I roar with laughter, smacking the wall again, this time striking it hard and firm, my big arm sending a vibration up through the stones until the ancient brass chandelier sways and tinkles like wedding bells.
Eleanor glances up at the chandelier, and then she gasps. “Are those . . . those look like . . . um . . .”
“Diamonds,” I say with a shrug. “These are just the small ones, though. I keep the big stones hidden in the vaults.”
“Diamonds,” she whispers, touching her neck and staring up at the chandelier. She turns around beneath the fixture, and just then the sun moves enough to hit the diamonds just right so Eleanor is speckled by hundreds of star-like reflections. She twirls beneath the canopy of diamonds, and then she looks up at me and shakes her head. “What’s with you, Easton? Why do you live in a dark old castle that for some reason has diamonds in the chandeliers? Why do you have vaults of precious stones but a drawbridge that hasn’t been repaired in a hundred years? Why are you strong enough to rip out a car-door and shake the walls but yet make me feel like I’m safe with you? Everything about you seems conflicted, like a mix of opposites, neither here nor there. Half of this, half of that. It’s messing me up!”
“Half of this, half of that,” I mutter, staring at Eleanor as all those words tumble out of her. It’s all I can do to not take her in my arms and kiss those lips. A kiss would explain everything—explain more than any words I can find in me. Where to begin? How to begin?
“Yes, half. It’s like everything about you is split down the middle, Easton,” she says. “I notice it because I’m a design engineer and I have an eye for symmetry, for balance. That’s why you’re messing me up, I think. Your clothes, for example.”
I frown and glance down at myself. “I wear the same clothes every day, but they are cleaned and pressed every night.”
“Exactly!” Eleanor says. “They’re cleaned and pressed, but they’re clothes from like a century ago, weathered and worn down to rags!” She glances up at the chandelier and shakes her head. “And clearly you can afford new clothes.”
My frown cuts deeper as I examine my breeches, touch my leather vest, straighten the bronze and steel inlays that shine as bright as those diamonds. “Rags?” I growl, raising an eyebrow and then scowling down at her. “Perhaps I will show you the dungeons before dinner,” I mutter.
“Ohmygod, see?” Eleanor says through a half-gasp, half-giggle. “That comment should be totally creepy, but I just laughed. And although you could toss me in a sack and carry me down to the dungeons, for some reason I’m not scared of you.”
I look her up and down, and then I cock my head. “Why would I toss you into a sack when I can just carry you?” I ask.
Eleanor throws her arms up in despair. “I don’t know! It just kinda seemed like something you’d do. Well, not you. But someone like you. I mean if this were a different situation. I mean . . . oh, you know what I mean, right?”
She touches her hair and blinks three times. Her face is flush, her chest rising and falling fast as she takes deep gulps of air. She’s clearly flustered by the energy between us, and she has no way of explaining it to herself. If she were a Dragon, she would know immediately that I am her mate and this is how two fated mates react when they are brought together. But she is not a Dragon, and neither will I be until I claim her.
Which means we are both just human right now.
Just a man and a woman.
And that will have to be enough.
“I am a half-breed,” I whisper. “Half of this, half of that. Just like you said. Perhaps that is what you see reflected in the way I live, the way I dress, the way I am.”
“A half-breed?” she says with a cautious laugh. “Aren’t we all half-breeds—a little of this, a dash of that?”
I smile and shake my head. “Not like this, Eleanor. Not like me. And even a little of what I am might be too much for you.”
Eleanor blinks and swallows hard. She looks down at the stone floor, and then she frowns when she sees the faded old family crest inlaid in the cold stone. The crest shows a dragon’s head in profile, two swords crossed behind it. And there, beneath the Dragonhead, stained blood-red by ruby-dust, is the Red Diamond.
Suddenly I feel movement behind my eyes, and I wince in pain as my vision explodes in a sea of red light. I know it’s my Dragon getting closer to joining with me, and I sense that the beast’s ancient instincts are being heightened by the sight of its mate standing over the crest of Dragonswain, keepers of the Red Diamond.
She is the key to bringing the Red Diamond back to its rightful place, comes the whisper from behind my eyes. I know it’s my Dragon, and I do my best to stand still, keep my eyes focused, my expression calm and stoic. It will be hard enough to explain things to Eleanor as it stands. I do not want to have to explain why I am talking to myself—or to an invisible mythical beast that is about to take up residence in my soul. She will lead us right to the Red Diamond. Well done, Half-Breed. You have found our mate, and soon we will fly through the skies as one. Congratulations.
“Might be a little early for congratulations,” I mutter under my breath. “There’s only so much strangeness a human can handle before it becomes too much. Too bad there’s no getting past the strangest part of it: That I’m a fucking Dragon, and she’s my mate!”
Eleanor frowns at me like she can see I’m muttering something. I force a grin and nod earnestly, wondering if I look like a lunatic. But then she flashes a little smile, almost a knowing smile.
You will not have to explain anything, Half-Breed, comes my Dragon’s whisper.
“Why is that?” I grunt, still puzzled at Eleanor’s strange expression.
Because she already knows, comes the answer from the beast inside me.
“Knows that I’m a Dragon?” I ask. “How can she know?”
She knows because her Dragon knows, comes the reply. And what her Dragon knows, she knows. You know what I mean.
I rub my eyes and shake my head to clear it. Then I look closer at Eleanor, who’s still standing beneath that diamond-studded chandelier that sways gently like a pendulum. Her eyes look different, it occurs to me. And there’s something about the way she’s standing that strikes me as peculiar. She’s almost too still. Like she’s frozen in position beneath the diamonds.
