by Ophelia Bell
She turned back to Marcus, her skin tingling at the very idea of him being here so close. He made her feel so good on the surface. But underneath… she shoved that idea down. There was something missing, but that didn’t matter—there’d been something missing her entire life. It wasn’t his job to fill that one void, not when he managed to satisfy every other part of her.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him. She’d intended to kiss him chastely on the cheek, but at the last minute, decided to piss off her brothers more.
Gripping the sides of his face, she pressed her lips against Marcus’s and latched on. He didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her and devour her mouth like he’d been starving since they parted. Her daisies dropped to the ground, forgotten in her confusion of desire, the same questions popping up again. How could he make her feel so good if he wasn’t the One?
He pulled away first, chuckling and glancing over her shoulder.
“I think I pissed them off,” he murmured.
“Fuck them.”
She grabbed his hand and called blithely to her brothers, “Don’t wait up!”
Chapter Twelve
Ked
Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean
Present Day
Throughout the flight, Ked kept sending periodic breaths to Evie to maintain a mental connection with her. Thanks to his blood in the man he carried, he had a solid connection to Marcus, but Evie was still remote to him.
The pair of lovers came together in his mind as though meant to be there. Evie’s memories fell into line with Marcus’s so perfectly, Ked had no reason to doubt either of them, or their bond to each other.
Ked had only the smallest twinge of envy that Marcus had reached Evie first, for being there in that first moment she’d seen her true mate, though he knew it was his own blood running through Marcus’s veins that had drawn her to him.
Deep inside Marcus’s mind, Ked sensed the regret. In spite of his deep love for Evie, Marcus would give everything up to spare her the ordeal of the last five decades. Marcus was letting go, bit by bit, as they traveled. Ked sensed the man’s crumbling constitution with every mile, but not because he was dying. Because he was wishing more and more for death, as though he were ready for it, willing it to come to him, willing himself to let it take him because he didn’t deserve her love anymore—because he didn’t deserve life, either.
That wasn’t how their world worked, though. And whether Marcus knew it or not, he’d been a part of their world since before his birth. As a Blessed, he’d been marked in the womb to someday become a dragon’s mate. How he found that dragon was up to Fate to decide.
Now that Marcus had been irrevocably altered, thanks to the Ultiori ritual to create an Elite, there was only one dragon he could belong to. And Ked wasn’t about to let him give up. Not when he knew how tightly bonded Marcus and Evie were, all thanks to his blood.
He knew from the memories he witnessed that Marcus had, indeed, been no more than Blessed when he’d first met Evie, but somehow that had changed. Yet even before it had changed, Marcus’s blessing had drawn the pair of them together so swiftly only magic or Fate could be responsible.
Ked would bet his soul that Fate was the bigger player in the scenario. If Ked was Evie’s true mate, Fate would not have simply delivered her to his doorstep. She’d make him work for it. He and his siblings had been in seclusion for too long. It would take dire circumstances to draw them out. Making them dream about their mates was what had done the trick, finally.
Just any mate wouldn’t do, however. It had to be someone special. Evie’s brothers had been the first to be mated, by Ked’s sister, Belah. The North siblings were more than just eligible turul. They were essentially turul royalty, the descendants of Boreana, one of the four Winds. Just as Ked was the son of the Mother of Fire, he was meant to mate a descendant of another elemental goddess. The Goddess of the North Wind.
Marcus was unexpected, though not surprising. Fate enjoyed her tricks, that was certain. Ked was no longer fazed by them. Marcus may have belonged to the enemy before, but he’d belonged to Evie first, and he belonged to Ked now. Both of them did.
Saving the man might be a challenge, however, if his dark dreams were any indication. In spite of the passion and love in those first few dreams Ked witnessed, there was an undercurrent of dread, one that couldn’t have only revolved around the human war Marcus had once expected to fight in. Blessed humans had always been somewhat prescient. Marcus may have believed his dread related to that old human war, but likely, it was related to the war coming. The war humans would probably never even know existed.
The dread grew ever stronger as they flew, with Marcus’s ordeal unfolding more every moment, and Evie’s along with it.
Ked picked up his pace and let out a trumpeting roar, urging his brothers on faster. He needed to reach the monastery before Marcus sank too far into his despair to bring him back out.
Behind him, Evie’s brothers let out similar cries and rose up high in the air, swooping down to land on Aodh’s back. With the surge of power he and his brothers had put forth, the turul wouldn’t be able to keep up for long. If they wanted to be there when they all landed, they would need to ride rather than fly.
Day faded into night as the sun traversed a path over them, and they flew on, the starlit darkness ahead of Ked bright in comparison to the dark pit he sensed in the soul of the man he carried in his claws.
Chapter Thirteen
Marcus
Dragon Monastery, Sunda Islands
Present Day
Marcus didn’t have the strength to move, or even open his eyes, when the rush of wind stopped and his body was gently relinquished from his clawed cage onto a soft surface.
His ears worked, however. As did his nose and his sense of touch.
Evie’s lilac fragrance hit his nostrils as her soft fingertips brushed his cheek.
