by Ophelia Bell
Between us, Rohan’s soul brightened, the near constant trickle of magic from his wounds still flowing through me toward the hound that had bitten him. Before my eyes, the magic brightened, and just as my orgasm hit its peak I felt a tickling sensation in my chest where Rohan’s soul bleed intersected with my body.
I was too overwhelmed by pleasure to make sense of this change. My fingers dug into his shoulders as I rocked harder atop his cock, chasing every last ounce of pleasure from what had already been an even more world-shattering climax than any I’d experienced.
My body felt alive and flooded with a power I didn’t expect from Rohan, as depleted as he’d been. Tingling fire danced through my limbs, and as I stared into his face that fire reached my mouth. Before I knew what I was doing, I dipped my head and darted my tongue out to the dark, wing-shaped tattoo on his left pectoral. It was as though fire burst through the tip and I abstractly heard Rohan gasp as I traced a new pattern around his tattoo, then pulled back, staring in surreal incomprehension at the way the design still glowed from the marks my tongue had added to it.
“You marked me,” he said, blinking at me in surprise, his voice rough and breathy. “Can I mark you?”
I nodded, too stunned to process any other reply than the answer that lay deep inside with all my deepest desires. To be marked, claimed by a dragon the way I had just . . . claimed him?
When his tongue lashed my left breast in a spot that mirrored his mark, some of the haze cleared. This shouldn’t be happening. Not if I ever wanted to set him free. But I only had a brief moment before that thought left my mind and nothing was left but the overwhelming bond of our marks between us.
His task complete, he looked into my eyes again and laughed out loud. “What is it?” I asked, confused but jubilant at his sudden burst of joy.
“Baby, you have wings.”
I glanced down at the pattern on my breast, the flare of golden fire in a shape that matched his tattoo. They were wings, sure, but he wasn’t looking at the mark. He was looking at me. Past me.
“Show me your dragon, Deva. My beautiful chimera. Let me hear you roar.”
I braced my hands on his chest and stared down in a daze at the shimmering hues that cascaded up my arms in a scaled pattern. My heart pounding, I tracked the transformation of my skin all the way to my shoulder before twisting my head and gasping out loud. I had dragon wings.
Their weight suddenly registered when I straightened up and I instinctively flexed and stretched, surprised by how second nature it felt to use them.
I scrambled off the bed to the sound of Rohan’s amused chuckle and stopped short when I caught my reflection in the bank of glass doors that made up one wall of his room. Beyond the windows, the sky had cleared to a beautiful red-gold sunset that faded into deep purple night, and in the glass I could clearly see myself. I glowed from head to toe with iridescent light, and stretched out behind me was a pair of the most striking prismatic dragon wings I had ever seen.
“What the hell did you do to me?” I asked.
“Maybe the better question is what did we do to each other? I feel fantastic. The pain is gone. That sickening pull I felt for the past two days has stopped.”
I spun around, my wings and scales disappearing with the power of a thought, and went to my knees in front of Rohan, my gaze fixed on his soul.
What I saw made no sense. The bite marks were gone—healed over as if they’d never existed. But something still didn’t look right. His soul wasn’t exactly damaged, but I couldn’t say it was whole, either. A fragment was missing. The glowing, egg-shaped orb pulsed with golden light just beneath his sternum, as strong as ever. Stronger, really. Yet at the very center existed a perfectly circular void from which light flowed. I tracked the path of the light, which seemed to go straight through me, but when I turned to follow it farther, the snaking trail of magic was nowhere to be seen.
I spun around, confused for a moment before my entire body heated with the understanding. It ended within me.
“Ro . . . Did you give me a piece of your soul?”
He stood and came to me, wrapping me in his arms as I stared up at him, searching his face for some sign that this was real, that I wasn’t dreaming. My heart hiccupped at the look of adoration in his gaze and my eyes welled with tears.
