by Bonnie Vanak
Tristan kissed her cheek. “Enjoy yourself.”
When she went to him, the dragon shifter looked wary and startled. Nikita offered a wide smile.
“I seem to recall a time when I danced at many great balls in Castle Baldwin, and one such dance was with you. Would you do a kindness and dance with me?”
Drust bowed low. “It would be my pleasure, my lady Nikita.” Then, in a lower voice, he added, “I owe you much more than a mere dance. It is my greatest wish that I could make amends some day for failing to watch over you and safeguard you from harm after Tristan died.”
He danced with effortless grace, twirling her around the ballroom, her skirts flying out, but he kept her at a courteous distance. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder.
“Are you settling in here? This place is heavenly, but I can imagine it takes some adjusting after the Shadow Lands.”
“The Shadow Lands were hell for me,” he confessed, expertly cutting a turn. “The land can turn the hardiest of souls, the strongest of men and dragons, inside out. Only those with truly strong spirits, and courage, survive past their memories to move onward to Tir Na-nog.”
“Tristan was pained while we were there,” she admitted. “He must have suffered much.”
He looked down at her, his look expressive with regret. “He had the memory of you to guide him here. You have always been the only one for him, from the moment he saw you in the market square two years before your mating day. He told me, ‘Drust, look at that lovely Lupine. See how gentle and yet spirited she is? She is the one for me. I know this.’”
Nikita blinked. “According to my dreams, which are memories, ours was an arranged match. He scarcely knew me. He knew of my father’s landholdings, and the forest-rich territory. That is why he mated me.”
Drust laughed, a deep sound that held much amusement. “Did you ever stop to think who did the arranging, my lady? Tristan cared not for territory. Or licking the white ass of that foul bastard, Emer. He wanted you. He would have given anything to have you, anything to make you happy. You had given away some of your wares to a group of Lupine children who went hungry and ignored by Others. He said to me, ‘Drust, she is so lovely. Each time I see her my heart feels lighter. She is the woman who can make me the Lupine I know I can become, if she is by my side.’
“Your true beauty was not your looks, but your soul. He recognized this, and knew you belonged together. It happens at times with Lupines, this soulmate recognition. It happens far less with dragons.”
A warm tenderness came over her as she glanced over at Tristan, talking with Saul. And then new memories surfaced, the flower garden Tristan had planted for her when she wistfully mentioned longing to see the blue wildflowers each day. How he had moved her entire family into the castle at his own expense when he caught her crying one night because she missed her kin. And how he’d taught her to read, when she longed to become educated.
Tristan had always been there for her, but she did not recall his little acts of kindness and love.
“He never told me.”
“Men are stupid in that way. We did not dare to be perceived as weak and ruled by the heart, not when the Fae were constantly breathing down our necks. But he knew you were his. I always wanted to find my true mate. I was mated twice and never did find her.”
He swept her past a table filled with Fae drinking and laughing. “But you had Camilla. You loved her, from what I can recall.”
“I loved her, but I was busy upon the king’s business and had little time for her. Once she told me she felt less than a female because she’d failed to give me children. I tried to assure her I had six strong, healthy children and did not need another. I tried to make her feel accepted, but it was a long and difficult road.”
She felt sympathy for Camilla, who had been loved and did not feel it.
“Is Camilla here in Tir Na-nog?”
Drust shook his head. “I have not seen her neither here, nor in the Shadow Lands. Shortly after the end of the Drakon War and there was peace between shifters and the Fae, I caught her with a lover, and banished her.”
“Oh Drust!” She pulled back a little and studied him. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “I did love her, but I would not tolerate such a betrayal of trust.” The dragon laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it? Betrayed by my mate, and all these centuries Tristan believes I betrayed him. Betrayal is an ugly thing, my lady.”
The dance ended and he gave a courtly bow to her curtsy. Then he formally escorted her back to her table and pulled out her chair.
