by Meg Ripley
It rushed at the great, black beast, but was thwarted in its effort by the mighty, clawed appendage, which thrust out and shoved the attacker so hard, its feet left the ground and it fell with a thud that made the floor tremble beneath her feet.
She stared at the downed beast in petrified awe, but blinked hard at what she saw. Her curse, apparently, was not limited to humans. Surrounding the dragon was a black haze, so vile it sent a shiver down her spine, similar to the way Damon’s aura had frightened her. In fact, it wasn’t just similar, it was the same; an exact duplicate. But that wasn’t possible because no two auras had ever been identical before. And that would mean…
No, she wouldn’t even consider such a ridiculous thought. She was mistaken. Her brain wasn’t functioning right. She was suffering the aftereffects of being on the brink of death just a moment ago. While her own life had forced her to assume a certain amount of belief in the inexplicable and unimaginable, this was beyond comprehension. Wasn’t it?
Not only would she be supposing that the scene in front of her was actually taking place and that it wasn’t a figment of her overtaxed, frightened imagination, but also that the beast lying on the ground was a human, somehow transformed into something else?
Her gaze was drawn back to the black dragon, and her knees buckled beneath her a split second later. She fell hard against the tiled floor, but the pain radiating up her legs did nothing to distract her from the beast in front of her. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The dragon on the ground wasn’t the only one surrounded by an aura, and the aura that surrounded the great, black beast was unmistakable—dark, but not sinister; a color without name. It welcomed her in. It called her to take shelter within its shadowy haze.
It was Noah’s aura.
When she had gotten back to her feet, she didn’t know, but she was moving now, stepping cautiously over the shards of glass scattered on the floor. But she wasn’t moving away from the terrifying scene outside; she was moving towards it.
One step. And then another.
Its body seemed frozen in place, and its green eyes stared back at her, eyes so much like the emerald-flecked orbs that had blazed with fire last night.
Another step.
The downed dragon surged to its feet. Head down, its massive form rushed at the obsidian-plated chest, knocking the black dragon flat on its scaled back.
“No!” she screamed before she could stop herself, and then immediately regretted it.
The mottled green and black head whipped toward her and a puff of smoke spewed from its nostrils, sending sulfurous fumes wafting through the air. She held her breath against the burnt match smell, but her lungs forced the air out in a rush as the dragon’s jaws parted, revealing dozens of dagger-like teeth. The corners of its massive mouth lifted as if it was sneering at her and it took one, thundering step toward her.
And then another.
She took two steps back but it advanced one more, ten times her own stride. There would be no way to escape it—to escape him. He advanced on her now just as he had moments before in the office. But instead of a sword, he wielded deadly dagger teeth and claws likely much sharper than the sword.
It was Damon. There was no way to deny it, no matter how much she struggled for a more logical explanation. Besides, was it any more logical to presume that dragons existed, but that they couldn’t possibly take human form?
He took another step.
Two more, and no distance would remain between them. She should run, no matter how futile the effort was, but her body wouldn’t listen. It wanted to move, yes, but not away from the scene in front of her. She wanted to run toward it, toward the beautiful, black creature lying wounded on the nature preserve’s grounds.
“Noah!” she cried, calling out to the black beast who couldn’t possibly be Noah. And yet, he was. It was as clear as the sun in the cloudless sky in front of her; as clear to her as the welcoming aura that surrounded him.
He moved so quickly, she saw little more than a blur as he sprung from where he laid and his iridescent wings spread out to full span. He took flight, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. He came down just as quickly, landing in the space that remained between her and Damon.
He looked at her, the sun glinting off the emerald specks in his eyes for a brief second before he spun around to face Damon. She couldn’t see what happened next, her view blocked entirely by Noah’s plated back, but the roar that filled the air next told her a heavy blow had been dealt, whether at Noah’s hand or Damon’s, she shouldn’t have been able to tell, but she could. Something inside her would know if it had been Noah’s tortured scream, whether it came from the dragon’s throat or the man’s.
The black beast’s massive body stepped to the left a split second before a black and green blur jetted into the sky, though as it flew into the distance, she could see one wing stretched out wider than the other, while the retracted wing flapped wildly to keep the dragon in flight.
She’d been right; it had been Damon’s roar she had heard, not Noah’s. But the black dragon wasn’t moving. He sat on his haunches, looking up at the retreating form, now little more than a speck in the sky. Why wasn’t he moving? Had he been injured as well?
Ignoring every rational thought in her mind, she took a step forward. And then another. The sun shimmered off the smooth, iridescent scales of his back, and her fingers itched to touch them. Would they be cold beneath her flesh? Or warm? Yes, they would be warm. Noah had been so warm to the touch; hot, in fact. Her fingers tingled in memory.
The dragon spun around all of a sudden; it was a wonder such an enormous creature could maneuver with so much speed.
She didn’t move. He looked down at her from his towering height, and the terror that had gripped her the moment Damon Cross’ vileness had reared its ugly face began to diffuse, seeping out from her fingertips. He could kill her with a single swipe of his razor-sharp claw, but he wasn’t going to hurt her.
