29. Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
Draken
What a day.
I shake my head down at my communicator as I quickly shoot off a reply to Vince and one to Layton. We were right in the middle of a lesson when Willow’s heartbreak speared through my chest.
The best I was able to growl out before transporting was ‘I got to go.’ I didn’t get or really try to explain anything else, and so they’ve both messaged me, concerned.
Corentin, Tillman, and I all popped into Uncle Oreo’s room at the same time, scanning the room for Willow. Oakly and Gaster were staring around, lookin’ alarmed, and Caspian was pacing anxiously.
When Corentin went to storm from the room to find her, Cas stopped him. Told him to give her a minute, that she was trying again to get into her mom’s book and to wait to see if she got it.
Us standing in there lasted all of ten minutes before his ass was the one to break first and shadow to the south wing. That was a torturous hour, waiting for her to emerge from the block her tree put up.
Since then, we’ve listened to the amazing story she had to share, followed by the plethora of information she now holds in her mind. It’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard, yet my dragon rumbled in my chest the entire time excitedly like he was witnessing his abilities unfold right in front of him.
Gaster and Keeper, since they’re the only two who’ve actually passed through the portals, told her all about their experiences.
Gas-man explained that he never used the one she was describing to get to the Valorian Veil, so he offered her a chance to take a little peek in his mind to see which he did use. She squealed and lit up like a damn Star gem as soon as she recognized it as one her grandmother had opened. Her elated laugh fell after that when he explained he had no clue at the time which realm he was getting ready to travel to, but he was doing it for the thrill.
I thought it was hilarious. Willow did not. She said she’s happy his mischievous days are over.
Her attention moved to Keeper after that, and he stated he used the main entrance. I guess in the Keep, there’re also several portals and entry points to places, but he and Tanith exited through a cave here like the one Willow described. He didn’t speak on it much after that. He got that faraway look in his eye. Willow immediately picked up on it and moved on. Or rather back onto the topic of her mom.
It’s a breath of fresh air, honestly.
She’s been glowing with more excitement in the last couple of hours than she has in the last few weeks.
I’m thrilled for her…
And jealous.
Sighing, beating myself up over the ridiculous envy I’m feeling, I slide my communicator into my pocket and lean back in my big-ass dragon chair. The paintings around my room make my beast purr happily in my chest, but my eyes and mind fixate on the one in the center of the bookshelves.
The majority of the people in this realm I consider as family are in that picture. There’re even two additions that I’m slowly but surely bringing into the fold—well, really one. I’ve already claimed Tanith. She can’t go anywhere .
And Keeper chips away at my resistance every single day.
Today was a big ol’ knock off the ice around my heart toward him. It was like he knew something was wrong. He didn’t say anything exactly straightforward, but when I left to come up here, get some space, clear my sad thoughts, he gripped my shoulder and said ‘me too.’
Now I have no clue what that me too was directed at, but I’ve summarized it to two things.
One he misses his mom.
Or he misses mine. And that thought has had me spiraling.
I don’t understand why he won’t talk about her, but it’s hypocritical of me at this point to get aggravated or upset with him over it because I refuse to bring her up as well. Their relationship is a mystery to me, and I don’t want to tell him the truth and have him judge her. Or say anything bad about her.
I might kill him if he did.
A small snort escapes me when there’s a knock at my door and I feel her standing there. I knew she’d been tapping against my bond, trying to figure out what was going on without invading all my privacy.
“Come in,” I call out.
She opens the door and hastily makes her way through the frame before shutting it quickly. I arch a brow at her sneaky little movements and watch as she presses her ear to the wood to listen for noise in the hallway.
“What are you doing?” I ask, chuckling.
“I stole these for you. All of them so I was hauling ass before Gaster and Oakly noticed.”
I throw my head back, laughing when she whips around with an entire bag of pastries clutched in her hand like they’re a bag of jewels. The old man’s been doubling his batches again now that I’m back to eating them, and she really did just steal every bit of them.
