Craapp,
Another hasty action, evidently gone straight to freaking hell.
Wren looked between Ethan
and Caleb who seemed
in shock and paled significantly as she watched them. She didn’t mark Kiernan
on purpose. How could they expect her to know what to do when they didn’t
explain what she could do? She was stumbling into her power like a blind woman
in the dark.
Ethan staring at Kiernan whispered. “By the spirit of the
Goddess, what have you done Wren?”
Kiernan lifted his hand to his cheek feeling the raised edge
of the inflamed mark. His voice took on a more hopeful tone. Wren wasn’t sure
why he felt it necessary to poke sticks at tigers.
“Lords, I take it that I bear her mark and as you see, she
wears my skin, it follows that she is mine to mate and not yours after all. I
take exception to your tainting her with
your
foul stench.”
Okay so he was sensitive about the stench statement.
Ethan’s blade forgotten, dropped to the ground as he launched
over Caleb grabbing at Kiernan to smash and pummel him with his bare hands.
Kiernan managed to bolt to his feet and dodge Ethan.
“No no no, this is not happening. Something is not right.
Someone has to fix this.”
Wren moaned,
before Caleb grabbed her, trying to drag her behind him, again. She tangled
herself around both of them to block their attack on Kiernan.
“You will not take her.”
Ethan roared his fury again, ready to battle Kiernan.
Wren pushed against him.
“Stop, stop right
now.
No one is going to do anything. We have to figure this out
obviously a mistake has been made.”
She
looked at Caleb and Ethan willing them to believe everything would be all
right.
Caleb hissed. “You’re ours to mate, you
belong
to us, not him and he will
not
take you.”
Wren reached her limit. She was exhausted and dirty from crawling
around in the slaughterhouse. A cold settled into her bones squeezing her heart
in a painful vice grip. Pain the only indication that she hadn’t been
completely eviscerated by their possessive disregard for her feelings. They
were so engrossed in defending their territorial rights that they couldn’t
think past their predatory aggression. Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down
her cheeks. How could she make them understand?
“I’m not property. I don’t belong to anyone. Take me back to
my place right now and” she hiccupped “and call someone to figure this
out.”
She broke at the pain tearing
inside her. Life was so incredibly freaking unfair.
She felt a soul wrenching loss emanate from both of them as
the conduit to their shared mental awareness completely shut down.
A hollow dull ache settled in the pit of her stomach. She
realized that her outburst announcing that she didn’t belong to anyone had hurt
them. They were warriors and needed to protect her, to be responsible for her.
Their form of ownership was a loving one where it meant
responsibility and stewardship, and care. She knew their character from the
moments she’d spent sharing their thoughts.
Her rejection of belonging to them in essence rejected the
bond, and their commitment to her. But these two had to get a grip. She didn’t
know how to apologize.
How did you take back words, that once they were said out
loud hurt so
bad
? The guys certainly didn’t have any
experience with that, the clods.
“Rogue, we are not finished with you yet. Come with us.”
Kiernan nodded and turned his back to them. She watched him
transform into his dragon. Wren bit her lip fighting her gag reaction at seeing
the raw exposed meat across the dragon’s back, of course he couldn’t carry her
astride sitting across the open wound. The three of them got the full-force of
the devastating injury on the beast, oozing infection and crawling with
something. Ethan and Caleb looked away from the wreckage that had been elegant
dragon hide.
They stepped away to make room for their own change. Ethan
clasped his arms around Caleb’s torso bringing them back to chest in a pose
that was blatantly sexual yet completely masculine. Caleb laid his head back
against Ethan’s shoulder accepting his brother’s embrace.
She barely blinked and in their place before her stood the
massive two-headed dragon, with deep bronze skin that glowed in the afternoon
sun-- the patina of antique brass. She gasped still in awe that this was Caleb
and Ethan.
Wren fought to remain calm as the huge animal swiveled his
massive body toward her. Should she beg him…them not to eat her? He seemed
inviting but maybe it was a lure to entice lunch nearer.
“I am Si.
My Queen.
We have not been
properly introduced.”
One of the heads
blew steamy breath against her exhaling. The other head came even with her body
inhaling, drawing in her essence. “I am Mon. Greetings, vessel of my mate.”
She reached out with her hand tentatively to touch the
dragon. The beast’s skin was soft under her hand, the texture of fine leather
and deep metallic bronze. “You are magnificent.”
“And you are the capricious little witch who has vexed us
beyond all reason. Why are you wearing another dragon’s skin? This shouldn’t
be.”
“Tell me about it.”
She wasn’t brave enough to start an argument with a dragon.
“Are you Ethan and Caleb?”
Her conscience,
which seemed centered on telling her to act not react, and to consider every
action for potential consequence; had already started harping on the, ‘you’re
too stupid to live’ message, to punish her erratic behavior.
