Chapter 12
Flynn said, “Okay then. If they were Al-Maddeiri, did you recognize them? Or the place where they were being held?”
Kira shook her head, trying to think. “Only that it looked like someone had taken a draken castle and turned it into a lab. Stone walls and modern scientific equipment, all together in one room.” She frowned. “And magic, too, I think. That’s the only way they could possibly have caged a dragon.”
They could be anywhere, she realized. This world, the Dragonlands, somewhere else.
She added urgently, “I have to help them. Even if they’re not…from my house. I think—I think I’m the only one who can hear them.”
Flynn’s brows drew together, and she could feel the anger surging through him. At her? Or at whoever was keeping shifters as lab rats?
Either way, it wasn’t his fight. He had no reason to help her. But he surprised her.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll help you look for them. See what we can find out. But it might take some time—we don’t even know what world they’re in.”
She nodded. She didn’t want to state her fears out loud—that she didn’t think they had that much time.
Their words echoed in her mind. Please don’t let us die here.
She shivered, and Flynn drew her closer, stroking her back. She was suddenly aware that he was naked, the long muscles of his thigh hard and firm where her bare leg was draped across his.
She had on nothing but the borrowed t-shirt and her panties. Flynn’s chest was warm, the fine hairs on his chest soft under her cheek. She could hear his heartbeat, slow and solid.
She’d been held by men before, but she’d never felt this safe.
“Right now I need to know about you,” he was saying. She could feel the vibration in his chest from his deep voice. “Do those visions always get you like that? Because that looked fucking dangerous.”
She shook her head. “That was the worst,” she said. “Usually they just give me killer migraines, and sometimes seizures.”
“Oh, only seizures,” he said. “That’s all right then. Except, this time your goddamn brain almost ruptured. Fuck it all, why didn’t you tell me about this?”
She hesitated. “I was going to. I was…hoping you could fix it. But now I know you can’t.”
“Why not?” He sounded annoyed, as if he didn’t like that she thought there was something he couldn’t do. Then he backtracked. “Why did you first think I could?”
When she remained silent, he said quietly, “After all I’ve been through with you tonight, Princess, the least you can do is tell me.”
Absently, she picked up one of his dreadlocks from where they spilled down over his shoulder, letting it slide through her fingers. It was rough and wild, like him. Not like the cool, disciplined Lion Guard she remembered. They wore their hair short, in a regimented style.
There was nothing regimented about Flynn. She wondered what kind of man he’d be now, if he’d grown up in the Guard.
He waited for her to speak, still holding her, running his fingers through her hair, brushing it back.
It was so hard to say this out loud. She’d been running away from it for four years—telling herself that when she found Flynn, it would all be fine.
A few dutiful nights between the sheets. Maybe even one would be all she needed. He’d do his duty, and she’d be cured.
Businesslike sex with this man? What the hell had she been thinking?
She said, “I told you. All that power the Al-Maddeiri bound into me when I was five? It was supposed to be unbound when I was twenty-one. When I mated.”
When the two of them mated. Once again, she was aware of every inch of his skin that touched hers, of his nakedness. She swallowed hard.
“Our bond was supposed to make me strong enough to channel it. And the unbinding ritual would multiply it somehow, so that it would spread through every other dragon in the House and make their powers strong again.”
Flynn said quietly, “There aren’t any others.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Either way, the power wasn’t meant to be bound this long. It’s going haywire, and I’m not going to be safe until I figure out how to make it stop.” She took a deep breath, then blurted out, “I was going to ask you to have sex with me.”
Unbelievably, she heard a rumble of laughter in his chest. Dammit, he might not want to have sex with her, but it wasn’t supposed to be laughable.
“Hell,” he said. “My ego’s as big as any guy’s—bigger than most—but even I don’t delude myself that sex with me is a magical cure.”
Kira wasn’t so sure of that. She could feel the power in him—and something else. She’d never recovered this fast from a seizure before. She felt almost okay again—and this one had been much, much worse than the others.
But she didn’t know how he’d take it if she said that. Instead she asked, “Did they ever tell you how the bonding and unbinding works?”
“Not really,” he said. “You were only five. It was going to be sixteen years before it happened. I guess it didn’t seem real to me.”
“We’re supposed to have sex. Three times.”
“Was that three different nights? Or three times in one night?” She could still hear the amusement in his voice.
She smacked him on the chest. “I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“Just getting my intel straight. And then what happens? After the orgy?”
“I don’t think it can be an orgy if it’s just two people.”