Drust took Tristan’s empty seat, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. “It feels odd to be among this many after so many centuries of forced solitude. I do not know if I like it.”
She touched his hand. “This is a land of dreams, Drust. You should learn to experience joy once more. If not for you, I would have been in real trouble.”
“The Shadow Lands are no place for one such as you with a gentle and innocent heart,” Drust said. “For me, they were painful, yet comfortable. They were a place to contemplate my life, and my death.”
Curious, she studied him. “How did you die? Was it a great battle?” She imagined Drust’s chest pierced by a lance or him gasping his last breath as he fought to defend his territory.
He grinned. “Carriage accident. Not very noble.”
They laughed a moment. Then the dragon stared again at Tristan. “Tristan could have left you to journey through the Shadow Lands. He walked that path again because he would not see you walk it alone. And he was forced to remember all the torment he suffered while there.”
Another shifter asked her for a dance, and Nikita ended up on the floor dancing for a long while. Finally, with excuses of needing to sit, she returned to her table. By now Tristan and Drust were talking, walking the perimeter of the ballroom. Hands hooked behind his back, Tristan listened as Drust talked. Once in a while he lifted his head and laughed at something the dragon shifter said. Memories blazed back—good ones. Utterly content, she let herself drift into one—before the Drakon War began. Tristan with his best friend, Drust, went fishing in the lake near Castle Baldwin as she and Camilla, Drust’s mate, watched Drust’s children from his first marriage scamper over the meadow next to the lake.
Camilla was plain-faced, but good with the children, and she had a quiet air about her Nikita had found refreshing. Camilla kept her company when Tristan and Drust were sent off on a raid for King Emer.
Nikita watched the children, her chest tight. She had confirmed today her suspicions.
“They seem so frail,” she mused. “And yet they run and play as if they were indestructible.”
“A trait among children, lost to us as we age. Do you want children, Nikita?” Camilla asked, handing her a cup of wine.
Nikita smiled and set the cup down. “Yes. It is my dearest wish.” She pressed her hands to her belly. “I think that wish may be coming sooner than I had hoped.”
Camilla hugged her tight. “Congratulations. Drust and I were never able to conceive on our own.”
She blinked at the wistful look on her friend’s face. “I’m sorry.”
Camilla shrugged. “I have Drust’s children from his first marriage to care for, and they are like my own. It will suffice.”
But to never carry the child of a man you loved, it must be heartbreaking, she had thought. And then she looked at Drust, who gazed at Camilla with the same tenderness Tristan displayed to her, but Camilla did not return the look.
Tristan’s deep voice broke through the memory. “My sweet, are you well? You look lost in thought.”
She smiled and accepted the silver goblet of punch he handed her. “Just thinking of the past.”
Maybe Camilla had taken another lover because of her inability to give children to Drust. The dragon admitted he had little time for her.
Would the same happen to her if she chose to remain on Earth as mortal? At least here, she would see Tristan often. Give him a chance to be a
real father.
The thought deeply troubled her.
They remained at the ball for a few hours, mingling with the guests, dancing, but always keeping an eye on each other. On the carriage ride back, she studied him with sweet anticipation.
When they arrived back at the cottage, he dismissed the coach and the coachmen, and they flew off into the night. Taking her hand, Tristan led her into the bedroom.
Once inside, he loosened his black tie, unbuttoned his jacket but then stilled, his gaze heavy-lidded with desire. In the soft golden glow of the bedside lamp, Tristan could have been a billionaire CEO returning from a late night benefit, ready to tumble into bed with his wife for a long bout of lovemaking before rising with the sun to assume his business duties.
Only this was a fourteen-hundred-year-old wizard who dispensed justice by obliterating shifters who did evil. Such a burden on his spirit.
She went to him, grazing her thumb along his stubbled jawline. “I had a great time tonight. It was amazing meeting all those shifters from your past.”
