However, that all changed when he met his mate, Blythe.
Blythe started a chain reaction that all boiled down to Brooklyn’s uncle, and the man that killed our father, actively trying to assassinate not just my brother, but the entire dragon rider race that served directly under Keifer.
Although he was unsuccessful, we’d lost six dragon riders and three dragons.
Immortal dragons.
We were still trying to figure out just what the man had that made the dragon’s link to the Meridian rendered invalid.
The Meridian was what gave dragons their life force and also gave them their ability to be almost immortal.
As long as they stayed within two hundred square miles of one of the six hearts of the Meridian, then they’d thrive. But if they moved too far away for too long of a period, then they’d slowly lose their immortality and age just like any other living being.
But when we were attacked, it was like the Meridian ceased to exist…and the laws of magic I’d grown up with didn’t exist, either.
“Are you even listening to me?” Keifer growled in frustration.
I stood up, careful to keep my shirt down, and turned to face Keifer.
“Yeah, I fuckin’ heard you. You’re leaving. I’m to stay here and take care of the sanctuary. You’re taking everyone. I’m all alone and the sole provider for our unconscious houseguest that shouldn’t even be here, and I need to keep an eye out for any bad people. Right?”
I was sure the sarcastic edge to my words came out nice and clear if Keifer’s face was anything to go by.
“I’m not leaving you alone, and not for long,” he grunted.
I raised a brow at him.
“If you weren’t leaving me for a long time, why take everyone?” I countered.
He sighed. “I can’t risk everyone. We’re going up to Anchorage for two months only. That should be enough time to figure out if whatever threat we had was actually a threat or not.” He sighed. “And I need to read up on dragon history; now’s as good of a time as any, I suppose.”
I nodded.
“But you can risk me,” I drawled dryly.
He turned his head up to study the ceiling.
It was true. Especially with the newest Prince of Dragons pending arrival.
Although we did have another few months before that happened.
Your girl’s calling out for you again, Perdita’s silky smooth, husky voice said in my mind.
I know, I replied back to her. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Two months ago we’d brought Brooklyn into the sanctuary.
And that’d been the day my life changed forever.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” Keifer growled. “Blythe’s puking again.”
I didn’t say anything as he left the room, actually somewhat thankful that he was leaving without me having to make up an excuse.
I walked to my closet and picked another shirt up off the shelf where I had a large pile of them.
Shucking the one I was wearing off over my head by the back of the collar, I placed it on the shelf and shrugged into a new shirt of the same exact color.
Then I hurried out of my room with the old t-shirt held firmly in my hand.
I made it to the infirmary in record time.
I’d started timing myself since I came down here so much.
“You really should tell Keifer what’s going on,” Skylar, my big sister, suggested.
I turned my head to study her for a quick second before moving my gaze to the small, broken woman lying in the hospital bed along the far wall.
Although all the other beds were occupied as well, my eyes were only for her…for Brooklyn.
I still couldn’t explain it.
It happened the moment I touched her as I was helping her out of the small, cramped cell I’d found her in.
It’d been terrible.
Something I never wanted to see again in my life.
I laid the t-shirt down over Brooklyn’s restless body, and instantly she stilled.
It was my scent that calmed her, though.
The scent of a mate, Perdita said with annoyance.
I ignored her.
I was trying valiantly to ignore the fact that Brooklyn was my destined mate.
I knew the moment I had her in my hands as I was carrying her out of that hellhole, but there wasn’t a single fucking thing I could do about it, seeing as Brooklyn refused to wake up.
There was no longer anything physically wrong with her body.
She’d healed in a matter of moments, thanks to our mate bond.
A bond that wasn’t supposed to be possible without us first being together, in the biblical sense.
But, what I’d learned from a book my father wrote to his sons about mate bonding, a book I’d had given to me by my brother, it was possible for the mate bond to pop into place under extreme physical duress.
Although, that was only assumed by my father because his mate bond had not formed like that. He’d only heard about it.
Everything about the bond I shared with Brooklyn was completely foreign and new to me.
I was learning as I went along.
And I couldn’t share it with her, because she wouldn’t wake the hell up.
My side started to itch, and I raised it up to study the tattoo that’d started to appear once I’d gotten Brooklyn to safety.
It was a big one.
It started at my right pectoral muscle, and traveled all the way down my side to my right hip bone.
It was a mass of swirls, runes, and dark lines.
And Brooklyn shared the same one on her body.
That’d been how my sister had found out about our mate bond.
She’d been stunned by the revelation, but luckily had held my confidence as I waited for answers.
Answers that wouldn’t come if she didn’t wake up!
I sent that telepathically to her, but as usual, she didn’t even twitch.
Sighing, I took a seat beside the bed and propped my feet up on the side of it.
