3
A moment of hesitation, then…
He drew a deep breath and stopped resisting. Turning his face into her hair, he slid his hands beneath her shirt. His calloused palms whispered across her bare back. One went high. The other swept low, slipping beneath the hem of her lace underwear to cup her behind. Pleasure shivered through her, bringing relief but also telling a story so heartbreaking, the edges of perception darkened.
She closed her eyes and nestled closer, pressing her breasts to his chest and her head beneath his chin. Lips moving against his throat, she encouraged him to be brave. To let her help carry the load.
Taunt muscles flexed around her. He released a shaky breath, and she braced. The world fell away, leaving her suspended in space, narrowing until she knew nothing but him. The cold floor beneath her feet ceased to exist. The low hum in the computer lab disappeared. Now she floated, warm in his arms, safe in his sphere as he connected in ways only a Dragonkind warrior could.
The Meridian, the source that nourished all living things, flexed.
The pulse rippled across the gateway of her mind.
Warm current ran up her spine. Pleasure curled deep. Satisfaction rose hard. A second later, Sloan slipped inside her mind. He hovered a moment, allowing her adjust, then…
Mental tether hooks struck. He tugged, testing the connection. Breathtaking beauty trickled through, stealing her breathe. As the intensity rose, he turned a mental dial, upping the wattage, forging deeper, melding his consciousness with hers.
Instinct wanted her to fight the invasion. Experience stilled the need. She accepted what he offered with gratitude, drifting into a riptide of emotion, leaning into the power of energy-fuse, holding him steady, following where he led.
Energy-fuse. God. Incredible. Unlike anything she’d ever felt, but knew now, she couldn’t live without. Terrifying in some ways. The most natural thing in the world in others. The bond she shared with Sloan was strong. Unbreakable. Present in all she did, but occupying the same cerebral space with him counted as something else. Something more. Something better.
She shivered as sensation tunneled, drawing her away from the here and now. She landed in another place and time. South Texas. Eleven years ago. In the heat and dust, inside a city she’d never visited yet felt familiar.
Tangled up with Sloan, she sank further into his flow, becoming him, abandoning herself as memory pushed images into her head. Tuned in, she watched the pictures flash on her mental screen. A black-haired beauty laughing. Light brown skin kissed by the wandering fingers of a full moon. Baby belly rounding out a tight t-shirt. Dark eyes sparking up at her.
Amanda.
Her name was Amanda .
The moment the name entered her head, the image spun. Now, she was flying. Wings-spread wide. Scales rattling in unpredictable winds . Panic-stricken. Pushing the limits of speed and her strength as?—
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Exhaust fumes scored her senses as she rocketed out of a mountain pass. Thick clouds and fresh air gave way to smog. Cutting through the filth, she leveled out over a stretch of highway. Treetops thrashed above concrete sidewalks. Hot and heavy, wind ripped over her scales as she blasted across a night sky glowing bright with city lights. Narrow streets rolled into wider boulevards. Squat houses transitioned to apartment buildings, arrowing toward the office towers that stood around a park in the downtown corridor.
Focused on the sprawling complex in the distance, she banked into a tight turn and set up her approach. Nothing unusual about the place. The hospital was one of El Paso’s finest, a tall building surrounded by a cluster of shorter ones. All interconnected, each serving a specific purpose, along with the humans who arrived for medical treatment at all hours of the day and night.
Cloaked by magic, invisible to human eyes, she flew over the main parking lot. Too many cars. Not the best place to land.
Contrails slicing off her wingtips, she circled back around. Her eyes narrowed on the tallest building. Lots of space to land on the rooftop. No need to make any adjustments in flight. Simply fly in, land hard, enter the complex, and find the floor that housed the maternity unit.
Battling a vicious updraft, Theodora folded her wings. Gravity yanked her out of the sky. Dry air whistled over her dark brown scales. Heat lightning struck, ripping through gathering clouds. Electricity sizzled above the city, making the horns on her head tingle as her paws slammed into the helipad. Steel groaned. The spikes riding her spine rattled. Asphalt tiles split, pushing sharp shards between her white talons.
