Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
HUNTER
“Owain!” his mate screamed, and ran over to where he slid down the wall.
Hunter leaped forward to catch Dawn as she stumbled, but Yrian already had her, and all he could do was pull forward a chair so she could be deposited on it.
Gabriel was there almost immediately, saying, “I am a healer. Are you harmed? Do you hurt anywhere?” to Dawn.
Hunter was mildly amused to note that, other than a few glances over at Owain, only the Dark One and his mate rushed to see how he fared.
“No, I’m not hurt. Just a bit breathless. That was ... so very interesting. It was like a door inside me swung open, and suddenly, I was filled with power. It was ... amazing!”
Mabel, after a quick look at Hunter, hurried over to see how the thane was doing. Christian and Allie had him on his feet, although he was shaking his head as if he needed to clear it.
Feeling it was his duty as host, Hunter joined them. “I’m so glad I had the walls reinforced after the last time Archer blasted me through a few of them,” he told the Dark Ones. “How do you feel?”
“Remarkably well considering the curse just exploded out of me,” Owain said, lifting his head at last, giving his mate a smile. “Berry, you can stop checking me for injuries. I was simply stunned for a few minutes.”
Christian’s phone was pinging in an annoying manner, causing the Dark One to pull it out and glance at it. He did a double take, then murmured something about needing to take a call, and moved away with his mate at his side.
“Did it work?” Berry asked, still patting his chest and arms. “Did you get rid of the curse? And are you sure you’re not hurt? You cracked Hunter’s wall.”
Hunter leaned to the side to look at the wall, sighing to himself. There was a six-foot crack in the paneling. He turned to Mabel. “How attached are you to Beck?”
“Not very. I mean, not if my contract isn’t renewed, and given the state of the company building and the amount of red tape it takes to get anything historic repaired in Beck, I suspect they will go into hiatus for a year or so. Why?”
“Because I’m thinking of leaving the lodge for those members who wish to stay here, and we will build a home closer to your studio.”
“‘We’ as in you and I? I thought you didn’t want me as your mate,” she said, giving him an odd look. He wished he knew what she was thinking. Did she not want to be his mate?
“I don’t,” he said, feeling bits of his soul shredding off at the lie.
He wanted to roar his frustration to the universe, damning his sire for ensuring he’d live his life alone and unloved.
“We will speak later on the subject,” he told her, trying to justify keeping her in his life even if he didn’t formally take her as mate. “But I thought you might want to live with me.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she said nothing, just watched when Berry fussed over the thane.
“Owain, are you sure you’re all right? Gabriel, maybe you could look at him. He’s still shaking his head,” Berry said, her voice sharp.
“There’s no need. I’m not hurt. And yes, it worked,” Owain answered, his voice cutting through those of the dragons, all of whom were asking what was the result. “I don’t feel the curse any longer.
Although ...”
His face worked for a few seconds before he took his mate’s arm. “May I?” he asked her.
“Always,” she said with a smile.
He leaned over her forearm, waiting for a second; then he obviously bit her.
“Wow,” Mabel said, moving over to Hunter, pressing a little closer than was normal for her. “That’s so ... I mean, I’ve seen Dark Ones before, but it’s still kind of startling to see them feeding.”
“Not Dark One,” Owain said, lifting his head from his mate’s arm. Hunter caught a glimpse of fangs and frowned.
“No, he’s not a Dark One,” Christian said, putting away his phone.
“Nor are those who evidently are his descendants. That call was from one of my guards. You will remember her, Yrian—Annaliese, who paired with you during fisticuffs last autumn. Although she is female, and thus not affected by the curse passed from father to son, evidently she is one of your descendants, Owain, because she felt the destruction of the curse. I have received several texts from others who are also in your bloodline, and they are all reporting they are now Moravian.”
“Yeah, that’s gone right over my head,” Aisling said, looking at Allie.
“Moravians are kind of a vamp light,” she answered, glancing at Dawn.
“All their women are born that way—they can drink blood if they desire, but they don’t have to.
More importantly, they have their souls, whereas unredeemed Dark Ones—those affected by the curse—don’t.
I wonder how many people will turn out to be affected by this. Christian?”
“We will survey the members,” he said, studying Owain, who was busy reassuring his mate that he was fine.