“Did anyone get any?” I ask.
“Nope, not even one. Oakly went to the bathroom when he brought them out, so I did a snatch and run.”
We both laugh as she strolls across the room and plops down in my chair with me. She takes a pastry out of the bag and presses it to my lips, then grabs one for herself, and we groan at the same time.
“Damn, he’s got this down pat. He sprinkles some shit in here to make them addicting, I swear,” I say with a full mouth.
“Yeah, he’d never tell us. He’d say the secret ingredient is love.”
Her mischievous giggle wraps around me like a hug and I pull her closer and bury my face in her hair.
My guilt about feeling jealous over her getting a piece of her mom that she one hundred percent deserves eats away at my heart. It’s not the type of jealousy where I’m mad at her or feeling anything negative at all.
I just simply wish I had the same.
I feel like the realm’s shittiest Nexus member for feeling this way.
“I need to talk to you,” she says quietly as I assume my feelings right now drift into her.
“I’m sorry, Willow. I’m not trying to feel this way. It’s such an asshole thing. That’s why I came up here to give myself a minute to get over it,” I tell her sincerely as I pull her completely onto my lap.
“You don’t have any reason to apologize. At all. You don’t think I felt this way about Corentin and Caspian a time or two?”
“You did?” I ask, shocked.
No, I’ve never thought that.
“Of course I have. Granted, I get neither of them act like or even say they need Aurora, but the way she’s always been so caring, sweet, and there for them. Calling just to check on them and ask about their day. Yeah, I got jealous of it. I wanted that too.”
I blow out a relieved breath and thank my fucking lucky stars. It still amazes me how she knows exactly what to say and when to say it, to make me feel better. It’s something we both do often, but damn, it’s a heady feeling every time.
I hope it always stays that way.
“It will. It’ll probably get stronger as we go, but that isn’t exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” she says, turning in my lap so she can look at me.
Her eyes can’t lie. They’ve never been able to.
This is a big talk. Life-changing.
She nods slowly, and I mimic her. Whatever it is, is going to be fine, and I obviously need to hear it if she’s doing this with just the two of us alone.
“Your mom was Keeper’s beloved. His only beloved.”
I startle at her words. That’s not what I thought she was going to say. I don’t know what I thought, really, but it sure as shit wasn’t that.
“I’m sorry?” I ask, maybe say, I don’t know.
“So…”
I listen as the story starts to unfold with her appearing in the forest on her little wander to the past and my heart feels like it’s going to explode the more she talks.
The phantom feeling of that cold-ass forest causes chill bumps to break out across my arms, and a shiver races down my spine at her words. Hell, even my dragon ruffles himself out as her dark description of what she witnessed grows even darker.
“What do you mean a burlap sack?” I growl.
“All the women had sacks over their heads. He couldn’t see the faces of any of them, but she stayed strong, and he picked her,” she says softly, running her hand down my chest to settle my rumbling.
At my nod, she carries on. This is hard to hear, but I need to know now.
The soft smile that she has as she describes how my mom’s voice was so gentle yet sassy when she smarted off to Keeper that first night pulls a watery laugh from me. I hear in my mind the exact tone she’s talking about. She never spoke to me like that, but the ladies at the brothel got it, especially in the morning at the breakfast table.
I chuckle a little harder at the fact that they apparently argued quite a bit over food. Mom wasn’t Chef by no means, but she kept me fed, every meal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Even so high she didn’t know her own name, she always kept me fed.
Willow’s eyes begin to water when she talks about their fight and how my mom ran. A mixture of fear and anger swells within me at the picture I paint in my mind. I’ve seen my little wanderer get bit by a vampire, so it’s easy for me to just see the same thing happening, but to my mom. It’ s petrifying, heartbreaking, and makes me want to burn down the whole fucking forest.
There’s a smidge of satisfaction in me knowing Keeper tore them all apart, but it doesn’t come as a surprise to me. He’s proven to be the type who when someone he cares about is hurt or in danger, he acts first.
