by T. S. Joyce
“Kane, please,” she begged, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you more now. Everything I learned about you, I love you more.” She clutched his shirt in desperation. “I won’t ever come in here again if you don’t want me to. Please don’t push me away.”
Bite him. Bite him now before he runs.
“Stop it.”
Kane jerked his glowing green eyes to her. “What?”
Rowan pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed him hard. She pushed her tongue past his closed lips in desperation. Moments drifted by, and Kane stood there like an immoveable stone. Eventually though, he softened, moved his lips against hers and drew her against his body, harder and harder until her bones ground. The bag of food hit the floor. The growl in his throat grew louder and more terrifying. The air became nearly unbreathable. Kane pushed her until her back hit the wall hard. He didn’t bother taking off her sleep shirt, and she wasn’t wearing panties. Kane simply pulled her knees around him, jerked the button of his jeans open and thrust into her roughly, held there for a second, then bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood and slammed into her again.
He was worked up, angry with her, and she’d known provoking him would get her a hard fuck, but that’s what she wanted right now. She would take anything, as long as he wasn’t giving up on her.
He held the backs of her knees, and his arms bulged and flexed as he slammed into her faster. She was already close. She shouldn’t have been. This should’ve been an anger-fuck just for Kane, but he was hitting her just right, and that sound in his throat was so sexy, so consuming, that she was already on a high from the oncoming release.
“Harder,” she screamed, and with a snarl, he reared back and bucked into her again and again and again until she was arching her spine against the wall in desperation.
When her orgasm shattered her body, she dug her nails into his back as hard as she could. Heat blasted through her chest. It was excruciating. It was beautiful. It was everything.
Kane gritted his teeth and grunted, froze buried deep inside of her. Warm seed shot into her, filled her, and he bucked erratically until the throbbing sensation stopped.
She thought he would drop her to the floor and walk out like she deserved, but he didn’t. Chest heaving, he pressed himself against her, hugged her, buried his face against her neck and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
And now Rowan wanted to cry again because this wasn’t the outcome she’d wanted. She didn’t want him to feel guilt. She rolled her head back until it hit the wall, and she ran her fingers through his mussed hair. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who messed up.”
Kane pulled her off the wall and hugged her tightly against him until his breathing evened out. “You wouldn’t have been so curious if I would’ve told you any of this. I’m just not used to…”
“Sharing?”
He chuckled a single, exhausted sound. “Yeah. Communication isn’t my strong suit, princess. I want to tell you things. I want to share my past, but it’s gonna be slow-going with me. You’re gonna have to be patient.”
“Who is Ben Porter?”
Kane sighed and lowered her to the ground, then fastened his pants. “Ben was my friend in Apex. The cleansing process was horrible, and painful. It was torture, but the nurses tried to make the in-between okay for us. On days I had control of the dragon, I got to eat my meals in this cafeteria with the other kids. We became friends. No one else in the whole world was ever going to be able to understand what we went through in that facility. Some of the kids were sad and homesick. Hurting. They usually didn’t make it. Ben was funny, and even when he felt like shit, he told jokes. Mostly dirty ones. Ryder reminds me of him. Because his animal fought like mine did, he had to stay for eight months, so we got to know each other well. He told me one night while we were all getting ready for bed that the cleansing wasn’t permanent. Not for him. He said some man called him in the middle of the night the month before his adoptive parents put Ben and his brother in the program. He said the man told him he’d had a dream about him, about his panther, and he said not to worry because his life would get good again. That he would find his animal again. And then he hung up. Ben was convinced he just had to get through the pain and that, someday, when he wasn’t a minor anymore, he would figure out how to get his panther back, and no one would be able to take him away again. Except Ben’s brother, Caleb, died in there. The cleansing did that sometimes. Took the animal but took the human, too, you know? Ben stopped joking, stopped fighting, and his animal went really quick after that. He was taken away. No goodbye, nothing. I was just alone with the new kids who were all afraid of me. The staff at Apex put me in solitary soon after. I thought the man on the phone with the prediction was just Ben’s way of dealing with what we were going through, but then last year, Wyatt got drunk one night and told me about these predictions Beaston had made about him.”
