From This Day Forward (8 page)

April unlocked the heavy oak door and made her way inside. She hit the light switch and the two lamps at either end of the living room glowed to life. She clicked another switch and the gas fireplace flickered on.

Five years ago, they’d totally renovated the interior of the spring house to create a guest house for when Yana’s sisters and their progeny invaded the homestead. The space was a perfect retreat. And April came here often to regroup. Yana would take the girls and April could slip away to the spring house for an hour of quiet. Rejuvenation. With a living room, small state-of-the-art kitchen, a bathroom with a high-tech, five-nozzle shower, a master bedroom and a smaller bedroom with twin beds, the guest house had everything April needed, whenever she needed it.

At times, she’d used it to nap. At other times, she’d just needed a shower and an hour to take care of herself. Other nights, she’d needed a glass of wine, or three, to get through the loneliness.

But the spring house had always been kind to her and the energy positive and nurturing. And here, for some reason, in the main area, she wasn’t plagued by signs everywhere. It was a silent zone for her. The actual spring room, off the mud room, was another area all together. It was there that her gift seemed to magnify and her signs came to life. Clearer answers and signs of the future came if she visited the well. She couldn’t face that tonight.

She wasn’t ready. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

But she’d deal with the wellspring another time.

April breathed deep and let it out in a noisy rush. She removed her boots, sitting them on top of the shoe rack inside the door. A braided rag rug warmed the tile floor at the entryway. She walked into the small kitchen, tugged open a cherry cupboard door to retrieve a mug, and brewed a cup of tea in her single-cup coffee maker.

Staring out the window over the sink, she didn’t see anything beyond her reflection in the glass. The woman who looked back at her was a stranger. Bedraggled hair, hollow eyes, sallow skin. Even with the exhaustion from the day sitting on her shoulders, April knew she wouldn’t sleep easy tonight. So she grabbed the bottle of brandy from the top cabinet and poured a healthy dose into the bottom of her tea mug.

She could feel the magnetic draw of the spring. The closed door to the mud room almost vibrated from the energy that seeped from the adjoining spring room
housing the well down the stairs.

April ignored it.

Instead, she grabbed her mug of brandy-laced tea and went back to curl up in the oversized leather chair facing the corner fireplace. She stared into the flames, wishing they could lick away the coldness that had seeped in to her, heart and soul deep. The ache that shouted she was alone in the world. Again.

Alone. Without a soul mate. Without a partner.

She felt crushed, like a petal ground under the heel of a boot. Broken. Bruised. A piece of a whole ripped away, fallen. Discarded and forgotten.

The brandy began its work quickly. Warmth bloomed in her belly. Sleepiness tugged at her, and the crash came suddenly but stroked her with gentle fingers into an oblivion she welcomed and wished could last forever or at least until the pain faded.

The warmth enveloped her, cocooning and tugging at her like an old lover’s invitation. Magick surrounded her in its comforting swaddle so that she didn’t know where she began and the magick ended, but it didn’t matter as she let herself slip into the consoling arms of peaceful forgetfulness because she knew it could only be momentary.

Because nothing would ever be the same.

She’d never find true, lasting peace again. Not really.

Noah found April curled up asleep in the spring house, the first rays of day lightening the room to a pale rose color. He’d come straight home after meeting his handler at Ft. Bragg. Still, it had taken a week to get home from Hajar. The Army hadn’t even had a chance to contact April to let her know he’d been found and was no longer MIA. He’d told them not to bother, he’d reach her first. Better the news come from him. He was faster than the Army. By the time they cleared the bureaucratic red tape, he could be home consoling her himself.

He’d never seen a more beautiful sight than his wife.

Snuggled asleep on his favorite chair. Safe. Untouched.

He didn’t want to wake her. She looked so peaceful. So tired. The news of his capture had more than likely wrecked her. He wouldn’t allow anything else to harm her, not ever again.

And he planned to keep her protected. Safe. No matter what it took. He’d pulled strings, or he’d had David Pearson pull strings with his CO to get time off until this mess with The Fox was cleared up. He’d explained the threat to David. The hoard thief. The Fox. Laid it all out there, knowing that his best friend would help him capture the woman and keep his family, as well as mages all over the world, safe from any threat.

David had come through. He wouldn’t let him down. Never had. He said he’d arrive in Mystic Springs later today. He had business at Derkesthai Academy. And nothing was more important than this nasty business with the hoard thief, or so he’d said, even though he’d grown deadly quiet, when Noah described the female dragon and his altercation with her in a cave in the Hajar Mountains to the west of Dubai.

Female dragons were rare. That’s why the dragon shifter race had begun to interbreed with non-dragon magickals centuries ago. Which is when the ancients believe mage magick had begun to weaken and grow soft, diluted by mixed blood.

Noah didn’t agree. Yes, when the first dragon mages had found their soul mates among
magickals things had changed. The magick morphed, but it became stronger, grew more diverse, and complex, which wasn’t a bad thing when a magickal species wanted to survive. No, dragon mages had gotten much stronger, not weaker.

Dragon mages now tapped into their humanity more, but that was a strength, not a weakness
, as far as he was concerned. Their magick had taken on nuances no dragon mage could have ever imagined.

Yet David
had held to the teaching of the ancients—holding the hard line, believing that mundanes weakened their race. Noah wasn’t sure when David had fully embraced that ideology, only that his thinking had progressed slowly. While David’s stance had eased from those early years, when he’d been indoctrinated by his own dragon mage parents, he’d never really shaken the belief. So as David’s friends—including Noah—dropped off, one by one, marrying their non-dragon magickal mates, he’d never considered another type of magickal as a soul mate. And because of that, he’d been alone for years—for as long as Noah could remember.

