by Marcy Jacks
“Stupid dragon. Stupid, idiot for not paying attention. This was why I wanted to come with you.”
A touch on his shoulder jerked him back. Jason looked back at the one who disturbed him.
Oh, right, Adrien.
“Jason, I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but we have to get him out of here. You can’t sit there with him. Everyone’s watching you, and they’re wondering what’s going on.”
Jason knew what this meant, but he wasn’t about to let them chain Marek again.
“If someone can help me bring him back to the shed, I’ll stay there with him. No one is putting him in chains, though. You got that?”
“All right, all right. I don’t mind if you want to keep the chains off, but if the elders say anything about it—”
“I’ll deal with them.” And Jason knew he was going to have a lot to answer for. Especially right now.
As far as he was concerned, Marek had answered the question of whose side he was on and who he wanted to fight for.
If this was not proof he was part of Keagan’s clan and that he was loyal to the peace agreement, then they were all pretty much fucked.
Adrien, along with two senior warriors, stepped forward. They helped to lift Marek off the ground. Jason did his best to hold the man’s weight, as well, but he could tell the others were using magick, and he was forced to use his own strength because there was almost nothing he had left to give.
In a strange way, this was one of the few times where it didn’t annoy him or feel weird to not have his magick there to help him.
He wanted to be able to carry Marek’s weight. He wanted to prove to himself, and maybe even to Marek, that he was willing to do these things for the other man on his own.
Without magickal help.
Seemed kind of weird and stupid for him to draw that line in the sand, especially when he had three other guys around him who were using magick helping him, but he was going to pretend that he wasn’t being inconsistent right about then.
He got Marek brought back to the shed. The door was busted. He could see where Marek had smashed against it until it had warped outwardly. When they got inside, he could see the twisted and bent links of the chain from when Marek had pulled and yanked hard enough to break them.
Jason was once again struck with the surreal nature of how Marek had done that for him. He’d done it because he hadn’t wanted Jason to be out there fighting on his own. And it was such a strange thing to realize that, if Marek had failed to escape, Jason might be dead right now.
That got him right in the heart. Marek had done all of this for him. He’d escaped and fought for the coven that had locked him up, for Jason.
So, Jason was going to stay here with him, his duty be damned. Others could handle the situation out there for a few hours without him, and until he got Alistair to remove the shackle on his wrist, he was useless to do much in the way of helping anyway.
“You gonna stay here?” asked one of the warriors.
Jason nodded. “Yeah. I won’t risk something happens to him while I’m gone. I owe him that.” He owed him so much more than just that, but that was none of this warlock’s business.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “We’ll be out there helping our own.”
Jason clenched his teeth at that, though he couldn’t blame the man for thinking in such a way.
Two days ago, that was exactly how Jason would have thought about the situation. He was a warrior for this coven, he was meant to take care of his own and no one else, not even other warlocks if they weren’t deserving of it.
But with Marek…it was different now. He cared about Marek, more so than even some of his friends in the coven.
And he couldn’t explain when that happened.
Maybe it had been the first time he’d seen the guy, but that sounded a little to insta-love for his liking. Angelica read books like that. They just weren’t realistic.
Except for right now…
“Do me a favor?” Jason asked, stopping the other two men before they could make their retreat out of here. “When you find Alistair, can you ask him to remove this for me? I’d like to be useful to the coven when Marek wakes up.”
When the two senior warlocks flinched, Adrien tilted his head, looking down at Jason. “What’s that for?” he asked.
“You didn’t hear?” they asked, looking at Adrien and Jason.
Jason’s stomach sank. “What? What happened to him?”
If they told him Alistair was dead, Jason was going to lose his fucking mind.
So, of course, that was exactly what they did.
“Alistair was in one of the trailers that got demolished by one of those fucking dragons. They don’t think he’s going to make it, much less be awake so he can spell that off you.”
Mother. Fucker.
Chapter Ten
It wasn’t long before Marek woke up, which was a testament to how good his healing abilities were as a dragon. Still, six hours was a long time by any standard, and definitely too long for Jason’s comfort. It was a miracle he was alive, and Jason was grateful for it, but every hour that went by with no reaction kept him on the edge of his seat for the entirety of that time.
After four hours with no change, and people still cleaning up, Jason had managed to convince the others at one point that Marek shouldn’t be a prisoner. He wanted to bring Marek to his small house, into his bedroom, on a warm bed where it would be easier for him to recover than if he were to remain on a cold, concrete floor.
Luckily, he was allowed to do this, to take Marek somewhere he could better recover.
Jason hadn’t thought his request would be granted, and he assumed it had something to do with Adrien, Jeremy, and maybe even Angelica after she had the specifics explained to her, but only one other person could be spared to help Jason move Marek into his house.
And Marek was a heavy guy. He was loaded up on muscle, and even though Jason was a warrior, physically, he didn’t come close to being capable of lifting Marek without magick.
He thanked the warlock profusely for helping him, and then set out to make sure Marek was as comfortable as possible when he woke up.
