Text copyright ©2016 Lani

Lynn Vale

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any

form or by any electronic or mechanical means
including information storage and retrieval sys-
tems, without permission in writing from the au-
thor. The only exception is by a reviewer, who
may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, charac-
ters, places, and incidents either are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 Dedication
To my husband, the biggest jerk I know…I
may love you like crazy, but you just pissed me
off, so this one is to you. (And don’t worry, he
does this a lot. We’ve probably made up by now.
:P)
 Acknowledgements
Asli, Danielle, and Kellie. Thank you for
making this beauty shine.
Marisa—thank you for making this cover so
beautiful. You did a perfect job!
 Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
 7/449
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail

The Kilgore Fire Series

Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
 8/449
Put Out (Winter 2017)
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon (Spring 2017)
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
 10/449

Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Dirty Mother
 Dragon Prince Nikolai Vassago’s day starts
out fairly normal: get up, kick some ass, fondle
his beard, take some names.
One minute he’s participating in a run-of-the-mill
mission, and the next minute, he’s rescuing
Brooklyn, the woman that is fated to be his, from
the clutches of a criminal mastermind.
Nikolai is quite pleased with his fated mate. Un-
fortunately, the same can’t be said for Brooklyn.
Living in a religious commune for the majority of
her life meant Brooklyn wasn’t exposed to all of
the outside world’s craziness. The moment she
turned eighteen, she was off and running towards
whatever new experiences the outside world
could give her.
In her quest to experience it all, she tends to jump
into situations without weighing the potential
consequences until it’s too late. Brooklyn just
wants to be free to make her own decisions and
live her life as she pleases. But in her quest to
save herself from the limitations of her old com-
mune life, she lands herself in a dangerous
 12/449

situation, and Nikolai swoops in to her rescue,

throwing her on the back of his dragon and flying
off into the night.
He’s a man-with-a-plan kind of guy, and she’s a
fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants (not on the back of a
dragon!) kind of girl.
Nikolai, however, has fate on his side, and
whether she is ready to accept her fate or not, it
won’t be denied. Brooklyn’s stubborn, though,
and Nikolai will need to use all of his powers to
show her that she’s exactly where she needs to
be.
 Prologue
Growing up is when you go
from using drugs for fun to us-
ing them just to function like a
normal human being.
-Food for Thought
Nikolai
Alright, Jean Luc. You know what to do, I
said telepathically to my spotter.
Jean Luc hit the lights and the entire sur-
rounding area went dark.
I blinked, and then suddenly I was seeing in
shades of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.
There’s a man in the back room, left corner.
Gun. There’s a man on the right side of the front
room, in front of the television. Gun on the table.
One more on the back porch smoking a cigarette,
 14/449

no gun, I relayed to my men who were surround-

ing the building.
10-4, was echoed amongst them, and I started
to creep forward on my hands and knees.
I had no clue what kind of security they had
out here, but with my ability to control my body
temperature, I hoped that whatever infrared/
thermal cameras they had out here would be
rendered useless with all the power I was
expending.
Slowly, we all converged at once, moving
stealthily through the long grass.
Perdita was overhead, circling closer and
closer, looking at her own version of a thermal
heat camera.
Perdita could do wonderful things, but one of
the best things was her ability to manipulate her
energy.
She could appear hot, cold, or even dead.
Whatever she wanted you to see is what you saw.
 15/449

I also had that gift.

It was a gift that not even my older brother,
the badass King of the Dragon Riders, had.
I could sense heat like a…well…dragon.
My bonded dragon, Perdita, was very unique,
and from all places, across ‘the pond’, as she put
it.
She was from Ireland, and over eight hundred
years old.
She’d never bonded to anyone but me;
something that was the same for most dragons
and their bonded dragon riders.
I had not understood the depth of Perdita’s
powers until we’d been bonded for over four
years. She’d given me short lessons on how to
harness the powers that she’d passed on to me,
but I’d not been able to do so at first.
Mostly because I’d bonded with her at the
young age of nineteen, instead of twenty-one.
 16/449

I’d still been a boy, and hadn’t really under-

stood the enormity of our connection until my
brother had sat me down and explained that not
even he had bonded until he was twenty-one.
So it’d been a wakeup call to realize that Per-
dita hadn’t been completely honest with me until
I’d accidentally used her gift on her.
Perdita was the queen of illusions and was
excellent at appearing harmless.
And apparently, so had I. I’d finally gotten
sick of how she’d been treating me, and had
thrown her so far into an illusion that I didn’t
know how to get her back out. Mostly because I
wasn’t sure how to get her out of it, and partly
because I was still mad at her.
After she managed to get out of it herself,
she’d apologized, and then had explained that I’d
shown her her worst nightmare. Something in
which to this day, she still hadn’t told me about.
 17/449

Something inside of me stilled, and all my

warning receptors started to clang at the same
time.
Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian, and Dorian
stopped when I hissed out a warning the second I
saw the first trip wire.
There’re explosives. Be vigilant, I ordered.
Do you want me to disable them, Boss? Ian
asked.
Negative. If we have to leave in a hurry, I
don’t want them to be able to come for us at a
quick pace. It’s best if they think they’re all inact-
ive. It might prove useful later, I explained to the
men.
10-4, Ian confirmed.
So we kept moving until we had about four
feet in between us and the house.
Alright, Perdita. Do your thing.
 18/449

Yes, Sire. You’ve got about ten minutes until I

will no longer be able to hold it, Perdita
expounded.
Perdita was so good.
All Perdita—or me for that matter—had to do
was send out what was similar to a movie toward
the men in the house.
However, she was more selective than I was.
When I wanted to play the mind games,
everyone within my immediate area saw the
same thing.
The only ones immune were my brothers.
And they didn’t even realize things were dif-
ferent before, or after, Perdita and I played our
mind games.
I wasn’t sure what she was showing them, but
not one of them reacted as I moved into the house
like I owned the place.
 19/449

My limited telekinetic abilities enabled me to

open the doors without breaking anything, then
walk straight up to the first man and take him out
with a sleeper hold.
He never even realized I was there, nor that I
was choking off his air supply.
He stayed pliant in my arms until he passed
out from lack of oxygen.
Then, with the utmost care, I dropped him to
the floor at my feet.
With the first man taken care of, I moved into
the main room and started looking around.
After taking care of two more men, I came to
the room where Brooklyn was being held and im-
mediately started to get queasy at the horrid con-
dition she was in.
She looked like death warmed over, and I
wasn’t sure she’d even be alive long enough for
Keifer’s mate to see her best friend again with
the shape she was in.
 20/449

Her hair was in dark clumps of brown around

her dirty face.
She was in a bra and bike shorts that accentu-
ated how skinny she’d gotten since she and
Blythe had graduated from nursing school only a
few weeks before.
Bruises ran the length of her arms and legs.
A cut above her eye looked like it could’ve
used stitches when she’d received it.
Now the only thing that would fix it was
plastic surgery of some sort.
The icing on the cake, however, was the tear
streaks that ran the length of her cheeks.
None of that stopped me from picking her up
as carefully as I could into my arms and walking
with her out of the house.
“Let’s go,” I murmured quietly once I
reached the front door.
 21/449

“You want me to take her?” Alaric asked

softly.
I shook my head, trying to fight down the ir-
rational surge of rage that shot through me at the
mere mention of him taking this woman from my
arms.
“Alaric and Jean Luc, follow us home. The
rest of you need to stay to make sure we make a
clean exit. If I don’t get her to my sister soon, she
won’t make it,” I ordered hurriedly as Perdita
hovered above us.
The moment Perdita and I made it a mile
away, they would no longer be under her spell.
And that could possibly spell trouble for us
getting away, unless the rest of them stayed to
make sure we weren’t followed.
 ***
Seven days later
“She had something in her stomach.”
I watched as Skylar held the USB drive out to
Keifer, a sick ball of fear knotting my stomach.
Taking it like it was a poisonous snake about
to attack, Keifer plugged it into the computer and
winced when a file popped up.
“Fuck,” he hissed, clicking on it.
It was a sound file.
Short. Sweet. And to the point.
“I know you, Vassago. I know you better than
you know me. I knew you’d come for her. You
can’t resist helping the innocent,” Joseph
grinned manically on the screen. “Which was
why I put a GPS tracker in her. You’ve doomed
yourself with your big old heart.”
Fear clogged my throat as I looked at the wo-
man on the exam table.
 23/449

The beaten and broken girl that would never

have a normal life again.
“Find the GPS,” Keifer ordered Skylar. “I’m
going to be with my wife.”
I looked over at him, then back to the com-
puter screen as I repeated the video file.
Which was why I put a GPS tracker in her.
Goddammit. Why had I not thought of that?
I forced myself to watch as Skylar started to
X-ray Brooklyn’s body, searching for the elusive
GPS tracker.
“You’ll need to leave…I think I’ve found it,”
Skylar said thirty minutes later.
“Where is it?” I asked, coming closer to the
table.
I wouldn’t comment yet about how all of her
injuries had healed so fast…or why my body
ached in the very same places she’d been bruised
in earlier.
 24/449

I also wouldn’t comment on the itching on

my side where I could see faint lines and swirls
appearing.
Something was off here.
I felt something for Brooklyn…a woman I
barely knew.
A woman that was just that…a woman.
I’d met her a week ago when I’d saved her
from that hellhole, and hadn’t even spoken to her
yet.
I had an irrational fear, though.
I didn’t want anyone to get close to her.
I hated being away from her.
It drove me nuts when Carrick, the night
nurse who worked alongside Skylar, was re-
sponsible for her.
And I was just plain agitated by…everything.
 25/449

“Right here,” Skylar said, pointing to a spot

just above Brooklyn’s hip.
I moved closer, trying to see if I could find
any scars, but there were none.
“What are you going to have to do?” I asked
worriedly.
Skylar glanced at me with concern.
“Hopefully a small incision…why?” Her
head lilted as she snapped on gloves.
I shook my head.
“You mind if I stay?” I questioned.
She shook her head.
“No,” she added. “But you’ll need to not go
all gray in the face when you see the blood.”
I hated that she was right.
But I had a phobia of blood.
My blood. Keifer’s blood. Anybody’s blood,
and I was close to losing it.
 26/449

It was a deep urge inside of me that pushed at

me anytime I saw it.
It wasn’t so much as getting sick, as much as
my body craved it.
And not in the ‘I want to drink it’ kind of
way. More like ‘I want to touch it’ kind of way.
Which freaked me the fuck out, and ex-
plained the grayness to my face as I thought
about how much I wanted to touch it.
But Skylar didn’t know that…nor did Keifer.
They just thought I had a phobia…a nice,
normal phobia.
Oh, how wrong they were.
“I’ll be fine,” I hedged.
And I was.
All the way up until she removed the tracking
device.
 27/449

The moment it was removed, my hand found

Brooklyn’s unconsciously, and I willed the
wound to seal.
I hated seeing her in pain, even if she wasn’t
actually ‘feeling’ it.
And, before my eyes, it did heal.
My hip, though, burned.
And I hissed in response, jerking slightly and
pulling my shirt up.
Skylar had frozen at my inhalation, and she
watched in awe as blood started to drip down my
hip with a precise incision in the exact same spot
as Brooklyn’s had been only moments before.
Then, as if it were magic, the wound
sealed…and the tattoo fully appeared.
Not just on me, but on Brooklyn, too.
 Chapter 1
Vegetarians live up to ten years
longer than the rest of the
world. Ten long, horrible,
bacon-less years.
-Nikolai’s secret thoughts
Nikolai
“I need you to stay back. Watch the sanctu-
ary…and Brooklyn,” my brother, Keifer, said to
me.
I blinked.
“So, let me get this straight…,” I said, turning
around in my computer chair to face him.
“You’re taking, not just you, but your pregnant
mate, our mother, sister, and entire fucking sanc-
tuary, sans two people. Me…and Brooklyn. The
girl who had a fucking transmitter pulled out of
her stomach that probably told the entire fucking
 29/449

world where we were located…do I have that

correct?” I replied carefully.
My brother gave me a blank stare.
“Yeah, that’s what I fuckin’ said,” he
answered tightly.
I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fin-
gers as I said, “And what if something happens to
Brooklyn? What am I supposed to do with her?
I’m not a fucking doctor.”
“She’ll be fine. I’ve told you over and over
again that there’s not a thing wrong with her. I
think she’s just…sleeping to sleep. Like her body
is keeping her in a dream state because her
mind’s so traumatized,” my sister, Skylar,
offered her two cents.
I rolled my eyes.
She’d told me that before, but I didn’t believe
her.
Nobody stayed in a coma for over two
months just because they needed to recover.
 30/449

I was fairly sure there was something else go-

ing on, but the two of them wouldn’t listen to me.
Apparently, medical science outranked my
gut feeling.
“Fine,” I snapped. “It’s not like I can really
stop you, now can I?”
Was I pulling off the nonchalant attitude like
I was intending to?
I sure as fuck hoped so.
Keifer grinned. “It’ll be fun if you’d at least
try.”
Keifer was officially the King of Dragons, as
of less than twenty-four hours ago.
Used to be he was a prince, just like me.
However, that all changed when he met his
mate, Blythe.
Blythe started a chain reaction that all boiled
down to Brooklyn’s uncle, and the man that
killed our father, actively trying to assassinate not
 31/449

just my brother, but the entire dragon rider race

that served directly under Keifer.
Although he was unsuccessful, we’d lost six
dragon riders and three dragons.
Immortal dragons.
We were still trying to figure out just what
the man had that made the dragon’s link to the
Meridian rendered invalid.
The Meridian was what gave dragons their
life force and also gave them their ability to be
almost immortal.
As long as they stayed within two hundred
square miles of one of the six hearts of the
Meridian, then they’d thrive. But if they moved
too far away for too long of a period, then they’d
slowly lose their immortality and age just like
any other living being.
But when we were attacked, it was like the
Meridian ceased to exist…and the laws of magic
I’d grown up with didn’t exist, either.
 32/449

“Are you even listening to me?” Keifer

growled in frustration.
I stood up, careful to keep my shirt down, and
turned to face Keifer.
“Yeah, I fuckin’ heard you. You’re leaving.
I’m to stay here and take care of the sanctuary.
You’re taking everyone. I’m all alone and the
sole provider for our unconscious houseguest that
shouldn’t even be here, and I need to keep an eye
out for any bad people. Right?”
I was sure the sarcastic edge to my words
came out nice and clear if Keifer’s face was any-
thing to go by.
“I’m not leaving you alone, and not for long,”
he grunted.
I raised a brow at him.
“If you weren’t leaving me for a long time,
why take everyone?” I countered.
He sighed. “I can’t risk everyone. We’re go-
ing up to Anchorage for two months only. That
 33/449

should be enough time to figure out if whatever

threat we had was actually a threat or not.” He
sighed. “And I need to read up on dragon history;
now’s as good of a time as any, I suppose.”
I nodded.
“But you can risk me,” I drawled dryly.
He turned his head up to study the ceiling.
It was true. Especially with the newest Prince
of Dragons pending arrival.
Although we did have another few months
before that happened.
Your girl’s calling out for you again, Per-
dita’s silky smooth, husky voice said in my mind.
I know, I replied back to her. I’ll be there as
soon as I can.
Two months ago we’d brought Brooklyn into
the sanctuary.
And that’d been the day my life changed
forever.
 34/449

“I’ll be back in a little bit,” Keifer growled.

“Blythe’s puking again.”
I didn’t say anything as he left the room, ac-
tually somewhat thankful that he was leaving
without me having to make up an excuse.
I walked to my closet and picked another
shirt up off the shelf where I had a large pile of
them.
Shucking the one I was wearing off over my
head by the back of the collar, I placed it on the
shelf and shrugged into a new shirt of the same
exact color.
Then I hurried out of my room with the old t-
shirt held firmly in my hand.
I made it to the infirmary in record time.
I’d started timing myself since I came down
here so much.
“You really should tell Keifer what’s going
on,” Skylar, my big sister, suggested.
 35/449

I turned my head to study her for a quick

second before moving my gaze to the small,
broken woman lying in the hospital bed along the
far wall.
Although all the other beds were occupied as
well, my eyes were only for her…for Brooklyn.
I still couldn’t explain it.
It happened the moment I touched her as I
was helping her out of the small, cramped cell I’d
found her in.
It’d been terrible.
Something I never wanted to see again in my
life.
I laid the t-shirt down over Brooklyn’s rest-
less body, and instantly she stilled.
It was my scent that calmed her, though.
The scent of a mate, Perdita said with
annoyance.
I ignored her.
 36/449

I was trying valiantly to ignore the fact that

Brooklyn was my destined mate.
I knew the moment I had her in my hands as I
was carrying her out of that hellhole, but there
wasn’t a single fucking thing I could do about it,
seeing as Brooklyn refused to wake up.
There was no longer anything physically
wrong with her body.
She’d healed in a matter of moments, thanks
to our mate bond.
A bond that wasn’t supposed to be possible
without us first being together, in the biblical
sense.
But, what I’d learned from a book my father
wrote to his sons about mate bonding, a book I’d
had given to me by my brother, it was possible
for the mate bond to pop into place under ex-
treme physical duress.
 37/449

Although, that was only assumed by my fath-

er because his mate bond had not formed like
that. He’d only heard about it.
Everything about the bond I shared with
Brooklyn was completely foreign and new to me.
I was learning as I went along.
And I couldn’t share it with her, because she
wouldn’t wake the hell up.
My side started to itch, and I raised it up to
study the tattoo that’d started to appear once I’d
gotten Brooklyn to safety.
It was a big one.
It started at my right pectoral muscle, and
traveled all the way down my side to my right hip
bone.
It was a mass of swirls, runes, and dark lines.
And Brooklyn shared the same one on her
body.
 38/449

That’d been how my sister had found out

about our mate bond.
She’d been stunned by the revelation, but
luckily had held my confidence as I waited for
answers.
Answers that wouldn’t come if she didn’t
wake up!
I sent that telepathically to her, but as usual,
she didn’t even twitch.
Sighing, I took a seat beside the bed and
propped my feet up on the side of it.
I laid my head back and got what little sleep I
could.
Which inevitably wasn’t much because
Brooklyn’s terror and pain flooded my mind each
and every time I got any REMs.
 Chapter 2
I remember a time when I
could get out of bed without
making sound effects.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
Three months ago
“What did I say, Brooklyn? I told you to stay
away from that trash. But you had to keep around
her and look where it got you!” my Uncle Joseph
brought the whip down again.
I closed my eyes and prayed it would end
soon.
When I first started what the Amish called
Rumspringa, I knew I would never return to my
parents’ holding.
 40/449

From the ripe young age of seven, I’d real-

ized that the world that I’d grown up in wasn’t
what I wanted to live for the rest of my life.
I’d met a girl in nursing school, and she
changed my life for the better. Introduced me to a
whole new world that I had no idea even existed.
We became best friends, Blythe and me.
At sixteen, I left my parents’ home for Rums-
pringa, and I’d taken everything I’d owned with
me.
Then I’d filed emancipation papers with the
state and I was officially on my own…well, sort
of.
I’d accidentally stolen some money from my
father to help smooth my way. Luckily, or un-
luckily depending on how you looked at it, my
father thought it was my Uncle Joseph, which
was why I thought my uncle was taking it out on
me a little harder than he should have been.
 41/449

“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed brokenly,

when one brutal lash ripped into my left thigh.
Another even more vicious one followed it up
just under my belly button, and I cried out in
pain.
The only thing holding me up now were the
metal chains attached to manacles around my
wrists.
My legs weren’t strapped down, but I was ef-
fectively immobile, and had been for going on
two hours now.
I didn’t even know how long I’d been in this
hellhole.
I knew, though, that I would survive.
Someone—I called her my new friend—kept
talking to me.
She was probably imaginary, but that was
okay. Anything to take me away from the pain
now was good enough for me.
 42/449

I’m not a figment of your imagination. Hold

on just a little while longer, and he’ll come get
you, my new friend said.
Who’ll come get me? I asked my imaginary
friend.
Call me that again, child, and I’ll tell Nikolai
that you like the opera.
I do not! I screamed in my head.
I hated the opera!
Detested it, really.
Especially when I had to listen when Joseph
blared it for hours on end.
If I never heard another opera singer again in
my life, it’d be too soon.
A particularly sick sound wrenched me away
from my inner turmoil and back into reality.
My head dropped, and I looked down at the
huge gash on my stomach and vomited all over
myself.
 43/449

At least I couldn’t see my abdominal muscles

anymore, I thought grotesquely.
You’ll be fine. I thought you were a nurse,
how can something like that upset you? my friend
said to distract me.
I loved my new friend.
Had I said that yet?
She fought with me to get my mind off of the
things that were being done to me.
Things I wasn’t aware were being done half
the time.
“Perfect,” Uncle Joseph crowed, picking up
the water hose off the floor and hosing me down
once again.
I couldn’t figure out if I was grateful or not.
On one hand, I was happy I no longer had
blood and vomit on myself…but it was also cold
as a motherfucker in here.
 44/449

Adding a wet bra, shorts, and panties to the

mix didn’t help matters any.
Fire lanced down my stomach as Joseph’s
fingers started to dig into my flayed open
stomach.
I looked down in time to see him shove
something small into the wound, followed by
what looked distinctly like a flash drive, before
he started to sew me up.
“This should get nice and infected by the time
they show for up you,” Joseph said as he took his
time sewing me up. “And they’ll find it. And I’ll
find them in turn.”
 ***
Nikolai
I was wrenched awake by my brother calling
my name.
“I didn’t say you had to sleep in here, dum-
bass. I just said keep an eye on her,” Keifer
growled with impatience.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands,
and said what I felt like saying.
“How about you go fuck yourself with that
hot fire poker you’re always threatening to beat
me with?” I asked.
My voice lacked its usual loudness, so I
wasn’t sure Keifer heard me when he didn’t reply
for a few seconds.
I reluctantly opened my eyes to see his face
not filled with amusement.
 46/449

“You know I’m the king now. I could totally

have you kicked out of my kingdom,” he
countered.
I laughed.
“Yeah fuckin’ right. You wouldn’t figure out
how to work the shields. Then you’d forget your
email password and need me to come unlock it
for you, and you’d be shit out of luck because I’d
be in the Bahamas somewhere enjoying life in-
stead of worrying about your stupid ass,” I shot
back.
An amused sounding snort came from my
brother, and he sighed before taking a seat.
“We’re leaving in an hour. As soon as Blythe
wakes up,” Keifer informed me.
I raised a brow at him.
“Okay.”
“I’m not leaving you by yourself…I’ve de-
cided to leave the triplets here. They’ve gotten
very good at hiding in plain sight, and they’re a
 47/449

damn sight better at scouting than any trained

bodyguard,” Keifer continued.
I groaned.
The ‘triplets’, as he called them, were actu-
ally three small ice dragons we’d saved from the
Anchorage Sanctuary a few months ago.
They were cute as hell, but they were also de-
manding and unpredictable.
“You don’t want to take them because they
can’t fly long enough for the trip,” I gathered.
Keifer winced.
“Yes and no,” he replied. “They’re going to
slow us down, yes. But I also feel that they’ll be
of help to you.”
I didn’t comment on that.
I didn’t feel the same way, but it didn’t
matter.
Keifer would do what he thought was
best…and safest.
 48/449

And if that meant not taking three of his fa-

vorite dragons, then that’s what he would do.
Even if it upset his new wife.
Keifer’s eyes went far away for a few long
moments before his eyes snapped back to mine.
“Gotta go,” he muttered darkly. “She’s
fuckin’ puking again. Then we’re leaving once
she’s done. The others have already left; we’ll be
the last.”
I didn’t wait for him to leave before I turned
back to Brooklyn.
Speaking of wanting to puke, I wanted to
right then.
Re-living Brooklyn’s suffering had really
fucked with my head and my ability to hold
down food.
I didn’t know Brooklyn all that well.
 49/449

Didn’t know much of anything about her oth-

er than she was best friends with Blythe, had her
nursing degree and used to be Amish.
Shouldn’t someone know his mate before
they were actually mated?
You sound like a whiny little girl who didn’t
get her favorite Barbie doll at the store, Perdita’s
thoughts whispered through my brain.
I mentally flipped her off.
Shut it.
She snorted delicately, in that way that only
females could.
She’s going to wake soon, and then you’ll be
lost because she’ll be too much for you to handle.
I highly doubted that she’d be too much for
me to handle.
But I’d yet to have a steady girlfriend, so
maybe Perdita wasn’t too far off.
My world wasn’t for the faint of heart.
 50/449

Most people in Dallas, Texas knew of the

dragons that called it home; yet, a lot of them had
never been anywhere near one.
I was a dragon rider.
I rode dragons like most people drove a car.
Perdita was such a huge part of my life that I
would be lost without her.
Not to mention that they were endangered,
and it was up to me and the rest of the dragon
riders to protect them from all who would see
harm come to them.
I didn’t have a safe life.
In fact, the last month had proven just how
unsafe my life really was.
A woman, especially one who had suffered
the atrocities that Brooklyn had, shouldn’t be ex-
pected to live the life she would now be living.
A soft moan from the bed had me turning to
the woman in question.
 51/449

She looked good…almost better today.

Her coloring looked almost like she’d gotten
some sun, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she
was almost smiling.
Then her eyes opened and she…screamed.
Guess that wasn’t what I’d expected when
she first woke up.
Maybe a ‘thank you’ or a ‘where am I’ was
what I’d expected…not a scream.
When she finally ran out of breath, I raised
my brows at her.
“You finished?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes, then took a deep
breath, and I closed my eyes and waited.
But it never came.
I opened my eyes to see her screaming…but I
couldn’t hear a thing.
Then I laughed.
 52/449

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

She’d used some of my other powers to make
herself a force field of sorts.
I wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but it
must’ve been a defensive reaction, because I
hadn’t learned how to do that until Perdita had
felt it necessary that I learn.
And only then because I complained that she
never taught me anything new.
I studied her while she screamed.
Was it sadistic of me to find her sexy while
she screamed?
I thought possibly so.
So I tried to will my dick to stop tenting up
the front of my soccer shorts.
I crossed my leg over my knee and crossed
my arms over my chest, leaning back with my
eyes closed.
I stayed that way for a while.
 53/449

Maybe five minutes or so, until I could feel

her stare.
“Who are you?” she asked.
My eyes slowly opened, and I smiled my
most disarming smile.
The one that got my mom to make the
chocolate cake that was my favorite rather than
the apple pie that was Keifer’s favorite…or the
peach cobbler that was Skylar’s.
My name is Nikolai Vassago, I said
telepathically.
Her eyes widened until they resembled
saucers.
“Your lips didn’t move,” she hissed.
I bobbed my head up and down.
“No, they didn’t,” I said aloud.
“What are you?” she asked, leaning forward
in the bed.
 54/449

The new position put her closer to me, and I

let my hands rest on top of my very sizable
erection.
“I’m a dragon rider,” I answered.
Her eyes widened. “Holy shit!”
I shrugged.
I was used to that reaction.
Normally, I didn’t go around telling people
what and who I was, but this was my mate, even
if she didn’t realize it yet.
“What am I doing with you?” she asked.
My stomach knotted.
“What was the last thing you can remem-
ber?” I asked carefully.
She didn’t seem worried that she was some-
where she didn’t remember coming to, so I de-
cided to feel her out and see just what exactly she
remembered.
 55/449

“I remember walking into the college where

we graduated. I was donating my old scrubs to
the school for someone that needed them.” She
concentrated, and as she did, three little lines ran
between her eyebrows. “I was walking out of
class when everything goes blank.”
I nodded.
“Your Uncle Joseph had you,” I said, testing
the waters a bit.
Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”
I nodded again.
“What…” she moaned. “Oh, no.”
I leaned forward.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re related to Blythe’s dragon rider,
aren’t you?” she moaned.
I blinked. “I’m nothing like my brother.”
 56/449

She snorted, then thought better of it when

she raised her hand up to her head.
A phantom pain started to trickle through my
own head, but I pushed it away.
I was good at ignoring pain.
I almost had to be to have Keifer as my
brother.
Keifer was always bigger and stronger.
So I retaliated by being able to take more.
More punches.
More magic thrown my way.
More emotional trauma.
Although my other brother, Farrow, who was
also a dragon rider, didn’t have anything on
Keifer.
And I guess, technically, I should be thanking
my older brother.
He made me into who I was today.
 57/449

Although, I would much rather be parking my

ass in front of a computer screen or a book, I
could hold my own against the King of Dragons.
Which meant I had a pretty solid shot at
standing up against almost anybody.
“I knew it!” she crowed.
This time, I didn’t feel any of her pain.
This time, I felt excitement through our bond.
A bond which she didn’t even realize was
there.
I’d clamped down on my end of the bond, so
the only thing she’d feel from me, if it came to it,
was extreme pain.
And hopefully she’d not ever feel that from
my end.
Because, if I was in extreme pain, that meant
she was fucked right along with me.
“So, what else do you know?” I asked with
deceptive calm.
 58/449

In reality, my heart was speeding up.

I was excited that she was awake.
“I know I need to pee,” she said.
I raised a brow at her.
“You have a catheter in,” I informed her.
She lifted up the covers, spread her legs, and
said, “By God, I do.”
I snorted.
“If you’re ready to get up, I’ll help you do
that. I can remove the catheter for you…but I
want to say that you can accomplish that feat
yourself, Ms. Nurse,” I teased.
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“How do you know so much about me?” she
challenged. “Are you a nurse…or a doctor?”
I shook my head.
 59/449

“I’ve been at your side for weeks now. My

sister and Blythe took turns taking care of you.
I’ve just been…observing,” I told her.
I wasn’t sure she was ready to hear anything
more, yet.
I’d give her a few days to get used to it…and
me…before I broached the topic of our mating
and what that meant for the rest of our lives.
She started to shuck her blankets, albeit
feebly, and I stood to help her disentangle herself
from the covers.
“Go ahead and give me the syringe,” she
ordered once I had her sitting up beside the bed.
I went to the far wall and found the syringe
she’d need inside a shelf like contraption that
held all the medical supplies before I walked
back to her.
I handed the syringe to her and helped her
stand.
 60/449

When I bent down and picked up the bag that

was holding her urine, she blushed scarlet.
“Give me that,” she hissed, holding out her
hand.
She made a feeble attempt to reach for it, but
started to fall.
I caught her before her knees could buckle,
and picked her up like one would a child, carry-
ing her into the bathroom and setting her down
directly on the toilet.
“You’ve been in bed for over two months. I
suggest you not try to do too much before you
know what you’re capable of,” I recommended.
She narrowed her eyes, and I smiled as I left
the bathroom, closing the door softly behind me.
 Chapter 3
I will wake up early tomorrow,
workout, eat a healthy break-
fast, and look presentable.
-Brooklyn, sleeping on a throne
of lies
Brooklyn
I felt like a newborn foal trying to find her
legs as I fumbled with the huge t-shirt that was
covering my body.
I didn’t know what to think.
My head was a huge mess of emotions as
well.
And that all centered around the dark stranger
with the beautiful brown black hair, sparkling
green eyes and a sexy mouth.
He sounded like he spoke in an octave that
wasn’t even registered yet.
 62/449

It was so low that tingles slid down my spine

whenever he spoke.
And, my God, like the man needed any help
making him sexy.
With the looks, the body and the voice, he
was the complete package of alpha male
perfection.
And, on top of it all, he was a dragon rider;
that left me feeling almost giddy.
I made quick work with the catheter, having
taken them out so many times that I could do
them in my sleep…or my weakness, in this case.
Of course, I’d never done it on myself before,
but there was always a first time for everything.
I made slow, painful work of shuffling to the
shower that was in the corner of the room, not
even caring about the fact that there weren’t any
towels or a shower curtain.
I looked down at my body, kind of excited to
see that I had lost a few pounds.
 63/449

I’d had a good thirty pounds around my hips,

belly, and ass that were nearly impossible to lose.
But, apparently, I showed that fat just who
was boss, because it was gone.
And I had a new tattoo that went down my
side.
When I’d gotten that, I didn’t know.
It could’ve happened at any time.
My mind was so blurry, at the moment, that I
just couldn’t quite find the ability to care at this
point.
I wondered idly as I turned on the water
whether they had many guests in this hospital.
But they did have shampoo and condition-
er…the exact ones that I used.
I used the shampoo to soap my body since I
didn’t see the soap.
And by the time I was done, I couldn’t even
lift my hands anymore.
 64/449

I was seriously questioning my decision to

shower when strong arms reached forward and
turned off the water, followed moments later by a
warm, fluffy towel wrapped around my body.
He picked me up much the same way as he’d
done earlier, and carried me back into the little
room where I’d been staying.
But, instead of taking me to the bed that I
now saw was stripped bare, he carried me out of
the room and into a long hallway.
“Where are we?” I asked him.
“This is our house; it’s the sanctuary for the
dragons in the heart of Dallas,” Nikolai
explained.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
I asked with confusion.
He chuckled as he turned around, pressing his
back against a closed door to open it.
Then we were in what appeared to be a
large…mansion.
 65/449

Whatever we were just in wasn’t a hospital,

but a medical wing of the main house.
We were in a huge living room about the size
of my entire apartment.
Then my stomach plummeted.
“My cat!” I cried.
He put me down on the couch in the middle
of the room, held up his finger, then disappeared
for a few minutes before he came back with El-
bow, my cat, in tow.
Elbow was a big girl.
She was a hefty thirty-five pounds, and prob-
ably could’ve survived had she not been fed for
over two months, but I would never make my girl
suffer.
She and I were like two peas in a pod.
I’d found her when I’d left my parents, and
she’d been with me ever since.
 66/449

“Oh, my baby,” I cooed as Nikolai placed her

in my arms.
I wrapped her in tightly and smothered her
with kisses all the while she tried valiantly to get
away from me.
“I don’t think she likes that,” Nikolai said
dryly.
I raised a brow at him.
“How would you know? Do you speak cat?” I
snapped, pulling her pudgy little body into my
face while I smothered her with more kisses.
She pushed away from my face, but I held on,
much to her consternation.
I’d admit, she probably didn’t like it when I
did that.
But I just loved her so much.
“I can’t believe you brought her here around
a bunch of dragons. I’m surprised she hasn’t
freaked out,” I said, mystified.
 67/449

The sexy man called Nikolai sat down on the

table in front of the couch he’d deposited me on
and watched as I scratched Elbow’s happy spot
behind her ears.
“I have a tattoo,” I said to him.
Outwardly, he didn’t react.
But I felt a surge of adrenaline in my veins.
Hope…want…need.
Not one of those things did I see on his face,
but I knew he felt them.
I didn’t know how…but he was feeling all
those emotions wrapped up in a small ball that
seemed to simmer underneath his calm outer
appearance.
“You didn’t have it before you…got hurt?”
Nikolai asked carefully.
I felt like I was missing something, and I nar-
rowed my eyes at the man that I really had no
proof was who he said he was.
 68/449

That’s about when I started to get nervous.

