“Killing them won’t solve anything, least of all the bigger problem,” Sophia said. “These hounds can be controlled and used to protect the bloodline against the hounds Fate does control. Find them, but don’t hurt them.”
“I’m not making any fucking promises,” Ozzie sneered and pushed past Deva, leaving her to stumble into Bodhi, who hooked a protective arm around her.
Sandor and Willem exchanged a quick look. Willem nodded silently and Sandor left, following Ozzie out the door with Llyr close behind.
I clung to Keagan’s hand, wishing like hell my magic had the same effect on flesh that Willem did, but only White, Red, and Green dragons had the power to heal wounds. The mind was the realm of Blue, Black, and Gold dragons. I liked to believe my magic affected the heart and soul as well.
I expelled a breath and let it flood Keagan’s lungs. It could ease his pain, even if it didn’t give him the joy it was meant to.
He gave me a grateful, though forced smile. “I love you, man,” he croaked. “I’d do anything for you. You know that, right?”
My throat tightened. “I don’t want you to fucking die for me, asshole. What were you thinking?”
“Thought I’d give you time to . . . to find your soul mate. Guess I fucked that up huh?”
“You weren’t trying to force it?” Deva stepped tentatively into the room, wiping tears from her cheeks. My heart lurched at the sight of her pain, my soul chilling even more than it had at Keagan’s physical trauma. Other people’s emotional distress hurt me far deeper, and Deva’s emotions always cut to the bone.
Keagan turned his head, grimacing as the movement stretched a still-healing tear along his collarbone. “Nah. I know I’m an asshole, but I’m not that big of an asshole. Just wanted to take the burden. Transfer the link to me. Now I’m linked to . . . What the fuck was that thing? Mama hound?”
Sophia shook her head, settling into one of Keagan’s comfortable sling-back chairs. “They have no gender, and I honestly didn’t know they could breed, but it seems they have. Those first two we captured must have been pups. I thought they looked too small to be full-grown hounds.”
“Guess Mama got pissed we caged her babies.” Keagan had begun to slur his words. His skin went from flushed to sallow and his eyes rolled back in his head. Willem cursed.
“Keagan, stay with me,” I said, my heart lurching. I leaned over and breathed again, pulling on dregs of power as it was, but it wasn’t doing a damn thing. His body arched in agony and he let out an unholy wail.
“Can you heal him faster?” I cried.
“It isn’t his flesh wounds that are causing his distress,” Willem said. “And I can’t fix the big one.”
The sweetest sound filled the air then, and I shot a look to Deva. She stood at the foot of his bed, her eyes closed. She still wore Maddie Dylan’s borrowed clothes, a peach-colored sundress that matched the desperate glow of her aura. And she sang.
I hadn’t heard this song before, but after the first verse, the rest of us picked up the chorus and sang along, with Bodhi snagging one of Keagan’s numerous guitars to strum along with us. Willem hummed between breaths until his skin rippled with evidence of his own flagging power, but Deva saw his need and reached out her hands to the both of us.
We kept singing song after song, Deva’s fingers twined in ours so tight I nearly lost circulation. The entire time she pushed restorative energy into our bodies, allowing us to keep going.
I wanted to give back, ached to give back what she’d sacrificed for me, and now for Keagan. He lay unconscious, but thanks to the spell we’d cast to see the hounds, I could see the faint greenish glow of what must have been the soul drain leading from the center of his chest and through the walls of the bedroom. I couldn’t see his soul proper; that skill must’ve required stronger magic than we’d used. But that didn’t matter, not when we had Deva, who would clearly give us everything she had to keep us whole.
We paused after an hour or so to catch our breaths. After a moment, a faint, sad whisper echoed in my head.
“I told you he loved you. You should be with him.”
“Since when are you two mutually exclusive? I’m never going to be without him, but you . . .”
I stared at Deva, willing her to understand what she meant to me. Yes, I loved Keagan, but we were partners, bandmates, friends. Lovers too, but it was always an easy kind of pleasure between us. He’d never displayed any sort of desperate depth to his feelings. Not until now.
