Chapter Nine
Aria waited impatiently for Vyktor’s return. She was aroused and yearning for him. She was half beginning to worry that he had some kind of addictive quality. Whenever she was separated from him for more than a few hours, she began to feel deeply bereft—and horny in a way she couldn’t seem to satisfy without him.
Her heart skipped a beat as she heard the door open. She sat up, eager to receive him, but the moment she saw his face, she knew that something was terribly wrong. He almost looked like a different person, with the weight of the emotion on his handsome features.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why do you look so… sad?” She had never seen him sad before. It was an odd expression to see written on his handsome face.
“I have good news, pet,” he said, forcing a smile that did not reach his eyes. “The war is soon to be at an end. Your people have found a means to close the portal.”
A big smile burst across Aria’s face. “That’s amazing!” She flung her arms around Vyktor. He hugged her back, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“Eldor is going to order our retreat, which means I will be leaving soon. “
“Oh.” Aria sank back.
Now she understood the palpable sadness that hung about him. She felt it herself, infecting her joy. “And the portal will be closed. So I will not see you again.” She looked up at him. “Maybe…”
“No.” He shook his head. “You cannot come back with me, pet. I wish you could. I wish with everything I am that it was possible, but you could not survive our lands. There is a powerful radiation. We dragons can absorb it in our flight forms, but it is enough to make humans very ill. You would suffer greatly and perish. And that I will not allow.”
“So…”
“I will return you to your base as we evacuate,” he said. “And I will miss you, pet. I will miss you every day of my life.”
Tears welled in Aria’s eyes. “But…” There were no words to fill the space after that. The situation should have been a cause for joy. The end of one of the most terrible wars humanity had ever been forced to fight, a restoring of balance, and perhaps a new respect for the horrors unchecked scientific advance could unleash… and yet this happy ending was going to tear her very heart out. She loved him more than she had loved anyone. More than she had thought she was capable of loving anyone. He had truly tamed her. He had tamed her hatred and fear into love and compassion. He had tamed the wild streak that made hurtling through the sky with no regard for her own personal safety seem like the right thing do to. He had made the life that she had been so ready to sell at any moment on anyone’s command somehow mean something. And now he was leaving her.
She let out a sob, a deep sound of pure anguish. When she looked into his eyes, she saw that they too were watering.
“I fucking hate you,” she cried. “I hate you for making me love you.”
“I am sorry, pet,” he said. “I did not foresee this. I…” His voice cracked with emotion. “I am sorry,” he repeated, drawing her close.
“Just take me,” she sobbed. “I don’t care if it kills me. Just take me there with you.”
“No,” Vyktor said, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I will not be the cause of harm to you.” He took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “Promise me, Aria, you will take care of yourself when I am gone. You will find a mate who…”
“No!” Aria whimpered. “I don’t want a mate. I want you.”
“You will have the gold and the jewels,” he insisted. “It will be more than enough to make you rich many lifetimes over. You will not miss me long, pet. You will return to the world as you knew it and you will be the mistress of it. I can work you enough gold to…”
“No,” Aria cried. “I don’t want gold. I don’t want diamonds. I want you. Why don’t you understand?”
Vyktor looked down at her. “You would rather die in an inhospitable environment with me, than live rich here in your own world?”
“Yes,” she sniveled. “Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe I’m stupid, but yes. I love you. And I don’t care about the gold.”
“Maybe… maybe we can come to some kind of… I don’t know,” Vyktor said. “But no matter what happens between you and me, I need to make contract with your leaders. I need to negotiate an exit for our men. I will not have them die. Eldor has charged me with contacting the humans and…”
“They’ll shoot you,” Aria said simply. “They will shoot you right in the face.”
“There is no human allowance for messengers from enemies?”
“Sometimes, but not when they’re dragons.” Aria shook her head. “They are not going to let you get within a thousand miles of them without putting a missile through you.”
“So what would you suggest, my pet?”
“You could go in your human form, but I think that would end badly as well,” she said. “At this point, anything even remotely dragon is going to be treated with extreme hostility.”
“So there is no way to make peace.”
“There’s a way,” she said. She looked at him. “You have to let me go. I can take a message to my command; I can probably even get an audience with the president himself. I don’t think anyone has been captured by dragons and survived before. They will listen to me. And they won’t hurt me. Well, they probably won’t,” she said, looking a little less sure by the end of her sentence.
“No.”
“What?! It’s literally the only option.”
He’d said no before engaging the rest of his mind. It was a deep no, a primal no. A no that came from not wanting to lose her, even for a moment.
She was staring at him, confusion written all over her face. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I don’t like the idea of sending you, pet,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of you leaving my side while this war still rages. We will find another way.”
“There isn’t another way,” she said. “It’s not like you have email in the middle of a mountain. It’s not like you can issue a press release.”
“No,” he said flatly.
“You’re being unreasonable,” she said, frowning unhappily at him.
He knew he was being unreasonable, but her pointing that out only made it worse. In all his years, Vyktor had never loved anyone or anything as much as he did this human woman who challenged him constantly, whose submission was always provisional, and whose spirit made him feel full inside. He would rather tear his own heart out and hurl it down the mountains than send her into any kind of danger.
“This discussion is over.”
“Oh, the discussion is over?” Her brows headed for her hairline. “You might be a dragon, mister, but you don’t tell me when a discussion is over.”
“You’re forgetting your place, pet.”
“Well, you’re forgetting your mind,” she said, unhappy. “We need to do this, Vyktor. There are people dying every day this war goes on. Dragons too. If we can end this, we should!”
“There’s more to this than you realize.”
“Then tell me!”
“No. Enough, pet,” he decreed. “We will find another way. This is not your concern.”
“Bullshit it’s not my concern,” Aria insisted. “I have a hand in this war, and I want to see the end of it. You’re not even letting me try.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m not. Now quiet, before I gag you and put you back in your cage.”
Aria settled into an eye-narrowed sulk. Vyktor was glad for the conversation to be at an end, even if it did put his pet into a foul mood. He watched as she walked away, putting herself in her cage.
He would rather her irritation than losing her.