Chapter 6
Izzi fought her way through the haze of sleep and exhaustion before opening her eyes to the soft glow of her bedside lamp. At the same time, she became aware she was held tightly in Deryk Pendragon’s arms while he lay wide-awake and fully dressed on the bed beside her.
Her cheeks burned with humiliation when she recalled everything that had happened before she fell asleep.
“What have you done to me?” She knew from Deryk’s pained wince that she was right. He had done something to her. She pulled out of his arms, wrapping the duvet around her as she glanced at the clock on her bedside table and saw that it was after midnight. She had been asleep for at least two hours. “Tell me what all this is about.” She sat up. “This effect you have on me and why. Tell me right now.”
Deryk rose to his feet, needing to put some distance between himself and Izabella in order to explain this in a way that wasn’t going to have her going for his throat again. This time with her teeth bared.
His senses were not only saturated with her scent but also her taste, the latter a delicious and addictive combination of the sweetness of honey and the tartness of lemons. He could have carried on pleasuring her all night long and never tired of that taste. Holding his mate in his arms as she slept had been a sweet torture he had relished.
He straightened his shoulders. “You already know I’m a dragon shifter.”
“I presumed so, yes.”
Which, thank the Goddess, was at least one thing Deryk didn’t have to explain to her.
But the rest of it?
Deryk knew he should have taken heed of Bryn’s warnings.
That he deserved whatever was going to happen next.
Even if it was to have Izabella refuse to be his mate.
“Have the Romanovs ever talked to you about their dragons?”
She gave a shake of her head. “Maybe to my parents, but if so, they have never told me about them.”
That was what Deryk had thought. This arrangement of having human servants was completely new to him. They had local people working in the castle in Wales, but compulsion invariably took care of any anomalies those people discovered about their employers.
He nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m fifteen hundred years old—”
“That explains your outdated caveman attitude!” She snorted.
Deryk shot Izabella a frowning glance. Although she wasn’t wrong about his caveman attitude, and she had taken the news of his true age with a lot more equanimity than a lot of women would have. “Unlike the Romanovs, my brothers and I weren’t born to a matched pair of dragons but to those Welsh goddesses I told you about, and a human male. My own mother is Aeronwen, the Welsh goddess of war and battles,” he explained as Izabella’s eyes widened.
“That also explains a lot,” she said dryly. “Is your mother also the reason you have the ability of compulsion?”
He smiled his approval of her perception. “All dragons have it.”
“Including the Romanovs?”
“I presume so,” he answered guardedly.
“And you used that compulsion yesterday morning on Pyotr, and again last night, to make him leave?”
“Yes.”
“That’s— It’s disgusting to take away a person’s free will in that way.”
Deryk knew Chloe had thought so too. “How do you think my brothers and I have managed to survive for fifteen hundred years?”
“Have you ever used that compulsion on me?”
“No.”
“Will you ever?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You said that too quickly.”
“I answered truthfully.” He shrugged. “I can’t and never will compel you to do anything.”
There was no doubting the sincerity in his tone. “I should thank God for small mercies.”
“Goddess,” Deryk corrected. “My mother would be horrified to think I prayed to anyone else,” he explained at her questioning look.
Izabella’s eyes widened. “She’s still alive?”
“Goddesses are immortal.”
“But your father was human?”
“Yes.” Deryk wasn’t going to go into the details of who his father was at this point. The rest of what he was going to tell Izabella was enough for her to take in for now. “My brothers and I were all born within one week of each other on the island of Annwn. We lived there until we were aged thirty-five in human years.”
“Annwn?”
“It’s the Welsh Otherworld, and an island where the fae live.” An island that was invisible to the human eye. Something else Deryk intended keeping to himself for now. Nathaniel had told him Chloe had met that explanation with complete disbelief and scorn.
“What happened when you reached thirty-five?”
“We stopped aging and entered the human realm. We’ve been here ever since.” He paused for the beat of a second, then two, before continuing. “Searching for our fated mate.” Again, the explanation as to the initial reason for the brothers having come to the human realm could wait.
