One with a daughter in her arms.
“Oh my God!” Rysa needed to get control. She couldn’t be randomly flipping between the past and the present and the future, dropping images that might—and might not—be important right now into her mind.
Andreas had her. She’d dropped to the gravel. Stones bit into her palms and she tasted the dust of the high desert.
“Rysa, listen to me.” Andreas glanced up at the prancing dragon above them.
The beast had calmed some, but not enough.
Andreas looked to Rysa and a blast of ‘calm’ and ‘clear-headed’ hit her hard. He followed it with a strong wave of ‘heal.’ “When they awaken, they are not always… themselves.”
Sister-Dragon pranced. We go to Derek, she signed.
“You send your brother into battle with a gunshot wound!” Rysa yelled. “You woke him too soon. He won’t be able to mimic to invisibility.”
We go to Derek now, Sister-Dragon signed. You are a bad Fate.
Rysa swung. Her arm tightened and her back contracted. She smacked the other dragon hard on the snout. “You are a bad sister!”
Sister-Dragon backed away, her head shaking side-to-side. Wild and painful patterns burst across her hide.
Rysa pushed away from Andreas. “Thank you, Second of the Legio Draconis.” One of her seers pushed the next words from her mouth.
No, not one of her seers. All three. She said what he’d needed to hear so long ago, what he needed to hear now, and what would let him be what he needed in the future.
“You bring balance to this Fate, Andreas Theodulus Sisto. You do what is right to protect the people who are your family.”
Shock hardened his face for a split second, but he recovered. Then he nodded. “Be careful, daughter of Mira of the Jani. Daughter of Alessandro Roberto de la Turris, son of my brother Severo. You are a precious gift to both Dracae.”
Andreas Sisto, a huge man like most of his kind, stood tall on the gravel in the center between three cabins in the high desert of Wyoming, on the Utah border. Three cabins, one his, one the Dracas’s, and one the Dracos’s. Here, on the edge of the Flaming Gorge, Andreas Sisto—the Second of the Legio Draconis, a warrior of unparalleled skill—locked his arms around the neck of an angry dragon.
“Calm, Sister-Dragon.” Calling scents flooded the circle again.
The dragon whipped her head, but he held on.
“Quiet, Great Lady.” Oceans and lovely breezes and the brilliance of an intact and safe family stroked all their minds. “Quiet.”
Sister-Dragon lay down on the gravel. Her hide pulsed first a mimic of the ground, then a memory of a world long gone. A small flame curled from her mouth.
“Go.” Andreas smoothed his hand over the dragon’s snout. “I will return her to her Human.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Anna will not be happy her Dragon compelled her to sleep so she could force her brother awake.”
No, she would not, but intra-Dracas squabbles were not Rysa’s concern right now. “Care for them.” Rysa pointed at the cabin. “I can’t right now.”
Andreas nodded. “Remember, I warned you.”
Rysa didn’t hear. She’d already run for Ladon and Dragon.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The door hit something soft when Rysa pushed into the little cabin. She forced her eyes to adjust to the interior gloom, and a sudden terror bled into her mind. No! screamed inside her head as her seers fed her images of what could be—a knife. Blood. Ladon so distraught he’d rather die than live, once again, through the death of a woman he loved.
No, she saw what might be. Her seers ran millions of little scenarios, millions and millions of what-ifs. They flashed between each other, triangulating, finding the truth of what-was-is-will-be.
She shouldn’t see it happening. She shouldn’t know how her seers worked, but she was special. A true threat.
Damned singular.
Her healer growled, and Rysa saw the truth—the quickness of her attention issues, the flitting from one moment to the next in ways that for normal people seemed chopped up and disconnected, had primed her brain for seeing what every other Fate missed.
“Shit shit shit.” She dropped to her knees in the threshold of the cabin’s door. Not now, she thought. I can’t fall into my own cycling brain right now. “I can’t.” I won’t.
Ladon and Dragon needed her. They needed the Draki Prime, their healer. They needed her love. They needed her.