“Well, that answers the question of whether or not Dawn is really the blood moon,” Ysolde said, glancing around the room. “So I guess that means Yrian’s go to do his thing?”
“I can try,” Dawn said, accepting a glass of water that one of the mates gave her.
Yrian frowned at her for a moment. “You need to recover. Much as I wish to help my kin by changing the articles of the weyr, we will wait to do so until you are not in distress.”
“I just need a few minutes, really,” she protested, but sipped at the water when Aisling and Ysolde both knelt next to her.
Mabel leaned in to ask, “What can we do to help her? Maybe some coffee? I don’t think alcohol is a good idea if she’s feeling woozy.”
Hunter shook his head and also knelt next to Dawn, the pull of the dark power in him answering the call it felt in her.
He recognized that feeling. “I think I can help. If you will permit me to take your hands?”
“So long as the reaper doesn’t smite me on the spot for getting handsy with you,” Dawn answered, but her voice was weak, and he sensed that the power Owain had stirred in her was not under control.
He took both her hands in his left hand and, with his right, began drawing the symbols that would pull the uncontrolled power from her.
“Mabel, would you go to the door and ask Javier for a vessel,” he asked, keeping his gaze steady on Dawn as he drew symbol after symbol that glowed black in the air for a few seconds before fading to nothing. “One made of silver.”
“Uh ... OK.” She hesitated a moment, then hurried to the door to ask the leader of his elite guard, who—with the other dragons’ assorted guards—remained outside.
“What are you doing? That is a spell rooted in dark magic,” Yrian said, his frown back.
“It is. Dawn can’t control the power that was released when Owain broke the curse, and it will get worse for her until it is removed.”
“You’re going to ... what, drain it out of her?” Aisling asked, horror crawling over her face. “Like you’re a magical version of that lady who pops pimples on YouTube? Won’t that leave Dawn without power?”
“Not even remotely,” Owain said as he joined them.
His movements were a bit jerky, but he stopped next to Hunter and, to his surprise, placed a hand on his shoulder.
Instantly, Hunter felt a kick of power that gave his spell an extra wallop.
“The blood moon can’t be drained, and as Hunter says, the power used to break the curse is uncontrolled.
It will cause much difficulty for Dawn unless it’s removed. I hope you have more than one vessel.”
“Javier is fetching a couple,” Mabel said as she returned.
It took almost twenty minutes, and two silver vessels, a tall silver-chased crystal decanter, and a lockable iron coffer, to contain the outpouring of unwanted dark power, but finally Hunter drew the last of it out of Dawn. She took a deep breath, and beamed at him.
“That is so much better! I didn’t realize just how bad that power was until you started draining it. Is it always going to be like that?” She glanced at the line of vessels on the table, now filled to the brim with excess power. “And if it is, I hope you have more shiny things to hold it.”
“Without a host, it will dissipate on its own after a few days. Regardless, I have a few gold chalices if needed, but I would hate tainting them,” he said, conferring quickly with Javier.
Several members of his tribe who’d gathered outside the meeting room doors were dispatched on various missions to find more suitable containers. “But they will serve as a temporary—”
A raucous alarm sounded, filling the entire lodge with noise, and sending all the wyverns present into immediate protection mode, Hunter included.
He marveled for a few seconds that his reaction was to protect Mabel, but when he pulled up the security cameras on the screens covering the undamaged wall, he stared in surprise at the group of people dropping from the sky to the courtyard directly in front of the lodge.
“Are those birds?” Mabel asked, putting a hand on his arm as he tapped on his phone to silence the alarms.
“Oh no, not them,” Berry said, looking at Owain. “How did they find us? And why did they find us?”
“You know these invaders?” Hunter demanded of the thane, ready to blast the man through a few walls if Owain had betrayed them. “You told them to attack my tribe?”
“Why would I do that, when Yrian and I have worked for two months on an agreement for the care of the blood moon?” Owain asked with a weary glance toward him.
“Not to mention the fact that I have no issue with dragons, especially not after you’ve helped us so much.
Quite the contrary, the removal of the curse leaves me very much in your debt. ”
“Owain would never attack you guys,” his mate said with a pugnacious look directly at Hunter. “Those are his wackadoodle druid uncles. Or at least fifteen or sixteen of them. There’s twenty-seven altogether, so I guess we lucked out and the others were busy.”