by Ophelia Bell
Now it seemed violent and unforgiving, the white caps of the water churning over the rocks.
When Aurum landed, Evie slid off and Aurum immediately shifted and walked toward the rest of the group. Evie followed close behind, hoping she would be able to hear any hint from the Wind that would give her insight into the situation. Ked was inside now, she could tell that much, and he’d taken Marcus in with him. She knew they’d gone together to more quickly navigate the place, but their absence now in the belly of this dead beast made her anxious.
The air currents shifted around them suddenly. Only Evie and her brothers seemed to notice, all three of them turning their heads at the whispers of approach.
At the other end of the rooftop, a dark cloud coalesced and Ked appeared holding a large, limp body in his arms. Aurum and Evie both ran to him and helped him lay the body down.
The man’s long arms and legs flopped to the rooftop and his head lolled to the side, but he was breathing.
“This isn’t either of them,” Aurum said with certainty. “The ones from my dream both had dark hair. This man has white hair. But he needs help, still.” She turned and called over her shoulder. “Numa! Come help, please!”
Aurum’s sister rushed over and knelt on the other side of the unconscious man.
Before Evie could reach him, Ked disappeared in a cloud again. Marcus had yet to make an appearance, and she guessed he was still inside.
Instead, she went to kneel beside the unconscious man.
He wasn’t entirely unconscious. Numa touched his face gently, and he turned into her palm. His lips moved constantly, repeating words over and over. Sometimes they sounded like, “Mama, save me.” Other times they were just gibberish. With a breath from Numa’s lips, his ranting slowed and he slept.
Evie studied his white-haired features that seemed contradictory to his youthful appearance. Maybe youthful wasn’t the word, though. He wasn’t young, but he was by no means old, either. His body, in spite of appearing malnourished, was strong and fit. Yet he had long white hair and a white beard. He’d been inside for a very long time. And for fifty years she’d been in there with him, yet had never known him. She’d caught so many fleeting impressions of the residents on the days when her door had opened and she was led to the lab, but had no memory of his voice carried on the recycled air around the facility.
Before she could hear more from Numa’s soft questions, an uproar came from behind her.
She turned in time to see Ked struggling with a black-haired man who kept yelling, “Let me die!”
Beside her, Aurum let out an incoherent cry, and the air around Evie grew thick with her friend’s power.
Every cell in her body gravitated to Ked and Marcus. She went to Ked and he met her, pulling her into a tight embrace. Marcus appeared out of the stairwell a second later, walked toward them, and embraced them both. She didn’t understand this need to be with them until Ked grumbled, “She found him, I guess.”
They turned together and watched as Aurum approached the man who knelt a few yards away, raking his hands through his long, lank black hair.
He wasn’t just a man, though. Beneath his crouched form, Evie saw hooves rather than feet, though his upper half was entirely human in appearance. A very upset human.
Aurum knelt in front of him and he held completely still while the golden dragon spoke.
“Do you know me as I know you?” Aurum asked.
The man let his hands fall to his lap and bowed his head. Beneath him, his hooves transformed into human feet.
“You are she,” he said. He let out a sigh through quivering lips. “I don’t deserve you. Not as I am.”
“I still want you,” Aurum said. She reached out to touch him, hesitating with her long, delicate fingers close to the edge of his face. She tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear and let her palm rest on his cheek.
His closed eyes clenched tighter and he turned away from her touch.
When he opened his eyes, he stared hauntingly down over the edge of the rooftop, watching the churn of the river beneath. He let out a sigh that reached Evie’s ears a second too late. I’m going home, was what Evie heard on the Wind.
Then he stood and in only a few swift strides, he vaulted off the rooftop.
They ran to the edge in time to see his body splash into the violently churning water of the rapids far below.
Before Evie’s eyes, Aurum shifted and let out a roar. Her massive gold-scaled shape swooped out over the ravine and down toward the river, following it until she was no longer visible.
They all stood there, still as statues. Evie took comfort in the touch of her mates, but they couldn’t keep the tears from falling.
“He was damaged,” Ked said. “But he is hers, so we will do what we can to find him.”
“How could he survive that?” Evie asked. The man hadn’t even sprouted wings when he leaped off the roof. He’d just plummeted straight into the churning rapids of the river below.
“He’s a satyr,” Numa said in her melodic voice. “The last male of his kind. The nymphs won’t let him die, if he’s coming back to them.”
A moment later, a dripping wet Aurum landed and shifted in front of them. “I lost him, but I’m going to find him. He’s in the water now, so I’m going to the source. You’ll help me, won’t you, brother? I need you. I need all of you to help me find him.”
“That looked like a suicide jump to me,” Marcus said. “That was Calder. The mad goat, we always called him because all he talked about were his regrets and how he wished to die.”
“He’s a water elemental. A nymph,” Ked said. “It explains his state of mind the first time I met him, but Numa’s right—a leap into any body of water wouldn’t have killed him. We have more immediate concerns, though.” He pulled away and moved to crouch beside the other man who was still incoherent, but had calmed under Numa’s touch.
