by Aja James
“The Jade Emperor thought that she would give up and leave. Humans are fickle and faithless, after all. But in this instance, he was wrong. She didn’t give up. She didn’t leave. She knelt there until she stopped breathing, and her heart stopped beating altogether.”
Cloud unfurled his body and stood up.
Even knowing that this was all in the past, he couldn’t help but want to protect her from hurt. His heart broke at the thought of her dying in such a way.
Waiting for him, who never came.
“Because the Jade Emperor seldom makes such mistakes…” the Master trailed off.
Cloud cocked his head and looked more closely.
The Master’s cheeks seemed slightly flushed, as if he were embarrassed.
Why would he be embarrassed by someone else’s mistake?
“Well, let’s just say he decided to rectify the error by offering her a second life in the form of a Pure One when her soul was in the in-between.”
“She accepted?” Cloud rumbled, finally breaking his silence.
“Yes.”
The Master grimaced slightly.
“Under normal circumstances, a Pure One’s life would not have been offered to one such as she… though her warrior prowess is commendable, her preferences are not as…ascetic as that race requires. She accepted, knowing the rules, because she wanted to keep waiting for ‘her dragon.’ I…on behalf of the Jade Emperor, informed her that she could be waiting for a very long time. Hundreds, if not thousands of years. She could not continue to haunt the altars of the temple. She needed to leave and live her life.”
“And she did,” Cloud murmured, trying to absorb everything.
“She did. She fulfilled her duty as a Pure One, as one of the Elite warriors who protected the Universal Balance, and in the past couple of decades, as one of the personal guards of the Pure Queen.”
“Why did she want to see me?” Cloud asked himself as much as the Master. “What could she possibly want with a heavenly dragon?”
“I imagine she wanted the same thing then that she wants now,” the Master huffed on a sigh, a rare display that he was irked.
“Now?” Cloud echoed dumbly.
“She is again kneeling in front of m—that is—the Jade Emperor’s altar,” the Master informed him irascibly.
“But this time, she’s chased you all the way into the Celestial Palace! And on that sneaky accomplice of yours, no less.”
“You mean Bai Long?” Cloud was trying to make sense of it all, while his head was virtually spinning with what this meant.
“Aella’s here? In the Palace?”
The Master no longer bothered to hide his perturbance, rubbing his fingers against his temples as if trying to alleviate a massive headache.
“I do not know what a humanoid female wants with a dragon, but she refuses to leave. She is breaking all kinds of laws just by being here. Her Kind is not allowed in Heaven. She has been bothering all the guards, interrogating the xian nǚ, banging on every door. She is disturbing the peace!”
“Where is she? I will go to her—”
“You will take her away from here,” the Master said firmly. “I do not want her to ever darken my doorstep again. And…”
He looked into Cloud’s eyes and ensnared his full attention.
“I give you the choice to go with her.”
Cloud’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“You are already marked as her Mate. Somehow, she’s Claimed you. Your dragon form is no longer stable, because you must be a humanoid male to answer her Claim. Even the Jade Emperor cannot break the bond between two Eternal Mates. Nothing in this universe can do that. So either she stays here with you, which I absolutely will not countenance—that female is nothing but trouble!—or you go back to earth with her.”
“I—” Cloud began.
But was interrupted by the Master as he plunged on to say, “If you go back with her, I will remove the chimu from your forehead. You will never be allowed to take dragon form again. You will never see your siblings, cousins and friends again. You will lose your ability to control storms, though I daresay you will retain some of your Gift in other ways. And you will never be allowed to return home.”
Cloud waited to see if the Master had anything more to add.
When silence greeted him, and the Master looked at him expectantly, Cloud took a deep breath and said, “I choose to go back to earth with Aella. She is my home now.”
The Master sighed. This time a little sadly, though he smiled a fond smile.
He reached out a hand to pat Cloud’s cheek affectionately.
“I want what is best for you, my child. I was mistaken that logic and tranquility would make you content. Perhaps, once upon a time, you were. But now that you know love, now that you love and are equally loved in return, I know you will never be happy without your Mate. Even if this attachment may also make you unhappy sometimes because human emotions are volatile and extreme.”
Cloud’s mouth spread in a dragon-sized smile.
“I like the passionate nature of humans…sometimes,” he confided.
The Master squinted one eye at him.
“Yes, I’ve noticed. You always did have the regrettable habit of letting your stormy side get away from you.”
“Aella likes my stormy side,” Cloud said rather proudly.
The Master stepped back from Cloud and clasped his hands behind his back in his usual implacable pose.
“So be it. Go home, child.”
And in another blink, Cloud was back at the Shield in New York City.
With an Amazon warrior wrapped tightly in his arms.
*** *** *** ***
Unfortunately, they were not alone.
One moment Aella was banging around the immaculate halls of the Jade Emperor’s palace, and the next she was back in the Shield, wrapped around Cloud like a barnacle.
She wasted no time kissing the bejesus out of him, but they were interrupted by several increasingly louder throat clearings just as she mounted him and began to tug on his clothes.
