Chapter 15
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ZOVAI
We watched Lena disappear from our chambers and I blew out a breath, covering my face with my hands and collapsing back into my seat. My whole body sang with the need to chase her. Follow her and scent her closer than I’d been able to. Touch her again.
“Well?” I snarled at Sirrus. “Do you finally understand?”
I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was about the woman that made my dragon pause. Pause. Like the word had any bearing on the roaring in my chest. That feeling made the idea of her death unbearable, ripping my dragon to the surface and threatening to unleash ten kinds of hell.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“That’s it?” I glared at him.
“She’s been out of our presence for less than a minute, Z. Let me catch my breath.”
I growled. “Take your fucking time. I’m just over here wrestling myself like she’s…” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
This thing we felt. It was a reaction I’d expect in response to a true mate. But she was human, and therefore, it was impossible. And beyond that, there had been no mates since before the wars, and we would know. Without a shadow of a doubt, we would know. So I didn’t understand the desperate drive of my dragon to keep her alive.
Luckily, I knew my brothers were now in agreement. What we could sense of each other’s minds in our human forms was as wild as my own.
Sirrus watched me closely. “Your sire…”
I snarled. “What about him?”
“He was known to have premonitions in his prime, did he not?”
“I’m not seeing things. Fallen fucking stars I don’t know what it is. But I’m not having visions.”
He rolled his eyes. “Premonitions and visions aren’t the same and you know it. Perhaps this is your version of the gift. Your dragon senses the great consequence of her death and is trying to prevent it?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly, not allowing my mind to follow that path. My lack of an additional power like most dragons was not something I wanted added to this mess. “All I know is that I’ve never felt anything like what happened when she touched me, and the thought of her dying, no matter how, has me on the edge of shifting indoors and not giving a fuck about the consequences.”
The first thing you learned when your shift arrived was that you never shifted indoors. Ever. Only if there was a situation in which you had to save your life. The power it took to change the body, and the potential size of the dragon, had the chance to shake the foundations of a building—or a mountain—and cause both damage and death.
“And if it were a premonition, would it not be only me?” I asked. “Why are you called to her too?”
“Touch,” Endre said. “It changed when you touched her. I hadn’t realized it until you said it, but it was the same for me. When I touched her skin. And you, Sirrus.”
He’d turned her around and grabbed her throat. That was the moment everything changed.
Sirrus ran a hand over his face, and for the first time I saw in him what I felt. The impossible need that defied logic. “Could she have known? Prepared? If she is a master of potions, surely there are some which can ensnare the mind. Perhaps what she had planned for Andaros was brought on us instead.”
“I doubt it. If she had known, she would have learned it from somewhere. If anyone had known, we wouldn’t have taken them by surprise,” Endre said.
I looked over at the cracks in the wall where I’d punched it the night before. “I want to follow her to whatever room she was given and pin her to the bed,” I admitted. “Do fucking filthy things to her.”
Sirrus chuckled. “If this is some case of our dragons scenting and wanting to fuck, we’ve gone too long without.”
I glanced at Endre. We hadn’t had time to speak about everything before she joined us here, and what they’d said?—
“She asked you to ruin her?”
Endre’s eyes instantly flamed into gold. “Yes.”
The thought didn’t cool my blood. Had me shaking with the sudden images brought to life. Lena was beautiful. Anyone would admit such. But with her ruby hair and the fire she displayed in her spirit, I wanted to see how it would translate in other ways. And if she was looking to be ruined, I would be happy to teach her every lesson in seduction.
“Why didn’t you?” My voice was rough.
His entire body was rigid. “Because I already want to do exactly what you said. More than that. I want to inhale her until she’s a part of me, and I don’t know why, and if I’m going to be ordered to kill her, I can’t know what she tastes like. Or sounds like when she comes.”
Discomfort flowed down my spine. Of the three of us, Endre would be the one tasked with her death if it was to happen. Because the Elders never ceased to enjoy punishment.
Not for the first time, I swallowed my guilt at wanting the Elders to fade sooner rather than later. This world stagnated and war festered while they lived. And the three of us were powerful, but at the same time we were powerless to do anything of value.
“She already has the loyalty of a dragon,” Sirrus said, “and was willing to put herself in my path to protect him.”
I smiled at that. The little dragon couldn’t communicate in fully verbal speech. The mother-tongue of the dragons was a mixture of sound and intention. But he’d made it clear in no uncertain terms: Lena had saved him, and he wouldn’t leave her side.
The trust of a dragon was hard to come by, no matter strength or size. That he defended her and stayed so closely by her side after such a short time was impressive, and spoke well of her. But even the trust of a dragon would not save her from the Elder’s judgment.
“What do we do?” I finally asked, after we’d kept to our own silence for long minutes.
We couldn’t kill her, and we couldn’t send her back, and as soon as the Elders found out she was still alive, they would order her death. Unless we gave them a good reason not to.
“I do not know,” Endre said with a hopeless laugh. “I wish I did, but I don’t. A part of me hoped that it was just you, Z. I won’t lie. I went to her cell to end her life last night and free all of us from this. And now…”
Now she was everything and nothing. Not a mate. Not a dragon. Just a human woman who’d somehow woven herself under our skin and into our minds.
I understood why he’d told her to come to dinner. Because I didn’t feel like I could breathe until she was close. And it was so fucking frustrating. I desperately wanted to tear the feeling out of my chest. Like an itch that couldn’t be scratched.
“I just want to know why,” I said. “I want to know why she calls to us. She is human.”
“Would that be so bad?” Sirrus asked. “There are worse things in the world than fucking a human. It’s been a long time, but we would not be the first dragons to do it. Perhaps it’s an infatuation that will fade after. Maybe ruining her would save us.”
Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t. Giving in and letting myself free would be only the beginning. Like an addiction I could sense before it ever took hold.
“Maybe it is better if she dies,” I muttered, though my dragon roared with such anger my body shook at the thought. “When she comes to dinner, the windows…”
Could I truly watch her walk into empty air knowing her body would shatter?
I didn’t know.
Sirrus looked at me, an unreadable look on his face. I gave it right back. “What?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“Is it?”
Laughing, he turned to leave. “No, but it’s not ready to be voiced either.”
Endre had moved to the platform that led to the ocean side of the mountains. Even from here, I saw the weight on his shoulders. The burden he carried most for the three of us.
Familiar anger rose, and I welcomed it. Anger and frustration were familiar. My instinctive self craved destruction. To have crushed the Rensaran palace like we joked about. To carry boulders over the water and watch them fall into the sea. To fall into battle and blood and madness and let everything who I was go.
I wasn’t familiar with tenderness or softness. Lena made me feel both. It made me love her and hate her and want to know her all at once.
Familiar restlessness crawled beneath my skin for the first time since we returned, and I nearly sighed in relief. I would take what I knew and worry about the rest of it later.
Stripping out of my clothes, I strode past Endre. “I’ll be back in time for the meal.” And then I leapt, falling into infinite air in nothing but the form of a man, savoring the wind’s whip on my skin before I gave into the magic of the change.
My wings caught the updraft, painfully slowing my fall and reversing it. I allowed my human mind to recede, giving way to the beast. I shuddered fully into my power and instincts, diving straight for the sea and into it. Beneath the darkness and the waves before rising again, breaking free.
Change was coming. I felt it even as I breathed. Maybe Sirrus was right and I sensed more than my own thoughts.
Because it was more than my dragon that was restless. Everything felt restless. Like the world had taken a collective breath when Lena took that risk and touched me. Now we all waited for the exhale, praying we survived it.