“In the human realm?”
He nodded. “We thought, until six months ago, they would be female dragons.”
Izabella’s shoulders tensed and her back tightened. “But they’re not?”
“So far, Nathaniel is the only one of us to have found his mate. She’s human, with a small amount of dragon DNA.”
“And I’m guessing he met her six months ago,” Izabella said shrewdly.
“Yes.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
Everything, Deryk’s dragon inwardly shouted gleefully.
The stupid bastard still thought this was a done deal.
“Last night,” Deryk continued evenly, “the first time I breathed in your scent, I knew you were my mate.”
Izzi stared at him. She could see the sincerity in Deryk’s expression, knew he believed what he was saying. It was just— Nonsense, the practical side of her nature dismissed. But wasn’t the fact that dragons existed at all, and she had known all her life that they did, just as unbelievable?
“You knew, without the two of us having spoken so much as a word to each other, that I was your mate.”
Deryk’s jaw tightened at the skepticism in his tone. “Yes.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is what it is.”
She gave a shake of her head. “I can’t be your mate.”
“Oh, but you are,” he stated with certainty.
“Maybe I didn’t word that correctly. I don’t want to be your mate. Apart from the fact I’ve only just met you and don’t even know you, your life is in Wales and mine is here in Russia,” she continued determinedly. “I’m also only partway through my law degree. But there’s no reason why the two of us can’t meet up again once I’ve finished it.” She could only hope Deryk would have met another woman who could be his mate in the interim.
Then why did the thought of Deryk with another woman suddenly fill her with rage, on a visceral level, that she had never encountered before?
Izzi’s eyes narrowed. “You still haven’t explained what you did to me and why I feel the way I do.” Color burned in her cheeks at how wantonly she had behaved earlier this evening, mewling and rubbing herself again him, her only thought to have Deryk pleasure her. That wild clamoring had abated for now, but the unease inside her told her it could return at any moment.
His throat moved as he swallowed before speaking. “When a dragon shifter mates he bites his female on the back of her neck, it infuses an aphrodisiac into her bloodstream in exchange for a little of her blood.”
“And that means they’re mated?”
“Yes.”
Izzi breathed out the air she had been holding in her lungs. “I think I would have remembered if you’d bitten me.”
“I kissed you at the palace last night.”
Her eyes narrowed at the way he was now avoiding meeting her gaze. “And?”
“We discovered when Nathaniel mated that the aphrodisiac is also produced in our saliva in response to meeting our mate.”
“So when you kissed me…?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why ever since, I’ve been consumed by this torment of physical arousal that won’t go away?”
“Yes.”
“You knew what the aphrodisiac would do to me?”
“I wasn’t thinking of much at all last night except claiming you—”
“Did you know what the aphrodisiac would do to me?”
“Yes.”
“You bastard.” Izzi rose to her feet, completely unconcerned by her nakedness as she began to pound her fists on Deryk’s rock-hard chest. “Reverse it,” she demanded as she continued to rain her fists against his chest. “Reverse it now.”
Deryk knew he deserved every bit of Izabella’s anger. Last night, he had been so consumed with mating her, in claiming her, he hadn’t really thought how Izabella might feel about all this. After fifteen hundred years of waiting, knowing he was on the brink of turning dragon and remaining that way, he had breathed in her scent, recognized her as his mate, and known that his own torment was over. He had simply taken what he wanted.
Izabella.
He reached up to grasp her wrists in his and hold her hands away from pounding on him. Not that she was hurting him; his dragon skin was much too thick for her to do any damage. But she had to be hurting herself as she struck him, and he couldn’t have that. Protecting his mate, even from herself, was his first priority now. Her happiness was his only concern. And right now, Izabella was far from happy.
He closed his eyes briefly before opening them again and answering her. “It’s irreversible.”
“What does that mean?”