Chills rippled across her skin when he said Beaston’s name. He was a Gray Back, like her, and she’d grown up with him in her crew. Beaston could see things across the veil. He could see future things like Weston, his son, could.
“I started thinking maybe he was the one who called Ben. I started hoping that maybe Ben had found his animal again. That he was okay somewhere.”
“If it was Beaston who called him,” Rowan whispered, “then Ben will find his panther again. Beaston’s never wrong. Kane?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want your dragon back?”
He backed away from her by a step. “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because my dragon wasn’t a good animal to have, Rowan. He was a monster. Checking on Ben isn’t about me. It’s not so I can be a shifter again. It’s so I can make sure my friend is alive and okay. At least one of us made it, you know? Found a good life.”
“But you said you missed him. That you missed flying and breathing fire.”
“Yeah, and what’s good for me isn’t necessarily good for the rest of the world.”
“You’re stronger now, Kane. You could control him.”
“Fuck, Rowan, stop! It’s not even an option, and Ben was probably just talking out of his ass.”
“Ignoring everything else, if you could have him, would you want your dragon back, Kane?”
He stared at the computer screen, at the picture of him with the empty eyes and the scars on his shaved head. His lips thinned into a grim line, and he refused to answer.
“Kane,” she murmured, gripping his shirt. “If you could control the dragon, and the world was safe from him, would you want him back?”
Kane pulled away from her, picked the bag of takeaway food off the ground, then disappeared down the hallway.
And that was answer enough. That was a yes. If it was a hard no, he would’ve just said it. But he hadn’t answered because she would’ve heard the lie in his voice.
Rowan frowned at the computer, at the broken face of her mate in the days after he’d lost his animal. He still got that expression sometimes when she talked about her dragon with him. That broken, yearning look in his eyes, and she couldn’t live her whole life stomaching that kind of pain in the man she loved.
She had to find Ben Porter.
Chapter Fifteen
Kane slipped out from under the covers of 1010, the cabin Rowan had moved into in Harper’s Mountains. He’d taken Rowan out to eat in Bryson City, and she’d begged him to stay. But when he’d fallen asleep beside her, curled around her soft body, he’d dreamt of flying. He’d dreamt of fire. He’d dreamt of the mountains glowing red and billowing smoke and then had woken up in a cold sweat.
It was Rowan’s magic, or perhaps being in Harper’s Mountains, that was dredging up the awful vision. Or perhaps it was 1010. Weston had told him to “sleep well” with his lips all twisted up like he knew something Kane didn’t.
Fuckin’ Novak Raven and his riddles lately. He’d been standoffish from the time Kane had brought Rowan home and then throughout the bonfi
re the Bloodrunners had built before Kane led an exhausted Rowan inside 1010. Over the fire, Weston had watched him with his eyes darkened to raven black, his head cocked like a bird, the set of his mouth grim. It put some deep-growing instinct inside of Kane on edge.
Novak could kill him. Any of these shifters could if they knew how weak he was. Surrounding himself with Bloodrunners had always put his hackles up. Sure, they were nice enough people, but they were a breed governed by their animals, and this crew had some of the most dominant bloodlines in the entire world. And what had his dumb ass done? Claimed their protector.
He strapped his prosthetic on as quietly has he could, then clad in only his briefs, strode out into the living room. There had been a delivery today from the airline, but Rowan had put off showing him her treasure.
She should’ve learned her lesson from earlier, though. Hiding only made both of them more curious, and now he couldn’t stop himself. It was almost like he was possessed, and his body moved of its own accord.
Beckoning him, the large, purple suitcase sat against the back wall of the house. Open me. See what your mate attached to. See what she would sicken for. See what she would die for.
