by Lolita Lopez
Something in the genetic tests caught her eye. Years earlier, she had run her own blood panel to see if she carried the marker for sickle-cell anemia. That results had been inconclusive and strange. At the time, she had assumed she had accidentally contaminated her sample but now she wondered—
A floorboard creaked. At first, she thought it was simply the house shifting because of the storm raging outside. But then she felt a whisper of an exhaled breath on the back of her neck. Her hair was still damp from her shower so the air cooled her skin. Her stomach clenched with fright. She whirled around and found herself staring at a black T-shirt stretched across a muscled abdomen.
Tilting her head back, she gazed up and up until finally she took in the giant who was skulking behind her. Holy shit. He had to be seven and a half feet tall—and his face! Oh, God. One half was puckered with vicious-looking scars, the skin bubbled in places and cragged in others. He wore his dark hair long and had an unkempt beard that made him look like one of those terrifying barbarians from ancient times.
A mean hand, the knuckles thick and scarred, crunched her shoulder. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
Gasping, she clawed at his hand but it was no use. “Let go of me!”
“Who are you? What are you doing in this house, human?” He bent down and inhaled deeply. “Not a human. What are you?” His gray eyes were now flecked with orange streaks. His grip tightened on her shoulders. “Where is Nico? What have you done with him?”
“I didn’t—”
“No lies.” He shook her, and his brute strength caused her to flop around like a damned rag doll.
Refusing to be hurt by this beast, she attacked the most vulnerable and easy-to-reach part of him. Without any warning, she slammed her knee right into his crotch. His pained roar threatened to burst her eardrums, but she dropped him to the ground nonetheless. The whole room shook when he fell to his knees.
Scrambling away from him, she ran for the door but he leapt through the air and landed between her and the exit. Panicked, she glanced around the lab for a weapon. On a nearby shelf, she spotted neatly labeled bottles of various chemicals. She raced over and grabbed the bottle of methanol. He jumped toward her, but she was quicker and snatched up one of the strikers for lighting the Bunsen burners. Holding the striker with her teeth, she hurriedly uncapped the methanol and splashed some toward him. He jumped back but the liquid splattered his shirt. She held up the striker in a menacing way. “One fucking step closer and I swear I’ll do it.”
A glint of panic flashed in oddly hued eyes. “You’ll take us both down, girl.”
“Probably,” she said, “but I swear you’ll get the worst of it.”
His burned cheek twitched, and she almost felt bad for threatening him with the same weapon that had disfigured him. Almost.
“Now, you stay right there, and you don’t follow me.”
“You can’t run from me forever, girl. I’ll find you—and I’ll kill you if you’ve hurt Nico.”
“I didn’t hurt him!”
“The house is destroyed. Broken doors? Shattered windows? I know the signs of an attack when I see one.” He snarled like a hungry wolf. “I’ll tear you to pieces for hurting my friend.”
She couldn’t reason with this giant. He was on edge and wild-eyed with bloodlust. Gulping, she backed away from the menacing man and out of the lab. Barefoot, she raced for the stairs. Where was Nico? Had something happened to him while she was getting dressed? Had that terrible drug caused him to pass out or worse?
A snap of wings made her stomach drop. She spun around just in time to see a ghastly orange dragon shoving his way through the door, taking half the wall with him, and bursting into the hallway. While Nico had been large in his shifted form, this one was a behemoth that made her entire body go slack with terror. The bottle of methanol and the striker dropped from her hands. She could feel the cold splash of the liquid around her bare feet. In the back of her mind, she knew the exposure was dangerous but the sight of that fearsome beast barreling toward her overrode her common sense.
Shrieking with fright, she spun toward the stairs and rushed toward them. On the third step down, her slick sole hit another puddle of the methanol that was pouring down the staircase like a waterfall. She felt a jolt of panic as she lost her balance—and then she was falling. Her head slammed hard into the edge of a step. The crack of bone rattled her skull, and pain unlike any she had ever known exploded in her head. Her shoulder slammed into the next step and there was another sickening crunch.