In all
fairness this out of control phase of life started when Ethan and Caleb had
arrived on the scene.
“Ethan and Caleb are me and I am them. Will you ride astride
my back or be carried in my claws, like baggage.”
Oh that was a low blow. “Astride, thank you very much.”
She grabbed her back pack of the ground, pushed the shirt
into the compartment and zipped it shut with a vicious rip. Then snatching her
sword out of the dirt, she shoved it into the scabbard with a hard fast punch.
It wasn’t like Kiernan had had a choice when he’d grabbed her in his claws to
rescue her. She slid her arms into the straps and waited.
Si’Mon lowered himself so she could climb onto his foreleg
for a boost up to settle between his neck ridges with her legs straddling his
withers and across his shoulders. Her bare thighs pressed against the soft
buttery hide from where the sarong rode up her legs.
The huge dragon sauntered forward several steps. The rolling
gait of his movement created a delicious friction across her bare bottom and
feminine core.
Oh freaking-hell-no, there was more of those two naughty
twins apparent in the dragon’s character than they were willing to admit. She
was considering protesting when he launched into the air causing her head to
snap down against her chest.
They flew together high in the clouds hovering over Kiernan
in shadow. Finally, Si’Mon spoke to her, His whispered words just for her to
hear in the funky modulated dual voice that resonated in her head. “Caleb and
Ethan are well pleased to find a mate to take together and provide such a
lovely partner for my queen dragon”
“I thought you were Caleb and Ethan but you speak of them as
if you are not.”
She was confused. The
hulking
Si’Mon
also said queen as if the meaning were
different from the Queen she’d heard about.
She’d watched Ethan and Caleb transform into the great
dragon. She saw their mannerisms in his behavior. Caleb and Ethan had spoken to
her telepathically while in route to find her. Certainly the way he teased her
body’s reaction spoke of their be-deviling attitude.
“I am of them and they are within me, but I am Si’Mon. Just
as you will transform from the shell you are into the host of my mate and be
together.”
“I don’t understand Si’Mon. I don’t have a dragon’s spirit
inside me.”
“Yes, you have always carried her spirit inside you. For many
generations she has traveled in your family’s ancestral blood line waiting for
the moment of awakening. The blood holds the secret.”
She was mesmerized by his words. It occurred to her, she
didn’t know Kiernan’s dragon’s name and wondered why.
“Si’Mon, what is Kiernan’s dragon’s name?”
“I do not know, little one. Names are power. If you know
another’s name you have the power to call that one to you in their dragon form.
Names are guarded carefully and not revealed.”
“I didn’t realize that. I said your name aloud for anyone to
hear. You didn’t say anything about keeping it secret.”
Wren worried that she had committed another
social blunder.
The huge dragon spoke matter-of-factly, almost prideful.
“Yes, all Drakin know my name, Si’Mon. I am the Mane’tung, I enforce the
Queen’s laws and all must have the power to call me in any form.”
“That doesn’t seem right that anyone can call you and yet you
aren’t given the same privilege.”
Wren
was learning that many things in their dragon world, while not fair, just were.
“None the less, that is the way of our people, secrecy is
their strength. Someone must have learned Kiernan’s dragon name and ensnared
him.”
“What’s to keep you from being called into a trap?”
Fear choked her at how easily Si’Mon might be
taken and through him Ethan and Caleb. That they would be tortured like Kiernan
had been.
My strength is in the skills I have obtained. My might is my
protection.”
Somewhere during the flight he became her friend and
protector and she realized that her life had changed forever. She felt like a
fairy tale princess. He landed lightly on the ground absorbing the concussion
through his bolder sized joints. “Si’Mon, you are wonderful.”
“In you, my mate has a host that is worthy of her long wait,
and I have found a valiant friend. Do not give up the battle for my human
forms. Our anger is a passion that runs deep.”
She hugged the huge dragon around the base of his twin necks.
It felt like trying to hug the front of a motor coach. Then Wren stepped back
leaving room for him to initiate the transition back to Caleb and Ethan.
“Yeah, well put in a good word for me.”
She hoped his belief that he was safe from capture wasn’t
just prideful over-confidence. She watched the transformation again that left
Caleb and Ethan entwined together before her. They clasped each other in
tenderness, heads bent together,
eyes
closed and
breathing deeply.
Their reluctance to separate from the dragon shape and each
other was apparent in every line of their embrace. She remembered how many
hours Caleb and Ethan had worried searching the psychic plain for her. They had
reason to be exhausted.
She missed Kiernan’s change. He stood leaning over with his
hands on his knees semi-vertical by sheer determination alone. Wren could only
imagine the agony his dragon was experiencing. Once the dragon shifted to man,
where did that pain go?