Rohan gripped one of my hands in his bigger one and brought it to his lips, kissing the center of my palm. “I didn’t know it was possible, but is it so hard to believe? I loved you from the moment we first sang together. How else were we going to be soul mates if I didn’t share my soul with you? Now come back to bed and let me keep my promise. I plan to make love to you until the sun comes up tomorrow.”
He tugged me backward, a suggestive smile on his lips that had my body warming again for the feel of him inside me, but he froze suddenly, his arms tightening around me and his gaze shooting to the windows behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and a chill ran down my spine. The hounds were back. The pair I remembered—Blaze and Boots—slunk in with ears drooped and tails tucked between their legs. But now they were accompanied by another, larger pair who hung back, their bodies halfway phased as they passed through the glass.
Spinning around, I pushed Ro backward, keeping my body between him and the hounds, but before I could sing the song to command them to leave, they started to whine so pitifully my heart hurt.
The two smaller ones dipped to the floor, laying down and putting their heads on their paws, still whining in that warbling, fluctuating tone of theirs, their eyes mournful orbs of violet. Behind them the others followed suit.
“What are they doing?” he asked, incredulous.
“I think they feel bad about what happened.” I bent down and took a tentative step toward Blaze, reaching my hand out.
“Deva, don’t,” Rohan said, tugging on my other hand. I glanced over my shoulder at him.
“It’s all right. I don’t think they’ll hurt me.” Looking at the hound again, I squatted and opened my hand in front of its glowing purple snout. It stretched its neck out and darted out a long tongue, licking me gently the way it had the day before at the Dylans’. “What do you need, sweetie?” I asked.
It crawled closer, looking up between me and Rohan as it gradually insinuated itself between us. Rohan stepped back cautiously.
“Wait.” I grabbed his arm to keep him from moving. “It’s our bond. You and I have a bond like Susannah and Gus had. They need this magic to survive. Somehow they must have known we’d bonded and they came back. Come here. Sit.” Rohan reluctantly moved to my side as I backed toward the door and we squatted down, sitting cross-legged on the plush, cushiony rug that covered the tiled floor in front of the door.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked. “One of these creatures attacked Keagan.”
“You know he provoked it. Besides, we’d trapped its babies in a cage. Do they look like they want to devour us now?”
“Do you really want to take that chance?” Rohan asked, wrapping his arms around his knees and eyeing the hounds warily. They remained on their bellies, the other three inching closer to us before stopping and giving me sad looks.
A greenish tendril of magic trailed from a diamond shaped spot in the center of one of the larger one’s chests, and with a start I realized it had to be the one who had attacked Keagan earlier. The green magic wavered in the air, trailing around the hound and through the wall toward Keagan’s room. But I knew after what I’d witnessed at Susannah’s that the love the pair of them shared had been more than enough to sustain the hounds and give their victims some respite from their bites. The flow of magic reaching this one from Keagan was fainter than it had been, even though he was in the next room.
The second larger hound beside it was an almost opaque dull gray, its purple eyes dim and its movements sluggish, despite a faint trickle of soul magic seeping into it from somewhere beyond the windows. It pushed toward me once more until its nose nuzzled my hand with a cold tickle,
then it let out a tremulous, guttural warble and went limp, falling onto its side. Its companions all released soft whines and looked at me.
“Sweet Mother,” Rohan blurted, releasing his defensive hold on his knees and shifting forward toward the unconscious hound. “It’s hurt!
My heart lurched and I scooted toward it, reaching out. At first its body felt like nothing more than a cloud of denser air beneath my hands. Instead of trying to touch it, I drew in a breath and exhaled, hoping that with my wings I’d also acquired more powerful dragon traits that I could put to use.
I was thrilled when vivid, multi-colored smoke billowed from my lungs and it only took a slight effort to will it into action. I enveloped the hound in the smoke, commanding the gaseous magic to solidify enough to lift the creature up so I could check for wounds. It levitated in the air over my head as I rotated it slowly, its muted shape disturbingly lifeless. My heart pounded with dread that it might have come to me too late. That it had died from something and it might be my fault for not figuring out its secrets sooner.