He picked up her hand and kissed it. “I have lived long, Nikita, done much, but loved only one woman—you.”
He rubbed her hand along his bristled cheek. She wished she could erase the haunted look in his eyes. This was the heavenly afterworld, but turning mortal must have triggered memories Tristan did not wish to recall.
“I love you as well, Tristan.”
He looked up, a flash of hope on his face pushing aside the darkness.
“I have always loved you deep inside, but the part of me that remembered the pain of your death, and how I was left alone, refused to recall it. All those nights after you died, I would curl up on my bed and weep. And I would wish for one last time running with you beneath the moon as wolf, one last touch of your lips against mine as Skin.”
She slid her arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him. He lowered his head to hers, and the kiss was sweet and brief, not the drugging kisses he’d showered upon her in the previous days.
Tristan cupped her face with his warm palms.
“I want to fall into you like water, drown myself in you. I want to dive into you so deeply the memory of you will carry me through the centuries to come. Being immortal and patrolling the mortal plane is lonely, Nikita. Watching all your friends die, loathing to grow close to anyone because you will outlive them, or they could embark on a dark path that forces you to kill them so that others may live.”
She stared into his dark brown eyes. “Tell me what I can do to ease your pain.”
“Be with me tonight. Run with me as wolf, as we once ran when we were mates on Earth. I want to feel the wind against my face and hear the beat of your heart as you race with me beneath the moon.”
His eyes closed as he kissed her knuckles, one by one. “With you at my side, the loneliness is vanquished. The darkest nightmares in the Shadow Lands, not knowing if I would ever hold you once more in my arms, were a living hell. When the grayness in the Shadow Lands threatened to swallow me until all I could hear were my own screams and remember the pain as they tortured me and the guilt I felt at leaving you, I would run as wolf and pretend you were running alongside me. Only the memories of you pushed the darkness away a little.”
Deeply touched at his confession, she kissed him.
They left the cottage and went outside. Nikita lifted her arms and called upon her magick and shifted into wolf. Iridescent sparks swirled around her, as lovely as fairy dust.
Sensations rushed at her, the smell of water in the creek behind Tristan’s home, the sounds of fairies dancing on the wind, the feel of the earth beneath her paws.
The large silver wolf standing beside her looked at her quietly in the moonlight. And then they bounded off for the woods.
Racing after him, she yipped with sheer enjoyment, snapping at the glowing green dragonflies darting in and out of the woods. Silver moonlight spilled down upon them, and she could taste the scent of prey hiding in the bushes.
But tonight her hunger was not of wolf, but woman.
They ended the chase at a small glen deep in the woods, near a bubbling creek. White orchids and lilies grew amid the green mosses and grasses. Tristan shifted back to Skin. Still nude, he padded over to a flower. She shifted back to Skin and watched him pluck it and then inhale the fragrant scent.
He held it out to her with a solemn look.
“Will you be my forever mate, Nikita? I ask much of you, for if you decide to remain mortal, you could never choose another mate to grow old with or bear other children with. No other male would be interested in you.”
The mating mark. Her breath caught. The mark a male Lupine gave to his female, to show to the world she was his. It diffused the lust of other males. They would never be sexually interested in her.
But she could not imagine having sex with anyone but Tristan. And if she could not have him as her mate, then she wanted no one else.
He claimed her heart, always. She accepted the lily and inhaled its fragrance.
“Yes. I will be your mate.”
He kissed her then, his mouth tasting like the sweetest wine and honey. As he drew back and cupped her face with his warm palms and pull her closer, the lily spilled to the ground. He kept kissing her, long, drugging kisses as he skimmed a possessive hand over her backside, and then pressed her closer. The rigid length of his erection dug into her belly. Tristan broke the kiss.
“Get on all fours,” he told her.
He looked feral and wild as his wolf. For a moment, fear flickered through her. Permanently Tristan’s.
