by Ava Benton
This wasn’t something I could share with Alan or Dallas. Perhaps in the old days, back home, before so many centuries had passed without our speaking to, or seeing each other.
Simply put, Alan and Dallas just didn’t understand me, didn’t come close to sharing the sort of bond I had cultivated with the others, the ones I share the cave with.
I never thought I’d miss Cash or Fence or any of them, but I did just now. I missed our shorthand, the way we could understand what the others were thinking without having to explain too much. I hadn’t realized how exhausting it could be to make myself understood until just then.
The scenery around us was idyllic, and I couldn’t help but let my stress melt away as I swam out until the sand was nothing more than a line in the distance.
There were a series of cliffs off to my left, with rocks along the base on which waves crashed. The word “tranquil” didn’t begin to describe it.
Except for one thing.
I wished I could shake the feeling that something was wrong.
“We should cliff dive!” Alan called out from where he treaded water, yards behind me.
I took another look, then shook my head. “Unless you want to paint the rocks,” I called back.
There were far too many. A person would have to take a running leap starting a great distance from the edge.
I was in no such mood and wasn’t sure I could shift in time to save my reckless neck.
“She is!” He pointed up, shielding his eyes from the late-morning sun.
I looked up, too, and knew the moment my eyes locked on her that she was the reason I was out here, that I had chosen that spot and swam out that far because of her.
From that distance, I could hardly make out any of the details of her face or body. She was little more than a silhouette standing against the deep, blue sky. Still, I knew she was the reason I was where I was. Nobody needed to tell me.
Just as I needed no announcement that something was terribly wrong.
“She can’t jump,” I muttered when Dallas reached me. “She’ll never make it without hitting the rocks.”
“Maybe she’s sightseeing,” he suggested, sounding doubtful.
“Maybe.” I didn’t believe it. I also didn’t take my eyes from her.
A gust of wind blew over her and carried the scent of her hair, skin, and clothes with it.
I breathed her in, my eyes closing without my intending them to. She was a rare perfume, one I had never smelled before and would never be able to get out of my head.
“Does she see us?” Alan asked, waving his arms over his head as if to warn her.
“I don’t think so. She’s not looking down.”
Instead, she stared off at the horizon, the picture of regret. It was in the slope of her shoulders, the position of her head. Perhaps my imagination played me false, I tried to reason, but the dragon knew better. He was alert, all but holding his breath as we watched to see what the girl on the cliff would do. The tension was nearly unbearable.
Until it broke.
Until she threw herself off the cliff.
Chapter 2
Savannah
It’s all over. It’ll be better this way. Faster.
I had already been dying inside for as long as I could remember. From that terrible day in Papa’s study, when I overheard him discussing plans for the rest of my life without the benefit of my presence.
The look on his face when I had made my presence known. He wasn’t even sorry to see me cry. Annoyed, more like. Annoyed that I was bothering him with my emotions. How dare I? And how dare I labor under the illusion that my life was my own?
There was still one thing I could do. One step I could take. One statement I could make. A final statement. The punctuation at the end of the short, pathetic sentence that was my life.
I parked the Jeep as close to the cliff as I dared. I could’ve driven it over the edge, but I didn’t want there to be any questions as to how it happened. No way to pretend it was an accident, that I had made a wrong turn or something.
I wondered if it would hurt very much.
A balmy breeze blew through my hair as I stepped out of the car, carrying the scent of the sea with it. I would never smell it again. I would never feel the water rising around me and the sand under my feet as I went in for a swim. I would never go fishing again or write again or do anything, ever.
Is it worth it? I asked myself this question as I stood there, pebbles and bits of earth scattering as I approached the edge.
A few small, loose stones tumbled over. I didn’t dare watch their descent. I’d know how they felt soon enough.
Was it worth jumping? The idea of escaping a lifetime of imprisonment? I looked out over the wide expanse of sea—but instead of seeing its sparkling waves, I saw him. My fiancé. Soon to be my husband.
I didn’t have to twist my imagination too hard to picture the sort of life he’d inflict upon me. One of loneliness, but I would prefer the loneliness because it would mean being without him.
I thought back on all the awkward dinners with him and my father, seated across from each other with absolutely nothing to say. Well, I had nothing to say—he, on the other hand, never stopped talking about things I supposed were meant to impress me. Or Papa. Probably Papa, come to think of it. This business deal, that meeting he attended, the big such-and-such he had entertained on his family yacht. And Papa would be impressed and would shoot looks at me, telling me I should act equally as impressed or even more so. And I would pretend, since it was what he wanted and I knew better than to refuse him.
But there were parts of Antonio’s business which he would never discuss in polite company, because it wasn’t the sort of thing one spoke about in between the soup and main course. Rumors I had picked up on the salt breeze. Corruption. Bribes. Threats. Intimidation. Physical violence. And worse. There was blood on his manicured hands, on the cuffs of his tailored shirts.
And his women. That was worst of all.
