All the dragons sensed it, too. They gathered at the edges of the patio with expectant looks on their faces. Those still inside filed out onto the grass, their loud chatter hushed. Under their breaths, their unanswered questions rippled through the crowd.
“What’s going on?” Mei asked Tee the question on everyone’s lips.
Tee looked sideways at her with a frown on her face. “I’m not sure.”
Alec’s assessing gaze stopped on them as they threaded through the crowd. A muscle twitched in the side of his face as if he gritted his teeth, but he gave no other hint that he had seen her.
Mei slipped back on her glasses, needing a barrier between her and her former colleagues and friends.
“Stop it.” Tee squeezed her hand. “You stand proud and tall here. You’ve nothing to feel guilty for.”
But she did. She had lied to them all, too, and put Darius in harm’s way.
Music started in the background with the strums of a guitar trio as Tee stepped next to Leo and kissed his cheek.
Leo swept Mei with a derisive glance. “Nice of you to join us,” he said so that only the three of them could hear.
“What’s going on?” Tee asked, lacing her hand with his in an easy, unconscious joining.
A lump tightened Mei’s throat at the loving gesture between the mates. Would she ever be able to hold Darius’s hand like that again? Would things ever be easy between them?
“Darius and Li will fight for the right to Mei.”
“What?” Her head whipped to the entrance to see Darius walking into the casino shadows between several more of Alec’s lieutenants.
Darius, she called to him. Whereas before there had been a muffled void around her mind, now her thoughts were sharp and crystalline.
His mind touched hers, and she rocked into Tee’s side before straightening.
I’m here with Leo and Tee.
Go! he shouted in her head, making her flinch against the volume. The whole bunch of them could turn on you!
Leo gave her an assessing look. “I imagine he’s not happy you’re here in the middle of all this?”
She nodded and turned her attention back to Darius. Don’t do this. Mei flung the desperate words at him.
Darius stepped to the common area, staring at her with his pale blue eyes. He wore loose white karate pants with a deep blue sash at the waist. His hands swung free, and he walked of his own accord. He wasn’t restrained, just hedged in and separated from the crowd by Alec’s men. She stepped toward him, but Leo put his hand around her wrist. Restraining her, but not hurting her.
Stay by Leo. No matter what happens. Darius’s words tunneled into her heart.
Alec cleared his throat, and the crowd immediately quieted, so that you could hear the wind rushing over the side of the casino rooftop.
“We’ve gathered to settle a dispute between the water dragons of the Crescent Islands and the ice dragon of the House Dachien.”
An angry rumble went through the crowd, directed at the water dragons.
Even if Darius won, the kingdom would never accept the water dragons. Even if Alec insisted, it would fracture the peace. She would be just as exiled as she was back on the sunbaked misery of the islands. Acceptance wouldn’t happen in her lifetime or Darius’s.
He fought and risked his life for nothing.
“…Li Xing and Darius Dachian will fight by mortal combat,” Alec said.
“No.” Mei spoke the word, but only Tee and Leo heard it.
“Mei.” Leo’s restraining hand squeezed her wrist gently. “He’s well able to put this vermin down.”
Tee laced her palm through hers again, but unlike the comfort she knew Tee and Leo’s joined hands contained, Tee’s hand over hers felt too tight.
Darius picked up a stick and sparred on the side with one of the lieutenants, while Alec droned on about ceremony this and ceremony that.
“I have to stop this.”
“No.” Leo said. “That’s the worst thing you could try to do.”
Mei shook her head, rejecting his words.
“It would upset him right now.” Leo leaned close to speak in her ear. “If I need to have you removed, I will.”
Mei looked into his eyes. They were flat and unflinching.
Tee shook her arm to get her full attention. “Darius will beat his bloody ass.” Her use of Leo’s curse words would have been funny on any other day. “Okay?”