I laid my head back and got what little sleep I could.
Which inevitably wasn’t much because Brooklyn’s terror and pain flooded my mind each and every time I got any REMs.
Chapter 2
I remember a time when I could get out of bed without making sound effects.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
Three months ago
“What did I say, Brooklyn? I told you to stay away from that trash. But you had to keep around her and look where it got you!” my Uncle Joseph brought the whip down again.
I closed my eyes and prayed it would end soon.
When I first started what the Amish called Rumspringa, I knew I would never return to my parents’ holding.
From the ripe young age of seven, I’d realized that the world that I’d grown up in wasn’t what I wanted to live for the rest of my life.
I’d met a girl in nursing school, and she changed my life for the better. Introduced me to a whole new world that I had no idea even existed.
We became best friends, Blythe and me.
At sixteen, I left my parents’ home for Rumspringa, and I’d taken everything I’d owned with me.
Then I’d filed emancipation papers with the state and I was officially on my own…well, sort of.
I’d accidentally stolen some money from my father to help smooth my way. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you looked at it, my father thought it was my Uncle Joseph, which was why I thought my uncle was taking it out on me a little harder than he should have been.
“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed brokenly, when one brutal lash ripped into my left thigh.
Another even more vicious one followed it up just under my belly button, and I cried out in pain.
The only thing holding me up now were the metal chains attached to manacles around my wrists.
My legs weren’t strapped down, but I was effectively immobile, and had been for going on two hours now.
I didn’t even know how long I’d been in this hellhole.
I knew, though, that I would survive.
Someone—I called her my new friend—kept talking to me.
She was probably imaginary, but that was okay. Anything to take me away from the pain now was good enough for me.
I’m not a figment of your imagination. Hold on just a little while longer, and he’ll come get you, my new friend said.
Who’ll come get me? I asked my imaginary friend.
Call me that again, child, and I’ll tell Nikolai that you like the opera.
I do not! I screamed in my head.
I hated the opera!
Detested it, really.
Especially when I had to listen when Joseph blared it for hours on end.
If I never heard another opera singer again in my life, it’d be too soon.
A particularly sick sound wrenched me away from my inner turmoil and back into reality.
My head dropped, and I looked down at the huge gash on my stomach and vomited all over myself.
At least I couldn’t see my abdominal muscles anymore, I thought grotesquely.
You’ll be fine. I thought you were a nurse, how can something like that upset you? my friend said to distract me.
I loved my new friend.
Had I said that yet?
She fought with me to get my mind off of the things that were being done to me.
Things I wasn’t aware were being done half the time.
“Perfect,” Uncle Joseph crowed, picking up the water hose off the floor and hosing me down once again.
I couldn’t figure out if I was grateful or not.
On one hand, I was happy I no longer had blood and vomit on myself…but it was also cold as a motherfucker in here.
Adding a wet bra, shorts, and panties to the mix didn’t help matters any.
Fire lanced down my stomach as Joseph’s fingers started to dig into my flayed open stomach.
I looked down in time to see him shove something small into the wound, followed by what looked distinctly like a flash drive, before he started to sew me up.
“This should get nice and infected by the time they show for up you,” Joseph said as he took his time sewing me up. “And they’ll find it. And I’ll find them in turn.”
***
Nikolai
I was wrenched awake by my brother calling my name.
“I didn’t say you had to sleep in here, dumbass. I just said keep an eye on her,” Keifer growled with impatience.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands, and said what I felt like saying.
“How about you go fuck yourself with that hot fire poker you’re always threatening to beat me with?” I asked.
My voice lacked its usual loudness, so I wasn’t sure Keifer heard me when he didn’t reply for a few seconds.
I reluctantly opened my eyes to see his face not filled with amusement.
“You know I’m the king now. I could totally have you kicked out of my kingdom,” he countered.
I laughed.
“Yeah fuckin’ right. You wouldn’t figure out how to work the shields. Then you’d forget your email password and need me to come unlock it for you, and you’d be shit out of luck because I’d be in the Bahamas somewhere enjoying life instead of worrying about your stupid ass,” I shot back.
An amused sounding snort came from my brother, and he sighed before taking a seat.
“We’re leaving in an hour. As soon as Blythe wakes up,” Keifer informed me.
I raised a brow at him.
“Okay.”
“I’m not leaving you by yourself…I’ve decided to leave the triplets here. They’ve gotten very good at hiding in plain sight, and they’re a damn sight better at scouting than any trained bodyguard,” Keifer continued.
I groaned.
The ‘triplets’, as he called them, were actually three small ice dragons we’d saved from the Anchorage Sanctuary a few months ago.
They were cute as hell, but they were also demanding and unpredictable.