Before I’d realized that I was in a comprom-
ising position.
I couldn’t leave…I still couldn’t leave.
I wasn’t strong enough.
And who was to say that this man didn’t
know Joseph?
Wasn’t working with Joseph.
My heart started to pound, and adrenaline
started to pour through my veins.
But I couldn’t run.
I’d have to play it safe.
I’d have to get more answers.
Find out where I was.
Could I use a phone? Would he let me?
“Can I use your phone?” I asked casually.
 69/449

He reached into his pocket and immediately

withdrew his phone.
“I never found yours when I got you from
Joseph’s. I got everything from your apartment,
though. It’s in a room on the second floor, which
was where I put all of your cat’s belongings as
well. The rest of your things, like your pots and
pans, as well as the things you wouldn’t be need-
ing here, like your bed and bathroom towels, are
in the basement with Blythe’s old things,”
Nikolai said, handing me his phone with zero
hesitation.
I took the phone, narrowing my eyes at him.
“You gave up my lease?” I gasped in outrage.
He stared at me unblinkingly.
“Your Uncle Joseph was willing to beat you,
for God knows how long, and there are others in
his organization that would be willing to do the
same because they know you are important to us.
You’re best friends with Keifer’s mate. And you
 70/449

are family to the man that just went all sacrificial

lamb for the greater good of human kind,”
Nikolai said dryly. “You’d be like a trophy to
them right now. So, yes, I did give up your lease.
And before you leave this place, you’re going to
be a hundred percent, and able to fight off any-
thing and everything that comes your way.”
My outrage fled just as fast as it was there.
“Shit,” I said, exhaling in defeat. “My family
sucks.”
Nikolai snorted. “You don’t get to have a say
in who your family is.”
I looked down at the phone in my hands and
swiped the screen to open it.
The first thing I saw was a picture of Blythe
scrunching Nikolai’s face with her hands while
she laughed.
And a jolt of anger and jealousy shot through
me, completely surprising the ever loving shit out
of me at seeing her hands on my man.
 71/449

My man?
What the hell?
Where did that come from?
How was spending ten minutes awake in his
presence enough to make him my man?
But the more I examined the feelings, the
more concrete they became.
He was my man, end of story.
Now I just had to figure out why the hell I
felt that way.
 Chapter 4
When she says ‘pull out’ the re-
spectable thing to say is ‘yes
ma’am.’ Not ‘you’d look good
as a single mother.’
-Things to never say to a
woman
Nikolai
I woke up the next morning, refreshed and
bright eyed.
I hadn’t slept this good since…
I shot up in the bed, tripping over the sheets
that were tangled around my legs, and made a
mad dash out of the door, completely unaware of
my near nakedness until I hit the mouth of my
room and ended up in the living space shared by
all the quarters.
 73/449

And there, on the bright red poufy couch that

Keifer called an eye sore, sat Brooklyn.
She had a mug of coffee in one hand, and a
bag of powdered donuts in the other.
She froze with the mug inches from her
mouth, and stared at me.
I stared back, letting my heart rate return to
normal as I took her in.
She looked like she was fine.
She didn’t look like she’d spent the past
couple of months in a coma.
In fact, she looked almost healthy today.
“You forgot to put pants on when you left
your room,” Brooklyn waved a half-eaten donut
in my direction.
I blinked, looking down at my boxers, then
turned right around and returned to my room.
Guess I was lucky to have anything on.
Normally, I slept completely naked.
 74/449

The first thing I did was take a quick shower,

washing as quickly as possible before I got out.
I may or may not have gotten lost in the feel
of the towel on my erection while I was drying
off; and, before I knew it, I was slowly working
my cock up and down until I was ready to blow.
And when I did, it was to images of Brooklyn
taking my cock down her pretty throat.
Embarrassed beyond belief that I’d blown my
load like some fifteen-year-old boy, I threw the
soiled towel into the linen hamper and walked in-
to my room, naked as the day I was born.
Had I known that a certain little brown
headed woman was standing in my door, I
wouldn’t have.
“Eeek!” Brooklyn squealed, covering her
eyes with both hands.
“Shit,” I hissed, walking to my drawers and
pulling out a pair of boxer briefs, followed by a
pair of soccer shorts.
 75/449

Once they were on, I turned back to

Brooklyn.
“I’m decent,” I cleared my throat, crossing
my arms over my chest.
She slowly moved her fingers apart to survey
me before she removed them completely.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized.
A beautiful blush stole up the front of her, go-
ing all the way up her neck, past her cheeks, to
disappear into her hairline.
“For what?” I asked.
I actually kind of liked having her know what
I looked like naked.
I scared women when I first presented my
cock to them.
It wasn’t freakishly large, like Guinness Book
of World Record’s big, but it was on the larger
side of large.
 76/449

With her knowing what I looked like before

we ever got started let her have the chance to
know what she was getting into.
And from what I could tell, she wasn’t averse
to the package.
“I thought you called my name…,” she hesit-
ated, sneaking a peek down at my crotch once
more. “No, I swear you called my name. I
would’ve never come back here had I known…”
She trailed off, and I was left wanting to laugh
my ass off.
Tell her, Perdita urged.
No, I snapped. She’s not ready.
Fool boy.
I mentally flipped Perdita off.
And I was sent back a mental picture of me
jacking off only moments before.
Don’t you dare, I shot back.
 77/449

Brooklyn’s eyes went wide and surprised,

and I knew seconds later that Perdita felt it her
God given womanly duty to protect all woman
kind.
Which was why she’d shared it with
Brooklyn.
I sometimes thought that Perdita didn’t really
want me as a dragon rider.
Sometimes, I felt that she secretly hated me at
times.
I don’t hate you. I just think, sometimes, it’s
good for you to come down a few pegs, she said
reassuringly.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
Brooklyn jumped, then her eyes went back to
my dick once more before she turned around.
“Do you want pancakes?” she asked as she
walked away.
 78/449

I followed behind her slowly, studying her

gait.
She looked like she hadn’t been lying in bed
for days and days upon end.
Her ass was tight, from what little I could see
of it.
Her legs trim and toned.
She was wearing my grey shirt that I could’ve
sworn I’d thrown in the wash last night, as well
as a pair of pants I’d unearthed from a box in her
suite where I’d stowed all her belongings.
They were about two inches too long; even
the small size seemed to bag on her ass.
Which meant that my t-shirt swamped her.
Later this afternoon, I planned on taking her
into the city to find her clothes that fit.
Something that I really, really didn’t want to
do.
I didn’t do shopping.
 79/449

In fact, the last time I’d stepped foot in a

mall, willingly, was when I was fourteen and
wanted a cookie from The Cookie Factory in the
mall’s food court.
I was what one would call a loner.
I didn’t do big events. I didn’t do movies. I
didn’t do dates.
I really didn’t do malls.
But I would go for Brooklyn, even if it’d give
me hives to do so.
“Yeah,” I said, following closely behind her
into the kitchen. “I could go for some pancakes,
but how about you let me make them.”
My suggestion was met with a glare from her
part.
“I think you’ve done quite enough for me the
last couple of days. And I feel fine, so you just sit
and watch the master work,” she ordered.
Needless to say, I sat.
 80/449

Then I watched as she pulled a covered bowl

out of the fridge and walked to the skillet that
was surprisingly already hot.
Just how long had she been waiting for me to
get up?
“There was something crawling along the
ledge of my window this morning around five,”
she said once she placed the first round circle of
batter on the skillet in front of her.
I blinked.
“That would probably be one of the terrible
trio,” I guessed.
She tilted her head slightly and looked at me
over her shoulder.
I jerked my eyes away from my contempla-
tion of her ass, and gave her my attention.
“A blue dragon?” she confirmed.
I nodded.
 81/449

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t them. I

looked for them thinking it was them, too. But I
found the three of them by the pool, each lying
on their own lawn chair.”
I pursed my lips, then got up to look outside.
Our kitchen had a sliding glass door that
faced the back patio, and I could see the whole
yard clearly.
The pool was centered in the middle of the
back two wings.
The left side belonged to Keifer, and the right
side belonged to me.
I looked to the right side of the house and
studied what was Brooklyn’s window.
The longer I looked, the more I could make
out tiny claw marks on the outside.
The likes of which would only belong to a
tiny dragon such as the three innocent looking
dragons that were lying on the steps that led
down to the yard.
 82/449

“I’m fairly positive it was one of them.

They’re pretty good at fooling us when they want
you to come play with them. If they ever do that
again let me know and I’ll throw up a ward on
your window that’ll keep them away,” I said over
my shoulder.
She blinked, then turned back to her
pancakes.
Once she flipped them, she turned back to
me.
“What’s a ward?” she asked.
I grimaced.
If I told her too much, then she’d get into the
semantics of my abilities, and I didn’t want to tell
her all of that yet.
“A ward is a sort of protection. I designed
them, then programmed them myself.” I hesit-
ated, “It’s more like an imaginary line that anim-
als, or humans, can’t cross. You know that feel-
ing when you don’t want to go somewhere, and
 83/449

your mind’s screaming at you not to go near it?

It’s kind of like that. I have one over this entire
property.”
In reality, I’d managed to sync my ability to
weave illusions into a computer program. To-
gether, with Perdita, I offered a full protection of
the estate and the area surrounding the estate for
about fifty miles.
The only drawback of using the program, was
that anyone that wasn’t a blood relation or bon-
ded to the original Vassago family in some way,
couldn’t pass through the barrier.
When Keifer had asked me to figure out how
to reconfigure it the day he found out he could
possibly be mated to Blythe, I’d been hard
pressed to figure out how to open it to allow her
through.
I’d been just about to pull it all the way down
when I’d felt Keifer pass through the ward.
 84/449

I’d held my breath, terrified that Blythe

would die, but minutes later, Keifer had landed
on the back lawn with Declan, his dragon, and
Blythe, none the worse for wear.
I’d not told him that I hadn’t gotten the ward
down.
I’d decided that bitch fit hadn’t been worth
the hassle of worrying him.
But I’d spent day and night since then honing
my skills with the design of the ward, and work-
ing with Perdita to get the ward under my com-
plete control.
And we’d accomplished it, so there was no
reason to worry Keifer…right?
“That’s pretty nifty, actually,” Brooklyn
broke into my thoughts. “So you like
computers?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. My brother owns
Vassago motors; you know that, right?”
She nodded, so I continued.
 85/449

“I never really wanted to be a part of the

hands on business end. Although I know my way
around a car just like Keifer does, I don’t enjoy it
in the least. It’s more of a chore than a passion
like it is for him,” I told her, sitting down at the
bar across from where she was currently flipping
pancakes. “So I started making myself useful to
him elsewhere, and I found that I was much more
suited for the computer end rather than the trans-
mission end.”
She smiled. “You would laugh if you saw me
trying to change my oil the first time,” she
snickered, looking up.
The light in her eyes had me wanting to bring
those lips to mine, but I refrained from moving,
happy to see her happy.
“Why didn’t you just take it to an oil lube
place?” I asked.
She shrugged.
 86/449

“Money, mostly. It was $40 to get my oil

changed by them, and $20 to buy the bottles and
do it myself,” she explained.
I snorted.
“How’d that work?” I asked.
“I wasn’t really prepared. I watched a
YouTube video on how to change my car’s oil in
the library at school,” she explained, going be-
hind her to reach above the counter for a couple
of plates before returning and piling on pancakes.
“So I go out there, armed with a couple old milk
jugs, a funnel and a monkey wrench.”
A smile lit my face.
“Ohhh,” I laughed softly to myself.
She nodded back. “Yeah, that’s about how it
went for me. I put the funnel in the milk jug, un-
screwed that little bolt at the bottom of the oil
pan, and was promptly drenched with oil.”
I could imagine.
 87/449

“So, from then on, I flirted with the boys at

school to get them to do it for me. Worked out
splendidly and haven’t changed my own oil
since,” she confirmed.
Irrational irritation started to pour through
me, and I growled.
“I’ll do it for you from now on,” I informed
her.
Her brows rose. “Oh?”
She slid the pancakes in front of me, handed
me a fork and the syrup, and then turned the
burners off.
She rounded the island with her own plate
and took up the position beside me.
We ate in silence, neither one of us comment-
ing on the fact that I’d practically taken her off
the market with that one comment.
Long minutes later, with my belly full, I
turned to watch her shovel the last of her two
pancakes into her mouth.
 88/449

“I have to get a little bit of work done

today…will you be alright if I leave you alone
for a few hours?” I asked.
She nodded, standing up while still chewing
her last piece, then placed her plate gently into
the sink.
“I’ll be fine,” she said once she’d chewed and
swallowed. “But I wanted to call Blythe today.
And one of these days you need to take me to get
some clothes like you promised. I realize that
you’re busy, but I can’t live in your clothes
forever.”
Brooklyn had tried to call Blythe yesterday,
but Keifer had answered for her saying that
Blythe was too busy puking to come to the phone
and to try again tomorrow.
I doubted that he’d even given Blythe the
message that Brooklyn was awake.
He was a nice guy like that.
 89/449

“That’s fine. You can use the house phone,” I

indicated the old rotary phone on the wall. “Or
you can come to my office and use my cell
phone. Whichever one you want to do.”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“Do you mind if I…explore?” she asked
hesitantly.
I shrugged. “Fine with me. But, it’s a big
place. It’ll take you days to see everything.”
Her eyes slowly slid down my chest, and it
was only then that I realized that I was shirtless,
showing off the tattoo that had just recently
shown up.
Her eyes brightened, and her hands slowly
slid up her rib cage.
But when she made to open her mouth to
question me, I bolted.
“I’ll be in the room right next to the one you
slept in last night!” I called over my shoulder.
 90/449

I then cursed myself because she knew where

my room was. She’s seen me naked in it earlier.
She glared at my retreating back, and I had to
say that I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t look all
too happy to see me avoid the topic.
And I knew I’d get the fourth degree later,
once I was done, or she worked up the courage.
Which was why I avoided her until late that
night when I knew she’d be asleep.
Yep.
I know. I’m a coward.
So sue me.
 Chapter 5
I don’t think I’d be good in a
threesome. I can’t even pet two
dragons at the same time.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
“I can’t believe you’re okay. Are you sure
you’re okay? I can’t come home, but I need to
know you’re okay,” Blythe babbled.
I narrowed my eyes at the hallway I was
walking down.
“I’m okay, Blythe. I promise. Now go take a
nap or something, and for God’s sake, stop cry-
ing. You’re making me want to cry, too,” I
ordered my best friend.
“Is he treating you alright?” Blythe contin-
ued, ignoring what I had to say.
 92/449

“Yes. He’s treating me fine. I promise. Now

go to sleep,” I repeated once again.
Blythe sighed.
“You’re treating me almost as annoyingly as
Keifer is,” she grumbled.
“Bye!” I said loudly, then hung up, easing
carefully around the next corner.
I was lost.
Horribly and terribly lost.
It’d been a little over three days since I’d
woken from the coma I’d been in.
And, in those three days, I’d thought I’d got-
ten pretty used to my surroundings.
Except, now that I was on my own looking
for the kitchen, I realized that my grasp on
where, exactly, I was wasn’t as good as I’d
thought.
Finally, I came to a door that led to outside,
and I pushed it open.
 93/449

Maybe if I could walk around the outside, I

would be able to find the kitchen faster rather
than to continue to walk around hallway after
hallway with no idea where I was.
It was a sound idea, too.
Except I didn’t take into account the fences.
And once I’d walked out the door, I’d real-
ized that it locked behind me.
“Wonderful,” I muttered to myself, looking
up at the overcast sky in contemplation.
I was in a side yard of sorts.
It was separated from the front and back by
huge brick walls that spanned at least eight feet
in height all the way around.
So I sat down, exhausted to my very bones.
I crossed my legs underneath me, and con-
templated my situation.
Brooklyn.
 94/449

I squeezed my eyes shut, my tired brain going

on overdrive.
I’d not heard Nikolai in my head since I’d
woken from my coma, and I’d just started to
chalk it up to my overactive imagination.
But, alas, Nikolai shattered that stupid notion
within seconds of me going outside.
Why did you go outside? the dastardly man
asked in my head.
I thought it’d be a nice day for a stroll, I
thought to myself.
Or maybe to him. I didn’t know.
The moment the words were out of my
mouth, the sky above me started to rumble.
Then, moments later, the bottom of the sky
opened up, and rain started to pour down.
I’m not really sure why I did what I did.
One second I was staring at the water as it
drenched me, and the next I was in a bubble.
 95/449

A literal bubble.
Like one of those plastic ball-like things that
hamsters run in when they aren’t in their cage.
It surrounded me perfectly, and I watched in
avid fascination as the rain curved around my
bubble and fell to the ground at my sides.
I’m in a bubble.
It’s called a shield, an amused female’s voice
said dryly.
My first reaction was to look at my sides as I
tried to find the owner of that voice.
And when I didn’t see anyone at my sides,
only then did I look up.
And up.
And up.
And up.
There was a beautiful white dragon the color
of a pearl.
 96/449

She had blue eyes, blue spikes down her

back, and a blue war club type thing on her tail
that reminded me of a mace I’d seen once at a
museum.
She was lying on the roof, almost like she
was sunning herself.
Could the roof hold that much weight without
collapsing?
She looked like she’d done it before.
“Are you talking to me?” I asked the dragon.
That had to be the stupidest thing to ever
come out of my mouth.
Literally, out of all the things I could’ve said
to a dragon, I had to ask her if she was talking to
me.
“Dammit, Brooklyn, are you stupid?” I asked,
leaning up, watching the dragon warily.
 97/449

My head popped out of my bubble, but the

rest of me remained in the bubble, protected and
dry.
Yes, I’m talking to you, the dragon informed
me with a regality that made me want to bow at
her feet.
Was that allowed? Did humans bow to
dragons?
No, you do not have to bow to me, child. If
you’ll concentrate on the shield around your
head, it should appear without much effort on
your part.
The backdoor behind me opened, but I con-
centrated on making a bubble around my face,
eyes widening as I felt it pop back in place.
“Wow,” I breathed.
What was going on?
Was I manifesting powers because I was in a
dragon rider’s home? Did one get powers just
 98/449

from being around dragons? Would I be like Su-

perman? The Hulk? Captain America?
I chanced a look back at Nikolai, and he
stood there, frozen, staring at me like I’d done
something he hadn’t expected me to do.
“Shit,” he breathed.
I blinked.
“You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?” I
accused, pointing a finger at him.
“Lucy,” the dragon teased in a Spanish ac-
cent. “You got some ‘splainin to do.”
Nikolai glared at something over my
shoulder, and I whipped around.
Because, hello!
There was a dragon at my back!
My bubble disintegrated.
 99/449

Whatever control I’d had over the bubble like

thing around me was gone, and I was no longer
being protected from the rain.
I’d never seen a dragon this close before.
Of course, everyone in Dallas had seen one a
time or two in the air.
But it was a rare treat that one saw them from
this close.
Dragons, from what I’d been told, were solit-
ary by nature.
They didn’t like large crowds. Small crowds.
Or medium crowds. You get the picture.
They didn’t like people much, period.
And they certainly didn’t spend time with hu-
mans that didn’t have dragon rider blood.
Mostly because you never knew who you
could trust.
Hell, I was a pretty normal woman.
 100/449

A new nurse.
A twenty-six-year-old, nearly virgin.
Well, that probably wasn’t so normal, but you
catch my drift.
I was an everyday, run of the mill, female
American.
I must’ve been really special for the dragon to
talk to me…that, or maybe screwed in the head.
“Stop putting yourself down. You’re com-
pletely fine,” Nikolai snapped.
I narrowed my eyes.
He needed to stop reading my mind, if he
didn’t like what went through it.
“I need answers, and not the vague answers
you’ve been giving me the last couple of days,” I
ordered darkly.
Nikolai sighed, sitting down on the edge of
the door, allowing his feet to extend out into the
rain.
 101/449

He was wearing a pair of black basketball

shorts
“I don’t think you’re ready for the answers
you seek yet,” he said evasively, opening the
door with a fucking key and waving me inside.
I narrowed my eyes, but nonetheless followed
him inside, looking only once over my shoulder
at the dragon that was no longer there.
“Who are you to tell me I’m not ready? I’m
tired of being treated like I’m a child,” I snarled.
My fear must’ve finally made itself known to
him, and he dropped his head to his hands before
he exploded in a flurry of movement.
He groaned and stood up, ripping his wet t-
shirt off over his chest.
And it was then that I saw the tattoo again.
It looked like an exact replica of mine, and
I’d been telling myself for the past twenty-four
hours that, maybe, I’d been dreaming when I saw
the tattoo yesterday after breakfast.
 102/449

Almost as if we’d hugged, and my tattoo had

rubbed off on him where our skin had met.
My mouth fell open and I stared in shock.
“You have my tattoo,” I accused smartly.
He nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Well…I
do know. But I don’t know why.”
I scrunched my nose up in confusion.
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
He sighed and started forward, offering me
his hand.
“Follow me. I have something you can read.
And once you’re done, if you have any questions,
I’ll answer them,” he said, leading me through
the maze of hallways.
I realized, as if in a daze, that I’d turned right
instead of left, which would’ve taken me to the
 103/449

kitchen instead of the copious amount of hall-

ways that I’d taken instead.
“You need one of those maps that malls put
up that says, ‘You are here’ on each corner,” I
mumbled distractedly.
I was distracted because I could feel the body
heat emanating off of the man.
He felt like a ball of fire in the middle of a
blizzard.
I wanted to wrap myself around him and rub
my face against his pecs.
Maybe wrap my legs around his face…okay.
I needed to quit. I was clearly getting out of hand.
Nikolai didn’t seem to notice my wayward
thoughts, only kept trudging forward without a
care.
Luckily, I managed to shake it off once I
reached what I realized was his own personal
office.
 104/449

The room itself had a wall of computer mon-

itors mounted above a massive desk on the far
wall. Bookshelves surrounded us, climbing to the
ceiling on either side of us.
On the opposite wall, through the doorway,
was a massive bed about twice the size of a nor-
mal sized king, and I idly wondered why he had
such a large bed. I had vaguely noticed it when I
was in there earlier, but now, all I could see was
the bed.
Both rooms were black.
Black walls. Black computers. Black curtains.
Black sheets.
The only thing not black were the wood
floors, and those were such a dark brown that
they could’ve passed for black.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “What’s with all
the black?”
He let my hand go and walked to the bank of
computer monitors, picking up a leather bound
 105/449

book from about fifteen books that were lined

against the back of the desk, and turned to me.
“Sit down,” he gestured towards his bed.
My brows rose, but I followed directions and
walked to his bed, raising a knee once I reached
the huge thing, and slid along the slick sheets un-
til I was safely ensconced in the very middle.
When I finally looked at him expectantly, it
was to see Nikolai’s eyes dilated, and his breath-
ing picked up.
I hid my smile as I held out my hands.
“Gimme,” I ordered.
He handed me the book so fast it looked like
he’d been cattle prodded.
I took it from him, and watched as he walked
to the other room. I could see him at the com-
puter monitors, where he took a seat, then im-
mersed himself in the World Wide Web.
Or whatever it was.
 106/449

I wasn’t sure.
The computer had one of those black screens
on it that didn’t allow anyone but him to see what
he was doing.
And I wondered idly why he had that.
Was he that private that he had to hide what
was on his computer screen?
After I studied his profile for long moments, I
finally cracked open the book that he’d given me.
MATING.
All dragon riders have a predestined mate.
Some riders will never find that mate and will
forever stay single, never to marry or fall in love.
Others, though, will find their mate. And their
mate will become immortal, matching in life
spans with their rider.
My heart started to pound, and I looked up at
Nikolai, studying him avidly.
 107/449

“We’re mated?” I squeaked.

He turned only his head to survey me, and
narrowed his eyes. “I told you to read it all; once
you’re done I’ll answer your questions.”
Duly chastised, I looked down at the book
and continued reading.
With the first touch of mates, skin to skin, the
process begins. It takes up to three full days for
the process to be complete, and the two mates
will be forever bound. Unconditionally and
irrevocably.
My mind started to whirl.
Had he been the one to save me? To rescue
me from my uncle’s harming hands?
Page after page I read, and the more I read,
the more I started to understand.
Was I afraid?
No.
Not even a little bit.
 108/449

The female is fed by the male’s connection to

the dragon. The two mates will forever have to be
within the vicinity of the other, or they start to
grow weak, and eventually die if the separation
goes on too long. Never stay apart for more than
twenty-four hours. Trust me, it doesn’t go away. I
know.
Was I now immortal? Was that what he was
trying to tell me?
The last words on the page were a dedication
of sorts.
And I looked up with a burning question on
the tip of my tongue.
“Who wrote this?” I whispered, finally look-
ing up from the book.
He was facing me…and had been for a while.
Studying my face as I read, gauging my reac-
tion to the words on the page.
“My father.”
 109/449

I blinked.
“Your father’s dead?” I gulped.
He nodded.
“He died hours after writing that.” He indic-
ated the book.
My eyes started to well with hot tears.
“He really loved you,” I whispered. “You will
forever live on in my heart,” I quoted from the
last page.
He smiled sadly. “I think that was for my
mother; although, she’s never read it to this day.”
“Your mother’s still alive?” I asked wor-
riedly. “But there was a page in there talking
about the mate losing the ability to talk once…”
He nodded.
“My father breathed his last breath down my
mother’s throat, just like the book says,” he ad-
mitted. “She hasn’t said a word since the day my
father died.”
 110/449

A ball of sadness formed in the pit of my

belly.
“That sounds so awful that I want to cry, and
I don’t even know them,” I whispered.
Nikolai shrugged.
“So, do you have any more questions?” he
asked softly, placing both of his elbows on his
knees and leaning forward.
“Were you the one to save me? Were you the
one who brought me here?” I whispered.
Nikolai nodded.
“Yes. Perdita and I brought you here,” he
confirmed.
“It says the minute a dragon rider touches his
mate’s skin, that the bond starts forming,” I hesit-
ated. “But I wasn’t awake for that part, which I
assume is what happened.” I licked my lips. “Can
you tell me how?”
He nodded.
 111/449

“I will start from the beginning and tell you

everything, okay?” he offered.
At my nod, he started to tell me how he came
to find me.
“Did I look bad?” I asked hoarsely once he
got to how he’d found me.
He nodded.
No sugarcoating for Nikolai.
“Was I…was I wearing clothes?” I asked.
It was something I’d meant to ask…yet
couldn’t find the courage until now.
I didn’t really want to hear the answer; al-
though, I knew I needed to know, if only for my
peace of mind.
“Yes. Skylar, my sister, said that you had no
internal injuries. She looked when I was out of
the room,” he said hastily when my eyes went
wide.
I nodded.
 112/449

“She also said that your injuries were life

threatening, and you probably wouldn’t make it
through the night,” he said softly.
My eyes widened even further.
“Then how am I alive right now?” I asked
bluntly.
He turned to the side, then pointed down at
the tattoo.
“Our bond,” he said simply.
“So our bond has healing abilities?” I asked
carefully.
He shrugged.
“I guess. I don’t really know,” he hesitated.
“All I know is what you know from that book in
your hands. There are a few things I learned from
Keifer; but, to be honest, he’s just about as clue-
less in that department as I am. No one even real-
ized this was possible until he mated with
Blythe.”
 113/449

I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

“So we’re mated for life?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And there’s no way to break this bond?”
That last question was met with a narrowing
of his eyes.
“Death,” he barked.
I held my hands up.
“Whoa there, dragon slayer. I was only won-
dering. You know you wondered the same thing.
You’ve had two months longer than me to come
to terms with this. I’ve had a little over an hour,”
I growled.
He looked down at his hand, opening and
closing it into a tight fist.
When he didn’t say anything more, I contin-
ued onto my list of questions.
 114/449

“It also said that I would share your powers,”

I said.
He nodded. “You do.”
“I do?” I asked. “Which ones?”
He grinned.
“I have a little bit of telepathy. I can make
some damn fine illusions.” He ticked the num-
bers off on his fingers. “I can detect heat by in-
frared. I can move things with a thought of my
mind. And there are times that I can channel an-
other dragon’s powers if I am touching a bonded
dragon rider or dragon. Make zones of protection
around myself. Just different things.”
I blinked.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“What else were you expecting?” he
challenged.
I held my hands up.
 115/449

“I just mean I thought you might have super

strength…or control fire,” I teased.
His face relaxed.
“I can do that if I’m touching my brother’s
dragon, Declan,” he said. “But a dragon rider
gets their powers from their dragon. And Perdita
is a shadow dragon. She is originally from the
caves that line a certain mountain ridge in the old
world. She does her best stuff in the dark, which
is where I excel,” he continued to explain.
“Whereas Declan, Keifer’s bonded dragon, is a
fire dragon. He does the more obvious things that
you would expect a dragon to do, such as breathe
fire.”
“And you think I’ll be able to control these
powers?” I bit my lip.
He nodded. “You already exhibited ‘the
bubble’, as Keifer likes to call it, when you were
out in the rain. It’s pretty good for protection.”
 116/449

“Sound protection, or protection against ar-

rows?” I asked.
He laughed.
“Arrows?” he snorted.
I nodded. “Y’all don’t get shot with arrows?”
He shook his head.
“Not for a very long time…if ever. I
haven’t…Perdita might’ve, though,” he paused
thoughtfully.
I have. I don’t like arrows. And no, the shield
doesn’t protect against them, Perdita offered
lightly.
I smiled at Nikolai.
“So, what now?” I asked once it’d been silent
in the room for a couple of long minutes.
Nikolai sat back in his chair.
“I guess we date,” he finally offered.
I nodded.
 117/449

“How long are we supposed to date?” I asked

curiously.
He raised a brow at him.
“I guess until you decide it’s time to move to
the next step,” he supplied.
My brows lowered. “And when will I know
what that is?”
He snorted.
“You’ll know. And when you know, you’ll
let me know,” he quipped cryptically, offering
me his hand.
I took it, and he led me to the shower, turning
the knobs until it was at a good temperature.
“Now, get in here and get dried off before I
have to call my sister and ask her what I’m sup-
posed to do for someone that has pneumonia,” he
ordered.
I was cold, now that he mentioned it.
 118/449

It was fairly close to freezing outside, but in

all this time, I hadn’t felt one single shiver until
he’d mentioned it.
I guess your mind is on other things.
He left the room without another word, and I
slipped my still slightly damp clothes off, and
traveled into the massive bathroom that looked
like it was fit for a king.
Or a prince, I thought to myself.
He hadn’t said he was…but he hadn’t said he
wasn’t, either.
Perdita had let it slip during one of the many
back and forth conversations I’d had with her that
day, and I knew that Nikolai had heard every
word said between the two of us.
But he hasn’t said a word, and I had to won-
der why.
That would be one of the many questions I’d
asked him about once I got out.
 119/449

And I had every intention of asking him…but

the moment I got out of the shower, my eyes lit
on the cotton t-shirt that I’d seen him wearing
earlier in the day.
He must’ve put it there for me to slip on, and
I did.
But the moment I had it over my shoulders,
all the tension that’d built up in my body from
the moment I’d realized we were mates, slipped
away as if it’d never been.
It its place was a sort of peace.
I was surrounded by his scent.
And the moment I sat down on his bed, a
strange sort of lethargy poured through my body,
and I laid down completely on the bed.
My head hit the pillow, and I took an even
deeper breath, filling my lungs with all that was
Nikolai.
And, unsurprisingly, I fell asleep.
 120/449

I was gifted like that.

