Draven was torturing his hair with his hands again. She reached over and did it for him, running a hand through the thick, coarse locks as he closed his eyes and enjoyed it.
“You have a way of healing,” he said quietly. “I noticed it with Ran last night. You know, you really just might save us.”
Her hand froze. “What do you mean save you?” she asked.
Draven went still. She could feel the tension radiating off his huge body. Feel the same tension from Ran.
Growing up in foster homes or other settings, always alone, she’d become an expert on reading moods. Sensing anger. When you were alone, you had to always have your guard up. She supposed it was why she never got involved. She’d been alone for so long and things had been just fine.
Now these men had made her want more but wouldn’t tell her things she needed to know about their life together. If they wanted to have one.
“We need to start being honest,” she said, folding her arms and sitting back in her chair. Her long, curly hair fell over her shoulder in wild waves, and she pushed it back. “We can’t keep going like this, just having sex and pretending everything is fine in the morning. Something isn’t fine, and I can sense it. And I hate it,” she said.
Ran stood up abruptly. “Want to go flying?”
Her heart pounded. “Flying?”
“Dragon scales can be invisible. We could take you flying.”
She looked at Draven, who pressed his lips in a hard line. When he said nothing, she turned to Ran.
“Where would we go?”
His eyes were soft, wistful. “Wherever you want. When you find out everything, you might leave us. I want to give you everything we can before that.”
Her throat tightened even as her heart leapt at the thought of flying on dragon wings.
Did they really want to give her everything, or were they just trying to sweeten the deal even more before telling her the truth of what was to happen?
Quill, the blue dragon, had talked about the mating ceremony and what would happen after.
“Are you really ready for it all to end?” Ran asked, tilting his head so his golden hair fell away from his face. His gorgeous features fairly sparkled in the sunlight, green eyes glowing like emeralds, perfect lips pursed. Like something from a painting, but he was real.
He’d made love to her last night. He and Draven, working together.
Perhaps more than anything, she was falling in love with how much they cared for each other. She didn’t think she’d ever had a friendship like that.
She wanted one.
“That settles it,” Ran said. “We can fly. And then we can show you our treasure.”
“Ran,” Draven said. “You can’t…”
“My dragon would never hurt her. I could feel it last night…”
Draven slammed a fist down on the table. “Dammit, Ran. When will you get I’m not worried about you hurting someone? I’m worried about you hurting yourself. When will you get that I don’t want to protect anyone from you? I want to protect you! I always have.”
Silence fell over the room. Whatever was happening, it felt far over her head.
“Ran’s dragon is sick,” Draven said in a low voice, his big shoulders hunching in on themselves like he was sealing himself in a cage. “Ran’s dragon is making him sick.”
Ran’s eyes widened in anger. “Don’t do this, Dray.”
Draven’s angry eyes studied Melissa’s face. “Is that what you want? To fly around on dragon’s wings and be ignorant of the truth? After what I learned about you last night, I can’t do it. Dammit, Ran, are you going to tell her or am I?”
“What do you mean?” Ran said, green eyes deepening in color as they narrowed. His lean body was tensed in anticipation. “What do you mean what you learned?”
“Ah, that’s right. You can’t read my mind,” Draven said to Ran. “So you don’t know what I found last night when you were sleeping off the day.”
Ran’s mouth tightened and a muscle twitched in his jaw as he jerked his head lightly, making his hair flip. “Then tell me. Mind lock with me now and just tell me.”
“Can I?” Draven gave her a wry glare. “Can I tell him what I saw last night?”
Melissa’s eyes widened as panic filled her. That had been private. Her memories. They rushed through her again, and Ran cried out, leaning forward over his knees.
She looked at him and then fled from the room, unable to watch as they took something from her she hadn’t meant to give. She slammed the door behind her as she tossed herself on her bed.
All she’d wanted was to escape, to forget about all of it and live in a fantasy.
And now the dragons were making everything real again, dredging up her secrets and…
She heard them arguing in low, angry voices.
She held her breath and focused on the covers beneath her until the arguing stopped.
“Can we come in?” a low voice said—Ran standing at her door, looking in.
“Fine,” she said. “But I can’t believe you did that.” She sent Draven a glance. “Every time, you lay me bare. Every time, you’re still concealed.”
“Why do you care if I know?” Ran asked, coming forward to take her in a hard hug. His steely arms, so unexpectedly strong, wrapped around her. “I need to know. If I’m going to be your mate, I need to know your pain. Being with us won’t be about erasing any of that. You’ll still be Melissa, with your needs and fears and doubts. But you won’t be alone in the dark anymore. When you run, we’ll catch up. When you’re hurt, we’ll be your support.”
She nodded into his shoulder. Already, it felt like she’d known him forever. Not that she knew what his life had been like, not that she knew what his past was down to the details, but she just felt after the past few days, she knew his heart. She could feel it radiating from him.
She felt weak in the knees and Ran sat down with her while Draven watched protectively from overhead.
