Steffan tossed and turned, but sleep eluded him. His leg ached, and so did another part of his anatomy. Mia’s scent lingered on him, and he tasted her on his lips, despite not touching her. It drove him insane. Having Aiden so nearby played havoc with his senses, too. Particularly after a day spent in Mia’s company. He turned over and sighed as his erection brushed against the cotton sheets and tormented him some more.
Hating himself for doing so, feeling as if he somehow broke his promise to Nathan and Dom, he reached down and wrapped his hand around himself, closing his eyes and thinking of Mia.
Her scent drove him insane, as did those huge eyes of hers and her full mouth. Only his immense power and self-control had gotten him through today. He didn’t think Aiden did as well controlling his reactions, hence his pissed-off attitude. At the thought of Aiden, Steffan’s dick stirred in his hand.
The three of them would be phenomenal together. He imagined Mia being kissed by Aiden. His blond head against her dark one, their beautiful lips pressed together as their tongues tangled. He groaned and began to move his hand. He needed relief before he went insane.
His flesh felt insanely sensitive in his palm. A shiver ran through him as he turned onto his back and moved his hand faster. It had been so long since he’d touched himself, so long since he’d experienced real desire. Now, he’d spent the last two days battered by endless waves of need and want.
He built into a rhythm, at once so familiar but so new. He’d never done this with such an aching need. When he’d had his mates, sex had been all about them. Since their loss, the rare times he had hooked up or masturbated were nothing more than a physical act of release. Like a sneeze. He’d release the buildup of pressure, in minutes, usually, but it didn’t feel anything other than mildly good.
This? More than good.
He closed his eyes, and a kaleidoscope of images rushed past his lids, all featuring Aiden and Mia together. His breathing became more erratic, and his hand moved faster and faster, his broad head slick now with precome.
The orgasm took him by surprise, barreling into him like a freight train, stopping all his worries for one beautiful, blinding moment. Three more pulses, all of them powerful, and he sighed as he dropped his head back against the pillow, utterly spent.
Oh, God, he was in so much fucking trouble. He threw one arm over his face and lay awake contemplating the shitshow his life had become. Not wanting to let Nathan and his friends down, he’d see this through. But once they got back to the clan, he’d disappear and hole up in his cave.
The idea of not seeing Aiden and Mia again caused a pang to his heart. Oh, for the love of the gods. He needed to get a grip. He didn’t want mates again, never wanted to face such a momentous loss. Plus, what did he have to offer? They wouldn’t want to live with him. He sensed their attraction to him, but if they saw him without his clothes, scarred skin and damaged leg, what then? He doubted they’d still want him.
Mia deserved someone better, if she decided to take dragon mates. And Aiden? Steffan sensed a lot of pent-up energy in the younger male. Aiden spent much time away from the clan and probably possessed no desire whatsoever to settle down. He also didn’t seem keen on Mia—or the idea of the Havsa. So, the male might find Mia attractive, more than attractive, but his head would stop him wanting more. No, the best thing for all of them lay in separating as soon as possible upon their return home.
He sighed again and turned over, one arm under the pillow, the other up under his chin, and prayed for sleep.
Four hours later, he woke feeling like one grumpy dragon. He’d dozed for an hour or two at the most, on and off, and his aching bones screamed the fact loud and clear. His leg burned like a bastard for some reason. White-hot spirals of pain radiated up and down his thigh. He gritted his teeth and swung his legs out of bed, feet landing on the cool floor. Getting up, he crossed to the window and looked out. Blue sky and bright light hit his retinas, and he blinked at another gorgeous day.
His aching body demanded soothing, so he gathered his things and opened his bedroom door, hoping the bathroom at the end of the corridor was free. It held a huge, claw-foot tub, and he wanted to indulge.
He trudged down the corridor, mind whirring as he thought over the same shit he’d been obsessing on all night. A click and a creak brought his head up in time to meet Aiden’s green gaze as his bedroom door swung open. Aiden’s eyes dropped from Steffan’s face down his body and stopped at mid-thigh.
Fuck, he hadn’t put any clothes on and only wore his boxer briefs. He waited for the disgusted look on Aiden’s face, but when the other male lifted his eyes, they were filled with something that looked an awful lot like pain or sadness. Not pity, no, nothing as irritating as that, thank the gods, because Steffan did not need anyone’s pity.
“What’s up with your leg?”
