12. Jerrid
JERRID
Dragon pulled Ava closer to him, inhaling her scent, enjoying the guardedness in her gaze.
She looked like a tender doe longing to bound away into the forest, but he wasn’t going to let her go. Oh no, he would keep her close. Very close.
Her skin felt soft in Jerrid’s hands, but the bones were firm and strong beneath the thin layer of her delicious scent. He had always liked elves—they smelled so good—but dark elves?
He loved dark elves.
No, Jerrid snarled, writhing in his mind like a caged, wounded creature. You don’t love her.
His gaze dropping to Ava’s mouth, Dragon leaned a little closer as Jerrid yanked hard for control of their body. Jerrid was wrong. He was always wrong about so many things…
You don’t love her, Jerrid repeated, almost frantically. You just like her because she’s spunky and won’t put up with your nonsense.
But neither did Brynja… Did that mean he loved her too?
Jerrid began to choke violently, his unspoken no reverberating in their thoughts as loudly as a clanging bell.
Dragon grinned and congratulated himself on maintaining control when Jerrid was clearly so determined to shake him loose. He wouldn’t let go. He would hold on for all he was worth because this was too much fun.
He liked having a wife.
She isn’t really our wife! Jerrid roared, a note of panic in his thoughts.
Dragon couldn’t think of anything else he would rather be doing. Even a long hunt in the woods didn’t please him as much as this did—this having-a-wife business. The only thing nicer than holding Ava in his hands was listening to Jerrid whine and bellow about it in the background.
He would never let go. He would—
Jerrid wrenched control so violently, Dragon felt himself slipping away. Ava slid out of his hands. No, she was flung out of his hands. Dragon watched in horror as she skidded backward and slammed into Brynja.
Both maidens went down in a tangled heap, Brynja swearing and Ava yelping out an angry, “Dragon!”
It wasn’t me, he wailed, but Jerrid had stolen his voice.
He roared in protest as Jerrid took the reins and slammed him back into the box, the box that confined his movements and clouded his thinking…
Jerrid sat down hard on his bottom, clutching the blanket around him as pain lanced through his shoulder blades. The wings shrank back into his body, and his incisors slid back into his gums. The sharpness of Dragon’s vision blurred briefly before returning to Jerrid’s normal, poorer eyes.
He blinked and stared at the two girls crumpled on the ground. They had both pushed up onto their elbows and were glaring at him so ferociously his stomach actually clenched.
“It wasn’t me,” he mumbled, the words sounding and feeling strange in his mouth. “It was Dragon. Dragon did it. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t.”
Brynja shoved Ava off her right leg and scrambled to her feet. “I don’t care who it was. You’re going to pay for that—”
“Don’t rile him again!” Ava snapped as she untangled her skirts and also stood. “You’ll let Dragon out again. You need to keep him calm so Jerrid doesn’t lose control.”
Brynja took a menacing step forward. “I am the one in danger of losing control!”
“Please! I’m warning you—”
The human spun to face Ava, hands clenched at her sides. “You dare to speak so to me? What gives you the right to threaten me, elf?”
“I wasn’t threatening you. I was trying to warn you—”
“I should cut out your tongue—”
Don’t let her, Dragon whispered, his voice tired and far away. Stop her. Protect her.
There was no doubt in Jerrid’s mind who Dragon wanted him to hurt and who he wanted to protect. He had clearly set his cap for Ava.
How was that even possible—a dragon falling in love with an elf?
Jerrid held on to the blanket with both hands and jumped to his feet, accidentally stepping on the corner in his haste and very nearly ripping it off his body.
As he struggled to re-wrap himself, blushing furiously, the arguing stopped.
He looked up to see both maidens watching him with mildly amused expressions.
“Do you need help with that blanket?” Brynja asked, a smirk playing about her mouth.
“No,” Jerrid ground between his teeth.
Ava sighed heavily. “I do wish you’d leave him alone. This isn’t going to end well if we don’t all calm down.”
Brynja continued to stare at Jerrid. Was she waiting for him to make the first move, or was she daring him to continue the fight?
We can fight some more.
No. Jerrid was done fighting. He was tired and sore and naked, for crying out loud. He wanted clothes and food and sleep, preferably in that order.
And Ava. We want Ava, too.
“No, we don’t!” he snapped.
Brynja arched an eyebrow, but Ava merely pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Don’t mind him—he talks to himself sometimes,” Ava said. “Just take me back to my cell.”
“No!” Jerrid pulled himself as tall as he could, striving for some sort of manly dignity. “You’re not sleeping in a cell.”
She can sleep wherever we will be sleeping, Dragon said slyly.
