Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
CONNOR
W atching my claws slice through Roman’s throat even as the sword I threw at him pins him to the stone makes my dragon surge with pride. All my Aries instincts feel satiated from both a battle won and the act of protecting my mate.
But when I hear Vivian scream Fiona’s name, I whirl to find she’s been hit, and my tower of pride turns to dust.
I rush to her side. Vivian’s moved her to a pew. With her hand pressed over the wound, all I can see is blood seeping through her fingers, but I don’t have to see the injury to know the poison is in her. I need to get her to Morwyn.
But she’s smiling—smiling as bright as she did the last day we were together. “We’ve got to quit meeting like this.”
She leans toward me, and I’m there, cupping her face in my hands and kissing her. Creator, I can smell him on her and I hate it. I desperately want to make love to her, to mark her as mine, to reassure myself that I am not too late, that he didn’t damage her in any lasting way. But she’s hurt, and that will have to wait.
I pull back and say, “Fiona, as many times as you can dress up in these hideous dresses and pretend to marry this guy is the number of times we will meet like this.”
“Considering he’s dead, I think this will be the last.”
I try to pry her hand off the wound in her arm to see what we’re dealing with. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine,” she says, searching my face. “It’s already feeling better. We should just go.”
“It’s not fine. Order weapons are viciously poisonous. We need to get you to Morwyn’s to clean out the residue so it doesn’t get infected.” I tug on her wrist. “Come on. Let me see.”
Vivian moves closer, her hands hovering near the wound. “Let us take a look, Fi. Maybe we should bandage it before we leave.”
“You helped us before,” I say because we’ve never officially met. “In France, thank you.”
Fiona squeezes my hand. “Connor, this is Vivian.” She looks at her friend. “Vivian, this is Connor… my mate.”
“Your mate ?” She eyes my wings. “You’re a dragon like Donovan?”
“You know Donovan?” I ask.
Fiona’s eyes go wider. “Oh my God. Donovan. He’s here, Connor! In the dungeon. They’re draining him. We have to get him out of here. ”
“Draining him?”
“I can show you where to go,” Fiona says.
Vivian pales and has to sit down. She has serious bruises. I don’t want to know how she got them. Not yet. First I need to get everyone somewhere safe. We can process the trauma of what happened to them then.
A shower of gunshots comes from the other side of the wall and then a scream.
Vivian covers her ears, her eyes filling with tears. “What is that? Are they coming for us?”
“That would be Seb, Remus, and Ellison. Sounds like they’ve incapacitated the guards, which means they’ll join us soon.”
“You brought backup,” Fiona says, followed by a relieved sigh. Her gaze drifts over the wound in my wing and she winces.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I tell her. “Now let me see your arm.”
Carefully, she peels her hand back and spreads the rip in the dress to give me a better view. “See, it’s not even…”
We all stare at the pink pucker in her biceps. Her dress is stained with blood, there’s blood on her fingers, but the actual wound isn’t bleeding at all. In fact, it looks like it’s healing at an accelerated pace, already knit together and slowly fading. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I gape in confusion.
She looks up at me, her brows rising. “I guess it’s not as bad as I thought it was.”
Seb chooses that moment to push through the side door into the chapel. “This is cozy in an I-worship-the- devil sort of way.” He scans the room. “I see you’ve taken care of public enemy number one. Just so you know, we probably want to get the fuck out of here just in case one of the guards we took down called the cops before they passed out. Plus the real Judge Burk isn’t going to stay asleep forever.”
“We’ve got to get Donovan,” I say.
“Donovan? Here?”
Fiona stands. “I’ll take you to him.”
But Vivian is shaking her head. “I’m not going back down there. Fi. You know I love you, but no.”
It’s too dangerous anyway. I turn to Seb. “Take them both out of here. I’ll get Donovan.”
“I’m going with you,” Fiona says, clinging to me.
I shake my head.
“I’m the only one who knows the code to unlock his cell door.”
“Then tell it to me.”
“No! We’ve already figured out that bad things happen when we’re apart, Connor. Let’s do this. Together.”
I stare down at her for a second, my fierce, flinty mate. Despite everything, she looks strong, healthy. There’s a spark in her eye. She kicks off her shoes and pulls me toward the door that must lead to the main house while Seb ushers Vivian toward the side exit.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I whisper as we exit the chapel doors and move into the rear of the house.
“Not anymore. I knew you would come for me. I knew you would never let that guy force me into marriage. ”
“But the stress, you’re not feeling ill?” I study her, looking for any signs the fibro is back.
She stops in front of a door with a keypad and blinks at me. “Being in Roman’s web was terrifying, but it could have been much worse.” Her eyes widen. “Speaking of, do you still have that fucking marriage license?”
I remember the paper Roman handed to me when he thought I was Burk and find it in my pocket. She snatches it from my hand and tears it to pieces.
“Allow me.” I take the pieces from her and, with a deep breath, blow fire across my palm. We watch the ashy remains of the paper float to the polished floors.
Stony faced, she lifts her chin high, then turns back to the door and punches in a code to unlock it. We descend into a metal bunker transformed into a dungeon, and when I see Donovan, a lump forms in my throat. He is sweating, pale, unconscious. A dragon very close to death.
