by Tessa Adams
She didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know where to start. Except—“A century? I thought humans rarely lived that long.”
His jaw clenched along with his fists. “I’m not your typical human.”
She had already figured that out. “So, who are you?” she asked again, breath held as she remembered the last time she had asked him that question. He had said, “No one,” his voice as flat and dead as any she had ever heard.
What had he meant? she wondered again.
And why did his pain matter to her so much?
He shouldn’t matter to her at all. He was little more than a stranger, albeit one she had been intimate with. But that didn’t mean she had to care about him, had to worry about him—no matter what her dragon seemed to think. Especially after the way he had simply disappeared on her all those years ago.
She’d left him in the shower after the most amazing sex of her life, had gone out to get coffee and some other stuff to make him breakfast. When she’d gotten back to her apartment, he’d been gone. No note. No explanation. Just gone.
She’d felt like her heart was breaking, which was stupid as she’d only known him three days. But it hadn’t mattered. Her dragon had been nearly inconsolable with grief and she hadn’t been much better. By the time she’d finally recovered, finally gotten over the time she’d spent with him, her hurt had turned to anger and then finally a resolve to never let anyone close enough to hurt her again.
Now that he was here, though, the anger was back. Along with the hurt and a slew of other feelings she’d rather not deal with, including an overriding worry for him. The man she’d met sixty years before had been dark, amusing, sexy, driven. This Matthew was still sexy, still dark. But the drive was gone and in its place was an inexplicable resignation. The change concerned her, even as she told herself she was an idiot for caring.
Worrying about him wasn’t her job. Neither was taking care of him. The only thing she had to do was get his clothes on and make sure that he got to the Dragonstar borders and on his way to somewhere else. Sure, they’d had sex, but it didn’t have to mean anything.
She wouldn’t let it mean anything. She’d escort him out of Dragonstar territory and then she could get back to her regular life. To the way things had been before she’d seen Matthew again.
What did it say about her that that idea was suddenly much less appealing than it had been?
The question popped into her head and she shoved it back down, refused to give it any credence. Then looked at Matthew and simply waited for him to make the next move.
When he didn’t answer her question, didn’t do anything but simply stand there and stare at her, she knew she was right to ignore any feelings she might still have for him. If he couldn’t be honest with her, even now, than she didn’t want anything to do with him.
Bending down, she scooped up her clothes and started yanking them on. As a shifter, she was rarely concerned with nudity—it was pretty much the nature of the beast, after all—but suddenly she was uncomfortable with him staring at her, his dark eyes cataloguing her nudity in a way that no other shifter ever would. She hadn’t been self-conscious when they were making love, but now that it was over, and she was thinking clearly again, she couldn’t stand the vulnerability.
“Caitlyn.” His voice was soft, entreating, as was the hand he held out to her.
She refused to let him get to her. She didn’t know what he was, only that he wasn’t merely human and if he didn’t trust her enough to share his identity with her, than she couldn’t trust him enough to allow him on Dragonstar land.
“Get dressed. I have a meeting in an hour and a half. You need to be long gone by then.”
He didn’t answer. She glanced at him, saw that he’d been waiting for her to do just that. “I am human, you know.”
“Really? Then how is it that you’ve lived over a century? How is it you haven’t changed at all since I last saw you?”
“Neither have you. Except for the hair.” He lifted one long, blonde curl. “I like it, by the way.”
She ignored the compliment. “Yes, but we’ve already established that I’m a dragon shifter—and I still want to know how you know that—and that you are not. So what are you? How can sixty years pass and you not have so much as one gray hair to show for it?”
For long seconds, Matthew didn’t answer. Just stared at her as lies and half-truths whipped through his mind at an alarming rate. He knew she’d sniff out a lie, but he’d never told the truth about this to anyone before.
Usually, the idea of talking about what had happened to him repulsed him, made him furious at his plight all over again. But not with Caitlyn. Maybe because she wasn’t human, maybe because he had a feeling she would accept the creature he’d been turned into better than anyone else he’d ever met. Whatever it was, he suddenly found himself trying to find the words to explain what he’d never really understood himself.
“I was an explorer, a historian, an anthropologist before that area of study even really had a name. While most of my colleagues were interested in cultures far away from North America, I was fascinated by the workings of the Native American tribes here, particularly the Manso and Apache tribes of New Mexico.
“I graduated from Harvard in 1857 with a history degree and left the East Coast immediately to come West. Even then, that’s where the majority of Native American tribes were and I wanted to gain access to one, to live among the people so that I could study who they were and why they did what they did.”
He glanced at Caitlyn, to see how she was reacting to his words, but she wasn’t showing any response. Just watching him with careful, interested eyes. It was the perfect response, one that let him continue with his story whereas too many questions or too much concern would have shut him down immediately.
“It was harder than I thought it would be. By then, the tribes were wary of all white men, but especially white men in fancy suits riding fancier horses. I didn’t understand, then, what they were so afraid of. Didn’t understand just how much they had already lost and how much more they still could.
