by Amelia Jade
But they ignored him, racing along, the intersection he’d dreaded coming closer. Torran waited and asked again, but there was no response. A terrible weight came over him as he sped ahead to the intersection.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though he wasn’t talking to the bikers.
His maw opened and billowing clouds of green gas came forth, filling the intersection seconds before the bikers entered it. He felt tears running down his scaly face as he continued to thicken the gas, melting everything inside the rough circle he’d created.
Six humans and their bikes entered the cloud. Nothing came out.
Torran settled to the ground nearby and dismissed the cloud. He walked over to the intersection, inspecting it. The last thing he wanted was to miss one of the phones, making everything he’d just done pointless. As suspected however, there was nothing remaining. Not even the asphalt had survived his attack, melted away into slag.
That done, he walked back down the side road into the ditch and promptly threw up.
He did not want to do this. At all. Fighting other dragons was one thing, or the Outsiders if and when it came to that. Torran would fight the evil beings and he would kill as many as was necessary to protect his mate, her friends, and the rest of humanity. But this? This hadn’t been a fight. It had been a slaughter, and he was not okay with that.
Especially now that he had to go back to Lilly and tell her that he’d just killed the man who had sired her child. Whether she had wanted him to be involved in her life or not, Torran had just removed any hope of the child ever knowing its father. He would never forgive himself for that.
Just like he now suspected Lilly would never forgive him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lilly
Angrily she shoved the front door open.
After Torran had taken off to God knew where after God knew who, Lilly had been left by herself in the field. In the cold. After a few minutes’ time she stormed back to the house in the shadows of dusk, thoroughly unhappy with everything.
“Hello?” she growled.
“Lilly?” Palin emerged from the side room where they were all still gathered around one of the three fireplaces in the house. “Is everything okay? Where’s Torran?’
“Torran went chasing after someone who was spying on us in the field,” she said, speaking loudly and angrily. “He was determined not to let them get away, since they’d seen him in his—” she clamped her mouth shut. “Nothing.”
But Palin knew something was up. She tried to move around him but he blocked her path and shuffled her into the empty kitchen. Then he called for Sandy to join him. Lilly hoped her friend would help get her free, but she took one look at Palin and nodded solemnly.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, looking back and forth between the couple, her friend and her friend’s boyfriend, neither of whom seemed ready to let her go.
“Sandy knows everything,” Palin said softly. “About me...and about Torran.”
She blinked. That was not what she’d expected from the confrontation. It seemed like he was trying to let her know he knew. “So…are you, um, like Torran as well?” she stumbled over the words, trying to choose the right ones that wouldn’t explicitly give it away if she were wrong.
“Yes,” Palin said quietly.
“Right. Well, what color is his?”
Palin answered immediately, and with a solid confidence she couldn’t doubt. “Green. Emerald, really. I am more viridian.”
Well, that just about sealed it.
“Damien was in the field,” she said softly. “I think he said something about filming Torran while he was in his other form. I think that’s why he went after him. To destroy any evidence of what he was.”
Palin looked away unhappily.
“Are you not going to go help him?” she asked, astonished. “Your secret could get out!”
The big man ran a hand over his smooth head, but declined to answer.
“That means no.”
“Torran won’t need his help, is what I think he’s getting at,” Sandy said, intervening for the first time. “He can handle it on his own.”
“Handle it? What the hell does that mean? What are you not telling me?”
Sandy looked at Palin purposefully, and the big man huffed unhappily and walked away. Then she rested one hand on Lilly’s shoulder and pushed her into a small side room. An office it looked like. Then she sat and indicated Lilly should too. “They have to protect their secret, Lil. No matter what. Could you imagine what governments would do with that sort of information? The things they would go to, to try and recreate dragons of their own? That they could control?”
Lilly nodded, because she understood. Sandy was making it clear, because she understood too.
“Wait a minute.” Her head snapped upright, blue-green eyes glaring. “You knew? All this time that you knew and you didn’t tell me? Did you not think this might have been a good thing to tell me when I first started indicating something was going on between Torran and me?”
“Oh come on,” Sandy groaned. “You know I couldn’t do that!”
“Why the hell not? You’re my best friend, Dee!”
“Lilly, use your head. What were we just talking about? Keeping their secret! Torran had to be the one to tell you, because only he knew if you were his mate or not.”
Right. His mate. Torran had used that word too.
“That sounds rather permanent, that word. Mate.”
“It is,” Sandy said calmly. “Dragons mate once, and they mate for life.”
“So you’re saying Torran and I…”
“If you choose to, yes. If you don’t, then he’ll let you go, and live forever alone.”
“No pressure,” she muttered. “They really do take keeping this secret safe stuff seriously.”
“Yes. They’ve learned that it must be stopped at all costs.”
Lilly’s stomach dropped. “At all costs? What does that mean? What are you trying to tell me, Dee?”