 Chapter 6
If a woman pulls out a knife
during an argument, it is not
recommended to pull out some
bread, mayo, and cheese. Why?
Because she will fucking kill
you, not make you a god-
damned sandwich.
-Word to the Wise
Brooklyn
I don’t know why I never expected Nikolai to
be able to fight.
He had the muscles.
He worked out.
He was aware.
But he never struck me as fierce.
 122/449

I wasn’t thinking that anymore, though, as I

watched him beat the ever loving shit out of his
opponent.
He never used a single one of his powers to
accomplish it, either.
He did it all with sheer strength, force of will,
and knowledge.
He was divine.
All we were supposed to be doing was buying
some supplies for the house.
It’d been over two months since I’d woken
from my coma, six weeks since he’d told me I
was his mate and even longer since the house-
keeper had stocked the kitchens.
I’d never been so happy to leave the confines
of a house.
I would’ve been happy with going in a plain
old car; but, today, Nikolai had taken me on a
motorcycle, of all things.
 123/449

I’d always wanted to ride on one but had nev-

er had the courage to ask for a ride.
Today, though, I’d practically begged Nikolai
for us to take it.
He’d argued that a truck would hold more
groceries, but I’d been adamant.
I didn’t even know why, either.
Just the thought of being in the open air, out-
side the confines of the sanctuary, turned me into
a giggling mass of excitement.
And I was sure that nothing would ruin this
day…but I’d been wrong.
Since I was now watching my man get
ganged up on by five men.
My uncle’s cronies could ruin my day, as
evidenced by the stupid goon trying to slash
Nikolai’s face off with a fuckin’ saber sword.
I’d at first tried to help Nikolai, but his insist-
ence that I back up and stay the hell out of it had
 124/449

been loud and clear, even when he hadn’t actu-

ally said any of those words out loud.
But he’d been awesome at screaming them
inside my head like I was a disobeying three-
year-old, rather than a twenty-six-year-old grown
ass adult who knew how to wipe her own butt.
I watched with the brick wall of a conveni-
ence store at my back.
Nikolai’s bike was on its side where he’d
dumped it.
My arm was scratched, and a strange throb-
bing sensation was going on with my ribs.
Funny enough, I hadn’t remembered ever hit-
ting my ribs. Nikolai had been extremely careful
about laying his bike down as we slid.
He’d also made me wear protective clothing,
such as a brand new pair of motorcycle boots. A
leather jacket with padding in the elbows and
back, as well as a pair of pants that were sup-
posedly flame proof.
 125/449

I was glad he’d forced me to wear them now;

but a scant hour before, as I’d been getting
dressed, I’d been reluctant.
“Duck!” Nikolai screamed.
Then, I was seeing nothing but black.
Everything around me was black.
“Nikolai!” I whispered frantically. “I can’t
see!”
Strong arms, the arms that I was coming to
care for in the short few days that we’d officially
started to ‘date,’ wrapped around me.
“Shh,” he breathed, so low that I couldn’t be
sure that he said anything at all.
Grab the bike, he whispered through my
brain.
I moved my arms forward and grabbed on to
the bike, feeling him shift as he got on. Then he
pulled me on behind him and a loud roar sounded
as he turned over the engine.
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“Hold on,” he rushed.

I held on.
It felt like we’d been released from a sling
shot as he blasted forward.
One second everything was dark, and the
next, I could see again.
“Eeek,” I said as I watched the end of an al-
ley loom ahead of us.
“There’s a turn. It’ll be tight, though; steady
yourself,” Nikolai ordered.
I steadied myself as best as I could, mostly by
wrapping my arms so tight around his waist that I
knew it had to be uncomfortable.
He didn’t complain, though.
The turn was tight, and I hadn’t even realized
there was one there until we were taking it.
We moved down an alley behind buildings
that was so narrow that I could easily reach out
 127/449

and touch the two buildings that were back to

back.
Nikolai didn’t seem to notice…or care…be-
cause he just kept riding forward so fast that I
could barely breathe.
We made it to the end of the alleyway and
pulled straight into traffic, cutting off a white po-
lice car in our efforts.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed.
He pushed us forward even faster, completely
ignoring the police car’s red and blue lights; in-
stead weaving in and out of traffic like his life
depended on it.
And maybe it did.
I didn’t know.
I turned to see if I could spot anyone behind
us, but saw nothing but the red and blue lights,
and the traffic trying to part for the police officer
to get through.
 128/449

“You’re gonna have to go faster if you want

to get away from that cop,” I said.
I couldn’t believe those words had left my
lips, but desperate times called for desperate
measures.
“Hold on to your titties,” he called over the
roar of the wind and the engine.
I looked forward, wondering how he was go-
ing to get out of the traffic jam I saw in front of
us, but once again my vision went warped, and I
saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Traffic was moving.
There was no police car behind us.
Everything felt…normal.
But it wasn’t.
Because I could still feel my hair flying
backwards.
Could still feel the adrenaline as it coursed
through my veins.
 129/449

Everything was still the same, but it wasn’t.

“Don’t you think you could warn me when
you’re going to just throw me into an illusion?” I
yelled.
I felt the rumble of Nikolai’s chest as it vi-
brated through his rough chuckle.
“I did,” he informed me.
I snorted.
“Hold on to your titties,” I said, “isn’t a
warning.”
“Toe-may-toe, to-mah-toe,” he drawled.
I snickered and leaned my head against his
back, enjoying the ride as much as I could.
He rode for what felt like forever, but ended
up being mere minutes.
He stopped abruptly when we pulled in be-
neath an overpass.
 130/449

We went from about sixty MPH to a full stop

in less than a hundred feet.
“That was fun,” I lied, trying to catch my
breath as we stayed huddled underneath the
bridge.
Nikolai turned his face towards me.
“I knew I should’ve had Skylar check your
head for brain damage.”
I pinched his side, causing him to squirm out
of my touch.
“Now what?” I asked him.
He sighed, slumping forward slightly on his
handlebars.
“Go home. I thought if this turned out okay,
and nobody saw us, we could do this more often,
but it’s more than apparent that, without the
patrols in the city to keep us safe from the
hunters, we’re not going to be able to leave the
house,” he admitted softly.
 131/449

A dark shape made itself visible from the

shadows, and I gasped, shrinking back.
“’Bout time you got here, dammit,” Nikolai
grumbled.
Sorry, Charlie. I couldn’t help but stay back
and see where they went, Perdita said.
She sounded so good when she was being
bad! If I’d said something similar, I would’ve
sounded like I was being sarcastic. Perdita,
though, sounded like she was being as courteous
as she could be.
Nikolai sighed.
“Where’d they go?” he asked.
“A warehouse just east of the city. They
didn’t even try to follow you.”
“Fuckin’ wonderful. I need to change my li-
cense plate now…and get us new helmets. And
you can never wear those clothes out again.
Motherfucker, I have a headache,” Nikolai said,
slumping forward with his head in his hands.
 132/449

I felt like a shithead.

I asked him repeatedly to go out, and I never
once realized that there would be danger.
I just wanted something to do. A place to
think that wasn’t the house that felt like a
freakin’ cage.
And I’d endangered us.
But he’d never said anything!
He didn’t want to make you feel trapped, Per-
dita said smoothly, her large head turning to look
at me.
I slumped into Nikolai’s back, wondering if
he’d heard what I’d just said.
He didn’t seem to notice, though.
His eyes were focused on the traffic passing
us, and it was only then that I realized that we
were hidden in the shadows.
The cars were passing us as if there wasn’t a
massive damn dragon right beside the road.
 133/449

“Can you teach me how to do this shadow

bend thing?” I asked the two of them.
“I planned to start teaching you as soon as
you asked; so, yes, you can learn as much, or as
little, as you like. I just didn’t want to overwhelm
you with too much information in such a small
period of time,” Nikolai informed me.
I smiled into the leather of his jacket.
“Cool,” I whispered.
Nikolai jumped up suddenly, and I gasped.
But it was only so he could start his motor-
cycle back up.
I laughed nervously at the smile he tossed
over his shoulder, satisfied that he’d scared me.
“Gonna go back into the illusion until we hit
the road to the sanctuary, so don’t be afraid,” he
yelled.
 134/449

Then we were gone, or my mind was. My

physical body was still pressed up against
Nikolai’s back.
It was an odd type of feeling that was for
sure.
The ride was long, and there was a ton of
traffic I could feel whizzing past us, but at least
Nikolai was able to give me the illusion of a nice,
traffic-free ride.
I knew the moment we got within the protec-
tion of the sanctuary, because suddenly I had the
ability to use all five of my senses once again.
My eyes took in the long drive that led up to
the house.
It was a blacktop asphalt and felt so smooth
as we moved up it, taking turn after turn.
Sporadically, trees dotted the large, sprawling
lawn.
 135/449

Some pine. Others oak. But my favorite was

the weeping willows that we had to drive under
just as we reached the carport of the house.
Perdita flew over the house, not stopping, and
I turned just in time to see the terrible three come
flying at us like they were tracking down prey.
I closed my eyes, but before they could hit
me and knock me off the back of Nikolai’s bike,
I was suddenly hauled off by two strong arms
and placed none too gently on my feet nearly ten
feet away.
I turned in time to see Nikolai go down.
“No ice!” he yelled.
I wondered what he meant by the ‘no ice’
comment, but saw what he meant seconds later.
Each and every place the triplets licked (yes,
they were like a bunch of happy dogs) there was
a trail of ice in their tongue’s wake.
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my own arms.
 136/449

Reddened lines in the shaped of slithery

snake tongues showed up on my arms, and I
looked at the back of my hands, only then seeing
the bloodied cuts.
“What…” I said, looking up at Nikolai as he
pushed to his feet. “What’s going on with my
hands?”
How had I missed hurting them?
Nikolai frowned.
“I thought I explained that to you,” he said.
“When either one of us gets hurt, the other dis-
plays the same cuts on their own bodies.”
I blinked.
“No,” I said. “I would’ve remembered that
discussion.”
He held his shirt up and showed me his side,
and I gasped when I saw my scar from my time
in my uncle’s captivity on his own body.
“Holy…” I breathed. “Holy shit!”
 137/449

He grinned.
“Creepy, huh?”
I let my hand trail down to the dragon at my
feet, and slowly stroked his leathery wings.
He was about the size of a small Shetland
pony, so he reached to just about my mid-thigh.
“What makes Perdita yours?” I asked.
Nikolai looked up at me in surprise.
“You mean, how am I bonded to her?” he
clarified.
I nodded. “Yes.”
He walked around the side of the house, and I
followed, waiting patiently for him to explain.
I followed behind him, watching him.
“I was standing right,” he stopped. “Here.
When I bonded to Perdita.”
I looked at where he was standing, and then
up at the house.
 138/449

He was standing under what I thought to be

his window.
“How old were you?” I asked.
He looked up at the sky, completely ignoring
the three dragons that kept jumping up to nip at
his fingers.
They were like a mixture of a dog and a cat.
Playful like a dog, but lithe and graceful like a
cat.
“It was the eve of my nineteenth birthday,”
he explained. “And I was sneaking out my win-
dow to go to a party with some new friends I’d
just met earlier in the day.”
I blinked.
“You snuck out?” I asked in surprise. “For
real?”
He nodded.
“I was in the rebellious stage of my teenage
years. My father had just died about a year
 139/449

before, and my mother hadn’t said a word in the

same amount of time. I went from having total
iron control of my senses to absolutely none. My
father was my best friend, besides Keifer. When
he was no longer there, I didn’t have the same
outlook on life,” he explained.
He started walking again.
“And that night I’d planned to try drugs for
the first time. I had a pocket full of weed to
share, and I was ready to get lost.” He pointed. “I
was looking over that tree right there when the
first jolt of power hit me, bringing me to my
knees.”
I was listening intently, waiting for him to
continue.
And when he did, my heart broke.
“I laid there for nearly two hours before Per-
dita finally showed,” he said. “Normally, the
dragon finds you well before the change, drawn
to you by your scent.”
 140/449

“And what happened that Perdita didn’t find

you that fast?” I asked.
He sat down on the cool grass, then laid down
until he could see the sky above him.
“Perdita didn’t want to come,” he said.
“Why?” I gasped.
“I wasn’t in a good place. I was an asshole to
the tenth degree. I was rude, offensive, and hated
everyone. And she saw that. Saw how I treated
people. Didn’t want to come to me, but the pull
was too strong, and in the end she did come, even
though she didn’t want to,” he said to the sky.
I looked down at him, but he was completely
oblivious to my gaze, instead staring at the sky,
contemplating memories that I couldn’t see.
“That’s sad,” I admitted, taking a seat beside
him.
I ran my hand down the leathery feeling
wings of the closest dragon and laughed when he
 141/449

started to make a sound that was perilously close

to a purr.
We sat like that in silence for a few long
minutes while he watched the clouds pass
overhead.
“Perdita got over it. But she didn’t give all
her tricks to me at first. Refused to teach me al-
most all of it. I had to work on it all on my own,
and I’m still not convinced that she isn’t keeping
things from me,” he admitted.
“Haven’t you proven yourself trustworthy
yet? I asked.
He sighed.
“She said, in the beginning, that I’d have to
earn every piece of information she had, and, ap-
parently, I’m not done earning it yet. I’m twenty
fucking eight, and I still feel like I’m that
nineteen-year-old shithead who was so lost he
couldn’t ever be found,” he closed his eyes.
 142/449

“Seems like you’ve turned your life around.

From what I’ve learned from Blythe, she loves
you. Your brothers love you. Your sister as well.
I don’t hear much about your mother, but I’m
sure I will eventually. You’re an amazing com-
puter whiz, and I haven’t seen a day that has
gone by that you haven’t come out here and spent
time with the little terrors. What is there to find?”
I asked.
He shrugged.
“Me. I still feel like I’m paying for sins that I
committed ten years ago. Perdita and my family
never let me forget that I used to be a fuck up.
But,” he placed his hands under his head. “Seems
Perdita’s finally happy that I chose correctly for
once.”
I cocked my head slightly to the side.
“Chose correctly?” I asked.
His eyes opened, and those beautiful green
orbs stared through my soul.
 143/449

“You. I chose you correctly,” he said.

Confusion clouded my features. “But I
thought you didn’t choose me?”
“I didn’t. You’re right. But according to her, I
have the correct attitude when it comes to you.
And, apparently, letting you choose the pace is
the right way to go about having a relationship
such as the one we have,” he informed me.
“Oh,” I said. “So you letting me call all the
shots made Perdita happy. Got it.”
“That first week that I came into my powers
were a nightmare. Keifer didn’t help me, either.
It was like I was all alone. I never saw Perdita
again for another six months, although I always
felt her close,” he said. “It was torture.”
“I read about the Meridian and how dragons
had to be around it to keep their eternal life. Is
that the same with you and her?” I asked. “Do
you have to be around her or you’ll die?”
 144/449

He shook his head. “No. But it’s uncomfort-

able. It’s like I have this well of knowledge, with
no way to tap into it. She centers me, and I center
her. It was a little bit of torture for us both when
she stayed away that long.”
I leaned down until I was leaning on his
strong, washboard abs, and stared at him until he
opened his eyes.
“You’re a good man, Nikolai. You’ve proven
that to me for months now. The majority of
which I wasn’t even awake. You’ve protected
me. Sheltered me. Saved me. In my book, it
doesn’t matter what you used to be. All that mat-
ters is what you are now,” I said. “You know I
used to be Amish, right?”
He nodded.
“I hated my life. Not that it was a bad life, per
se, but it wasn’t something I could see myself do-
ing for the rest of my life,” I said. “I woke up the
day of my sixteenth birthday, and knew I
wouldn’t be able to stay there anymore.
 145/449

Technically, I still had time to spread my wings,

so to speak, and then be baptized. However, after
my first ever movie, I realized I wasn’t going to
be able to do it anymore.
“I went wild. Did some questionable things
that I can’t really remember. Went to movies.
Parties. Drinking. Things I’m not very proud of
anymore. But I turned my life around. Became
who I wanted to be. And it looks like you’ve
done the same,” I said softly.
His eyes melted.
“Thank you,” he said.
I smiled down at him, then leaned forward
until my lips hovered over his.
“You made the right decision,” I whispered
softly.
My breath brushed over his lips, and he in-
haled deeply, almost as if he could pull me that
little bit closer so that my lips would touch; but it
wasn’t to be, sadly.
 146/449

Three dragons chose that moment to ambush

the both of us at once.
I rolled with the attack, crying out in mock
terror.
Nikolai did the same, but he was obviously
the larger target, because soon I was left by the
lone one who’d taken me down, and all three
worked on Nikolai; nipping, throwing their bod-
ies around and growling.
It continued for long minutes until Nikolai
was too tired to play any longer, causing him to
flop back on his back, lungs heaving for air.
“You’re good with them,” I said, moving
closer until our hips touched. Him facing one
way, me the other.
I breathed deeply, letting my feet tangle in
the grass.
I’d lost my boots sometime during the alter-
cation, and the grass felt cool against my bare
toes.
 147/449

Nikolai moved his head until it rested against

my foot, and I pinched his hair between two toes.
“Oww!” he said, jerking slightly.
I grinned.
“So how long are Keifer and Blythe going to
be gone?” I asked.
He shrugged, making the dragon on his chest
grumble at him for having his bed moved.
“I guess as soon as they find what they’re
searching for,” he finally said.
Apparently, they’d found what they were
searching for.
 Chapter 7
Nikolai is a weird combination
of ‘he’s so sweet, my parents
love him’ and ‘don’t ever fuck
with that guy, he’s a crazy
mother fucker.’
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
I opened my eyes to darkness, and a solid
massive male, who wasn’t Nikolai, standing over
me.
And I might, or might not have, reacted
badly.
Out of sheer instinct, I launched myself off
the bed, then hovered there in the corner.
Then imagined myself being protected by
Nikolai, and suddenly, I was.
 149/449

Nikolai appeared as if out of thin air, and he

was spitting mad.
He launched himself at my unwanted in-
truder. The two of them went down in a pile of
big limbs, strong punches, and bellowing roars.
“What the fuck is going on here?” the man
that looked like death reincarnated, screamed.
Nikolai didn’t talk, only kept attacking.
Except, the more I looked, the less and less
real it seemed.
Because Nikolai wasn’t doing much more
than distracting the intruder, stepping in front of
him, knocking him down.
It wasn’t anything like the fight I’d seen last
night.
What the fuck was going on, indeed.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement
in the doorway, and looked to see a crowd
huddled there, Nikolai in the very front.
 150/449

He was looking at the scene with an im-

pressed air about him, and suddenly, I wasn’t
scared any longer.
Which meant the illusion I’d unwittingly cre-
ated dissipated in a cloud of smoke.
“What are you doing out there?” I asked
Nikolai in confusion.
Then understanding dawned as he grinned
and watched Keifer stand up and brush off his
shirt before turning to me.
Why he was hovering in the doorway in a
dark room scaring the ever loving crap out of me
while I was sleeping was beyond me.
It wasn’t Nikolai who answered.
“I was letting your cat back inside, she
wouldn’t shut up,” Keifer explained.
“Ahhh,” I said. “How’d she get outside?”
 151/449

Nikolai shook his head and finally breached

the room, walking to the bed, and taking a seat
like there weren’t fifteen people in the room.
Well, more like five, but who was counting?
He was wearing exactly what he’d had on last
night when we’d gotten into bed, which wasn’t
much of anything, corroborating his story.
The night before, Nikolai and I had fallen
asleep in his bed, talking about this and that.
We’d…or at least I’d…had a great time.
We’d stayed up until the wee hours of the
morning, talking about dragon riders. My life
with my parents. Nikolai’s life before he’d come
into his powers. What I wanted to do with my
life.
And sometime between my explanation and
his offer, I’d fallen asleep.
Only to be woken up so rudely by the be-
hemoth standing at the end of the bed, glaring
 152/449

down at me like I’d outsmarted him, and I was an

interesting new toy.
“Hi,” I said, waving.
“You have a mating tattoo,” the man said.
“That’s very observant of you, Keifer,”
Nikolai said dryly.
Keifer turned his glare to his brother.
“How long has this been going on?” he
challenged.
Nikolai grinned. “Since you left.”
Blythe, who’d been standing in the doorway,
gasped.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Blythe said
accusingly.
I held up my hands. “I was just trying not to
freak out. He said to give it time, so I did that by
not talking about it…at all.”
 153/449

Blythe’s lips tightened and she turned to re-

gard Keifer, revealing a small bump that I hadn’t
seen before.
“You’re pregnant?” I screeched.
Blythe blushed.
“You’re accusing me of not talking to you,
and you have something this huge, and you didn’t
tell me?” I yelled, standing now.
“I’m not huge!” Blythe screeched back.
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling.
“That’s not what I said, and you know it,” I
stated.
She furrowed her nose at me.
“So…how was the sex?” Blythe asked.
Nikolai coughed.
“I…” I hesitated. “We haven’t…uhhh…had
sex yet.”
Blythe’s mouth dropped open.
 154/449

“You…then how…you have his mark!” She

pointed at the tattoo.
I looked down, only now realizing that I was
practically naked, only in a bra and a pair of
panties.
“Shit,” I said, standing up and reaching for
the blanket that was on the bed. “Why are y’all
still in here while I’m naked?”
“You’re not naked,” Keifer argued.
Nikolai grabbed his brother in a choke hold
and took him out of the room, leaving only me
and Blythe.
“You’re my sister for real now!” Blythe said,
jumping on the bed and rolling until she was ly-
ing on the made side of the bed.
I blinked, laughing under my breath as I real-
ized that Nikolai had made the bed around me in-
stead of waking me up.
“I haven’t decided to actually accept the mat-
ing yet,” I hedged.
 155/449

Blythe gave me an eye roll.

“If you’re bearing the mark…something I’m
still not sure how you’re doing if you haven’t had
sex…then you’re his and he’s yours. No ifs, ands
or buts. Trust me on this, you can’t run,” she
said.
Then she did something with her fingers, and
all of a sudden a fireball formed in her hands.
I gasped.
“Your hand’s on fire!” I screeched.
Apparently, screeching was the only octave I
could handle this morning.
She looked at me curiously.
“You made my mate fight a figment of his
imagination…and you’re saying something about
me holding a ball of fire?” she asked.
I blinked.
Now that she put it like that, it did sound odd
that I would question her use of a magical ability.
 156/449

“I don’t even know how I did that,” I said.

Blythe smiled.
“The first night I started exhibiting powers, I
caught my panties on fire,” she said.
I waited for the punch line, but there wasn’t
one.
“You’re…what?” I asked in confusion.
She nodded as if I was in on some insider’s
scoop.
“I really did. But I didn’t burn my skin. But
I’ve miraculously never had to shave again since
I burned off the hair. It’s been
rather…interesting. The major thing is that I can
hear other people’s thoughts…when I want to,”
she added quickly when she saw the worried look
on my face.
I visibly relaxed.
“Good,” I said. “Do you think you could
make it so I didn’t have to shave anymore?”
 157/449

She gave me a droll look.

“You’re weird,” she said. “Tell me how you
and Nikolai got mated without actually fucking.”
I curled my lip at her. “Don’t say ‘fucking.’
It’s crude,” I said. “As for the ‘mating’ part of
our ‘mating’, which I’m still not sure about; ap-
parently the tattoo can appear without actual in-
tercourse. Mine appeared after he touched me.
When his sister was working on me, apparently I
became very near death, and the mating was
forced to save my life. I drew a monumental
amount of energy from Nikolai that was able to
heal me physically. Mentally, it took a little bit
longer…or so I’m told.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Do you want to fuck
him?”
I glared at her and she held up her hands.
“Sorry,” she said. “Keifer has a dirty mouth.”
I sighed and finally sat down, letting the sheet
I’d grabbed in my haste to cover up drop as I did.
 158/449

I reached for the shirt Nikolai had taken off

the night before and shrugged it on before lying
down next to her.
“I want to,” I said.
“Then why don’t you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I’m nervous. I want to be with
him, but to have it forced upon us makes me feel
like it’s wrong. What if he resents me? What if I
resent him?”
“Trust me on this,” she said. “You won’t re-
sent each other. Everything you’re feeling now
will all be clear after, and you’ll feel even more
deeply and strongly for each other.
I sighed.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
She jumped up.
“Me, too!” she said, clapping her hands.
 159/449

Then she jumped forward, tossed me a pair of

sweatpants that were on the floor, and said, “Get
them on.”
Needless to say, I ‘got them on’.
They were too big.
They were, of course, made for a man that
was six foot three and two hundred twenty
pounds.
Not me at five foot six inches and a hundred
and thirty five pounds.
Well, a hundred and thirty five pounds when
I was still working out. There was no telling what
I weighed now.
Blythe walked with me to the kitchen, seem-
ingly having no problem navigating the hallways
like I had.
We were almost there when we heard a com-
motion that had us both running.
“Fuck!” came the booming bellow of Keifer.
 160/449

We were in the kitchen within moments, and

I froze when I saw Keifer as pale as a white
sheet.
“What’s going on?” I cried, seeing Nikolai
not in much better of a position.
He was leaning heavily on the counter,
Keifer’s hand wrapped around his bicep.
He had his head leaning against the cool
granite countertop as something was exchanged
between them.
“Hurry, put your hand on him,” Blythe
dragged me to Keifer.
Except my mind was all on Nikolai, as worry
poured through me. Was he okay?
The moment I touched the skin of Keifer’s
arm, lightning jumped from him to me.
My skin seemed to pulse as whatever power
communication between the two males poured
into me as well. My skin felt hot, and my eyes
 161/449

burned like they did at the end of a long day of

working outside under the sun.
My breathing came in short, ragged gasps,
and my eyes inadvertently closed as I, too,
slumped onto the counter.
It was like when I was sixteen and accident-
ally touched an exposed wire from a box fan I
had plugged into the wall. It was a distinct buzz
of energy that jolted up my arm and shot straight
to my heart…only multiplied times a thousand.
I could feel my residual aches and pains flow-
ing away.
My hearing and vision became sharper as my
knees grew weaker.
Pictures started to flow through my brain of a
tow-headed boy running after a much larger man
that was carrying a cane.
Then another where two teenagers fought,
ones that looked impressively like much younger
versions of Keifer and Nikolai.
 162/449

Then there was the moment Nikolai first laid

eyes on Perdita.
The moment he realized that he needed to
change his life to be a better man.
Then more of Nikolai excelling at using his
powers, fighting more with his brothers.
Swinging his sister around in his arms. Cooking
with his mother. Throwing the football to a
bunch of smaller dragons.
And finally…the first time he saw me.
How he felt when he first laid eyes on my
broken body. How tenderly he’d held me when
he’d finally gotten me away from there. How
he’d cared for me, day in and day out. The mo-
ment that the tattoo appeared on both of our bod-
ies. How he’d take his shirt off after a long day of
wearing it, and carried it down for me to wear.
The moment he placed the shirt next to my
face, I’d calm instantly.
And I finally knew.
 163/449

He was mine, and I was his.

I opened my eyes, eyes full of wonder, as I
stared at the man at my side.
“What was that?” I breathed.
He grimaced.
“What was what?” he asked, standing up like
an old man.
“All of that,” I said.
My brain wasn’t working right. Little zips of
power went into my fingers where I still touched
him, causing me to twitch every now and then.
I watched him now, not as the man I was
stuck with (even though I wanted to be stuck
with him), but as a different man. A man that I
was in love with, and I never knew it’d
happened.
Sometime in the last couple of days, he’d
wormed himself into my heart, digging in deep,
 164/449

and making a spot for himself there.

Permanently.
I studied his face. The scar that ran across the
bridge of his nose, knowing exactly how he’d
gotten it, even though I’d never worked up the
courage to ask.
I saw the beautiful, silky brown hair. The
olive green eyes that had a smidge of honey
brown encircling his irises. The beautiful lips that
were a stunning shade of red. The slightly poin-
ted out ears. The beautifully defined chest.
His tattoo that matched mine.
The abs that looked like they should be illegal
in forty-nine states. The way he had deep ridges
that formed a V to his bottom half.
And I fell in love. I fell in love so deep and
hard that I would never be able to dig my way
out.
He was mine.
And I was his.
 165/449

And I saw the moment he saw me realize it,

because those beautiful greenish brown eyes of
his flared, his pupils dilating until they took up
the majority of his eyes.
His arms tensed. Abs flexed.
“That was my life,” he said quietly.
“I know,” I said back just as quietly. “What
happened?”
“Someone came into power. Keifer is King of
the Dragon Riders; when a dragon rider does
come into their powers, he feels it. All the excess
energy that’s given off the dragon rider can’t
handle is shot back to him by some cosmic wave
in the universe. He then distributes that power,
first to himself, and each person he’s bonded to,
either by blood or blood bond,” he said. “I didn’t
realize, though, that I could pass it on to my mate
seeing as you’re not directly bonded to him in
any way. This mating business is still new to us.”
 166/449

“Yeah,” Keifer said, picking himself off the

ground. “I’ve only gone through that three times
now, and it hasn’t gotten easier.”
“It was faster this time, though,” Blythe said.
Keifer and Nikolai snorted.
“And it didn’t leave you on your ass this
time. Only your knees,” Blythe continued.
I smiled, sensing a sore subject when I heard
one.
Blythe had a way to badger you to death. She
was awesome like that.
“Shut it, woman,” Keifer growled. “Now
cook me something to eat. Suddenly, I’m fuckin’
starving.”
“Hmm,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Meat.”
“What kind of meat?
“Good meat. Manly meat,” he teased.
 167/449

Blythe raised her brows.