Mei nodded, but numb horror started at her feet, shook her ankles, then climbed to her knees and chest. She was lightheaded with fear, only held down by Leo and Tee like an overfilled helium balloon ready to pop.
Li stepped onto the roof, a water dragon at each side.
Mei’s vision shrunk to a tunnel with him at the center. She’d not seen him in his human form in many years, and now she felt flung into the past. He still looked as handsome as the day they were married, when she had thought he was her Prince Charming and they would live happily ever after. How could one so evil be so visibly unaffected by his actions? He wasn’t a big man compared to the land dragons, but he seemed huge and menacing to her. She shrank back, closer to Tee’s side.
Darius and Li stepped to the center of the grass roof, and Alec joined them to talk to them privately. He tied a red rope around their left wrists, making much ado about securing the knots.
The two each had one fist and two legs to fight. The close quartered fighting would make it much harder to inflict lethal wounds.
Did Alec intend for them to have a casual spar?
He didn’t know Li like she did.
Panic grew in Mei, but she had no time to act. Li didn’t wait for Alec to start the fight. He jumped into the air and kicked Darius hard with the ball of his foot.
Darius fell to the ground, but regained his footing with a smug smile. He tugged Li forward, unbalancing him, before smashing his knee into Li’s stomach.
Li cried out as he fell, and Mei heard the sound reverberate in her ears. It was a sound she’d never heard from Li’s lips, ever: pain.
The other water dragons stepped forward to aid him but were quickly restrained by Alec’s lieutenants.
Li lashed a foot upward from the ground, catching Darius’s ankle and toppling him to his back. Mei inhaled hard, and her heart sped into overdrive.
Darius lay still and unmoving.
Li jumped on top of Darius, his fist raised overhead, but Darius punched him from below, one, two, three punches that snapped Li’s neck back and forth like a puppet on a jerking string. Blood ran down Li’s face from his mouth. The smell of it reached her, metallic and acrid, making her stomach recoil.
Darius punched Li again, and he fell on the grass.
“This will be over soon,” Leo said.
Hope and excitement had her stretching forward on her tiptoes, waiting for the final blow to end the fight.
Suddenly, Li shifted into his water dragon form and struck Darius with all the lunging power and muscle he had in his taloned dragon’s fist. It was a strike no human could bear, and Darius had no chance to shift himself. He flew across the grass and landed hard on his back. The broken red cord hung from his slack arm.
Leo exclaimed and pulled Tee into his arms, making her release her hold on Mei.
Still Darius didn’t move.
Mei ran to him, not feeling the ground under her.
Dragons in human form screamed and ran back into the shelter of the casino. Their panic spoke of their long held belief in the unbridled treachery of the water dragons. They were right, it seemed. Slippery and treacherous was the water dragon.
Alec’s men shifted into their dragon forms and roared fiercely from the perimeter of the roof.
“Don’t you dare be dead.” She sank to the grass beside Darius. “Oh God, oh God.” She put her ear to his chest, hearing the strong beat of his heart over the chaos around them. His breathing was steady, too. He was just stunned, out cold from the devious punch from Li’s dragon.
A roaring she wo
uld recognize anywhere sounded behind her.
Li.
She stood, putting herself between Li and Darius. Li’s water dragon grinned down at her with toothy fangs, all primal beast. But then, he was a beast in either form.
In her mind, she was back in the Triton house, on the Crescent Islands, cowering behind the sofa to avoid his kicks. She forced the fear away and reached deep into her reserves for strength from her dragon.
“You bastard!” She screamed the defiant words at him that she hadn’t been able to then.
Your lover is not so strong, Mei, Li taunted. Not as strong as me.
“I’ll kill you!” She realized her words were true with a slight shock. With Darius vulnerable at her back, and nowhere for her to go, she wanted Li dead. Not just wounded. She wanted him to never return to haunt them. She wanted him dead for the future. She wanted him dead for the past.
Li laughed in her head. I’d like to see you try.