I shuddered at the idea of being just another one of them. Something he could use until he grew tired of me. What then? I’d play the part of the smiling, empty-headed accessory. The broodmare. The concubine living a life of quiet desperation who would probably turn to pills or alcohol or a combination of the two in order to ease the pain. And there would be pain.
The dark, empty look he sometimes got in his eyes when I denied him a kiss or a fondle—only when my father wasn’t around, only when we were supposed to be taking time to get to know each other—promised many nights of pain once there was nothing standing in the way of him taking what would legally be his.
How was I supposed to let that happen?
You’ll go to Hell.
All of my mother’s teachings came back to me in a rush as I stood at the edge of the cliff. It was her voice I heard, reminding me that suicides went straight below and suffered an eternity of hellfire and torture. Images from my childhood, from the religious books I used to flip through as a little girl teased at the edges of my memory. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe that any so-called merciful God would punish me for eternity when all I was doing was sparing myself a certain lifetime of misery. Didn’t my anguish matter? It had to balance out. It just had to.
I was wasting time. Stalling.
It wasn’t as if I wanted to jump. I didn’t want to die. I had to, though. That was the rub. I had to end it. It was the only way. The fear of what waited for me on the other side was what held me back, kept me from flinging myself over the edge.
Tears spilled over and rolled down my cheeks, soon to be just a tiny part of the salty water below. Maybe I would see Mama waiting for me. She would understand, if nobody else. She would speak up for me in front of whoever it was who judged these things. If there was any such person. Maybe there was only nothingness. Just blank, empty space. Even that would be preferable to life as Antonio’s sex slave.
One more look at the world I was about to lea
ve. The tears flowed fast and hot as pain spread through my chest. I didn’t want to go, but there was no other way out. What had I ever done to deserve this? I’d never fall in love or have babies. I’d never see my words published. Nothing I had dreamed of would come to pass. Because I was born in the wrong place, to the wrong man.
A gust of wind picked up my hair and blew it out behind me like a flag, wrapping the thin, cotton dress around my legs.
I shivered in spite of its warmth.
It was a case of now or never. I had to do it before somebody found me—with my luck, somebody would. And I’d never get another chance.
“I hope you can forgive me for this,” I whispered to nobody in particular.
God, I guessed, even though I had stopped believing years earlier. Around the time of Mama’s funeral. Even so, the old fears and superstitions were there. They had only been sleeping. Waiting for a moment of crisis.
One… two… three.
Goodbye.
I closed my eyes and jumped.
And I immediately wished I hadn’t.
No! No! No! I take it back!
But there was no taking it back. I was falling and crashing, and the snap of bones rang in my ears as pain, real pain as sharp and hot as fire, consumed my consciousness before everything went black.
Chapter 3
Miles
“Shit!”
She was falling, almost in slow motion. Or perhaps it was the way time seemed to slow down, dragging out like warm taffy.
I had no time to think. I could only react.
The calls of Dallas and Alan were only a whisper in the back of my mind as I shifted and allowed my dragon to burst free.
We took to the air, wings beating furiously as the body fell.
Faster, faster, catch her!
I elongated my body as much as possible and focused on centering myself beneath her.
The crash of her impact with my back knocked me off-balance, but I righted myself and sailed over the surface of the water, triumphant and frantic.
Warm blood spread over my scales, a warning. She was gravely injured.
Alan and Dallas were already ashore when I landed, allowing them to ease her off me before I shifted back to human form. They’d spread a towel out on the sand, and it was already stained dark red.
The girl’s leg was coated in blood which oozed from a compound fracture—her thigh bone stuck out, a stark, white splinter.
“We have to get her to safety.” Alan glared up at me. “You took quite the chance there.”
I slide into my cargo shorts, removing my belt as a second thought. “Does she need a tourniquet?”
“How the hell would we know?” Dallas snapped.
I thought it couldn’t hurt, so I looped the belt around her upper thigh, above the wound. When I pulled tight, the flow of blood appeared to lessen.
The dragon was pleased. As was I.
“Somebody could’ve seen you here on the beach, when you landed,” Alan insisted.
“Good thing no one did, then.” I looked around, trying to put a plan in place. “Do either of you know of a hospital nearby?”
“We’ve been here as long as you have,” Dallas pointed out, standing, hands on his hips, looking roughly as hopeless as I felt.
He was right, naturally. This was Mary’s resort. Not an area I was familiar with. Certainly not one Dallas and Alan would be familiar with. They’d been captives until we’d rescued them.
We were each as lost as the other.
There was no time to waste in attempting to locate a hospital.
“If we lift her in the towel and lower her into the bed of the truck, she might be able to make it through a ride back to the resort. Mightn’t she? We have to try.” It was the best I could come up with.
She had lost so much blood, and her entire right side was a wreck. Her arm was clearly broken in several places and beginning to swell, dark purple bruises standing out against her tawny skin. I didn’t dare touch her abdomen or ribs for fear of what I’d find there.
“What could they do for her?” Alan asked.