And then there was darkness.
Chapter Five
When he left Eris to answer that phone call from Ignatius, Nico had meandered through the house while he talked. He had told their leader about Eris, of course. His friend had taken the news surprisingly well. For a man who had fought fang and talon to keep the members of his Brotherhood unattached and single to ensure they never loved anything more than their duty, Ignatius was becoming awfully soft when it came to all these new mates. Nico had long suspected that Ignatius had known this time would come. He did have an uncanny ability to always anticipate where he would be needed.
Well.
Except for the night Sixtus had been so cruelly murdered.
Staring out a window while he spoke with Ignatius, he had spotted a backpack near the apple tree. As soon as the call was over, he had gone out to retrieve Eris’s bag. It was soaked through with rain. He had unzipped the pouches and searched them, finding cash, maps, burner cell phones, and a pistol, which made him frown. He didn’t like guns. He hadn’t ever really seen the use of them but, then, he had wings and could spit acid.
Clutching her dripping backpack, he had turned his attention to the apples. There had been twelve on the tree last night. Now there were eleven and a small, flowering bud of a new one forming. He touched the remaining apples, his fingertips gliding over the golden skins glittering with raindrops. Somehow they seemed a little less fantastic this morning. Eris had eaten one last night, and nothing about her had changed.
Was it all a lie? Were the myths really just myths? He had a hard time believing they were simple stories. After all, he was a dragon. He shouldn’t even exist, but he did. Yet Eris seemed no different this morning than she had last night.
Mulling the possibilities, Nico had enjoyed the warm spring rain and walked out to inspect the wards. They had done their job last night, allowing only dragon blood to stray across them, but he wanted to make sure they were still standing strong and vigilant.
He spotted both of Eris’s sneakers while he was making the round of his fence. The sight of the electric-blue and bright yellow shoes covered in mud and grass made his chest tighten with regret. He could have killed his mate. The shame of it made him ache. She had only been trying to find her best friend, her family, and he had nearly killed her for eating a stupid fucking apple that hadn’t had a single discernible effect on her.
Heading back to the house, he ran his fingers through his wet hair. He would have to strip in the mudroom and get out of his soaked jeans and T-shirt. Thoughts of his own impending nakedness made him think of Eris naked. That lush body of hers was going to be his undoing. Though the need was less strong during the daylight hours, he still craved her. Come sunset, she would be lucky to get down into the lair with him before he had her stripped and riding his cock.
A bloodcurdling scream nearly stopped his heart.
Eris!
Racing across the patio and into the house, he rushed into the entrance hall and discovered Reynard in full dragon form crouched on the milky white marble there. When his friend’s grand orange wings folded against his back, Nico spotted the fast-growing pool of blood puddled around Reynard’s feet.
Nico’s heart stuttered in his chest. He dropped the backpack and crossed the space with three quick strides. Numbness spread through his chest and into his face as he tried to take in the scene before him. Facedown and with her neck at an unnatural angle, Eris lay immobile in her own blood
. A nasty gash had opened up the side of her head. Her left shoulder and collarbone sat too high and were obviously shattered and dislocated.
Collapsing next to his mate, Nico finally found the strength to reach for her. As gently as possible, he rolled her onto her back. She wasn’t breathing, and her eyes were frozen wide open in horror. He noticed the grayish-blue irises now had flecks of gold in them. His seed had already started to make its mark on her, activating whatever diluted dragon blood there was within her.
The same blood that now soaked his jeans and ran out of her lifeless body like a river. It hadn’t been enough to save her life though. A fall like this would never kill a full-blooded dragon but she was too human.
Reynard had shifted back. Naked and panting, he placed his trembling hands on his thighs. Fury like nothing Nico had ever experienced raged through him. He carefully placed his dead mate on the cold marble and glared at Reynard. “What did you do?”