So does AnnaBelinda.
“Oh God.” She pressed her temples.
So does Derek.
But she couldn’t see him, as if he’d vanished from her seers. Vanished like Dragon, gone invisible to mimic the burning world.
Rysa hollered. She roared like a dragon. Roared it all out. All the randomness. All the strange hopping from one point in her mind to another. All the past. All the present. All the future. All the burning and all the self-doubt.
She was the Draki Prime. She was the class-one healer of dragons. She might not see the world the same way everyone else did, but she saw it the way she needed to. And she would not let her man or her dragon suffer.
The room hadn’t been like this when she left. It was as if Dragon now sucked away all the color instead of adding to its brilliance. Gloom hung from the ceiling like gauze netting.
The bed wasn’t in the center of the room anymore. Ladon had shoved it hard and it had twisted around the side table closest to the window. It now sat at a diagonal, one corner blocking the door.
Rysa wiggled between the door and the frame. The latch scratched across her belly, and her shirt caught on the handle, but she popped through to the other side.
All the randomness in her head, all the twisting points coming at her from all corners of the universe, didn’t matter. An hour ago, she’d lain under the hefty arm of the love of her life, on the bed that now blocked the door.
She shouldn’t know for sure that he was what she’d always need. She was twenty years old. Still in school. Still young. Still lacking experience with any men other than that boy Tom and the man who wanted to marry her, Ladon.
Her true love. She didn’t need seers to show her the depth of what they shared. She didn’t need her growling healer to point out the only times she felt real and whole were when he held her close.
This man and his dragon, they were what she wanted. And what she needed, no matter what experiences she relinquished to be with them. And now Ladon paced between the bed and Dragon’s warming body, as naked as when she left him. “Leave, Rysa. You can’t…” He sounded hollow. Cold. “You don’t need to be here.”
Every cabinet door in the kitchenette hung open. Several of the drawers lay on the floor, dumped and upended. Ladon stood in the shadows between his dragon and the little table, a pillar candle from the bathroom in one hand and a steak knife in the other.
The candle’s flame flickered. He stared at it, his eyes as cold as his voice. Wax covered his chest, mixing into the diamond of hair over his heart. It also covered the back of his hand—he’d dumped the candle onto himself several times.
“Ladon, what are you doing? Set down the candle. Please.” Rysa crawled onto the bed to cross over to him, but he stepped back, away from her. Into the kitchenette.
“He’s confused.” Ladon blinked rapidly, holding out his other hand.
The knife pointed at Dragon. The blade glinted in the candlelight.
“My love, please.” She crawled slowly forward, across the blankets. The room smelled odd, as if last night’s desert sage mixed with the smell of cold meat.
She glanced into the kitchenette. The rotisserie chicken sat on the floor, half eaten.
Ladon looked down at the candle. “My beautiful love.” Then back at her. “You’re special. He loves you as much as I do.” The knife waved in the air. “You’re the only one. The only one who loves him.”
“Ladon, set down the knife. Please. Put the candle on the table.” She made calming calling scents for him, sce
nts that would stop his blinking, but he wasn’t close enough to smell them.
He inhaled deeply and his chest bowed out. “I heard her. I was asleep. Dreaming about your breasts.” He smiled, but the smile vanished as fast as it appeared. “She interrupted.” He waved the knife again. “I can’t think.”
The candle waved, the flame flickering again. He stared at it, but his pupils were huge. So large she couldn’t see the golden-brown of his eyes.
“He’s in pain. He blocks it from me, when he’s awake. He keeps his agony to himself.” Ladon’s face scrunched up the way it had when he’d been shot. When she had leaned over him and laid her hands over the gushing blood and kept him alive. “I can’t help him.”
Rysa dropped her feet off the side of the bed nearest Dragon. He’d started to glimmer. Small lights danced on his bed-shape, as if tiny faeries popped in and out of existence along his surface.
She felt the uncut, unbridled, searing pain radiating from the wound on his leg. In the parking lot, at the hospital, when she’d laid her hands on his flank, she’d stopped the bleeding. But she’d done nothing to stop the anguish.