“You don’t want to take them because they can’t fly long enough for the trip,” I gathered.
Keifer winced.
“Yes and no,” he replied. “They’re going to slow us down, yes. But I also feel that they’ll be of help to you.”
I didn’t comment on that.
I didn’t feel the same way, but it didn’t matter.
Keifer would do what he thought was best…and safest.
And if that meant not taking three of his favorite dragons, then that’s what he would do.
Even if it upset his new wife.
Keifer’s eyes went far away for a few long moments before his eyes snapped back to mine.
“Gotta go,” he muttered darkly. “She’s fuckin’ puking again. Then we’re leaving once she’s done. The others have already left; we’ll be the last.”
I didn’t wait for him to leave before I turned back to Brooklyn.
Speaking of wanting to puke, I wanted to right then.
Re-living Brooklyn’s suffering had really fucked with my head and my ability to hold down food.
I didn’t know Brooklyn all that well.
Didn’t know much of anything about her other than she was best friends with Blythe, had her nursing degree and used to be Amish.
Shouldn’t someone know his mate before they were actually mated?
You sound like a whiny little girl who didn’t get her favorite Barbie doll at the store, Perdita’s thoughts whispered through my brain.
I mentally flipped her off.
Shut it.
She snorted delicately, in that way that only females could.
She’s going to wake soon, and then you’ll be lost because she’ll be too much for you to handle.
I highly doubted that she’d be too much for me to handle.
But I’d yet to have a steady girlfriend, so maybe Perdita wasn’t too far off.
My world wasn’t for the faint of heart.
Most people in Dallas, Texas knew of the dragons that called it home; yet, a lot of them had never been anywhere near one.
I was a dragon rider.
I rode dragons like most people drove a car.
Perdita was such a huge part of my life that I would be lost without her.
Not to mention that they were endangered, and it was up to me and the rest of the dragon riders to protect them from all who would see harm come to them.
I didn’t have a safe life.
In fact, the last month had proven just how unsafe my life really was.
A woman, especially one who had suffered the atrocities that Brooklyn had, shouldn’t be expected to live the life she would now be living.
A soft moan from the bed had me turning to the woman in question.
She looked good…almost better today.
Her coloring looked almost like she’d gotten some sun, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was almost smiling.
Then her eyes opened and she…screamed.
Guess that wasn’t what I’d expected when she first woke up.
Maybe a ‘thank you’ or a ‘where am I’ was what I’d expected…not a scream.
When she finally ran out of breath, I raised my brows at her.
“You finished?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes, then took a deep breath, and I closed my eyes and waited.
But it never came.
I opened my eyes to see her screaming…but I couldn’t hear a thing.
Then I laughed.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
She’d used some of my other powers to make herself a force field of sorts.
I wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but it must’ve been a defensive reaction, because I hadn’t learned how
to do that until Perdita had felt it necessary that I learn.
And only then because I complained that she never taught me anything new.
I studied her while she screamed.
Was it sadistic of me to find her sexy while she screamed?
I thought possibly so.
So I tried to will my dick to stop tenting up the front of my soccer shorts.
I crossed my leg over my knee and crossed my arms over my chest, leaning back with my eyes closed.
I stayed that way for a while.
Maybe five minutes or so, until I could feel her stare.
“Who are you?” she asked.
My eyes slowly opened, and I smiled my most disarming smile.
The one that got my mom to make the chocolate cake that was my favorite rather than the apple pie that was Keifer’s favorite…or the peach cobbler that was Skylar’s.
My name is Nikolai Vassago, I said telepathically.
Her eyes widened until they resembled saucers.
“Your lips didn’t move,” she hissed.
I bobbed my head up and down.
“No, they didn’t,” I said aloud.
“What are you?” she asked, leaning forward in the bed.
The new position put her closer to me, and I let my hands rest on top of my very sizable erection.
“I’m a dragon rider,” I answered.
Her eyes widened. “Holy shit!”
I shrugged.
I was used to that reaction.
Normally, I didn’t go around telling people what and who I was, but this was my mate, even if she didn’t realize it yet.
“What am I doing with you?” she asked.
My stomach knotted.
“What was the last thing you can remember?” I asked carefully.
She didn’t seem worried that she was somewhere she didn’t remember coming to, so I decided to feel her out and see just what exactly she remembered.
“I remember walking into the college where we graduated. I was donating my old scrubs to the school for someone that needed them.” She concentrated, and as she did, three little lines ran between her eyebrows. “I was walking out of class when everything goes blank.”
I nodded.
“Your Uncle Joseph had you,” I said, testing the waters a bit.
Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”
I nodded again.
Dragons Need Love, Too (I Like Big Dragons Series Book 2) Page 2
