The Last Dragonet

by Shannon West

  When it was over, we were both still standing, with me being pressed against the wall and held there by his muscular body. Dmitri took a long breath and reached around me picking me up. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and he carried me to his bed. Neither of us said a word and soon, we had both fallen into a deep sleep. I didn’t even get back up to clean up again, but just said fuck it. As make-up sex went, it was pretty spectacular, but then, I don’t think you could call it that since we actually never made up. We just passed out, with nothing resolved.

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of Dmitri’s phone ringing. I was wrapped in his arms, our legs entangled, and was warm and cozy and pretty damn sticky. I didn’t want to move, but I managed to nudge him and mumble, “Your phone’s ringing.”

  He, in turn, mumbled something that I couldn’t quite understand. It sounded a lot like, “Fuck it,” to me, but he rolled over and reached for it, anyway. “What?” he barked into it. Suddenly, he sat straight up, seemingly wide awake now. “What? When?” He paused. “Okay. Let me get dressed. Get Sebastien and Alexei to meet me downstairs.”

  He threw the bedcover back and crawled out of the big bed. I looked up at him and muttered, “What’s going on?”

  “Trouble on the western border of our property. Gunshots, some of the patrol injured. Sebastien, Alexei and I need to go check it out. I’ll be back as soon as soon as I can, and for God’s sake, Luca, do what I tell you for once and stay put.”

  And just like that, we were back to square one. He left and I lay there fuming for about thirty minutes before my growling stomach forced me to get up, get dressed and find some food. I may have still been pissed at Dmitri, but going on a hunger strike was not ever going to be the way that I protested anything. There were other ways of making my displeasure known, I was sure. Of course, withholding sex didn’t seem to be a viable option either.

  I forced myself to get up, wash the smell of sex off myself and get dressed. Then, I meandered downstairs to ferret for food and hope that I didn’t run into the parents. The truth was that I didn’t like them any better than they liked me and the best plan was for me to avoid contact with them, at all costs. We didn’t have the warm and fuzzies for each other and I was pretty sure we never would.

  Luckily, I didn’t run into anyone except Viktor. I had just walked into the dining room and discovered that all the breakfast food had already been removed when he came in from the kitchen. I smiled at him and said, “Viktor, thank God. I know I was late for breakfast, but would it be possible for me to get some toast or something?” Right at that moment my stomach growled loudly and he actually smiled a little.

  “Of course, sir. I believe that we can find you something. Come with me.” He turned and went back into the butler’s pantry, where all the food had just been moved, and thankfully not disposed of yet. “Help yourself. I’ll direct the kitchen staff to clean up as soon as you’re done.”

  He handed me a plate and I began to fill it with bacon and eggs and biscuits and fruit. “Thank you, Viktor. Is it all right if I eat in here?” I sure as hell didn’t want to risk running into either of Dmitri’s parents. I’d been lucky so far, and I wanted to keep it that way. He nodded, pulling out a chair for me at the table. I smiled back. Yep. Old Viktor knew the score. He walked out of the room and I dug in to my plate.

  I was still eating when I heard the first knocks on the door. Thinking that Viktor would get it, I kept on until I was finished, but the knocking continued. I got up to go to the kitchen to put my empty plate with the other dirty dishes, and the knocking persisted. Where the hell was Viktor? Or somebody?

  Finally accepting that apparently no one else in the house was going to see who banging at the front door, I gave up and went to see for myself. I was surprised when I opened it and Pen stood there, smiling at me. Not at all what I expected. Actually, I didn’t know what I’d been expecting out here at the backside of Bumfuck Egypt, though I guess I figured some of the family had forgotten their key or whatever.

  “Um… Dmitri isn’t here if you’re here to see him, and I don’t know where everybody else is. I don’t know why no one else came to the door.” I felt as if I was babbling, but I was confused and there was something about this guy that left me a little tongue-tied. Maybe it was the aura of power that clung to him like a cheap suit.

  “Actually, you’re just the person I was looking for, Luca.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Your grandfather sent me to get you. He heard that there was a problem on the western border and sent his men to check on it. They found Dmitri and his cousins unconscious, but alive, and brought them back to Eldor’s estate.”

  My heart had jumped into my throat. I felt like I couldn’t get my breath and my knees felt as if they were about to buckle. Clinging to the doorknob to hold me up, I took a shaky breath. “He’s alive, though? You’re sure?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure, but your grandfather thought that you would want to come see for yourself. A doctor has been called, of course, but it may be some time before he can get here.” He glanced up at the sky. “Looks like a storm might be coming.”

  “Oh, I do want to see him. But maybe I should tell his parents too?”

  He stepped up and touched my arm, leaning in slightly. “It’s all right, Luca. Someone will be along to tell them. You need to come with me, now.”

  And all my nervousness and doubts just vanished and I found myself nodding. “Yes, of course.”

  He smiled and I started out the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  His hand on my arm stopped me, and I looked up at him.

