But now, in this modern world, he’d been forgiven his sins. He could take a road never allowed him before. He and the beast could rest. Work a job. Fix a home. And maybe, if he was lucky, become a good husband.
But the picking at Rysa that Sister did—the poking at her confidence and the angry snarls—threatened to unravel something as fragile as it was precious. Rysa wasn’t like Sister. She didn’t have century upon century with every type of man a woman could have. Rysa had only her time with that boy who had hurt her, and with him. She knew only a man who made her suffer in ways only modern men could—telling her she wasn’t worthy of his love. Treating her as if she were a toy. Making her feel that even if she ventured out to make her own life, it wouldn’t mean anything.
But Ladon saw her potential. She sparkled with energy and quickness and a beauty that made him wonder if he’d found an angel, not a Fate or a Shifter. But she didn’t see herself that way. Not yet.
And his sister wasn’t going to destroy her first steps toward leaving behind the monster who abused her. “Do not speak to Rysa again. Do not harass her or huff or make those disapproving faces you are so fond of.” He pointed in the vicinity of Sister-Dragon. “That goes for you, as well.”
A line of light rolled down the beast’s neck, traveling from her snout, across her back, to the tip of her tail. She blew out a small flame. I do not harass.
“Yes, you do! Both of you.” Ladon threw his hands in the air. “Neither of you understand her life. The path she has walked is not yours. Nor is it the path walked by any Fate or Shifter you have ever known.” How had they become so disconnected from the world? “The world has changed, Sister. Faster than it has ever before. We may speak the language, but the people are not the same as they were when we crossed the ocean. They’re not the same as they were when you married Derek! You do not understand the damage you cause.”
Sister’s eyes narrowed. Her back straightened more than it had before, and if she clenched her muscles with greater force, she’d pop a vertebra. “Why are you a fool with Fates?”
He blinked. He was the fool? Her behavior followed such an obvious course that a group of teenage normals would roll their eyes and point fingers. “I grow tired of your issues, Sister.”
Every bit of tension she’d stored in the muscles of her spine snapped to her arm. She yelled, sprinting toward him.
Her palm slapped hard across his jaw.
She’d have killed a normal with that hit. Ladon touched his lip and licked the blood off his finger. “You can prod all you want, Sister, but not near my mate. Leave her alone.”
She stepped back. Her fury blazed across her face, and also across her beast’s hide. Ladon pointed at Sister-Dragon. “And you! Leave your brother alone. He chose Rysa before I even understood what was happening. He knew before I did. He knew before you that Derek was the best thing to ever happen to your Human! He’s a better judge of character than any of us. Better than Marcus. So you shut the hell up and stay out of where you are not needed.”
Sister-Dragon snorted, backing away toward their cabin.
“Sister!” Ladon ran his fingers over his own scalp, drawing attention to hers. “Hold yourself. A break now, in this world, will cause more deaths than you or I have made in all our time on this earth.”
She twisted and pulled the remains of hair between her fingers. “I will not lose my husband.”
He tugged his own hair. “Yet you mourn already.”
Headlights threw wide beams across the circle. Tires crunched on the gravel. Andreas returned in his dragon-sized SUV, food in hand.
“Feed Sister-Dragon. Sleep.”
Sister looked up at the sky. Tears appeared at the corner of her eyes. Real tears. Tears like he’d not seen in millennia. “Go back to your Fate.”
His sister turned, fingers digging into what was left of her hair, and walked away.
Chapter Thirty-One
Andreas parked next to the van. He cut the engine, one big hand on the side mirror of his vehicle, the other on his own bald head.
Ladon hadn’t asked why Andreas had shaved his own head back to nothing.
When Ladon saw Andreas in ’45, he’d stood on the edge of the dance floor, arms crossed, watching Sister and the handsome Russian prince touch only each other. Watching her dragon roll around them, bright and vibrant and, for the first time in centuries, happy.