“Glad you’re finally taking charge of the situation, Aella,” Sophia said wryly from somewhere behind her. “But can we please get business out of the way first?”
“I want to see! Why are you covering my eyes, mom? What’s going on?” Benji shouted with his usual enthusiasm.
It was the child’s voice that cut through Aella’s lust-drenched haze. But she couldn’t resist giving Cloud’s kiss-swollen mouth one last scorching pass, audience bedamned.
Primly, as if she hadn’t been dry humping a fellow Elite warrior in the middle of the Shield’s Atrium for all passersby to see, Aella smoothed a hand through her golden waves, sat back against the deep-seated couch, and crossed her arms and legs in her usual insouciant pose.
“Let’s get to it then,” she said blithely. “I am impatient to get in my Mate’s pants, so let’s keep this short, shall we?”
Cloud adjusted himself next to her and scooted a little farther away, coloring deeply at her words.
She might not mind putting on a show in front of their friends, but Cloud was not used to such public displays. The social norms that were deeply ingrained in who he was came from ancient China, after all.
But Aella closed the distance between them immediately and plastered her body against his side, putting a possessive hand on his thigh and squeezing hard as if to declare (unnecessarily) to their curiously observing friends that he was hers.
All hers. And only hers!
The other members of the Dozen gathered around, Sophia, Benji, Seth and Jade taking seats, Rain, Valerius, Tristan, Ayelet, Inanna and Gabriel choosing to stand. Tal and Ishtar chose that moment to join them, little Isolde happily tucked against Tal’s hip, her chubby arms wound loosely around the warrior’s neck.
“That was some miracle you pulled off,” Sophia began without further ado. “May I assume that Cloud was responsible for the thunderstorms that saved the day?”
Cl
oud gave a brief nod.
“How—”
“It’s a long story,” Aella cut in. “Let’s save it for another day.”
Sophia eyed her friend with a knowing smirk. The Amazon was extremely impatient to get into her male’s pants.
“Are you back for good? You were gone for almost a week. Where were you?”
“A week?” Aella looked with surprise to Cloud.
“Time flows differently in different realms,” he murmured for her ears only.
“Yes, we’re back for good,” Aella answered Sophia’s first question, glancing at Cloud for confirmation.
He nodded.
“As to where we were—again—information for another day.”
She met the gaze of each member of Sophia’s inner circle.
“Catch us up. What happened in the past week?”
“We made our way back to the Shield without further incident,” Inanna was the one who spoke this time.
“You have the prisoner?” Aella inquired.
“Indeed. It is being confined in the Healing Chamber.”
Aella frowned.
“Rain’s Enclosure? Why? Was it wounded?”
“Why do you keep saying ‘it’?” Benji piped up. “The correct pronoun is ‘he.’”
“So the Creature is male, Benji?” Sophia asked. “You can see its true form?”
“Of course I can,” the boy said loudly. “He’s our friend. That’s why we’re putting him in the Healing Chamber, isn’t it? Because we’re trying to fix him.”
Rain, Inanna and Sophia shared a three-way glance.
It was true that Rain had bound the Creature in a prison made out of her hair, more inescapable than a straight-jacket, given that each strand of hair had greater tensile strength than steel cables. But also because the hair, even after being cut from Rain’s head, remained “sentient.” The individual zhen obeyed her command. If their prisoner struggled, the strands would tighten to enforce immobility.
At the same time, the pointed ends of the hair, the zhen or needles, could insert into strategic pressure points to either subdue the prisoner or to regulate and manipulate its physical functions to obey Rain’s will. Currently, she put the Creature into a deep sleep.
“The Creature is not our friend, Benjamin,” Gabriel said sternly. “It is dangerous.”
Benji looked over at his father, his forehead furrowed in an uncomprehending frown.
“But he’s Ere, papa.”
Sharp indrawn breaths flowed through the Dozen one by one.
Benji looked around him, bewildered.
“What? Didn’t you know? He’s Binu too,” Benji continued, oblivious to the shock zinging around the adults.
“You know, the man with glasses that sometimes visits Mama Bear’s shop.”
He looked toward Tal and Ishtar.
“You remember him, right, Mama Bear and Uncle Tal? He’s our friend.”
“What…” Ishtar began shakily, then swallowed and tried again.
“What does he look like, Benji? Can you describe him to me?”
Benji frowned again. Couldn’t they all see what he saw with their own eyes?
But he shrugged. Adults could be blind sometimes.
“He has your hair color, Mama Bear. It’s more curly than wavy though. And the eye color is the same too. But… sometimes they turn blue, or maybe green, kinda like Uncle Tal’s. His nose and mouth reminds me of Mommy’s.”
Ishtar, Inanna and Tal gasped in unison, their faces blanched of all color.
Isolde must have noticed Tal’s discomfort, because she patted her hand gently against his cheek to soothe him, her eyes filled with sympathy.
“He’s tall and broad shouldered like Uncle Tal,” Benji went on, “but skinny. He looks like he hasn’t eaten in a long, long time. I think we should feed him something. He must be hungry.”
“H-he…” Ishtar started, then broke off.