“Still, the Manso took me in, and though some members of the tribe were suspicious of me at first, time and proximity eventually bled it out of them. Even the tribe medicine man warmed up to me eventually. Not a lot, but enough to allow me to participate in various ceremonies. Eventually, I was even allowed to marry into the tribe. I fell in love with Nizhoni, the medicine man’s daughter. We were married during the third spring I spent with the Manso and by the time I’d been with them six years, she had born me a son and we had another child on the way.
“I was happy, convinced I was living the life I was always meant to. Sure, there were problems, especially with Manifest Destiny and the encroaching civilizations that were taking more and more of the West. Not to mention the Civil War. But we were pretty safe in our little section of New Mexico—no one wanted the desert—so I tried to ignore things outside the tribe as long as possible. Politics didn’t interest me, wars, land grabs. I just wanted to be left alone to study and write.”
He shook his head, felt the old guilt take another bite out of him. “Of course, that was a problem. I didn’t realize it at the time—anthropology was a new science, after all—but in becoming a member of the tribe, I’d lost my objectivity. My ability to study it without letting my own opinions and experiences color my findings.
“After six years with the tribe, I published my findings, including glowing reports of the peace and happiness of the Manso people. I talked about the wealth of their culture, the way they could draw everything they needed from the New Mexico land. And in doing so, I brought disaster down upon the tribe.”
Talking about it was all it took to bring it all back, including the moment when he realized what he’d done, how he had been responsible for the death and destruction of the only people he had ever care
d about. “A lot of Americans didn’t like reading about the prosperity of a Native American tribe when much of the country was starving, miserable, ripped apart by a Civil War that had already gone on too long. My writings rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, until a bunch of them decided they wanted what the Manso had. That they were entitled to it and could take it by force, if they had to.”
He didn’t need to close his eyes to clearly see what had happened next, even after all the years that had passed. “I was gone when they attacked. Out, wandering the land and imagining the interest and excitement my series of articles was generating back East. Thinking about the letter I’d gotten from my editor earlier that week, demanding more articles. More information.” He shook his head. “I was so vain. Eventually, I wandered back toward the village—our village—and that’s when I heard the screams.
“I started to run, fearing that we were being attacked by another tribe. That was how great my arrogance was, my belief that I had done the right thing with my articles. I got back just as the attack ended and found my worst nightmare. They’d slaughtered everyone. The chief, the warriors, my pregnant wife and child. Everyone.”
He spoke faster now, wanting to finish, to get the last of the story finished. His head was pounding, his stomach was queasy and his heart was beating much too fast. He looked down, once again focused on the cracks on the desert floor. If he closed his eyes now, it would play like a movie in his head. The blood, the suffering, the useless death. It had been over one hundred and fifty years and he could still smell the stench.
“I went through the village, checked every single body for signs of life. I was crazed, desperate to find one person who had survived. But there was none. Everyone was gone . . . until I got to the medicine man. My father-in-law. He was dying, I could tell, but still I tried to save him. He told me not to, told me death had already marked him. Then he asked about his daughter, about my wife. Our child.
“I told him the truth, that they had been murdered. He blamed me, told me I was the one who had brought this down on his people’s heads. Told me he had foreseen this at the very beginning, had known all along that my arrogance, my weakness would kill his people.
“Then he cursed me. As it was the Manso’s fate to leave this earth forever, so would it be my fate to stay here forever. I would be a monument to the tribe, to my wife and unborn child. A living vessel of the knowledge and customs of the Manso people. I had stolen their lives, he said, so he would steal my death.
“And he did. At first I didn’t believe him. Even after everything I had seen him do through the years, I figured he was just talking crazy. That he was delirious with pain and sadness and betrayal. But then one year passed, then another and another. At first I was too tied up in my own grief to realize what was happening, that I wasn’t getting any older.
“But eventually the truth set in and I’ve been wandering the earth for the last one hundred and fifty years trying to make amends. For the first seventy-five, I was too broken to do much but endure my punishment and try to make sacrifices to atone for my role in the deaths of my adopted tribe. But it never got better, never got easier. Just harder with every day, week, month that passed until I was sure that I would go insane. Finally, I decided I had to try to break the curse. Even if it meant burning in hell for my sins, I had to find a way to die. I’ve been searching ever since.”
“For what?”
“Clues on how to break out of whatever he’d done to me. Ancient spells, long-forgotten magic. Something, anything, that would set me free.”
“Have you found anything?”
“I’ve found a lot of things, including proof that dragon shifters exist and live in the desert caves, but nothing that’s strong enough to lift the curse. It’s why I left you alone all those years ago. I didn’t know what you were, didn’t know that you weren’t completely human. I couldn’t face trying to explain this to you, couldn’t handle the idea of you turning away from me too.”