“We have to leave now,” Aurum said, frantic and pacing around them. “If we get to the source, we can find him, but we can’t waste time.”
“The source is protected.”
They all stared at the man who had spoken. The white-haired stranger lying between them opened his eyes and looked around for the first time. He struggled to a sitting position and bowed his head, taking a deep breath, his bare, broad shoulders shuddering. Tangles of white hair fell over his bearded face. His voice and posture were weary, reinforcing Evie’s sense that he was even older than the white hair suggested. But when his gaze landed on her, she saw no lines around his eyes and his skin was perfectly smooth and pale. It was then that she understood what he was.
The color of his features wasn’t due to age, though he was no doubt ancient. He was so pale he seemed nearly translucent, the way a plant might when deprived of sunlight. The lack of sunlight had made her own skin paler, but her hair and wings had darkened over the past five decades in captivity. Not so for one of his kind, as bound to the Earth as the ursa were.
He glanced at all of them before his gaze fixed on Aurum when he spoke.
“Solstice. That’s when we go. What day is it today?”
“November twentieth,” Evie said.
“My mother will help us find him,” he said. “You must take me home on Solstice.”
“And who, pray tell, is your mother?” Numa asked.
Evie answered for him, the Wind already whispering the surprising name in her ears.
“His name is Stonetree. His mother is the Ursa Queen, Maia Stonetree.”
His gaze shot to her again and he studied her, as though trying to understand how she knew. When a breeze blew past, whipping his hair around his head, he closed his eyes. The cock of his head and the imperceptible whisper Evie heard caused her eyes to widen in disbelief. He was most certainly an ursa male, and yet the wind was speaking to him just then. She glanced toward her brothers, who both star
ed back at her in shock.
Evie’s fascination with the exchange was interrupted by Ked rising again and pushing her away.
“This is Aurum’s ordeal, not yours. Be careful.”
“You don’t understand. He’s different. How can he hear the Wind the way I can? He’s an ursa, not a turul!”
“I am many things,” the man called to her and Evie pulled away from Ked’s tight grip.
“Please tell me,” she said.
“My mother knew when I was born that I was more than just an ursa child. She gifted me with all my secrets when I was a baby, before they took me away from her.” He stood to his full height then, towering broad shouldered and as tall as any of the dragons. Turning his back toward Evie, he tugged the waist of his pants down low enough to display an intricate, bear-shaped scar near the base of his spine that glimmered faintly with power. When he turned around again, he focused intently on Evie. “I was conceived inside a place like this, hundreds of years ago. My father was an ursa male—a Windchaser—who was mutated with the blood of a turul before he was given to my mother to service her through her estrous. After she escaped, my father was destroyed for the sake of the master’s cruel experiments. You carry a child like me inside you now, so you understand more than anyone what I am. Guard that child with your life when it is born, for the Master will hunt you down to reclaim it if he learns that it exists. I know that if he could have killed my mother when he stole me back, he would have, but she was far too powerful, and he dared not capture her as well, or she would have destroyed every last one of his hunters in her mother’s rage.”
Evie had certainly heard stories about the fearsome power a female ursa could wield in order to protect her cubs. Turul mothers were protective, but their mates shouldered as much or more of the responsibility of ensuring their offsprings’ well-being. Still, she reflexively placed her hands over her abdomen and was comforted by the solid presence of Marcus and Ked as they moved close to her sides.
“Why did he leave the two of you behind?” Ked asked warily.
Evie already knew the answer to that as well, but decided she’d let the man answer.
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.
“I think I do,” Marcus said. “You were the only male captives still alive. And it’s human males he needs for what he’s doing. Blessed humans, to be exact—like me. He never considered either of you a threat and since you weren’t any use, and he couldn’t kill you outright, so he let you go. He left you for dead though, didn’t he?”
Evie’s skin prickled with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the chilly air. She saw no scars or signs of injury on the man, but at Marcus’s suggestion, his eyes clouded and his expression grew pinched.
“He gave up on Calder a long time ago. I think he hoped for more from me, but when I refused again to share the secrets my mother bestowed on me, he tortured me.” His eyes fell on Evie again. “Nicholas is the name he gave me because I was his first successful attempt toward breeding a hybrid, so he considered me his own offspring, in a sense. My mother did not have the chance to give me my ursa name before I was taken from her. I need to go home so I can learn my true name. And if you take me, I can help find Calder.”
* * *
Evie watched with a pounding heart as the four dragons she’d come to love rose into the air. Nicholas rode on Numa’s back, his pale shape stark against her shining green scales.
The wind swept around them, carrying the dragons up the second they stretched their wings.
“Why are you crying?” Ked asked, sliding his thumb down her cheek.
Evie sank into him and let her tears flow. “To be taken from his mother so young and not even know his true name must have been horrible.”
“She gave him what magic she could to protect him. Being born outside the Sanctuary that was a wise thing for her.”
Evie nodded and accepted Marcus’s large hand in hers, squeezing back. She hadn’t considered names for her baby yet, but suddenly knew that she needed to go home before the baby was born. If the ursa were anything like the turul, they would have a naming ceremony, too, and Maia Stonetree would not have wanted to give her son his ursa name until she could do it in their sacred place.