She was safe.
But could she trust that feeling? She couldn’t possibly be thinking straight, she knew, because right then, as the beast gazed back at her, the peace that had begun to wind through her veins turned to something else, something much more urgent and fiery.
It had to be the tumultuous events; how else could she explain the way her body was responding? But he was beautiful; black as night except for emerald-flecked eyes, and covered with staggered and overlapping rows of teardrop-shaped pentagonal scales. Great spikes jutted back from a high brow, each one like an onyx spear, and a long, plated tail tapered into a sinister-looking arrowhead.
His eyes roamed over her as hers did him, but his lit up with angry fire and a low growl rumbled deep inside him. A tremor of awe rippled through her body. Safe or not, he was an overwhelming presence and she could well understand why ancient civilizations worshiped these beings as gods.
But she realized what it was that angered him. She’d all but forgotten them in the past few moments, but her attention was drawn there now; the deep wound across her chest stung viciously and her hand and wrist throbbed along with her pulse. Caught up in terror at the time and faced with the imminence of her own death, she hadn’t realized either wound was so deep. Blood had long since saturated the bodice of her dress and it dripped a steady stream from the gash in her hand, even now.
It reminded her of how she’d come by her wounds. Damon had said she knew too much; that she was a risk to him, to his kind. How much more would this dragon want her dead when there was no doubt she knew what—and who—he was?
“Noah…” she called in a faint whisper, finding it suddenly took more strength than she possessed to speak louder, though she didn’t know why. But she needed to tell him…something. She needed to reassure him that his secret was safe with her; that she knew how to keep secrets.
That she’d done it well for a very long time.
At the moment, though, she seemed to be having difficulty forming words. It was as if some connection had
been severed between her brain and her vocal cords, and the odd way the world around her had begun to spin slowly on its axis made speech all the more troublesome.
The scene at the periphery of her vision began to darken in wave-like increments until the beautiful creature in front of her was all she could see.
Something wasn’t right.
Her knees wobbled in their effort to hold her up, and before she could react, they lost the battle, collapsing beneath her weight. Shards of glass dug into her, piercing her flesh from shoulder to ankle, but it didn’t hurt. In fact, she couldn’t feel the sharp stabs at all.
She’d realized she lost more blood than she thought, at the same moment the creature disappeared, lost to the darkness behind her eyelids.
Chapter 5
Noah had never known white hot rage like the kind that coursed through his body. He’d lived through wars, stood on battlefields with friends to fight a common foe, witnessed a multitude of atrocities, and not once had it threatened to overtake him. But the moment he’d seen the wounds on Claire’s body, and Damon, his sword drawn back, poised for execution, an inferno had rocketed through his veins. There had been no choice, no decision to make; the beast had taken over.
It didn’t matter that he had kept his secret for centuries, that he’d never once been foolish enough to trust another living soul. It was insane to believe he felt so strongly for this woman that he could justify risking discovery and battling his own kin to protect her. But he hadn’t cared.
Nothing mattered except Claire.
And the moment she collapsed on the glass-peppered floor, he’d understood anguish like never before. His chest had clenched so hard, it paralyzed him; a mighty beast, and yet he’d been rendered immobile by her fallen and bloodied figure.
But he could hear the blood pumping through her veins, her heart beating in overdrive, the laborious draw of each breath. She was still alive. For how long, he didn’t know. She’d lost a lot of blood. God damn it, if he’d gotten there just a few minutes sooner…
There wasn’t time for that now, though. He scooped her up in his arms as gently as he could, cradled her close to his chest and spread his wings.
He shouldn’t be doing this. It was broad daylight. He hadn’t been able to stop the change when he’d first spied her, but at least the preserve had been devoid of every living being but the animals it contained. What was he intending to do now? Fly right up to the entrance to his hotel? Land in front of a busy hospital?
No, he knew what he’d do. It was still risky, but it was possible he might go unnoticed. He needed to move quickly though, and so he forced as much of his focus as possible away from the woman who laid unconscious in his arms and onto the flap of his outstretched wings and the smooth glide of his body through the sky. It was too slow, though he knew it wasn’t. While every second felt like the stretch of several minutes, in reality, he knew in flight he was faster than the top speed of his Aston Martin, nearly as fast as the planes that kept him grounded in order to stay hidden most of the time.
It felt like hours, but really, only minutes had passed when he saw the marina down below. It was his private marina, just outside of Santa Barbara, and while he still kept his flights there limited to the cover of darkness, there were seldom people milling about even during the day. He saw no one around as he came in lower, and he would have prayed to whatever ancient deities existed to keep it that way, but his prayers were occupied already, pleading with any ethereal being out there to keep Claire alive.
He landed smoothly on the dock, custom made large and sturdy enough to accommodate his enormous size. But he reined in the heat inside his body once he’d touched down, drawing the beast inward to his core and resuming his human form. He kept her drawn tightly against him despite the change, and hurried onto his yacht.