“Steak? Chicken?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Anything, as long as it comes
from an animal that has legs.”
“I’m out of everything but eggs,” Nikolai
said. “We haven’t gone to the grocery store since
you left.”
“Well, fuck,” Keifer said. “Guess it’s break-
fast. What about bacon?”
Nikolai shook his head. “That’s gone, too.”
“I know how to make pancakes,” I offered.
Keifer nodded. “That’ll be okay, I guess. Do
you cook any good?”
I shrugged. “Better than Blythe.”
A dish towel hit me in the face, and I
laughed.
“Well? It’s the truth,” I said.
Blythe stuck her tongue out.
 168/449

And I started cooking, Blythe at my side of-

fering to stir or add ingredients when I needed
her to.
“So, tell me what happened today. You said
in your message that you were attacked,” Keifer
said, taking up a spot at the counter.
Nikolai sat down beside him, and they dis-
cussed what had happened earlier in the day.
“You think it was her uncle?” Keifer asked,
gesturing to me.
“No. It had nothing to do with him, I don’t
think, and everything to do with her uncle’s
cronies,” Nikolai said. “They clocked me the
minute I got out of our territory, so they at least
tracked us to our line but couldn’t see any further
past it.”
“Well, that’s just fucking perfect, isn’t it?”
Keifer growled in frustration.
 Chapter 8
The strongest walls are not
made of stone. They are made
of brave men.
-Fact of Life
Brooklyn
I tiptoed out of the bedroom that Nikolai had
stashed me in hours ago.
My eyes darted first left, then right, as I
slowly eased out of the door.
I froze when my cat followed me, but
breathed a sigh of relief when she continued
down the hallway in the opposite direction of
where I was going.
I couldn’t sleep.
In fact, I was so not sleepy that I could prob-
ably stand to burn a few hundred calories.
 170/449

And I had just the way to do it as I eased

down the hallway towards Nikolai’s room.
I pushed the door open on a silent swing,
straining my eyes to see inside…I couldn’t.
So I slowly moved towards the bed and kept
my hands out in front of me to stop myself from
taking any headers without seeing them first.
A table bumped into my right knee, and I
cursed softly.
“Shit,” I whispered nearly silently.
“I was wondering when you’d finally get in
here,” Nikolai said, amusement tinging his voice.
I squeaked.
“God!” I gasped. “You just scared the crap
out of me.”
He chuckled darkly, and suddenly I was
yanked down.
 171/449

I sprawled ungracefully across a very hard

body and instantly went soft as I burrowed my
face deep into Nikolai’s neck.
“You were waiting for me?” I asked softly.
“Mmm-hmm,” he rumbled.
His chest vibrated with his words, and I
nearly moaned.
“Then why didn’t you come to me?” I asked.
“I don’t want to push you,” he answered.
“Push me into what?” I pushed.
He sighed.
“We both know where this is going,” he
answered honestly. “We’re just waiting for you
to get ready.”
I swallowed thickly, went up on my elbows
and stared down at where I thought his face was.
“I am ready,” I said nervously.
 172/449

His strong, thick fingers burrowed deep into

my hair, and I closed my eyes as his lips met the
sensitive skin of my neck.
“You sure?” he asked.
I nodded, and he growled in reply.
“Good,” he said. “I don’t think I could’ve
held out for much longer. Your visions are killing
me.”
I blinked.
“What?” I asked.
I felt his lips curl into a smile against my
neck.
“You’ve been projecting visions at me. And
they all center on me and you…most of the time
we’re naked,” he answered.
I gasped.
“What?” I asked.
Had I done that?
 173/449

Holy shit!
I’d, of course, had daydreams about him, but
never in a million years would I have thought
that I was projecting those visions out towards
him.
“I’m…I don’t know what to say,” I stuttered.
He chuckled.
“Not your fault. I needed to teach you how to
handle them first. Without the knowledge, you’ll
just keep doing it unwittingly. But I found that I
quite liked the visions…and I didn’t want you to
freak out without being in the right mind frame
first,” he said.
I sighed a breath of relief.
“Good,” I said, leaning my head down to his.
His lips whispered against mine, baby soft.
“You smell so good,” he growled.
“You always do. The scent of you clings to
me, making me think about you even when
 174/449

you’re not here,” I admitted. “My mind never

strays far away from you.”
“That’s how I want it,” he admitted, both of
his hands moving up to my face to hold me in
place.
Then he really was kissing me.
Deeply. Sensually.
I moaned into his mouth, eyes closing in rap-
ture as my tongue played along his.
“God,” I breathed.
“No. Just yours. Nikolai. Your mate,” he said
as he pulled back. Then went in for more.
My hands went underneath his shoulder
blades, and I curled my fingers until they were
resting on top of his shoulder.
My panty clad pussy was resting on the solid
expanse of his belly, but I could feel a faint prod
from his lower half at the bottom of my thigh,
and my body responded to it.
 175/449

“We need condoms.”

“I don’t have any,” he moaned, dropping
back away from me.
His head hit the back of the headboard, and I
winced.
“I…I didn’t think this through very far,” I
admitted.
“Me neither. I thought with us not having
them here, it’d be easier for me to stay away
from you. Not to take that final step until you
were ready,” he explained.
I bit my lip as I counted days inside my head.
I’d had my period and had finished it just two
days ago, making me think that maybe it
wouldn’t have any repercussions if we did it right
now.
Tomorrow we’d get condoms.
Tomorrow, I decided.
 176/449

I moved lower, scooting until I was between

his legs, and my mouth could reach his nipples.
I ran my tongue along the small, tight peaks,
letting my teeth nip the bud every few flicks as I
did.
“Shit,” he hissed, letting his fingers tangle in
my hair.
I switched sides, repeating the process.
His hands tightened in my hair, fists clench-
ing and unclenching as he tried valiantly not to
direct me where he wanted me to go.
“What do you want, Nik?” I questioned.
He growled.
“You. I want you. I want you on your back,
with your legs around my shoulders. I want you
on all fours, with my dick in your ass. I want you
on your knees, with my cock in your mouth. I
want you every which way I can get you,” he
answered abruptly, tumbling me to the side so he
was on top of me. “But mostly, right now, I want
 177/449

to be inside your hot, sweet pussy so bad I can

taste it. Unfortunately, I can’t fucking have that.”
When he started to get up, I wrapped both of
my legs around his hips and pulled him closer
until the cock in question ran along the length of
my pussy.
“Then take me,” I ordered.
He hissed through his teeth.
“I can’t. I can’t do that to you. What if…”
He stopped when I pressed my hand over his
mouth.
“My uncle’s proof that we don’t have forever.
I can’t live like that anymore. I want you. I want
this. We’ll deal with everything else…later,” I
insisted.
I could feel the stillness in his body. Practic-
ally see his mind working as he tried to work out
what to do.
And, in the end, he chose me.
 178/449

“We’re so fucked,” he said, then pulled my

panties off of me with one vicious yank.
I jolted with the force of it, my legs falling
wide as he sank his hips between mine and
rubbed himself along my exposed sex.
The hard ridge of his cock was somewhat
frightening, but he quickly made me forget about
it when he shoved my shirt up over my head and
latched his mouth onto my breast.
I arched, trying to get him to take more of my
breast into his mouth, but he pushed me down by
placing one giant hand on my stomach.
I moaned.
Seemed like I was doing a lot of that, but I
couldn’t help it. He was making me feel things I
wasn’t used to feeling, which meant my brain
wasn’t processing like it was usually capable of.
“Nikolai,” I pleaded. “Please.”
I yanked on his hair to get him to move…to
do anything but torture me, but he either didn’t
 179/449

care that he was torturing me…or he didn’t real-

ize it.
Either way, I was on the verge of getting
vicious.
Luckily, he stopped the delicious torture and
moved down my body, only making me realize
that he was swapping one torture for another.
I bit my lip so hard that I drew blood the mo-
ment his lips latched onto my clit.
I’d never had that done before.
Hell, I hadn’t had half the things he’d done to
me tonight done before in four sexual encounters.
I was practically a virgin to all things sexual,
except for the actual act itself.
And the feel of Nikolai’s tongue darting in
and out of my entrance had me gasping for
breath.
“Oh, fuck,” I breathed, closing my eyes as he
started to play a finger lightly up and down the
 180/449

crease of my ass, not quite peeking into that deep

forbidden place, but teasing me with the
possibility.
“Has anyone ever had you here, before?” he
rumbled against my clit.
I shook my head on the pillow.
“No,” I moaned.
“Good. I’ll be the first,” he growled. “And
the last.”
I agreed wholeheartedly.
How anyone would ever leave this man’s bed
was beyond me.
I wasn’t naïve. I knew he wasn’t a vir-
gin…but he would’ve had to practically kick me
out of his bed to get me to leave if he gave half
his other conquests this type of treatment.
A sharp slap on the side of my ass had me
gasping, and my eyes opening wide.
 181/449

Then my heart rate picked up as I looked

around at my new world.
I wasn’t seeing in color, per se. I was seeing
in shades of colors.
The room around me was a deep solid
purplish black while where Nikolai was between
my thighs and colored in shades of orange, yel-
lows, and reds.
“Don’t think about me with other women,” he
said, stretching his tongue out to flick just the
very tip of my clit.
I swallowed and nodded.
“What am I seeing?” I asked, concern evident
in my voice.
“I don’t know,” he growled. “What are you
seeing?”
He ran his tongue up the inside of my thigh
until he reached my hip bone, then nipped me
sharply before moving back up again.
 182/449

“Colors. Different shades of colors,” I ex-

plained breathily.
He was now at my tits, which he glided over
with smooth, single-minded focus.
“Infrared. I can make myself see heat signa-
tures…and obviously you’ve picked up on that
power, too,” he explained.
I closed my eyes, suddenly not caring about
anything but the way it felt to have his cock lined
up at my entrance.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
I nodded, biting my lip as I did.
“Yes,” I hissed.
He didn’t waste any time thrusting inside.
He filled me only half way before he had to
back out.
Then wasted no time thrusting back inside
again.
 183/449

My man was anything but a procrastinator.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck yes. You feel so
tight around my cock.”
I bit my lip, trying to keep the wail that
wanted loose out of my throat.
He leaned down and pressed his lips against
mine, giving me my first taste of me.
It was salty and a little bit sweet, making me
deepen the kiss.
He hitched one of his arms underneath one of
my legs and held it in place while he started to
really thrust hard inside of me.
In and out.
In and out.
Solid strength and sinewy muscle meeting the
softness of my ass and thighs.
I gloried in the way my pussy stretched for
him, stretching around him like I was made to fit
him and only him.
 184/449

I would’ve never thought it possible to take

such a large cock into such a tiny entrance, but
Nikolai proved me wrong as he finally bottomed
out completely inside of me.
His wiry pubic hairs rasped deliciously
against my engorged clit, making the moan fi-
nally slip free of my lips.
“Yesssss,” I yelled. “Harder.”
He gave it to me harder, filling me up and
emptying me almost as fast as I could think it.
In and out.
Hard and tight.
My pussy clamped down on his invading
cock, and suddenly I was no longer in this world
anymore. I was skyrocketed to some alternate
universe where only orgasms of this caliber
existed.
“Yes. Oh, God, yes!” I shrieked.
 185/449

Nikolai grunted, his cock twitching as his

own release followed mine.
He cursed as he tried in vain to pull out, but
my pussy was having none of that.
It seemed to cling to his dick, refusing to let it
go for anything.
He filled me up, hot spurts of cum filling me
so completely that I wasn’t sure I could ever get
completely free of him.
He growled, then collapsed on my chest, giv-
ing me his weight as his strength left him.
I held him, wrapping my arms around his
neck as I breathed in his scent.
My heart rate calmed, and I finally allowed
myself time to think.
“We’re bad,” I said after a while.
He chuckled and took me with him as he
rolled, allowing me to come to a rest directly on
top of him.
 186/449

“Yeah, we’re bad,” he agreed.

 Chapter 9
Cut myself shaving, and all I
have are Hello Kitty Band-
Aids. My balls look silly.
-E-card
Nikolai
My brother gave me a smirk as I walked into
the kitchen the next morning.
“You missed our sparring session,” he mur-
mured around a sip of coffee.
I grunted.
“Sure did,” I agreed, walking around the kit-
chen island to the coffee pot, and the coffee cups
above it.
I pulled out one that said, ‘I’m a bear without
coffee’ and filled it up to the brim with hot, re-
freshing, life altering coffee.
 188/449

“You look almost…happy,” he surveyed.

I shrugged, even though I was that. Happy.
I was so happy I could barely breathe without
letting out an excited chuckle.
I was acting like a fifteen-year-old girl, but
I’d been waiting for last night for long, long
months.
“So you wanna make that up now, or later?”
he asked me.
I looked at my watch.
“Now. I have some work I need to do later
this afternoon,” I explained, leaning my hips
against the counter in much the same position as
Keifer had taken up.
He nodded, sipping his own coffee.
“So, why are you here so fast?” I asked.
“Wasn’t the purpose of this to have some time
away from here because it wasn’t safe?”
 189/449

He sighed and placed his coffee cup on the

ground.
“I tried, I really did. But I couldn’t stay away.
My mind was screaming at me that it wasn’t safe
for you or me, for us, not to be together. So I got
the shit I needed figured out with the archives,
then got back,” he explained.
“What about Mom and Skylar. Farrow?” I
asked.
I guess I should’ve thought more about this
last night, but I’d been preoccupied.
Now, though, it wasn’t lost on me that they
weren’t here.
“I left them in Alaska at the new reserve,”
Keifer answered.
My brows rose in response.
“With who?” I asked.
He grinned.
“The boys.”
 190/449

I laughed.
Derek, Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian and Dorian
were the ‘boys’ he was speaking of.
They were a rough bunch of dragon riders
that had formed a tight knit group with Keifer
and I.
We were now what you would call a ‘motor-
cycle club’ in the real world. But in our dragon
rider world, they were my brothers.
The men that I would trust with my
back…and my mate.
Speaking of my mate, I sensed her before she
actually showed in the open doorway.
I turned to stare at the entranceway and
smiled when I first caught sight of her.
“What’s with that look on your face…?”
Keifer asked. “Oh.”
I watched as Brooklyn, in only one of my t-
shirts, walked around the counter and walked
 191/449

straight into my arms, hitting me and making me

nearly spill my coffee.
She buried her face into my arm and sighed.
“Good morning,” I rumbled.
“Mornin’,” she murmured.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
She shook her head instead of answering.
A sound from the doorway had me turning to
see Blythe, in much the same state as Brooklyn
was in, walking in like she had lead weights tied
around her feet.
She walked straight to Keifer and buried her
face into his chest.
I shared a look with my brother, one of com-
miseration and happiness, all jumbled into one.
“So what are you ladies up to today?” I
asked.
 192/449

“I’m taking Brooklyn down to the hospital

and introducing her to the staff,” Blythe
answered.
“Honey, we don’t have any staff at the hos-
pital yet. Who’re you going to introduce her
to?” Keifer asked, sounding confused.
Blythe blushed, burying her face into his
chest again without answering.
“You’re going to see Angus,” Keifer guessed.
Ahh, that made sense.
Angus used to be my father’s bonded dragon
and had lost a wing trying to protect my father
from dying.
He hadn’t been able to do it, and Angus had
been a bitter dragon ever since.
Or, at least, he had been until Blythe had
come into the picture.
 193/449

Blythe was carrying a king inside her womb,

and the moment she got close enough to Angus,
the baby and Angus had bonded.
It’d been a surprise to us all.
That never happened, not even with Keifer.
Angus was a cantankerous old bastard, and
the only person that’d been able to get through
his thick shell was Blythe.
But I wasn’t so sure that she needed to intro-
duce Brooklyn to Angus just yet.
“Blythe,” I started.
Brooklyn pinched my side.
“Ouch!” I shied away from her touch. “What
was that for?” I asked as I rubbed my side to re-
lieve the burn.
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do,”
she said. “And I want to go meet him. She said
he was lonely.”
I tightened my mouth.
 194/449

“He’s not lonely. He’s a jacka…” Brooklyn

covered my mouth.
“Shhh,” she hissed. “Blythe said he could
hear really well, and I don’t want him to hear you
and eat your face.”
I snorted, sticking my tongue out to lick her
hand.
She squealed.
“Ewww,” she said, rubbing her hand down
the shirt that was covering her thighs.
I grinned.
“I’ve got to do a little work this morning, and
it’ll probably take me into the afternoon if I’m
lucky. If I’m not, it’ll be this evening. If not into
the night. It’s a new account, though, and I need
to do the first part myself before I pass it off to
my team,” I said.
Her brows furrowed.
“You have a team?” she asked in confusion.
 195/449

I grinned.
“Yeah, I do.”
Keifer snorted.
“I think what she’s getting at, bro, is she
doesn’t know what exactly you do,” Keifer sup-
plied helpfully.
I frowned.
“I know you own a computer business that
does stuff with computers,” she admitted.
I nodded.
“I own a computer business,” I told her.
Keifer and Blythe both snorted this time.
I sighed.
“He owns Dragon Techware,” Keifer
supplied.
Brooklyn gasped and turned around, her
mouth opened wide.
 196/449

“But that’s the biggest software company in

the world!” she cried.
I grimaced.
“And the government is trying to sue you!”
she continued.
“The government is trying to sue you?”
Blythe and Keifer asked in unison.
I brought my fists up to my eyes and rubbed
as if that’d help with the tiredness.
It didn’t.
“I’m not being sued by the government.
They’re pissed because I refused to do business
with them,” I explained.
“You refused the government? You can’t do
that!” Keifer said. “You’ll bring attention to us.”
I turned a glare onto my brother.
“When have I ever…and I do mean
ever…brought anything to our doorstep?” I
asked.
 197/449

“When we were working with Dad when we

were teenagers, you hacked into the school’s
computers and changed everyone’s grades that
you hated to fifties and below; the school came to
the shop to question you,” Keifer said.
I shook my head. “They came to question me
because I was on the computer team and thought
I might be able to help them solve it. They wer-
en’t here because of me, per se.”
Brooklyn and Blythe giggled, causing me to
give each of them a wink in turn.
“You were just mad because I changed your
grades, too,” I said.
Keifer glared.
“Fine,” I sighed and took a sip of my now
lukewarm coffee. “They wanted me to limit who
I sold my software to. They were upset that
everyone had access to the kind of programs that
they had to pay a small fortune for, and they were
politely requesting that I stop selling. And when I
 198/449

refused to do that, they offered to buy me out,

which I declined. Now they’re trying to sue me
over some bullshit excuse that won’t hold up in
court. My lawyers don’t even think I’ll need to
show up in court for it.”
Keifer pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Since when did all of this shit start?” he
asked with a barely contained amount of control.
“A couple of months,” I said.
I wasn’t going to lie to Keifer.
It wasn’t my fault that he was exceptionally
unobservant.
It was just my luck that my brother fell in
love and stopped shoving his nose into my busi-
ness every chance he got.
“Let’s go spar,” Keifer said. “I find that I
need to let off a little aggression.”
Blythe and Brooklyn took that as their cue to
go get ready, and Keifer and I headed to the
 199/449

training room that was nearer to his side of the

estate, rather than mine.
“So you didn’t tell her that you develop
weapons, I noticed,” Keifer said.
I grimaced.
“She had a lot to take in with the whole mat-
ing thing. I find that most people are intimidated
by all of my businesses, so I try to not throw it all
out there at once if I can help it,” I explained.
Keifer nodded as he held the door to the gym
open for me.
The gym had the familiar blue mats ranging
from one side of the place to the other except for
on one side where all of the weight equipment
was located.
“Sooo…” Keifer said. “Now that we’re alone.
Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”
I walked over to the bench that sat along one
wall and dropped down onto it, picking up the
tape and lining my hands and knuckles with it.
 200/449

Couldn’t break any knuckles, or skin any-

thing today.
I had too much shit to do to deal with any of
that.
Not that it would last for long…but, just in
case, I took precautions.
Keifer didn’t bother.
I looked over at the door to the gym one more
time before I turned back to Keifer.
“They found us too easily. The moment I got
out of our territory, it was another fifteen miles
into the heart of Dallas before they caught up
with us. And it wasn’t because they were waiting.
They were actively searching for us,” I said.
“One, how did they find us so fast? Two, how did
they know when to look? Three, if they were
somehow tracking us, or waiting for us, how did
they conceal themselves?”
 201/449

Keifer gestured for me to stand, and we star-

ted to spar, not actually going all out yet, but just
warming up.
This was something I’d missed since he’d
been gone.
I used him to keep my skills up, seeing as he
was just as deadly as I was.
We both had a different set of skills, and each
of us mastered different fighting styles.
Then each of us would fight the other, and
we’d learn new skills to adapt to either type.
I’d become lax since he’d left, and I could see
it mostly in the way my breathing was faster, and
my heart rate was skyrocketing.
“Getting slow,” Keifer taunted.
“I’ll show you slow, old man,” I said, duck-
ing and feinting to the left.
He reacted, dropping his shoulder, and I took
advantage by throwing a punch to his face.
 202/449

“Fuck!” Keifer growled as blood poured from

his nose.
He didn’t react other than that. He was easily
keeping up with me even though he bled like a
stuck pig.
We were going at each other hard, and I was
going blow for blow with him when I suddenly
dropped to the ground as agony burned up my
leg.
I was held there for long moments as I tried
to get my wits about myself, and I knew instantly
that something had happened to Brooklyn.
“Motherfucker,” I wheezed.
Keifer offered me a hand up, and I hastily
stood while yanking up my pant leg.
There, at the base of my ankle, were two twin
marks, where what looked like two sets of fangs
pierced the bony part of my ankle.
Mother.
 203/449

Fucker.
“We gotta go,” I said hurriedly, hobbling as I
ran/limped out of the gym.
“What happened?” Keifer asked.
“I think Brooklyn was bitten by a snake,” I
uttered hurriedly.
Keifer blanched.
That was one of the drawbacks of having
land. With land came snakes. And with snakes
came the potential of getting bitten.
I ran through the pain, making it down to the
pond even as I listened to Keifer hanging back
because he was trying to make Skylar understand
what was happening over the phone.
I made it down to the pond in time to see
Blythe running towards us.
She froze when she saw me, then turned
around and started running back toward the pond
 204/449

where I could see Angus crouching down next to

Brooklyn.
Brooklyn was crying, dark streaks ran down
her cheeks from where her mascara was running
with her tears.
“It hurts,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked as I made it to
her side. “You’ll be okay. I know it hurts right
now, but the healing will start to take place…”
A dragon’s magic will help heal the body, but
it only repairs. If there’s something that destroys
the body’s cells before the repairing can begin,
then there’s more at work there than a dragon’s
magic can handle, Angus said.
Keifer nodded.
“That’s what Skylar said, too. We’ll have to
take her to the hospital,” Keifer agreed.
“Shit,” I said. “What could get worse?”
 205/449

You know that saying that says ‘it can al-

ways get worse?’ It’s something that nobody
should say aloud. Why? Because if you do, then
there’s a possibility that it can, indeed, get worse.
“I think that the snake was being con-
trolled…” Blythe said. “By something similar to
a dragon rider.”
“Controlled by what?” Keifer asked.
Then realization dawned on me.
The Purists couldn’t find us…couldn’t pierce
through the veil to get to us.
But animals could.
I’d made sure of that with my own two hands.
I felt sick to my stomach at having put my
mate and family in jeopardy.
“They’re working with fucking dragon
riders?” I asked in shock. “Are you fucking kid-
ding me?”
Keifer rubbed the bridge of his nose.
 206/449

“How do you know it was a dragon rider?”

Keifer asked Blythe.
“Well, it had to be something, because that
was no ordinary snake,” Blythe said. “Slithered
right past me from clear across the field. Angus
clocked it before it even started moving, and
stepped in the way. The snake moved fast around
Angus before he could even react, heading
straight toward Brooklyn like it was a homing
missile angling for one person, and one person
only. Brooklyn.”
“What happened to the snake?” Keifer asked
as I slowly scooped Brooklyn up into my arms.
“Angus ate it,” Brooklyn smiled for the first
time since I’d arrived two minutes ago.
I leaned down and kissed her head, turning
around to see Perdita land not but five feet from
us all.
Let’s go, she said, offering her tail to me.
 207/449

I nodded and walked towards her, climbing

up her tail like one would a hill.
She helped us up to her back and we rose at
the same time Declan, Keifer’s dragon, landed
beside him.
He and Blythe rose almost as fast as Perdita
and I did.
“Wait!” I said, halting our forward move-
ment. “If the Purists really had something to do
with this, we can’t just go flying in there without
a plan. They’re going to be ready for us the mo-
ment we cross over the border. We need to put up
a veil,” I said to Perdita.
Perdita shook slightly, vibrating with pent up
energy as what I said penetrated her rage fueled
brain.
You’re right, she agreed.
I could no longer see Keifer anymore. He had
the ability to cloak himself.
My power wasn’t such as his.
 208/449

I could ‘cloak’ to an extent, yes, but it was

nothing like Declan and Keifer could do.
Perdita, however, had learned to adapt, and
she could make anyone see what she wanted
them to see.
Which was why, in the next moment, she
made it seem like we were nothing more than a
bird flying through the air.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The ride to the hospital was quick and
efficient.
At one point, we passed over the border
where the land seemed to ‘disappear’ and I
thought I saw movement below, but I couldn’t be
quite sure.
We went to the furthest hospital in hopes that
if the Purists did bring forces to the hospitals,
then they’d check the closer ones first.
 209/449

Perdita landed at the helipad, and I had to

thank my lucky stars that we were able to land
there since a helicopter followed right behind us.
I waved to Keifer as I went in, and he flashed
only briefly to me before he disappeared once
again, set to recon the building in hope that no
enemies followed us, as well as to prevent any
from coming in if he could.
I walked straight into the ER and moved up
to the first person I saw, which happened to be a
security guard.
“Sir,” I said.
The man turned, surprised at me just showing
up. Then blinked at me as I held a getting-more-
incoherent-by-the-second Brooklyn in my arms.
“Yes?” he asked, moving out of his little
office.
“My wife was bitten by a rattlesnake,” I
offered without preamble.
He blanched.
 210/449

“Come with me,” he said, directing me to a

big brown door.
Brooklyn didn’t protest being my wife.
What she did protest, however, was me trying
to place her on the gurney.
“When was she bitten?” a doctor asked after
the security guard led him into the room.
“About half an hour ago,” I admitted.
Although I knew it wouldn’t look like it was
only a half hour.
The wound was already healed.
What wasn’t healed, however, was the poison
slowly seeping through her veins.
“I’m not seeing an entry wound,” the doctor
said in bafflement.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, fabricat-
ing a wound on her leg like the one I’d seen earli-
er, and the doctor hissed once my illusion hit his
mind.
 211/449

“Ahh, I see it now,” said the doctor, then

turned to me. “What kind of snake was it?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, but Brooklyn
beat me to it. “A six foot long Diamondback
Rattlesnake.”
The doctor blanched, but, nonetheless, re-
layed the information.
“Nancy, we need anti-venom!” he called to a
nurse.
I leaned down until my forehead was touch-
ing Brooklyn’s.
“I’m sorry,” I said roughly.
She picked her hand up and let it rest on my
face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You didn’t do
anything.”
How true that statement was.
I didn’t do anything.
 212/449

Mostly because I hadn’t known that I’d need

to prepare for that kind of threat.
Now, though, I would prepare.
They wouldn’t slip past me that way again.
“Alright, Mr…” a woman at the front of the
room said.
I turned. “Vassago.”
“If you’ll come with me to fill out this paper-
work,” I held up my hand to stop the woman.
“I’m not leaving her right now. You can ask
me in an hour or so, then I’ll give you whatever
you want,” I said, trying not to sound rude, but
coming off that way anyway.
The woman smiled congenially. “That will be
fine.”
“Anti-venom is expensive as hell,” Brooklyn
said. “And I don’t have insurance.”
I snorted. “I got you insurance a day after you
came to stay with me. And, as for the money the
 213/449

anti-venom will cost, that’s not an issue. I’ll have

that money before you can even spell
billionaire.”
She looked at me with wide eyes.
“I suppose we never really got to talk about
that part of our relationship, did we?” she asked,
holding her arm out as the nurse put an IV into
her wrist.
I shook my head.
“No. Not yet. But it doesn’t matter, what’s
mine is yours,” I offered.
She grimaced.
“You know, I have a degree. And I passed
my boards. And I want a job,” she said
stubbornly.
I suppressed a smile as I watched the nurse
that the doctor had yelled at earlier hook up mul-
tiple IV lines…more than I’d ever seen run into a
person before.
 214/449

The nurse followed that up with a bag of

filmy looking liquid in a clear bag and hung that
up connected to the first large bag.
“It’s called a piggyback,” Brooklyn said, see-
ing where my attention had gone.
I looked down at her.
“What?” I asked.
“That smaller bag will run first until it’s com-
pletely empty because it’s higher than the big
bag. Once the smaller bag is finished, then the
bigger bag will resume,” she informed me.
“Ahh,” I said, even though I technically
didn’t see.
I was too busy watching as the filmy liquid
dripped into her veins.
One tiny drip at a time.
“How long will it take to know if there’s been
any damage?” I asked the doctor.
 215/449

He shook his head. “Days. Hours. I don’t

know. It shouldn’t be too long, though. Diamond-
back Rattlesnakes are very rare, but since you got
her into the hospital within two hours, I don’t ex-
pect any complications.”
“What kind of possible complications are
there?” I asked, watching as Brooklyn’s eyes
slipped closed.
“Common symptoms include swelling, severe
pain, tingling, weakness, anxiety, nausea and
vomiting, hemorrhaging, perspiration and eventu-
ally, heart failure,” he said. “But, like I said, it’s
very likely that nothing will come of the bite.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’d you give her?” I asked.
“A sleeping medication to calm her down and
relax her. We don’t need her heart pumping any-
more because she’s anxious. We need her calm
and relaxed to give the anti-venom the chance to
work,” he explained patiently. “This would be a
 216/449

good time to go get her paperwork taken care of.

We’ll need to know of any allergies. Whether
there’s a possibility she could be pregnant. And
old medical records. Anything you can think of
would be helpful and useful information.”
Shit.
Pregnant.
No, she couldn’t be pregnant.
She was on the shot.
She’d mentioned that...hadn’t she? Or had I
made that up? Only thought she’d said that.
There was no way she could be pregnant.
But that didn’t alleviate my fears.
I knew nothing about her medical records be-
fore I met her.
Literally, I knew nothing.
Not whether she broke her arm, nor if she
ever had the chicken pox.
 217/449

“Alright,” I said. “I need to make a call,

though, first.”
He nodded. “The registration clerk is the first
door on your right once you reach the end of the
hallway.”
I nodded and leaned down, giving Brooklyn a
soft kiss on the lips before I exited the room,
stopping right outside the door to call Blythe.
“Hello?” Blythe asked urgently.
“Hey. They got the anti-venom started. But
they’re asking medical history, and I don’t know
anything about it.”
“She had surgery when she was eighteen for a
broken arm. She has pins in her left tibia,” Blythe
said instantly. “She’s not on any medications,
and she’s allergic to Vicodin.”
“Alright, thank you,” I said and hung up.
I caught the first nurse I could find and told
her that Brooklyn was allergic to Vicodin before
 218/449

I went down to registration and filled out

paperwork.
I was in the middle of the fourth form when
the whole hospital exploded in a flurry of activity
as a ‘Charlie Brown’ was called over the loud
speaker above my head.
“What’s that mean?” I asked the registration
clerk.
“That there’s a combative patient,” she
answered instantly. “Nothing to worry about.”
My brows rose.
Something told me not to let this go, some
hidden instinct.
Something’s going on, I relayed to Perdita.
There’s nothing going out here, Nikolai.
How’s Brooklyn? she asked, her smooth voice
calming some of my fears.
 219/449

I finished up the last form in my hasty scrawl

and walked out the door, immediately spotting
where the commotion was coming from.
I was just in time to see Brooklyn’s prone
body disappear around a corner with an orderly
in green scrubs pushing her away.
I hurried towards her, wanting to know where
they were taking her, and was held up by the
combative patient.
I managed to push past, but only in time to
see the orderly cross into a bank of elevators at
the end of the hallway and the doors close behind
him. No Brooklyn in sight.
What the fuck?
 Chapter 10
Calm down, Mr. Mechanic! I’m
just here for an oil change. If I
wanted to know about all the
other things wrong with my
car, I’d turn the radio down.
-Things not to say to an auto
mechanic
Nikolai
I started opening doors, and began to get wor-
ried once I’d opened the fourth door, not finding
her.
Brooklyn’s missing, I thought to my brother
and Perdita.
Haven’t seen her out here. What happened?
Keifer asked.
Some orderly took her out of her room. I fol-
lowed but, by the time I got to the hallway, the
 221/449

orderly didn’t have her and was getting on the el-

evator alone. I can’t find where he dropped her
off.
My heart was pounding as I opened the last
door, only seeing a laundry shoot and a linen
cart.
The floor’s empty, I said. There’s no sign of
her.
I hurried back to the room, hoping I’d some-
how been wrong, but when I got there, she
wasn’t there either.
I walked back into the hall.
“Where’d you take her?” I asked the first
nurse I saw, pointing into Brooklyn’s now empty
room.
She frowned. “Nobody took her anywhere.”
And with those words, I knew we were in
deep trouble.
 ***
I ran my hands through my hair.
After a thorough look through the hospital, I
was officially about to throw up.
“I can’t find her,” I said desperately.
“We’ll find her,” Keifer promised.
It’d been over two hours since I’d lost her,
and my mind was practically screaming at me to
find her now, or it’d be too late.
“Did you find any more on the fucker that
sent the snake?” I asked.
Blythe shook her head. “No. Angus was look-
ing by his own means using the forest animals,
and he couldn’t find anything.”
“Fuck!” I yelled, pulling my hair.
A soft hand on my bicep stilled my thoughts,
and I looked down into Blythe’s eyes.
“Try using your bond,” she said.
 223/449

I closed my eyes.
“I did. They gave her some sleeping meds
right when I left the room. It made her go under
quick, and I haven’t been able to hear her in my
head for well over two and a half hours now,” I
explained tensely.
“Shit,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes and tried again, just in case.
And found myself in a basement.
I blinked, looking around, and realized that I
was tied to what looked to be a laundry bin.
I looked around, my stomach roiling when I
realized I was in a bucket of dirty linens.
“Oh, gross,” I whispered.
Except it wasn’t my voice.
It was Brooklyn’s.
“Nikolai?” she asked.
I’m here, I said.
 224/449

She blinked. “You’re not here.”