There’d been other issues that night. A girlfriend leaving. A friend who, for the coming few decades, no longer acted as a friend.
But the seventies arrived and Ladon and Andreas spent their nights in the open fields of Iowa drinking enough vodka to kill a platoon of normals, watching the stars and cursing the name of one particularly unfriendly woman.
They’d both had a lot more hair then than they did now.
“Shit.” Andreas tapped the mirror. “She’s okay? She’s not going to… run off?”
Ladon didn’t know. He shrugged.
Andreas opened the door and the SUV whined in response, the door creaking and halting as the big man pushed.
“You should get that looked at.”
Andreas sniffed and lifted an eyebrow, one hand on the open window frame of his vehicle, the other at his side. He’d put on a jacket. The night cooled, but not enough that Ladon, in his shirtless state, felt uncomfortable.
“Why the fuck haven’t you cleaned off the blood?” Andreas pointed at Ladon’s chest. “You want the cops out here? That’s the last thing we need right now.”
“You’d take care of it.” Ladon walked away, toward the cabin.
“Yeah, I’d take care of it. Put things back into balance.” Andreas slammed the SUV door. “Nothing new about me cleaning up your goddamned messes.”
Ladon stopped in the doorframe. What had Rysa said? …cleaning up my messes because they have to.
He stood on the threshold between his Legion life and his modern life, Andreas and his sister behind him and his woman in front, sleeping on their bed.
One certainty he pulled from this evening—“Compelled” meant something completely different to her than it did to him.
Andreas opened then slammed the back of the SUV and returned with three big bags of groceries in his hand. “Greens for you and Brother-Dragon, bread, and a rotisserie chicken.” He handed one bag to Ladon. “I bought water. It’s still in the back.” He held out the bags. “There’s chocolate in the second bag. I bought more for the Dracas. Thought I’d get some for the little lady.” He nodded at Rysa. “Is she asleep?”
Ladon nodded.
“Good. You should be as well. I won’t chance working her seers if she’s not well-rested.” He poked Ladon’s chest. “You can’t fight with a flimsy rib.” Andreas walked into the cabin, stepping lightly so as not to wake Rysa.
Ladon rubbed his head with his free hand as he followed in Andreas. “What does ‘compelled’ mean to you?” If anyone would know, it’d be the First Enthraller. For Andreas, ‘compel’ had a flavor.
“Why?”
Ladon closed the door. Compelled for him always carried a reason. He never did anything he didn’t feel was necessary. Compulsion only came into play when he didn’t want to do it, but chose to anyway. Such as when he knew it was wrong, but the righteousness of the outcome outweighed the villainy of the deed.
When the act returned balance to his—or his family’s—lives.
Andreas walked sideways between the bed and Dragon and set the bags on the floor of the kitchenette. “You know as well as I, Ladon-Human.” The fridge door opened, throwing a sliver of light on Andreas’s legs, and he stuffed all manner of vegetables onto the interior.
“No, I don’t.” Ladon gently sat on the bed, next to Rysa’s head. A sigh jolted out of her as a ragged sound, as if her throat constricted.
He touched her forehead. Andreas walked over and picked up the last bag from in front of the door where Ladon had set it down. “She breathing okay?”
Ladon listened again. “I think so, but she fee
ls warm.”
Andreas nodded as he walked around the bed, stepping carefully by the sleeping beast, and into the kitchenette again. The last of the groceries landed on the counter and in the fridge.
“I think ‘compulsion’ has taken on a new meaning, now that people think they have free will.” Andreas knelt at the side of the bed, close to Rysa, and took her wrist. “Remember the good old days when you did what the gods said and didn’t think twice about it?”
Ladon chuckled. Neither he nor Andreas—nor Sister, either, for that matter—ever considered their lives controlled by an outside force. But their point of view had been in the minority many times over the centuries.