Deryk drew in a ragged breath. “It means the mating has already begun and can’t be reversed.”
“I’m not a dragon.”
“But you must have some dragon DNA.”
“The same dragon DNA your brother’s mate has?”
“Probably not from the same dragon, but yes, dragon DNA. Your family has been the human caretakers for the Romanovs for a very long time. The chances are that somewhere back in your ancestry, one of them was involved with a Romanov dragon and gave birth to a hybrid child.”
“But not mated by them?”
“No.”
“But you’ve mated me.”
He swallowed. “I’ve waited a very long time for my mate, for you, and last night, I reacted instinctively. I honestly didn’t give the idea of the aphrodisiac in my saliva a second thought when I kissed you.”
“And you think that excuses what you did?”
“No, of course it doesn’t, but— I recognized my mate and— I didn’t know you then,” he said lamely.
She glared at him. “You think you know me now?”
He didn’t need to know Izabella for any length of time to realize the person she was. “I know you’re very beautiful. That your parents are very proud of you. You’re also intelligent, and studying for a law degree. You also have a temper,” he added dryly.
“And you are arrogance personified if you think I’m going to let you get away with this.” She wrenched out of his grasp, no doubt bruising herself in the process.
She looked like a pagan goddess with her straight blonde hair cascading down the length of her spine to her ass cheeks. Her shoulders were proudly back, pushing her red-tipped breasts forward. She stood with her legs slightly apart, her stance one of attack rather than defense.
She is a worthy mate for us, his dragon purred.
“I refuse to be your mate,” Izabella snapped as if in answer to that thought.
Deryk grimaced. “There will be consequences if you refuse.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you claimed me without my permission.”
He should have thought about a lot of things before doing that. Mostly, Izabella.
“Find yourself another mate,” she told him dismissively. “This one isn’t interested.”
“There is only one mate for each of us.”
Her eyes widened incredulously. “And for you I’m it?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean there’s now only you for me too? Answer me!” she insisted as Deryk hesitated.
“The mating works both ways, yes,” he revealed reluctantly.
“Even though I’m human?”
“Yes.”
“But we haven’t mated.”
“Not completely, no,” he acknowledged. “But that saliva in your bloodstream means the mating is already too far along for us to be apart for more than a few hours without it becoming extremely uncomfortable.”
She studied him. “You feel this painful arousal too?”
He nodded. “I haven’t been able to rest for thinking about you and wanting you.”
To Izzi’s disgust, she found it somehow…exciting, to know she was the cause of this man’s physical arousal and discomfort. Deryk was…well, he was unlike any other man she had ever met. Tall, huge, and dangerous.
Dragon.
“We’ll both die if you refuse the mating,” he said quietly.
She snorted. “And you’ll die a painful death if I’m forced to accept it,” she assured him determinedly.
He arched one brow. “The Romanovs?”
“Me.” She glared. “Now get out of my apartment and don’t come back.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Izabella.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it works exactly like that.” She began pushing him toward the door.
“The sexual hunger will come back.”
Her cheeks burned. “Then I’ll find some other way to deal with it.”
Deryk spun round so quickly, he had to grasp Izabella’s forearms to stop her from stumbling and falling. “No other man touches what’s mine,” he roared.
Izzi reared back at the fierceness of his tone. Anger rather than compulsion, because Deryk had seconds ago admitted he couldn’t compel his mate—
She was not his mate!
She couldn’t be. If she became his mate, she would have to spend the rest of her life with him. Go back to Wales with him. To this castle he and his brothers lived in.
Her life was here in Russia. Her parents were here. So were her brothers and their families. Her friends too. She might no longer consider Pyotr in a romantic light, but he and Tanya were still her friends.
Deryk said the mating, once begun, couldn’t be reversed.
“I hate you right now,” she told him vehemently.
“I can’t blame you for feeling that way—”
“And don’t even think of using that placating tone with me,” Izzi scorned, her gaze moving over his obviously aroused body. “Not when I can see how much the thought of a mate excites you.”