You’re missing. I’m trying to find you. Look
around and let me see what you see, I ordered
her.
She did, looking around the room and show-
ing me the massive washing machines along one
wall of the concrete lined room. The other side
held the dryers. The back wall was covered in
tables where there were stack after stack of
clothes.
Shelves lined the middle of the room, and not
one single person was there.
Where was everyone?
“Where is everyone?” Brooklyn echoed my
thoughts.
I don’t know, I said, whisper soft.
She tested the bonds around her wrists, find-
ing out quickly that they were tied too tightly to
get any wiggle room at all from them.
 225/449

That pipe above your head has a bolt in it,

rub the cord along the edge of the bolt, I ordered.
She did as she was told, and I watched her
struggle, hoping that the anti-venom had time to
work before she started to get her heart rate up
again.
She bit her lip in concentration and stared at
the bolt, working for well past ten minutes before
she saw the first fray in the cord.
“Got it,” she said, renewing her effort when
she saw the progress she was making.
With another four minutes of vigorous rub-
bing, the entire thing popped loose from her
hands, and she was able to stand.
“Okay, now what?” she asked.
“Hide,” I urged.
She dove out of the laundry basket and ran
across the room, climbing into a huge machine,
closing the door softly behind her.
 226/449

The man that entered was the same man I saw

leaving with Brooklyn earlier, and it was then I
realized how he’d gotten her out without me
seeing.
He’d dropped her down the laundry shoot.
We were lucky she wasn’t dead.
Brooklyn’s heart pounded, and I jolted out of
my in between state, startled to see Keifer dir-
ectly in front of me, looking me straight into the
eyes.
“Fuck,” I said, jumping up.
“Where are you going?” he asked, following
me back inside the building.
“Laundry room in the basement,” I rushed.
Keifer didn’t follow me.
Not that it surprised me.
He would watch my back, but only from afar.
 227/449

Right now, the heir that Blythe was carrying

was more important than Brooklyn, me and the
whole world combined.
If it came down to a choice between Blythe
and Brooklyn, it’d be a terrible, no good choice.
I would literally have to force myself to think
with my brain and not with my heart.
But my heart would win.
Every single time.
Because Brooklyn was my mate and would
always come first…even if it meant the end of
the world.
I rounded the last corner of the maze of hall-
ways that winded their way down to the base-
ment, and I stopped at the door and listened.
When I heard nothing, I pushed open the door
and was immediately assaulted by a goddamned
wolf.
 228/449

All I saw was a dark silhouette coming at me

with white, gleaming teeth.
“Fuck!” I cursed, putting my arm up when it
lunged for me.
The wolf’s teeth dug into my forearm vi-
ciously, tearing and breaking the skin with a
vengeance.
Brooklyn cried out, obviously feeling my
pain, and I focused, even through the haze of
pain.
The dog was protecting whomever was in
here, the man that’d taken Brooklyn.
The dog…wolf…whatever the fuck he was,
was enraged…and animals didn’t just get en-
raged like this one.
They had to be provoked, and me coming
through the door wouldn’t elicit that kind of re-
sponse from this animal.
No, he had to be controlled.
 229/449

My mind automatically went into survival

mode, throwing out wards and visions all at the
same time.
My vision went into the hypersensitive ultra-
red mode that would help me see in the dark as
the wolf dropped off my mangled arm with slow,
precise movements.
And I saw the man crouched down next to a
laundry hamper almost too easily.
I could also see the form of Brooklyn hiding
in the furthest washer with the door closed.
Her head was covered by her hands, and her
breathing was erratic.
I morphed the illusion to a form of mental
torture, giving him the illusion that he was tied
down, even though he wasn’t.
He dropped to the floor, as did the wolf, and
laid there like babies placed in their cribs.
 230/449

I walked over to a roll of twine that was on a

table in the middle of the room and walked to the
assailant.
Once I reached him, I reared my steel toe
covered foot back, and kicked him straight in the
temple.
He passed out cold.
My stomach roiled from the jostling the
movement had caused my arm.
I was afraid to look at it.
Nonetheless, I tied him up anyway, ignoring
the pain, not taking any chances at all with
Brooklyn’s life.
Once I was done with him, I walked to the
wolf.
Taking a chance, because I didn’t like hurting
innocent animals, I let the illusion fall to pieces,
ready to throw it back at him if he moved at me
wrongly.
 231/449

He didn’t.
He stayed down, whimpering and looking up
at me.
I reached over towards the wall, feeling for a
light switch.
My hand hit the switch, and I saw the wolf
lunge.
He didn’t lunge for me, though.
He lunged at the man that I’d thought was
unconscious.
He obviously wasn’t because he was now on
his knees.
He didn’t get far, though, before the wolf,
and yes, it sure as fuck was a wolf, hit him like a
battering ram.
The man went down onto his back as the wolf
went for his neck.
 232/449

I threw the illusion out, not wanting to lose

my witness or the information I could get out of
him, and the wolf ceased immediately.
This time I kept the illusion up while I picked
up the man, grimacing at the pain in my arm, and
tossed him into the laundry basket.
I followed suit with the wolf, laughing when
the breath left the man, and walked to the unit in
the corner where Brooklyn was still lying.
She wasn’t surprised to see me, though, as
her eyes lit on me.
I raised a brow, wondering how she’d been
able to slip through my illusion, and promptly
found a hundred and thirty-five-pound woman in
my arms, knocking me back a step.
“You’re okay,” I said.
“Your arm,” she said worriedly.
I held on to her, even though I knew she
wanted to look.
 233/449

“Let me look,” she ordered.

Perdita, come to the back entrance and get
us, I said.
10-10, Captain.
I rolled my eyes.
“Did she just say 10-10?” Brooklyn asked.
I nodded. “She doesn’t understand what that
means…she tries, though.”
I gently placed Brooklyn down on her feet,
and she winced only slightly.
“Okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “It still hurts. But I think it’s
okay.”
I dropped to my knees and inspected her leg,
amazed that it didn’t look like a thing had
changed.
The bite was no more, and her leg looked
completely normal.
 234/449

“Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

“What?” she asked worriedly, leaning over to
look down.
“There’s nothing there. God, I was so wor-
ried,” I said, moving back up. “I think Angus was
wrong. I think that Perdita’s powers did help you,
kind of like why I heal so fast. It just doesn’t
work like the healing does because it’s a toxin
and not a physical injury. I want to say you’ll be
fine.”
She nodded.
“That’s what I’ve come up with as well. I’m
lucky.”
I agreed.
She was.
Very much so.
“Let’s go. I have some questions I want to
ask the man that took you, and the longer you
 235/449

stay here, the more possibilities we have of get-

ting caught,” I explained.
She nodded in understanding and limped
slightly at my side, following me to the laundry
basket.
“Do you think that’s hurting him?” she asked,
looking down into the basket.
The wolf had a large, clawed foot planted
against the man’s face, and deep red marks were
starting to form from the rough handling of the
man.
“I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s hurting him
or not. What I do give a fuck about is him waking
up before I’ve gotten him secured; so let’s go,” I
said.
 ***
Brooklyn
We moved, him with one arm pushing the
huge cart, and the other arm wrapped around my
waist.
I gave him more of my weight than I ever in-
tended and walked/limped out of the basement.
He pushed into an alley two minutes later,
and I gasped when the first thing I saw was a
massive dragon snout.
“Shit!” I said, my heart pounding in surprise.
You did well, Perdita said. No freaking out.
No crying. No girling out at all.
I laughed and walked forward, gasping when
a dragon appeared directly beside Perdita with
Blythe and Keifer on his back.
“Jesus,” I said, gasping in a shaky breath.
“Can’t y’all warn a sister?”
Keifer blinked.
 237/449

“What?” he asked.
Blythe snickered and scooted off Declan’s
back and walked up to me.
Once she was within reaching distance, she
grabbed me up in a strong hug and started to cry
into my shirt.
“You’re getting my boobs wet,” I said, pat-
ting her back awkwardly.
Keifer and Nikolai snorted, Blythe laughed
and hugged me tighter, rubbing her face along
my breasts.
That was the thing about a best friend.
They made your other friends and family
question your sexuality.
And I could see interest flare in Keifer and
Nikolai’s eyes as they took in the scene.
“Uhh,” I said to Blythe. “Could you stop?
You’re giving the guys something to think about
that they’ll never be getting.”
 238/449

Blythe snorted and let me go, walking over to

Keifer and burying her face between his pecs, do-
ing the same thing she’d just done to me, only
less successfully seeing as Keifer had pecs and
not breasts.
“I got a man for the guys to question.”
Keifer grunted.
“I’ll bring them home. They’re obviously
needed more here than there anyway. Plus,
they’ve been bitching to come home since the
moment we left,” Keifer grunted.
I vaguely wondered who ‘guys’ were, but de-
cided to question it later when I had a better hold
on my ability to keep my eyes open.
I was fading fast now that the adrenaline
wasn’t pumping through my bloodstream to keep
me awake.
I dropped listlessly and Nikolai caught me
and placed me up on Perdita’s back.
 239/449

Perdita curled her tail up to rest at my back,

giving me a makeshift back rest that I leaned
against while Keifer, Blythe, and Nikolai studied
the wolf and the man in the basket.
“Do you think the wolf will bite?” Keifer
asked.
Nikolai shook his head.
“I don’t think he wanted to bite me in the first
place. As soon as the hold the guy had on the
wolf broke, he turned on the man instead of on
me,” Nikolai explained. “I’m going to take her
home and make sure that she gets taken care of
and then set free.”
 Chapter 11
Waiters gonna wait. Alligators
gonna alligate. Haters gonna
hate. Potatoes gonna potate.
Sorry, I forgot where I was go-
ing with this.
-Text from Brooklyn to Nikolai
Brooklyn
We rode most of the way to the compound in
silence.
Keifer and Blythe were riding directly beside
us, and there was a third dragon I’d never seen
before on the opposite side of Keifer.
Nikolai explained that Declan’s dragon was
mated to another dragon. Her name was Story;
she was absolutely beautiful.
I could quite clearly see the love between the
two dragons, and it made me smile.
 241/449

All the way up until the point where a field of

cows came into view.
It didn’t happen all at once.
We were just riding smoothly along until sud-
denly we dipped.
I gasped and grasped Nikolai’s hands, leaning
back to keep from falling forward and tumbling
to my death.
Nikolai grasped me around the waist and
pulled me more firmly into his hold, sighing in
exasperation.
“What’s going on?” I asked worriedly.
My question was answered in the next mo-
ment when Perdita took one final plunge before
her massive clawed feet reached out and grasped
one of the cows in the field below us, then lifted
right back up in the air.
I gasped in surprise, watching as the two oth-
er dragons at my side followed suit.
 242/449

Each of them picked up a cow in their clawed

feet and raised back up in the air.
“What are they doing?” I asked worriedly.
Before Nikolai could respond, Perdita did
some sort of throw.
The cow went airborne, quite a way above
our heads, and seemed to stay suspended for long
moments of time before Perdita launched herself
forward, and ate the cow all in one single gulp.
I gasped.
I vaguely heard the sound of Blythe crying
out in alarm, and turned my head in time to see
Declan and Story follow suit with their own
cows.
“Holy crap,” I said in awe.
I’d never really put much thought into how
the dragons ate…or what they ate for that matter.
 243/449

I’d never seen Perdita eat before…and to be

honest, never really had a desire to do it again,
either.
“Well…” I said as we passed through the bar-
rier to the Vassago lands. “That
was…interesting.”
The barrier started to tingle on my skin, tick-
ing down the nerve endings of my arm, legs, and
spine.
Nikolai felt the shiver and pulled me into his
arms, mistaking my movements for being cold
rather than the discomfort of passing through the
barrier.
I patted his hand.
“I’m not cold,” I explained. “It’s the barrier.”
“The shield?” he asked, an odd tone in his
voice.
I nodded.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
 244/449

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“It sends shivers down my spine,” I said.
I could feel his apprehensiveness.
“You felt it?” he asked in confusion. “We
haven’t gotten to it yet.”
I was frowning now, too.
“Well, what was the thing we just passed,
then?” I inquired.
Perdita was listening, and she added her input
now, too.
Maybe it was the Heart she felt, Perdita
offered.
“The Heart?” I asked.
“Perdita, can you take us by the heart again?”
he asked.
Perdita banked hard right as I felt the familiar
buzz of something over my skin, letting me know
 245/449

that Nikolai was letting Keifer know telepathic-

ally where we were going.
Except when I felt the ‘barrier’ again, it
wasn’t the heart we were at.
“This,” I said.
Perdita landed by a fallen down oak tree and
gently lifted her tail so Nikolai and I could get off
without having to jump the whole way to the
ground.
Nikolai helped me down, and I shivered again
once my feet hit the forest floor.
“Here,” I said. “Whatever’s right here is mak-
ing my heart shiver.”
I looked up to Nikolai’s beautiful face and
frowned in response to his frown.
“What?” I asked.
“The heart is over two hundred yards away,”
he said. “There’s no way you’d feel it until you
got within its own protection shield.”
 246/449

His explanation made me nervous.

“Then what’s right here?” I asked.
He looked around, then let me go to explore.
“Where do you feel it most?” he asked.
I started walking first in one direction, and
then in the other when I felt the feeling growing
fainter.
“This way,” I pointed.
Nikolai stayed at my side, Perdita stayed at
our backs, and we walked another fifty yards
when the feeling of utter wrongness started to
wash over me.
“I can’t go any farther,” I said.
“Hmmm,” he said, taking his own step
forward.
He didn’t seem to have the same problem as
me as he moved forward as if whatever was
weighing me down like a wet blanket didn’t af-
fect him in the slightest.
 247/449

He kicked rocks over, shoved bushes to the

side, and genuinely made a mess of everything in
his way, but instinctively stayed away from the
one thing that I could feel the cause of my shivers
emanating from.
“The stump,” I said, pointing. “Check the
stump.”
He frowned and looked around.
“Where?” he asked.
I pointed to the stump.
He looked down and scowled.
“What do you see?” he asked.
It was my turn to be confused.
“You can’t see it?” I asked. “It’s right
between your feet.”
He shook his head.
Concentrating, I focused on what it looked
like to me, and projected that image out to him.
 248/449

It was like me showing him what it looked

like by playing a video of the scene straight from
my eyes into his brain.
He inhaled deeply, then dropped to his feet.
“Weird,” he said. “Is what you’re feeling bad
shivers, or good shivers?”
Perdita stepped up to where Nikolai was
crouched down.
He kept his eyes on the stump, though.
With one hand, he started to peel the bark
away.
Something broke off.
“Not good or bad, I guess. It’s just making
me feel like cold liquid; something is pouring
through my veins,” I explained.
“Hmmm,” he said.
Perdita was the one who started acting weird.
Drunk, even.
 249/449

She swayed first one way, then caught

herself.
She overcorrected, then swayed back the oth-
er way before rolling completely over.
She started to writhe on the ground.
“What in the world…” I said.
Then an explosion of light poured through the
dimly lit forest, and I was thrown ten feet back-
wards until my back slammed hard against the
tree.
It felt like it was cushioned, though.
Almost as if I slammed against a mattress
rather than a tree.
Nikolai was still in his same spot, staring at
me like I was a demon coming up from the pits
of hell.
The picture I’d been projecting at him cut off
abruptly, and he was left staring at his hands
 250/449

which were around something that he couldn’t

see.
I, on the other hand, could see perfectly.
“Whattttt the fuuuuck,” I drawled, looking in
awe at what Nikolai had exposed.
“What?” he asked worriedly, freezing.
It was good he did, too, because suddenly the
tiny little things, the size of a hamster, started
pouring out of the hollowed out shell of the tree
stump.
Nikolai froze when they started to climb up
his hands.
“Don’t!” I cried, stilling his instinctive reac-
tion to brush them off.
“What…what the fuck is it?” he asked.
“I…” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Show me,” he demanded.
 251/449

I frowned and sat up, crawling on my knees

until I was directly across the log from him.
Once settled, I stared in awe at the tiny little
pixie…things.
Then I projected the image to him.
He froze, his hands falling limply onto his
knees, palms up.
“Holy…holy shit.” He breathed shakily.
“Oh, holy shit.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Tell me what it is.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as
he did, and croaked as he tried to speak.
He cleared his throat, licked his lips, and then
tried again.
“They’re Fairy dragons,” he said. “Fairy
dragons are the smallest of all types of dragons.
More like pets than actual dragons. Fierce and
loyal. They’ve never been on this side of the
‘pond’ before.”
 252/449

Perdita rolled onto her back and started to

scoot across the forest floor like a large dog.
“What’s she doing?” I asked.
Nikolai breathed out shakily.
“Fairy dragons are so rare…so blasted rare
and true, that they bring out the good in almost
everyone,” he explained. “I don’t really know
what she’s doing, but I’ll be sure to ask her once
she’s back to normal.”
Perdita looked like she’d imbibed on enough
alcohol that she was punch drunk. It was actually
kind of…cute.
“What’s their story?” I asked, giggling when
one of the pink dragons—and they were pink,
bright pink— jumped up from Nikolai’s arm to
his shoulder.
“Fairy dragons grow up to be the size of a
housecat,” he said, shivering when one of the
dragons started to curl herself into a lock of his
hair just behind his ear. “But they’re so rare, that
 253/449

no one really knows anything about them. There

are a few articles about them in the archives, but
they just cover the basics on them. What I’ve
gathered is that, mostly, they’re social creatures
that show up when someone worthy is brought
forth. Those that can see them are worthy.”
“So I’m worthy…of what?” I asked.
“Their loyalty,” he said with a shrug.
“But they’re not on me, they’re on you.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I
really don’t.”
My head started to ache from holding the pic-
ture in my head for too long, and I sighed.
“I have to let the picture go,” I admitted. “My
head hurts, and I think I need to lie down.”
Then I let the illusion go and sighed with re-
lief when my head stopped throbbing almost
instantly.
 254/449

Nikolai stood, and the tiny dragons stayed on

his shoulders, clinging to him like little spider
monkeys.
“Do you still have that shivery feeling?” he
asked.
I pursed my lips and thought about it.
“No…and yes. They’ve turned more to
tingles of awareness now,” I said. “It’s almost as
if they were trying to make me find them, but
now that they’ve been found, they’re content to
just let me feel that they’re there.”
One dragon broke off and launched itself
from Nikolai’s shoulder to mine, and I gasped in
surprise at the warm, gooey feelings that shot
through me.
“Is this what you’re feeling?” I asked.
He scrunched his eyes up and focused on my
mind, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m feel-
ing. It’s kind of emasculating, if I’m being
honest.”
 255/449

I laughed.
The dragon on my shoulder rubbed my chin
like a cat would.
“I think we should take them back with us,” I
said.
Thirty minutes later, we finally arrive back at
the manor.
The fairy dragons had climbed into the front
pocket of my zip up jacket, as well as made
themselves at home in my hood.
There were ten of them in total, but only one
really seemed to be truly ‘mine.’
The same had happened with another. The
thing had stayed curled up in the hollow of
Nikolai’s arm, in between my body and his.
And the moment we touched down on the
lawn of the manor, two other dragons broke off
from my pocket. One from the left, and one from
the right.
 256/449

It wasn’t until we were in the kitchen that I

realized where the two had gone.
One was on Blythe’s hand, crawling up the
sleeve of her arm, and the other was perched on
top of Keifer’s head.
Both of them were frozen.
“What…what is it?” Blythe asked.
“None of you can see them?” I asked.
They shook their heads.
Fighting back the headache I knew would
come, I pushed my mind at them once again and
gave them a real time picture of what was sur-
rounding them.
“Fairy dragons,” Keifer breathed.
I smiled, looking down at the cute little
pixies.
“What else do y’all know about them?” I
asked the group in front of me.
 257/449

Blythe reached out and ran the tips of her fin-

gers down over the cute little winged creature on
her shoulder.
“I just read about these little guys in the
archives,” she said. “Aren’t they supposed to
show when ‘all three sons come into their
power?’” she asked. “I could’ve sworn that was
what I read.”
Silence filled the room, and it wasn’t lost on
me that it wasn’t an easy silence. It was heavy.
Then both men started talking rapidly back
and forth about prophecies and what was to
come.
“It also said something about the ‘dragon
keeper’,” Blythe continued. “The one that holds
the heart in her heart, or something like that.”
I saw Nikolai’s head whip around.
He was staring at me, or at least his eyes were
pointed in my direction…but Nikolai wasn’t
home. He was in his head, thinking furiously.
 258/449

When I tried to concentrate on his thoughts,

to ascertain what he was thinking, he shuffled
through so much information that I couldn’t
make out a single thing he was thinking.
“So you’re the dragon keeper?” Keifer asked.
“I always thought that was a man.”
“We haven’t had a dragon keeper in well over
a hundred years,” stated a man I’d never seen be-
fore in my life that came in through the living
room, startling me so badly that I gasped.
And suddenly, every single fairy dragon was
in attack mode, making a dragon wall in front of
me and the newcomer.
“I can see that y’all need to be introduced,”
Nikolai said. “Jean Luc, this is my mate, Brook-
lyn. Brooklyn, this is one of our fellow dragon
riders, and a brother of the Dragons Warriors.”
Jean Luc stopped in front of me, not seeing
the dragon wall, and tried to offer me his hand.
 259/449

His advance, however, was stalled before he

could make it within a couple of feet of me.
“What the…” he said, pulling his hand back.
Blood welled on one knuckle as he stared in
confusion at the air in front of him.
“And I guess I should also tell you that
you’re looking at the dragon keeper,” Nikolai
said humorously.
Jean Luc brought his bloodied knuckle to his
mouth, and only then did I extend the illusion to
envelop him as well.
By this time, my head was absolutely pound-
ing, and I was only able to hold it long enough
for Jean Luc to fall back into a defensive position
after seeing the dragon wall of flesh in front of
him before it all faded away.
I could tell the moment everyone in the room
could no longer see them because they all
slumped slightly where they were standing.
 260/449

“I guess I walked in on a part of the conversa-

tion that obviously needed more explanation,”
Jean Luc croaked, looking around the room in
awe.
“I’ve been telling you not to butt your fat
head in for years,” another man said as he came
into the room. “Now, what’d I miss?”
 ***
Jean Luc was a tall, dark and handsome man.
Then again, all of them were handsome.
Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Derek and Dorian
were all talkative and friendly. They were also
the epitome of best friends.
When you thought of brothers, these guys
were what you pictured.
Then there was the real brother of Nikolai
and Keifer.
Farrow didn’t act like he wanted to be there.
Something about him just screamed leave me
alone! even though he was in the room.
The other man who didn’t seem to fit was
Ian.
He was the one in the corner, a deep, brood-
ing feeling wafting from him.
 262/449

He had dark eyes, a scowl set in stone, and a

set of arms that could easily break me in half if
he had half a mind to try.
Dark, scary looking tattoos took up the ma-
jority of said arms, snaking and curling around
each contoured muscle like it was alive.
But it was his eyes, though, that let me know
that he wasn’t truly a bad person.
That, and the pink fairy dragon that was
perched on his shoulder.
I knew he knew it was there, too.
He could see it.
Nobody else could, though.
They could feel them, though.
Each and every one of the fairy dragons I’d
brought home were now paired with various
dragon riders.
 263/449

Everyone in the room had one, including Mr.

Grouchy Pants, aka Farrow, Keifer and Nikolai’s
brother.
“Why do you think we can’t see them?”
Blythe asked. “Do you think I have to do
something worthy, like push this kid out to get
them to let me see them?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re not being very
helpful tonight.”
I snorted. “I know just about as much, if not
less, than you do. So what exactly do you want
me to say here? I’m learning right along with
you.”
She growled.
“This kid is giving me indigestion. And I
want to eat a cow,” Blythe grumbled.
“Like a literal cow, or a steak?” I asked
worriedly.
 264/449

“A steak. And a hamburger. And some ribs

and brisket,” she qualified.
“The last time you had ribs, you threw up be-
cause the barbeque sauce was too thick,” I said.
“Remember?”
She glared at me.
“It was gross,” she said. “Like literally. I
threw up because it was poisoned.”
I rolled my eyes.
They landed on Ian again.
“Why’s he over there by himself?” I asked.
Blythe followed my gaze, and she shivered.
“I don’t know,” she said. “When I first got
here, Keifer told me to stay away from him be-
cause he wasn’t ‘stable’.”
“How’s he not stable?” I asked. “Like men-
tally unstable or traumatized unstable?”
 265/449

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve asked Keifer

about him, but I never really get any answers.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
My eyes caught movement out of the corner
of my eye, and I watched as Ian walked out of the
room without a backward glance.
But he moved deliberately, as if he was being
careful of the dragon on his back, confirming that
he was more than aware of just exactly where
that dragon was.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I have to use the
little girl’s room.”
“Hmm,” she said, her eyes falling on the food
that Keifer had just brought into the room.
On the plate was a huge ass steak, and noth-
ing else.
He set it down in front of Blythe, then walked
away.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked.
 266/449

She shrugged. “I think the baby talks to him.”

“Weird,” I said. “What does he say?”
She shook her head. “I don’t really get much
on that subject,” she answered. “And I thought
you had to go to the bathroom.”
I glared.
Then left, waving to Nikolai as I exited the
room.
He winked at me, then lifted his beer up to
his mouth as he turned back to the man he was
talking to, Derek.
Derek, apparently, had been in a coma not too
long ago, and he was still pretty lanky due to that.
He looked like he could easily stand to gain
at least twenty-five to thirty pounds.
And Nikolai’s sister stood at the bar, shooting
the man inconspicuous glances during her con-
versation with another man that belonged to the
Dragon’s Warriors, Alaric.
 267/449

I walked out of the room, my eyes searching

before I’d even gotten all the way into the
hallway.
I found Ian a lot sooner than I thought I
would.
He was standing in the kitchen in front of the
fridge, offering the dragon on his shoulder a
marshmallow.
“You can see him!” I said excitedly.
“Her,” he said. “And yes I can.”
“How?” I asked, walking closer with no re-
gard for personal space.
I had a problem with that.
And I was working on it.
In the meantime, I hoped that the people I did
it to didn’t care.
“I named her,” Ian said darkly. “That’s why I
can see her.”
 268/449

I blinked.
“How did you know to name her?” I asked
questioningly.
He shrugged. “I didn’t.”
The man was full of embellishments…not.
“Hmm,” I said. “Can you see the others?”
He shook his head. “No, only this one.”
“Hmmm,” I said again, turning to look out-
side as I took a seat.
Ian didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t ask
him to.
We sat there in silence as we looked over the
lawn.
The three ice dragons, that seemed like they’d
grown in the last day alone, were playing in the
swimming pool that Keifer had turned to ice in
front of my eyes.
 269/449

They were having a grand old time, and about

five other dragons belonging to the other dragon
riders in the house, sat and watched them.
“What’d you name her?” I asked.
“Daisy,” he answered shortly.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked. “I’m a
little overwhelmed, and for some reason, you’re
making my head feel better.”
He grunted.
“Do you know why that is?” I questioned
him.
He sighed.
“I’m a healer,” he answered.
I blinked. “You’re a healer?”
“Are you going to repeat everything I have to
say?” he asked.
I scowled at him.
He sighed again.
 270/449

I seemed to be getting that reaction from him

a lot.
“I get my healing powers from Mace.” At my
questioning look, he said, “My dragon.”
I nodded, not saying anything to encourage
him to continue.
“I can heal just with my presence,” he ex-
plained. “And go even deeper by touching you.”
When my eyes widened, he shook his head.
“No, I will not touch you.”
“Damn right you won’t, Ian,” Nikolai said.
The headache started again at my temple,
then spread back into my skull until it was
pounding once gain.
“You give me a headache,” I said, not totally
lying.
He frowned.
Then his expression turned to understanding.
 271/449

“Touch her,” he ordered Ian.

I laughed.
Ian didn’t move.
Nikolai glared at Ian.
“Touch her, please,” he grated out through
clenched teeth.
Ian sighed and touched his pointer finger to
the middle of my forehead.
My eyes crossed as I tried to see the tip of his
finger, then my headache started to slowly disap-
pear until I no longer had it.
“Wow,’ I said. “That was better than
ibuprofen!”
Ian grimaced.
“Ian doesn’t like calling attention to his abil-
ities,” Nikolai explained. “Keifer and I are the
only ones who know that he can do it.”
 272/449

“Ahh,” I said. “Any idea why my headache

keeps coming back?”
When you talk? I wanted to add.
You’re blocking him, floated through my
brain from Perdita.
My eyebrows rose to my hairline.
I am? I asked secretively. From what?
I think you’re blocking him from your emo-
tions and your head, but I can’t really tell be-
cause you’re blocking from me, too. I only get
bits and pieces from you, which is what I’m as-
suming Nikolai is getting as well. I just know
what to look for when someone is blocking, and
you’re doing it.
I pursed my lips as I thought about what
she’d said.
I wasn’t intentionally blocking him.
Really, I was just being me.
What would I have to block from him?
 273/449

Ian and Nikolai spoke about possibilities, and

I thought about others.
I did it so long and intently that I hadn’t real-
ized that Nikolai had asked me a question.
“What?” I asked when the silence became
deafening.
“Are you ready to go to bed?” he asked.
Ian got up and walked out the back door
without another word, and I watched him
curiously.
“He’s not very social,” I observed dryly.
“No, he’s not,” Nikolai agreed. “And you
need to be careful with him.”
I blinked. “Why?”
Nikolai thought about it for a long moment
before he said, “You just do.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but he was being
completely serious, so I decided not to ar-
gue…for now.
 Chapter 12
Did you happen to me, or did I
happen to you? Because I want
to know which of us has the
shitty luck.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
My muscles strained as I held onto the head-
board with both of my hands.
My eyes squeezed tightly shut as Nikolai
took me slowly from behind.
And when I say slowly, I mean so slowly that
I wanted to yell at him to speed up.
Alas, Nikolai was in charge, something he’d
told me no less than twice already since we’d
begun.
 275/449

My eyes crossed as he pushed into me so

deep that I had to bite back a curse at how good it
felt.
There was a house full of people, and both
rooms on either side of us were filled.
Keifer had thought it best to make sure all the
dragon riders were under one roof, meaning all
the other rooms, including the one I’d been previ-
ously occupying, were now occupied.
But these people had supersonic hearing
thanks to their magical abilities from their
dragons.
I buried my face into the mattress, gasping
for breath as he pulled all the way back out.
With infinite slowness, he filled me once
again.
I was so full. So very full.
Please.
Please what? he asked.
 276/449

Please, I need more, I said, keening.

His version of more, wasn’t my version of
more.
But I couldn’t say his version of more didn’t
have me feeling like I’d been stuck into an elec-
trical socket.
His thumb brushed the tight ring of my as-
shole for a second time, and I involuntarily
pushed back, giving him permission.
He took it and ran with it.
His thumb swept down and gathered the wet-
ness that’d gathered at the base of his cock, thor-
oughly coating his thumb before he brought it
back up and slowly pressed it inside.
I came.
I couldn’t not come.
There was no stopping it.
The new sensation, paired with the way he
moved his cock in and out of me, had me coming
 277/449

so hard that I most likely cut the circulation off to

his cock.
He didn’t seem to care that he was about to
lose the appendage.
His mind was too focused on the dirty talk he
was speaking in low, crooning words.
“You want me in your ass?” he asked. “Want
me to make you mine, everywhere?”
I nodded into the pillow.
I must’ve lost my fucking mind.
I’d never once wanted anal sex.
In fact, I’d never once even thought about
that with anyone else.
Anyone else but him.
With him, I thought about it each time he
took me from behind.
 278/449

That naughty little voice in the back of my

mind kept yelling at me to ask him to do it…and
I’d wanted it.
Badly.
One finger turned to two in between one
breath and the next, and I bit the pillow, Edward
Cullen style, and screamed as my orgasm that I’d
thought finished reared its head again.
“So tight,” Nikolai said, scissoring his fin-
gers. “You want my cock here, woman?”
I nodded. “Yes. Please.”
He rumbled his agreement, but didn’t pull his
cock out of my pussy. Only stretched me even
more.
Something for which I was thankful for long
moments later when he finally pulled out of me.
The tip of his cock met the tight ring of my
ass, kissing the entrance just slightly before he
pulled back.
 279/449

I cried out, pushing my hips back to meet

him.
He slapped my ass.
“Hold on, baby. I need lube,” he said, sooth-
ing me gently once he’d spanked me.
I turned my head on the pillow to watch as he
leaned over of the bedside drawer and pulled out
a small bottle of lube with a red lid on it.
My eyes lit on the lettering that read ‘Warm-
ing Gel,’ and I moaned.
He laughed at my reaction, pouring a gener-
ous amount onto the palm of his hand and fisting
his cock in a tight grasp.
He worked the lube onto his cock, making
sure to line and coat every inch of his member
before he took the bottle of lube and squirted a
generous amount onto the tight, back hole.
My asshole puckered as I shrank back.
 280/449

The lube was cold, but quickly warmed when

Nikolai took the head of his cock and rubbed it
in, pushing himself back and forth over the hole,
teasing me.
His fingers took some of the wetness that was
surrounding my hole and slowly moved it inside
of me. It was only then that the warming part of
the ‘warming gel’ started to really make itself
known.
I felt like I was burning from the inside out.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I chanted as he
filled me, three fingers wide.
“Relax,” he said, smoothing his free hand
over my backside.
Relax?
Did he realize what he was about to do to
me?
Had he any idea of the anticipation I was
feeling right now?
 281/449

Yes, yes he did.