“Would it make you feel better if I showed you mine?” Ran asked in a low voice. “My time being alone, before I had Draven?”
She nodded. Everything about these men seemed perfect. She was tired of being the broken one.
“I’ll have to invade your mind,” he said. “And not just listening. I’ll have to come in. Is that okay?”
She nodded.
He took her hand. It looked small in his. Sometimes, because he was smaller than Draven, she forgot how large Ran really was. His tanned fingers brushed lightly over her wrist, and then he pushed his hair behind his ear and closed his eyes.
She could hear Draven let out his breath in a huff.
Her mind suddenly felt light and odd. And then images came, like a projector had been placed in the back of her head and was broadcasting in front of her eyelids. Flickering. Real.
As if an old video were playing, she could see Ran. He was alone and little, sitting in the middle of a large room. If she squinted, she could see it was a cave. The walls were rock. From up above, a few lone beams of light shone down on the dirt floor.
Ran was in the middle, hands around his knees, rocking. As he muttered, energy emanated from around him.
Then time started to pass. She saw Ran changing positions, flickering like it was stop motion. Occasionally, she saw dark figures, there and then gone. And she saw Ran was growing.
Intermittently, she saw a flash of something grim and dark, something huge that would be in the pictures for only a few frames.
And then Ran on the ground, on his face, golden hair splayed.
He was still a boy. Then he was getting taller. She saw different areas of the cave. Saw Ran drawing on the walls. Saw the cave empty, like Ran had been removed. Saw people enter and exit, looking at him, poking him, marking things down.
The soul-haunting loneliness of the situation permeated everything, and she felt tears fill her eyes for what he’d been through.
She hadn’t been the only one to be totally alone.
But at le
ast she’d found him now.
And then she saw the pictures slow, flickering less and less, and saw a tall, dark-haired boy enter the room, a golden glow around him. Saw Ran look up at him through his hair, saw the two make eye contact.
For a moment, she swore she saw the image of two dragons flash around them. One in gleaming gold and one in burnished black.
She saw one reach down and pull the other up, saw them embrace and then look into each other’s eyes, and then saw them walk from the cave.
When she opened her eyes, as the memory was gone, she saw Ran studying her quietly while Draven had his head in his hands. It was odd to see the big man looking so tortured.
“Dammit, that day. That day I made a huge mistake,” he said, standing to leave the room. “That day, I doomed all of us.”
“Dray,” Ran said.
“No,” he said. “No, I can’t stay here right now. I have all this power and I can’t do anything.”
“We’ve found her,” Ran said. “We found a mate. It’ll be okay now.”
Draven gave him a hard look, one that gave Melissa chills even though it wasn’t meant for her. “That may not fix this and you know it.”
“Dray, it’s time for you to accept some things don’t last forever. But I have never regretted making you my partner.”
Melissa blinked. Draven had said Ran was meant to choose the blue dragon. She didn’t know why, or why it was clearly causing Draven so much agony.
Draven stopped at the door and put his hand on the wooden frame. When he tightened his hand, she heard the wood crack, and it made her jump.
“Fine,” Draven said. “We’ll take her in the clouds. We’ll show her the treasure. We’ll take our last chance. But I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for being so stupid.”
“You never had to forgive me,” Ran said. “You just had to love me.”
“You know I always have,” was his low reply.
Then Draven was out of sight and Ran stood and pulled her with him.
“Did you get enough to eat?” he asked.
She nodded hesitantly.
“Good, because you’re going to need your strength if you’re going to fly with dragons.”
* * *
As they walked out of the apartment, Melissa looked between the two men. There was a curious tension between them, something that had presumably been building for a long time.
She knew what she was seeing in front of her was the grown version of those boys that had met in the cave.
Why had Ran been in the cave?
Years of isolation will do that to you, Draven had said the other day.
It stopped her in her tracks for a moment, making her hesitate in following them to the elevator.
But there was no turning back now. They’d been on an unstoppable collision course ever since the night she’d met them by plunging impetuously into their job. All that was left was to go the end of the line and see where it took them.
They rode the elevator to the top of the building, just a couple floors up, and then walked out on a wide cement roof that overlooked the city. The wind blew blustery and cool, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Draven slipped his jacket off and onto her shoulders. It hung on her, far too huge, and she turned to him with wide eyes.
“Don’t you need it?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m going to be in my dragon form.”
Her heart sped up. She’d been waiting to see it.
“Ran, you’ll need to help her. She won’t be able to see it until we get out of the city.”
Ran nodded and put an arm around her as the wind picked up, gusting even harder.
The next second, Draven was gone, and Melissa shuddered deeply at the impression she was at the foot of something enormous and powerful. Something she couldn’t see, but could sense as the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stood on end.
Ran kept his arm around her and guided her slowly forward, though she could feel herself resisting.
“It’s okay,” he said. “There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of when it comes to Dray’s dragon.” He muttered something under his breath that sounded like unlike mine.