Someone entered the room behind them. She turned to see Torran, his face ashen and sickly.
“She’s trying to tell you I’m a murderer.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lilly
Lilly didn’t speak.
“She shouldn’t be the one to tell you, though,” he continued, trying to hold himself together. “I should. Since I’m the one who did it.”
“I’ll leave you two,” Sandy said awkwardly, rising.
Lilly grasped her arm, wishing her friend could stay, but knowing it would be best. This had to be handled between the two of them, not anyone else.
“What did you do?” she asked in the silence that followed.
To her astonishment Torran fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said, repeating the line over and over again.
Lilly went toward him but he moved away from her. “You don’t want to touch me.”
She stopped, holding her distance, fairly certain that she knew what had happened.
“I tried, Lilly. I tried to stop them. I tried to do whatever I could to keep them from taking more video, but they just shot at me and started filming me with their phones. I had to make a decision, because otherwise they were going to split up. I…I had to protect us. It wasn’t just about me, you have to understand that. It was about the others. If I were the only one, I would have let them go and dealt with the consequences. But I couldn’t risk the rest of my kind. We’re few enough in numbers already and…” He trailed off.
Lilly sat back into her chair. “Damien is dead, then?”
Torran nodded, visibly pulling himself together. He stood, unwilling to sit in the only other chair, since it was so close to her. She wished he didn’t feel so uncomfortable near her, but she understood his sentiment. He looked horrible, and she couldn’t imagine the guilt racking him just now.
It was odd, since she didn’t feel the same way. For the most part she wasn’t even that sad. Part o
f her missed Damien, sure, but it was more like wistful regret about the man he’d used to be. Certainly not the man he’d become. She didn’t miss that at all. In fact she felt safer now that she knew her child would be able to be born in peace.
One question did remained though. “You didn’t…um. You know. Like...”
“Like what?”
“Eat them?” she asked, wincing at the indelicateness of her question.
Torran’s head snapped up, disgust on his face. “What? No. Never. I’m not a cannibal. I used my dragon powers.”
She nodded. “What about the, uh, bodies, then?”
“No bodies. Just a big round spot eaten out of the road.”
Lilly jerked backward. “I thought you said you didn’t eat them?”
“Not that sort of eaten. I’m an emerald dragon, and our power is a highly corrosive form of gas. I…I used that. You don’t need to know more, Lilly. Please, I’m already disgusted with myself. You don’t need to subject yourself to that.”
She agreed and let it drop, focusing instead on Torran. He seemed…damaged. Whatever he’d gone through out there had left him completely unlike the confident, strong-willed person she’d known.
“Torran,” she said softly.
He jerked at hearing his name, refusing to meet her gaze.
“I thought dragons were mighty killers, fearsome in battle. I honestly didn’t think that this would bother you so much.”
This time he did look at her, and she was stunned by the self-loathing she saw.
“There’s a difference between being a warrior and killing another in battle. I have done that before, and I have no doubt I will do it again, probably sooner than I wish.” He shook his head. “It is how I kill that matters. What happened out there?” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction he’d gone. “That wasn’t battle, Lilly. It was slaughter. Humans stood no chance against me and my power. They could not fight back at all. That is hard to stomach.”
He looked away again.
“You didn’t have a choice,” she said softly. “You had to protect the secret of your race. You gave them chances to stop. You said so yourself. They made that choice. You didn’t make it for them.”
“It was a waste of life. I am sickened by what I’ve done. I hate myself for it.” He swallowed, the sound so audible she could hear it. “I know you do too.”
Lilly bit her lip. Did she hate him?
“I’m sad,” she said at last. “And disappointed.”
Torran’s head drooped.
“I’m disappointed that it came to this,” she continued, her voice growing stronger as she found the words she wanted to speak, and the confidence that what she felt was okay to feel, that it didn’t make her a lesser person. “I’m disappointed that Damien felt the need to expose you. I’m disappointed,” her voice grew hard, “that they tried to harm you.”
By now he was openly staring at her, his jaw unclamped, lips parted.
“I’m disappointed that they couldn’t see the good in you. And most of all I’m disappointed that they tried to kill me and my child. That is what I’m disappointed about. I’m sad that they forced you into action. I’m sad that you didn’t have a choice. I’m sad that you’re blaming yourself for their own stupidity.”
“Lilly…”
She shook her head, eyes blazing. “I’m sad that the man I once knew died. But he didn’t die at your hands,” she snarled, holding a finger up to silence Torran’s protests. “He died months ago when he decided that he controlled me, that he was superior to me, and that I was no longer a person to him. That is when he died.” She fixed her stare on Torran and advanced on him. “Those people you killed were scum. They deserved it.”
Torran didn’t speak in the silence that followed.
“That is how I feel.”
Then she kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Torran
He melted into the kiss without hesitation, thankful that his mate had somehow decided that he had done what needed to be done.
