I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie (The I Like Big Dragons Series) (3 page)

My candles that I had interspersed around the room all lit at once, and I screamed.

“What the hell is going on?” I shrieked.

Macy started hammering on the wall, or her boyfriend.
Whatever
. Fuck her.

I narrowed my eyes at the wall.

That stupid heifer!
I’m allowed to scream if I want to
. She fucks day and night, and she’s going to bang on
my
wall to get
me
to quiet down?

Master Farrow has always had excellent stamina with the ladies.

I froze, turning around and scanning the room.

“Who’s there?” I asked
nervously.

A deep, rumbly laugh filled my head and my eyes widened.

“Holy mother of God, get out of my head!” I yelled.

The voice in my head continued to chuckle.
Oh, this is almost as good as when Prince Keifer came into his powers. He didn’t shriek like you do, though.

I couldn’t explain it, but I knew whatever was in my head wasn’t human. He didn’t sound human.

Or if you could say ‘sound’ at all. Was hearing something in your head ‘hearing’?

My panic started to make my heart beat faster, and the worse the panic got, the more afraid I became.

Then things started…floating.

My brush on the dresser was the first thing that started to lift off the wooden surface. Then my jewelry. Then…everything.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!” I whispered.

Calm down and it’ll stop. You freaking out about it isn’t helping. Go take a shower. Cool your tits,
the voice said.

Cool my tits? For real?

“What are you?” I whispered, taking his advice and walking into the bathroom.

Jesus
, I was taking the voice in my head’s advice.

I was going crazy. There was no other alternative.

I am a dragon. What else would I be?

What else would he be? Right, a dragon.

“Umm,” I flipped on the hot water. “How is this possible? I thought I read that women couldn’t communicate with dragons…Couldn’t command them.”

Women can’t
, he agreed instantly.

“I’m a woman…just sayin’,” I informed the voice in my head.

Pulling the tie out of my hair and ripping the shirt off my shoulders, I jumped into the shower, squealing when the ice cold water hit my skin.

Macy must’ve used all of the hot water again. Fucking perfect.

I closed my eyes and thought about warm things, letting the water roll over my shoulders and head.

For once, the meditation worked, and the water actually felt warm and luxurious.

I opened my eyes as I reached out for the shampoo when I saw the steam rising from the shower floor, coating the glass shower doors and covering the mirror over the sink.

The steam was everywhere, including wafting through the air and curling up over the top of the glass shower door.

It’d never been that hot before.

“Oh, my God. I’m in heaven,” I whispered.

All I want for Christmas is your soul.

-Text from Blythe to Brooklyn

Keifer

My eyes opened, and I knew instantly something was different.

The lights.

The lights in the room weren’t on.

Why were the lights not on?

I sent out a small pulse of energy, willing the lights to come on, but they stayed dark.

A sense of foreboding went through me.

Were we under attack? Why else wouldn’t the lights turn on? Something had to be
stopping
me from turning them on.

I sat up, throwing my comforter off my body, and shivered when my feet hit the cold floor.

Declan, what’s the status of the estate?
I asked.

Unremarkable
, Declan answered.

Would it kill the dragon to say ‘nothing’s happening?’ Or possibly, ‘all’s clear?’

He answered,
yes
, but he didn’t sound right. Almost as if he was answering me from a long way away.

Where are you?
I asked.

Watching a woman,
he answered quickly.

What woman?

The pretty brunette that we met this afternoon. The one with the big tits.

I winced.
You’re not supposed to say things like that to women. And again…why are you there?

She’s amusing
, he drawled.

I sighed.
Something’s wrong with my powers. I can’t do a goddamned thing. Not even light a candle.

I walked to the doors of my room that led outside and did something I hadn’t had to do in over twenty years.

Twist the knob.

The feel of the knob on my hand felt foreign, and I couldn’t believe that something as simple as turning a handle was so complex when I could move things with my mind.

The moment my feet met the cool wood of the deck that wrapped around the house, Declan touched down.

His large, muscled dragon body quivered as he shook slightly, trying to rid himself of the wetness he’d collected in the clouds.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked.

Yes, yes I do,
he confirmed, surprising me.

I blinked. “You do? Is it everybody or just me?”

Young master, I think you need to go speak with your Mamen. Once you’ve done that, then I’ll take you where you need to go,
he rumbled.

Annoyed with the cryptic words, as was Declan’s usual, I turned around and walked back through my room.

Then I promptly face-planted into the door since it didn’t open when I sent the gentle request for it to do so.

Wincing, I rubbed my head as I opened the door to my room, heading straight for my mother’s wing of the estate.

Declan’s devilish laughter followed in my wake.

Bastard
.

Oh, Master. You never cease to amuse me,
he teased before cutting off from me, releasing me to my own thoughts.

The estate we lived on was in the
heart
of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. Right on the outskirts of the actual city of Dallas where the energies of the Meridian ran underneath the city.

The heart was also known as The Meridian and was what gave dragons their life force. Gave them their nearly immortal abilities.

As long as they stayed within two hundred square miles of one of the six hearts of the Meridian, they’d continue to thrive. But if they moved too far away for too long of a period, then they’d slowly lose their immortality and age just like any other living being.

There were five more ‘
hearts’
scattered across the United States, all in small towns, making it easy to conceal their presence.

Humans didn’t know about the Meridian, and if
I
had anything to say about it, it’d stay that way.

By the time I made it to my mother’s rooms, the sun was just starting to light the halls of Darcy Manor.

I’d lived in Darcy Manor my entire life and really had no plans of ever leaving.