He sucked in air through his mouth and blew it out through his nose. Gods help him, but the kid was direct. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, Steffan. Don’t play it down.” Rhiannon’s serious voice came from her doorway, and he turned to her as she leaned against the frame, looking at his leg with a frown between her eyes.
“It’s nothing.” He ground the words out and made to move forward, but Aiden put a hand on his arm. Just that, a mere touch, and Steffan became powerless to pull away. For a moment, time seemed to slow to nothing as the two males stared at one another, their breathing synchronizing beautifully.
Aiden’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. Yeah, Steffan almost laughed at the response, suck it up. He’d been bonded once before and understood how powerful such a match could be. Add in sexual desire, and you’d got one incendiary mix. He and Aiden were great matches, but they also possessed an intense sexual attraction for one another. They’d be no mere close friends. If either of them possessed any inkling to be bonded, theirs would be a strong sexual union. And once they found their mate, they’d make the sort of powerful triad Nate, Dominic, and Claire did.
He ignored the tiny voice telling him they’d already found their mate. No need to go adding gasoline to the fire burning within.
He jerked away, as if wrenching himself awake from a powerful dream, and stalked down the corridor to the bathroom.
“You weaken, Steffan. The poison is making you sick. You need to fight it.” Rhiannon’s words followed him, but he slammed the door on them, cutting her off.
He grunted and swore under his breath as he went about running the bath. Once it filled to the top, he climbed in and sank deep down into the scalding hot water. A loud sigh escaped his parted lips, and he let his head drop back, the bottom of his hair getting wet.
He didn’t need fucking pity or concern. Didn’t want it, and never asked for it. Despite the gorgeous heat of the water and the soothing of the burning pain, he didn’t fully relax. His skin felt too tight, and he wanted to…leave. Now. Without Mia, and without having to spend any more time with Aiden.
Only his word, given to his old friend, stopped him from doing so. Instead, he sank down under the water until it covered every bit of him, even his face, and closed his eyes.
*****
Aiden turned to Rhiannon as the bathroom door slammed on them. “What do you mean poison? What’s wrong with his leg? It looks horrific. I thought we healed easily?”
Her eyes reflected the light breaking through the window at the end of the hallway, limpid pools of sadness and despair. “My child…”
He held his hand up, sick of the child shit. “I’m not your child. I’m a grown male and have two hundred-plus years of living under my belt. So please, give it to me straight.” Christ, why did he care? Not wanting to go there, he focused on her and her answer.
“Many, many years ago, Steffan came to serious blows with another dragon. A most powerful one called Rhyndor. They say he’s maybe more powerful than either Steffan or Nathan. No one’s seen this dragon in centuries, so he’s become a legend. When he and Steffan fought, Rhyndor used his claw and placed terrible poison into Steffan’s system. As you know, if a dragon can get healing, then the poison can be defeated. But Steffan didn’t reach a healer in time, and the poison set in.”
She paused and glanced at the bathroom door as if worried he’d hear them, but the water thundered away in the room, hopefully concealing what they said. Something about her story bugged Aiden, didn’t add up.
“But…if the poison set in and he didn’t get to a healer, how is he even still alive? Poison kills even powerful dragons. Didn’t Claire nearly die, despite her powerful magic?”
“Yes, but she didn’t know how to fully use her magic then. As for Steffan, the only thing keeping him alive is his strength. He’s so powerful, he defeated the poison simply by being himself. No one’s heard of a dragon who can do this. I fear the thing keeping him alive, his determination and innate power, is starting to wane.”
Fucking hell. Aiden had had no idea. None. Yeah, he’d picked up the power rolling from Steffan, but he had not guessed the depths of his strength.
“The only reasons Steffan doesn’t seem as potent as he truly is, is due to the poison and the fact he’s basically given up. But that’s what living only for revenge will do to you.”
Given up? This went from bad to worse. And the idea of an even more powerful Steffan fried Aiden’s brain. He couldn’t imagine it. The dragon already possessed enough charisma to floor you with a look if he wanted. Alarms were clanging in his brain, telling him to walk away. To end this conversation now. His mouth didn’t seem to be getting the message. “Why has he given up? If he’s so powerful, why can’t he get his vengeance on this Rhyndor character?”
“He’s disappeared. Dropped off the face of the earth. No one knows where he is, and I think in the last couple of decades, the fire for revenge has started to dim in Steffan as he loses hope for ever finding his foe. And without the one thing that’s kept him going for ages, what else has he got to live for? He’s cut himself off from us. Doesn’t do anything, really, other than brood in that cave of his. An amazing cave, maybe, but still.”