Willem snorted, and Deva and I both looked at him in surprise. “You two kids broadcast your thoughts so loud you may as well just use your mouths. My guess is this guy . . .” He jerked a thumb at the unconscious ursa in the bed. “. . . didn’t know what he had until he thought he was about to lose it.”
“He isn’t fucking losing me,” I growled.
Willem’s eyebrows shot up. “No? Your two auras tell a different story, and they have since the day she walked into our store and the pair of you sang that fucking Leather and Lace duet.
“You think Keagan didn’t have eyes that day? It didn’t take dragon sight to see what was happening, even before the damn hounds attacked. He thought at least the pair of you would have each other’s backs until you found a third, like me and Sandor waiting for his One. He’s an ursa, Rohan. He didn’t hope for much, but he hoped you’d share the choice.”
I sagged in my chair and scrubbed my hands over my face, then gave Deva a sad look. “I don’t think I had a choice, once I got attacked.”
But I had a feeling Willem was right; it wasn’t the attack that had shifted things so out of balance between me and Keagan—it was Deva. Singing with her was akin to making love. When our voices mingled, it was like our souls entwined.
I loved making music with the band, but it had never been like that. Yet as I looked at her for confirmation that she understood, she pulled away, retreating into herself and her strange, barely-there aura closing off like there was nothing to see. She started singing again, but it lacked power this time.
Bodhi stood and set the guitar he’d been playing aside. He gripped Deva gently by the shoulders to stop her.
“I think we ought to work in shifts to protect him. You’re losing it. Go rest and recharge. I’ll stay with Willem and take care of Keagan.”
Deva nodded solemnly and left the room, her head bowed. Bodhi raised his eyebrows at me.
“She needs you too. Just as much as we need her.”
I started to rise, only to see a flurry of a turul’s feathered wings outside the glass doors. A moment later a naked Sandor stood there in its place, pushing his way into the room.
“Willem,” he croaked.
The big, white-haired dragon looked up and frowned, then leapt to his feet as Sandor rushed to him.
“Never think I don’t love you just because you aren’t my One,” Sandor choked out.
“I don’t think that—” Willem began, but the remainder of his sentence was swallowed up in Sandor’s fevered kiss. Their auras flared bright, tangled together as much as their bodies were. After a long moment, they seemed to realize they had an audience.
“Ah, the guest room’s free,” I said, gesturing vaguely in its direction.
When they left, I stared down at Keagan. Even in sleep he looked pained, almost grieving. I bent to kiss him, his day’s growth of beard tickling my lips and sending a pang of longing through me.
I had no idea if Deva was my One, or if I even had a One. The turul were the only race that had a single mate predestined from birth. For the rest of us, it seemed pretty random whether Fate chose to point us at a specific partner or partners, but mostly we got to choose. I had a feeling I was one of the lucky ones.
Looking down at Keagan, I wondered if this was really a choice at all.
Bodhi started playing again and singing softly. I bent my head close to Keagan’s, resting my cheek against his and whispering, “I love you, buddy. Never believe for a second that I don’t. But I don’t think I�
�m complete without her. Please understand.”
As I kissed him again, a small spasm took hold of my insides, reminding me how dangerously low on magic I’d become while trying to help him, even after Deva’s infusion. I needed her desperately now, every bit as much as I had two days ago, but not just to replenish my power and keep me from going feral.
I didn’t know how the hell things would work with Keagan once he was better—if he got better—but I hoped that he’d come around. The animosity he had for Deva couldn’t last forever, could it?
I hoped not, especially since I was positive she’d sooner kill herself than let any of us die.
“You’ll stay with him?” I asked.
“Got no better place to be,” Bodhi said, propping his feet up on the bed and dipping his head to pick at the guitar and croon another song.