It wouldn’t ease his conscience, and Torran would regret his actions that day for the rest of his life, but knowing that he still had his mate at the end of it all would make it much easier to stomach. He would sleep better with her at his side, he knew that.
“Do you know what the strange thing is?” she asked, breaking apart.
Torran looked at her in alarm as tears started to trickle down her cheeks. “What’s that?” he asked, doing his best to brush them aside as they started to fall.
“I feel like this will help provide me with some closure.”
He frowned, not understanding.
“I told you, I’ve been essentially mourning the loss of Damien since he changed. When he became the man that you knew. Or when he decided to stop pretending he was someone else, however you want to think of it. Since that time I’ve been sad over the death of who he was, but a part of me maintained hope that maybe one day he’d realize what he’d become and go back to normal.” She laughed, a sad sound. “Now that he’s actually dead however, I think I can actually, truly move on.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this, Lilly.” He pulled her close, allowing her to cry into his shirt for a bit.
His mate was strong, however, and soon she was wiping the last tears away and pecking him on the cheek as a sort of thanks for being there for her. As if he would be anywhere else.
“Me too. That gang of his, they were all assholes,” she said. “I had no proof, but I heard them talking. They did all sorts of terrible things to other people. The world will be better off without them. I always hated them for sucking Damien into their world. Now at least they won’t harm anyone else.” She rubbed his cheek. “I know that’s not enough to put you completely at ease, but hopefully you can find some small bit of solace in knowing you prevented a lot of people from coming to harm from them.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t do much. But that’s not the same as saying it does nothing,” he told her. “Every bit counts.” He looked down. “I’m just sorry your child won’t have someone to call Dad.”
Lilly stepped closer, nuzzling up to him. When he refused to look her in the eye she reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing his head around with surprising strength. “Look at me,” she commanded.
He did, hating himself for it the entire time.
“My child may not have their biological father, no. That is regretful, but there was no way I was going to introduce them or allow Damien to be a part of their life.” Her expression softened. “But you called me your mate.”
“You are,” he whispered. “Only you.”
“I guess that means I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“I hope not.”
She smiled. “Well then, you’d better do a damn good job at preparing.”
“Preparing for what?” He was confused.
“Being a daddy.”
Torran’s knees wobbled and he searched frantically for a chair as the world spun around him. “What did you just say?”
Lilly squatted in front of him, both hands on his knees. “Torran, you are the most kind, gentle, and caring soul I think I’ve ever met. Yet you’re strong, full of knowledge and wisdom, and on occasion you’re even funny too.”
He stuck his tongue out at her. They both knew it was a little more frequent than that. A little.
“Plus you’re also a freaking dragon, and I can’t think of a better protector for my little boy or girl. We have a lot to sort out and get used to, but I’ve grown to like having you around, and I think you would make an excellent father figure to my child.” She paused. “And if you play your cards right, maybe you can have that big family you wanted.”
He was too wrapped up in emotion from her saying that she would allow him to help raise her child to respond to the rest of it all.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said softly.
Lilly looked at him sharply. “Excuse me?”
“You’re s
uch a better person than I am. Better than anyone I know.”
“Well duh. I’m perfect.” She grinned to show she was joking. “Don’t you dare sell yourself short. One of the things I like most about you is your confidence. Not the arrogance you pretend, but the confidence to do what’s necessary, and your inner strength. I know you’re taught not to accept that you’re a good person, but I can see it, and I like it. So hold on to that.”
“I can do that.”
“You’d better. It’s what won me over.”
Pulling her close, Torran reveled in her presence as she crushed herself against him. They both needed a hug right then, and he made no move to end it prematurely. In the coming days and weeks they would need each other. Both of them had a lot of adjusting to do to their newfound lives and impending parenthood.
Parenthood.
Holy shit, he was going to be a dad! Torran couldn’t believe it.
“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her and stroking her curly blonde hair.
“Just remember your promise.”
“Which one in particular?” he asked, holding her close.
“After the baby is born you’re taking me flying!”
For the first time since he’d come back Torran laughed. A moment later Lilly joined him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Torran
“You’d think it was summer out there,” he complained, wiping sweat from his brow as he walked into the master suite he and Lilly shared.
“Working up a sweat?”
He froze, stopped in his tracks by the purr emanating from the bed itself. Turning his head slowly, he took in the sight that lay before him.
Lilly was sprawled out on top of the covers, wearing a lacy…a lacy…well, it was a lacy thing that hid parts of her, and absolutely didn’t hide other parts of her. The name for it was suddenly unimportant. It was a dark shade of purple, and it drew him in like a fish to a lure.
“I hope you aren’t completely out of energy,” she teased, biting down on the tip of one finger.
His heart, which had just began to calm, revved back into overdrive, pumping all the blood straight between his legs. “For you, never,” he growled. “Though you may wish to let me shower first.”