His hide, with all its lights and tiny eyes that allowed his skin to see what it mimicked and his ultra-fine coat that fluxed into any texture he needed—he had billions upon billions of nerves. He felt on a level no human could possibly understand.
And he’d been shot.
He wasn’t awake. His dragon mind wasn’t filtering for his humans or translating right now. Ladon couldn’t turn off the faucet of sensation pouring from Dragon.
But she could, if he’d let her. She could stand between them and use her scents to calm them both. Use her seers to modulate their energy connection.
“Ladon, please, put down the knife.” She stood slowly, her hands out, palms open, so he could see all her body, and all her movements.
He twirled the knife between his fingers, rolling the handle along his knuckles the way a magician rolled a quarter. The blade flashed, but didn’t cut. “Why?” His thumb dropped the handle onto his palm and he wrapped his fist around the wooden guard.
Her seers, as confused as Dragon, danced along the edge of this situation. Too much uncertainty kept them from seeing. Neither her present- or her future-seers knew what to do.
But her past-seer did. “Why, Ladon-Human?” Her voice dropped low. Somehow, from somewhere she called up Marcus, the past-seer of the original Draki Prime. She let her memories of him steer her answers. Let the arrogance of Marcus and his brothers shine through.
“Because I am your Prime, that is why. Neither you nor your beast would be alive right now if not for me.” She pointed at the blade. “Lay down the knife. Now.”
He glanced at the blade, then at the candle, then back to the blade. He twirled it again and it flashed between his fingers, a bright streak of steel. Then he slammed it point-first into the table top. “Happy now, woman?”
He stepped forward with his posture arrogant and his chest out. He meant to intimidate.
She wasn’t having any of it. “Put down the candle. Now.”
Ladon held it in front of his chest, too close to his chin. His skin reddened, his stubble sparking. He’d set himself on fire.
“Stop!” She reached for the candle.
Ladon flipped her around and pinned her back against his chest, trapping her arms. The candle wavered in his other hand, held straight out from his side.
He let go of her wrist, though his own moved fast and he curled his arm around her front, his palm now over a breast, and pulled her hard against his chest. “You aren’t wearing my shirt anymore.” He sniffed her neck. “You smell like Andreas. Did he touch you? No one touches you.”
The candle moved in front of her face. Its heat flickered with its light, first licking the tip of her nose, then waffling and sending up cold ash into the room’s darkness. Desert sage wafted from it like a burning version of the bath salts.
Its core had almost melted away. Inside, liquid wax sloshed.
“Take off that shirt.” His hand yanked up on the fabric. “Take it off!” he yelled in her ear and she cringed, pulling away from him.
She turned in his arms. Placing her body between him and the candle he held, she slowly, carefully, laid her hands on his chest. The wax drops felt hard, cold. They crackled on his tender skin, a smooth armor between him and the unfiltered agony pouring from Dragon.
He blinked too rapidly again, his pupils still too large and his lips too slack.
“I’m going to take the candle, Ladon.” She looked over her shoulder, turning only slightly, and reached for his hand.
“No!” He picked her up, his free hand under her bottom, faster than she could respond, and pressed her against Dragon’s side, folding her back, as if he laid her onto a real bed.
Candle wax sloshed onto his hand.
He didn’t flinch. It seared, sending up fizzing wretchedness, but he paid no attention.
“Senephreti hated me.” He licked her neck and pressed his growing erection against her crotch. “The moment I married her, she ceased being a slave. That’s all she wanted.” He yanked Rysa’s shirt up and over her breasts, exposing her bra and the delicate skin over her breastbone.
Was he going to pour wax on her? Her breath hitched—her seers didn’t know. He was too random right now, too on fire.
He growled and exposed his teeth. “For centuries after her, I kept women at a distance. They only caused pain.” He yanked down the cup of her bra.
His mouth descended to her nipple and he rolled it with his tongue, biting and sucking harder than he’d ever done before.