Amazing cave? He wanted to know more, suddenly. Wanted to know everything, and it terrified him.
“I need to get packed, and we shouldn’t be talking like this. You want to know more, you ask him. But you must be aware of the amazing chemistry you two have. Add Mia into the mix, and wow! Dare either of you act on it? That’s the question.”
She shot him a shrewd glance and turned back to her room. It wasn’t a question of daring or bravery. Aiden didn’t need the hassle, didn’t want to be tied down. He loved his life and his passion for finding out about his people’s past. Knowledge, finding out new things, these were the highs he lived for. Spend too long at home in his poky house, and he started to feel trapped. Would being with Steffan and Mia make any sort of difference to those feelings? He tried to imagine living with other people instead of rattling around alone in his tiny space, and frankly, it scared the shit out of him.
The moment he’d touched Steffan, though… His whole system still vibrated to the other male’s frequency, a tuning fork set to Steffan’s unique internal music. All the things that made Steffan who he was found a serendipitous echo in Aiden. They matched so beautifully, it scared the crap out of him.
What about Mia? He couldn’t deny his attraction to her. He wanted her so bad it burned, but he hated what she stood for. She represented the people who’d torn his family apart, and it may have been a long, long time ago, but dragons didn’t forget such a betrayal. It had been shockingly controversial when Nathan and Dominic took Claire as their mate, and they weren’t even from a clan affected by the Havsa and their murderous deeds.
But she didn’t commit those deeds, so should she be tarred with the same brush? He raked his fingers through his short hair and blew out a long, frustrated breath. The water had stopped running in the bathroom, and he realized he stood in the hallway still. He made to move when the splash of Steffan getting into the tub followed by a groan caught his attention.
Images flittered into his mind. Steffan walking down the hallway toward him with his powerful body on display. Christ, he’d not seen such a fine male before. All his fantasies of what Steffan looked like under his clothes had been off the mark, far too pedestrian.
The male owned such strength. His broad shoulders were wide, leading down to his massive chest, smattered with a light dusting of dark hair. His stomach came ridged in muscle that rippled as he’d moved toward Aiden. His body didn’t look like it came from working out in a gym, or at least, not only from that. Steffan looked like some sort of ancient warrior. A male whose physique got developed through fighting and war and hard physical graft. And knowing the history of their kind, and the age of Steffan, it was most likely exactly how his body had been formed. In the forge of endless wars. First on the side of humans, then against them, and even against other dragons, if the stories Aiden had heard were true.
The horrible mess of scalding red marks on the dragon’s thigh sickened him, though, not because of how they looked, but because of what they meant. They signified a real danger to Steffan’s life. Because if Rhiannon was correct and Steffan had given up, then the poison would worm its way deeper and deeper until it took over.
What if he had something to live for? Something more than a revenge that became less likely by the year?
Aiden shook his head and stalked back down the corridor to his room, the direction of his thoughts becoming dangerous. He didn’t want to settle down and commit, and so getting involved with Steffan would be a bad idea for them both. He couldn’t save Steffan because he didn’t have it in him to save himself. He wanted to be left to his own devices.
Once more, he thought of his fathers. One male had been happy with his life. Content to be settled down and living amongst the clan. But his other father, Hedron, his life had been a shining beacon of all to avoid, so far as Aiden was concerned.
Hedron had clearly loved his mates, and his son, dearly. They’d adopted Aiden, as was often the way with the Dragonea. They’d been lucky, and all had been ecstatic, or so Aiden had always been told when his family repeated the fairy tale of their history. But Aiden had always sensed Hedron needed something more. While his mates were alive, Hedron appeared happy to bury his other need, the desire for travel and knowledge. It had been Hedron’s interest in such things that passed down to Aiden and started him on his lifelong quest to travel and learn all he could about dragon culture.
Sadly, he’d lost his mother over a hundred years ago and his other father shortly after. Then he’d seen what Hedron’s true sacrifice had been. Suddenly without his mates, Hedron had been a lonely male, and one who seemed filled with regret for the things he hadn’t done. Thirty years ago, he’d moved back to his birth clan in Canada where he had other close family members. He and Aiden saw one another rarely these days, although they spoke every week via the internet.
Aiden didn’t want to end up like Hedron. To see the father he’d once admired and wanted to emulate left so low by the death of his mates terrified him. A life spent regretting all the things you’d never done was no life at all. He needed to resist this intense pull he felt toward Steffan and Mia, or he’d lose himself in it.