  “I think you might need a jacket, Luca.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, yeah. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” I took off up the stairs, taking them two at a time, ran into our apartment and grabbed the coat that Dmitri had bought for me in Moscow. I put it on as I hurried back down the stairs. Pen was standing in the entry hall where I’d left him. And it still never occurred to me to question anything. Like where the fuck was everybody?

  “Okay. Now, let’s go.” I moved toward the door, but stopped suddenly. “I guess I need to tell Dmitri’s father what’s going on. If I can find him, that is.”

  Pen shook his head and gazed into my eyes again. “No, you don’t need to do that. You’re too anxious to see Dmitri.”

  “Oh, right. We need to go.”

  Looking back, it’s easy to see what he was doing. He compelled me to just blindly follow him, of course, but I couldn’t see that then. In my defense, the guy was extremely powerful and I apparently had no defenses against him at all. I realize now that it was easy to compel me, because not only was I actually scared to death about Dmitri, but besides that, I also wasn’t looking forward to talking to his father and seeing that ever-present look of contempt on his face. I didn’t owe him anything, anyway. He’d treated me like shit since I’d arrived.

  So I let Pen hurry me out the door to the Sno-Cat he’d arrived in. Once we were on our way, I looked back toward the house and spoke my thoughts out loud. “I wonder where everybody is. I can’t believe that I’m the only one who heard you knocking.” I turned toward him. “Surely somebody else in that house could have heard you. You were pretty persistent.”

  He gave me a strange look and gave me a little smirk. “What is it Dmitri calls me? A witch? Maybe I put a spell on them so that no one could hear the knocking except you.”

  I actually laughed. “Yeah, right. Bullshit.”

  He laughed at that. “Remember, Luca, I’m a mage.”

  “A what?”

  “A mage. A magician. Or, if you prefer, a wizard or witch. Whatever you choose to call me, I it’s all the same thing. So perhaps I put a hex on everyone in the house. Everyone except you, so they wouldn’t hear me knocking.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged. “Because I knew that they wouldn’t let you leave with me, because I work for Eldor.” He laughed then at the look on my face, turning it all in
to a joke. And I laughed along with him, though I admit he’d made me uneasy.

  Casting spells and hexes? Maybe. I’d seen him light a fire with a wave of his hand. Anyway, it didn’t matter at the moment. The most important thing now was getting to Dmitri, and I was on my way, so I decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Nothing else I could do now.

  Chapter Ten

  Luca

  When I’d flown to Eldor’s land a few days before, the trip hadn’t seemed to take long at all, but in this Sno-Cat, fighting the icy terrain, the driver was taking his time and moving slowly. Pen spent most of his time staring out the window and my mind was full of scary imaginings about how Dmitri might be injured, never once stopping to wonder why the fuck Eldor would take him to his home to recover, or why he’d take him anywhere for that matter. The times I’d seen them interact they hadn’t exactly been the best of friends.

  About thirty minutes or so into the journey, Pen turned to stare at me. “You look at great deal like your mother, you know.”

  “I do?” I turned to him in surprise. No one ever talked to me about my mother. Never. My dad always shied away from the subject and actually got crazy if I pressed him for answers. And since I spent most of my childhood trying to dodge those big fists of his, I didn’t press very often. Or at all.

  “Did you know my mother?” I asked softly.

  “I knew her,” he said, his mouth turning down in a bitter little frown.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t like her much.” I turned away from him, feeling unreasonably hurt by his attitude about my mother, though I had no idea why. I never knew the woman at all. “I don’t think anybody liked her much, actually. The one time I got my dad to talk about her, he was pretty damned drunk. He called her a fucking bitch, so…”

  Pen glanced at me sharply. “What? Auric said that? He called her that?”

  I nodded. “Normally, he wouldn’t even speak her name. It was Rosamund, wasn’t it?”

  Pen flinched like I’d hit him. “Rosamund,” he said, and his eyes got a faraway look. “I haven’t spoken that name in a little more than twenty years. But yes. She was…very beautiful.”

  “Yeah? Can you tell me what she looked like? I’ve never even seen a picture.”

  I thought at first he wasn’t going to answer me, but then he looked at me strangely. “Auric never told you about her?”

  “No. Like I said, he didn’t like to talk about her.”

  After a long moment, he sighed. “Curly black hair, like yours. And eyes so blue they didn’t look real. Her smile was…”

  He stopped talking right in the middle of his sentence and started looking back out the window again. I noticed he was clenching his fists so hard they were turning white.

  “I don’t have anything much of hers left,” I said, more to pass the time than anything else. “I would have liked something more than what I have. You know, just to make her seem more real to me. I heard my dad and some woman he was living with for a little while arguing one time about him pawning all my mother’s jewelry. I guess he didn’t split the money with her or something. Anyway, the woman was pretty pissed off.”

  I had no idea why I was telling him all this shit. I’m sure he couldn’t have cared less. “Since by then my dad was calling my mother names and all, and since by that time, I’d heard the things the neighbors had to say about the night before I was born…”

  “What did they say?”