Which was why he chuckled when he got a
load of my thoughts.
The head of his cock met my entrance, and I
breathed out, slowly pushing outwards like I’d
read in my romance novels.
It worked.
The head of Nikolai’s cock slowly filled me
up.
There was a small twinge of pain, but Nikolai
had done a wonderful job at making sure I was
prepared.
Once the head was fully lodged inside my
ass, the rest of him followed, filling me up so full
that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be the same again.
“God, you’re so tight. You should see what
you look like all stretched out around me,” he
growled.
I could imagine.
 282/449

“Show me,” I ordered.

An image filled my brain, and suddenly I was
not only experiencing him fuck me, but watching
him fuck me as well.
I got to feel how it felt for Nikolai, as well as
what it felt like for me.
It was like an inferno that took off inside of
me, and I never stood a chance.
Not one single chance.
He took me then, no more slowness for him.
He pounded away inside me, knowing that it
didn’t hurt.
I watched as my ass rippled each time his
hips met my butt.
Relished in the way my asshole stretched
around his invading cock.
He was watching me take him, and soon he
couldn’t hold on to his hard earned control.
 283/449

He lost it, and I closed my eyes as the picture

he was sending me was lost as well.
He moved, splitting my insides as he pumped
away.
His balls slapped my pussy each time he
pushed into me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
The orgasm that took a hold of me wasn’t
normal.
Not ever had I experienced this feeling
before.
I don’t know if it was because of the use of a
different hole…or the way we were so intercon-
nected, but it was an out of body experience not
just for me, but for him as well.
He roared as he came, and I screamed along
with him, no longer caring who or what could
hear me.
I screamed so loud that my throat hurt.
 284/449

My hips ached at the way his hands clamped

down around them, and when he came, I felt it all
the way in my heart.
His hot cum filled me up to the brink, splash-
ing inside of me with such force, that I could feel
it.
My fingernails dug into the backs of his
thighs as I held on for dear life.
He growled out his release, giving me
everything he had to give, and then some.
Long minutes later, we both came down from
that high, panting and sated.
“How’d…how’d you know I wanted that?” I
asked, licking my lips.
He turned his head on the pillow, giving me a
raised eyebrow.
“You’re a projector,” he said. “Everything
you want is plain as day in my mind when I’m
fucking you. I just never actually did it because I
 285/449

wasn’t sure you were ready…if we were ready,”

he admitted.
I blushed.
Was I? Had I given him all of my fantasies?
And was I embarrassed about that?
No. I wasn’t.
But I wanted the same in return from him.
I flushed.
He laughed softly, his chest shaking my face
as he did.
“Don’t worry, woman. I want you and you
want me. There’s no shame in that,” he said.
“Plus, it makes it infinitely easier on me to get
you to come. To know what you want. To give
you what you need.” He sighed. “I’m sure every
man wants that built in knowing like you’ve giv-
en me. And I can’t say that I’d never willingly
give it up, even if it did embarrass you for me to
know it all.”
 286/449

My body ached as I pushed up to my hands

and knees once again, and the crawled out of bed
to go clean myself up.
It was definitely a different experience, but I
knew that I’d want to do it again some time.
Maybe not right now…but soon.
Very, very soon.
 Chapter 13
Of course you can trust
me…unless it’s alone with
cake.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
Life went back to ‘normal.’
And I say that lightly.
Mostly because my new normal was different
than my old normal.
We were able to come out of the sanctuary as
long as we had at least two dragon riders in our
party.
It also didn’t happen as often as I’d like, and I
hated asking because it meant that someone had
to drop what they were doing because I wanted to
leave.
 288/449

I took up a job with Blythe on one side, and

Skylar, Nikolai’s sister, on the other.
Over the next few weeks, more and more of
the dragons came home. Which meant the staff
that’d been let go had started to slowly trickle
back into their previous jobs.
Of course, this was only after they were put
through an extensive truth sense by Jean Luc.
Jean Luc was able to get anything out of any-
one…except for the man who’d attacked me at
the hospital and made an animal attack Nikolai.
Speaking of that pesky wolf, it was now
Nikolai’s shadow.
His best friend.
It was a big beast, but it was becoming com-
mon for me to see the two of them together.
Nikolai’s fairy dragon, Percy, was also al-
ways with them. They, along with Perdita, had
become as thick as thieves.
 289/449

It amazed me that such difference in the food

chain could get along as well as they did, but the
four of them managed it.
Speaking of Percy, he came fluttering up to
me and landed on the bed beside my hand.
I was currently treating a training injury that
Dorian, another dragon rider, had suffered as
he’d fought with Ian.
In fact, anyone who had the balls to fight with
Ian ended up getting hurt.
Keifer and Nikolai were one of the only
exceptions.
But it wasn’t often that anybody deigned to
work with Ian. He had a perpetual bad attitude
and didn’t like anybody.
I wondered why he was there…and it’d been
something that I’d been asking Dorian when
Percy had showed up.
“What’s going on, Percy?” I asked the little
dragon.
 290/449

The dragon didn’t ‘talk.’ He spoke in my

head like the other dragons.
But it was so natural, like I was talking out
loud to anybody else, that I didn’t notice that
nobody else heard him.
There’s a fight in the yard between Nikolai
and Keifer.
I blinked at what Percy said.
“He’s what?” I asked. “Why are they
fighting?”
Dorian straightened, wincing only slightly.
“Who’s fighting?” Dorian asked worriedly.
Blood was pouring down his side from the
sword wound that Ian had given him.
I’d been in the middle of cleaning it when
Percy had flown in like his tail was on fire.
“Keifer and Nikolai,” I said, pushing him
back down.
 291/449

“You’re not going to go out there?” he asked.

I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “Not until I get you ready for
your stitches.”
He ignored me and got up, easily pushing me
aside.
“You’ve received a local antiesthetic and pain
reliever,” I said to him. “You won’t know if
you’re doing any damage because you can’t feel
it.”
My words fell on deaf ears as he walked out
the door, grabbing a folded up sheet on his way
out the door and pressing it to his side.
I followed behind the stubborn man.
Every single one of the dragon riders I’d
come into contact with were exactly the same.
Hardheaded, stubborn as hell, bad asses.
 292/449

Blythe caught up with me once I’d made my

way about three quarters of the way outside, her
pregnant belly leading the way.
She was enormous, too.
At a little over six months pregnant, she was
easily twice the size of normal, not that anyone
would actually say that to her.
She was sensitive.
If I hadn’t done the sonogram on her myself,
time after time, I would’ve said she’d be deliver-
ing a freakin’ toddler, not a small baby.
But the baby was growing to size…she was
just carrying…big.
She hurried to my side, coming from the pris-
oner’s ward, and most likely going to get her ass
spanked when Keifer found out where she’d
been.
“Did he say anything more?” I asked.
 293/449

Blythe and I, as well as Skylar, traded off go-

ing into the prisoner’s ward…or just room num-
ber eight that was the furthest way from the rest
of the general population.
The prisoner was named Merrick Brown, a
dragon rider turned enemy.
Not that I really thought of him that way.
He was actually a pretty intelligent guy…un-
til you tried to ask him why he’d done what he’d
done.
Then he clammed up like a…well…a clam.
He was also fucked up beyond belief, and not
healing at all.
The wolf bites he’d sustained, on top of
something else that’d been done to him before
he’d tried to take me, combined with no healing
powers whatsoever, meant he was really fucked
up.
 294/449

He had broken bones on top of broken

bones…he wasn’t healing correctly…and no one
could figure out exactly why.
And when he was asked, his mouth was as
tight as one could be.
“Not a word,” she said. “I can tell, though,
that he wants to…which is why I keep going
back in there. I hope that he’s ready to talk, but
he never does.”
“I can’t ever get him to talk, either. I’ve no-
ticed a pattern,” I said as we pushed out the door.
“Oh?”
We walked out into the courtyard where
games were usually played, but today served as a
makeshift fighting circle.
There were about thirty people there, milling
about as they watched Kiefer and Nikolai fight.
And it wasn’t just any fight, this was a no
holds barred, I’m going to fucking kill you, kind
of fight.
 295/449

In other words, normal for Nikolai and

Keifer.
In fact, this was at least a once a week occur-
rence since Keifer had come home four weeks
ago.
“Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms over my
chest. “Have you ever tried to ask him about his
family?”
She pursed her lips. “Yes…yes I have.”
I nodded. “And when he closed up…was it
by choice, or by force?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but just as
suddenly snapped it shut and placed both hands
on her hips.
Her eyes were facing forward, and she was
looking at the fight between Keifer and Nikolai,
but not actually seeing it.
“Shit,” she said finally. “Shit.”
I nodded.
 296/449

“I’ve had a discussion with Nikolai about

it…and if my guess is correct, that’s what they’re
fighting about,” I guessed.
Blythe pursed her lips.
“That shithead is so freakin’ stubborn
headed,” Blythe growled.
I snorted, and then her eyes went wide.
She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her
stomach, and my eyes widened to resemble
saucers.
“The fuck is that?” I gasped.
She shook her head. “An elbow? A knee?”
I giggled, jumping up and down. “I won!” I
exclaimed loudly. “Fuck you, Keifer Vassago!
You owe me five hundred bucks and a trip into
town.”
Keifer’s brows furrowed, but he was too busy
trying to beat the snot out of my mate.
 297/449

I moved my hand to the other side of Blythe’s

belly and concentrated, practically willing the
baby to move…and I did something.
Something incredible.
I gasped as my mind disappeared and I was
suddenly transported into…something.
I opened my eyes.
They were hazy.
Like I was underwater.
And the area around me wasn’t dark…but
nearly.
It was like I was in a hole with light shining
through a blanket.
I looked at my hand…and it was most defin-
itely not my hand.
It was way too small.
And my knees were up by my chest.
And so was my ass.
 298/449

Not my ass.
Someone else’s ass.
A tiny ass...but an ass nonetheless.
“Sweet, baby Jesus,” I whispered to no one in
particular.
I wasn’t sure anyone could even hear me.
Or see me.
I reached out with my hand and touched the
other hand.
There were three that I could see, one of
which wasn’t mine.
And I realized then where I was.
I was in Blythe’s stomach.
“Oh, holy shit. Holy shit on a stick,” I said.
“Oh, my God.”
I was being super intelligent…but I couldn’t
get my brain to work right.
 299/449

“Can you hear me?” I whispered.

The babies didn’t react.
And yes, I said babies.
Woman? Nikolai whispered in my brain.
What are you seeing?
I didn’t know how to let him know what I
was seeing.
It was obvious speaking wasn’t getting
through, but I tried telepathically anyway.
I think I’m in Blythe’s uterus.
There was a long, silent pause, and then
Nikolai replied with, that sounds interesting.
I think…I think I’m somehow doing this…in
reverse of what you do. Can you do it, too? I
asked.
There was a moment of silence, and then a
frustrated reply.
I can’t. What did you do?
 300/449

I thought about what I did, sending him what

I’d done exactly.
Then he was there, too.
You can see? I asked.
I don’t know whether we were occupying the
baby’s mind…or just using her eyes. I didn’t
know any of it, but I could tell that the other
baby—the boy—didn’t like it.
Not at all.
They’re twins, I whispered.
Settle down, Dragos. We’re just making sure
you’re okay, Nikolai’s voice whispered.
The boy baby settled down, staring at us…the
girl…in suspicion. But he wasn’t actively freak-
ing out anymore.
We were pushed out when both of our hands
left Blythe’s stomach, and we were left standing
there with a confused looking Blythe, a pissed off
 301/449

and bloody Keifer, and the rest of the onlookers

staring at us.
“What,” Keifer said, slightly breathless. “The
fuck was that?”
I grinned, then I pushed what I’d seen into his
mind.
He froze.
He stared off into space, his mouth going
slack, and then he paled as he got to the part
where he saw three hands.
Then impossibly more when he got to the part
where Nikolai joined us and we pissed the boy
baby off.
“Twins,” he said roughly. “Oh, fuck.”
“Twins?” Blythe asked. “What are you talk-
ing about twins?”
Nikolai did the same thing that I was doing
for Keifer, and Blythe swayed.
 302/449

Nikolai caught her before she could hit the

ground.
“But…but…I had a sonogram!” she wailed.
“There weren’t two in there!”
“Apparently,” I teased. “One was hiding.”
Blythe flipped me off.
“Shut up.”
I grinned. “Congratulations, Daddy and
Mommy. You’re having twins.”
“I hope you choke on a dick,” Blythe said,
patting her stomach. “And you do know, right,
that twins are determined by the father’s genes,
not the mother’s. You could be having twins
yourself.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I denied. “And shut your
mouth.”
Blythe bared her teeth at me like a feral
kitten.
I bared mine right back.
 303/449

“Well, at least we’re not the only ones,”

Keifer said.
We both turned to him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
He pointed to the both of us.
“We were fighting with our fists. Y’all are
fighting with your words. Same thing,” he said.
Blythe punched him.
“No, it’s not the same thing. We’re fighting
because we’re trying to relieve stress. Y’all are
fighting because y’all are stupid and don’t want
to listen to what the other thinks,” Blythe shot
back.
“And what,” Keifer asked. “Does he have to
say that I don’t already know?”
“How about the fact that the prisoner you
have in the infirmary isn’t able to talk; yet you
continue to treat him as if he can,” I said sharply.
Keifer froze.
 304/449

“You say can’t…,” Keifer said.

I nodded. “He can’t.”
“How do you know?” Keifer challenged.
I started walking back towards the hospital,
knowing that he’d follow.
He didn’t disappoint.
As I made my way back into the infirmary,
and into the ‘prisoner’s’ room, I stopped beside
his bed.
“Hey, you,” I said, tapping his shoulder.
Nikolai’s arm wrapped around my waist,
pulling me back so I could no longer reach the
man in the bed.
Merrick opened his eyes, and when he got a
load of the entire freakin’ compound in his room,
his eyes flared.
 Chapter 14
When someone asks you if you
do any dangerous sports, say-
ing ‘sometimes I disagree with
my woman’ is not a good an-
swer. At least not if your wo-
man is in the room with you.
-Note to self
Nikolai
His eyes flared, but he didn’t look alarmed.
He looked reserved.
Almost expectant.
And…defeated.
I looked over at my brother to see him hold-
ing his sword in his hand, flexing and un-flexing
his hands as he did so.
Merrick’s eyes didn’t miss that, either.
 306/449

In fact, they followed the movements.

Hope flared in his eyes.
He wanted us to kill him…why?
Then I started to look at him.
He hadn’t been hooked up to a heart monitor
since the first couple of days we’d had him
here…and those he’d spent unconscious.
As soon as he’d woken up, he’d been taken
off everything but the IV that was still running
antibiotics through his veins…antibiotics that he
shouldn’t need.
Because he was a bonded dragon rider.
Everyone who was a bonded dragon rider had
powers, and Merrick wouldn’t have them if he
wasn’t bonded to one.
But…where was his dragon?
Why, in the time that he’d been with us, had
neither my brother, nor I, thought of that?
 307/449

“Hook his heartbeat up to the monitor,” I

ordered my mate.
She did, taking three sticky pads from a
drawer beside the bed, and placing them on Mer-
rick’s chest before hooking up some wires from
the monitor to them.
The moment the wires were in place, I got a
good look at Merrick’s racing heartbeat.
And by racing, I mean, it was flying. It was
way too fast.
“Keifer,” I said to my brother. “Where’s Mer-
rick’s dragon?”
Keifer’s brows furrowed, and then his eyes
widened.
Merrick’s heartbeat picked up once more.
And something like pleading came into his
eyes.
 308/449

“That would’ve normally been one of the first

things I would’ve asked…,” Keifer trailed off,
and his brows furrowed.
Merrick’s eyes closed in relief, and I finally
understood.
He couldn’t talk about it. Not just about who
he was and whom he worked for, but about
everything.
“Get Ian in here,” I ordered.
I’d known that the majority of the men were
behind us.
All but Ian, anyway.
I heard, more than saw, Alaric leave.
He walked with heavy footsteps compared to
everyone else.
Maybe it was because his feet were bigger
than everyone else’s. Hell, I didn’t know. But I
always knew when it was him coming.
“Everyone else out,” Keifer ordered gruffly.
 309/449

The room emptied of everyone except for

Blythe, Brooklyn, Keifer and me.
Oh, and the man in the bed who couldn’t
move.
He was there to stay.
“Ian can heal him…and search whatever he
has in his mind,” Keifer trailed off when he saw
the look of pure panic in his eyes.
“We won’t hurt you,” Keifer growled in
frustration.
That was a lie.
We would if the end game was near.
Ian’s prodding was coarse at the best of
times. He could do healing, as long as it was
something on the outside of the body, just fine.
The intricate stuff tended to be a little rougher on
the person on the receiving end of his gift.
Ian showed up long moments later with the
cold clinging to him.
 310/449

A rush of wind followed in his wake, and I

shivered when the cold hit me.
Blythe scooted closer to me to allow Ian to
pass her, and she stayed when we watched in hor-
ror as Ian slapped his hand down on Merrick’s
chest, and then proceeded to exorcise him.
Or, at least, that was what it looked like.
Merrick’s body bowed up off the hospital bed
like his chest was connected to a string.
“How much do you want healed?” Ian
growled.
Keifer looked at Merrick with dispassionate
eyes.
“Just enough to see what’s going on in his
head. Then we’ll see about healing him com-
pletely once we know more of why he’s done
what he’s done,” Keifer ordered.
Those were the words of a true leader.
 311/449

It was more than obvious that Blythe was sur-

prised by the callousness as was Brooklyn,
though, they were both trying to hide it.
I knew my woman, though.
Knew what she looked like body-wise when
she was pissed, and man, was she pissed.
Ian rocked back on his feet long moments
later and Merrick’s body fell onto the bed with a
hard thud.
My body tensed at remembering all the injur-
ies he had, but the harder I looked at the man, the
more amazed I became.
I’d known that Ian was a healer. He’d told me
himself.
However, I’d never actually seen him do it.
The worst wounds on Merrick’s chest and
neck were now lightly pink, showing almost per-
fect healing.
 312/449

His breathing was deeper, and his heartbeat

was steadier.
“What’d you find?” I asked when Ian never
turned around.
The veins on Ian’s arms stood out in stark re-
lief as he fisted his hands.
Then he turned, and the pain in his eyes was
obvious.
“You okay?” Brooklyn checked, taking a
few steps forward.
Ian held out his hand to stop her.
“Don’t,” he ordered.
She blinked, freezing.
“You’re hurting!”
Blythe stepped forward as well, and it was
only then that Keifer and I stopped them before
they could move any further forward.
 313/449

“Ian takes the pain onto himself,” I explained.

“And it hurts him to be touched for a while after.
Give him a little bit.”
She shrank back at the mere mention of him
taking on the pain.
He’d done that for Brooklyn, and she
would’ve never let him do it had she known that
he was going to have her pain.
That wasn’t right.
And it wasn’t right to ask of him, either.
“What kind of effect does it have on you?”
she asked.
His jaw clenched.
“The same thing it would have on the person
I take the pain from. Takes about an hour to push
out of me,” he answered through gritted teeth.
“What’d you find out?” Keifer asked.
Ian’s eyes narrowed.
 314/449

“His dragon is being held hostage, as well as

about five other people at the same compound
Nikolai took Brooklyn from,” Ian said, panting
lightly once he was through.
I gasped.
“Who else does he have?” he asked.
His eyes slid away from me, and he gave a
look to Keifer that clearly said, ‘Not here.’
I was about to ask what was going on when
Merrick’s back bowed again and he started
seizing.
“Put him to sleep!” Ian said urgently. “Give
him a sedative.”
Blythe ran for the med cart while Brooklyn
ran to raise the bed rails on his bed.
It wouldn’t do to have Merrick falling and
breaking a bone after he was just healed.
“What’s going on with him?” Blythe asked
once she returned with a syringe.
 315/449

She depressed the plunger and injected the

meds into Merrick’s veins via the IV.
Merrick instantly calmed.
“That’s the side effect of using my powers,”
Ian said, sounding tired. “Causes seizures and
shit.”
I whirled around and glared at Keifer. “You
knew this was going to happen?”
Keifer shrugged.
“We weren’t getting anywhere the easy way,”
he said unapologetically.
I narrowed my eyes at him, but Ian chose that
moment to pass out.
He hit the floor so hard that I was worried
he’d broken something.
He’d fallen well, though, his head landing on
my feet rather than the concrete floor beneath
them.
 316/449

I crouched down and rolled him over to his

back, checking his pulse.
“He’s fine,” Keifer said.
I growled.
“Nikolai,” Brooklyn said through clenched
teeth. “If you care for your brother at fucking all,
you’ll get him the fuck out of here before I kick
his ass.”
I wisely said nothing as to how improbable
that was, and grabbed my brother by the collar
and started ushering him outside.
Brooklyn
“Fucker,” I muttered under my breath.
“He’s protecting me,” Blythe said softly.
I looked over at her where she was checking
Merrick’s blood pressure.
“I don’t really give a fuck,” I said.
She flinched.
 317/449

“I know it’s harsh,” I said. “But you need to

get him under control. He can’t put his people at
risk to save you. When’s it going to be too
much?” I asked. “What if next time it’s me?”
She didn’t have anything to say to that, and
frankly, neither did I.
 Chapter 15
Never tell someone that their
butt looks like an elephant’s.
Even if you mean it in a nice
way.
-Words to the wise
Brooklyn
“I’m not really convinced y’all are bikers,” I
said to Nikolai.
Nikolai rolled his head in my direction.
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
I sat up and grabbed the pillow that was be-
side my hand, pulling it into my lap and leaning
forward slightly on the bed as I addressed him.
“Well,” I said. “Y’all don’t dress in leather
other than your vests when you leave the estate.”
I flicked up a finger. “You don’t act like bikers.”
Second finger. “You don’t ride your bikes all
 319/449

that often.” Third finger. “And y’all don’t give

off that whole biker-esque feel.”
Nikolai raised a single eyebrow.
“Who are you to dictate what a ‘biker’ does
and doesn’t do?” he asked. “And how many
bikers have you known in your life?”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“Well…” I smiled.
There was Sons of Anarchy, after all. I felt
like an expert.
He grinned.
“We’re going on a fun run next week,” he
said, leaning back in his computer chair.
As he did, he propped one foot up on the bed
and made it lean back even further.
He linked his hands behind his head and
stared at me.
“What’s a fun run?” I asked.
 320/449

“It’s just a fun ride. We have a destination in

mind,” he said. “But sometimes we go further
than that.” He shrugged. “Just depends on our
mood.”
“You’re going by yourself?” I asked warily.
He snorted.
“Like I’d leave you here by yourself,” he
said.
I narrowed my eyes.
“You don’t think I can take care of myself?” I
questioned him.
“It’s not a matter of you taking care of your-
self,” he said soberly. “It’s a matter of people
knowing our weaknesses, like Merrick did.”
“You know as well as I do that Merrick
couldn’t control what he did,” I said.
And Merrick was dead…practically.
He wasn’t dead yet.
 321/449

But he would be.

Soon, according to Ian.
And Merrick’s sister and dragon were miss-
ing in the meantime.
He had to die knowing he wasn’t able to save
them.
Nikolai raised his hands and tiredly rubbed
them over his eyes before he ran his hands
through his hair roughly.
“I know. God, don’t you think I know that?”
he snapped.
I raised a brow at him.
“Is there something bothering you?” I asked.
He sighed.
“I don’t like that you’re spending more time
with him than me,” he admitted.
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my
mouth.
 322/449

“I freakin’ work there. What’d you want me

to do?” I asked.
He stood up and started pacing.
“I don’t like the way he looks at you. I don’t
like the way he can hide what he doesn’t want us
to know. I don’t like the way he can get you to do
whatever the fuck he wants you to do, either,” he
snapped.
“Is there anything you do like?” I snapped
back.
He glared at me.
“What?” I asked. “He had no control about
telling you those things due to the geis he had on
him,” I said. “You’re really going to hold that
against him?”
Nikolai shrugged like he could care less what
Merrick did and didn’t have that was keeping
him from speaking.
“You’re annoying me almost as much as your
brother did today,” I muttered darkly.
 323/449

Nikolai snorted.
“You’re being childish,” Nikolai snapped.
I rolled over and glared at my mate.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. I’m not.”
I lifted up onto one elbow.
“How,” I asked, “am I being childish?”
The fight Keifer and I had this morning had
been pretty big.
I wanted to go out to the store for more sup-
plies. He’d said no, then refused anyone to take
me.
I hadn’t left this Godforsaken place in well
over a month, and I was getting claustrophobic.
Nikolai sat up as well, not liking that I was
above him with that much venom in my words.
“Keifer has hundreds of people that depend
on him,” he said. “The feelings of one woman
 324/449

don’t outrank the wellbeing of hundreds. And

you need to stop thinking with your heart, and
start using your brain, because like it or not, this
is your life now.”
He got up and left, leaving me a large amount
of time to think on his words.
Was I being childish?
I didn’t know.
And I’d pissed off my best friend today, too.
So I couldn’t really talk to anyone right now.
Fucking perfect.
 ***
I was walking down by the lake when I saw
the big dragon.
Angus.
Hello, pretty lady, Angus replied.
I smiled despite my bad mood.
“How’s it shaking?” I asked him.
How’s what shaking? he asked in confusion.
I smiled.
“How are you?” I amended.
I couldn’t really be sure, because to be hon-
est, I wasn’t good at reading dragons still, but I
could swear he smiled.
I’m fine, little one. You, obviously, are not.
What’s wrong? he asked.
I sat down on the bench that’d been moved
down close to the water. For my best friend. A
 326/449

best friend that I’d pissed off because I’d pissed

her husband off.
So I explained that I’d pissed everyone off,
not leaving anyone out.
“So, was I childish?” I asked once I’d
finished.
Let me get this straight, he said. You asked
Keifer to allow someone to take you to the store
so you could get supplies, supplies that you
wouldn’t tell him about. Then you yelled at him
in front of five people, one of whom was his wife.
Do I have that correct?
It sounded bad when he put it like that.
“I wanted to buy Nikolai a birthday present,”
I said huffily.
The dragon rumbled out a laugh.
And you couldn’t just order it online like
everyone else does? he asked.
I shook my head.
 327/449

“I feel like I can’t breathe,” I said. “I’ve been

trying for weeks to order it online, and it’s not in
stock,” I mumbled. “I’ve run out of options, and I
really want to get it for him.”
I dropped my head into my hands and
shivered in the cold night air, silently berating
myself for not grabbing my jacket in my haste to
get out of the stupid mansion where everyone
seemed to be in every room.
“Your first mistake was going about it the
way that you did,” Keifer said from behind me.
I jumped, then dropped my head, sighing.
Shit.
“Your second mistake was yelling at me in
front of the others. I will take a lot from you,
since you’re my brother’s mate, but I’m not go-
ing to take you yelling at me in front of them. It
makes me look weak, something which my
brother told you the last time you raised hell
 328/449

seeing as I was listening when he did,” Keifer

continued.
I gritted my teeth.
“Your third mistake was saying that in front
of my wife. She may be your friend, and owes a
certain loyalty to you, but she’s my mate. She’s
my other half. She’s co-ruler to me. She can’t be
seen arguing against me, just as you can’t.
You’re a princess now. It’s time to act like it,”
Keifer finished.
By the time he was done, I was clenching my
fists so freakin’ hard that I didn’t have any feel-
ing in them.
Whirling around, I glared at Keifer.
Easy with what you say, Angus whispered
through my mind. Control your anger. State your
case. Tell him what you feel, but don’t make him
feel stupid.
I was beyond ‘rational’ however.
I was into the ‘irrational’ state now.
 329/449

“Keifer, do you know what it’s like to be im-

prisoned?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed, and I couldn’t be sure if it
was due to the setting sun or the fact that he
didn’t like my tone.
“No,” he said.
I nodded.
“And do you know what it’s like to be told
what to do and when to do it?” I persisted.
He shook his head. “I’ve been king and a
prince my whole life,” he admitted. “It definitely
isn’t something that I’ve experienced.”
I nodded again.
“What about the basic amenities. Have you
ever had to deal with power outage?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The sanctuary has
backup generators, and we have for a very long
time now. Why?”
I ignored his question.
 330/449

“When I was four years old, I got my first

job. It was beating the rugs out at my parents’
place. There was a line of them that stretched
over thirty feet long. I did it for five hours a day
after I did my schooling,” I told him.
He cocked his head.
And it was then I realized that Nikolai was
there, too.
I knew he wouldn’t let Keifer yell at me.
He’d let him explain what he felt he had to,
but he wouldn’t ever let Keifer hurt me. My feel-
ings were a different thing, and I hated that
Nikolai was siding with Keifer on this.
He’d held back some, staring at what was go-
ing on.
I turned back to Keifer.
“When I was eight, I graduated from the rugs
and moved to the kitchens, where I cooked the
morning, noon and evening meals, as well as
baked the next day’s bread for over a hundred
 331/449

other people,” I explained. “I was one of about

four girls that were in my age group in our Amish
community. So, for sixteen years, I followed or-
der after order, and worked my ass off all be-
cause I was a girl. And I left because I was told
to leave. But I didn’t go back, do you know
why?”
I crossed my arms, glaring at the man that
was now my ‘King.’ Even though I’d never
sworn any fealty to him.
“I did a woman’s work. I did what I was told.
I went where I was instructed. I read what I was
given. I was a fucking slave,” I hissed. “And
now, here I am, a fucking slave again. I go to
sleep when I’m supposed to, since the lights are
turned out at a certain time because I share a
fucking house with fifteen other people. I work
where I’m told, because I’m needed. I don’t leave
because I’m told I can’t. I haven’t been able to
order a single fucking thing off of the Internet be-
cause of some blackout to my account due to
somebody out there looking for a way in at me.
 332/449

I’m being paid by my mate for services rendered

because whomever is supposed to pay me
doesn’t. And to top it all off, I am now mated to a
man that takes the side of his brother rather than
his mate.”
I was good and pissed now.
In fact, I wanted to throw something at both
of their faces.
My shoe, perhaps, since when I looked
around that was the only thing I could see that
would make an impact.
I didn’t, however.
Instead, I pulled what little courage I had left,
and volleyed one final blow at not Keifer, but at
my husband.
“I left that place because I knew they were
going to marry me off to a man. A man that’d
already told me he would brook no disrespect to
his family or mine. I was to obey him. No matter
what. And so I left, because that’s not how I
 333/449

wanted to live my life,” I snarled. “And look

where I am...being dictated what I can and can’t
do. By you. By him. And who’s watching out for
me? No one, that’s who. Because even my own
fucking best friend takes the other side.”
With that, I gathered the darkness around me,
something that I’d learned from Perdita, and I
disappeared.
Well, seemed to disappear.
Really, I just sat on the picnic table.
“Shit,” Nikolai hissed. “Shit.”
Shit was right.
 ***
Nikolai
“She’s right,” I said to my brother once we
were back inside.
“Just give her time to cool off. She’ll see the
error of her ways,” Keifer muttered dismissively.
I didn’t think she would.
In fact, I thought that this was worse than
ever.
Usually she was a pleasant buzz in my
brain…a hum of awareness.
Now…nothing.
She’d disappeared into the shadows…a trick
that I’d shown her because she’d asked.
Now I was staring at where she’d been with
worry.
Perdita, where is she? I asked.
If anyone could find her, it would be Perdita.
 335/449

Although she couldn’t always see through my

veils, she always had a hint of where I was.
I don’t see her within two hundred feet of
where I am. Why? Perdita answered quickly,
sounding distracted.
She was mad at me and disappeared into the
shadows, I answered.
I’ll keep an eye out for her, but she can’t get
off the property without me knowing, and if she
needs time, let her have it. You’re suffocating
her.
Words that Brooklyn had practically spat at
me moments before.
Wonderful.
I kicked the dust at my feet, annoyed that I’d
done exactly what she’d accused me of.
I’d taken my brother’s back out of habit.
 336/449

We’d been together for a very long time, and

we’d promised to always have each other’s
backs.
However, here I was, taking his back over my
mate’s and I’d seriously pissed her off.
I watched the darkness for the next two
hours.
And I wasn’t really, truly, worried until the
first hint of dawn started rising over the trees in
the back yard.
That’s about when my heart started to speed
up.
Perdita, I need you to find her now, I ordered.
Perdita took a few seconds too long to answer
me, and I screamed at her in my head.
Perdita, I need you to find her! I bellowed.
I don’t know why I was all worried about it
now.
 337/449

I’d been standing here for two hours without

any hint of worry.
Then all of a sudden it was just there.
And it took me a few long moments to realize
why.
Because I was feeling her panic.
Brooklyn! I cried, hoping she’d answer.
She didn’t.
So I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying
to use that same thread I’d used weeks ago when
I’d channeled her in the hospital basement.
And I found her…but I couldn’t see anything.
“Where are you?” I whispered aloud.
The blackness shifted, and I saw what looked
like brake lights…from the inside, not the
outside.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Shit!”
 338/449

I was too scared to break off from her, so I

mentally shouted for Perdita to relay the informa-
tion I’d just discovered to Keifer.
And I prayed.
Because, this time, I wasn’t sure that
everything was going to work out quite like I
wanted it to.
 Chapter 16
I love you more than you de-
serve. Fucker.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
My body hit the floor with a solid thud, and I
jolted in pain.
My elbow hit the concrete with a loud smack,
and I knew instantly that it was broken.
White hot pain rolled through my vision as I
rolled over and vomited as the pain washed over
me.
“Tie her up,” a familiar voice ordered.
A familiar voice that I hadn’t heard in a very
long time.
I forced myself to open my eyes and stared at
my brother, Charles.
 340/449

“No,” I croaked.
My brother smiled, showing his crooked teeth
that glowed yellow due to not taking care of
them.
The last time I’d seen him he’d had a beard
that reached down to his nipples.
Now it was shorter and came to just about
shoulder level; however, everything else about
him was the same.
He hadn’t changed at all in the years since I’d
last seen him.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked.
I nodded.
I was surprised.
“Get her tied up!” he snapped again, and it
was then that I saw the men in the room around
me.
And the other tables.
 341/449

And the cage.