He grimaced. “I’ve been in this state since I first breathed in your scent.”
“I walked into your bedchamber, you breathed me in, and that really was it for you?”
Deryk shook his head. “I detected your perfume the moment I walked into my bedchamber shortly after I arrived in St. Petersburg.”
Because Izzi had been in there earlier talking to her mother while she prepared the bedchamber. “I want you to leave now,” she said with a calm she was far from feeling. As Deryk had predicted, the arousal was returning. She could feel it once again clawing inside her and taking possession of her body, causing her nipples to ache and between her legs to burn with a need to be filled. “I want you to leave now.”
His gaze raked over her with merciless thoroughness. “My dragon won’t allow me to abandon my mate when she’s obviously in discomfort. I won’t allow it.”
Her cheeks burned. “A discomfort you created!”
“Yes,” he acknowledged quietly. “Look, I know this isn’t ideal for you, or what you expected for your future. But I give you my word, I’ll be good to you. Concerned only with your happiness and well-being. I will also be completely faithful to you for the rest of my life.”
Izzi snorted. “How can you promise that when you have probably had hundreds of lovers in fifteen hundred years?”
He didn’t attempt to deny it. “For me, there is now only you.”
“But you don’t love me any more than I love you!”
“Love will come—”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
His mouth twisted. “I know Nathaniel and Chloe are so deeply in love with each other, it’s nauseating.”
Izzi would be lying if she didn’t admit, to herself at least, that her curiosity was piqued where Nathaniel and Chloe were concerned. Most especially Chloe. How had the other woman, also human, coped with learning she was the mate of a dragon shifter? Was she really happy with Nathaniel? Could Izzi be happy with Deryk, a man, a dragon, she had only just met?
“What will happen to Nathaniel when Chloe dies?”
“You won’t have known the parents of the Romanov brothers,” Deryk continued, “but their mother was human too originally.”
“Originally?” Izzi had never heard that before. Did her parents know?
Deryk nodded. “The mating prolonged her life.”
Izzi’s mouth went dry. “By how much?”
“She was twelve hundred years old when she died.”
“And you think that will happen to Chloe too? To me?” She might live to be twelve hundred years old?
“We have every reason to believe so, yes. There are also other…changes. Chloe has only been with Nathaniel for six months but already she is able to sense Nathaniel’s thoughts and moods. The baby too.”
“What baby?”
“Chloe is almost six months pregnant.”
Izzi felt her the blood drain from her cheeks. “She became pregnant almost immediately after the two of them got together?”
“Yes,” he answered guardedly.
“Will that— Would that,” she corrected firmly, “happen to me too if I agreed to this mating?”
“Probably. The intensity of dragon mating fever is caused by the need to procreate.”
Not only did this man, this dragon, think he was going to mate her, but if she accepted the mating, he intended to immediately get her pregnant too? Deryk and his brothers might have been born to ten different goddesses, but there were seven of the Romanov brothers, born to a single human mother.
“Absolutely not,” she bit out firmly. “I will not become some sort of baby machine so that your family can procreate.”
“Believe me, that isn’t going to happen,” Deryk assured hastily. “Chloe has already voiced her own objections to that possibility, and Dylan is working on something right now to prevent a further pregnancy until she and Nathaniel decide they want another child.”
“Birth control for dragons?”
“Yes.”
“Dylan is another one of your brothers?”
He nodded. “Our healer.”
“No.” She gave a vehement shake of her head. “I refuse the mating.”
“Izabella, I can’t just walk away from you,” Deryk pleaded. “Not now. You belong— We belong together.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.” Izzi knew exactly what he had been going to say before he corrected himself. “And I don’t want anyone to belong to me either.”
“I’m yours, whether you want me or not.”
Deryk Pendragon was the man of every woman’s fantasies. Beyond handsome, and sexually experienced in a way that made her toes curl. A man, she knew from the coffee shop this morning, every woman looked at and wanted for her own.
And he was hers?