It’s something I’ve found I like the most about him.
I may not have accepted our relationship fully yet, but I know without a doubt that he’d protect me, her, my brothers, any of us if need be. I trust that completely.
“The Summum-Master said he’d heard, like the vampires were just strolling around the fucking forest gossiping?” I ask skeptically as she gets to the part about Keeper being summoned.
Gossiping seems like a pathetic fucking pastime for hundreds of years old vampires.
“I’ve assumed that up to this point, well, up to Renic,” she says.
“The vampire we just captured?” I ask, but then it all clicks together for me. “He’s the one who told the Summum-Master about their relationship.”
“Yeah. The only other part I don’t know the truth about is the comment about her scent changing. I don’t know if that’s a vampire bonding thing, or…they could smell that she was pregnant.”
“But if they could smell that, he would’ve been able to, right?” My eyes widen with that thought. That answer will change it all.
I mean, I don’t necessarily know how because it doesn’t sound like he had much of a choice but to let her go or she’d get brought into the Mastery. But if he knew, he’s done a hell of a job acting like he didn’t.
“I don’t know. He’s going to have to answer that for you,” she says gently, lacing her fingers through mine.
Yeah, I’ll need that explained to me.
“I know what you’ve been fearing, and I understand. I’m not hurt, upset, or anything of the sort, Draken. It’s a fear anyone who has experienced what we have would naturally fear, but I want to reassure you, you don’t need to be afraid of that. I can prove it, if…you want to see this next part,” she says, looking down at her thumb running circles on my hand .
Fuck, she always sees right through me. And calls me out just at the right time.
When her shattering eyes meet mine, a lump forms in my throat. Her showing me whatever comes next, I know I’m going to have to face two things that I really want to, but at the same time, as she said, I’m petrified too.
One, I’m going to have to see my mom. For years, I’ve painted the prettiest picture of her in my head. I don’t want to sully it. I want to hold onto the childlike wonder I had of her.
Two…I’m going to have to see how Keeper truly felt about her.
I need the truth, but I don’t. I do.
Fuck, this is about to be painful.
I nod slightly, and she mimics me, then lays her forehead to mine and throws us right into the past. In the middle of a bloodbath.
Keeper’s tearing men apart left and right with no fucking care in the realm. No one that’s in his vicinity is safe. He demolishes them as if it’s nothing more than a walk in the forest.
The entire time, he screams in rage. It’s so clearly written across every swipe of his dagger-like nails or in the tearing of body parts. I swear, I can sense his anger like it’s my own.
Once he’s finished, he breathes heavily, then zooms back through the forest and a sense of shock rushes through me when he bursts through the door of a home.
And I see her, my mom. Well, I can’t see her fucking face because of that sack, but I know it’s her. I’m so frozen in my own mind, I can’t do anything but watch.
“Oh, Elementra. What happened?” she shrieks, jumping up from her seat and rushing to him like all she cares about is making sure he’s okay. He pulls her in close, presses his face into her neck, and takes a deep breath.
I swear he and I exhale at the same time.
A shuddering breath that I can’t control right now falls from me at the sound of her voice. Fuck, I’ve missed that sound. Her singing, her nighttime stories. Sometimes the words would slur, but they were still gentle and comforting.
“It’s time for you to go,” he says tenderly.
“What?” she asks, taken aback by his words.
“The others have told the Summum-Master about you, about us. He’s showing keen interest now. You must go.”
Her head shakes back and forth furiously, and she latches on to the burlap sack still hiding her face from us.
“Why…why can’t I stay with you?” she asks, choked.
“Because he will use you against me. He will make you suffer, just to control me. I can’t allow that to happen. I can’t watch that happen because I won’t be able to protect you from what he will do. My life is in his hands, and he will continue to hold whatever he can over me. That now includes you.”
“Keeper. I don’t want to leave you.” She cries and my heart cracks open.