Jerrid nearly barked out that she wouldn’t be sleeping with them either, but he caught himself just in time. “She…she’s my wife, and she will sleep with me.”
The words felt so wrong as he forced them out of his mouth.
Brynja belted out a laugh as Ava blushed and looked away. “You really have it bad for this stupid elf, don’t you?”
Knock her on her—
“She is my wife, as I have said,” Jerrid managed between stiff lips, avoiding looking at either of the insufferable females. “I will bring her safely back to Eroth, and I intend to perform my duties to the letter.”
“What, and letting her sleep in a cell is outside the scope of your husbandly duties?”
Jerrid’s temper flared as Dragon growled low in his thoughts. “Yes. Yes, it is. She will not go back to the cell.”
Brynja’s smile slid away. “Then we’re back to an impasse, dragon rider. Or should I say, dragon shifter.”
His cheeks grew hot.
“Though I must say, you need to learn to control the shifting. It isn’t safe doing what you’re doing.”
“No kidding.”
Brynja’s gaze grew sharper, alternating between him and the still-blushing Ava. “No. You misunderstand me. Fighting against the shift is dangerous. If you don’t become one with your dragon, the sickness will take you. And then it will destroy you.”
Jerrid’s heart skipped a beat, Dragon listening as intently as he was, his thoughts suddenly focused.
Ava too stared at Brynja, her lips parted. “What do you mean? The sickness? What sickness?”
“The dragon sickness,” Brynja shot at her with a derisive look, as if this were something a healer should already know. “I’ve never seen it happen because I’ve never met a dragon shifter before, but my pa used to tell me stories about one of his old mates. The dragon sickness killed him.”
The words, spoken in a bored and emotionless voice, felt like a slap across the face.
She’s lying, Dragon snarled, but something akin to panic simmered beneath the surface of his thoughts.
Ava settled horrified eyes on him. She clearly believed that Brynja spoke the truth, or at least that she spoke what she thought was the truth. Brynja probably had no reason to doubt her da’s stories. But surely, he had been exaggerating to make the tale more interesting.
Jerrid had never heard of a shifter being killed by his own dragon before.
“Thank you for the advice,” he began and cleared his throat to release the sudden fit of hoarseness, “but I have everything under control.”
A low, deep laugh rumbled in his head. Except when I have everything under control for you…
He grimaced. “I don’t see that there’s a problem. The moments when I shift are very rare. I just won’t shift anymore. Problem solved.”
Ava and Brynja both snorted, and Dragon roared with laughter.
Jerrid’s cheeks warmed. “I’m glad to see you all have confidence in me.”
“It isn’t that we don’t have confidence in you,” Ava said, sobering.
“It’s that we know it isn’t true. You forget that I have met Dragon.
Up close and personal. He isn’t tamable, Jerrid.
He’s out of control, and when you let him have access to your…
to your body, you put everyone at risk. Not just yourself. ”
“I haven’t hurt anyone, except maybe Talos, who deserved it.”
“You threatened to eat me,” she reminded him.
“Dragon did that.”
She sighed deeply, but before she could respond, Brynja cleared her throat.
“And that is exactly my point,” Brynja said. “You talk about yourself and Dragon as if you’re two different beings. You’re supposed to be one.”
Jerrid shook his head. “I don’t want to be one with him. I want to get rid of him.”
Ouch. That hurt.
“You can’t get rid of him. It would be like severing a limb. Or tearing your own heart out of your chest.”
Jerrid thought he might be able to manage it, thank you very much. But she did have a point. Dragon wouldn’t go quietly, and if Jerrid was to get rid of him…he would need help. And Ava and Brynja were the only two people besides his parents who knew who—no, what—he was.
And Brynja seemed to know more about dragon shifters than anyone, even if her knowledge came secondhand from old wives’ tales told around the firepit at bedtime.
“You need to be careful,” Ava whispered, interrupting his thoughts. “That’s all we’re trying to say.”
Brynja stiffened. “We are not trying to say anything. I am telling you what I know, and she is just trying to get on my good side so I don’t put her back in the closet.”
“Is that where you had her? In a closet?”
Brynja’s mouth quirked. “We’re fresh out of cells, I’m afraid. And the closet seemed lonely, if a bit crowded.”
We should put the cranky human in the closet…
Jerrid tugged his blanket a little tighter and ignored Dragon’s snide whisper.
While he might be trying to convince Ava and Brynja that he wasn’t worried about Dragon…
he and Dragon both knew the truth. They were a disaster about to go off at any second, and if he didn’t stay in control, bad things were going to happen.
What if she’s right about the dragon sickness? Dragon’s thoughts sounded surprisingly somber, almost pained.