“We made it out,” she said. “You did this for me, didn’t you? I will always love you, Marcus Calais. I will never forget you.”
Her velvet lips pressed gently against his, and he wished for nothing more than to be able to kiss her back—to reach up and embrace her. But his arms didn’t work, and she was better off if he were dead, anyway, after what he’d put her through.
He just wished he had the power to ask the dragon why the hell he wasn’t dead.
A moment later, whatever he was lying on lifted up and he felt himself moving. A stretcher? After traveling for several minutes, he heard a door open and was awash in calming aromas and the whisper of bodies moving nearby. The air grew slightly warmer and he realized he’d been chilled from the flight, though he hadn’t been aware until now.
Strong hands lifted him and laid him down gently on a soft bed.
Then the voices spoke, too familiar and heartbreaking to his ears. Voices he wished he could respond to.
“Watch him. He’s the enemy and he isn’t to be left alone, do you understand? If he wakes up, get me or my brother or Ked. We need to speak to him.”
Evie’s brothers.
If Marcus had the strength now, he would try to reassure them that he’d never meant to harm her. But that would be useless, wouldn’t it? At least, coming from him. They would need to hear from their sister that she was the one who had begged Marcus to run away with her, and that she was the one who had begged Marcus to send her blood-soaked feather to her brothers to make them believe she was dead.
Right now, all he really wanted to do was beg them to do what he knew they desired most. To kill him.
If that were even possible.
They’d wanted to, fifty years ago. He didn’t blame them now. They probably should have. He was no good for Evie, but he hadn’t known at the time how bad he would wind up being for her. If he’d known then, he would have stepped off that proverbial train and thrown himself
onto the tracks beneath it.
Chapter Fourteen
Marcus
New York
Midsummer, 1965
The subtle glares Evie’s brothers kept giving Marcus didn’t bother him as much as the stories they told about their grandmother did.
They were on the subway, heading toward Evie and her brothers’ neighborhood from Central Park. By her brothers’ accounts, the woman he was about to meet had antler horns, spouted poison smoke, and could change your gender with a single look.
He kept one hand cupped casually over his crotch and his other hand linked with Evie’s because she seemed to take comfort in his contact, but stayed alert for her brothers to make a move. He’d never dated a girl with older brothers who were this hostile. Hell, he’d never dated a girl with brothers. Or for that matter, one with a grandmother who was apparently the devil incarnate.
Who was he kidding… he’d barely dated anyone. He had no clue what he was doing. All he knew was that he wasn’t letting go of this girl if his life depended on it. Brothers or no brothers. Devil or no devil. It had taken him several weeks after Evie’s first invitation to warm up to the idea of actually spending time in the same room with her family. Evie was so amazing, he worried he’d fuck it up somehow.
“You can relax,” Evie whispered. “She’ll love you. I promise.”
Marcus wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t exactly been an outcast growing up, but he hadn’t been popular, either. He gravitated toward athletic pursuits as much as academic, which hadn’t endeared him much to either group. He’d rarely had girlfriends, and had no practice interacting with families unless he counted his own distraught mother.
He’d started college on an athletic scholarship, but threw himself into his studies as hard as he trained with his football team. He’d succeeded, so far. Gotten his degree just before meeting Evie. But now he was likely on the verge of being drafted, and not by a pro team, like he’d hoped, but by the United States military.
He couldn’t tell Evie that, though. He’d only just found her. The Vietnam War was ever-present, a ticking time bomb that could change his life the second his number came up. He was amazed it hadn’t happened already.
He just hoped he had time, though time for what, he wasn’t sure. Time to fall even deeper in love with Evie? It had been a couple months since they’d met, and every day, he fell more in love with her. Her brothers still gave him dirty looks, but had reluctantly accepted that he wasn’t going anywhere. They still did love to give him hell, from time to time, which Marcus had begun to understand was their way of keeping him on his toes. The first time he ribbed them back, he’d earned himself a smile from the gruffer one—Iszak—and a laugh from Lukas. Evie had rolled her eyes and warned Marcus not to encourage them.
The train came to a stop and Evie stood. She tugged at his hand and smiled at him. Marcus had a hard time not letting his eyes drift over her bare shoulder and the top of her breast. She did love wearing clothes that seemed on the verge of falling off her at any moment. Her dark brown hair fell over her other breast and he resisted the urge to push it aside, just to make sure that glorious, creamy mound was unobscured.
“You’re such a perv,” she said, laughing at him. “We’re here. Come on.”
He took a deep breath and stood, letting her lead him out into the noisy heat of the subway platform.
“I’m not a perv,” he murmured in her ear. “I just prefer you naked.”
He relished the soft shiver of her body against him and the way she clung to him for a moment. He was sure she was trying to catch her breath. Even more sure when she reached up to grip his cheeks and pull him down into a luscious kiss.
“I prefer you naked, too,” she said, grinning up at him.
“I didn’t just hear that,” Iszak said, giving his sister a severe look before stepping out and leading the way up the steps to the street level.
Marcus’s pulse raced and he held tighter to Evie’s hand. The short walk to the row house Evie and her brothers shared with their grandmother seemed to take an eternity.