She grabbed hold of Tal’s arm and clung to him like a lifeline.
“He…could he be…?”
Tal looked blindly down at his Mate, unable to speak. He could only hold her tightly against his side. Isolde, too, squeezed him with all her little body’s strength.
He needed it. They all needed it, if what they were beginning to suspect was true.
If what Benji saw was true.
But they knew by now not to doubt the boy’s words. Somehow, Benji always saw the truth in any matter. It was time they paid attention. Really started listening.
“Well,” Sophia murmured as the Dozen gathered around Ishtar and Tal, to lend comfort and support, “it sure hasn’t been a dull week.”
She looked to Cloud and Aella as she stood up as well to join the others.
“Before you lovebirds disappear to do…lovebird stuff,” she said with a teasing smile, earning a wink from Aella and another blush from Cloud, “let’s make it official. The joining between Eternal Mates is sacred and rare. We have a lot to figure out ahead of us. This new…development…is most unexpected. But first thing’s first. We should celebrate your joy with the Mating ceremony. I will oversee it myself.”
Aella and Cloud shared a small but deliriously happy smile and nodded in agreement.
That was when Aella finally noticed.
“Where’s Eveline?”
*** *** *** ***
Eveline was in big fat trouble, that’s where she was.
She eyed the dozen or so males and females trapped and bound in the same dark chamber she was in.
They didn’t know what awaited them. No one would answer her questions. And if they spoke, they were punished with physical blows to keep silent.
She’d tried to use her telepathy to force some cooperation from her captors, at least to glean some information. But nothing worked. Their minds seemed a complete blank.
Eveline was the second to last person, thus far, to be shoved into this lightless pit, her arms bound behind her back, her feet tied at the ankles.
The bottom of the pit was several feet from the ground above, so when she was shoved inside, she landed hard. Her shoulder and hip were likely severely bruised, but she didn’t think she’d broken anything.
When she opened her mouth to ask questions, seeing that she was not alone, one of her captors or guards from above sprayed her hard with ice cold water. It knocked her back against the wall, leaving her with a bloody nose and choking on fluids.
One of the other prisoners shook their head at her after she recovered and tried to speak again. Apparently, no one would answer her even if she did manage to ask questions. No one wanted to be punished for breaking the silence.
Once in a while, perhaps twice a day, food and water were distributed to the prisoners in tin bowls. Because they were bound, they could only put their faces into the bowls and eat like animals.
Starving, frightened animals.
Eveline sat back now and reflected on how she got here.
Everything had been going smoothly with her trip down the Zagros Mountains. She’d made it to the small airstrip Cloud programmed into her GPS without incident.
But the plane had taken a detour when Eveline dozed off. When she awoke, she was ushered into a large bus filled with humans. She thought nothing of it, since her GPS indicated that she was going in the right direction. It was hours later that she began to question where they were headed. The GPS continued to show that she was moving north when, in fact, the sun setting outside showed that she was moving east.
When she went to the front of the bus to ask questions, something hard knocked into the back of her head.
The next time she awoke, she was already bound and in the process of being shoved into the pit.
Sometime later, another wriggling body was dumped inside. There was just enough light when the hatch was open to take a quick glance around.
Pure Ones.
All of the captives were Pure Ones.
Eveline had a sinking feeling about this.
Untold hours later, one of
the captors came into the pit, hauled her up by the hair and dragged her up the steps and out of the pit. Before she could look around to get her bearings, a blindfold was tied around her head.
She was shoved into another box, and then she was moving.
Her stomach lurched when the vehicle took off. She was in a plane.
More time passed. She could no longer keep track. It seemed like days since she first left the Parau Caverns.
She was put into another vehicle. More bumps in the road.
Until at last, she was taken out of the box.
All this while, no one said a word to her. At least her captors didn’t touch her other than to shove and drag her from one place to another.
She sniffed the air around her. It was cool and fresh, which told her that she was far from any populous city. Fresher than even in the suburbs.
Leaves rustled overhead as a chilly breeze swept through.
She was in a forest. Perhaps in the mountains.
But where exactly?
She was urged to move again by a forceful shove in the back.
The hand stayed in the middle of her back to guide her, given that she was still blindfolded and didn’t know where she was going. Several times, she stumbled over rocks and roots. Rough hands yanked her up and pushed her to keep walking.
Finally, her toes stubbed into a concrete block.
Steps?
She heard a door creak open, and then she was pushed again to climb up the steps.
“Leave us.”
That voice.
It was the only voice she heard in all this time.
And what a voice it was.
Deeply masculine, husky, and rough.
Sinful.
But she didn’t have time to dwell on it, because his scent assaulted her next.
Earthy, dark, decadent.
Arousing.
Eveline shook her head slightly to clear it.
What in Goddess’s name was happening to her? Was she actually getting turned on right now?
It would be laughably ludicrous if she was feeling in a jovial mood.
But she was definitely not laughing. She felt like crying actually.
It was just her luck that her unseen captor and would-be foe was the one male in the world who cranked Eveline’s extremely dormant (nearly dead, if she were absolutely honest) libido.