Shaking the debris from her claws, she transformed, shifting from dragon to human form. With a murmur, she conjured her clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt settled on her skin as she stomped her feet into worn cowboy boots and jogged across the helipad. A quick jump down put her level with the rooftop entrance. Moving with purpose, she flicked her hand. Earth magic spilled from her fingertips. The glass doors slid open. Without breaking stride, she crossed the threshold and invaded the small lobby.
Two elevators to her left.
Five conjoined chairs to the right.
Heavy steel door standing sentry to the stairs straight ahead.
Gaze glowing bright green, she opened the door with her mind and entered the stairwell. Fast feet took her down. Dread swirled up, making her heart thump and her mind scream. The denial was foolish. Nothing but a pipedream. With her sonar up and running, she already sensed Amanda. The friend she’d made her lover was in the facility, six stories down, in the north-east corner of the hospital, but…
It was too soon.
Way too soon.
Amanda was only six months along. Barely out of her second trimester, nowhere near ready to be inside a hospital for anything other than weekly checkups.
Hope collided with reality. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was nothing. Just a blip in an otherwise healthy pregnancy, but dread sent her sideways anyway. Carrying a Dragonkind infant wasn’t easy. Most human females never made it through, and still, she wanted to believe the magic she fed Amanda each day had done its job. Hadn’t worn off while he hunted the rogue in mountain passes. Was still keeping her safe even though it had been hours since she’d last seen her.
And yet, fear rose, feeding her worst-case scenarios.
Theodora tried to not to panic. Inventing problems wasn’t wise. Hurrying the hell up, talking to the doctors, discovering the issue, setting it to rights, would serve her better.
Feet moving double-time, she rounded the last landing and vaulted down the steps. The slam-bang of her boots ricocheted, echoing off cinderblock walls as she cranked the door open and stepped into the ER.
The sharp scent of floor cleaner mixed with antiseptic hit her.
A quick scan provided more details.
Chaos absolute. Injured humans were everywhere. Some slumped in chairs, others sat on the floor while more stood leaning against pale walls. Nurses in colorful scrubs manned three intake windows with counter-to-ceiling plexiglass, trying to keep up with the influx of would-be patients. Doctors in white lab coats came and went from curtained off bays. Paramedics rushed in and out, some with empty gurneys, others with people in various states of consciousness.
Pivoting to the right, she left the calamity and rechecked her sonar. Still in the same place. Amanda hadn’t been moved yet.
Raised voices quieted as she jogged past “DO NOT ENTER” signs and entered the brainstem of the ER. She paused on the lip of the room and took stock. Wide open area in the center with desks and computers. Messy piles of file folders laid out on every available surface. Private rooms fronted by glass walls and sliding doors running along both sides of the room.
Thick in the air, the scent of Amanda’s blood reached her.
With a curse, she followed the trail. Around a corner. Up another flight of stairs. Into a long corridor. Her boots thumped across industrial grade linoleum. Powerful magic did the rest, clearing a path in front of her. Doors opened, then closed on silent hinges. Cloaking spell still up and running, she wove her way between rushing doctors and nurses, hugging the walls to avoid trampling hospital staff.
The scent path grew stronger.
Her focus narrowed on a set of swinging doors at the end of the hall.
Stepping around a stack of the plastic wrapped, unpacked boxes, she bumped into an office chair. Wide seat. Tall back. Covered purple leather. Kneeing the armrest, she set it spinning on roller wheels out of her way. Slamming into the wall, it whirled back in her direction. She shoved it again and pushed through the doors into an antechamber. Long stainless-steel sink in front of her with sharp smelling soap resting a ledge, a run of wide windows above it.
More doors to her right.
A high-tech operating suite beyond both.
Without breaking stride, she crossed the threshold. Her boot soles hit slick and slid on linoleum. Not understanding, she regained her balance and glanced down. Blood on the floor. Pools of it surrounding an operating table draped in blue sheets, surrounded by humans wearing surgical scrubs, masks and?—
“Call it, Dr. Finnley.”
