Chapter Twelve
She’d wanted to see him shift. Wanted to see and touch the dragon side of him.
Ashlyn swore under her breath. She hadn’t considered the female hormones that must be stained into the stone here. She always wondered why no males could come in. She assumed it was for the protection of the eggs hidden. Before dragons could shift, the males would feast on the eggs of another breed to eliminate their enemy. Today, dragon eggs were sought out as many believed it gave them immortality and strength to dine on such a delicacy.
It had been the egg they’d been after. Ashlyn had known all along—her parents—they’d been keeping a secret from her. She’d always assumed it had been about the egg. She paused to consider, so long ago, what her youth-blinded eyes had failed to see.
Sigurd leaned and brushed a light kiss against the corner of her mouth. “You’ve gone off some place?”
“Only thinking.” She waved him down the center tunnel. The path widened and transitioned from stone to hard packed dirt.
“About?”
“My parents, my real parents. You asked why I never call Dr. Kovak, father. Well. He isn’t. Mary and Edgar Sullivan, those were my real parents. Or so I thought. I can’t bear to call anyone else by their names, it is like saying they never were… you know?”
“I get it, baby. I lost my own mum before I was old enough to figure out I could fly.”
“How could you not know you could fly?”
“How could you not know you were a dragon?”
He had a point. “No one ever told me I was a dragon. Even now I find this all surreal.”
Their path took them away from the caverns and opened to the heavy growth between trees, over moss covered terrain, and through the natural greenery of Harghita’s mountain forest.
“You never felt it? A stirring? A tingling of your skin, like you couldn’t stand to wear it anymore and needed to shed?”
Ashlyn shook her head.
“You never noticed the smells? So keen. And your vision? Sharp?” Sigurd faced her with a strange expression.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you smell of liquid lava, jasmine, and a hint of pine.”
“No. I smell of all that?”
“And of me.” He gave her that cheeky, wicked grin that made her insides turn to mush and she wanted him to back her up against one of these trees.
“Of course, because we’re mates.”
He chuckled. “That and we just got done rubbing up against each other in the cavern.”
Those teasing thoughts of his would be the death of her, she decided, and tried to focus elsewhere. “I want to see you as a dragon. I want to watch you shift.”
“Anything for you, baby.” Sigurd turned and strode away from her. Ashlyn’s appreciative eyes drifted over her dragon mate’s muscled back as he shed his shirt over his head. He’d mooned her with the dropping of his pants, no boxers, no briefs, but trim firm muscles down his backside.
When he turned to face her, a ripple of anticipation went through her. “Ready for your next lesson?”
“Lesson?”
“I take it this place is hidden and safe to us dragons?”
She tried to keep her eyes on his. “Yes. It’s cloaked by the mountains. This is an extension of the haven. It was here before the hatchery. It has always been a safe place for dragons.”
“Good. Dragons never shift where they might be seen to the outside world.” Sigurd took a few more steps back. “Now as tempting as it is to check out all that makes me a man, I need you to keep your eyes locked with mine. Watch me shift, baby.”
A wave of blue flowed over his blond head, swallowed his pale skin as his body elongated and grew. He doubled in size and doubled again with a flash, until two huge wings unfolded from his sides. A ripple of different shades from white to sapphire glinted in the light filtering between the tree branches overhead.
She’d seen dragons, many times, mostly females from the haven come to lay their eggs. Sigurd, on the other hand, took her breath away. His wings flexed, extended out, then curled back to rest against him. She reached out, hesitated, and two large vivid blue eyes blinked at her. “Go ahead, baby. Touch me. Feel me. I’m yours, as you are mine.”
She walked up to him, pressed her hands to the soft velvet patch of his muzzle. She leaned against him, tracing her hand against the cool scales under his eyes and down his cheek. Like leather, his skin felt firm, textured, but soft. She moved to his neck, and he rumbled as she walked around his face. “Hush now. You’re so big I want to see all of you.”
He curled his tail, swished it for the tip to come close to her tennis shoes. She waited for it to lay still, stepped over it. “Behave.”
She ran her hands over his side, down by his belly the scales became more calloused, instead of smoother, like she imagined. He sat back on his haunches, watching her as she brushed her hand across his rump. When she came back around, he puffed out his chest for her. She touched him there and he shivered. “You’re not at all the way I thought you would be.”
“I disappoint you?”
She saw disappointment flicker in those blue orbs of his eyes. “Not at all. You’re beautiful. I’ve never seen a dragon like you.”
“But? Go on. I suspect it is lingering there at your lips.”
She touched his muzzle, careful of those sharp teeth concealed behind his lips. “Well…” She stroked him, considered her words as to not injure his ego. “All the dragons I have known have been warm, and you are cool beneath my hand.”
“My sire was an ice dragon and Mum a white blood.”
“Was? Did you know your sire?” She tilted up his chin and walked beneath his head.
“I have no memory. He died in a fight with another dragon.”
She pressed her hand against one of the scales in the center of his exposed chest. His heart raced beneath her touch.
“I’m sorry.” She kissed him there. “A dragon killed my parents, too. Not like your sire. They came to our home. Not humans. They set the house on fire. My parents told me to run and hide in the woods. I saw my mother running. I saw the blaze… the fire… the dragon it…”
A sob caught in her throat.
Sigurd nudged her with his muzzle. He reached down and pulled a scale from over his heart and plucked it from his chest. Through tear blurred eyes, she watched him. He shifted back to his human form. Pulled her in his embraced and held her while she sobbed into his shoulder.
“There now. I’ve got you. It was a horrid thing which happened to your parents, but you’re alive. They must have loved you very much to protect you like that.”
Ashlyn shook her head. She sniffed. “Why? Why did it have to be them?”
If her own misery didn’t make her feel terrible enough, she felt his sorrow and it ached as strongly as hers did.
“It doesn’t make sense. They were Keepers.”
“I hate them.” She leaned back, stared at him. “I hate dragons.”
“I know why you can’t shift.” Sigurd brushed away stray tears with the back of his hand. “You’re afraid of them. Afraid of being a dragon. Afraid you’ll be like them.”
“You’re wrong.”
“We’re bound, baby, remember? I feel what you feel? I think as you think.”
She shook her head. “Stop trying to make me into something I’m not. You’ve fooled me, brainwashed me so I’d be your mate. You want me to be like you, even if I am. I will never shift. I will never put myself in a place where others can control my fate.”
Sigurd winced, her words a hard slap, but he took her hand. He placed the scale from his chest in her palm and said, “I love you, Ashlyn. Shift or don’t shift, matters not. You are my mate.”
She watched him back away from her slowly. He shifted and with his wings he flapped and lifted himself above the tree line until she lost sight of him. As she stood there, willing her heart to steady it’s fast beating, she stared down at the soft blue scale in her palm.
A gentle wind brought with it the scents of hibiscus and sulfur.
It was better this way, she clutched the scale in her hand, for what she knew she had to do.