I paused in the doorway for a moment, watching Keagan’s aura brighten and the stream of soul energy that flowed from him dim. I wasn’t sure who to pray to—Gaia, Fate, or the Mother Dragon—but I sent a silent prayer out into the universe, then turned to go.
I wandered down the hall, past the closed door of our spare room where I could hear Willem and Sandor, their soft murmurs infused with love and promises in between sighs and groans of pleasure.
Ozzie and Llyr hadn’t returned, so they must’ve still been hunting for the hounds. There was something more between the pair of them and Deva that I’d picked up on that wasn’t quite clear, but the one thing that was clear was that she was on the outs with them both. Llyr’s proclamation that he was her mate notwithstanding, I’d trust her to tell me the truth before I believed him.
I couldn’t find her anywhere in the house. It was nearly dusk, the sky was so overcast I couldn’t see the sun, which was an apt reflection of my mood. The palms and shrubs outside the house swayed in a heavy wind, and when I glanced out past the boarded-up glass in the living room, I saw two female figures leaning on the railing overlooking the bluffs, one with jet-black hair whipping around her head.
Stepping out, I was instantly buffeted by the chilly gusts wailing down the coast. If the wind could have a mood, this one would be desperate and anguished. My shoulders itched with each current blowing past, and I could already feel my hold on my human shape fading, which sucked, because I really didn’t want to rush this . . . if I could even get Deva to listen.
Just before I reached them, one of the figures transformed, and where there had been a woman clad in a gray dress, a massive bird swooped up on the air currents and soared away. Her clothing collapsed into a heap on the ground.
“Where did she go?” I asked, watching what had to have been Sophia North fly off to the east.
Deva turned, huddling into herself against the chill. She hadn’t grabbed a sweater, but I sensed her discomfort was less from the temperature and more from the turmoil churning inside her.
“To get more answers from Fate, if she can. How is Keagan?”
She glanced at the warm glow of his room, Bodhi’s singing muffled by the glass. To the right, the guest room was dark, but the tangled auras of the two men inside were clearly visible beyond the curtains. That seemed to ease her tension, but she still looked at me expectantly, as if I could tell her anything she didn’t know.
“Bodhi’s keeping vigil. He’s got talent,” I said lamely. What Bodhi had was a serious hard-on for Deva, which I understood completely. I was probably a dick for what I was about to do after learning he’d met her first, but I stashed a promise to make it up to him in the back of my mind.
“He has turul blood,” she said. “And a soul.”
I moved to her and gently gripped her shoulders. “Deva, I know you want us to be whole and healed, but you can’t force it—I don’t care what Sophia says. Maybe Meri let the hounds bite two people and they were just too desperate not to die that they bound their souls together.
“The point is I don’t think we’re there yet. There are four of us here who are damaged now, and you don’t see us scrabbling to be one other’s soul mates. Willem and Sandor are the closest, but Sandor was marked by Fate when he was born, and even he isn’t willing to risk it.”
“But you love each other. Why not?”
I struggled for an answer. “What we have is . . .” Not enough, was what I wanted to say, but it diminished what Keagan and I did share. “. . . not what I need to fix me.”
I was unsure how I knew that, but I was positive it was the truth. I was equally certain that Deva was exactly what I needed. I thought she was what we all needed, but maybe the others just needed more time to figure that out.
Or more accurately, we were what she needed.
Just as I had that little revelation, pain crashed through my torso in a vicious spasm. I doubled over and gasped. Deva’s eyes widened.
“Ro, you’re starting to shift. You aren’t doing that on purpose, are you?”
Through clenched teeth, I told her, “No, baby. I’m trying damn hard to keep my shit together, but it’s been a hard day.”
“Hold on.”
She grabbed my hand and led me back around the pool toward my room at the north end of the house. The wind followed us, icy now and nearly wrenching the door from Deva’s hand when she opened it.
We shut the weather out and I collapsed onto my bed, groaning and curling into myself to try to maintain my human shape just a little longer.
Deva’s hand was at my back, stroking and pushing power into me.