Shit.
There was a dragon in the cage.
A beautiful brown and white one that re-
sembled more bronze, rather than brown, the
longer I stared at it.
That must be Merrick’s dragon.
Speaking of Merrick, I looked over to the
wall where I’d heard a body hit the ground
shortly after us getting into the room that we
were in, and saw him lying on the ground, blood
seeping out of his ears, nose, and mouth.
My heart hurt.
Not because he’d attacked me, but because I
could clearly see that he’d had no choice.
He literally couldn’t not do it, and it’d cost
him.
Big time.
 342/449

He was dying.
I could tell.
And I knew he’d brought me here under
protest.
The blood where he’d fought the pull proved
it.
He’d slipped me a note that I’d read by the
brake light glow, and I’d clearly seen the letters
he’d quickly scribbled onto an old receipt from a
supply order.
He’d said only a few short words.
There’d been another geis that I hadn’t real-
ized was there…nor had Ian.
One that was sort of a ticking time bomb.
If I wasn’t brought to the compound where
the man said to bring me, who I now knew was
Charles, then he’d kill him. After he killed Mer-
rick’s sister.
 343/449

And then he’d practically forced him to do it

by taking complete control of his body, which I
knew couldn’t be done by anyone other than an-
other dragon rider.
And Merrick had fought it.
He’d fought it so hard that even his eyes were
bleeding from his attempt not to deliver me to my
brother.
He’d been willing to let his sister and dragon
die to make sure that I lived, but in the end he
hadn’t been strong enough.
I wasn’t sure anyone could be. Not against
that kind of power.
My eyes went to the other two tables where a
man and a woman lay.
The man only had eyes for the woman, and
the woman looked at her brother with a broken
heart.
I could guess what was going on here.
 344/449

The man on the table was probably the other

dragon rider that’d forced Merrick to do his bid-
ding, and the girl was probably Merrick’s sister.
An impossible task if I did say so myself.
The man had wanted his mate to live. The
woman had wanted her brother to live. The
brother had wanted what was best for everyone.
Look around, my mate instructed me.
I couldn’t though, because in the next instant
I was yanked up by my arms, and my elbow
screeched in protest.
I could practically hear the bones of my arm
grinding together at the move.
I’d almost managed to block the pain out due
to some weird healing power that I knew I got
from Nikolai.
Now, though, it was as if it’d happened all
over again.
 345/449

Any healing that’d been done to it while I

was lying on the cool concrete, was abruptly hal-
ted by my rough treatment.
I screamed as white hot lighting shot up my
spine, and vomit surged up my throat.
I emptied the contents of my stomach onto
the man at my side, coating him from chest to
shoes and everywhere in between.
I was dropped once again, and I took the mo-
ment to open my eyes and look around, pushing
the pain brutally away with sheer force of will.
Force of will that I’d borrowed from Nikolai
in a desperate move to not only save myself, but
the others in the room with me who also didn’t
have a choice.
Easy, Nikolai’s ripple through my mind said,
making me calm slightly. I’ve got you.
I took everything in through a pain filled
haze.
 346/449

The room, or should I say cabin, we were in,

was a one-bedroom open styled floor plan. One
side of the large room was the kitchen, where we
were currently located. The other side housed a
bed and wardrobe, as well as a bathroom behind
a curtain.
The single window that led to the outside
showed nothing special.
An old curtain hung partially over the old
glass. Trees were beyond the glass, lining the en-
tire view.
Then I continued to survey, even when I was
picked up once again.
This time by a different set of men, not in-
cluding the man I’d puked on.
My eyes finally went to the lone door, and I
was glad to see that it had glass, allowing me to
see out.
 347/449

And as they moved me closer to the front

door where the hospital bed lay, I got a good look
outside the window.
Excitement coursed through my veins as I
saw the water tower.
To most it wouldn’t be that significant.
However, this one had a huge ‘Dallas’
painted on the side in red, white, and blue
lettering.
It’d been special to the city having been
donated by an old war vet that’d left all his
money that he’d been able to save in his lifetime
to the area of Dallas where he’d grown up.
He’d requested that the money that he’d
donated be put to good use on something that
would benefit the entire community.
And since they had needed the water tower,
they’d bought it.
Then had declared it, ‘Teddy Reed’s water
tower.’
 348/449

Got it, Nikolai said. I need to talk to Keifer

and the boys. But I’ll be back.
Then, just as suddenly, I was once again
alone in my head and able to concentrate on my
immediate surroundings again.
I’d deliberately ignored the table at my side,
but now I finally gave in to my sick curiosity and
looked down at the instruments on the smooth
surface.
“I wasn’t going to torture you, since you’re
my sister after all,” my brother said. “But you’ve
pissed me off today by not following directions.
So now you’ll do what I tell you to do, and like
it. Do you understand, sis?”
I wanted to slap him, but the special part of
me that hadn’t known I’d existed, i.e. control,
stayed with me long enough for me to take
whatever medication that he’d just given me.
I wasn’t picky about what they’d given me.
 349/449

Nikolai and I had had a long discussion on

what would happen to my body now that I had
special healing capabilities.
Anything, such as Motrin or Tylenol would
likely affect me for only a short period of time.
Nikolai’s sister was working on a way to
lengthen the effectiveness of the drugs, because
when someone got hurt and needed to be sedated,
whomever was having the procedure done on
them, repeatedly got knocked out by physical
means because they couldn’t make them stay still
any other way.
“Are you even fucking listening to anything I
am saying?” my brother snarled, pulling my hair
back so hard that a fistful of hair was in his hand
as he shook his fist in my face to show me.
I shouldn’t have done what I did.
I should’ve stayed calm.
I should’ve let Nikolai do what he needed to
do.
 350/449

But I didn’t.
I reared back with my legs, then sent both
straight into his chest.
It hit his breast bone with a crack, and I very
clearly made out the sound of ribs breaking.
I was thankful for my boots that I’d worn.
I’d intended to go for a small walk around the
lake, and due to the rain we’d had the previous
night, I’d prepared for the possibility of mud.
I’d worn them out of deference to my mate,
who continually said I needed to be more careful
about the mud. That a good pair of boots would
likely save me from a snake bite if it ever came
down to it.
I’d worn them, even though they were incred-
ibly uncomfortable.
They proved to come in handy now, though.
Almost out of reflex, I closed my eyes and
started concentrating.
 351/449

My head started to pound as my body became

more aware of the pain I was in.
However, my attempt to use my veil had
worked, and I disappeared from sight only mo-
ments later.
Rolling to my feet, I gritted my teeth against
the pain in my arm and moved to the door, freez-
ing when a man stopped in front of it, blocking
my exit.
“She’s around here somewhere,” the man
said. “You need to get up off your ass and find
her.”
That was directed towards my brother. Stupid
asshole.
I was happy to see him still writhing in pain
on the ground, almost gleeful, in fact.
“Seriously?” the man asked. “What do I pay
you for?”
 352/449

Charles grimaced in pain and lifted his knees

up under his torso before pushing up to his
haunches.
“Kill her,” he said gravely. “Fucking kill her.
She’s ruined my life; she doesn’t deserve to
live.”
How in the hell had I ruined his life?
I took a step backward and stepped wrong,
bumping the small table at my side.
My hand automatically went out to stop the
lamp from falling, but it was the one that had
been broken upon my arrival, meaning I
screamed.
Letting the lamp drop to the ground, I limped,
slightly hunched over, to the side of the room,
directly behind where my brother had managed
to get to his feet, albeit pitifully.
My brother looked around the room frantic-
ally, almost as if he was waiting for me to beam
him over the head any second.
 353/449

And technically I would have…if I had

something to use.
I wasn’t sure I could lift anything at this mo-
ment in time.
Instead, I sank down to my butt, letting my
back slide against the wall until my backside met
the cool tiled floor.
“Listen, Robert,” Charles said, a slight
wheeze in his voice. “She’s not going to leave.
Not with knowing who all is here. Let’s just get
the good stuff started. She’ll show herself when
she sees what we’re doing. She’s a nurse. Don’t
they take oaths or something?”
I gritted my teeth and let my head fall down
to my knees, my broken arm dangling uselessly
at my side.
“Fine,” ugly Robert said. “I’ve got my stuff
right here. I’ll take the geis off of him, and you
can see how to do it for next time.”
 354/449

My eyes widened in shock as they walked

over to Merrick and picked him up by the arms,
half dragging, half carrying him to the kitchen
table that was only a few feet from my face.
I swallowed bile as they let his body flop
down hard, his head hitting the table with a soft
thud.
He was beyond feeling it.
His eyes weren’t even open, and I was fairly
sure he was only a few minutes away from
death’s door.
“Why are we taking this off of him?”
Charles asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we let
him die like this?”
“He won’t die with the geis on him. It’ll keep
him alive just by the magic in the power object,”
Robert answered, lifting up Merrick’s shirt and
showing off the tattoo that was on his left side. “I
weaved words into the ink, forming the image.
 355/449

Once the image and ink are gone from his skin,
he will be able to die if you choose for him to.”
I leaned forward, curious how they were go-
ing to get rid of it.
I wasn’t left wondering.
Seconds after the thought crossed my brain,
Robert pulled out a wicked looking blade, then
sliced the skin right off of Merrick’s side.
The tattoo disappeared with the skin, and
what was left was just a gaping hole from hip to
ribs.
Blood welled, and the muscles of Merrick’s
side were exposed by the horrific act.
“There,” Robert wiped the blade off on Mer-
rick’s back. “That should be enough. I want my
money.”
My brother pointed to the box that was on top
of the kitchen counter, and Robert went directly
to it, stopping only long enough to check that
 356/449

there was indeed money in it before he left, clos-

ing the door to the cabin softly behind him.
Something about the way he left so abruptly
had me wondering why.
Why, when he’d spoken about his plans with
my brother and then abruptly left meant there
was a motive behind the act.
I didn’t know what, but I knew better than to
show my hand.
I would wait, no matter what.
Nikolai would be here soon.
I knew it.
I could feel it.
My brother hissed, staring at Merrick, then he
scanned the room.
“I’m going to fucking torture him until you
show yourself,” Charles growled.
 357/449

Then he did just that, and he didn’t stop at

just Merrick.
He’d started in on the other dragon rider and
Merrick’s sister when torturing him didn’t work.
Sickened, I prayed.
God, please hurry, Nikolai, I pleaded.
But he didn’t answer, and the worse was
proven yet to come.
 ***
Thirty minutes later, I’d had enough.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
My arm was healed enough that I could now
wiggle my fingers without screaming in pain, and
I couldn’t let Charles hurt the woman any more.
I pulled out my badass, letting her off the
chain.
And when I say ‘off the chain,’ I mean it in
the worst way possible.
I wasn’t proud of what I did next.
 Chapter 17
There are two kinds of people
without beards. Boys and wo-
men. I am neither.
-Jase, Duck Dynasty
Nikolai
To say that I was out of control was an
understatement.
Anything and everything that I was ever
taught was thrown out the window when I real-
ized my mate was gone.
So, as Perdita flew me over the cabin on my
second flyby, I made an instinctive decision.
“Get me onto the roof,” I said, noticing the
large chimney.
How do you know this is the right place? Per-
dita chimed into my chaotic thoughts.
 360/449

It’s like a buzz under my skin. I just know. As

we flew, the buzz became stronger and stronger
until I felt her, I explained to her telepathically as
she hovered over the roof.
Before I could reply, the screaming started.
I practically flew down the chimney, coming
to a thudding stop in the black dust filled bottom,
coughing slightly as I tried to look around.
The fucking fireplace was huge, and I could
stand up all the way and still see everything that
was going on and more.
“Brooklyn!” I bellowed, not seeing her
anywhere.
I did, however, see a man on the floor,
screaming for his life. Merrick.
Choosing to prioritize rather than freak out, I
bolted for Brooklyn, scooping her up in my arms
and burying my face into her neck.
 361/449

She pushed off of me, though, and went to

Merrick, pressing her two fingers to his neck and
checking his pulse.
She looked at me grimly.
“He’s not good,” she whispered.
She took a wad of paper towels off of the
counter that was a few feet away from her hand
and pressed them to Merrick’s side.
“Don’t hurt him!” the woman pleaded.
“Don’t hurt him!”
Brooklyn blinked, her brows furrowing.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Keifer
roared from the doorway.
Nobody moved.
The ones on the tables couldn’t.
This whole thing was so fucked up.
Where was everyone?
 362/449

Nobody in the vicinity but the ones in the cab-

in, Perdita relayed.
“You,” Keifer said, pointing at the woman.
“Speak. What’s going on here?”
The room went silent.
“It’s my brother. Please,” she cried. “He
didn’t have a choice.”
“What are you talking about?” Keifer said
through gritted teeth. “Who are you talking
about?”
The woman gestured.
“Him. Merrick. He’s my brother. Please,” the
woman had tears pouring from her eyes.
She looked terror stricken.
“What’s your name?” Jean Luc asked, shak-
ing him slightly.
“Desi,” she said, voice breaking.
Desi shook her head.
 363/449

“He forbade me to do anything,” Desi

whispered hollowly. “I couldn’t have helped
even if I tried. He’s my brother. He gave me an
order, and his word is law, no matter how much I
wanted to disobey it.”
I looked over at Merrick, seeing his breathing
uneven and coming in pants that were getting
slower and slower.
“We need to get him home to Skylar,” I
muttered, hurrying over to the bed.
“Don’t move him,” Brooklyn whispered. “I
think…I think we just need to get him to his
dragon. He can fly him to the heart. I think…I
think that’s the way to do it.”
I blinked.
“What?” I asked.
Brooklyn started talking even as she urged
me to help her move Merrick.
 364/449

I took the hint and grabbed the end of the

sheet while Desi’s boyfriend—the other dragon
rider—Tony, picked up the last corner.
“I heard my brother talking,” Desi whispered.
“Charles was hurting Tony.” She looked guiltily
at the man beside her. “As he was working him
over, he kept talking about stealing ‘hearts’ and
how he was going to become a rich man with the
ability to heal anyone he wanted to. I didn’t un-
derstand, not at first, but this is my best guess. If
what he says is true…I think that’s the only way
we can save him.”
“The closest heart is about an hour’s ride
from here. It’s the one just off of our property,” I
said.
“You’re not bringing that man back onto our
property,” Keifer growled. “He’s tried to kill you
twice now.”
“He didn’t have a choice,” Brooklyn said,
pointing at Keifer. “Back the fuck away.”
 365/449

Keifer didn’t budge, and Brooklyn let the

sheet drop and charged up to Keifer.
“If you don’t get out of my way,” she hissed.
“I’ll shove that stupid fucking cane up your ass.
Wide end first.”
I looked down at the cane in Keifer’s hand,
then back at my mate who rarely had a bad thing
to say about anyone.
Then raised my eyebrows at Keifer.
“She has a point,” I said. “That tattoo is gone.
Something happened here that he didn’t want.
Look at him.”
Brooklyn bared her teeth at Keifer, who
didn’t back down from her angry stare.
“I’m thinking of not just you, but my whole
sanctuary. We can’t bring them into Dragon
Rider territory. We can’t vouch for any of them.”
“Then we’ll stay here. You take him. We will
keep,” Desi pleaded, her voice filled with
desperation.
 366/449

Keifer gritted his teeth, his mind working a

hundred miles an hour.
I knew his dilemma. He had more than just us
to think about.
He had a mate at home that was pregnant. A
threat that he knew nothing about. And four un-
knowns that could possibly kill all that he loved.
He was just being protective.
And I didn’t know who to side with.
Turns out, though, that Brooklyn could take
care of herself, which she proved in the next
instant.
One second Merrick and Brooklyn were
there, and the next second, they weren’t.
My vision blurred, and then I was privy to the
same thing that Brooklyn was. She’d weaved her
own illusion to help get Merrick help.
Good girl.
“Help me,” she whispered. “Help me now.”
 367/449

I looked into her eyes, studied her face, and

then nodded.
This was the time.
I would either choose her or Keifer.
I picked Merrick up, cradling him like an
over large newborn, and walked out the door.
 ***
I witnessed magic that night.
Saw the amazingness of it before my eyes.
Merrick’s dragon, a shiny pale bronze
dragon, the size of a small tractor, used to mow
acres upon acres of hay, stood proudly by Mer-
rick’s side.
It was then that I realized that the dragon was
taking in just as much healing power as Merrick
himself.
I hadn’t realized that the ride was as far away
as it was, but the longer I watched Merrick and
the dragon, Sascha, heal, the more I realized that
we must’ve been further than was safe for even
Perdita to go.
“You need to tell your brother where, exactly,
you are or he’ll keep hounding us until he finds
us. And I don’t really want to deal with the fight
that I can see coming. Tell him and be done with
it,” Brooklyn growled for the fourth time.
 369/449

I narrowed my eyes.
“If he comes here, he’s going to try to stop
you and me,” I informed her.
She shrugged.
“It’s already done,” she said.
I looked from her to Merrick and back again.
“You think he’s going to be okay?” I asked,
leaning forward slightly to study the other man.
He isn’t bleeding anymore, so that was a
good thing, right?
Yes, Perdita said telepathically. Your brother
has found you.
I looked up just in time to see Declan and
Keifer land on the soft forest floor beside us.
Keifer didn’t attack like I thought he would,
though.
Instead, he calmly slid off the dragon’s back,
and crossed his arms as he watched whatever
 370/449

healing was happening with Merrick, and his

dragon, happen.
“I took the others to the sanctuary,” he said.
“And I would’ve brought Skylar with me, but
you never answered.”
Brooklyn snorted.
I sent a glare in her direction.
“What exactly are you thinking I’m going to
do here?” Keifer asked my mate.
Brooklyn looked up, and her eyes narrowed.
“What do I think is going to happen?” she
asked. “How the hell would I know? Everything
that I’ve wanted since you’ve gotten back has
taken a backseat to what you wanted. My best
friend, my mate, they all deferred to you. And
I’m tired of coming second best to the people that
used to put me first before you showed up.”
As Brooklyn spoke, she leaned forward and
poked Keifer in the chest, pronouncing each
word with more and more force until her finger
 371/449

was sinking into the soft jacket Keifer was

wearing.
“You done?” Keifer asked.
Brooklyn hissed at him.
Keifer’s frown cracked, and suddenly a smile
overtook his face.
“You’re good for this family, you know,” he
said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Brooklyn asked in
confusion.
“Sorry that I haven’t tried harder to get along
with you. You’re one of mine now, and I’ll do
my best in the future to listen to you before I
choose what I think is best for you,” he promised.
I threw one arm around Brooklyn’s shoulder.
“You’ll excuse us for a moment?” I asked my
brother.
 372/449

I didn’t wait for him to tell me yes or no; in-

stead, I just walked away with Brooklyn as she
dragged her feet.
We were about thirty feet away, and out of
hearing distance, of at least my brother, when I
turned Brooklyn to me and stared at her, studying
her tired face.
“You’re okay?” I asked her worriedly.
She held up her hand.
“I think it’s healed,” she answered. “Are you
okay?”
I looked at my own hand.
The flash of pain I’d felt earlier when Brook-
lyn had broken her arm was a distant memory
now, but it still hurt to think that she’d been in
pain and I’d had no way of preventing that hurt.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”
She nodded.
“I’m still mad at you,” she promised.
 373/449

I nodded this time.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have chosen
my brother over you. I’ll offer no excuse.”
She sighed.
“I know exactly why you chose your brother
over me, and I agree with it,” she admitted. “But
it doesn’t help. I’ve gotten a taste for freedom
and I don’t like having it denied to me.”
I pulled her into my arms, letting my lips rest
on her forehead for a long moment before pulling
back to look into her eyes.
“There’s always going to be a threat to us…to
you,” I told her.
She frowned, and when she would’ve spoken,
I stopped her before she could.
“Listen,” I said.
When she nodded, I continued.
“Every day will be a constant struggle,” I in-
formed her. “When there’s that many people
 374/449

under the same roof and in the same immediate

area, tempers are bound to flare. So you’ll have
to try your hardest to work with the others there,
even my brother.”
She nodded.
“And when you have a problem that you
can’t solve, I’d like you to come to me, talk it out
with me, before you go about trying to fix it on
your own. Like today,” I said.
She winced.
“I was just trying to get some air,” she said
softly.
“I know,” I informed her. “But that’s another
thing. You‘re going to have to get used to having
security. If not me, then a dragon escort.
Anything; but you can’t be left alone. You’d be a
huge pawn in this war against the Purists.”
She grimaced.
“You’ll need to choose,” I said. “Your free-
dom, where you’re able to do whatever you
 375/449

want, or this place.” I hesitated, “It’s not always

the best place to be in the world, but there’ll be
no better place that has a greater group of friends
that care about you enough to take absolutely
anything for you. Even a bullet.”
“You know I can’t leave. You were the one
who explained that I’d die if I was away from
you,” she muttered darkly.
I smiled at her obvious irritation.
“I never said you’d be getting rid of me. I’d
go with you, of course,” I said softly. “We can
live out of the public eye. If we moved to a dif-
ferent state, it’d be likely that nobody would even
know who I was.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“You’d leave this place?” she asked in
stunned disbelief. “For me?”
I smiled at her.
 376/449

“I’d give my left nut for you. Is it so hard to

believe I’d give up my sanctuary for you?” I
asked teasingly.
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s disgusting.”
I laughed, then shrugged.
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t want you to give up your left nut,”
she sighed, turning fully to face me as she said
what she had to say next. “I’m not even asking
you to always side with me over your brother. All
I’m asking is that you at least give me the benefit
of the doubt. If I tell you I’m going stir-crazy, we
need to fly out as soon as possible.”
I stared at her, studied her face, and then
nodded.
“I can do that. I will do that,” I amended.
She smiled then, and then walked into my
arms.
 377/449

Her body felt right as I wrapped my arms

around her shoulders and pulled her into me.
She rested her hand over my heart, and my
arm trailed down her arm to her forearm where
she’d broken the bones earlier in the day.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
She let her head fall back as she stared into
my eyes.
“I’m better than okay,” she answered. “I had
a lot of thinking to do while I was waiting for
you to get there, and I didn’t like what I saw.”
I blinked.
“What do you mean?” I asked worriedly.
“What did you decide?”
Was that panic in my voice?
I didn’t like the tightness in my chest, or the
way my breathing seemed to stall as I waited for
her to reply.
 378/449

“I saw my life. Two different paths I could

take.” She hesitated and I lifted my hand to run
down the side of her head, smoothing her hair
down so I could see her eyes completely.
“Go on,” I urged.
She swallowed.
“I had two choices,” she answered. “One, I
could leave…test out the theory of whether or not
I would die without you.”
Despair rose inside my body, but her next
words calmed that roiling storm.
“Or…I could suck it up and be a big girl,”
she continued as if she was unaware of the havoc
she’d caused inside of me.
Her look said she knew what her hesitations
were doing to me.
And she smiled.
Something eased in my chest, and I knew
which decision she’d come to without her even
 379/449

saying because she suddenly opened herself up to

me, letting me feel exactly what was going on in
that head of hers.
Everything that I ever wanted to know about
her was suddenly revealed.
What it was like for her as a child.
What she wanted most in life.
What she loved.
What she hated.
Everything was there for the picking, and I
had to gasp as all the love she felt for me sud-
denly poured through the mating bond that we
shared.
“Jesus,” I whispered, going down to my
knees.
I couldn’t help but do that.
It was as if the strength I had to stay upright
suddenly fled, leaving me with nothing else but
the love I felt for Brooklyn in my heart.
 380/449

I stared at her, then I gave it all back to her.

I gave her my hopes. My dreams. My wants
and needs.
I gave it all to her just like she’d given to me,
and I watched as her eyes lit up with each new
memory or thought.
By the time I was done, she was crying, and it
took everything I had to not join her.
Men didn’t cry, though.
“Brooklyn!” Keifer suddenly cried. “Oh my
God,” he said in pain and fear. “We have to go.
Now!”
I was up and running towards my brother be-
fore I’d even realized I was moving, Brooklyn
directly beside me.
My eyes went first to Merrick, and then to
Keifer. “What’s going on?” I asked him.
I couldn’t see any signs of Merrick being in
distress. In fact, he looked even better now than
 381/449

he did a couple of minutes ago when I took

Brooklyn off to the side.
Keifer’s eyes, though, were wild, and I knew
instantly it had everything to do with his wife.
“What is it?” Brooklyn asked worriedly. “Is it
Blythe?”
Keifer nodded almost out of habit.
His clenched hands at his waist, though, told
the real story.
He was in pain.
Or at least his wife was in pain.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Brooklyn
ordered, snapping her fingers at Keifer.
“She’s in labor,” he said, his voice cracking
on the ‘labor’ part.
“Okay,” Brooklyn nodded. “Take me with
you and I’ll go to her. Nikolai, take Merrick back
with you.”
 382/449

“Wait…” Keifer held up his hand. “Do you

think the heart will help her like it helped him?”
Brooklyn looked thoughtful for a few long
seconds before she shook her head. “No. I don’t
think so. The heart healed Merrick, but it didn’t
take any of the pain. I could feel the distress
rolling off his body as he laid there.”
Keifer nodded then walked straight to De-
clan, offering his hand down to my mate without
another word.
Brooklyn ran up to me, gave me a quick kiss
on the cheek, and then ran back to Declan, taking
Keifer’s hand.
Once she was in position, Declan lifted off
with a powerful flap of wings, and then his cloak
was in place and I could no longer see him.
I looked over at Perdita, then to the side of
her where Merrick lay next to his dragon.
 383/449

Then, without another word, I walked over to

the dragon rider and picked him up in a fireman’s
carry over my shoulder.
I laid him over Perdita’s shoulders in the next
instant before turning to his dragon.
“Can you follow?” I asked her.
A series of images flew into my brain, and I
startled in surprise when I realized just how
young Merrick’s dragon was.
Only the ones that were too small and young
couldn’t voice their words, and this one, although
it looked older, did the exact same thing as the
little ice dragons at the sanctuary did.
Stomach knotting, I got up and voiced my or-
der to the big beast. “Follow me.”
 Chapter 18
Brooklyn
The screaming, my God, would it ever end?
“Seriously,” Blythe growled between
clenched teeth. “If one of you doesn’t shut him
the fuck up, I’m going to levitate out of this bed
and show him what pain really is!”
I watched as Nikolai finally took pity on his
brother and put him out of his misery.
By knocking him out.
With his fist to Keifer’s temple.
“Nikolai!” both Blythe and I squeaked in
outrage.
Nikolai blinked.
“What?” he asked, blinking owlishly.
My mouth opened and closed like a guppy.
 385/449

“I think,” Skylar said, “that my sister-in-laws

are upset over the fact that you cold clocked
Keifer.”
Blythe and I nodded, but then Blythe’s stom-
ach tightened as another contraction started to
roll over her.
“It’s too soon,” she moaned, her arms band-
ing tightly around her belly as she started to pant
for breath.
I looked at Skylar.
Neither of us said what we were thinking.
It was incredibly too early for the babies to be
born.
In fact, at this point in time, the babies may
not survive.
We didn’t have the same capabilities as Dal-
las’ busiest hospital did.
If we were lucky, we could get the babies
there in time.
 386/449

Likely, though, we wouldn’t.

Although we were close by a dragon’s flight,
we couldn’t just go flying up to the helicopter
landing on the hospital’s roof and demand atten-
tion. Not after the last time we’d gotten fined out
the ass and told not to ever do that again. Oh, and
threatened with lethal force. That was a biggie,
too.
We’d have to stay and hope for the best.
Pulling Nikolai to the side, I stared him in the
eyes so he could read the seriousness in mine.
“Listen,” I said to him. “Drag him to that
chair over there. Calm him down, and shut him
up when he wakes up. Seriously, this is going to
be quick and dirty; he needs to keep his shit to-
gether, okay?”
Nikolai nodded, and we both turned at the
same time when a scream erupted from Blythe’s
lips.
 387/449

I patted him on his hand before I left, giving

my full attention to Blythe.
Her eyes were scared, and she was looking at
me with fear.
“It’ll be okay, best friend,” I whispered to
her. “We’re mated to freakin’ dragon riders.
Conditions couldn’t be any better than they are
right now.”
She nodded, wanting to believe me, but I
could tell she didn’t.
We both knew what happened to babies that
were this early.
They were literally two months and a few
days premature. That was eight weeks. That
meant each baby was thirty-two weeks and three
days. Full term was considered thirty-seven
weeks, and they were five weeks shy of that. And
to top that off, they were smaller because they
were twins.
 388/449

The lungs were what developed most fully

during this time. Although everything was
formed, the surfactant that made the lungs stay
inflated wasn’t working efficiently yet.
That was the main worry.
There were others, of course, but the lungs
were the main worry as of now.
We wouldn’t borrow trouble, however.
“We need to do a sonogram to see how the
babies are positioned,” Skylar said to Blythe and
me, completely ignoring the whole room of
people.
Jean Luc and Ian were in the back of the
room, partially closed off by a partition that
blocked one room off from another as they
watched over our newest sanctuary occupants.
The rest of them were in the living room/
break room off of the main area where the pa-
tients were held.
 389/449

Needless to say, there was a lot of commotion

going on.
A groan from the seat beside the bed had
Blythe’s attention moving to her mate while I
brought the sonogram machine up to her bedside.
After a quick setup, Skylar took the wand and
did her thing while I watched the screen
anxiously.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the
first baby was head down.
We’d worry about the second once the other
one came out.
“Okay,” I said, my voice obviously portray-
ing my relief. “Who do you want to check you?”
Her mouth pursed. “I guess, either way it
goes, it’ll be uncomfortable. How about we just
take turns? How about you first? It’ll make our
friendship stronger.”
I laughed.
 390/449

“Yeah,” I said. “Having my fingers up your

hoo-hoo will make our relationship stronger, I’m
sure of it.”
After donning gloves, I quickly checked her.
“You’re at nine centimeters,” I told her. Once
done, I washed my hands and asked, “How long
have you been in labor?”
She shrugged.
“About four hours now, I guess. At first, I
wasn’t sure that it was for real. I’ve had a lot of
lower back pain since I’ve found out I was preg-
nant, and it’s all lower back. Every bit of it.”
She growled when the pain under question flared
again, her face going tight with agony.
“Can you give her any drugs?” Keifer asked,
his voice sounding much more like himself.
“I don’t have anything that I think is safe
enough to give her that won’t affect the babies as
well,” Skylar said. “I thought I’d have a few
more weeks to get the things we’d need.”
 391/449

“What don’t you have?” I asked worriedly.