Heady as that realization was… “From what you’ve told me, you have no more choice in this mating than I have.”
“I’ve had fifteen hundred years to know what I don’t want,” he told her grimly.
“That isn’t the same as meeting someone, getting to know them, falling in love with them, and then the excitement of building a future together.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“Yes!”
“Then we’ll do that,” he assured her.
“After you’ve completed the mating?”
His lips thinned. “Yes.”
“No.”
“If I leave now, in a few hours’ time, you will once again have desperate need of me—”
“My body might, but that isn’t me,” Izzi bit out through clenched teeth. The trembling of her body seemed to be increasing by the second. A few hours’ time? She needed Deryk again right now, damn it! “I really, really hate you right now.”
He winced. “I’m sorry you feel that way. But if you will only let me—”
“I think you’ve already done enough, don’t you?”
Deryk knew Izabella’s condemnation of his actions was fully merited. It had just seemed like a dream come true, the end of a lifetime search, when he realized he had finally found his mate. So much so, he hadn’t stopped to think of the impact the mating would have on Izabella’s life.
Or he hadn’t wanted to think of it.
Selfish bastard.
Yes, that was exactly what he was, he acknowledged.
What he had always been?
Not where his brothers were concerned. Chloe too now, no matter how much the two of them liked to spar verbally. But in every other way?
Yes, probably, he admitted self-disgustedly.
Fifteen hundred years of living had created a deep-rooted cynicism inside him. Toward everything but his family. To women. Life. The whole fucking universe. A cynicism that had dissipated the moment he had breathed in Izabella’s perfume and known she was his mate. Now all Deryk could see, feel, and hear was her. Izabella. He would do anything for her. Anything at all.
Except leave her.
But she needed time to adjust, to accept him and their mating, and time was something neither of them had. He had meant it when he told her the two of them would die if the mating wasn’t completed. Sooner—much sooner—than later.
He breathed heavily. “Dragons are very territorial, and the Romanovs are expecting Bryn and me to leave Russia in two days’ time.”
“Then I wish the both of you a safe journey,” Izabella came back dismissively.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave without you.”
“And I’m not leaving with you.”
He drew his breath in sharply. “Do you feel nothing for me? Nothing at all?”
There had, as Izabella accused, been hundreds of women in Deryk’s life over the last fifteen hundred years. Some he had even shared with his brother Nathaniel, before his brother’s mating. All of them women who had provided Deryk with the physical release his dragon demanded. Human women who would come to no harm from Deryk or his dragon, as the mating bite and the aphrodisiac were reserved solely for his mate. Despite those women’s entreaties to see him again, Deryk hadn’t cared for any of the women he’d taken after that one physical encounter.
It was beyond endurance that the one woman he did want, the one woman he and his dragon worshipped and valued and always would, wanted nothing to do with him.
Deryk could maybe even accept that as his due, after years of not giving a damn for the women he had used and as easily walked away from. But if he accepted her decision not to complete the mating, then Izabella would die too, and that was unacceptable. To him. To his dragon. It was part of their nature to protect their mate above everything and everyone else. From herself, if necessary. He couldn’t walk away knowing he was condemning Izabella to death by doing so.
“You—” Deryk broke off as the ring tone of his mobile, a heavy metal rock band playing one of his favorite songs, sounded at the same time as another ring tone played a popular female singer.
He pulled his mobile from his jeans pocket as Izabella picked up hers from the bedside table. “Bryn,” he read the name on his caller display. “You?”
“My father.” Izzi frowned, wondering if her father had somehow discovered she and Deryk Pendragon were supposed to be having dinner together this evening. If so, she knew she was in serious trouble.
The Mikhailov family served and protected the Romanov dragons, they did not fraternize with them or any of their friends. The fact Deryk and Bryn Pendragon were the first friends of the Romanovs Izzi had ever met made her behavior tonight doubly damning.
But her father’s reason for calling her had absolutely nothing to do with the Pendragon brothers.