I shoved her hand away. “No, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“You don’t know that. I got a little lightheaded last time, but that’s all. I’m going to give you what you need, Ro. Don’t argue.”
She hovered over me, sliding her hands over my skin as she began to undress me. Each caress pushed more power through my skin, and while it didn’t ease the constant pulling sensation at my core, it did ease the urge to shift, and I gradually relaxed.
By the time she had me naked, the itching, clawing need to change forms had abated. My cock was also rock-hard, but I was too weak to do anything about it.
“I’m going to get Bodhi to help,” Deva said, slipping off the bed. It was all I could do to summon enough strength to drag her back.
She fell beside me in a heap, but didn’t resist when I wrapped my arm around her and curled my body tight against hers.
“No. Deva, I need it to be just you and me right now. Forget about helping me for a few. Forget about everything but what you need.”
With what little magic I had in me, I focused on encompassing her in my aura, letting her feel what it was like to be loved the way I ached to love her, if she’d only let me. She tensed and tried to pull away.
“Rohan, you don’t have to . . . You shouldn’t . . .”
“Shouldn’t love you? I think it’s a little late for that.”
31
Bodhi
The urge to sing Jewel songs should have worried me, but under the circumstances, they just seemed appropriate. I gave in, pleased that a song about saving one’s soul would do the trick as well as any other, though not necessarily better.
When I opened my eyes after the last note faded, Keagan was regarding me coolly, one brow raised.
“Seriously, dude? I’m on my fucking deathbed and you sing me that shit?”
I rested my fingers across the guitar strings to mute them. Licking my lips, I said, “So angsty music about actual souls is maybe too close to home for you, huh? How about this?”
I pulled my feet off the bed and dropped them to the floor. Bending over the guitar, I plucked out a new tune. After the first verse of “Try a Little Tenderness,” I glanced up, and the stricken look on Keagan’s face made me stop playing again.
“Dude, I didn’t mean anything by it. Just thought actual soul music was what you’d like.”
“Fucking perfect,” he choked, and burst into tears.
“Jesus,” I muttered, at a complete loss as to what to do with this beast of a man who’d succeeded in scaring the s
hit out of me that morning, but who clearly had a sentimental streak as vast as the Pacific.
There had been some serious jealousy in that glare when he’d seen me with Deva and Rohan, but I hadn’t been sure who he thought he was losing until after his attack. It was Rohan. I guessed there was some higher races complexity to this situation, and I just wasn’t clued in enough to grasp it all.
What I could grasp was that the man was seriously hurting, and I had a feeling it wasn’t just the brilliant green thread of light seeping out of the center of his torso that was the root of it.
“Hey, it’ll be all right,” I ventured, setting the guitar aside and leaning forward to rest a hand on his shoulder.
“I fucked up, man,” he sobbed. “I seriously fucked up, and I’m going to be alone because of it. I may as well die without her.”
Without her? Even though it contradicted my earlier impression, I didn’t even bother asking what he meant; I’d been stewing in the same sentiment all fucking day. It had only gotten worse after lunch—after Deva’s manic insistence that all our damaged souls could somehow make each other whole again. None of us believed it, even though it wasn’t the craziest suggestion I’d heard over the past few days.
The only thing keeping me from jumping off the goddamn bluffs was believing that there had to be a way to fix my mom. If my grandma could find her soul mate from among the damaged souls left in the wake of these beasts, maybe Mom could too. I just doubted it was any of these guys—she would have known when she met them this morning.
“You and me both, man,” I said, squeezing Keagan and giving him a little shake. Our eyes met, and whatever he saw must’ve made him feel less alone. His tears ceased and he nodded.
“What the fuck do we do?”
He was just as lost as I was, and I fucking craved the tenderness I’d been compelled to sing about a moment ago. If I could give it, maybe I’d find some in return.
The pleading look in his eyes made something snap inside me. I moved my hand to the back of his head and leaned in closer, my heart kicking hard against my ribcage.
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