“With enough whiskey, some creativity and that bathroom down the hall, I bet it could be.”
God, she wished he’d stop talking like that. It made her all soft and wet and wanting.
And he wasn’t serious, anyway.
She said, “After the non-orgy, very boring, very dutiful vanilla sex, came the official bonding ceremony. Blood and magic.”
“And then the sorcerer did the unbinding, and you gave the magic back to the other draken?”
“Yeah.”
“And we were bonded forever. In your dutiful, vanilla version of Bored Ever After.”
“Something like that. And then you went off and fought more wars and visited every now and then, if you didn’t get killed.”
“I’m trying to find words for all the fun that sounds like.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
“Yeah. I was hoping…well, that maybe just the sex would do it. Tame the power, I mean. So we wouldn’t—you know. Be stuck with each other.”
“Just the sex,” he repeated. “So you were just going to come up to me and be like, ‘Hey, medicinal fuck, no strings, what do you say?’”
“Well, when you put it like that…” She sounded like an idiot. A complete and total idiot.
His fingers stroked the back of her neck, sending heat through her body again. She felt him smile. “Not that that would be a hardship, Princess, but what if it didn’t work?”
“Then I’d be no worse off than I am now.”
“You mean, dying. And being chased by dragon hunters.” She felt Flynn’s arm tighten around her. It seemed almost—protective. “There has to be a way to unbind the power. Or…I don’t know. Siphon it off somehow? What about when you Change? Dragons usually heal when they Change.”
“I can’t Change.” She should be used to the shame that surged through her, but she wasn’t. For a draken to be unable to Change was cause for pity, if not disgust.
Flynn growled in his chest. “Why not?”
She realized she’d been toying with his dreadlock again and put it down, smoothing it.
“When my guardian brought me here, to this world, he knew that if anyone ever found out who I was or what I was, I’d be hunted down and captured, or killed. So he put another kind of binding on me, one that disguises my draken nature, so it can’t be detected. The binding makes it impossible for me to Change.”
“Yeah? Well, he might have been an okay guardian, but he sucked as a sorcerer,” Flynn said. “Judging by those hellhounds and what you told me about your magical ‘come kill me’ flares, it’s not keeping anyone from detecting you.”
“Not since I turned twenty-one. It used to, though.”
“Could it be making the other problem worse? The seizures?”
“Maybe.”
“And he doesn’t remove it because…”
She went silent, and he finished his own sentence. “He’s dead.”
Kira nodded. She’d never admitted to anyone how terrified she’d been when Markus died. Dragons lived for centuries, but he was old—much older than he’d let her know. She’d only found that out afterward, when she was going through his papers.
She’d thought he’d always be there for her. That they’d find a way to undo the original binding together, and she’d be fine.
Flynn had gone very quiet. Kira said, “Flynn, I know I can’t ask you to bond to me. Not even the beginnings of it. You have another life now, and people who are depending on you. I get that. And there’s a chance—well, I don’t know what all that magic would do to you if we released it without any other dragons to give it to.”
His fingers moved in her hair, and he still didn’t say anything. She expected him to pull away any moment, to go back upstairs, now that the seizure was over and she was okay.
Now that he knew she’d come here for something impossible.
But he didn’t. He just said quietly, “I never thought I would have a mate, you know? My supposed true mate was gone, and I’m not really made for all that soft, mushy shit, anyway.”
She turned, propping herself on one elbow. “Why not? There had to be women in your life before now.”
That got a crooked grin from him. “I’m sure as hell not a virgin, sweetheart.”
She knew the endearment didn’t mean anything—it was just something he said. But it gave her heart a pang anyway.
No one had ever called her anything like that.
Flynn went on, “I’ve had some relationships. Got my heart bruised up a couple of times, when I was young and stupid. Bruised a couple of hearts, too, probably.”
He was looking off into the distance now, not meeting her eyes. “But I always knew, even when it was happening…”
His voice drifted off.
Without thinking, she finished his sentence. “That it wasn’t forever.” She felt a jolt of recognition. “Me too,” she said softly. “It was like, even when I thought I was in love, somehow a part of me always felt like it wasn’t real.”
He turned his head slowly, meeting her eyes. “Yeah.”
They gazed at each other, heat building between them.
Slowly, he reached out and traced the outline of her lips with a fingertip. Electricity sizzled where he touched. “Damn,” he said.
She nodded. That felt real. He leaned in, brushing his mouth over her cheek. Blue light sizzled around them, crackling in the air. His lips met hers, and she was gone.