblings quietly. Naked, fresh from shifting, his long silver mane of hair stretched down his back and fell across his face and shoulder.
“When there was no answer from you or Morfyd and baby brother didn’t return . . .”
Fearghus shook his head. “Not this again.” He didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to find Annwyl. Hear what she had to say. And no matter what she said, he would tell her the truth. Tell her everything. He couldn’t go on like this anymore.
“I told you not to ignore him.” Morfyd chastised as she helped a very green Gwenvael to his feet.
“Go back to the old bastard and tell him to stay out of my life.”
Briec shook his head. “I can’t.”
Fearghus frowned. “What do you mean you can’t?”
“I mean I can’t . . . because he’s already here. He awaits you in your den.”
Before Fearghus could react, Morfyd’s hand suddenly gripped his arm, nearly tearing the skin off. “Gods, Fearghus. Annwyl.”
“Dragon!” Annwyl called out before she even entered his part of the lair. “Dragon! Are you here?”
She marched into the dragon’s main chamber, the words she needed to tell him on her lips. “Fearghus, I . . .” She stopped.
Although the dragon she now saw before her bore the same size and color as Fearghus, this one’s black mane had silver and white hair streaked through it, and his scales were not as bright. Clearly an older dragon.
And he definitely wasn’t Fearghus.
She stopped and stared at him. The old dragon looked at her.
“You.”
The look of welcome she always saw in Fearghus’s eyes did not spark in this dragon’s. And she knew in that split second he wanted her dead.
She burst into a run, the dragon’s flames just missing her. The dragon took in another deep breath so Annwyl dived behind a large boulder. Flames erupted all around her as she crouched down low. The flames went around the boulder but its heat scared her beyond anything she’d known. He could kill her with one blast. She ignored the panic that began to rise and unsheathed her sword.
After several moments, the flames stopped and she could hear the dragon stomping toward the boulder. She held her breath and waited. He stopped and she glanced over just as his snout came around the boulder, latching on to her scent. She waited until the beast’s head was close enough then she slashed him across the snout. Dragon blood spurted across her arm and the dragon roared in pain and anger as she sprinted out, heading away from the beast. He charged after her. Annwyl knew that in order to survive she needed to let her instincts take over. She weaved between other boulders, using the beast’s size and weight against him.
When he stopped to strike her with flame, she would again hide behind a boulder or a stone wall. But she couldn’t keep it up much longer. She needed to kill the dragon before it killed her. She stayed behind a boulder longer than normal and this time, just as she somehow knew he would, the dragon came from overhead.
As his head silently lowered to get close to her she jumped up on the boulder and onto the beast’s snout. Startled, he gave her the time she needed to run up and over his head, down his neck, across his back, until she reached his tail. She knew he could use it as a weapon, so she moved quickly. She held the tip down with her foot and slammed her sword between it and where the scales were at their smallest and weakest. Where Fearghus once cut his brother’s tail off.
She impaled the tail, burying the blade into the ground. The roar he sent out shook the cave and Annw
yl knew she only had seconds before he got himself loose. So she unsheathed her second sword and ran under the dragon.
She could only pray that a dragon’s weakness was the same as a human’s. The groin. She lay flat on her back and, using her legs, slid completely under him. She had to move quickly. Once he realized she was there, all he had to do was lie down.
As she hoped, the hard scales that covered the rest of his body did not cover his groin. His shaft protectively tucked up inside the flesh, thankfully out of sight and away from her face. She’d already seen more of this dragon than she’d ever wanted to. She raised her sword and dug it into the beast’s fleshy underbelly, readying herself to push the blade through. She hoped the move would allow her time to get out of the cave and out of the glen if she had to.
“Annwyl! No!”
Annwyl froze. Blood began to seep where the tip of her blade rested, but she pushed no further. The dragon above her stopped breathing. He couldn’t sit now. True, he’d crush her, but he’d impale himself in the process.
