Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Her heart had calmed down enough that she was no longer worried that it would give out on her, and yet something had changed in her chest, a pulling sensation that had her wanting to lean in as close to Keeran as she could get.
She rubbed at her sternum, trying not to panic. That couldn’t have been some kind of sex fuelled hallucination. She’d felt it.
Her eyes narrowed, a memory swimming to the surface of the only other time she’d felt anything like it.
It had been the first time she’d seen Keeran, when he’d been performing in Callodosis.
There was one unignorable common denominator there, and when she raised her eyes suspiciously, it was looking right at her.
“Say something,” he said, almost pleadingly.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“Which part specifically?”
He had a point. Was she referring to the fact that he’d pinned her on a wall, used sex to punish her, given her an orgasm that had altered her perception of pleasure, or the fact that it seemed to have triggered some kind of…
she didn’t even know how to describe what she was feeling now, a tether, an ache?
Whatever it was, he was undoubtedly at the other end of it.
“I felt something…” she spread her palm over her chest. “I can still feel it.”
She was too scared to care how crazy she sounded, and something in his expression made her think he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Her mind flung the memory of his eyes at her, black as pitch, staring up at her.
There was something he wasn’t telling her, something he hadn’t wanted her to see.
“Did you do something to me?” she whispered, hating how small and frightened she sounded.
Hurt ripped across his face, and for once, he couldn’t hide it. His torment took over his features, flooding her with guilt that she’d been stupid enough to suggest as much.
“No,” he said, averting his eyes, hiding something from her.
She twisted in his arms, trying to make him look at her. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Keeran swallowed heavily, still staring unseeingly at the blankets beneath them.
“Keeran,” she said more loudly, snapping his eyes back to hers.
He sighed, the worry in her gut snarling more with each passing second. How bad was this going to be?
“It’s not something one does to another person,” Keeran started, reluctantly.
“What is it then?” Aelia pushed, growing impatient.
Keeran opened and shut his mouth a few times, looking for words that wouldn’t come.
“Spit it out, Keeran,” she snapped, her fear getting the better of her. What was happening to her?
“Have you ever heard of a pair bond?” he said, pressing his lips into a hard line the moment the words had left him, as if regretting ever letting them out in the first place.
Aelia frowned, the words seeming familiar, but she couldn’t remember why.
“I don’t think so?” she said, uncertainly.
Keeran nodded, unsurprised. “It’s a bond that forms between two individuals. No one really understands the magic behind it, but each pairing is unique to the couple, connecting them in ways specific only to them.”
“And that’s happened? To us?” Aelia stared up at him, her fear easing slightly. It was something Keeran seemed to understand, and just putting a name to what she was feeling made her feel better about it. At least she wasn’t losing her mind.
“It would appear so.”
“Why?”
“No one knows,” Keeran said.
“No one knows,” Aelia repeated, sceptically. “Who are these people who don’t know? Because I’ve never heard of any pair bond forming between artemians before. And that’s what you told me you were.”
“I am,” Keeran insisted, so quietly she almost missed it.
Aelia blinked as she remembered where she’d heard of pair bonds before, the blood draining from her face as realisation hit, and hit hard.
“A mating bond,” she whispered, thoughts whirring. Her eyes flicked to his, looking for the darkness in them with renewed fear. She tried to pull away from him, but his arms tightened around her.
“Aelia, please,” Keeran said, imploringly.
“Let me go,” she made her voice go cold, not letting it tremble with the fear that pulsed through her veins.
His arms loosened enough for her to stand, but his fingers clung to her wrist.
“You need to let me explain.” He looked up at her, the anguish in his face tearing at her heart, quietening her terror. She gulped, trying to control the panic, the emotional turmoil of the day leaving her wired and volatile.
The wind tickled past her bare legs, reminding her how little she was wearing, and how close she was standing to him.
“I need to have clothes on for this conversation.”
He released her wrist, watching her closely as she rifled through her pack and threw on a pair of trousers, as though worried she’d make a break for it. She hopped gracelessly into her boots, nearly falling backwards in her rush to pull them on.