He and David had gone to school together. They’d been young dragon mages testing the limits, who had come up through the ranks together. They’d taken totally different paths in life. David leading the North American Dragon Consortium, Noah choosing instead to enter the Army Special Forces and lead mundanes.

And still, they were both men who held to a strong moral code. Who led men—whether dragon or mundane—into battle and fought the great evil that existed in the world.

Noah had chosen to fight within the mundane world.

David chose to limit his fight to the magickal.

Yet they bridged the gap; needing to exist in both worlds and play by the rules imposed by each, toeing the line while holding to the beliefs that ruled their own lives.

Only David had done it alone. Or seemed to. There had been women in David’s life. But no one lasting. No one he’d chosen to share his life or his hoard with. Noah didn’t know if the man even believed in love, which made him a little sad, especially when he’d found such strength and purpose in his relationship with April. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And he hated that she’d suffered for his sake, even for a little while.

She looked so tired. He grabbed the plaid throw blanket on the back of the chair and covered her. They’d had some of their best memories in this place. The spring house had been a haven against the world for them. This hidden cottage had been the first place they’d made love. They’d spent their honeymoon here. And each of their children had been conceived under the calming magick of Mystic Sprin
gs that bathed the spring house and pooled stronger here.

It was Noah’s home away from home when he returned to Mystic Springs on leave, since for many of those years he couldn’t share a house with April and the girls until each of his daughters turned five. Now they were all beyond the age of danger, the age of majority, and were no
longer in danger from him.

The ancients had always taught that dragons were predatory like other big predators
—say lions—they’d eat their young, no qualms, if they felt threatened by the attention their mate gave the young ones. By the age of five, the attachment phase between mother and child began to lessen. The chemicals they gave off—kind of like maternal pheromones—eased up and dragon males weren’t driven crazy by the overpowering influence of them.

Thank God they were beyond that stage. Noah had no desire to return to those lonely years where he’d felt like a man without a tether. Lost. Years when all he’d wanted was to hold his wife and daughters and he’d been forced away by dragon mage rules. So he’d found purpose in his career, solace in the adventure, the danger. Now, he didn’t know how to stop. How to call it quits and return to his family twenty-four-seven.

Or if they’d even want him fulltime. An alpha male in a house full of women could find himself in big trouble—rather like a stampeding bull among fragile teacups. Although he had to try because these teacups were mighty precious to him.

Noah crouched in front of the oversized chair. He stroked April’s cheek with the back of his knuckles. Mascara streaked her face, the dark rivulets evidence marking the boundaries of a river of sadness she’d poured out after she thought he’d gone missing . . . after she’d feared he’d never come home again.

She hugged a framed picture to her chest.

He eased it out of her hands. A picture of him, laughing with the girls in the back yard as they played leap frog. The three girls were heaped in a little dog pile on his chest as they tickled him into submission for some supposed slight. One of the rare, unguarded moments they’d shared over the years.

A longing so strong and painful it almost slayed Noah had him steeling himself against the onslaught of emotion. He rubbed his aching chest. Even an ice-cold façade could never protect him from the deep penetrating roots true love dug when it took hold—whether it was the profound abiding love he felt for his one true mate or the soul-wrenching protective love he felt for his daughters.

Noah
placed the photo back on the mantle where it belonged. He loved his family more than anything. He wouldn’t let anyone jeopardize them. Certainly not the hoard thief and not a female dragon to boot.

He turned back to study April. God, she was beautiful.

Noah swept her bangs off her forehead and brushed the palm of his hand over the soft bristles of her short, silky blond hair. Her pixie haircut suited her. She resembled Tinkerbelle.

She looked so small. So delicate and full of life.
His.
The single word whispered through him. His sexy Tinkerbelle. The petite, curvy, sexy siren who’d brought tangible magick into his life like glittery fairy dust just by loving him no matter what, unconditionally, no matter how long he’d been away fighting on foreign soil. No matter how many times he walked away from her.

She’d always welcomed him home with open arms, soft, giving, and generous. She lacked Tink’s dark side, however
—she’d never been jealous or angry, exhibiting only the joyous, bubbly, seize-life-with-both-hands side of her personality. April didn’t play games. She didn’t manipulate or hide. She put it all out there. And he knew that the news she got from his CO devastated her.

The one thing April feared most of all was abandonment
—both intentional and unintentional. Her father had been the first to deal that blow. And every loss she’d felt after had hammered another blow, making her fear grow bigger and bigger, a monster lurking just out of reach to devour all she loved and cherished.

It wasn’t a rational fear, but most fears weren’t.

Noah didn’t know how to reassure her. He loved her. Always had. Since the day he’d first met her in high school. He’d been a newly transferred student; the quiet, attitude-ridden jock forced to leave his school and star role as quarterback in the summer before his senior year to come to Mystic Springs when his parents decided they needed a quick change of venue.

Noah knew
at first sight she was his one and only. He loved her beyond reason. He’d worked hard his senior year to win her over and he’d stopped at nothing until shortly after graduation she’d agreed to marry him, become his soul mate. He’d determined from that day forward to spend the rest of his life loving her and proving to her that he’d never leave her like her father had done. He hadn’t kept his vow. And it wasn’t until his recent fight with the female dragon in the cave in the Hajar Mountains that Noah realized that his chosen profession did nothing to allay, and everything to exacerbate, his wife’s fears.

Ten long years of him leaving her again a
nd again.

And she’d never complained. Not once.

If anything, he’d picked a career that forced her to confront her fears every single day of her life. She’d managed. Until now. He hated that he’d caused her so much pain. And he’d never even considered the possibility of it until now.