Kane narrowed his eyes at the luggage and let off a low rumble. He hated whatever was in that case. Hated it because she had chosen it before she’d ever met him.
She didn’t wait for us.
Fuck, what was wrong with him?
His stride was in jerks, and when he stepped wrong on his bad leg, he had to right himself on the back of the couch.
The suitcase was pulsing. Come closer.
Kane gritted his teeth and clenched his hands, but didn’t stop until he was standing over the luggage. Slowly, he knelt down and crushed the lock in his hand, threw it onto the floor, and unzipped the case slowly.
He inhaled deeply before he lifted the lid and shoved it back.
A large piece of metal lay inside, folded in half and melted on one side.
Kane ran his hand over his face, trying to figure out why Rowan would attach to a piece of junk instead of the treasures of old. He’d expected bricks of gold or precious gems. Something of value, not a twisted, melted hunk of metal. And then it hit him. The story of Rowan’s kidnapping. Of how she’d almost died by Damon’s dragon fire. Of how her father, Creed, had covered her with metal that was too small to cover his massive grizzly body but that had kept Rowan safe.
Kane looked back over his shoulder at the open doorway of the dark bedroom. Rowan was breathing deeply, sleeping soundly, and he was sitting here hating a piece of metal for taking a piece of her heart.
God, he had to do better than this. Had to take better care of her. He needed to protect her treasure so she wouldn’t get The Sickening again. He studied the gnarled metal. Three seconds. She’d said it was just a few seconds, and Damon’s fire had nearly melted straight through the metal.
Something deep and dark inside of him unfurled. That’s not her treasure. We are.
Kane clenched his fists hard to punish the tiny voice that was fucking with his head. Maybe he was losing his mind. He was imagining The Darkness. Wishing for his return badly since he’d started hunting Ben. This wasn’t his dragon, though. The voice was too small, too frail, with the power of a gnat. No, this was a figment of his imagination. This was being around Rowan’s dominant dragon and wanting so desperately to be worthy of her.
Kane slammed the lid on the suitcase, stood, and strode for the front door. He grabbed his phone off the table where he’d left it by his keys and made his way outside. The night air had a bite to it and cooled his molten body a few degrees. He inhaled deeply and cleared his head.
He’d asked Rowan for a day because of this call. Because he needed time to man up and put himself on the radar of the blue dragon before he found out about Kane claiming his great granddaughter.
Damon Daye was going to kill him. All Kane could do was ask for more time with Rowan and hope the old dragon forgave his lineage and understood love.
Kane snorted and shook his head at the full moon that sat low over the Smoky Mountains. A minute ago, he’d been contemplating his hatred over Rowan’s treasure, and now he was going to ask Damon to let him have her for a little while?
Irritated with himself, Kane connected a call on his cell to the one number in his phone he’d never dared to call. This was his 911. This was the number he’d kept all these years in case he lost control again and needed to make sure the world was safe from him.
Damon would’ve put him down.
“Hello?” a smooth, deep voice answered on the other line.
“Damon Daye?” Kane asked, narrowing his eyes at the moon.
There was a long hesitation and then, “Blackwing Dragon. I’ve waited a long time for this call.”
Kane frowned and ran a hand down his chin in a nervous gesture he’d picked up from the time he’d spent in Apex. “You know me?”
“Yes. I’ve watched you.”
“To make sure I didn’t turn out like my father?”
Damon chuckled darkly. “No. I’ve watched you to make sure you were good enough.”
Kane scratched the back of his head and sat on the edge of the porch. “Good enough for what?”
“For Rowan.”
“I don’t understand. Did Beaston tell you about us?”
“Feyadine told me about you. Do you know her story?”
Kane had done his research. “She was your first mate. She came between you and my father hundreds of years ago, back when you were still immortal.”
Damon swallowed audibly through the line. “Very good. Feyadine was a seer. She could see things like Beaston can. Like Weston can. And one night while she was sleeping beside me, she had a dream.”