As a precaution, Jason even got out his first aid kit, the one that was dusty and barely ever used because, again, magick, and he set out to bandage and put cream on even the smallest of burns on Marek’s body. By the time the man woke up, Jason had run out of bandages.
But that didn’t matter, because he was awake now. Marek was awake. He was going to recover. He was going to be all right.
Jason leaned over the other man quickly, hesitant to touch Marek’s body, mostly because he didn’t want to cause any further harm to him, even if by accident.
“Are you all right? Can you move at all? Are you thirsty? I can get you some water.”
Marek smiled softly. “Slow down, I’m fine.”
Jason shook his head, not willing to accept that as an answer. “You’re not fine. You sound tired and your voice slurred.”
“My voice did not slur,” Marek said, his tone much stronger now than it had been just a minute ago. “I’m all right. Why do I look like a mummy?”
Heat rushed into Jason’s cheeks at that comment. “You had burn marks all over your arms and chest. A few on your face. I just wanted to make sure they were clean and well dressed, is all.”
He’d never felt smaller or more uncertain of anything than he had in his entire life. Marek was the one in bed and yet Jason was the one who felt weak and powerless, as if he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
It was right about then that Marek took a look around himself and realized he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He glanced at his bandaged arms, probably noting that the shackles were no longer there.
“Gotta say, it’s nicer waking up here than it was in that dank little shed.”
The heat in his neck, cheeks, and ears increased. “Yeah…”
Marek continued to smile at him. “This your place?”
Jason
nodded. “Yeah. All warriors are afforded a small home of their own. You get a bigger one each time you climb the seniority ladder.”
“And how do you do that?”
Jason shrugged. “Hard work, putting the hours in, proving your bravery. I don’t think I’ll be demoted anymore, but on the off chance I am, I’ll have to share a room in the barracks with the others again.”
Marek watched him, his hand resting lazily on his stomach. “I’m sorry if me coming here made that almost happen.”
Jason thought about that, and he shook his head. “I’m not. I’m glad you came here, even though we all treated you like shit.”
Marek went back to grinning. He seemed like such a happy guy. Could he never stop smiling for even five minutes at a time?
“Well, you were pretty welcoming to me when I first came, so don’t sell yourself too short on that front.”
If Jason’s face heated up anymore, he was going to get a nose bleed from all the blood rushing to his head. “Right, yeah, well that was a special circumstance.”
“It was special, all right.”
Even Jason couldn’t help but laugh a little at that one. “Asshole.”
Marek pretended to be offended by the comment. Jason didn’t mind. He thought the other man was cute when he behaved like a simpleton.
“I asked them to let you come in here because I thought…you didn’t deserve to be put back in the shed after what you did. I don’t know if the higher-ups thought the same thing, or if they were so busy dealing with the wounded and calming the parents that they didn’t want to bother with arguing, but here we are.”
Marek looked down, and his stare at the shackle still on Jason’s wrist was obvious.
“They wanted to reward you and me for helping out, but they didn’t take that off you.” Marek spoke of the shackle with a little more fire than he had when he first found out about it. “You nearly died because that stupid thing was on your wrist. Why didn’t they take it off?”
Jason couldn’t help but smile a little. It was nice to know that Marek was finally able to take this seriously, that he knew the importance of magick for those who practiced it.
“Alistair is a bit…indisposed right now. He can’t take it off.”
“What? Why not?”
Jason couldn’t smile for this bit. “Because he might be dying.”
Marek blinked. “What? Oh shit, well, I don’t want to be an asshole to a dying guy, but fuck him.”
“Marek.”
“I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry for him, but he nearly killed you because he took your magick away. I hope he recovers, but yeah, fuck him.”
Jason shook his head. “You’re impossible.”
Marek shrugged. “The guy’s an adult, I’m sure his feelings won’t be hurt because I said some mean things about him. He is lucky he’s so old. How old did you say again? Ninety?”
“He’s a hundred and five.”
Marek whistled. “Yeah, if the guy were in his forties, maybe his fifties, I’d beat the hell out of him for what he did to you. This is enough. Still hope he recovers, but it’s enough.”
Jason didn’t think he was going to entirely understand this train of logic, but he didn’t feel he could blame Marek for it either. Not if what he’d said was true.
“Well, if he dies or can’t take this off for a while, the other elders will focus their energy on removing the spell and getting this off me.”
“That’s doable, right?”
“Yeah, but you remember what it took to remove the spell Arty cast, right?”
Marek looked at him.
“Two of the elders and Arty’s dad had to come together to help remove it, and Arty’s not even that great at casting magick. It might’ve even been an accident. It takes a lot more energy for people to remove spells than cast them, and it’s supposed to be harder, too.”
“And since everyone in this coven is using their magick to heal and repair things…” Marek finished, saving Jason from having to explain it.
He nodded. “Exactly. So, I might be wearing this thing for a couple more days, whether Alistair lives or not.”