She moaned. She shouldn’t be reacting like this—egging him on. Letting him do these things. But she knew he wouldn’t hurt her and part of her knew he needed this release.
“In the Early Middle Ages, the normals sent me virgins. Every goddamned spring.” He bit her again. “My settlement threw a party and I’d fuck the virgin if she wanted it and then we’d send her back to the villages, blessed by the dragon. The normals thought it helped the crops grow.” His mouth moved across to her other breast. “But Abigail stayed.”
The murdered one. Rysa sat up, curling her arms around his neck. “Honey. Please give me the candle.” All the pain was keeping him from thinking straight—and dredging up every moment of his past filled with equal agony.
His hand locked around her throat. Not hard. Not so she couldn’t breathe, but enough to hold her still.
“You can’t see everything. Fates don’t know everything. Daniel didn’t see the villagers’ anger about the drought. He didn’t see Dragon cutting her burned corpse down from the parapet.” He closed his eyes. “Daniel lost a love, as well. He blamed himself.”
“Ladon, that happened centuries ago. It’s gone. Done. I’m here. You’re okay.”
His eyes popped open. “Okay? Your Fate family wanted to turn you into a biological weapon. Vivicus thinks you’re the final trial in his never-ending quest to destroy Sister and me.”
“I’m not those other women. Train me. Teach me to fight. I’ll be safe.”
“No one touches you!” His hand tightened for a millisecond, but he dropped it to her shoulder. “I should have ripped the head off that son of a bitch who attacked you in the store. He terrifies you. You curled up on yourself in the hospital because you thought he might get near you again.”
She stiffened. He was right. All this time she’d been surrounded by dragons and warriors of unparalleled skill, and deep inside she still thought that disgusting smelly asshole might find her and make her do what he wanted her to do.
“I’m going to pull his head from his shoulders so he doesn’t wake up. Then I’m going to kill every single Seraphim within a thousand miles. Guns, knives, chains. I’ll drag them behind the van. They’ll pay for what they’ve done. They’ll be one long Shifter smear between here and Texas.”
He was talking rampage. He and his sister would go on a killing spree, and in this modern world, helicopters w
ould find him. They’d shoot Dragon from the air.
“Ladon, no. You can’t. You can’t do that. Promise me! Please—”
He pushed off her, and stepped back against the bed. “You. Are. Mine!”
“Ladon!” Her palm met his cheek and the slap rang out through the room. “I do not belong to you. I choose to be—”
He threw the candle at the wall and leaped for her, pinning her against Dragon once again. The wax splattered, the flame hissed, and the pillar dropped to the floor, extinguished.
“After Abigail died, Daniel kept me alive. I was with him for thirty-nine years, not because I wanted him, but because I hated what I did to women. Thirty-nine years. He was my best friend. I knew what I was doing to his psyche. Can you imagine the suffering I caused him? When he’d had enough he vanished into the wilderness. I didn’t see any of the Draki Prime for a century and a half.”
He’d been with Daniel for four decades? Her mouth opened, but she shouldn’t be surprised. Twenty-three centuries and she should be surprised if he hadn’t.
“Helga and her six children found us wandering the Bavarian forests. She ran a tavern. She put us to work. She died twenty years later, in her bed, surrounded by her children and her grandchildren, all of whom I helped raise.”
He rubbed against her again, and his mouth descended her ear.
“The Black Death took two thirds of the Shifters in the years before your family was born into this world.”
“Ladon, let me up.”
“No. If Charlotte was alive today, she’d be committed. I never left her. I never cheated. I don’t cheat. I stand by my women but Penny cheated on me.”
He yanked on her shirt again, pulling it up and over her head. “I want to feel you. I want to know you’re real. That neither Dragon nor I imagined you.” His mouth covered hers, his kiss drawing all her breath from her lungs.
“I’m real. I’m here. Let me—”
His back arched and he backed away again, his fists clenching. “He’s… ah!” Ladon dropped to his hands and knees. His body retched, his back contracting in spasms so painful he barely breathed, and he vomited onto the floor.
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