Wracked with guilt, Reynard’s voice wavered. “I came onto the property over the front gate, and you didn’t answer the door. The house was destroyed. I called for you. I searched for you.”
“I didn’t hear you. I couldn’t feel you. My senses are all messed up because of the overdose of lust root you hit me with,” he ground out angrily. He caressed Eris’s still-warm skin. “Where did you find her?”
“She was in your lab. She was poking around in your research. I asked her who she was and she didn’t answer me.” Guilt and shame darkened his face. “I didn’t know she was one of us.” He gestured to her beautiful eyes. “She smelled wrong.”
“Wrong?” Nico repeated angrily. “What do you mean wrong?”
“Not human and not dragon,” Reynard said. “Different. Wrong. She attacked me, kicked me in the balls, and when I tried to stop her, she grabbed a bottle of methanol and threatened to burn me.”
He could just imagine his little hellcat taking on a goddamned giant like Reynard with nothing but her quick wits and bravery. Glancing at the staircase, he spotted the shiny trail of quickly evaporating methanol. It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks.
“Who was she, Nico?” Reynard asked the question as if he feared the answer.
“She was my mate.” His voice broke as he spoke the words.
“No.” Reynard spoke so softly and with such self-hatred. “No!”
Seething and overwhelmed by the urge to hurt his friend, Nico flung himself at Reynard. The slightly younger dragon didn’t even fight him. Nico shoved him through a wall and leapt on top of him. With fists hard as steel, he pounded Reynard’s face. The taunting images of everything he might have had with his sweet Eris flashed before him—love, happiness, marriage, and children.
Wrapping his hands around Reynard’s thick neck, he squeezed the life right out of him. He couldn’t kill the barbarian, not without one of the Knight’s swords, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to fucking try. He crushed Reynard’s windpipe and delighted in the gasping gurgle that followed. The life started to fade in his friend’s eyes and his bloodlust went with it. Still, he squeezed a little tighter in the hopes it would lessen the ache of his breaking heart.
“Nico?”
Startled by the soft, dreamlike voice of Eris, Nico damn near jumped out of his skin. He wrenched his hands away from Reynard’s neck and glanced over his shoulder. His jaw dropped as he rose on shaky legs. Behind him, Reynard shoved to his feet and took a tentative step forward. Neither man spoke as they tried to reconcile the sight before them.
It wasn’t possible. She had died in the fall. She’d been dead.
Sitting up, Eris gingerly touched her battered head. The shoulder and collarbone that had been dislocated now looked perfectly aligned. The wound in her head wasn’t totally healed yet but it was quickly knitting itself together.
“What the fuck is that?” Even a dragon as old as Reynard could be rattled, it seemed. He pointed to the same strange fluid dripping from her head wound. Iridescent and golden, it slid down her face and dripped onto the bloody pool surrounding her. The shimmery drops sat atop her blood like oil slicks on water.
Crouching down in front of his bewildered mate, Nico lovingly clasped her face in his hands and studied her. He could feel her strong heartbeat in his fingertips. When he inhaled her scent, he understood what Reynard meant when he said she smelled wrong. She didn’t smell like a human or a dragon. She smelled like…sunshine. He didn’t know how else to explain it. The scent was bright, clean—and eternal.
Gathering one of the shiny golden drops from her temple, Nico rubbed the substance between his fingertips. The realization of what this precious fluid was hit him like a punch to the gut. It couldn’t be—and yet it was.
Holding her frightened gaze, he finally answered Reynard’s bluntly asked question. “It is ichor. It is the blood of the gods.”
*
This is not happening.
Jittery from a wicked adrenaline rush, Eris reached up to touch her bloody head. Her fingertips slipped in the wetness there. She gathered some and lowered her hand to examine the fluid that oozed from the cut. Her heart stuttered in her chest at the sight of the golden liquid coating her skin.
No. No. No. This isn’t possible.
But it was happening. It was real.
She tried to make sense of the evidence right in front of her. Her panicked gaze flitted to the staircase she had tumbled down so violently. She remembered the blinding pain, the crack of bone, and the snap in her neck. But then there was nothing. There was only darkness.