“What kind of dream?”
“She dreamt of the Blackwing crest and the Bloodrunner crest side-by-side in a ring of fire. She told me that the two lines would fuse.”
“Hundreds of years ago, she predicted this?” Kane’s body was covered in gooseflesh now.
“I thought she’d been wrong about this vision. I thought Marcus was dead and that I was the last immortal dragon. And when he died his final death, I thought the same again. There would be no fusing of the ancient clans. And then there came you. A Blackwing not five years older than Rowan. One with a dragon to match hers.”
“I don’t have the dragon anymore.”
“But you’re still her match.”
“I want to be. I do. But I can practically see her destiny and how strong she’ll be, and I will hinder her. I’ll hold her back. I’ll be this crippled human she has to drag through life, always protecting.”
“Does she feel like that? Does she see you as some crippled human?”
Kane picked up a stick off the porch and chucked it into the dark woods. “She sees what she wants to see. Can I ask you something?”
A low rumble sounded over the phone, and something terrible and dark drew up within Kane. He asked anyway. “Did you have anything to do with my dragon being taken?” It would’ve been perfect for Damon. The last of his enemies rendered helpless. The last Blackwing Dragon snuffed out, and Damon didn’t even have to lift a claw to do it.
“Marcus was my friend for hundreds of years before he betrayed me for the first time, Kane.”
“Just answer the question.”
“You’re breathing because of me, boy. Your dragon killed that black bear shifter. And yeah, he had it coming. He couldn’t ruin a human’s life like that and get away with it. He would’ve been dealt with, but you were too loud about it. You damn near burned the entire neighborhood that night. Do you remember anything?”
The blood was draining from Kane’s face and hands, leaving his skin clammy. “No.” His voice broke on the answer.
“I do. I was there to bring you back down to earth and force you to Change back because I could see it in your eyes. Your dragon was alone, in control, without you there to guide him. And he was scorching the land. Do you know what your sentence wa
s supposed to be? Do you?” he barked into the phone. “Death, Kane. You were supposed to be shipped to a shifter prison and put down humanely, and your body was to be burned and your ashes dumped in the ocean. I fought hard for you because I could see it. Rowan had been kidnapped and was broken. She wasn’t going to come out of my mountains, and you were on a collision course with the government. I trusted Feyadine, I trusted Beaston, and they’d both had the same dream centuries apart, and her father, Creed, was begging me to save you. Save that boy. I went to battle to get you a year in Apex. It’s not what I wanted. I wanted you to be able to keep your dragon and learn to control him, but no amount of money I could throw at the courts was going to save him. It was you or the dragon, Kane. Rowan was clinging to her fear so hard, a dragon stuck in the body of a mouse, and her shot at breaking out was you. And all the while you were being stripped of your dragon, I was praying to God every night that you were strong enough to survive it because someday, somehow, you were going to help my—” Damon’s voice cracked, and he inhaled a deep, shaky breath before he tried again. “That you were going to help my broken girl. Have you bitten her yet?”
Kane was shocked. It was all too much. Too much to learn all at once. He was breathing because of Damon? He was breathing because of Rowan? So much pain to get here…
“You should’ve let me die,” he whispered.
“Don’t you fucking say that to me. You didn’t break, Kane. Not even close. And someday you’ll be looking in the eyes of your mate, holding your first child against your chest, and you’re going to look back on this moment and regret that statement. Your journey to that moment, all the heartache and pain, will be worth it. Did. You. Bite her?”
“Yes,” Kane answered on a breath.
“Good. She doesn’t belong in my mountains anymore, Kane. She belongs in yours.”
And then the line went dead.
Chapter Sixteen
“Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” Rowan said.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Air Ryder said around a giant bite of submarine sandwich. A tomato slice squirted out the end and onto the floorboard of the rental car. “What are we doing again?” he asked, slurping lettuce strands like spaghetti noodles.