“I wish you didn’t have to, beloved, but you must. You must live for yourself. For us. Please, do not fight me on this. It’ll only make it harder.”
Beloved…
Keeper wraps his hand around the back of her head and holds her against his chest. Her cries seem endless and the longer she pours her heart out, the more mine breaks.
Witnessing what my parents could’ve been is gut-wrenching.
Gently picking her up, her arms wrap around his neck, while her legs circle tightly around his waist, and they’re off.
A decade feels like it passes as he just runs. It’s as if he was trying to find a place so far in the forest, maybe they both could’ve escaped.
But the end of his line finally comes, and the dark ward comes into view.
“Do one thing for me before you go, beloved,” he whispers when he sets her down.
“Anything.”
“Take off the mask.”
She trembles at the request but nods nonetheless and I hold my breath.
Her hands shake uncontrollably as she slowly pulls it off, and her midnight black hair is the first thing I recognize. I used to brush it and play with it. All the women at the brothel used to sit around and do each other’s hair.
I thought I was supposed to as well .
“You’re the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen,” Keeper mumbles with wide ruby eyes, then leans forward to lay a kiss on her forehead. “Do not wait for me, my beloved, but know that one day, I will find you, and I will give you all of me.”
“I’m already yours, Keeper, and I’ll love you even after my last breath. There is no other.”
She presses her lips to his fiercely. Through her tears, through her obvious hesitancy and want to stay, she kisses him like she knows this is goodbye forever.
And sadly, it is. When she drifts through the ward, he may not have known then, but I do. That’s the last time he’ll ever see her.
I’m glad he stayed there watching her until he couldn’t see her any longer.
The soft glide of hands across my wet face pulls me the rest of the way out of my mind, and I kiss the tips of my little wanderer’s fingers as they rest on my lips. I can’t bring myself to open my eyes just yet. I just want to see my mom’s face for another second.
Even heartbroken, she looked happy and healthy.
She was always beautiful to me, but she seemed truly in the best condition she was ever in, in that forest with him.
That fear that’s kept my mind and heart at a distance from Keeper’s settles with the knowledge that they were in love. They definitely attempted to fight it, probably even denied it to themselves every day, but you can’t truly fight that kind of love. It happens fast and most times, unexpected.
When we found out what Franklin did to Willow’s mom, I was horrified, disgusted, and obviously was ready to kill him. Unfortunately, when who Keeper was to me was revealed, that was the first accusation and assumption that came to my mind.
It wasn’t logical. I know that now. The way he acts toward me, all of us, doesn’t fit the characteristics of someone who’d do something so vile to a woman.
But nonetheless…I was afraid I was a cruel monster, made by one.
“Thank you for showing me,” I murmur after I clear my throat.
“You don’t have to thank me. You deserve the truth…So does he,” she says softly and I finally peel my lids open .
“You think I should bring this up to him? Tell him what happened to her after this?” I ask, shocked.
I think it’ll break him.
I know a man in love when I see one.
I am said man. So are my brothers.
“I do. You both have been avoiding talking about her, and I think talking about it will break this barrier between the two of you.”
“Yeah, or it might just break the relationship we’re starting to build.”
“The relationship is being built on rocky terrain, dragon,” she says lightly but matter-of-factly. “Keeper has gone all in with you, yes, but he’s got some deep anger buried down, just as you had your fear. I don’t think he’s going to be able to get himself out of it without your help. He also may have answers you want.”
The knowing look in her eye tells me everything. She truly believes this conversation needs to happen and I’m going to have to be the one to approach him about it. Tanith’s already told me he isn’t going to push, and this conversation would be just that. So I’m going to have to do it.
“I’ll talk to him,” I agree.
“Good. Sooner rather than later,” she says, smiling.
“That can mean many things, little wanderer,” I tease, and she rolls her eyes.
“I know, but the plans have changed. We’re leaving tomorrow now. We need to make sure the main portal to the Valorian Veil is closed, and Corentin said we can’t rush off today and haphazardly do this, but we have time to arrange to leave tomorrow.”