Tristan slid a hand around her neck. “Only you, my sweet. You are the only woman I shall ever love, for eternity. When the stars cease shining and the moon fades, there will be one light in the sky and it will be me, burning with love for you.”
And then the hunger for him returned and her fears evaporated beneath the power of his touch.
Only his.
Still naked, she dropped to the ground on her hands and knees. In the gleam of moonlight his eyes glazed with lust.
He was in full mating frenzy. Biting her lip, she surrendered to the fevered passion. She opened her legs wide in the traditional mating position and braced herself.
His heavy body settled atop her, the edge of his cock nudging her soaked slit as he wrapped muscled arms around her waist. He nuzzled her neck, and then dragged his tongue over her sensitive skin. Tristan kissed and caressed her until she felt ready and open. Wriggling her bottom, she spread her legs open wider as the moonlight caressed them both.
“Now,” he murmured.
He pushed his penis deep inside her body. Her cry of pleasure was silenced under the penetrating thrust of his tongue as he turned her head toward him and kissed her. She wanted more. Her feminine tissues clung to his cock as he hammered deep inside her, their wet flesh slapping together.
Tension filled her loins as he squeezed and kneaded her hips, riding her hard. Then Tristan fisted a hand in her long hair and slammed into her even harder.
Turning her head, she watched his incisors sharpen and lengthen. Tristan gently turned her head aside, nuzzled her throat. She moaned as his cock pushed deep inside her and stilled.
“Now,” he growled.
Sharp teeth sank into her neck. Niki cried out. Pain flashed through her, along with an erotic throbbing in her loins far more intense than anything she’d ever felt.
Then he licked the wound, his tongue dragging slowly over her sore skin. The stinging pain faded, replaced by intense pleasure. Nerve endings screeching with sensation, she moaned and pushed back against him, undulating her hips. He grunted and kept thrusting, harder and harder, each push of his cock rubbing against her sensitive tissues.
“Come with me,” he panted, wrapping his arms around her waist, sealing her to him.
She let go, the pleasure bursting deep inside her loins as he penetrated deep. A long, low howl ripped from him as his powerful body shuddered behind her, his seed spurting hotly into her w
omb, each ejaculation causing new ripples of pleasure that stroked into small orgasms, sending waves of fresh pleasure inside her.
They collapsed to the ground. But he did not pull out. She felt his cock thicken inside her.
The mating knot of Lupines.
Tristan rolled them onto their sides, his arms possessively wrapped around her, anchoring her close. After a few minutes, he eased out of the tight clasp of her body. He lay on his back on the soft, damp grasses, and pulled her into his arms, the sweat from their bodies sealing them together.
For a while, they simply lay together, the sound of their ragged breathing filling the air until her breathing slowed and she could finally think straight.
He skimmed a gentle hand over her belly. “We made a baby tonight.”
Raising her head, she glanced down. “How do you know?”
“I can sense it.” He kissed her again.
Tristan’s child. And she was now his forever mate. Overwhelmed with joy, Niki pressed her hands to her belly. She would have a child, a child to raise and care for, a child to watch grow, and guard.
Her mother had died giving birth to her. Joy turned to ashes as she curled up next to Tristan, tunneling her fingers through the hair on his chest. “What if something bad happens?”
Tristan’s gaze became fierce. “I will not let any harm come to you or our child, Nikita. I promise, you will both be safe. I pledge you the protection of my body and my powers as the Silver Wizard.”
His voice trembled a little. “I will not lose you again.”
Such devotion in those words, and in the kiss he gave her. Tristan pulled her closer and stroked a hand tenderly over her belly.
Tears clogged her throat, partly from joy and partly from dread. She dreaded their time together ending.
For then she must choose.
Stay with him here, forever.
Or go.
Chapter 17
Never had he experienced such tender bliss.
Not since he’d walked the earth as mortal had he known such joy. The days passed from one to another in a rush of erotic pleasure and sweetness, for Nikita was in his arms at last.