But when I caught a glimpse of the underside of its belly, I saw them. Claw marks ran in three long, ragged lines as though something had attacked it. Something at least its own size, if not bigger.
I pushed my magic into the wounds, closing my eyes and mentally connecting with my smoky breath to try to understand this creature on a deeper level. I didn’t glean much, but was at least relieved to be able to sense its life still struggling within it. I didn’t know if I could heal it, but I wanted to try.
Gradually the wounds closed, and I gently lowered it back to the floor. When I reached out to brush my palm over the strangely tingly ruff of its neck, it twitched and sat up, blinking at me. Its indigo gaze had brightened and its dull coat began to gleam once more.
“Can you show me what hurt you?” I asked it.
The hound tilted its head and blinked once at me, then lifted its snout and began to howl, but the sound wasn’t something I heard so much as absorbed, as though the frequency of the music it made was designed to sink straight to my soul.
For the first time since encountering these creatures I had a clearer idea of how they should work. Their strange, ethereal songs were how they communicated, but they spoke to our souls and now that I had a soul, I could actually hear it.
But what I heard terrified me.
33
Ozzie
Llyr and I flew for several more hours after Sandor doubled back like his tail was on fire. We pressed on against the ever more violent winds, chasing the winding knot of greenish magic that was swiftly growing too faint to see.
I hoped we’d find a den of some sort, but the hounds didn’t fucking stop moving and we kept losing sight of them among twilight shadows of the city. I slowed the beat of my wings when I saw a glowing, four-legged creature far below and followed it, but it just ambled along like it had no worries. It was walking down a busy sidewalk, so I didn’t want to descend too close. Birds my size would create a panic if I started swooping down over the heads of the humans.
Llyr seemed to sense my dilemma and arced past me, his huge heron shape shrinking and magic flooding off him as he descended and shifted at the same time, until he was nothing more than a nondescript gray dove landing on a light pole several feet above where the hound had paused. I perched in the shadows on top of a building nearby and waited.
He flew back up several moments later and angled toward the center of the roof I’d landed on, beneath a canopy of huge solar collectors. Once in the darkness, he shifted and crouched down. I slipped easily into my human form facing him.
“It isn’t one of ours. It’s too big too, bigger than the mama hound that attacked Keagan. Also, it seems to be stuck like glue to a human woman I’ve never seen before. I couldn’t tell whether or not she’s bloodline, but she appears perfectly fine. No evidence of soul bleed. I communed with the River, observed the flow of Time around her to see her future.” His brows drew together and he frowned.
“What?” I prompted.
Llyr shrugged. “Completely benign. She’ll meet a man tomorrow and they’ll be happy together. It must be one of the hounds Fate still controls. How many do you think are in the city?”
“No idea, but it’s going to make our task harder.”
“They don’t bite unless it’s bloodline, your grandmother said as much. We just need to pick up the trail of soul magic that links our hounds to their victims.”
“Which is hard to do when we also need to stanch that bleeding if we want Keagan and Rohan to survive. We lost the trail because Deva’s singing to them, no doubt. I have a feeling trying to track them isn’t the most efficient way to find them.”
Llyr frowned and nodded. “We need her to lure them to us again. But we need to be prepared for an attack when we do.”
I nodded, though the idea made me uneasy. What if Sophia was right? Hell, I knew my grandmother and she was never fucking wrong. “I may be crazy for saying this, but I think we need to give Deva the reins when they come. Let her test her voice more. I want to see if she can actually control them.”
“Her voice . . .” Llyr narrowed his eyes at me. “Why is it her voice that seems to have all the power? She’s equal parts all races, yet her turul power is through the roof. This fucking wind started at the house and hasn’t abated all night. I guarantee if we looked at a weather report, high winds wouldn’t be in the forecast.”
