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 goddamned 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.

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 housekeeper 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.

I’d always wanted to ride on one but had never 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, outside 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 insistence that I back up and stay the hell out of it had been loud and clear, even when he hadn’t actually 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 convenience store at my back.

Nikolai’s bike was on its side where he’d dumped it.

My arm was scratched, and a strange throbbing sensation was going on with my ribs.

Funny enough, I hadn’t remembered ever hitting 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 supposedly flame proof.

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.

“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 alley 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 and touch the two buildings that were back to back.

Nikolai didn’t seem to notice…or care…because 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 police car in our efforts.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.

He pushed us forward even faster, completely ignoring the police car’s red and blue lights; instead 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.

“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 going 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.

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 vibrated 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 beneath an overpass.

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.

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 license 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.

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, Perdita 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.

“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 motorcycle 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.

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 protection 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.

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.

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 displays 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!”

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.

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 window 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 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 Perdita finally showed,” he said. “Normally, the dragon finds you well before the change, drawn to you by your scent.”

“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 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 almost 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, apparently, 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.

“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 computer 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.

“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?”

He shook his head. “No. But it’s uncomfortable. 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 matters 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 doing 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. 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 inhaled 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.

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 bodies 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 altercation, and the grass felt cool against my bare toes.

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.