“That’s probably a good idea. If there’s one thing we know, shit surely can change in a day,” I say both seriously and cryptically.
She sees it for what it is, though.
I don’t know how this conversation will change things, but it will, and it’s best I do it before we all venture on another possibly dangerous mission.
“He’s outside with Tanith. Moping, according to her.”
“Damn, she can be mean sometimes.” I chuckle.
“Feisty, blunt, yes. I wouldn’t say mean, though. ”
We both laugh a little at that, and she runs her hand around the rim of my mating mark through my shirt as I sigh. The tender touch of her fingers and eyes as she gazes at exactly where she knows her teeth imprints are calms my rising nerves.
“Come on then, little wanderer. Let’s get this over with,” I say, standing us both up.
“I’ll walk you to the garden, dragon, but that’s as far as I go.”
Damn. It was worth a shot.
“Everything’s going to be okay. I think this will go a lot better than you think,” she says, squeezing my hand as we make it down the hall.
Then her ass pulls a Caspian and whisks me through the shadows with no warning, and I grumble as she spits us back out right at the gardens.
“You said you’d walk me to the gardens.”
She laughs, shaking her head at me before pressing up on her toes to give me a kiss on the cheek. “You’re stalling. If I had let you walk all the way here, you’d have found a way to distract me.”
Yes, yes, I would have.
I know, ridiculous.
Blowing out my breath, I lay my lips to her forehead. “I needed the push. Thank you.”
“Anytime, Draken.”
Her hand grips my arm as she turns to walk away, and her smile speaks a million words. If she believes this is going to go better than I think, then I’ll just think it’s going to be great.
Forcing my feet to work, I walk around the bend in the garden and chuckle as Tanith and Keeper come into view.
He most certainly is moping.
He’s kicking at grass, pacing back and forth, and Tanith huffs, rolling her eyes every few steps he takes. I wonder if that’s what I look like when I sulk.
Probably exactly like that.
“Oh, thank goodness, young lord. You’re here to rescue me from this imprisonment,” Tanith says and I hide my smirk behind my hand when Keeper whips around, glaring at her .
“Are you comparing my company to being locked away?”
“Obviously.”
“Ungrateful dragon,” he sneers and I do chuckle then. So does Tanith. “Draken, I thought you and your beloved were discussing our new plans for tomorrow?” he asks me, way nicer than he spoke to Tanith.
The reply to his question runs through my mind, and I tell myself to say we did, then start a conversation from there and easily lead into what I want to talk about, but that’s not what my mouth does.
“She was your beloved. You loved her. Willow just showed me.”
His whole body falls statue-still and he doesn’t hide anything as his face crumbles. I mean, just flat out falls apart. Gone is the happy, cheery, teasing personality that I know I get from him, and in front of me stands a shell of that man.
“Oh, this would be my cue to leave,” Tanith says, and with a few beats of her wings, she’s gone, but me and Keeper never break eye contact.
“I wondered when the Adored would tell you. I’m surprised she waited as long as she did,” he says mournfully.
“She’s pretty proficient with timing. She always knows when it’s the right time, or at least something tells her when. So…it’s true? I mean, I kinda saw it with my own eyes, but I’d like to hear it.”
He closes his eyes and his head bows low. “Yes, it’s true.”
“You didn’t want it?”
“What? No, of course I did,” he immediately says as his bright ruby eyes fly up to mine. “I was…I was just a fool, Draken. I should’ve released her from the forest the second I felt anything. I never should’ve let it last as long as it did.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t say regretful shit like that with me standing here coming to you for answers. I won’t be made to feel even more like a mistake, especially not by you. I’ve experienced it my whole life,” I growl.
I don’t mean to jump straight to being defensive, but the deed is done. I’m here in the flesh now. There’s no changing that.
