Neela’s heartbeat quickened. This was more than just a thought, this warm, almost solid presence in her small bed beside her. She still couldn’t quite make out his features—they disappeared into the darkness when the little veins of light faded between pulses that matched his pulse.
The darkness shifted, grew denser near her face, and she closed her eyes and sighed as his warm fingertips traced a line over the edge of her jaw. His breath gusted over her lips, mouth a hair’s breadth from hers.
“Is this real?” she asked the presence inside her mind. Her entire body ached for him to close the distance. She didn’t dare move lest she shatter what she was sure must be a hallucination.
“Am I here with you? No, it is only an illusion. If I could escape my prison fully, I would not leave you trapped in yours. What I can do is make you feel anything you desire with only a thought,” he said. “What is your wish, adara?”
“Kiss me,” she breathed.
He’d pressed his palm more heavily against her cheek, slid it around to the back of her neck, and pulled her to him until her mouth met his. Neela hadn’t cared that he wasn’t really there. His presence was believable enough for her to let herself forget.
When the velvet heat of his tongue pushed into her mouth, she moaned and leaned close, slipping her hand from his cheek, down his shoulder, and back up, reveling in his form. She explored his shape as they kissed, keeping her eyes closed, lest the illusion shatter under too much scrutiny.
Zorion’s touch was more than she could have hoped for, and he explored her with as much languid fascination. He brushed his hand down her arm and dropped it to her hip, then glided it back up, leaving a trail of bright desire as he went. Neela hadn’t dressed after Nikhil’s departure and still lay naked on her small bed. Clothing mattered little in the dark isolation of her cell.
She let her hand slide up his neck and encountered no resistance. His scalp was entirely bare and smooth. And when she moved her hand lower, exploring the hard muscles of his chest, she found he was completely bare there as well.
He slipped his hand between them, brushing his fingers over the bare tip of her breast and sending a zing of pleasure to her core that made her gasp. He jerked his hand away with a soft grunt of surprise.
“I am sorry,” he said, his voice still only echoing inside her mind.
“Don’t be. It felt good.”
“Indeed. You feel different than I imagined.”
His statement gave her pause. “You … can feel me? I thought you were just a figment of my imagination.”
Warmth returned to her breast, his big palm cupping again, even more gently this time.
“Just because my body isn’t physically with you doesn’t mean my mind is absent. It’s like a waking dream we both share.”
“That’s … nice …” She let out a soft sigh, losing track of her thoughts as he gently closed his hand over her breast and his fingertips drew together, slipping along her skin until only her nipple was held between them. He swirled his fingers in a circle around the hard tip until she squirmed.
He bent again and captured her mouth with his, kissing her slowly. Then he grew bolder and moved down her body, mouth tracing a hot line along her sternum until his tongue reached her breast and teased her nipple. She opened her eyes to the disorienting sight of opalescent fire sparking in the shape of a tongue.
“Is it unusual that I wish to taste you?” he murmured, sucking her nipple into his mouth.
“No. I like that.”
“I can feel your pleasure. It makes me ache in ways I don’t quite understand. Like a hunger and a need to provide food at the same time. I want to both devour you and give you sustenance.”
He moved his mouth lower, the heavy shape of his body hovering over her while his lips tickled a tantalizing path down her belly, his big hands rubbing up and down her sides. Neela’s core throbbed and heated in anticipation of him reaching her there, but then she remembered where she was and what she’d been doing mere moments before he’d returned.
“Stop!” she yelled, sitting up and abruptly pushing him away.
A painfully beautiful image of a man flashed before her eyes before the fire died and he faded back into the shadows. But she’d seen the hurt in his eyes before he went. Her heart ached at the way he withdrew from her.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
“Please don’t apologize … I’m the one who’s sorry. It isn’t your fault, I just can’t be with you like that yet. I want to, but … you don’t want me right after I’ve been used the way I have. I’m not clean.”
“I will always want you, adara. You are mine. The baby he put inside you tonight is half you, which makes her half mine to love and protect. The feeling you have right now makes no sense. You are not tainted because you let yourself be loved under duress. It shouldn’t stop you from loving freely when you wish.”
She blinked at the pulsing network of veins she made out in the dark. It didn’t make her feel any better that he still wanted her, regardless of the fact that she was still marked by another man’s essence. Nikhil’s seed still coated her thighs. She closed her eyes as the rest of Zorion’s little speech sank in.
“Please, no …” she said, sinking back down to the bed. She pulled the pillow to her chest and buried her face in it, struggling to hold back tears. “Tell me you were guessing … that the baby doesn’t really exist.”
“It is only a spark, but there is life in your womb. Why does this make you sad?”
“Because it means Meri will have what she wants.”
“The creature that took my mother’s love from her,” he stated flatly. “The one who is keeping us apart.”
“Yes. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
His comforting warmth enveloped her again, as though he embraced her from behind. He said no more, only held her while she cried, grieving the eventual loss of a child she’d never even imagined might exist, or that she’d even care about so much.
