Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tirrian
My dragon scoops her up into his mouth and starts swimming for the surface.
It’s all I can do to stop him from giving her a bite and making her ours.
No, not without her permission, I tell him, and he grumbles but listens.
All three of us are on the same page. Despite everyone thinking I was going to shift and fly, I’ve been swimming since they disappeared from sight.
It’s been long enough for me to finally get over myself.
I’ve finally caved to my feelings and admitted that I want her as much as they do.
I just hate that they made the decision for me, but if I’m truthful with myself, I’ve been interested from the start, even when I thought I had to be on Dylan’s side.
But he has proven to be everything they said he was and more.
I have no idea what happened to him. He is nothing like the dragon I grew up with.
Both he and his dragon have become bitter and twisted.
I’ve watched her carefully over the last few months, and she is nothing like he said she was.
She’s kind and caring and does her best to make sure everyone she loves knows it and feels it.
I know I have a lot to make up for. I’ve been an asshole, I can’t deny it, but hopefully she will accept our mating bite.
I know she could mimic one of my dragons, but I don’t think it would give her both forms, and they are insisting she has a form for each of them.
It’s unusual for a dragon to have two forms, and my Chinese dragon is the only one I know of.
He is lonely and would love another one to swim with, but first, the warlock needs his time.
He’s been waiting long enough, and we need to rescue her grandmother.
My dragons are going to have to be a little more patient.
When I explained this to them, they accepted it reluctantly as long as I wasn’t actively trying to sabotage them anymore, and I agreed.
I will be helpful and kind and her friend—or I will try.
It really does go against my core makeup.
I hate having to bow to anyone. I am the prince of dragons, after all, but for my mate, I will do anything.
We swim upward toward the pools in the palace.
From the way mer people were swimming away from it, I would say something significant is going on, but hopefully the warlock will be able to heal Lila.
I have no idea who I ate, but that’s going to have to be explained as well.
How dare they hurt our mate? Damaging the dragon prince’s mate is a death sentence, and ignorance is no defense.
My head pokes out of the pool, and I look around, trying to take in the throne room, but there’s smoke in the air and a keening sound coming from somewhere.
I can’t make out anything through the smoke, so I climb out, my large, serpentine body trailing behind me.
I hold Lila carefully in my maw, my whiskers touching the ground.
There are more screams as my body fully emerges, and as I pad through the smoke, I find two warlocks at the center of all the chaos, and not the one I had been expecting.
In fact, neither Xavier or Cas are to be seen, nor Eric or William.
The man looks like an older version of Xavier.
These are his parents. I’ve met them on a few occasions with my father.
They seem to have the same love of chaos Xavier does.
How they managed to set fire to a palace made of limestone and coral, I have no idea, but they have achieved it.
“Oh, darling, would you look at that?” The male turns to face me, interested surprise on his face. “That’s a different form of dragon than normal.”
He’s right. Dragons are mostly like my other form, but occasionally, there is a throwback to dragons of long ago, and we are able to take dual forms, making us lethal in both the sky and sea.
“I remember the dragon king’s line had a ferocious female queen who was quite fond of this form,” Xylene says offhandedly as she keeps her attention on the crying, stuttering people they have corralled in one corner of the room.
She’s talking about my great-grandmother, which is where I get the genes from.
I lay Lila down at their feet and back away before changing shape. “Lila’s hurt. Can you fix her? Or can you take her back to the ship?” I stand naked in my half form, unashamed. Xylene smirks, getting a good look, while Cronus scowls before waving a hand and covering me with jeans and a shirt.
“Of course I can fix her,” he tells me before squatting down next to her and running his hands over her injured side.
I watch as the open wounds knit themselves back together, and then he covers her with a sheet that he conjures out of thin air.
“She lost a lot of blood. She will probably need to feed. I could…” He trails off as I glare at him, and smoke pours out of my nose in agitation.
“No! I will help her,” I argue, and he just grins and backs away, Xylene scolding him.