The breath left her body. Her mind went blank.
A loud exhale. The snap of latex gloves. “Time of death…8:43pm.”
“The baby?”
“No,” someone inside the suite murmured, tone trailing sorrow. “He didn’t make it.”
“Goddamn it,” the surgeon whispered. “How did we lose them both?”
“She bled out,” a nurse said. “Catastrophic cardiac event.”
“I know that, Sandy.” His brow furrowed. The surgeon glared at his assistant over his mask. “But how?”
“No clotting factor,” someone else said. “Nothing in her blood panel suggested any problems before she went into v-fib.”
Feet rooted to the floor, she shook her head in denial. It couldn’t be true. She didn’t want it to be true, but then, the operating team’s words registered. Bled out. Unable to clot. Time of death. God…God…God. The healing power of earth magic hadn’t helped at all. None of her precautions mattered. Nothing she’d done to keep Amanda stable, to prevent her death had?—
“Fuck,” the surgeon muttered, snapping his gloves off. “I want an autopsy to confirm. Full investigation.”
Silence met the pronouncement.
Machines defied the quiet, humming as the human rabble stood unmoving around Amanda. No beep on the heart rate monitor. No breath in her lungs. The devastating smell of death hovering in the air. A nurse moved, breaking through the silent coven to set a swaddled bundle with a blue hat on the table next to her friend’s body.
The horror held her suspended before…
Rage and shock ripped through it, tearing at the edges of her mind.
A rumble started inside her head, then grew and deepened as grief carved her open. Bleeding pain, she screamed. Trapped inside the cloaking spell, no one heard her, but magic spilled out, pouring from her veins into the room. The earth answered her anguish, striking like a poisonous sidewinder.
The hospital’s foundation cracked.
The building shook.
The floor heaved.
Fissures opened seams in the walls. Metal tray tables flipped over. Surgical instruments went flying as high-powered lights swayed.
With a series of curses, the medical team abandoned their patient. Rubber soles leaving a bloody trail, humans streamed around her, exiting the OR as her knees hit the floor. Tears tightened the back of her throat. As each pooled in her eyes, she stared at her swaddled son laying lifeless on the table beside his dead mother.
God forgive her.
It was her fault. All her fault.
No matter how much Amanda wanted it, she should’ve stayed away. Held the line and said no. Instead, she’d caved under the pressure, giving her friend what she wanted, needing to be needed, and become delusional in the process. And as the building trembled and lights winked out, she tipped her head back and railed at the unfairness. At the brutal truth of what she’d done. She screamed until she grew hoarse and could no longer breathe.
A sob escaped her.
Swamped by grief and guilt, she crawled through blood to the edge of the table. Grasping the edge, she pulled herself up, tears spilling over as she cupped Amanda’s cheek and picked up her son.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “So fucking sorry.”
But it was too late for regret.
Her friend lay dead. Their son hadn’t lived.
Leaning in, she kissed Amanda softly, said goodbye, and cradling her son, stumbled from the room. Numb, unseeing, feet slipping on blood, she careened across the antechamber, out into the hallway. Spotting the purple chair, she sank into leather seat. Hunched over, she stared at his small face. Sheer perfection. Beauty that would never be realized.
Rocking him gently, she named him Simeon, and pain shearing her soul, started to sing. Slow. Soft. Each note full of love and longing. Giving her son his first and last lullaby.
The song from that day played like a death knell inside his head. Melancholy in the melody. Sorrow in each chord. Devastation in the lyrics, giving voice to his pain, saying the things he found impossible to say.
There were no words.
No way to express the depth of his anguish.
Though, he knew the song by heart.
Rising and falling with the strum of acoustic guitar, Sloan hummed along. He felt the rasp in the back of his throat. Tasted of tears on his lips. Knew the weight of his son in his arms, still warm from his mother’s womb, and relived the torment of loss.
Every day.