The blood had ceased to flow from her wounds, or even trickle, and he worried for one panicked moment that she’d perished there against him. But no, her heart was still beating; he could hear it, and he could feel its strong, consistent beat against his own chest. Strange—after such an injury, it should be weak at best. And how had she stopped bleeding?
He didn’t linger on the questions for long. Once inside, he hurried to his suite and laid her out on the bed. He wasn’t well-equipped with medical supplies, having little need of them himself, but he kept a limited supply on board for the rare times he hosted one event or another on the yacht. Lunging for the first aid box in the compartment by the door, he threw it open as he rushed back to the bed.
“Noah?”
Claire’s eyes were wide open, but disoriented. Though her voice quivered when she spoke, it was stronger than he’d expected, given the pallid color of her already pale skin.
“Claire…” he breathed out a rugged sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath since the moment she’d fallen, and her voice had relieved his lungs of their burden. He turned his attention back to the contents of the box in his hands and withdrew a stack of sterile bandages.
He intended to use them to clean and bind her wounds, but as he reached out to swab gently at the gash across her chest, she shook her head and withdrew from him, her body pressing deeper into the mattress.
She was scared of him, and that was a good thing. His response to her last night had scared him, and if she was smart, she’d definitely want to keep her distance. Still, he couldn’t leave her wounds untreated, fear or no fear.
Ignoring her silent protests, he continued, swabbing carefully, despite the way his hands tremored in anger at what Damon had done to her. The wound was deeper than he’d expected, so much that she was going to need sutures. And without anything stronger than Tylenol and whiskey on the yacht, he was going to have to do this with no pain relief for her beyond the slightly numbing effect of alcohol. He should have taken her to a hospital, not to his boat, but he hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of placing her in anyone else’s care. Now, though, he didn’t have a choice.
“Claire, I need to get you to a hospital,” he told her, tossing the bandages on the bed and leaning in to gather her into his arms again.
“That’s not necessary,” she said matter-of-factly, stifling a yawn.
Afraid just a moment ago, she seemed more tired than frightened now. Panic flooded his veins. She was dying; there was no other explanation for the change in her. He was just about to pick her up and rush her to the hospital despite her protests when he paused, catching sight of the wound on more chest once more.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought. Had he been in such a panic that his eyes deceived him? He’d been certain she was badly injured; that she’d lost so much blood, she might not come back from it. Upon closer inspection now, though the wound covered a great deal of area, it was shallow enough that with proper care, it might not even leave a scar. He glanced down at her hand and wrist. The blood there had dried, and the gash wasn’t much deeper than the one on her chest.
Perhaps it had been shock that had sent her careening into oblivion—attempted murder and dragons all in the span of mere minutes were probably enough to make any human faint.
She moved to sit up, and he resisted the urge to force her back down. “I suppose your wounds aren’t that serious anymore, Claire, but there’s no need to push it, alright?”
Now that she wasn’t on the brink of death, he did have a few questions. No doubt, she had a few of her own.
When she’d looked up at him outside the preserve’s building, she’d known who he was. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t in human form; she had seen right past his exterior. How that was possible, he didn’t know, but he’d accepted that his secret had been blown as he gathered her up in his massive arms and flown her to the only place he knew was safe.
He was trading the secret he’d kept for centuries for her, and he’d done it without a moment’s regret. But now, he couldn’t lie and tell her that he’d found her lying in the preserve’s back office; that he had no idea what had transpired in the moments before
. But he did need to know why she’d been there in the first place.
“Claire, what were you doing at the preserve?” he asked bluntly.
“I ran into Mr. Cross last night, after…” A blush crept across her cheeks, the color a stark contrast to the pale white skin. “Well, he said he was an avid collector and told me about artifacts he had, and I’d been doing research on some of them…so it seemed like a good idea.”
She sped through the thin explanation so fast, he wouldn’t have caught it all if he had less than stellar hearing, but he did, and he heard every word. And he didn’t believe for a second it was the whole story. She was hiding something, and she was either a terrible liar or too shaken to come up with a better story.
“Do you have any idea why Damon…why he would have wanted to hurt you?”
“No. I mean…no.”
She was definitely hiding something. She knew exactly why Damon had wanted to hurt her. Hell, Damon hadn’t just wanted to hurt her, he’d wanted her dead. Bile rose in the back of his throat at the thought.
Maybe she didn’t realize what a dangerous situation she was now in. But he knew Damon Cross, and what he knew most of all about him was he didn’t give up. Whether it was vengeance he sought or…damn…
“You knew something,” he sighed heavily, wishing fervently it were anything else.
Damon believed in protecting their secret—at any cost. He would go to any length to keep it safe. He hadn’t been content to remain discreet, independently vigilant like the rest of them. No, Damon took it upon himself to guard their secret, no matter the human lives lost to his cause. As much as Noah hated to admit it, he rather thought Damon enjoyed his role, taking perverse delight in eradicating any threat in his way.
She stared at him, her brilliant blue eyes wide in poorly concealed fright. He stared back, searching her gaze in return.
“You were there,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question, but he knew it wouldn’t be.