He’s on me in the blink of an eye. I’ve grown used to tracking him, so I knew he was coming, and I don’t move as he lays his hands on my shoulders. “That is not what I meant by any means, son. Nothing about you is a mistake. Not a thing. Not how you became and not what you’ve become. I have zero regrets, but I am riddled with guilt.”
“Can you just explain it all to me?”
He stares into my eyes for a hot minute, and I let him see the want, need I have for these answers. I feel like a child begging for a scrap of anything he’s willing to throw at me.
“The bond between Eryken…” he stops, shaking his body out as if it pains him to say her name. Honestly, it kinda hurts me to hear it.
“The bond between your mother and me was vastly different than with Tanith and me. Whereas in the Keep, it was an immediate feeling. Here, it was too late for me to notice. It was as though the way in which you all bond was merging with my nature. Everything about our relationship was like the two realms colliding. The bond took time, slowly developing as I’ve heard that it happens with awakenings, yet I felt protective over her the second I was a few feet in front of her.
“We fought, and we fought. Endlessly really. Then we talked, spent time together. I learned your mother was incredibly smart, had a voice that could lull me to sleep, she loved art, and had an imagination of a storyteller. It wasn’t until after she was free, I realized, those were our challenges. We were matched in both strength and intelligence.
“I was so na?ve not to see it or maybe I simply didn’t want to, I’m not sure, but in my mind, I’d deemed it impossible. An actual bond hadn’t snapped in place, so I firmly told myself it was my loneliness clouding these crazy feelings I was having. The first time I called her my beloved, it had slipped out, but it felt right. It was the first thing that felt right since I became imprisoned in that place. So I told myself, she could be that for now.”
The way his eyes lit up when he spoke about the things he learned about her and the emotion in his voice now make my heart pound against my rib cage painfully. I don’t want to tell him what became of her.
“Did you know she was pregnant? The comment about the scent,” I choke out.
“No, I didn’t. If I did, I would’ve hidden her so far into the forest, she never would’ve been found. I would’ve made every vow possible to keep her safe. The scent that the other vampires smelled was the bond and the pregnancy. It’s not something I would’ve picked up on. That should’ve been another thing that told me the truth, but I refused to accept that.
“When a beloved is claimed, the smell of their blood changes, but not to their other half. They will always smell the same. Your mother always smelled like Estra fruit. A very popular delicacy from the Keep. She smelled like home.” He pauses, taking a deep breath.
“Her scent would’ve started changing for them, warding them away from her. The pregnancy would’ve solidified that because they would’ve started catching her scent and mine, mingled. I would’ve known eventually. Once the taste of her blood changed.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says that, thankfully, ’cause I grimaced. “So if the bond never snapped in place, is there a possibility she wasn’t your beloved?”
It’s not that I’m doubting he loved her, it’s very clear in every word, every expression, but I can’t imagine what it feels like. If I had lost Willow before we bonded, I know a part of me would never be the same. There’d be a hole the size of this realm in my heart.
I don’t want that for him.
He closes his eyes once more, and my body startles when a tear slides down his face. I want to take my question back. I want to rewind time by twenty-five seconds and never let the words come out of my mouth.
“The moment she crossed through the ward, our bond solidified. I couldn’t do anything but stare as my entire life walked away from me because I told her to. She had to.”
Fuck.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I don’t know what else to say.
The devastation rolling off him is suffocating. It’s pounding against my lungs like I’m reliving my own grief and now his.
“There’s nothing you have to be sorry for. I am. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for the two of you. If I had been, she’d still—”
He can’t finish the sentence, and I don’t want him to either. It’ll lead to me having to tell the story and fuck me, this is going to be so much harder than I thought.
“Start nice and slow, young lord. Tell him the happy things. Not all of them but start there and end there.”
Peering out of my peripheral, Tanith is nestled in the tree line, watching us keenly. I was too caught up in his story to notice her spying.
“Thought you were giving us some space?”
“I could no longer ignore the call to come. He is in pain. But he must break before he can rebuild.”