“Stop teasing the dragon. Regrowing skin is not a fun job if he decides to cook you.”
She grabs him by his robe and pulls him toward her while still keeping an eye on the Aquilian crowd.
I take his place by her side, kneeling down and using one of my claws to open a vein on my wrist. Retracting the claw, I gently open her lips and dribble blood into her mouth.
It trickles down the side, but it doesn’t take long for her to start swallowing.
Suddenly, her hands grab my wrist and bring it close to her mouth, where she latches onto the wound, sealing her lips around it and drinking deeply.
Each tugging pull of blood sends a shot of pleasure straight to my cock, and it rapidly hardens beneath my jeans.
Mate now, my dragons mutter inside my head, but I ignore them. Now is not the time or place.
Tastes so fucking good, also reverberates inside my mind.
This voice is softer and familiar. Lila’s talking inside my head like Aquilians do when they are beneath the water.
She’s probably not even conscious of it, and I won’t point it out to her no matter how smug I feel that she likes how I taste.
Her eyelids flutter open, and she blinks a couple of times, looking at me before they widen in surprise, and she drops my arm like it’s a hot rock.
Using her finger, she catches the dribble of blood that escaped her mouth.
I don’t even think she realizes she’s licking it, her surprise at seeing me in my human form too great, but I can’t help the wave of desire that floods through me at the sight.
“Fuck, Tirrian, where did you come from? I’m sorry, did I attack you?
” She looks around and struggles to get up, holding the sheet up to preserve her modesty.
Her body shimmers like it does when she changes forms, and the tail disappears, replaced with long, shapely naked legs.
I almost reach out and run my hand along them but stop myself before I can make a fool of myself.
“What happened to that dragon? Did you see it? I can’t be imagining things, can I? ”
“Lila, thank fuck.” A female voice has us both turning to the group of people huddled in the corner away from the warlocks.
It’s Nixie, Nikos’s sister. She has her arms wrapped around a woman, and there are more women and children behind her.
One of them is bawling loudly and annoyingly.
Nixie and the woman with her glare at the stupid woman.
Lila wraps the sheet around herself and struggles to get up. I reach out, putting my hand under her elbow, and help her to her feet. She blinks with surprise but then gives me a shy smile. “Thank you,” she says before looking around the smoking room. “What the hell happened here?”
“That idiot aimed a laser weapon at us, but he’s so inept, he missed and set his own palace alight,” Cronus scoffs, gesturing at a lump of flesh sitting at the base of the throne.
I can barely make out what used to be Marlin, but there is a scrap of the gaudy robe he was wearing. Lila wrinkles her nose.
“Everyone panicked, and we’ve been trying to put out the fire ever since.
Every time I think it’s out, it flares up again.
I’ve never seen anything like it.” Xylene sounds put out, and I have to smother a smile.
The two of them are so much like their son, it’s uncanny.
I only hope that my own father and I are not so similar.
“So the king is dead?” Lila asks, gagging slightly at the sight of the lump of flesh.
“Of course he is. You don’t take a shot at the king and queen of warlocks and expect to survive.” Cronus sounds affronted. I chuckle, and Lila rolls her eyes.
“And the dragon ate Raen, so I guess he’s out. What happened to that dragon? It was the same one that saved my babies on Skarr and the one I saw on Fluxx.” She looks around the room, and Xylene frowns.
“You mean Tirrian?” She points at me, and I wince slightly. Lila hadn’t put two and two together yet.
“You’re the Chinese dragon?” Lila’s mouth drops open in surprise, and she almost loses hold of her makeshift sheet dress.
I push my hair back from my face and shrug. “Yeah, I have two dragon forms, meaning I’m good in the air and under the sea.”
She throws her arms around me, forgetting about her sheet which drifts to the floor. I hear Cronus snort with amusement, but I’m distracted by the little naked woman pressed against me.
“Thank you so much. My babies would be dead without you.” She rests her head against my chest, and I bring my arms up to return the hug, but there is so much naked flesh I don’t know where to put my hands so it doesn’t upset anyone.