Melissa reached in front of her and gasped when she felt something so smooth, so cool, it was like touching solid water or liquid metal. Her hands felt along it, touching what had to be scales. But it was a more wonderful feeling than she’d ever imagined.
“Dragon,” she said quietly.
There was no sound, just a change in the air, like Draven had been moving his head. She looked in front of her at the lightly shimmering air and wondered how huge he was. She could sense something invisible there, almost like it was something perfectly camouflaged with the air in front of her.
It made it hard to breathe.
“So do I get on top of him?” she asked.
She heard a loud snort that seemed to thunder through her, shaking the air around them, and took a startled step back. As usual, though, Ran was there to support her and keep her moving forward.
Ran let out a laugh. “No. Not on him.”
She gave him a wary look. They were two opposite forces—Ran always pushing everything forward and Draven always pushing back with everything he had.
And her in the middle, just wondering how she could fit into all of this and somehow make their lives better.
Because the last few days had been better than the rest of her life. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to live this way forever.
“What do I do, then?” she asked.
“Put your hands up,” Ran said. “Straight up.”
“Wait,” she said, looking at him. “What about you?”
His expression turned thoughtful, somewhat sad. “I’ll be following right behind. In my dragon form.” He folded his arms, looking pensive. “Dray’s right. It’s time to show you everything.”
She felt her heart beat one painfully hard thump in her chest. She put a hand to it, not knowing why.
Then Ran reached for her and put both her hands above her head.
“Wait, I’m not—”
“Dray, she’s ready.”
Before she could protest, a huge force wrapped her waist, sweeping her off her feet and into the air. She nearly shrieked as she saw the ground below her and looked down as she flailed to see her entire torso had disappeared and she was hanging suspended in something hard and cold that felt suspiciously like giant talons.
She looked back down and saw Ran standing on the top of the building, looking out.
She blinked and he was gone.
Then she heard a swooshing in the air and could feel he was behind them. Something huge, maybe even bigger than Draven.
A part of her had always wondered if perhaps he was weaker than Draven and that’s why Draven seemed overprotective and worried.
But the presence behind her sent chills down her spine. Something ominous. Something dangerous. Nothing like the calm she’d felt with Quill or the safety she’d felt from Draven.
No, what she felt from Ran seemed like pure, utter destruction.
But she forced herself to take a deep breath and look around her, enjoying the sheer magic of the moment. She was flying, something she’d always dreamed of as a kid. The ground looked tiny below, the clouds were getting closer, and as they went up and up, she found herself engulfed in misty white.
She blinked and looked forward. It was hard to keep her eyes open, but it was exhilarating. Just as it had been the first night she’d been with them.
Exciting. Dangerous. Something few people in the world would ever get to experience. Her heart soared within her.
Then she heard a roar from behind her. Followed by a screech that sent chills through her body. The talons around her tightened, and they dipped in height.
After another few horrible noises, she realized the dragons were talking to one other. She reached for her ears, wondering why they didn’t just use their minds.
Maybe there were s
ome downsides to dragons after all. Then again, she’d known some men who made pretty annoying noises as well.
And they didn’t come with multiple orgasms and unbelievably beautiful bodies.
As they dropped, the clouds passed, and Melissa could see beautiful green farmland and rolling hills stretching out in front of them.
As the ground grew closer, she realized just how fast they were going. Suddenly, she felt like a plane about to land without wheels. She tucked into a ball but felt air swoosh around her in a puff as she felt the world stop moving. Then she was dropped unceremoniously to the ground, just a few inches away, and then she felt a massive thumping just ahead of her. The sound of something huge landing.
And then another thump. Something else on the ground. Something even bigger.
She crawled back on her hands, looking up in the direction of the noises, and she saw the air shimmer in front of her.
Then, in a matter of seconds, scale by shimmering scale, she saw a golden dragon appear. As tall as a house, long and lean and standing on all fours, long neck arched regally up to peer down at her. The whole thing looked dipped in the finest gold, gleaming in the light, and she caught her breath at it’s beauty.
The eyes in the intelligent, reptilian face were a blazing red, like the center of a fire.
The expression as it peered down at her was haughty and reserved. Very much Draven.
She let out a huge breath as she watched him and then felt a chill wave over her as she saw something else changing out of the corner of her eye.
She looked over, almost against something in her that was begging her not to, and saw a dark shape materializing against the sky.
Much taller than Draven. Much more terrifying. Its body was black but shone with the colors of an oil slick. Its feet had disproportionately large claws, and the twisted monster looked terrifying rather than regal. The reptilian eyes flashed at her, a noxious shade of green. And the sound it made as it breathed, slightly raspy, set her on edge.
The air seemed changed, almost as if breathing it made her slightly nauseated. And she almost felt like she could see something green leaking out from the scales.
The whole picture just looked evil.
A Tiger's Destiny (Tiger Protectors Book 3) Page 20