“There’s bound to be medical equipment there. They treated Klaus for his concussion, didn’t they? And any of you who required treatment, too. Phillip was a surgeon in the Army,” I added, flailing around for a plan. “We have to. We can’t leave her here to die.”
“She wanted to die,” Alan replied, his voice quiet.
“You don’t know that. I’ll take her on my own, if the two of you won’t.”
“Of course, we will.” Dallas gathered the towel by her feet, while I gathered it around her head and the two of us carried her up the beach to the truck.
I winced when we lowered her in the bed, sure she would wake up screaming, but she was unaware. I touched bloodstained fingers to the side of the neck to feel for a pulse. It was there, but it was weak.
“Hurry!” I barked as Dallas slid behind the wheel, with Alan throwing himself into the passenger seat before we peeled out.
I wanted to stabilize her, hold her close, spare her every last bit of pain I could as we jostled over the unpaved roads. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We’ll get you there soon,” I murmured, peeling dark, blood-soaked hair back from her forehead.
She was a beauty.
She was dying.
The brakes squealed once we pulled through the large, circular drive and came to a stop in front of the entrance.
I leaped over the side of the truck and opened the gate, using the towel to pull the girl to me while Alan ran inside for help.
They brought out a gurney, and two of Mary’s guys lifted the body from the truck while I explained to Phillip what had happened.
“I think she hit something on the way down,” I barked. “I don’t think hitting me would’ve caused that much damage. And she was already unconscious prior to that—she never cried out when she made contact.”
“This is all important to know.”
We burst through the double doors leading into what I could only describe as a makeshift hospital room, complete with overhead lights which the weathered, brusque Army surgeon lowered and flipped on before examining her.
In such harsh light, she looked worse than ever. Her skin was so fine and delicate, every bruise showed up like an ugly, garish stain.
“She’s bleeding inside. Heavily.” Phillip’s craggy brow creased even further. “It would’ve been better to get her to a hospital, but there probably isn’t enough time.”
“Can you help her, though? Does she need more than what you can provide?”
He shook his head. “I’ll do the best I can. We have to open her up.”
“Can you use our blood? There was plenty taken from the lab,” I pointed out.
“Yes, yes, but I have to find the source of the bleeding, first,” he said, pushing me out of his operating theater. “Get out of here, so I can do my work. She’s in good hands.”
In good hands. He’d just said she should’ve gone to a hospital, but wanted me to believe she’d be all right with him.
I sank into a chair in the hall and held my head in my hands, elbows on my knees.
In good hands. That had to be enough.
The dragon wasn’t so easily put-off, of course, and he raged inside me. His rage was born of frustration and a feeling of uselessness. We had done everything we could for her, but it didn’t feel like nearly enough.
After all the energy and excitement of the last half-hour, I felt strangely hollow inside once there was nothing left to do. Her blood was all over my clothing, driving her essence into my subconscious.
The dragon breathed her in, let her sink into him. Into both of us. I worried that I’d never be able to let her go after such an intimate connection forged itself between us. I had no more control over it than I did over the tides, unfortunately. Such things weren’t within my power.
Feet shuffled around me, though it was a long time before I raised my head to see who’d gathered.
Leslie a
nd Ainsley stood against the wall, heads inclined toward each other as their breathless murmurs poured forth.
Dallas and Alan.
They seemed more concerned about me than they were the girl. I wanted to tell them to stop looking at me as they were, that I wasn’t the one to worry about. I’d be just fine. It was her, bleeding inside. She was the one in true danger.
Martina and Gate walked down the hall, hand-in-hand as always.
“Any word?” she asked, looking at me with something dangerously akin to pity in her eyes.
I was the first to admit how much my cousin and I and the rest of the clan owed her, but that didn’t give her permission to pity me.
Resentment bubbled dangerously close to the surface.
Alan spoke for me, shaking his head before replying. “It didn’t look good, however.”
“Why don’t you wait a minute before declaring the girl’s life over?” I snapped.
His eyes flew open. “Ach, I meant no disrespect. I’m only commenting on the good doctor’s assessment.”
“We don’t want to see anything happen to the poor lass,” Dallas added in an attempt to smooth things over.
“And she jumped? This was purposeful?” Gate looked around, waiting for an answer.
Dallas glanced my way before answering. “Aye. It looked purposeful.”
“We don’t know that.” Why was I jumping to her defense? And why did it seem as though they all expected me to?
“Lad, none of us are trying to sully the girl’s character,” Alan argued. “It’s none of our business why she acted as she did. But let’s face facts, just the same. She didn’t slip and fall. She didn’t even scream, as one would if they were caught unawares. She stood there long enough for us to notice her.”
“As though she were weighing her options,” Dallas added.
A sick certainty revealed itself. Yes, she’d done it on purpose. She had tried to kill herself. There had to be a reason why she would go to such extreme measures. What if she were gravely ill and wanted to avoid the pain and indignity that would soon become her life? What had I done by prolonging things? Was our blood strong enough to heal her, if that were the case?