After that night, Zorion had refrained from intimate contact beyond holding her as she cried. When Meri eventually did magically spirit the tiny fetus from her womb, he was there, but not even his presence was enough to comfort her through that loss. He couldn’t tell her where it had gone, or even if it survived. His link was with her, and her alone.
The closer they got to the temple, the more that night came back to her. How very solid and warm he had felt, more tangible than the many faceless males who had been forced to breed with her to no effect, or even Nikhil himself, whose deliberate tenderness had been so clearly at odds with his true desires. She knew her Sayid was a brutal sadist at heart, and the one time they coupled he had behaved against his true nature for her sake.
She didn’t regret stopping Zorion from pursuing more intimate contact with her that night, but the closer she got to him, the more she craved knowing what it would have felt like to have his mouth on her everywhere, to have him spread her legs wide and bury himself inside her, to have him push her limits the way she wished Nikhil had done.
Her dreaming mind fixated on those remembered sensations of Zorion’s deft hands instinctively understanding what would give her pleasure, and of how much his body responded whenever she arched into him or vocalized her ecstasy. She couldn’t actually see his body, but she had felt the strength of him from head to toe, and particularly the thick, rigid heat of the cock that had brushed down her body as he’d slid lower on his quest to please her.
But when awake, she doggedly marched onward, her focus on following the tether of power that joined them. When she reached him, there would be no limits, no boundaries, even if his very touch burned her alive.
Chapter Three
The morning of their last day of trekking through the terra cotta wasteland, Neela and Naaz packed up camp in silence and got moving without so much as a word. They rarely needed words to u
nderstand each other, and it wasn’t until he touched her gently on the shoulder later that day when they stopped for water that she realized they hadn’t yet spoken all morning.
She glanced up to see her brother’s dark brows creased.
“We’re not losing each other,” she said, replying to the unmistakable worry she sensed in him.
“You’re already gone, sis,” he said. “But it isn’t just you … My own mind has been in another place all morning.”
“She’s in your blood, isn’t she? That want you can’t shake, like a hunger that grips you so strongly your teeth hurt, and you know the ache won’t leave until you get to have a taste …”
Naaz’s dark lashes fluttered closed and he licked his lips, his cheeks darkening to a ruddy shade. “Don’t …”
Neela gave him a perplexed look. “Brother, are you actually embarrassed? What happened to the cocky boy who used to brag about his skills to make women beg for more?”
His eyes flashed with irritation. She’d seen him in action countless times before they’d first encountered their dragon mates. Women responded to him easily and eagerly, and he’d never gone long between lovers. That had been a long time ago, though, and they both knew it.
“Evie was the only female I haven’t had to use my powers on in centuries,” he said softly. He squatted down at the edge of the spring and dipped his canteen into it. “It feels strange going to a female who actually wants me … not my best friend’s lover who has no choice, or any number of female captives who would probably rather die than have me fuck them.”
The venom in his tone betrayed a level of self-loathing Neela had believed she was alone in feeling. She squatted back down beside him and stroked a hand over the bunched muscles of his broad shoulders.
“You made sure they enjoyed it.”
Naaz grimaced. “The fact that I compelled their minds to like it doesn’t excuse what I was forced to do. The closer I get to Asha, the more I feel like I should just turn around. Walk off into the desert and let her have a man who’s worth something.”
Neela’s chest tightened at his utterly defeated tone. She remembered the horrified look in that first turul’s eyes when the attendants had shackled his wrists above his head and manually stimulated him until he was hard enough to enter her.
“Fuck or die, you piece of shit,” one of them had said. The last thing she’d seen before her face was covered by the hood were the tears in his storm-filled eyes.
Her brother hadn’t been bound; that much he’d shared with her. But he’d been compelled, nonetheless. He’d chosen to obey for her sake, and ultimately, she for his.
“I love you, Naaz,” she said softly, leaning her cheek against his strong shoulder. “What was done to us was inexcusable, but we are not to blame. Do you blame Nikhil for everything, now that he’s on our side?”
He picked at a stray thread on the pocket of his cargo shorts where a button was once attached. “Not anymore. If Belah could forgive him … if Iszak and Lukas could … and hell, Evie and Marcus … then I can too.”
“Evie forgave you.”
“That was different.”
“Was it? Just because the three of you psyched yourselves into liking it doesn’t make it right that you had to do it. None of us had a choice, brother. That’s what you need to get through your head. If we didn’t go willingly, Meri would have gotten into our minds and made us go through with it anyway, and she wouldn’t have cared if it hurt.”
He shook his head, close-cropped black hair shining with sweat in the late afternoon sun. “No. It was me too. I performed like a fucking champ for them. There were moments when Meri would urge me on, and I got this rush just knowing I’d pleased her, like I’d been a good pet. I wanted more of that feeling. What the hell does that make me, besides a filthy fucking piece of shit for ever, ever feeling good about what I was doing?”
“That’s what Meri does,” Neela said. “It’s how she keeps her Hunters in line.”
