Chapter 12
“ I …what?”
I did not mean to, but I reared back in shock. The dragon-man’s hand fell from my cheek.
“I am not your mate,” I sputtered. “I do not even know what that is. But I know I am not it.”
“You are,” he replied calmly. He had taken no offense. “I sensed your life thread, connected to your father. That is what drew me across the sea towards your island. That is what led me to him when he was in peril, causing me to pluck him from the sea. When I flew your father home, your being, your life, your existence, guided me towards your island. And when I landed before your house and said I must have either you or one of your sisters, I knew it would be you. Fate has bound us together, lass.”
“Fate has most certainly not bound us together,” I snapped. “This is madness. You do not know me. I do not know you. I am uncertain what you are, beyond a creature of strange magic. ”
“I am Warkin. Dragonkind,” he responded. “Surely you’ve heard of my kind.”
“Only a little. And I am Sanlyn. What matters it? We are not mates.”
“It is a rare and strange thing for a Warkin to find his mate outside his people,” the man acknowledged. “But that is probably because…”
He stopped.
“Because?” How I wished for light so I might see his face! I could scarcely believe the strangeness of this moment. A strange man, possessing bizarre magic, was claiming I was his mate? I did not even know what he looked like, beyond his frightening golden stare. How fearful should I be?
“I wish I could tell you,” the man replied soberly. “There is a great deal I will tell you. One day.”
To my surprise, he started to rise. Without thinking, I lunged across the bed, fear forgotten, to grab his hand.
“Where are you going?” I demanded. “I will have answers, and as you are the one with answers they must come from you!”
The man turned, regarding me soberly. Again, it was so dark I could not make out his features, except his eyes. But they were so piercing, so powerful, that I released his hand as if his skin had set mine on fire.
“Lorna,” he said quietly, his accent placing a slight burr on the “r” in my name. I’d never heard my name spoken this way. Never heard it uttered in a fashion that made it sound interesting and exotic. “You will have to trust me, lass. I mean you no harm. You are my salvation.”
“Trust you?” I shook my head to physically shake off the spell his words had thrown over me. “I do not know you,” I said, “beyond the beast—the man,” I quickly corrected, “who terrorized my home and kidnapped me. How am I to trust you? What is there to trust? ”
He lingered a moment in the gloom, his body very still. I could not say why, but I had the strangest sense that I’d offended him. Or that my words had pained him. Which was ridiculous. Nothing I’d said was untrue.
“Trust that I would never hurt you,” he answered solemnly. Rather than pain, there was a gentleness to his tone, overlayed by a coat of honesty. Reassurance. “Simply wait a while longer and I will prove it to you.”
And that was that. Even if I had been capable of restraining him further, I was too stunned to do so. The stranger rose off the bed, which creaked as his weight left it. A mere step or two into the darkness, and he was lost from view. I heard no doors open or close. Heard no footsteps departing. He was simply there one instant, then he was not.
Bewildered, I sank back onto the firm mattress, feeling the warm sheets and blankets against the bare skin of my feet and ankles.
“His mate,” I whispered aloud. “His mate! How is this possible? Mated to a dragon? What manner of nonsense is this?”
Much as I wanted to reject the strange notion out of hand, one thing kept me from it.
The Warkin, the dragon-man, had saved my father.
Against all odds, a dragon had found our small island amid a chain of others in the Jeweled Isles. Not only found it, but, as he’d said, plucked my father out of the ocean, saving his life, then flown him directly home to us. How, unless there was magic involved? Dragons were very mysterious creatures. No one knew them better than the Warkin, the people who bore their name—the Dragonkind. My knowledge of the creatures was limited, to say the least, and yet I could not imagine a dragon, even with their spectacular abilities, being able to draw a single human out of a terrific storm at sea, unless he were either in precisely the right place at the right time, or had been drawn to the spot, as he’d claimed.
“He sensed Father in the storm because Father is kin to me. He was able to find our island and bring Father home…because he could sense me.”
Trying to reason out the matter, I whispered the words aloud. I had lived this impossible adventure, yet it still made no sense. I was merely Lorna of the Jeweled Isles. I had no magic. There was nothing special about me. I was the youngest daughter of a minor chieftain, living a quiet, simple life amidst a rough and hearty people. How could I be the mate of a dragon?
The simple answer was, I couldn’t. The beast, the man, was lying. And yet…here I was, his prisoner in a magical cave of stone, shut in by the secrets he would not tell me and the bits of truth that he had. What my future held as his so-called mate, I couldn’t predict. However, as I lingered there in the dark, my mind and heart in turmoil, clenching and unclenching my fingers to prove to myself that I was still alive, I was still awake, and I was not dreaming, I made one radical decision.
If this was magic, then it could be broken. I knew not how. I knew not when. But I pledged myself to that end. A dragon’s mate or not, I was Lorna of the Jeweled Isles, and I would forge my own destiny.