Andreas tapped the bed. “I think ‘compulsion’ has become a boogieman. Something that hides around corners and sneaks up on people and makes them do things they think they should know better than to do. Things they don’t want to do. They have to because they’re forced to.”
Ladon didn’t respond. So Rysa thought the rumbling forced him to be with her. That, deep inside, he didn’t want her next to him. Because if he was compelled, why would he want to be with her?
How many of the people in her life acted as if they were compelled to take care of her? How many times had that boy who hurt her made her feel less of a person because he had to “clean up her messes?”
Ladon didn’t have to do anything. Dragon didn’t have to cooperate. She might bounce and run and talk too much, but he didn’t care. If she needed him, he’d be there, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
“She’s warm.” Andreas laid his wrist to her forehead.
Rysa stirred. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes.” Ladon touched her arm, her shoulder, her cheek, to feel her skin. To know how she responded.
Andreas frowned. “What happened?”
Ladon helped her sit up. “We had an argument.”
Rysa rubbed at her swollen eyes. “He asked me to marry him.”
Andreas balked, then scowled at Ladon. “How many times have I told you not to ask a woman to marry you until it’s her idea?” He grinned and sat back on his heels, and crossed his big arms over his chest. “He’s going to pester you for decades until you give in. And Ladon-Dragon will bound around you like a big glowing puppy signing Please please please every five minutes the moment he wakes up.”
Rysa smiled, though Ladon could tell she didn’t feel up to it. Her shoulders slumped and she leaned to the side, against him. Ladon took her hand.
“Answer me when you want to,” he whispered next to her ear. “I can wait. The choice is yours.”
His reason for walking the earth, his center, blinked, her eyes wide, and touched his cheek. He could be what she needed. He could be the modern man she wanted. And he would, no matter what happened.
He wasn’t compelled. He was blessed.
“I don’t feel good,” she whispered. “I feel like I did in the RV. Nauseated. And my hip really hurts.” She looked up at Andreas. “I’m scared to use my healer on myself.”
Andreas took her shoulders and pulled her away from Ladon—not far, but rotating her so she faced him.
Needles crawled on Ladon’s skin not unlike when Dragon moved too far away. Needles saying what matters most was almost out of reach.
Her seers danced along the edges of his mind as a quick touch, one saying she’d not lost her rapidly building control. “I’ll be okay.”
But he worried. How could he not? The pallor had settled into her face again.
Andreas cupped her cheeks. “Look at me, grandchicklet.”
Rysa snorted. “Grandchicklet? Did you make that up on your own or did you ask the guy at the gas station for the stupidest nickname he could think of?”
Andreas winked. “I made it up. Have to put all those hours of television watching to good use, don’t I?”
“You know, you’re not the big bad scary Roman dude you pretend to be.”
“We all grow and change, young lady.” Andreas leaned forward and opened his mouth. An exquisite brew wafted from his throat, one Ladon could not label but knew the other man had calibrated for Rysa. It smelled feminine and healthy, soft around its edges and strong at its center. It curved and cycled and thought about the world in a way Ladon knew he’d never be able to copy.
Under it all, he also smelled ‘clearheaded’ and ‘in control.’
“How’s that? Feel better?”
Rysa nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, grandchickadee.”
“That’s even more stupid!” She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs as if she hadn’t had a chance to breathe in hours.
Andreas stood and dusted his knees. “I will deliver the remaining groceries to the Dracas. I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.” He pointed at Rysa. “First light, you come to me. We will train. And we will find the plan we need.”
“Yes, grandpappy.”
“Ladon.” Andreas swept his hand toward the door. “Come fetch the water.”
Outside, Andreas popped open the back of the SUV.
Ladon leaned against the side, watching Rysa drop her feet off the bed and stretch her toes. “Damn, she’s beautiful.”
Andreas peeked around the back of the vehicle. “She looks like her mother.” With that, he handed Ladon two jugs. “If she’s not using her abilities, she shouldn’t be sick.”