He turned to face Caitlyn. “I’m so sorry that I left you alone, that I hurt you. But I’d never counted on you, never expected to feel that kind of connection to another person. When I felt it for you, even knowing what I did about myself, I ran. It was easier than dealing with the maelstrom of guilt and resentment, fear and hatred, that was inside of me.”
“And now? Why did you come back after all this time?” Her voice was calm when she spoke, but he could see the pain in her eyes. God, he really was a bastard for dredging all this up again, for not keeping his hands off her when he knew he should have.
But he couldn’t lie to her. Not again. “I came back because I was sure I was close, sure that I would find the ancient stones out here, in this desert, that would eventually let me die.”
Chapter Seven
Caitlyn’s heart stuttered at the thought of Matthew no longer existing on the face of the earth. In the sixty years that had passed since she had last seen him, when she’d thought of him she had resigned herself to the fact that he was dead. But now that she’d seen him again, now that she knew he was immortal, the idea of him deliberately killing himself was anathema to her.
And yet, hadn’t he suffered enough? Hadn’t he lived through more than any human being should ever have to?
“Is that still what you want?” she asked. “Even now? Do you still want to die?”
“I don’t want to live forever. Not like this. It’s not natural, not right. I was born in 1834. I’ve outlived everyone I’ve ever known. I don’t even exist in the world we live in today. Not on paper anyway.”
He hadn’t outlived her, and she found it telling that he hadn’t mentioned that. Hadn’t even thought about it. She had fallen in love with him sixty years ago, had carried a torch for him all the years in between no matter what she’d told herself, and now she was right back to where she’d been all those years ago. Caring about a man who couldn’t care about her.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t help him, couldn’t give him what he most desired, even if it killed her.
Her dragon screeched in outrage, its fire racing along every nerve ending she had. She winced, but didn’t try to fight her beast’s pain. It was easier, she’d learned, to just accept it. When the temper tantrum was over, she thought of her own magic, of Shawn’s and Dylan’s. They were the best magic wielders in the clan and when they combined their talents, it was usually enough to do whatever needed done, no matter how complicated.
Would it be enough to break a centuries-old curse from a Native American medicine man?
She didn’t know, but she had a feeling she was about to find out. Reaching down, she scooped up his T-shirt and jeans and threw them at him. “Here, get dressed. We need to—”
She paused, midsentence, as everything inside of her froze. Stalking toward him, she stared at his biceps in shock, her mind sorting through and discarding a million different scenarios with each step that she took. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.
“Get what?” he asked defensively.
“That!” she said, pointing to the double ringed tattoo that twined around his upper arm. “It wasn’t there when I knew you before.”
He looked down at it, started to shrug. “I don’t know. It just showed up around the time we were together. I figure it’s part and parcel of the whole curse thing.” But then his eyes narrowed, and he poked at it intricate black tattoos. “Except it looks different now. And it hurts a little bit.”
“Different how?” she demanded from between clenched teeth. If that tattoo was what she thought it was . . .
“Bigger, more defined. And I’m sure this second ring is new. It wasn’t there yesterday.”
And there it was, the other shoe dropping directly on her. It was amazing she hadn’t been flattened by this point. Backing away from him, she tried to focus on something, anything other than the gorgeous tattoo that was the onl
y thing she could see.
Because it wasn’t a tattoo. It was an almost complete mating bond, one that would tie Matthew and her together forever.
Her stomach revolted and she barely made it to the nearby scrub brushes before she got sick. How had this happened, she asked herself, horrified. How could she have let it happen? She’d spent her whole life waiting for someone she could mate with and now that she’d found him . . . now that she’d found him, the only way to save him was to break the magic that bound him to this earth. The only way to set him free was to kill him and, in doing so, sentence herself to death or, at minimum, six agonizing centuries of loneliness and pain.
“I still don’t know what we’re doing here.” Matthew paused at the entrance to one of the caves, deep in the desert. It was so dark out now that he had trouble seeing, but Caitlyn’s dragon eyes obviously weren’t having the same problems he was. “You were just sick—we need to get you home, get you some ginger ale or whatever it is dragons take for upset stomachs.”
She shot him a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed. “We drink ginger ale just like anyone else. And I’m fine.”
“You didn’t look fine.” Her rubbed a soothing hand down her spine. “You need to take it easy.”
She hissed at him, all amusement gone, but he didn’t back down. He’d failed her sixty years ago, had run from her and his own feelings. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. “I’m serious, Caitlyn. Climbing through caves in the middle of the night doesn’t seem like a good idea for anyone.”
“I’m dragon. Maneuvering through these caves is normal for me. Now, come on. I don’t want to miss them.”
“Miss who?”
She didn’t tell him, just kept walking. The passageway narrowed and he was forced to trail behind her, which wouldn’t have been bad—considering the view—except that he knew she wasn’t feeling well. Not just because she threw up, but because there was something inside of him that was tied to her. Something that told him exactly how shaky and uncomfortable she was feeling.