“Annwyl, love. Give me your hand.”
Annwyl glanced over and saw the shiny black talons of her dragon. Breathing hard, a war raged in her soul between the warrior ready to strike the killing blow and Annwyl the woman who knew this dragon was Fearghus’s father.
“Fearghus?”
“Annwyl. Trust me.”
Annwyl looked back at the bleeding beast above her. If the old dragon killed her now, she knew as sure as she knew her own name that Fearghus would kill him. The old beast wouldn’t risk that. She decided to trust the one being she’d trusted all along.
She grabbed onto his talon and allowed him to snatch her out from under the great dragon. He pushed her back into Morfyd and Gwenvael and turned to face his father, protecting them all with his own body.
Chapter 13
Never before had anyone gotten so close to killing Bercelak. And if he hadn’t stopped her, Annwyl would have killed him. She found the one weak spot on a dragon. The one place with no protective scales.
When the four of them charged in, Annwyl had just slid her long body under the dragon’s. Fearghus called her name but the blood lust had her, and she couldn’t hear him. So he shifted, his voice shifting with him, almost bringing the walls down with his call to her.
Part of him didn’t want to stop her, he was so angry at his father. But he knew that if Annwyl killed him, there would be no going back for the queen. She would move heaven and earth to destroy Annwyl and he would do the same to protect her. But at the sound of his voice, she stopped. Cold. He wasn’t sure she had that kind of self-control. But, as always, Annwyl continued to amaze him.
“You son of a bitch!” Fearghus’s rage shook the walls of his lair, and he itched to beat the old bastard to death.
His father had his claw over his slashed snout while desperately trying to get his tail released from the blade that held it. “Did you see what that mad bitch did to me?”
“I should have let her kill you.”
“I gave you strict orders. . . .”
“I don’t answer to you! Get out. Now!”
“What is your attachment to this human?” His father’s shrewd eyes stared closely at his son, his nostrils twitched. “I smell her all over you.”
“I said go!”
His father looked around him to see Annwyl. “What did he tell you, little human, to get you to spread your legs?”
Fearghus released a fireball that sent his father flying across the cave, part of his tail torn off where the blade impaled it.
“Fearghus, no!” Morfyd shouted behind him. But he only glanced at his sister. His anger had a stranglehold on him now. Too blind with rage to acknowledge anything. Until he heard Annwyl.
“Fearghus?” She didn’t shout. She didn’t scream. She said it so quietly the rest of his family probably never heard her. But he did.
Annwyl sheathed her sword and listened to the fight between father and son. It almost reminded her of Lorcan and their father, but she doubted the fight would end with Fearghus crying and cowering in a corner.
The old dragon’s cold eyes turned to her. She pulled away from Morfyd, ready to face the old bastard when something caught her eye. The bright red of a surcoat. Shredded and sitting at the entrance to the chamber. She walked over to it as the family squabble continued. She crouched down beside the garment and also found chainmail leggings, chainmail shirt, and leather boots. All shredded and ripped apart. For a moment she worried that maybe her knight had become food for the old dragon, but she could find no blood and the garments seemed split apart.
She looked up at Fearghus who had just blasted his father across the room. What did the old bastard say to her? What did he tell you, little human, to get you to spread your legs? At that moment, Morfyd called out to Fearghus, and in anger the dragon’s head snapped around to briefly look at her. The action caused his mane to flip to the opposite side and an unruly bit of black hair fell over his eye.
Annwyl stared. How had she never noticed it before? That black hair that she loved so much on both her knight and her dragon. The hair she insisted on running her hands through when she talked with her dragon or gripping in passion when she rode her knight.
“Fearghus?”
He moved to descend on his fallen father, but her voice stopped him. He looked at her. Their eyes locked. And Annwyl felt a wave of cold spike down her spine. Her gaze shifted to Morfyd, but the woman looked away from her. Gwenvael, although still a little green, turned his entire body away. His eyes downcast. Then she realized that there was another. She looked up to find a silver-haired naked man staring at her. He grinned in greeting. Then he winked.