  “That they were fighting really bad that last night. And they never saw her alive after that.”

  He drew in a breath sharply, but I just kept talking.

  “The only thing I have left of hers was one of her old books. She had stuck one behind the radiator that never worked. And inside was a letter, dated from a week before I was born, so I guess she never got to give it to my dad. It was a love letter and I kept it,” I said, blushing a little. “Anyway, I just didn’t feel right about giving it to him.”

  “A love letter,” he repeated softly and the look in his eyes was odd. He looked furious and kind of yearning all at the same time. The look my dad got in his eyes when he passed a bar or a liquor store and was all out of money. That was when he was at his most dangerous because he usually took that fury out on me.

  I shrugged. “I think that’s what it was. She told him how much she loved him and said that when the baby came—that would be me—she was giving me both her father’s name, Luca, and his father’s as my middle name. Funny, ’cause my middle name isn’t Eldor.” I smiled. “Thank God.”

  “Really?” he said sounding bored. “What is your middle name?”

  “Myrdinn. Weird, huh? My full name is Luca Myrdinn.”

  He recoiled away from me so hard he almost fell off the seat. “What-what did you say?”

  “I just told you my name. Luca Myrdinn. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He grabbed my arms and turned me toward him. I tried to twist away because I don’t like to be grabbed, but he held on so tight I couldn’t move. “Tell me what the letter said. Every word, Luca.” He put one hand up to my forehead then and I found myself saying shit I hadn’t thought about in years. Repeating that letter word for word.

  “Darling, by the time you read this, our son will be born. Yes, it’s true. Our son. I know you’ll be angry and shocked, and I’m sorry I lied to you, but please believe me when I tell you I had no choice. I’ll tell you why when we’re together again. I love you so very much, and I’ll tell you everything when I hold you in my arms. Until then, please keep me in your heart. When our son is born I’ll name him after my father and yours. His name will be Luca Myrdinn, and he’ll be everything that has been promised and more.”

  After I had repeated the letter, I fell back in my seat, exhausted, and he let me go. He looked white as a sheet and his chest rose and fell really hard for a long time as he stared at me. He reached up to the glass between us and the driver, and his hand was trembling. He rapped on the glass and the driver turned around to look at him.

  “Turn around.”

  “What? No, I have to get to Dmitri.”

  He shook his head at me. “Dmitri just arrived back home and he’s searching frantically for you. Everything I told you was a lie and I compelled you to believe it.”

  “What? I don’t understand! Why would you do something like that?”

  “Because Eldor has paid me well to do it. Because Dmitri is right and you give your trust too easily. And because I’m a bastard whose heart apparently turned to stone twenty years ago when Rosamund left me to go to America with Auric.” He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I thought I would die when she left me. We were lovers, Luca. I wanted to marry her and take her away from Eldor, and I thought she wanted me to. But then everything changed overnight and she left with Auric, after she told me she hated him. Hated the way he looked at her and touched her. And now you’re telling me… I thought she was a liar all these years, but goddess help me I loved her anyway. I don’t understand this.”

  “Then that makes two of us. If my mother was so much in love with you, then why would she…? Wait a minute, the letter I found. She said she’d lied, but she had no choice and she said…” I turned to look at Pen with wide eyes. “She said she’d name her son after both her father and her lover’s. Pen, what is your father’s name? Tell me, damn you.”

  He raised his eyes to mine and they were filled with pain. “His name is Myrdinn. Myrdinn Pendragon.”

  ****

  Dmitri

  It didn’t take me long after we flew to the western border that morning to figure out we’d been played for fools. The men I had stationed at the small outpost nearest the Arctic Ocean were surprised when we burst in on them, expecting some kind of trouble. They assured us everything was quiet, and that’s when I turned around to stare at Sebastien. He said the name that chilled me to the bone.

  “Eldor.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face and I got a little light-headed with fear. I don’t even rememb
er the trip back home, but we made it in record time and I was exhausted when the house finally came into view. Everything looked just the way it did when we left with no outward sign of trouble, but I still had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  We landed and shifted back and I ran inside and through the house shouting for Luca. I was vaguely aware of my parents and some of my cousins and even Viktor and the other servants looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I guess I had, in a way. My father pulled on my arm and tried to stop me, and I damn near took his head off. He backed away quickly, his hands held out in front of him and from the look on his face I think he finally realized how much Luca meant to me. I think I finally realized it myself.

  Because Luca had been right, even though it had made me angry when he called me on it. I had been thinking of him all this time as a pretty little possession. Someone fun to fuck and play around with. The fact that so many others wanted him was just icing on the cake. He belonged to me. He was my possession and I’d play with him until the newness wore off. Oh, I had no plans to ever part with him, just like I had no plans to part with any of my treasure. I wasn’t the kind of Dragon who traded his treasure or spent his gold. I liked to hoard my pretty things and keep them close. So when had Luca become more than a possession? I wasn’t sure, but I knew that he had. And I knew that if I lost him, I’d spend the remainder of my very long life mourning that loss.