“You’re going to have a panic attack, if you keep that up. She really is a lovely woman,” Evie said.
“So, she raised you guys?” he asked, trying to make conversation. “Where are your parents?”
Lukas shared a quick, furtive glance with his brother, then shot a look over his shoulder at Evie.
“Sort of,” she said. “Our parents raised us, but they’re musicians. They left when we were old enough to not need them anymore, and Nanyo’s been there for us ever since.”
“Left… as in deserted you?” He tried not to sound accusatory, because deep down, he thought he understood.
“No. They both got jobs with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. It was their first love—the thing they wanted most together, after each other and having a family.”
“Ah, musicians,” he said, as though that should explain everything. The truth was, he envied their lifestyle. She and her brothers both seemed so free. He had the weirdest sense that they might just fly away at any moment, and he wanted more than anything to keep Evie on the ground with him.
Climbing the steps to their front door, he believed his heart might be a percussive genius the way it kept time with Evie’s steps and every single rhythm of her movements. Maybe he was meant for a life in music, too?
At least, he hoped he was meant for a life within her music.
The apartment they led him into was nothing like he expected. In spite of the exterior’s humble appearance, the interior was cluttered with wondrous things. Everywhere he turned, he spied new details. Old photographs lined the walls up the stairs, each one with a different, ornate frame. The photos the frames contained seemed to stretch back for centuries. In one particularly ancient one, he could swear he saw Evie’s face, but the tug of her hand urged him onward.
At the top of the stairs, he was blinded by the sunset through the high windows. When his sight returned he gazed around, awe-struck at the view they had from this seemingly mundane location. It took him another moment to register the eclectic décor inside. Every inch of wall was filled with something. Photographs, shelves of books, knicknacks, or memorabilia. Yet everything was neatly placed and belonged exactly where it was. It had its own rhythm that meshed perfectly with everything he knew and loved about Evie.
Evie led him through the entryway, into the living room. Though Marcus couldn’t really call it one room. The entire apartment was one big room, which seemed strange to him.
“Do you like it?” she asked. “We had to take out the walls to fit all our stuff in.”
“It’s amazing. It feels like a…” He couldn’t find the word at first, as he gazed around at the sofas and cushions scattered over the immense array of colorful rugs that covered the floor. More bookshelves rose up around an ornate fireplace and even flanked the huge mirror that hung above the mantel. He saw himself in it, with Evie behind him, curled up in the deep sofa like a little bird roosting. The silhouettes of Iszak and Lukas were visible for a second before disappearing down a hallway.
“What does it feel like?” she asked.
“A nest,” he said, walking over to sit beside her. “It feels like a nest. A very comfortable nest, too. How long have you lived here?” The collections he’d seen had to have taken decades to amass. Generations, really.
Evie darted her eyes out the window and plucked at his shirt cuff. “Not that long,” she said. “It is pretty cozy, isn’t it? I love it here. Especially now that you’re here.”
She threaded her fingers through his hand and squeezed. The mere sensation of her touch made him crave more of her. He looked at her, enthralled again at her beauty. He’d heard her sing so beautifully so many times. Watched her sweet mouth make the words of those songs. Then considered himself infinitely blessed to have that same mouth encompassing him so thoroughly as to make him sing he
r praises. He loved her mouth, and decided to risk a taste of it.
Just as his lips found hers and she leaned into him, her eyelids fluttering closed, he sensed a presence in the archway behind him. He pulled away and looked over his shoulder at the newcomer.
“Are you going to introduce us, or just sit there smooching?” The brittle, ancient voice sounded amused, and totally incongruous coming from the vital, healthy woman standing backlit in the arch.
She could have been Evie’s twin, if it weren’t for her forbidding posture and the butcher knife she held in one hand.
Evie stood up abruptly and turned. Marcus followed, resting his hand on her hip.
“Nanyo! This is Marcus. Please be nice, okay?” Her voice held the faintest hint of panic that had his instincts on edge until Evie leaned into him and squeezed his hip in return.
“Marcus, this is my grandmother. Sofia North.”
The other woman raised an eyebrow. “So, this is the man.” She ventured forward, the knife still raised parallel to the ground. Marcus eyeballed the blade, a little worried, but when he met the woman’s eyes, all he saw was devious mirth. She was fucking with him. That should have made him relax, but he couldn’t.
There was no way in hell this woman could be Evie’s grandmother, but he was pretty sure there was even less a chance he’d survive if he told her so.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. North. You are even more lovely than I imagined from Evie’s descriptions.”
The woman smiled and gave him a once-over. “You are about what I expected. My granddaughter always had good taste in men.”
Oddly, Marcus sensed the comment was a challenge. He wanted to be more than that to Evie. More than expected.
“How can I exceed your expectations, Mrs. North? I love your granddaughter. I don’t think anyone who simply ‘meets expectations’ is worthy of her.”
The woman in front of him smiled. “What do you think I am, an oracle? I’m merely an old woman who wants the best for her grandchildren. Now, come set the table. Dinner will be ready soon.”