Mei pulled into her dragon form even as her human mind frantically considered the consequences. What did it say about her that she wanted to kill him?
Her dragon didn’t care.
She shifted in a heartbeat and lunged at his front side, biting at his neck, feeling the taste of his tacky blood in her mouth with zeal.
He would pay for hurting Darius, and for hurting her. She closed her eyes and used her dragon strength to hang on and pierce his vulnerable underbelly with her talons.
Li roared and swatted at her, but he was slower, and she flitted above him left and right, and then jumped on his back. She threw her tail around his shoulders and sank her talons and her teeth into the back of his sinewy neck.
Li’s dragon craned his head, trying to dislodge her, but Mei used his backward reach to sink her teeth in deeper. The gratifying tear of muscle and cartilage crunched between her jaws.
Yes, her dragon roared with no thought of mercy. I will kill you.
She spit his blood and flesh out on the ground. Satisfaction for the harm she caused him pulsed through every cell of her body.
Li staggered forward. His tail thrashed, overturning chairs from the gala with the momentum.
He straightened on his hind legs and shook hard, but she sunk her teeth into his throat again and again. He roared to the sky, and a deluge of water fell over the roof. The water blanketed her but didn’t slow her. It ran in concentric waves to the roof edges and spilled down the casino walls before she could reach to it for restoring energy.
The wounds on Li’s neck bled, and his yellow reptilian eyes rolled back at her. If she gave up and didn’t finish him, he would never stop. It was enough to squash any remaining hesitation.
She opened her jaws wide and sank them into his windpipe, knowing that attacking this vulnerable spot was her best chance to end it, even though it left her wide open to his counterattack.
He shook his shoulders, flinging her side to side, and beat at her dragon with his wings.
Pain shot through her hurt arm as his claws tore it open. But she clung on tight with her jaw and talons, thinking of all the times he had kicked her when she coiled on the ground.
Once, he had beaten her with the flat edge of a long kitchen knife, telling if she moved, she would be cut. She bit even harder now, feeling the first rigid contact with his larynx, knowing his windpipe was close.
Li fought back hard. Again, shaking side to side, trying to throw her off, but she tightened her tail around his shoulders and hung on to him with every muscle and ounce of determination she had.
Her claws broke through his leathery scales even as her fangs crushed his windpipe.
Li still thrashed wildly under her, not knowing it was over. He fell heavily to the side and continued to spasm. Even pinned under him, his dragon’s blood dripping over her in bloody torrents, she didn’t release her grip until he grew still on top of her, and his body grew cold with death.
…
“Mei.” Darius crawled across the grass to get to her. Her human form was unmoving in the grass, pinned under Li’s dragon leg. The other dragon lieutenants rushed to his aid and helped to pull her free. He shrugged off their hands, wanting to be the only one near her.
Mei fluttered open her eyelids as Darius pulled her across his lap. She blinked at him several times, as if she couldn’t remember what had happened. He brushed her tangled hair away from her face. “Why did you do that? You could have been killed.”
She frowned and seemed to replay the fight in her head, and then threw her arms around his neck. “You’re okay.”
“I’m fine.” His hand shook as he stroked it down her back.
She could have been gone in an instant. He wanted nothing more than to get away from the dragons and go over each and every scrape on her body to make sure she wasn’t really hurt. Shock sometimes hid injuries.
He looked around for the doctor, but his eyes were drawn toward the side of the patio where Alec stood.
“Get the doctor,” Alec said to one of his lieutenants. Helping arms lifted Darius and Mei to their feet and onto a patio chaise.
The crowd cheered and stomped their feet rhythmically across the roof as if in celebration. The sound crept up his hyper-aware senses with foreboding. They still hated the water dragons. Mei’s defeat and killing of her own didn’t change that.
“Do you think you can stand?” he whispered in her ear.
She looked level at him, understanding filling her face with sadness. “You think they will still turn on me?”
“I don’t want to wait around and see.”