“But you know her blood meld never really worked on us. None of the Elites were affected beyond letting her hitch a ride once in a while. That’s why she had to lock you up—or Evie, or Zamirah—to keep me and Marcus and Sterlyn in line.”
“I don’t care if she couldn’t influence you with her magic. She could still get into your head. She’d never have kept Nikhil under control for so long if she didn’t have other tricks.” Nikhil had been different, but Neela was never quite sure how. Meri had control of him long before she was aware of the woman’s influence over any of them.
Naaz remained silent for some time, watching a droplet of condensation travel down the surface of his canteen. The shadows were lengthening now, portending sunset, and they were close enough to the temple that Neela knew neither of them would want to stop to camp for the night.
“I wonder if he knew all along but just didn’t care. He changed after the blood exchange … Did you notice that?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Um … that was a long time ago, but yeah, I remember. Hard to forget seeing you infused with all that Red dragon power. That was when the killing stopped and the breeding experiments started. And every time I saw him in the lab after that, it was like he’d been lobotomized.”
“He found out Belah was alive. Knowing that changed everything. That’s when I knew it wasn’t him controlling us all along. That it had to be Meri. She was the only other person left from before. Even when she switched bodies, you always knew it was her from her eyes. I wonder what Nikhil would have done if he’d been in control.”
Neela’s gaze drifted to the distant edge of the pool. An underground spring had forced its way through the cracks in the granite and gradually worn out a deep depression in the stone over eons. It was rare for her to come across pieces of the world that she knew without a doubt were older than her and her brother. Places like this comforted her because they reminded her of the way they’d been shaped by time and circumstance, worn away by their experiences until nothing remained but their raw, primal essence.
“He’d have found her. And he did find her. And she forgave him. Have you talked to Asha about this at all?”
Naaz tensed and shook his head. “We don’t have the same link you have with Zorion. And even if we did, she’s too good to hear the details. How the hell would I start that conversation, anyway? ‘Hey, baby, are you cool with my filthy, rapey prick being the one to wake you up?’ She’s too fucking good for me.”
“Nikhil wouldn’t have told us where she was, if he believed that. You trust him, don’t you?”
He turned and looked directly into her eyes, his lips pressed into a line. “Do you?” he asked, and in his gaze she saw a challenge that made her heart plummet into her gut. He knew.
“He didn’t force me, if that’s what you’re thinking. She forced him to come into my cell that night. Same as you and Sterlyn and Evie. Or Marcus … You know what, forget it. I’m not having this conversation with you.”
She plunged her canteen back into the water to refill it one more time, then stood and stalked away. Hot tears pricked at her eyes. They’d all been coerced into couplings they’d never have entertained, had they been free to choose, but the saving grace of those few were that she actually cared about the men who came to her, even if she didn’t love them.
The world in front of Neela blurred as she made her way down the path. She swiped angrily at the tears on her cheeks until the warmth of a familiar presence floated over her mind.
“We’ll find her,” Zorion said.
Neela nodded, sending back her silent gratitude.
“I’m sorry,” Naaz said, falling into step beside her. “I guess I just feel like this is too easy.”
Neela snorted. “Being forced into slavery and having to wait three thousand fucking years to be with the people we love? You’re a good person, you idiot. What Meri forced you to do hasn’t changed that.
You. Had. No. Choice.”
Naaz frowned and shot a sidelong glance at her.
“Well, sure,” she said, answering his unspoken commentary. “You could’ve let them torture me, but you didn’t. I forgive you, you shithead. Now would you just forgive yourself so you can finally be happy?”
He shook his head. “Not enough, sis. I can’t help it.”
She threw up her hands. “Fine. But I’ll be damned if I let you ruin this for me. Tell Asha if she needs to commiserate over what a knucklehead you are, I’m here.”
“Thanks, I think,” he said, quirking his mouth at her.
Neela chuckled. She bumped him with her shoulder and he slipped his arm around her, holding her against him as they trudged along, their steps perfectly in sync as always.
“I love you,” he whispered against the top of her head.
“Me too,” she said, and let out a long sigh.
Chapter Four
“Maybe I spoke too soon,” Naaz muttered under his breath.
His skin prickled with a sense of unease. The red rock canyon they trekked through suddenly felt too exposed and he glanced up, surveying the rim several hundred yards above them. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just more scrubby weeds and dust silhouetted against the night sky.
“More fucking Hunters?” Neela murmured.
“Meri sure isn’t fucking around about recapturing us. Do you have enough juice for another fight?”
“I’ll manage. It takes skill as much as magic to kick their asses, and we’ve got centuries of practice on most of them.”
Naaz’s power was fading, but he had enough for another fight or two yet. He unsnapped the closure on the scabbard at his hip and closed his fist around the hilt of his knife. His gaze tracked a multitude of movements at the edges of the canyon, senses almost as acute as a dragon’s picking up the signature of human auras.
Auras with the unmistakable taint of Ultiori Hunters. These ambushes were becoming almost predictable.
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