“Shitty.” Marek eyed him, and Jason could see that thinking expression on his face again. “Are you all right?”
Jason couldn’t believe it. “You’re the one in bed with bandages all over you, you got electrocuted by one of my friends because I couldn’t stop her fast enough, and this is all after you were attacked for doing nothing wrong and chained up in a shed. Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. Are you all right?”
Jason couldn’t believe it, and he didn’t understand why his heart kept constricting every time Marek spoke to him like this.
He never thought of himself as a romantic sort of person. He’d always thought that he behaved a little too callously, even with his former lovers. And maybe that had been part of the reason why they’d inevitably left.
But Marek brought something out of him, something that hadn’t been there before, or if it had, had been so small that Jason had never noticed it.
Even that stupid smile on Marek’s face was enough to make Jason get all melty inside.
“You’re stubborn, you know that, right?”
“I know. You would have to be a bit stubborn to want to enter the warrior classes.”
Marek’s gaze moved up and down Jason’s body, and he knew what the other man was looking at and looking for.
“Just because I don’t look like I take steroids doesn’t mean I can’t be a warrior. We use magick around here, not our fists.”
“Yeah, I saw that with the people who went up against those dragons. I guess there’s not much need for channeling your physical strength.”
Jason didn’t like where this line of thinking was going. He’d never been self-conscious about his body, but now that he was in front of a guy he’d already been intimate with, he was forced to think about all the ways Marek was better than he was. He was good enough while fucking that he was able to make Jason come while inside him, something Jason had never before experienced, and he was physically stronger, more handsome, and he walked with a confidence Jason envied.
He took care of his body to an extent, but being next to a guy who could lift a car over his head without the use of magick made Jason wonder if he shouldn’t have taken better care of it.
“I suppose being physically stronger and faster would have helped me out a little more when that red dragon was chasing me down.”
“I still can’t believe you went out there and showed yourself.” Marek sounded so unbelievably unhappy by that, that it was impossible for Jason to not smile a little.
“Magick or no, I still had a responsibility to those kids and their parents.”
Marek looked at him, and though Jason expected the man to reprimand him some more, he was shocked when that was the exact opposite of what happened. Marek reached for his hand, and Jason couldn’t do anything but give it to him. He’d give the man whatever he wanted right about now.
Marek looked at the bandaging on Jason’s fingers, but he didn’t comment on it. Maybe because he didn’t need to.
“That was so fucking brave. I can’t even believe you did it. Responsibility or not.”
Jason didn’t understand. “You do stuff like that all the time for your clan, don’t you? I mean, you did it for my coven.”
“That’s different. I have a fighting chance. Without your magick, you had none. I still wanted to kill you when you ran out there, but I couldn’t help but think I was mated to the baddest motherfucker on the planet for it, either. You put me to shame.”
More heat flooded Jason’s cheeks. He was getting real sick of the whole blushing thing. He didn’t like it, and he wanted it to stop.
But…so long as he only blushed around Marek, maybe it was all right.
Marek pulled Jason a little closer, and he felt what the other man was after when his bandaged hand touched Jason's hip.
The heat that sizzl
ed through him was shocking, but in a softer, more pleasant way than it had been when Jason had tackled Angelica to the ground. He groaned, pulling away, even though he wanted to lean in. “We shouldn’t.”
“Yes, we should.”
Jason allowed himself to be brought forward just a little bit more, even though he knew better, even though Marek was in bed.
“You’re recovering. I can’t make you do anything to your bandages.”
“And you won’t.” Marek was determined, and Jason was helpless against what he wanted.
Jason had lied before. He didn’t like being helpless, with the exception of where Marek was concerned.
Jason didn’t mind feeling a little helpless under his expert touch. That was something he was finding he liked more and more.
Marek pulled Jason on top of him, so he was straddling Jason with the sheets between them, and it was good. Jason tried to keep as much of his weight off the other man as possible, but he couldn’t deny how excited this new position left him feeling. It was wonderful, and even with the sheets and their clothes between them, Jason could feel the heat of Marek’s cock, and his own responded in kind.
Marek rested his hands on Jason’s hips. He seemed to be attempting to guide Jason’s body, to encourage his hips to slowly thrust forward and back.
And once again, Jason found himself falling willingly into Marek’s trap.
The man had him right where he wanted him. Of course Jason wasn’t going to do or say anything to stop it at this point.
“I want you to ride me,” Marek said. “I want to see you move with my cock deep inside you, and then I want to take you flying. I want to make you mine for the rest of our lives.”
That made Jason stop. He stared down at Marek, a little more panic flooding into him.
“You don’t approve?”
“I…” Jason had to think about it. “You keep calling me your mate. Is that really what you want?”
“It is,” Marek said, putting no thought into it at all.
As though he were so sure of it.
“It’s all right if you don’t trust this,” Marek said, stopping Jason before he could speak another word. “I love you, and I want you. You’re already my mate, but some humans don’t get it, even when they’re in the middle of feeling it.”