“I’ll answer anything you ask,” he said, when she was done. “Just let me explain.”
Aelia stood facing him, legs planted hip-width apart, heart still racing.
“You know what I am?” he asked, barely audible from across the clearing. He sat with one leg bent high, his elbow resting on his knee, yet he seemed coiled and ready to spring. She could feel the tension radiating off him.
“I think so.” It made perfect sense; it explained why he hadn’t Shifted in the days she’d known him, why he was so fast, so strong. It explained the scars, and the evil she saw in him. She felt so stupid for not seeing it earlier. “You’re a Dragon.”
“Ask me something,” he demanded, softly. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He hadn’t denied it. Aelia felt all the blood rush from her face.
“What are you doing here?” She folded her arms over her chest, trying to fight the pulling feeling that was trying to drag her back to him.
“I came to settle some old scores,” he replied immediately.
“What does that mean?” Aelia shook her head, refusing to accept any more of his vague bullshit. Not now she knew she might be tied to him by some freaky, magical bond.
This time, he hesitated, pursing his lips as he thought of his answer.
“When we were exiled, it was a massacre. Our own generals turned on us, poisoning every man, woman, and child in the King’s army, making us near defenceless.
They slaughtered nearly all of us. The lucky ones were murdered in their beds, rendered completely paralysed by the neurotoxin they’d slipped into our food.
The rest died slowly, only half in control of their bodies as they tried to flee.
” Keeran’s expression had darkened, a hint of cruelty entering his tone.
“That night will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“You were there?” Aelia gasped. He looked too young to have been fighting in the War of Two Kings. She was only a few years old when the war had ended, far too young to remember anything of it, and he was only a few years older than her. Or was he…
The Dragons were immortal, she realised with a jolt. She suddenly wished she’d paid more attention to the stories told in Callodosis about the Dragons. As a child, she’d been too engrossed by the legends, the warriors, the battles. If only she could remember some of the details.
“I was there,” he admitted. “I was a child when they turned on us but, by the end of the war, both sides had recruited the children of Dragons into the army. Once Shifted, even a young Dragon is a formidable force on the battlefield.”
Her historical knowledge was limited, but even she’d known that the Dragons had begun to involve their young in the bloodiest war in Demuto’s history.
But knowing it had happened and seeing someone it had happened to were two very different things.
Aelia shut her eyes against the horror that rose like bile in her throat.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said, shakily.
“In some ways, I can understand why they did what they did,” Keeran continued, picking up a twig and twirling it absentmindedly between his fingers.
“The Dragons had lost themselves, had succumbed to the darkness that lives within us all, and we were tearing the country apart in a pointless war. But Aelia, if you’d have seen it, you’d understand.
Dragons fell screaming from the sky on wings that couldn’t support them or were shot down by the artemians they'd fought alongside. Some couldn’t even get airborne, so they were butchered on the ground, speared over and over until they succumbed to blood loss. ”
“Why. Are. You. Here?” Aelia bit out, despite the nausea curdling in her stomach at his words.
Keeran lifted his chin, his eyes defiant and unapologetic.
“I came back to kill the generals who turned on us. To track down any of them who still live and make them pay for what they did to us.”
Aelia’s shoulders slumped a little, and she dropped her eyes to hide her relief from him.
He wasn’t back to try and reclaim Demuto; she hadn’t stumbled upon some immortal uprising.
The Dragons had ruled them for centuries, the closest things to gods to walk the earth.
There were other immortals across the world, other forms of magic that blessed the immortals of other countries, but in Demuto, Dragons were the pinnacle of power.
The last thing she wanted was to be involved in their return.
Revenge, however, she could understand.
“Us?” Aelia said, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself. “There are more of you?”
A muscle in Keeran’s jaw twitched, his fingers clenching and unclenching where they rested on his knee.
“I fled to the mountains to the South with one other Dragon, Khaled. He died last year. To my knowledge, there are no other Dragons in Demuto.”
“I’m so sorry.” Aelia didn’t know what else to say. In a few short minutes, the little he’d told her about his past revealed more trauma than any one lifetime should hold. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be the last of your kind, how lonely that must be.