I’ve never been the type of male to cry easily, but Donovan has always been a hero to me. Every Zodiac warrior knows his story and his sacrifice. Since I was a boy, training at my father’s side, I’ve thought of him as an invincible force in dragon society, a peacekeeper, a guardian of us all. To see him like this, it crushes something childlike and innocent inside me. It mutes a tiny voice that still believes in purpose and destiny and the creator’s gentle hand.
Fiona codes open his cell and rushes in, removing the tube that’s draining blood from his arm and using a torn section of her dress to stem the hole the needle leaves behind. I move to his other side and slap his cheek to try to rouse him, then cup the back of his neck to keep his head from rolling to the side.
“Donovan? Donovan? Are you still with us?”
He doesn’t rouse.
“I’m going to have to go into his head.” I look to Fiona, and she nods.
“Go. I’ll keep watch.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I close my eyes and dive in. The familiar blackness meets me, and then I find myself sitting next to Donovan in an empty theater. Scenes flash on the screen in front of us, but I turn my full attention on the dragon beside me.
I grab him by his shoulders. “You’ve got to wake up,” I say. “We can get you out of here, back to Cardinal Island where we can heal you.”
Donovan doesn’t even look at me. His eyes are locked on the screen.
When I still can’t get his attention, I follow his stare to what’s happening behind me. The scene playing now is of him and a much younger Stefan swimming in a pond. They’re laughing, splashing. Then a picnic. Then a walk in the park. Two hands, fingers entwined. Two faces on the same pillow, whispering in the dark.
“Donovan?” I swallow as more images come. Quiet dinners. Stefan kissing the scar on his palm where the Order sliced him for his blood.
“He was my mate,” Donovan finally says, his red eyes shifting to look at me.
“Was?” I swallow hard.
His eyes move back to the screen. Roman and Stefan are arguing about leadership of the Order while Donovan frantically pulls at the blue cuff that keeps him prisoner, the cuff that makes it impossible for him to disobey an order from a member of the society. Roman draws a blade from a messenger bag on his hip. No, not a blade, a massive claw. A dragon claw. Ancient by the looks of it.
Stefan is confused and asks what he’s doing, where he got it. But Roman’s already swinging. The claw cuts through his father’s throat, almost severing his head. Blood spews. Stefan’s body collapses to the sound of Donovan’s howls of agony and rage. The claw is gone, and then Roman removes the cuff on Donovan’s leg.
A legion of guards enters the room in the next blink to find Donovan, uncuffed, covered in blood and hunched over Stefan.
Mate. Stefan was his mate .
“You judge me.”
“No,” I say. “I’m just surprised.”
“It didn’t start this way. We were enemies in the beginning. It’s not always clear to us why the creator makes us love the ones we love.”
My mind is a whirling vortex of confusion and emotions. He was a prisoner! He was a pet! How could he have loved one of our enemies? But I watch the video again, now replaying the quiet moments, the touches, the looks. Two lives intertwined. Two hearts that together brought our people peace for over fifty years. All love comes from the creator, and this one, this peace-bringing love, would have gone on forever if Roman hadn’t ended it.
“I’m sorry.” My voice is heavy with emotion as I think about what I’d feel if the same was done to my mate, my Fiona.
He turns to look at me again. “The end is close now. You must leave and take the girl with you.”
My eyes sting. “No, Donovan.” I shake my head. “We can save you. You have to come back with me.”
His gray eyes turn incredibly sad, and the screen starts to flip like we’ve reached the end of the film. “You know as well as I do that we go where our mates are. I am old, Connor, and my heart is broken. Under the best of conditions, I might have a few more decades before the creator called me home during my alignment. But Roman has bled me to the point of death.”
“We can figure something out. If we move fast. Maybe a transfusion?—”
He shakes his head. “No. I won’t fight this. I want to go. My body is dying. You know what that means. Get out and protect your mate. I won’t be able to stop it when it happens.”
My eyes are wet now, and I don’t care. I place a hand over my heart. “Thank you for your years of service to the brotherhood and your personal sacrifice.” I stand and bow.
He bows his head. “It’s up to you and the others now.”
He means to protect our people. His death, Stefan’s death, and now Roman’s death—it means war. It means that everything changes.
I pull out of his head with a gasp and grab Fiona’s arm. “We have to go. We have to go now!”
“Wait! What about Donovan? ”
I don’t answer, just lift her into my arms and start to run. She clings to my neck, trusting me completely although she has no idea what’s going on. I hear the chiff of the flames coming to life behind us just as I reach the stairs.
“What is that sound?” she asks fearfully.
“Fuck.” I plow through the door to the main house as fast as I can and throw my wings around her just as a mushroom cloud of fire blows us out of the stairwell. I howl and leap for the closest window, crashing through with Fiona wrapped tightly in my arms, tightly in my wings.
Shards of glass tear my flesh, but the injuries heal almost immediately. I keep running though. Keep moving as the entire house is consumed as if we’d detonated a bomb in its depths. By the time I reach the hill where Seb, Ellison, Remus, and Vivian wait, the house is completely consumed in fire.
“Donovan?” Seb asks.
I cock my head in the direction of the house. My voice cracks as I say, “He didn’t make it.”
I release Fiona and check that she’s okay. She hugs Vivian, both of them sobbing now. My mate and her friend stand, arms around each other, watching the house burn. My brothers and I take a knee and bow our heads, our hearts heavy with the loss of a warrior, a brother, and our last hope for peace.