“I need to go home,” she said.
“We can be back to the Monastery by sunset tomorrow if we leave now,” Ked said.
“No,” she said looking up at him. “I need to go to the Enclave where I was born. It’s closer, for one thing, and my family will be there for the winter. Plus, when our baby is born, she can be named on the mountain peak where I was named, with the North Wind to bless her. Belah and my brothers can join us.”
“In that case, we’ll be home by morning.” Ked released her and in a cloud of swirling shadow shifted into his majestic black-scaled true form.
As Marcus helped Evie climb onto Ked’s back, he asked, “Will your grandmother have breakfast ready for us? I’ve missed her cooking like you can’t even believe.”
Evie laughed. “Nanyo prefers ice cream for breakfast, but I’m sure she can accommodate you if you ask nicely. Just don’t make demands while she’s in the kitchen. She’s scary with a carving knife.”
Beneath them, Ked let out a deep rumble of laughter. “I will never again argue with that woman while she’s cooking.”
Still vibrating with humor, Ked spread his wings and launched into the air, and with the rise in altitude Evie’s spirits rose. She leaned back against Marcus and closed her eyes, happier than she’d been in as long as she could remember.
Epilogue
Marcus
Turul Enclave, the Appalachian Mountains
Present Day
After a few weeks at the Monastery, followed by the even more rustic amenities of the turul Enclave, Marcus was a little ashamed to admit he missed some features from his life as an Ultiori Elite. Hot, running water and electricity were two of those things. Evie and Ked didn’t seem fazed by the change, and adapted swiftly to the otherwise comfortable quarters the three of them had been given in one wing of the rambling stone lodge that was the focal point of the turuls’ community.
The building seemed to have sprouted organically from the earth and trees of the mountain, part stone and part wood, added on bit by bit over the centuries, so he’d heard, until it was a warren of cozy nooks and crannies mixed with huge rooms for larger gatherings. Every room seemed to have a window looking out over the rolling hills of the Appalachian mountain range that was now covered in its first dusting of snow.
Their rooms were warmed by a huge fireplace that burned day and night. Unlike at the monastery, they weren’t waited on. As Evie explained when they arrived, they were expected to be self-sufficient, and so he and Ked took it in turns to ensure they were well supplied with everything Evie would need to be comfortable and cared for.
Most days, she insisted on spending her waking hours among the other turul, usually helping her grandmother in the communal kitchen and sharing meals in the huge dining room with the others.
He and Ked sat alone together at their regular dinner table, silent and immersed in their own thoughts. Evie would get her fill of socializing and join them, but until then, they both had taken to brooding over their own worries again.
They weren’t the only strays in residence in the Enclave, though Marcus and Ked were given the widest berth of any of the outsiders, and he was sure it wasn’t only because they were so new. Marcus was still an Elite, in spite of now being marked and mated by the most powerful dragon on Earth. Ked, being that dragon, was avoided as much out of fear as respect. So they often found themselves isolated from the bustling community with only Belah and Evie’s brothers for occasional company once they arrived and announced their intention to stay until their own child was born.
Evie seemed to thrive in the attention of her fellow turul, so he and Ked subsisted with each other’s com
pany during the days, making sure to get their fill of the woman they loved in the evenings.
There was only one thing missing, something that had nagged at Marcus since the day Ked had marked them both. Those marks meant that he and Evie belonged to Ked, a fact that Marcus couldn’t deny. Yet he had known her and loved her for so much longer. He still couldn’t shake the memory of the day he’d decided to run. The day that would have gone so differently, had he not received that letter.
It wasn’t until Marcus sensed an amused presence in the corner of his thoughts that he glanced up to see Ked watching him with a half-smile over his dinner plate.
“You still want to propose marriage to her. Why didn’t you share this detail before?”
Marcus’s cheeks heated and he stared back down at his meal—yet another gourmet concoction from Evie’s grandmother that left his mouth watering more with each bite. He chewed and swallowed, enjoying it enough to savor it the way Evie would, then took a breath.
“It’s a little late for something so human and frivolous, don’t you think?”
“Yet you kept the ring all this time. Was that what took you so long to come back out of the enemy’s compound when we were there? You went back for it, didn’t you?”
“It was the only thing of value I’d left behind. Even if I never gave it to her, I wanted a keepsake to remind me of when I first fell in love with her.”
As Ked studied him, Marcus had the strongest sense of deep understanding. Sometimes the dragon surprised him with the well of wisdom he possessed, though he shouldn’t have been. He still wasn’t quite sure how old Ked really was, but was occasionally privy to memories that must have predated most civilizations.
Today, Ked’s ever-present connection to him somehow managed to discern the precise source of that hesitant tangle in Marcus’s gut.
“She won’t say no, and you know it,” Ked said. “And she won’t think it’s a ridiculous question, either. She grew up among humans. She loves human traditions as much as any of us. Dragons rarely celebrate their matings publicly, but the other races do. She won’t get a traditional turul mating ceremony because she shouldn’t shift during the pregnancy. Not to mention, you can’t fly.”