Always the same regret.
Forever the same result.
He carried it with him like a talisman. Holding the memory inside his heart instead of his head. Living it. Breathing it. Becoming it as he drifted through a world without his son. He kept him close in the waking hours. Saw Simeon’s face in his dreams when he slept, knowing he should’ve been there. Instead, he’d arrived too late to save their lives.
The mother of his child was gone. So was his son. Buried twelve years ago beneath the hard, cold Texas ground. Had he been brave enough, he would’ve joined them. The drive to live had stopped him. The sense of something more did the rest, helping him hold on while he hunted for a purpose.
The night he met Bastian and the Nightfury dragon warriors proved his desperate belief in something more true. He’d been resurrected and reborn, been gifted brothers. Warriors he loved and valued. The pack had saved his life, shifting his focus, providing a target, giving him an outlet for his grief and aggressive nature.
Knowing it, though (being grateful for Bastian’s intervention), didn’t stop him from playing a game of what if , longing for a different outcome for his son. Incredibly long odds given human females rarely survived birthing Dragonkind.
His soul didn’t care about facts. It followed a different beat, crying out, reaching back in time, wishing, wanting, desperate for the impossible. For Simeon to live. For him to know the pleasure of raising his child.
The lead singer reached the crescendo.
His heart ached harder.
His son had turned twelve yesterday.
He commemorated it the way he always did—alone. Given his sins, he didn’t deserve anything else. He knew Theodora wouldn’t agree. She loved him too much to let him suffer alone. In the dark. Suffocating in the silence.
The entire reason he hadn’t told her.
His mate looked after him, twisting herself in knots to give him what he needed. Night in. Night out. She kept him steady. During the days too, holding fast while he slept, smoothing out his nightmares, giving him sweeter dreams. A tremendous give. One he thanked the goddess for all the time. She’d been made for him. He’d been born to ensure she thrived, so no matter how hard, he would?—
“It’s The Tragically Hip.”
Her voice dragged him from the past, bridging time and space. Dragged out of the purple chair in the hospital corridor, he landed inside his body. His mind followed. The song stopped playing as he realized where he stood—inside Black Diamond’s computer lab, her scent in his nose, his arms tight around her, with his palms pressed to the softest skin he’d ever touched.
Humming the tune against the base of his throat, she swayed in time. “Fiddler’s Green. You sang him Fiddler’s Green.”
“Yeah.”
“Beautiful.”
His chest tightened at her words. He’d hoped…hoped so hard…that he’d done right. That the song he’d chosen for Simeon had done his son justice.
“A lullaby about a little boy taken too soon.” Shifting in his arms, she pulled back enough to look up at him. Lashes wet with tears. Expression full of sorrow. Understanding shining in her green eyes. “Perfect choice, honey.”
Slipping from beneath her shirt, he gathered her long hair in his hand and pulled it over her shoulder. Comforted by the softness, he twirled his fingers in the thick strands. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
A tear rolled, leaving a wet trail across his skin.
Theodora kissed it away, and staying close, held his gaze. “He was beautiful.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to go get him?”
His brows collided. “What?”
“Bring him and Amanda here,” she said. “Have them closer. Be able to visit whenever you want.”
Shock thumped through him. Bring them here? To Seattle? He opened his mouth. No sound came out. Unable to find his voice, Sloan stared at her.
“You’ve never considered it?”
Finding it hard to breathe, he shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just…”
As he trailed off, she tilted her head. A dangerous glint entered her eyes a moment before they narrowed on him. “A form of punishment? A way to make yourself suffer more?”
Hearing the edge in her tone, he swallowed. “Not exactly, but?—”
“You don’t deserve that, Sloan. You deserve to have your loved ones close.”
He didn’t agree.
He deserved that and much worse for what he allowed to happen. Faced with the rising tempest of her temper, though, wasn’t the time to press his point. A smart decision. The second he told her he didn’t deserve her compassion and understanding, she’d get pissy, insist it wasn’t his fault, but…
It was.
All of it.