Annwyl stood and walked to Fearghus. She stood in front of him. “Fearghus?”
“I can explain everything. . . .”
“Can you, boy?” Fearghus closed his eyes at the sound of his father’s voice. The old dragon had hauled his enormous bulk up and stood behind his son.
Annwyl felt it at that moment. She had kept it at bay so long she forgot how good it felt to wrap it around herself like a warm cloak in the middle of winter. She unsheathed her sword as her rage spread through her limbs.
Fearghus’s eyes snapped open in surprise at the sound.
“Annwyl.” She moved around him, her eyes locked with his.
He turned his body as she walked. He waited for it. Waited for the blow. And he’d take it too. She was sure of that.
“Are you going to let some human do this to you, Fearghus?” His father barked in disgust. Annwyl now stood between the two dragons. Her eyes still locked with Fearghus’s, her blade pointing tip down, the handle gripped by both her hands. She held the weapon so tightly that her tan knuckles now white with the effort.
“You lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“Just kill her, Fearghus. Kill her and be done with it,” his father sighed heavily.
“Tell me, Fearghus.” She raised the sword high, her rage singing through her veins. “Do you understand this?”
She spun on her heel away from Fearghus and, using all the rage she contained, slammed the blade into the old dragon’s claw between his talons where the scales were at their thinnest, nailing it—and him—to the hard ground.
The dragon’s head fell back and the roar he let out most likely rang out hundreds of leagues away.
Annwyl turned to her lover. “Burn in hell, Fearghus.”
She walked away, leaving the dragons to tend their wounded father.
Chapter 14
His siblings stood there silent, stunned by their father’s scream of pain. But Fearghus watched Annwyl. He watched her walk toward the exit. Watched her notice Briec staring at her. She stopped and stared back at his silver-haired brother. When he smiled at her, she backhanded him across the head, knocking the dragon’s human form into Gwenvael.
He glanced at his younger brother. “Go with h
er.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Gwenvael demanded as he helped Briec to his feet. “She’s insane! I’m not going anywhere!”
Fearghus growled low, making sure his fangs showed. Gwenvael winced back and grudgingly followed.
“Keep her safe,” he called after his brother. He looked at Morfyd who finally snapped out of her surprise and now tended their father.
“How bad is it?”
Morfyd looked at her brother with wide eyes. “She went straight through to the cave floor. I think it’s stone.” She didn’t bother hiding the awe in her voice.
“No. There’s some dirt there.”
“Well, it’s going to have to be pried out. It’s imbedded.”
He sneered at his father. “He’ll live. I’m going after her.”
“What?” His sister stood up in front of her brother. “Fearghus, don’t. She’s angry. Very angry. She impaled your father . . . twice. Give her some time to calm down.”
“I lied to her, Morfyd. She has every right to be angry. Besides, it wasn’t me she hurt.”
“No. You’re not going anywhere until you help me with him.” She went back to Bercelak. “I can’t do this alone.”
Fearghus shook his head. His sister didn’t need his help. But she wanted to give Annwyl at least a few minutes to calm her rage. Perhaps not a bad idea, when he thought about it a moment.
He watched his father struggling to pull his claw from the cave floor, but he couldn’t do it without tearing open the wound. The bastard was effectively stuck until he and Morfyd helped him. Fearghus smiled a little at his father’s suffering and the female who caused it.
I do love that woman.
“Stay away from me, Gwenvael.”
“I don’t want to be here, but my brother gave me no choice.” Gwenvael struggled to keep up with her. His stomach still threatened to remove the rest of the soldiers he’d eaten the previous night and she had very long legs. She didn’t run but rather stalked. And he knew if he got too close he could end up like Briec. Or worse . . . like his father.