“How do you know it isn’t me. Or Sophia for that matter?” I challenged.
Llyr stood up and snorted, pacing away to lean on one of the heavy steel posts that propped up the solar panel above us. “You two are more disciplined. This wind . . .” He swirled his finger in a spiral pointed skyward. “It’s too chaotic. I can feel the magic in it. Is there something else you aren’t telling me about your bond with her? Why the hell are you keeping your distance from her if she’s your One?”
“What does your fucking River tell you?” I asked.
His eyebrows lifted. “I told you. Not a goddamn thing. Everything about Deva is a mystery. I only know some of her future based on the link she has to the other guys. Your future is just fucking empty. Which I could interpret as a depressing lack of living—some people have futures where they merely exist without love or purpose to drive them. But I know you better than that. You fucking want her. Probably as much as I do if you were willing to have me as a shitty substitute while I pretended to be her.”
“She shouldn’t be my One,” I said, my voice low and shamefully tinged with despair. Reluctantly I added, “You still have a chance if you want her.”
Llyr shook his head. “I don’t get it. I see how she looks at you. As much as I hate exploiting my link with her, it’s become a reflex. But that means I can also feel some of what she feels. She fucking loves you, which makes more sense now that I know you two are meant for each other. And despite all this encouragement you keep giving me, you hate the idea of her with anyone else. You could have her, yet you push her away and throw all the rest of us at her instead.”
“I don’t fucking throw anyone at her,” I countered.
“You’re definitely being an asshole about it every step of the way, but you aren’t discouraging it.”
My blood heated. “What should I fucking do? She wants love that I can’t give her. Encouraging her to direct it at you losers is the best alternative to keep her safe.”
His expression darkened. “Safe from what, Ozzie?”
I shook my head and stalked a few paces away, careful not to venture too close to the edge of the rooftop. The wind had abated and the sky cleared somewhat, making way for a spectacular sunset, but there was no telling who could see if they looked up at the right moment.
Behind me I heard Llyr’s voice, closer now. “Gaia’s fucking tears, safe from what? Is she in some kind of danger I should know about? My job is to protect her!”
I scrubbed my hands over my face, body tense with the suppressed frustration over this entire fucked up sit
uation. Llyr grabbed my shoulder and spun me, his naked body about a foot taller than he’d been and his eyes a swirling maelstrom of both rage and fear. I was resigned to the violence when he slammed me against a support post making the panel above us shake.
“Safe from what?” he bellowed.
“From Fate! From goddamn Fate! And from me. You want to protect her, the best way is to distract her from me because if she gets close enough I don’t know that I can hold back.”
He seemed to grasp the sincerity in my tone and his body shrank to its former size, which was still a bit bigger than me. He cursed softly but didn’t release me.
“I’m the worst person to enlist for help,” he said, sounding just as resigned to some inescapable fate as I was. “In case you missed it, I am persona non grata to her.”
The metal post was ice cold against my back, a stark contrast to the heat of the satyr in front of me. My traitorous cock twitched at the memory of his mouth on me the night before, and the sadness in his eyes made the urge to punch him diminish. “Why the hell would she hate you? She fucking sang you a mating song.”
His eyes narrowed. “Because I accused her of not being a virgin before we fucked. She insisted she was, but there’s no faking that with a satyr. Do you have any idea why she’d cling so adamantly to a lie?”
My blood chilled and I closed my eyes, a sick feeling settling in my stomach. Of all the people to make love to her, it had to be a creature so attuned with fertility magic he’d sense the missing power a true virgin usually possesses.
“What a fucking double standard you guys have,” I spat, seeking to twist the topic to my advantage. “Was she not good enough for you? Not pure enough for a race that fucking thrives on wild orgies?”
Llyr let out a low growl. “It’s not about her damn purity and you know it. It’s about her not fucking knowing she’d been fucked before.”