Wren watched as the brothers looked on and Kiernan moved his
body forward on grit and guts alone. The interlude of friendship with Si’Mon
was over. Ethan and Caleb glared at as the stalked past her.
They must have found some measure of respect for the Kiernan
they labeled rogue because they moved to help him. Together they ducked under his
arms to shoulder his weight and carry him up the stairs of a wide veranda
porch, around a wood frame Victorian era home. He didn’t resist.
“The old crone will have our hide if anything happens to
him.” Caleb groused.
Ethan muttered “Yeah. Too bad she didn’t fill in all the
details involved in this nightmare.”
“Wait, where are we?” This wasn’t Wren’s store. A light scent
of Confederate Jasmine hung in the air.
Ethan’s weary voice told her more than anything else how far
apart they’d become.
“We’ve needed an alliance with the Watchers. Perhaps Isobeau
and
them
can help us straighten out this
fuckfest.”
So, they’d brought her to
dump her on the Watchers?
Caleb shrugged hefting
Kiernan’s weight higher on his shoulder. “They’re the only hope we have.”
Kiernan couldn’t get
warm
,
a frozen lump sat in his belly
and radiated ice outward. Warmth didn’t exist in his universe. Food had helped
him regain some of his strength. A shower and borrowed clothes from the
Watchers, a token balm to humanity, reminded him of all that had been stripped
from him.
He had spent six month chained and tortured, treated like the
soulless beast he was. Kiernan sat huddled on the corner of the couch with his
arms wrapped across his abdomen, convinced he would never be warm again.
Nothing eased the raw pain gnawing in him.
He realized the dragon inside him suffered physical injury
that he would need to find a way to heal. He refused to consider that the
dragon part of him might not survive.
If
Phaux
died, so would he. If he
and his dragon could heal then, later, there would be time to deal with the
mental effects of their captivity.
A glimmer of a memory about a fae woman telling him something
important flashed and was gone. He packed the thoughts of his dragon away in a
dark corner of his mind where he didn’t have to think and shut the door.
The Mane’tung stood flanked behind him, on guard. He was
rogue, they the enforcers charged with dispensing justice. Caleb and Ethan
glared threatening him subtly without words.
Wren sat across the room in a tall backed chair looking like
the high fairy queen on her throne, dressed in his skin. He couldn’t resist a
surge of pride watching her. Bonded to the Mane’tung’s lineage, she would be a
Queen.
They were a much better match for her than he could ever be
as a simple warrior. Hell, who was he kidding? They were
Arach
he was
Wyrm
, two completely different beasts.
He didn’t need a Dragon Guardian to tell him her destiny was
upon her. His loss stemmed from wanting something so precious and innocent that
it would help him escape for a moment what he was, a stone cold killer.
≽
∞
≼
Isobeau held her
breath
. Giving up her need to breath was easier than having it taken by
the male presence in the next room. She had to go in there. She couldn’t stall
much longer.
His thoughts invaded her, suffering, searing pain and loss.
There was no inkling of bonding with Wren, only an instability that rocked
everything he believed or knew as true.
Isobeau
would have to confess her
crimes in front of him. Kiernan would channel all his pain into a raging anger
at her. He would be free to return to their society filled with righteous
hatred of her. She would be free to continue to live out in the open, half a
person, unable to be acknowledged in dragon form, unable to ever love again.
His emotions were wide open as if he’d no filter to prevent
invading her with his raw pain. The other males didn’t seem to notice it. Oh
dear Goddess, perhaps she was the only one sharing his psychic projections.
Her brothers wanted to take him apart piece by piece for
daring to question their prerogative to mate Wren. She’d not initiated a merge
to claim them as was her
right,
technically they had
no official bond. Like so much Swiss cheese, full of holes and it stunk. They
didn’t have the marks of Goddesses confirmation or anything else from which to
speak with any authority over her.
Isobeau’s situation was another matter. She’d been trying to
protect Wren. She’d had Kiernan declared rogue, then thought he had gotten word
and gone into hiding, never expecting he’d been kidnapped and tortured. She
should have kept closer track of his whereabouts.
The whole thing was a mess. Now she had to go in there and
help figure it out. She would have to be close to him, breath the same air, smell
his delicious scent, resist the urge to rub all over his muscular chest,
curling into his lap like a kitten drunk on catnip, to bathe in his utterly
heavenly aroma.
She could do this. She could remain stoic. She had to prevent
her eyes meeting his or she knew she’d dive into his soul and grab him for her
own. That would never work. He didn’t need to know the extent of her desire for
him. Hell, who was she kidding? Instead of being the invisible Isobeau she
would become Isobeau the enemy, Isobeau the hated,
Isobeau
the destroyer. She opened the door stepping through to finish ruining her life.