Ladon glanced over his shoulder at the other man. “She did. When we were arguing. But not a lot. She’s gained a fair amount of control.”
“Listen to me, my friend. Mind issues—” He waved his finger at his head. “—psychological traumas, are not easy to fix. I can’t give her a boost to change something she doesn’t understand needs changing.”
Ladon glanced back. She stretched her arms and her breasts thrust out.
“Make sure she rests. I’ll deal with your sister.” Andreas pulled three more bags out of the back of the SUV before slamming it shut. He watched Rysa for a long moment, his face intense with thought. “She does look like Mira.”
Andreas looked away. “Do you think, maybe, she’s here for a reason?” He paused. “That maybe she’s your second chance?”
Ladon stepped away from the SUV. He’d had more than his share of second chances. She wasn’t a chance, she was a purpose.
“Maybe she’s the balance.” Ladon patted Andreas on the shoulder.
The big man nodded before walking away, toward Sister’s cabin.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ladon balled a wet paper towel and wiped the blood off his chest. It had dried like tiger stripes across his abdomen and he scrubbed at a thick band directly over his fragile rib.
The pressure hurt, but didn’t scream in gut-melting agony the way the gunshot had. His wounds knitted, he breathed and walked without too much difficulty, and no more blood escaped his body.
He preferred his blood inside, where it belonged.
Rysa must have done more than put his organs back together. He didn’t feel fatigued the way he usually did after losing a large volume of blood, nor had he experienced a sudden, deep chill, symptom he’d often experienced.
She’d make a brilliant healer, once she gained some knowledge of what to do.
She sat now on the side of the tub as the gurgle of water filled the huge bowl, her gaze moving between the steam floating into the air and the black silhouettes of the mountains outside, as if she wanted to drop the shade, but also didn’t. She seemed to like the view.
Water splashed and the pipes roared, but he heard her breathing. He would always hear her breath, from this moment forward.
He scrubbed harder at the last of the streaks.
In the other room, Rysa leaned over the tub, the lovely metallic highlights of her hair accented by the candles she’d found. Four big pillars—the kind that would stay lit the entire night—flickered at the corners of the basin. “I found bath salts in the cupboard with the towels.” She waved a plastic bag with a hand-drawn label in the air. “It says ‘desert sage
.’ It smells nice.”
He dropped the bloody paper towel on the floor, along with Derek’s jeans. He’d have to take it all out to the van before they left. No use in the locals seeing the remnants of their fight at the hospital. Might result in the authorities showing up.
He walked into the little room, his boxer briefs low on his hips, doing his damnedest to keep his physical interest in her under control.
“Well, now.” She looked him up and down from her perch on the side of the tub, her gaze first stopping at his chest, then at his bellybutton. “I think I won the man lotto.” Her gaze dropped lower still, moving down his trail of body hair to his groin.
He grinned, happy she felt good enough to joke. “I think we need to talk.”
She trailed a finger over the groove where his abs met his hips as she sighed—a full-on, deep sigh as if she was exhaling the last remnants of their argument.
Or at least Ladon hoped.
“You’re right. We do.” She looked away, at the mountains. The moon spilled a glimmer across the land not unlike the beast’s hide, but it didn’t reach into the space she occupied.
Ladon sat next to her, descending slowly to the lip of the tub so as not to disrupt the small calm she’d found. With Dragon sleeping, his connection to the beast had dropped to a trickle. She couldn’t access it to slow down her attention issues, as he’d seen her do earlier. Without Dragon’s help, she might cycle into a deeper and deeper panic, one almost as bad as the others he’d witnessed.
What had been the common thread through all her panics? Lack of control. Not her inability to control her hyperactive body, but her perceived lack of control of the circumstances in which she found herself.
Rysa panicked when she thought she was drowning, first in Burner chaos, and now in an imagined soup of what she thought was the inevitable end of their relationship. Why would he stay, if he was compelled? He had control of how he responded. He never panicked. So why would he choose to stay?
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