Death. I was dead.
The soft echo of a weak heartbeat filled her ears. She could remember the exact moment she had miraculously come back to life. Her heart had wobbled painfully in her chest and then had started to race. Blood had pumped through her veins, carrying with it a bright and white-hot burst of heat.
She gingerly touched her head again. The spot where she had previously encountered pain and blood was now smooth and healed but slightly tender and hot. Accelerated healing like this was impossible and yet the evidence was incontrovertible.
“Eris,” Nico whispered. He knelt in front of her, the dark red blood that had seeped from her body—my human body—soaked into his jeans. Gently cupping her face, he peered into her eyes. “Baby?”
Overwhelmed and unable to speak, she wrapped her arms around his neck and burrowed into his familiar heat. Powerful arms embraced her, and he lifted her with ease. Confused and terrified, she wished his strength would flow through her body.
“Sh,” he murmured lovingly. She clutched at his bronzed and tattooed shoulders, and he nuzzled her cheek. “I’ve got you. You’re all right now.”
Am I? She honestly didn’t think so. Something strange and unnatural was happening to her, and it wasn’t anything like what Nico had described last night about mating with a dragon. No, this was because of that stupid, stupid apple she had recklessly eaten.
Dazed and shaky, she let Nico take her into the master suite. For the second time that morning, she found herself in his arms in the shower, but this time there was little pleasure. While she enjoyed the sensation of his hands gliding over her skin, she didn’t feel the earlier rush of arousal. Resting her cheek to his chest, she clung to him and only broke away when he gently pushed her back so he could dry her off with a towel and help her into some clothing Ivy had left behind.
Sometime later, she found herself bundled in a cashmere blanket and stowed in a comfortable wingback chair that Reynard had carried into the lab. Eris watched the two dragons move from workstation to workstation as they pored over her test results. Nico’s machines whirred loudly, and his numerous computers crunched complicated and very complex data. He had taken four vials of blood from her arm and now seemed hell-bent on finding answers that she feared couldn’t be found.
Touching her arm, she thought of the strange golden fluid that now flowed through her veins. Not blood, she reminded herself. Ichor.
“Are you all right?” Nico stood next to her chair while h
e waited for his printer to spit out new results. “How do you feel?”
“I feel like I’m never, ever eating fruit again. Like never,” she added emphatically. “One stupid apple and look at me! I’m pulling a Lazarus and bleeding gold!”
Nico abandoned his paperwork and knelt down in front of her. Gently cupping her face, he stared into her eyes and calmed her with his commanding presence. “Whatever this is? Whatever the consequences of eating that apple? We’ll figure it out together.” He leaned forward and kissed her tenderly. “You aren’t alone, Eris. I’m right here with you.”
She couldn’t believe this man she had known for less than a day was making such promises to her and meaning every single word of it. He wasn’t going anywhere. She could see that he was in this with her for the long haul. Wherever this strange new path led, he would be right beside her.
Knowing that he needed all the information possible to help her, she said, “I feel different, Nico.”
“Tell me. Describe what you feel.”
“Alive? Vibrant? Aware.” She gulped and glanced around the room. “I can feel the energy in this room. I can feel your heartbeat and his and the electricity zipping through the cords. I can smell things I’ve never noticed before, smells so faint they’re undetectable to a human nose. I feel like I’ve woken up from a haze and now everything is bright and shiny and new.”
“Some of that is the dragon blood in you that Nico’s lovemaking activated,” Reynard interjected matter-of-factly, his face hidden behind a microscope. “When I was researching Cora’s bloodline, I talked to her about the change that occurred after she fully mated with Stig. She described something similar to what you’re experiencing.” He lifted his head and stared at them. “Nico and I forget that what we’ve known since birth isn’t what others have experienced.”
“He’s right.” Nico dragged his thumb along her lower lip. “Some of what you’re feeling is to be expected.”