“Anything,” Skylar admitted. “I have
blankets and towels. But I don’t even have a suc-
tion bulb. It’s all on order, but it’s not set to ar-
rive until a few weeks from now.”
I looked over at Nikolai.
“Can you make a trip to the store and get
some things?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes going to Keifer then
back to me.
I saw the warning for what it was.
If he wasn’t there, Keifer very well might go
a little crazy.
I nodded, letting him know I could handle his
brother, and he left without another word.
“Isn’t he going to wait for what I tell him we
need?” Skylar asked.
 392/449

“I’ll tell him. It’ll be faster, just in case

Blythe goes faster than either of us anticipates,” I
told her.
She nodded, not questioning me or my de-
cision, and went back to studying the monitor.
“I’m not a baby doctor,” she admitted. “I’m
very rusty on what needs to be done, so you’ll
have to help me. You’ve had training for this as
well, and I’m going to depend on you to be the
check to my balance, okay?”
And that’s how the next four hours went.
Nikolai arrived back in less than two, his
arms filled with sterile packages that I wondered
how the hell he’d found.
My guess was he’d gone up to the hospital
and lifted it right from under their noses.
It was all hospital grade, and not one item
looked to come from the grocery store, but a ma-
jor medical supply chain that supplied hospitals
with their supplies.
 393/449

I didn’t bother asking, though.

I’d leave that for a later date.
“I think we’re ready to push,” Skylar said,
fear leaking into her voice.
I reached down and grabbed her hand.
“We can do it,” I promised.
And we did.
We delivered the boy first, and the girl within
five minutes after that.
However, nearly instantly we realized that
they weren’t going to be okay.
Both of their lungs were very
underdeveloped.
The boy was worse than the girl, and both ba-
bies were sitting in their father’s arms as they
struggled to draw breath.
I was holding an oxygen mask over the girl,
while Ian was doing the same for the boy.
 394/449

“You’ll have to let me hold him. I can keep

him here long enough for you to take me to the
hospital,” Ian said, his voice serious.
I could tell Keifer didn’t want to let Ian have
his child, but in the end he did what was best for
the baby.
Keifer placed the small boy into Ian’s arms
and took the tiny girl into his arms with the port-
able oxygen around her little face. We all started
to walk to the dragons that were crowded around
the compound’s hospital.
Even Angus, the little boy’s paired dragon,
was there.
He was usually a lot more anti-social, but in
this instance, he was every bit as concerned as
everyone else.
And also the most useless. At least that’s
what he was thinking.
Angus had suffered a loss the day Nikolai’s
dad died.
 395/449

Both dragon and King had gone down, and

although the dragon hadn’t died like the king
had, he might as well have.
He was useless with only one wing.
He was surly. Angry. And he hated anything
that had to do with a Purist.
He was best by himself and didn’t make any
excuses for his behavior.
Right then, though, I saw the devastation in
his eyes as he watched Ian, Keifer, and Nikolai
mount.
“Take care of them,” Keifer said.
My eyes widened as I looked back at Angus,
whom the order had been directed to, and nearly
smiled.
Angus, now full of a purpose, nodded his
head in understanding and acknowledgment.
I will, my King.
 396/449

Then they all took flight, and I watched with

my heart in my throat as they took off with the
future King of Dragons and his baby sister.
 ***
I dreaded walking back into the hospital room
where Blythe was.
I knew she was crying.
Hell, I was crying.
But I did it anyway, despite the foreboding
that followed upon my heels.
I met Skylar coming out just as I was about to
go in and froze at the look of shocked terror on
Skylar’s face.
“What is it?” I asked the moment I took stock
of her features.
“She’s bleeding out.”
I blinked.
“But…” I stammered.
She’d been doing fine!
I went into the room to find Blythe so pale I
could practically see the life draining out of her.
 398/449

“When did this happen?” I asked urgently,

running up to the bed and grabbing a hold of
Blythe’s hand.
Blythe’s head rolled to the side.
“Make sure you take care of them,” she
whispered brokenly.
“No!” I instantly denied. “You’ll take care of
them! I don’t want them!”
She smiled softly, then her eyes closed and
she lost consciousness.
“We have to take her to the heart,” I urged,
pulling the blankets off her and throwing them to
the floor.
Skylar helped me, careful to leave the bag of
fluids going into her in place.
“I thought we couldn’t die!” I cried. “I
thought we were immortal!”
Skylar and I kicked the brakes off of the
gurney and pushed her quickly out of the room.
 399/449

Merrick, his eyes glossed over with exhaus-

tion, stood in the doorway of the entrance to the
outside, watching us.
“I’ve got a ride for you,” he said, his voice
rough.
Merrick had thought ahead. Sascha wasn’t
able to carry that many people. Not in her
weakened condition. Hell, we were all weakened.
He looked about ready to fall, but I didn’t
help him.
Not only did I not have time, but I didn’t
think he would appreciate it.
I came outside once again to find Angus out-
side, and standing next to him were a couple of
horses without saddles.
I didn’t even question where they’d come
from.
I just ran up to one, used the mane to grab
hold, and swung up into the saddle.
 400/449

I’d have to ask myself later how I managed to

do it, because the horse had to be at least fifteen
hands tall, and I was fairly sure the horse was
wild.
I’d never seen any horses here.
Horses and dragons didn’t get along.
But right now, I didn’t ask questions.
I smiled as Angus lifted Blythe up off the
gurney with his tail, offering my hands out for
her.
He placed her somewhat gently into my arms,
and then I gave a thumb’s up to Skylar, who
managed to mount the other horse using the
gurney as a step stool.
Then we were off, praying the whole way
that everything would be okay.
 Chapter 19
When people ask me which is
more important to Brooklyn,
food or love, I don’t answer.
Mostly because she’s eating.
-Nikolai’s secret thoughts
Nikolai
“And you said the mother gave birth at
home?” the nurse asked Keifer for the fifteenth
time.
“Listen, lady,” I said none too gently. “She’s
on her way, trust me. But my brother has a heli-
copter that he used to get her here, and there’s
only so many we can fit into the belly of it.”
The nurse looked at me with anger, upset that
I’d been so rude to her, but I couldn’t find it in
me to care at that moment in time.
I was pissed off, scared, and nauseous.
 402/449

Not to mention we’d been away from the

twins for well over thirty minutes now while we
were peppered with question after question re-
garding our involvement.
“Something’s wrong,” Keifer said to me
when the nurse finally left.
I turned to him.
“What?” I asked, sitting forward in my chair.
“Is it the babies?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s Blythe.”
“What about her?” I asked, somewhat
confused.
When we’d left, she’d been fine. She’d actu-
ally been a rock, in fact.
Keifer shook his head. “I don’t know. I just
feel it…here.”
He pointed to his chest, right where his heart
beat below his hand, and I suddenly had the same
odd feeling.
 403/449

Except I knew Brooklyn wasn’t hurt.

I could feel that she was upset, though.
Could practically hear her breathing as it
accelerated.
“Call her,” I said, handing him my phone.
He was about to take it when the nurse who’d
taken the babies earlier called his name.
“Keifer Vassago?”
Keifer turned to me. “Call her and figure it
out.”
Then he was gone, following after the woman
who had taken his children away from him.
I could see the indecision in his eyes, the de-
sire to be in two places at once.
However, Blythe had Skylar and Brooklyn.
The babies didn’t have anyone.
He had to be here.
I didn’t, though.
 404/449

I stood and started running down toward the

stairs with my phone to my ear.
Ian caught me at one point, his heavy boot
steps following closely behind me as we took the
steps two and three at a time.
The phone rang and rang, and my bad feeling
went from bad to terrible.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asked as we met at the
top of the steps.
I pushed through the roof entrance door, toss-
ing a veil around the both of us to fool the video
cameras when they heard the roof alarm signal,
and slammed it shut behind us.
“Something’s wrong with Blythe,” I said,
hurrying to the roof.
Perdita met me even before I called her, and
Mace, Ian’s dragon, did the same.
We both mounted and were flying away
without another word.
 405/449

“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” I

asked Perdita.
Blythe’s bleeding, from what I can tell, she
said.
Bleeding didn’t sound good. Not at all.
And when I saw the state she was in when I
landed at the heart, for the second time in less
than a day, I wanted to cry.
She wasn’t good.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the moment my feet
met the cold earth.
“She won’t stop bleeding,” Skylar said. “I’ve
given her everything that I can, but she won’t
stop. Not even the heart is helping.”
We watched in horror as Blythe’s laboring
breath stopped.
Nothing. Not even a breath, left any of us as
we watched Blythe’s body turn cold.
Then everything around us exploded.
 ***
Keifer
I was standing next to my baby girl’s incubat-
or when I felt Blythe’s life slip away from me.
One second she was a soft hum around my
heart, and the next thing she was just…gone.
I didn’t really know what happened next, but
power burst out of me, and every single living
soul within a five-hundred-foot radius was
affected.
I sent that power down my bond, straight to
my mate’s heart, and forced it upon her.
She didn’t protest.
She couldn’t.
Because she was dead.
 Chapter 20
Things I will not judge you
on: Sexuality, religion, or
race. Things I will judge you
for: Not signaling while driv-
ing, how you treat others, and
what direction you place the
toilet paper.
-Fact of Life
Brooklyn
The room we were in was white.
White walls. White ceiling. White bed. White
linens.
Where in the hell was I?
A moan from my side had me turning, pain-
fully, to face the other occupant of my bed.
“I fan’t feel my fongue,” Nikolai said.
 408/449

I giggled, then my head exploded with pain.

“Owww,” I whined. “What happened?”
The bed shifted on my other side, and I
gasped, turning to see who else was in my bed.
“Blythe?” I asked. “Why are you in bed with
us?”
A moan from her, and from someone across
the room, had me sitting up in confusion.
Then the door opened, dragging my attention
from the other bed in the room housing Skylar.
“Glad to see y’all are all awake,” Ian said
with annoyance. “I can’t keep fucking doing
this.”
“Doing what?” Nikolai and I asked at the
same time.
“Jinx,” I whispered roughly. “You owe me a
Coke.”
My mouth felt like I hadn’t partaken of a li-
quid in about a week.
 409/449

He snorted.
“Taking care of y’all. It goes against the
grain,” he grumbled. “And I’ve had to do it for
everyone that’s a fucking dragon rider or some-
how bonded to a dragon rider.”
“Why weren’t you affected?” Blythe moaned.
“Because someone had to take care of y’all,
and I had the least to give, according to Keifer,”
Ian shrugged.
Blythe gasped, standing up on the bed and
staring at Ian with sudden terror.
“My babies?” she asked.
He held up his thumbs in the universal sign of
‘they’re good.’
“Thank God,” she sank to the bed. “Why am
I naked?”
It was then we all looked at Blythe, who’d
hastily taken the sheet from the bed and wrapped
it around herself.
 410/449

“Because it was either take it off you, or

leave you in blood. So I chose to take it off of
you underneath the blankets. But thanks for the
show,” Ian jeered.
I tossed the pillow at him that was under my
head.
“So what…happened?” I asked, checking to
make sure I had clothes on.
I did.
Nikolai rolled out of the bed, coming to his
feet like a panther.
“Fuck, but I have to pee. How long were we
out?” he asked, walking to the bathroom.
Then he proceeded to pee for, at least, seven
minutes…maybe longer.
Blythe and I looked at each other, and a grin
played at our mouths.
 411/449

“My head hurts,” Skylar said in protest from

the other bed. “Why are we in the sun room? My
hands feel like they’re nailed to the bed.”
The funny thing was, that they were above
her head as she looked at them in front of her
face. Opening and closing them into fists, trying
to work the circulation back into them.
“It was either the sun room or straight out-
side,” Ian boomed. “My powers work best during
the light of day,” he said. “And Keifer decided to
heal every single one of the babies in the NICU
as well as you.”
His eyes were pinned on Blythe.
“What?” she asked. “What are you talking
about?”
“From what I can gather, which isn’t much
since I haven’t seen Keifer yet, nor spoken to
him, is that he healed you,” he answered her. “He
felt your life force slip away, and he drew almost
every ounce of power from nearly every person
 412/449

that’s connected to him. And then he funneled

that into you.”
We all blinked, but Ian continued before we
could ask him anything more.
“When he had the excess that he didn’t need,
he gave it to all the babies that were in the NICU.
They’re calling it a divine miracle,” Ian said,
tossing a paper onto the bed.
On the front page headline it read: Christ-
mas Miracle. All babies ready to go home,
happy and healthy.
“Holy cow,” I said, leaning forward.
“They’re all okay?!” I asked.
Ian nodded, then picked up a TV changer and
pressed the big red button in the middle that
turned the massive thing on.
I didn’t remember any TV or beds being in
here, but that was a question to save for a later
time.
 413/449

“They’ve been running a continuous loop

today about all the babies and their parents’ stor-
ies,” he said, stopping on Channel 3.
“How long were we out?” Nikolai asked, his
arms crossed over his chest.
“Four days,” he said distractedly.
“Four days?” Blythe shrieked, climbing out
of the bed and running away. “I need to go see
my babies!”
Then she was gone, a long white sheet trail-
ing in her wake.
“You’re taking her, right?” I asked Nikolai.
He shrugged.
“Guess I’m going to take about fifteen
people. Hope Perdita’s ready to be a packhorse,”
he teased.
I think not. Perdita replied primly. You’d be
lucky to get me about two feet off the ground at
 414/449

this point. Your king zapped me just as good as

he zapped you.
Nikolai smiled and he grabbed my hand to
lead us into the main part of the house, then even
further to the bedroom that he and I shared.
It felt like years since we’d been in the room,
even though it was less than five days ago.
“You want the shower first?” he asked.
I gave him a look, one that said I clearly
didn’t want the shower first.
“You want me to take the shower first?” he
guessed wrong again.
I shook my head, then I stripped off my
clothes and walked into the bathroom, turning the
shower on, then stepped back and waited for it to
heat.
It didn’t take long, and by the time my feet
were hitting the cool tile, I could feel Nikolai’s
heated gaze on me.
 415/449

“Better make this quick,” I said huskily. “She

won’t wait long.”
His hands went to my hips, and he didn’t
waste any time, picking me up around the waist
and impaling me on his cock.
It was an impressive show of strength as he
supported me with his upper body alone.
I moaned and threw my head back, my long
hair tickling my ass as Nikolai pumped into me
roughly.
He took me at my word, making it quick.
In the next second, when I felt his orgasm
start to rise, mine followed.
The push and pull of his cock as it dragged
deliciously along the walls of my sex had me bra-
cing for my orgasm before I’d even had a chance
to enjoy the feel of him inside of me.
“Hurry,” he said roughly against my neck, his
tongue snaking out to run along the length of my
throat.
 416/449

My hands clenched in his hair and I started to

squeeze my thighs around his trim waist to help
slam myself even harder down.
Then, like a tsunami to my soul, my orgasm
rolled over me, pulling Nikolai under with me.
He growled and latched onto my neck with
his teeth, holding me in place while he pumped
me so full of his release that I could already feel
it leaking out of me.
Long seconds passed as we stayed tangled to-
gether, our breathing returning to normal.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said against
my neck.
I clenched around him, causing a growl to
erupt from his throat.
“You guys!” Blythe said from outside of our
bedroom door. “I want to meet my babies! Stop
fucking or I’ll chop y’alls’ privates off!”
 417/449

Chuckling, he pulled out of me, and I imme-

diately waddled to the toilet to ensure no leakage
got onto the carpet.
“You’re so messy,” I muttered to myself,
grabbing a wash rag from the top shelf in the
closet and wetting it down.
I looked up and saw the hot pink box of my
tampons directly in front of me, and I froze.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
 Epilogue
My life is a blonde moment.
-Nikolai’s secret thoughts
Nikolai
I looked over at my mate warily.
Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
One second she’d been happy, and when she
came out of the bathroom, she was anything but.
“Can you please tell me what’s wrong?” I
asked her.
She glared at me, and I sighed, turning my
gaze back to the hallway we were walking down.
“Do you even know where you’re going?”
Blythe asked me.
I nodded.
 419/449

“I hacked into the news feed of the hospital

before we left,” I said. “Checked everything out.
The NICU is right off the first floor.”
And low and behold, it fucking was!
We rounded the corner just as the doors
opened and a man with light brown skin, and a
woman with fiery red hair came out, two car
seats clutched in their arms.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” the woman
said excitedly. “I just can’t believe it.”
The man nodded, his eyes wide and scared as
he walked past us.
“It’s been four months, Amy. I don’t think
I’ll know what to do with myself on my lunch-
breaks anymore,” he said as he pressed the elev-
ator doors.
I looked over at my mate and smiled.
“It was worth it,” she said softly.
I nodded.
 420/449

It was.
If I had to do that once a week, it’d be worth
it to see the excited smile on the faces of the par-
ents that got to take their kids home when they
never thought it’d be possible for them.
“I’m sorry,” a woman in pink scrubs with
small feet prints all over them said. “We’re only
allowed to have parents in here.”
Blythe raised her hands. “I’m a parent.”
Her eyes zeroed in on Blythe, taking in her
hair and clothes, then she smiled.
“I’ll bet you’re the one with the hunk-a-li-
cious man, aren’t you?” she asked.
Blythe nodded, her face blushing slightly.
“Yes,” she said. “Keifer is definitely that.”
The woman nodded and took her hand.
“You can all come,” she said. “Normally,
we’d never be able to do this. The NICU is a very
special place where the littlest of our people
 421/449

come to get better. Any germs could be fatal to

our babies.” She took a breath. “But today, every
one of them is going home. On Christmas, at
that.”
Blythe slowly started to cry, and I reached for
her shoulders, looping my arm around her on one
side, and pulling Brooklyn in on the other.
“He looks good like that, doesn’t he?” Blythe
whispered.
I looked at my brother.
He was sitting in a rocking chair, shirtless,
with both of the babies on his chest.
His eyes were closed, but the instant the
words left Blythe’s lips, his eyes snapped open,
and locked on Blythe’s.
“Shit,” Brooklyn said. “I always feel like I’m
intruding on them when they get like this.”
I laughed and walked forward, pulling Blythe
who couldn’t seem to make her feet work.
 422/449

Blythe’s watery smile took over her face once

we were close enough to touch.
“Oh,” she breathed, bringing her hand up, but
stopping just short of touching either baby.
“Shoot,” she said, pulling her hand back and
turning to find the anti-bacterial dispenser on the
wall.
Once she was lathered up to her arm pits, she
shot both of us a glare, then went back to her
babies.
Brooklyn laughed, and I took the chance to
pin her to the wall as we both sanitized our
hands.
“You’re not telling me something,” I said
softly, eyes inches from hers.
She bit her lip.
“I’m…” she whispered. “Late.”
“Late?” I asked. “Late for what?”
 423/449

She just kept staring, and it was then that the

realization suddenly dawned.
“You’re on birth control,” I said, narrowing
my eyes.
She nodded.
“I am,” she confirmed.
“Well, stop taking it!” I ordered her.
“I can’t exactly just ‘stop’ taking a shot,” she
informed me. “But I don’t have to get it again.”
I nodded firmly, leaning in until my forehead
touched hers.
“I’m going to be a shitty father,” I said. “I
like quiet and order.”
She snorted.
“You can kiss that goodbye,” she informed
me. “You already have two babies about to be in
the house with you. Now you’ll have one more.”
“How late is ‘late?’” I asked her.
 424/449

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. A long time,” she said. “I
haven’t had a period since the first week I was
with you.”
I pursed my lips.
“Make an appointment with my sister,” I
ordered.
“We can do it when we get home,” Skylar
said excitedly from beside me.
I turned my glare on my sister.
“Don’t you know the meaning of privacy?” I
asked her.
She nodded.
“Sure do,” she said. “But you didn’t ask for
privacy. In fact, I only followed you to the germ
shit,” she said, pointing to the wall behind me.
I sighed, long and loud.
 425/449

“You’re pregnant?” Blythe asked from be-

hind us.
I looked over my shoulder to see not just
Blythe, but Keifer as well, staring at us with
excitement.
“Seriously,” I said. “This hasn’t even been
confirmed yet!”
“But you think it’s true, so it is,” the nurse
offered her two cents.
I turned my eyes back to my mate.
“Seriously?” I asked her.
She patted me on the arm, then went to
Keifer, expertly picking up the baby from his
chest and cradling the little life to her heart.
“So, is this the girl or the boy?” Brooklyn
asked.
“That’s the girl,” Keifer told her.
“How do you know?” Blythe asked.
 426/449

“Because she’s wearing a pink hospital brace-

let,” he said, indicating the smallest bracelet I’d
ever seen. “And the boy is wearing a blue one.”
“Oh,” Blythe said, relieved. “They look ex-
actly the same.”
“Except for this one is two times smaller than
yours,” Brooklyn said teasingly.
I nodded.
“Your boy is a porker,” I agreed.
Blythe shot a glare in my direction.
“Where’s Farrow?” Keifer asked, looking
around the room.
My brows furrowed.
“He left with you, Keifer,” I told him.
Keifer’s eyebrows bunched up. “No, he
didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Boys,” Brooklyn sighed. “He can’t be far.”
 427/449

“He’s not at home. I haven’t seen him since

he left with Keifer,” Skylar said. “I saw him
mount his dragon and leave with you, Keifer.”
“Well then, where the fuck is he?” Keifer
growled.
“Language,” Blythe snapped at her husband.
 ***
Ian
“Listen to me, and listen to me good, you
little piece of shit,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You’re going to go home. You’re going to clean
up your act. And you’re going to fucking stop
acting like a spoiled brat. You’re going to get
your brothers and sister killed. Is that what you
want?” I asked Farrow.
Farrow didn’t speak, his throat working but
the words not coming out.
Of course, that could have something to do
with the fact that my forearm, corded with
muscle, was pressed against his windpipe.
Or it could be because I’d beaten the absolute
shit out of him.
Either way, he had a good reason not to be
speaking.
Did that help his cause, though?
 429/449

Fuck no.
I was tired of playing these games.
“Why?” I asked him, finally letting him go.
“Why what?” he rasped. “Because I fucking
wanted to.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And where did that get you?”
I looked over at the body behind him, staring
at the young woman that’d been shot dead; a bul-
let hole straight to the heart would do that to a
person.
“Go home,” I ordered him. “I’ll take it from
here.”
He left without another word, and I hunkered
down next to the dead girl’s body.
She used to be Farrow’s on again, off again
lover.
I’d come many a times to haul his ass home,
and this was always where I was led.
 430/449

This time, though, I knew there wouldn’t be

any more coming to get him.
This was the last time.
I didn’t care if the little fucker did save my
life.
My debt had been repaid. Over and over
again.
And as I brushed a piece of hair off the girl’s
face, revealing a pure beauty that Farrow didn’t
deserve, I wanted to weep.
She looked like my sister.
A sister that I hadn’t seen since I was ten
years old.
Mattie had been five years older than me
when we’d been split apart after our parents died.
She’d gone to a nice home where her foster
parents loved her, and I’d been put in the system.
 431/449

Which was good that I had, because it prob-

ably wouldn’t have gone as well as it had when
I’d gone through my transition.
Someone comes, my dragon, Mace, said.
Mace, always chronically late, informed me
just in time for me to turn.
I looked up in time to see a beautiful straw-
berry blonde come around the corner, seeing me
hunkered over the dead woman.
Her eyes filled with terror, and she screamed.
I winced, and I knew this wouldn’t end well.
Not at all.
Especially when the people of the apartment
complex started to open their windows and look
outside.
I immediately shrouded myself, but it wasn’t
fast enough.
The woman had snapped a picture, and had
run before I could even think to react.
 432/449

Cursing myself, I followed, but when I turned

the corner of the building, she was nowhere in
sight.
And I had a bad feeling.
A: because she had a picture of me and she
didn’t seem the type to keep shit to herself.
And B: because my body was tingling like a
live wire.
What’s Next?
 Dirty Mother
Book 5 of The Uncertain Saints MC Series
11-3-16

Chapter 1
If I’m in a parking space about
to back out, and you honk at
me, you better believe I’ll sit
there until I die.
-Fact of Life
Ridley
Two months later
“Goddammit,” I said to no one in particular.
“I will take her to another goddamned hospital if
you don’t fucking do your GODDAMN JOB!” I
finished on a roar, and not one single person in
 434/449

the entire ER was looking at me with anything

but fear.
Even the cute little blonde.
A blonde so light it was almost white.
She was about five six or so, with deep blue
eyes and wariness seated deep.
She hadn’t come close to me all night. Not a
word was said between the two of us, but I
couldn’t help but watch her.
She’d worked on my sister, and had been the
only one to listen to what I had to say.
Then a bitch of a nurse, who must’ve been
the big, bad bully of the bunch, had pushed the
younger nurse away with an order for her to go
restock or something; then she’d disappeared.
I’d seen her a few times since then, each time
she’d been carrying boxes instead of working on
any patients.
My curiosity was piqued.
 435/449

“Ridley?” my sister said softly, making me

turn to look at her instead of where the blonde
had disappeared.
“Yeah?” I asked softly, turning so I could
see her face.
“Did I hurt your truck too bad?” she asked.
I smiled and ran my hand down her face.
“It’s not too bad,” I lied.
It was totaled.
For the second time in two months.
“I should’ve never gotten pregnant,” Kitt
whispered.
I looked down
at my sister, studying her face and the seri-
ousness of her statement.
“You don’t want Emily?” I asked her.
A tear escaped her eye.
 436/449

“I’m so tired of having this disease,” she

whispered. “I’m so fucked up it’s not even
funny. I even killed someone.”
I bent forward and pressed my lips to her
forehead.
“Then where would Apple be if he didn’t
have you and Emily?” I asked her roughly.
“Where would I be?”
“Why don’t you call him Core like everyone
else?” she laughed lightly.
For that reason right there.
I liked to see her smile, and if calling the
man by Apple made her smile, I would do it.
Even if it got me a glare each time I used it
around Apple.
What kind of fucking name was Apple for a
man, anyway?
“’Cause I don’t want to,” I told her honestly.
“You’re not answering my question.”
 437/449

She shrugged.
“I love them. I love her. I love him. I just
don’t want to be a burden,” she whispered.
She never was.
Kitt had seizures.
She’d been having them since she was a
young kid.
They were, however, under control with
medications.
But, on her way to the routine appointment
with her doctor in Dallas, the one where Capone
was killed, the baby’s car seat had hit Kitt in the
head.
But that was neither here nor there.
Kitt had been having more seizures than usu-
al since she’d gotten pregnant with Emily.
They’d gotten so numerous, in fact, that she’d
had to start taking medicine to stop the seizures.
Medicine that had to be inserted rectally.
 438/449

And today, on the way to one of her appoint-

ments in Dallas, she’d had a seizure in the car.
It’d been weird…which for Kitt was beyond
normal.
Normally, when Kitt had a seizure, it was
triggered by something. Such as stress or ex-
treme excitement.
Ever since she became pregnant, though, she
had them whenever and wherever.
This particular time it happened to be in my
truck.
One second I’d been driving along as she
tried to get me to listen to something on her
phone, and the next she’d stiffened up and started
seizing.
While she was seizing, she’d stuck her arm
through the steering wheel, making it to where I
either had to hurt her arm and get it removed
from the wheel or wreck.
Which turned out to not even be that easy.
 439/449

I’d managed to free her arm, only after my

sister’s arm had made a weird popping noise.
Then I’d promptly crashed into a semi-truck.
“You’re not a burden, Kitt,” I whispered. “I
promise.”
A commotion at the front of the ER had me
looking up in time to see Apple barreling in
through the door, a look of utter helplessness on
his face.
In his arms was Emily.
She looked tiny in the big, tattooed, scarred
man’s arms.
“Kitten!” he yelled loudly, startling the whole
ER once again when they’d just calmed down
from my threats.
The baby in his arms started to cry, and he
thrust her into my arms, not caring that I was
bleeding all over the place.
 440/449

I took Emily in my good arm, curling her into

the crook of my elbow as I stared at the two
people in front of me.
Smiling, I turned my head down to look at
Emily.
Her blue eyes were open and she was staring
at me with intelligence.
I could swear that she knew exactly what was
going on.
“Your parents are in love with each other,” I
told the little beauty in my arms.
Emily gurgled and spit started to slide out of
the corner of her mouth.
I reached for the bib she wore around her
neck but froze when my arm started to protest.
“Ouch,” I groaned.
“You need anything?” a soft voice asked.
 441/449

I looked up to see those pretty blue eyes be-

longing to the blonde from earlier looking dir-
ectly at me.
I smiled at her.
“No, not right…” I started, but then stopped
short when Emily chose that second to projectile
vomit across the room.
And all over the nurse’s feet.
The nurse laughed, but that laughter abruptly
cut off when the nurse that’d told this one to go
gather supplies showed up.
“God, you’re a mess. Get out of here and go
clean up. Make sure you clock out while you do
it,” she ordered, pushing the pretty nurse.
My brows furrowed.
“You’re going to make her clock out for
something a patient did?” I asked shortly.
“You did this?” Bitchy nurse asked.
 442/449

I shook my head. “No, my niece did it.

However, that’s not something you can clock her
out for when it happened on the job.”
The cute nurse, Freya C., as it read on her
nametag, looked at me with relief in her eyes.
Thank you, she mouthed.
I winked and turned back to the bitch.
“Yes?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Freya, clean up this mess,” she ordered then
walked away.
“You’ll have to forgive Annette,” Freya mur-
mured softly. “She’s had a rough time of it
lately.”
I didn’t say anything; instead, I took the pa-
per towels she’d handed me and started to wipe
of Emily’s chin.
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“Oh my God,” another nurse said, pushing in

close so she could get a better look at Emily.
“She’s so cute!”
Freya was pushed to the side and her balance
swayed to one side.
To save herself form putting her ass into the
vomit, she had to throw her hands to the side and
catch herself.
I scowled at the woman.
“Move,” I ordered.
The woman, startled by the abruptness of my
words, backed away. Right into Freya.
This time Freya really did slip.
“Ahhh,” Freya cried, planting her entire leg
into the throw up.
I winced and hopped down off the cot, my
body protesting as I did.
“God, you’re sick,” the new nurse said to
Freya. “And clumsy.”
 444/449

And that’s when I realized I was on the set of

Mean Girls.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I snapped.
“Now.”
The woman left, tossing mean looks at Freya,
as if she was the reason for her predicament, the
entire way to the nurse’s station across the room.
She converged on the bitchy nurse from earli-
er, and together they whispered as they pointed at
the poor girl at my feet.
“Here,” I offered my hand. “Let me help
you.”
She wouldn’t take it since it was my injured
hand; instead she leveraged herself up and hur-
ried over to the sink where she started to vi-
ciously wash her hands.
Her shoulders hunched in, and I could tell she
was only a short minute away from crying.
 445/449

The poor girl’s ugly red shoes with the holes

in the top probably weren’t feeling too good,
either.
Freya slipped on some gloves, then went
about washing her shoe, being sure to get into
each and every crevice of the shoe.
Then she took out the little plug things. One
was a Santa Claus, the other was a gingerbread
man.
On her other shoe she had a Christmas tree
and a candy cane.
“You like Christmas?” I asked her.
She looked over her shoulder at me.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I do.”
“I can tell,” I teased her.
She even had Santa Claus earrings on.
“Freya!” the rude cow from the nurse’s sta-
tion called. “I need you in room four for a linen
change. Mr. Anderson had another accident.”
 446/449

Freya’s shoulders slumped, and it was then I

realized that I couldn’t watch those two bitches
do this to her.
I couldn’t let her go do this with vomit still in
one shoe.
Except the little girl in my arms started to cry,
and I looked to the parents to my right and saw
Kitt crying with Apple holding her and talking to
her softly.
“Fuck,” I sighed. “Fucking fuck.”
“Language!” my sister managed to cry
through her tears.
The nurse bitch that was so rude to Freya the
first time came over carrying a tray in her hand.
She set it down on the rolling table at my
bedside and started to unfold a package.
The doctor, Carrolton, came up beside her
and started to fit on some gloves.
 447/449

“I’m going to guess you need about fifteen

or so stitches on this cut, and…” he studied the
other cut on my arm once he’d peeled back the
bandage and pursed his lips. “This one will prob-
ably take around ten or so. If you’re lucky.”
“You want me to hold her?” the nurse
offered.
I looked at her, then down to her name tag on
her shirt.
“Lucy M.,” I said. “I’m not ever going to let
you hold her. Your bitchiness might rub off on
her.”
Lucy M.’s eyes went wide at my words and
she started to say something cutting, but Car-
rolton stopped her with a raised hand.
“Why don’t you go help Freya clean up Mr.
Anderson’s fifteenth shit in the last hour? You
know it’s goddamned c-diff. I can smell it. You
can smell it. She can smell it. You should’ve
 448/449

told her he’s under precautions,” Carrolton

warned.
I was irrationally angry as I stared at the
woman.
I wasn’t completely sure of what ‘c-diff’
was, but I knew the man wouldn’t be ‘under pre-
cautions’ if he wasn’t contagious. And you
didn’t send some woman in there, possibly en-
dangering her life, because you didn’t like her.
I didn’t care what she did.
This bitch was not going to get away with it,
and I would make sure of it.
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