Darcy Manor belonged to me now and always would. At least until I died, then it’d pass on to my first-born son, and if I didn’t have a son, then to Nikolai.

Knocking softly on my mother’s door, I waited long moments for her to answer it.

I must’ve woken her, because her hair was askew, and her eyes puffy with sleep.

She raised her eyes at me in question.

“I have a problem,” I murmured, pushing into her room.

She moved to the side to allow me in, and I was struck, just like I always was, with the way her room seemed to be stuck in time.

It looked exactly like it always had.

My father’s things were still exactly where they’d been the day he’d died. His glasses on the table beside the bed. His clothes still hung in the closet, and his belongings still spread throughout the room.

It was as if he’d just left twenty minutes ago rather than fourteen years.

“Mom,” I cleared my throat, shaking off the pang in my heart that followed me remembering how my father had died. “I don’t have my powers. They’re all gone.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at me.

With a decisive determination I’d never seen from her before, she ran to the closet in the back corner of her bedroom, and yanked the door open before disappearing inside.

I waited several minutes while she rifled through it moments before she returned with a leather bound book with gold lettering etched into the front.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding towards the book
, temporarily sidelining my freak out while I tried to figure out why she was handing me a book at a time like this.

Instead of signing like she usually did when she wanted to relay something to one of her children, she held out the book.

“Read it,” she mouthed.

I blinked.

“Mom, I don’t have time to read anything. What if there’s something seriously wrong here?
Who will protect the manor if something were to happen?” I growled in frustration.

I didn’t have time to read a godsdamned book.

She crossed her arms and started to tap her foot.

“Read it,” she mouthed again.

Growling in annoyance, I pulled the book open to the first page and began to read.

MATING
.

That was what the first page said. One word. Mating.

“Mating?” I
blinked. “What’s any of this got to do with mating?”

Of course, I’d heard about dragon riders mating.

It was an old wives’ tale. Something that I wasn’t even sure existed.

Dragon riders lived as long as their dragon did.

Which meant they could live indefinitely.

Their wives, however, did not.

They lived a normal lifespan, just like everyone else.

Which was why not many riders married. Nor ever had anyone to call their own. They’d just have to watch them die, so what would be the point?

At least that was my reasoning on never looking too hard for love.

Mating, though, was something entirely different from just being married. Mating was said to be a continuous share of power between the rider, the dragon, and the mate.

And in my thirty-five years of life, I’d never seen one single mating. Never even heard of one.

When I looked up at my mother, I could tell she wouldn’t allow me to get out of here without reading it.

So, ignoring the chaos in my head that was screaming out at me to figure out what was going on, I sat down and read.

For a very long time.

All dragon riders have a predestined mate.

Some riders may never find that mate, and they will forever stay single, never to marry or fall in love.

Others, though, will find their mate. And their mate will become immortal, matching in life spans with their dragon rider.

It took me a while to realize that all of this was written in my father’s handwriting. Every single penned letter. I’d devoured the entire book in one sitting, not moving a muscle until I flipped to the very last page.

The words swirled around in my head, taking up residence in my thoughts. In my very being.

“What…” I croaked, turning my head to look at my mom.

But she was no longer standing beside me. She was gone.

And the light that had just started to peek up over the horizon was in full bloom.

I’d been reading for a
very
long time.

Then some things started to make sense. Like how and why my mother lost her voice.

A mate losing her voice is one of the aftereffects of being mated; you don’t have the ability to tell all of what happened. The dragon rider’s last task is to allow his dragon to breathe his fire down his mate’s throat; if they’re able to. That will give them the ‘powers’ for the rest of their mortal lives, but also take away their ability to speak. If they don’t get the dragon’s breath, then they won’t have the powers for the rest of their lives, nor will they remember what happened while they were with their mate. It’s a fail-safe of sorts, meant to keep the secret of mating under close watch to enable future dragon riders and their mates the full abilities of their power.

Had my father instructed his bonded dragon to breath down my mother’s throat? Was that why she no longer spoke?

Then other dots started to connect.

With the first touch of mates, skin to skin, the process begins. It takes up to three full days for the process to be complete, and the two mates will be forever bound. Unconditionally and irrevocably.

So what, neither one of us had a choice?

Would my ‘mate’ hate me because I took that choice away from her? Would she resent me? Dislike me immensely?

Then another passage that I’d read came back into crystal clear clarity.

The female is fed by the male’s connection to the dragon. The two mates will forever have to be within the vicinity of the other, or they start to grow weak, and eventually die if the separation goes on too long. Never stay apart for more than twenty-four hours. Trust me, it doesn’t go away. I know.

Had my father tried and had seen its results?

How did he know all of this without having experienced it on his own?

Surely, if it were common knowledge, I would’ve heard about it by now.

Dragons weren’t known to be gossips, per se, but they did share information. As did dragon riders. We had to share information in order to be able to stay alive.

Otherwise the fucking Purists, our enemies for lack of a better word, would get the upper hand, and God knew we couldn’t give the Purists too much of a leg up; they’d run us into the ground and exterminate our entire race in a matter of days.

Over my dead body, would I ever allow that to happen.

Standing up and stretching stiff muscles, I connected to Declan.

Have you seen where my mother went?
I asked him.

No. But your little firebug is getting restless,
he answered.
Come.

I have one more stop to make,
I informed him.

Then I went to my brother’s room, knocked loudly on the door, and explained where I was going.

Nikolai was in his usual attire of gym shorts and nothing else.

He had his glasses on top of his head, as if he’d forgotten them there when he’d gotten up, and his hair was a mess, almost as if he’d been running his fingers through it all night.