“Fuck me. I don’t want to break him.”
“I’m sorry, but you must.”
I’m already telling the alternative story in my mind. The one I’ve crafted over the years. It’s all a lie, all an escape from reality. That’s the version I’m prepared to give him so I don’t have to do what Tanith just told me to. But Willow’s words ring in my mind.
The relationship is being built on rocky terrain, dragon.
We can rebuild.
“She got better at cooking. At least I suppose she did. It was all I knew, and it was edible,” I say.
“Edible is the key word.” He snorts, showing the barest amount of happiness at that.
“She liked to tell me stories. I always thought she just made them up as she went, but I think they were stories about the two of you, just with a twist to them. The main characters always fell in love and had a happy ending.”
I don’t stop talking. I tell him almost everything I can remember. I search into the depths of my mind, as far back as I can go, and let it all free. Years of memories that I haven’t spoken about in all the time she’s been gone, but I give it to him so he can share it with me.
Then, I break his heart.
“She was a sex worker and a drug addict who died of an overdose when I was four. Everything I just told you all happened in the brothel we lived in and she died in. They kicked me out that same day, and I lived on the street for over a month until a farmer adopted me and abused me until my gift emerged. Then I killed him, ate him, and came to live here with my brothers. ”
He stumbles back from me like I just rocked his jaw, more like his whole world and his eyes shift to blood red. The smile that was plastered on his face melts away as he shakes his head back and forth.
“No…no. You said she was a good mother.”
“She was, in the way she knew how. But there was always something inside of her missing. Of course, as a child, I thought she was perfect. As a teenager, I hated her. Until recently, I accepted that she was a good mom in her own way. She did take care of me, clothe me, feed me, love me, but something was broken in her that could only be fixed with the bandage of a drug. I loved her very much, and it’s taken me a long time to come to terms with it. Honestly, I never would have if not for Willow showing me how to look at things from other perspectives, but…I forgive her.”
My body slouches with my confession and the weight of that truth lifts off me, making me feel twenty feet tall, but it seems to crush him. His body vibrates like it’s taking every bit of his strength to keep from being buried beneath it.
The wind from his speed nearly knocks me to my ass. It’s a burst of raw power and my eyes scan the surroundings, looking for him, but all I see is plants, scrubs, and dirt flying in the air. The roots being snatched from the ground sound like bones breaking as he annihilates the garden. Thank fuck no one is out here but us because he’s completely lost it.
Tanith finally emerges from the tree line, rumbling, purring, doing everything she can to calm him down as he absolutely snaps, but nothing works.
“Go to him, Draken. Do not allow him to lose himself to his grief. If he does something horrid in this fit of rage, he will never forgive himself.”
She starts up a hum in my mind and my eyes bug out of my head.
What the hell—
“How do you know that song?”
“Your mother taught it to him.”
You’re kidding me.
Turning back to him, I sprint to the garden and focus my eyes on finding and tracking him. It takes longer than it has lately, but as soon as I do, I throw a fireball in front of him to slow him down long enough so I can tackle him.
Our bodies hit the dirt with a deafening bang and a cloud of dust covers us as we roll. He tries to shove away from me, but my dragon flies forward, evening our strength.
Getting him pinned, I start humming.
Repeatedly, the little melody my mom used to sing to me vibrates through my throat and the grip he has on my biceps loosens as his eyes slowly shift back. When I think he’s in control enough not to fuck anything else up, I get off him and offer him my hand. Never missing a beat of my song.
Standing tall, he quietly mumbles the last few lines of the chorus with me and as our notes end, he exhales sharply.
“I’m so sorry, son. I will be everything I can and more for you. I will make up for it all and be the father you deserve,” he says, laying his forehead to mine.
“I’d like that a lot,” I say, and a shock passes through me.
The same shock I felt in my dragon form, but this time, it warms my body, spreading everywhere until it settles within my blood.
“Congratulations, young lord. You’ve accepted your father’s bestowing.”