She shook her head and looked straight into his eyes. “I want a life with you. I meant it before when I said I love you. If you still want me, I want to complete our bond, have children.”
“I love you, too.” Happiness squeezed his heart. She was his. He was hers. They just had to make it off the roof and start over somewhere safe. “I want that, too.”
“You were right before,” she said. “We have to stay and see this through.”
He had to smile at her twisting his words back to him. They would likely never be those symbiotic mates who always agreed, they would likely always be scrabbling about something. As long as they were together, he was good with it. “We could wait things out in my room, let Alec tell us what happens.”
“I’m not afraid anymore.” She sat away from him so that a foot separated them. “Li is gone; I killed him.” Her voice was small but victorious. She looked past him to the dead dragon. “I killed him,” she repeated as if not quite believing it.
“You did.”
“Please settle yourselves.” Alec’s voice broke over the crowd, and instantly, all chatter stopped. He stood on the stage from the gala, and all the dragons watched as Lucy in all her red-headed humanness walked to him. He brought her to his side.
Leo walked hand in hand with Tee to stand behind them in support, while Alec’s guards and lieutenants patrolled the crowd. There would be no divisions. Whatever Alec decided, it would be final.
Alec turned back to the crowd. “I’ve made a decision on the issue of the other water dragons.”
“Do you know?” Mei asked him, and Darius shook his head.
“Our people are evolving. Recently, several of us have found our fated mates among the humans.” There was not a sound from the dragons as Alec lifted Lucy’s hands to his lips and kissed the back of her hand.
“More fated mates could be found among the water dragons. It is in the best interests of our people that we find a way to bring them back into harmony with the kingdom.”
Slight hissing broke out, but was quickly quelled by glares from Alec’s men.
“There will be some among the water dragons who are ready for unity, and some who are not. I’ve been told of unspeakable brutality among them.” Alec’s voice hardened, and he shook his head. “That kind of abuse will no longer be tolerated.”
Mei inhaled and glanced at him before turning her attention back to Alec. She clasped his hand, as if wanting to share her excite
ment for the changes Alec announced.
“I will begin this process by removing the women and children for care and observation,” Alec said. “The young men and woman who wish to join our dragon guard will be given a guardian to ensure their transition is successful.
The water dragon commanders who have led their fold into treachery and ruin will be given the opportunity to swear allegiance to me and join the kingdom. Those that do, will live out their days on the islands they have chosen as their home.
“After a cooling-off period, I’ll evaluate each case to see that all have been treated as fairly as possible. Aiding me in this transition will be my trusted lieutenant Darius Dachien and his rightful mate, Mei Chen.”
Happiness flared in Darius’s chest. This was a future he could not have hoped for: a future with Mei, safe and rewarded for her loyalty to the king, and in a position to help her people find the right path.
“How about that date now, Ms. Chen?” he whispered in her ear. “You. Me. And an island in the middle of the ocean?”
Tears sheened her dark eyes, and her smile lit her face. “Yes!” She slid her arms around his neck and held tight. “Oh, yes.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The luxury yacht in the South China Sea had been a stroke of brilliance, if Darius did say so himself. And he did, several times.
Mei had agreed with his brilliance and made sure he knew how much she appreciated the gesture to give her a respite from the unification task. As it was, they could boat over to the Crescent Islands for the meetings with the water dragons and leave whenever they liked.
They’d been to the islands twice so far. The water dragons were even more manipulative than the Book of Dragons said, and it amazed him how anything good, let alone Mei, had come from their gene pool.
Their first trip over, the dragon fold leader, Donghai, had feigned complete shock that there were other dragons in the world. He made much ado over welcoming them and extending his tribe’s pseudo-gracious hospitality.
They’d spent a full day wading through the hip-deep shit, but Darius and Mei had let them keep their ruse.. Saving face was important, Mei said, and she argued to him privately that it was just the first step in bringing the antiquated fold into the kingdom.
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