And as I stare her body starts to shine brighter, with brilliant white light that makes the diamonds themselves look dull. I blink and gasp, and I feel my Dragon rumble in approval as we watch in awed silence.
“What’s happening to me?” she gurgles from that frozen position under the circle of diamonds. Beneath her feet the Crest of Dragonswain is glowing like it’s alive, like the dragon is moving, the swords are shining, and the Red Diamond is shimmering like a blood-red snowflake.
Her Dragon is being brought to life by the essence of Diamond Energy. She is a White Dragon, whispers my animal from inside. Cut from the essence of Diamond Energy. Unbreakable like a diamond.
“A White Dragon,” I mutter, shaking my head in disbelief at the sight laid out before me. It occurs to me that my mate is becoming a White Dragon before I myself am a full Red Dragon, but that means nothing in the face of the beauty before my eyes, the magic that’s happening right here, right now.
“Easton . . .” comes her whimper, and I snap out of my stupor and rush over to her. I want to take her into my arms and hold her safe until whatever’s happening is complete. Clearly we’re past the point of explaining things. Now the shortest past to understanding is just to live through what’s happening.
But I’m stopped in my tracks before I get to Eleanor, and I roar in anger as I hit an invisible wall that feels cold as ice, hard like a diamond. I can’t see it, but it’s there. I pound at the barrier with my fists, punch and kick with everything I have. But all I do is send vibrations of cold pain through my own body, and I realize that I am locked out until her White Dragon joins with her.
So I press up against the invisible wall between us, placing m
y palms in line with her pretty face. I look deep into her eyes, doing my best to calm her down with my warmth.
“You’re going to be fine,” I shout. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Eleanor.”
“I know,” she replies, her eyes open wide, her pupils shining like icebergs in a sea of diamonds. I can already see her Dragon in those eyes, and I sense that whatever she’s feeling is too beautiful for her to remain scared.
Because what’s happening is destiny, and when it comes, you know.
You just know.
And so I stop pounding against the unbreakable cocoon and instead I wait. I wait for my mate, wait for her to emerge from that cocoon fully formed, a deadly butterfly with wings of pure white, claws sharp as diamonds, a heart that burns hotter than any flame.
Slowly my own flame builds as my Dragon retreats to the shadows because it knows it will have to wait too. It will have to wait for the man to do what a man needs to do.
“I’m here, Eleanor,” I whisper as the White Dragon grows in her eyes and then snaps at me in delight. “But I’m still just a man. Just halfway formed until you complete me. Until you make me whole. Come, Eleanor. Make me whole.”
And as I feel my Dragonblood surge through my body, Eleanor screams and spreads her arms out wide, shattering the cage of invisible ice and leaping out of it like the creature of wing and talon she is.
I catch her in mid-air like this is a ballet on ice, and I spin her around beneath the chandelier like it’s a dream.
And then I kiss her.
By God, I kiss her.
5
ELLIE
The kiss answers every question but not in words. There are no words that can explain what I feel, what I’ve seen, what I know is happening to me.
I felt it start the moment I stood on that Dragon’s Crest and stared up at the diamonds circling above like a crown. It started slow. Just a tingle in my toes, a shiver in my spine, a pinprick of sensation along my legs. Then my heart started beating harder—not faster but harder. A strong, steady beat that I sensed was pumping fresh blood to every cell in my body.
Fresh blood.
New blood.
Blood that throbbed in my veins like a river rushing down a mountainside.
Blood that burned the way ice can burn you.
“A White Dragon,” Easton had said, and now he says it again through that fiery kiss, that warm embrace that makes me believe everything will work out because there’s no way he’d let anything bad happen to me. “You’re a White Dragon, Eleanor!”
“Sure,” I mutter, swooning in his powerful arms and bumping against his hard body, which feels immovable like a stone wall. “One of those snakes bit me, right? And now I’m hallucinating before I die?”
Easton booms out a laugh that makes my boobs vibrate, and then he kisses me on the forehead, strokes my hair, caresses my cheek. “There’s no easy way to explain what’s happening,” he says through a smile that’s a mix of pity and excitement. Why is he so excited that I’m dying? Oh, right. Because he’s a serial killer. Hey, Frannie, you were right!
“But you were wrong about the reality show, Frannie,” I mutter. “Coz this sure as hell ain’t reality.”
“Who’s Frannie?” says Easton. Then he snorts like he doesn’t care. “Eleanor, look at me. You’re not dying, all right? You weren’t poisoned by a snake. You weren’t bitten by a spider.”
“There was no spider, you big phony,” I mumble, my words slurring like I’m drunk. I’m also swaying like I’m drunk, and if not for Easton I’d probably be rolling around on the stone floor giggling like a loony. “You faked the spider attack. You were totally gonna kiss me, weren’t ya?”
Easton turns bright red under his scars, and then he blinks and looks down like a bad schoolboy who just got caught. “Yes,” he says. “I knew you were my mate, and I thought you knew it too.”
“I don’t know anything anymore,” I gurgle, my arms tight around Easton’s neck—mostly because I don’t trust my legs to keep me upright. My vision is blurry in the weirdest way, like my eyes are recalibrating or something. I frown and squint, and then I gasp out loud when suddenly everything snaps into focus that’s sharp as a diamond-edge, clear as ice-crystals. I can see the tiniest detail on Easton’s big face, and I gasp again as I run a trembling finger along the most beautiful of his scars.
“Tell me . . .” I whisper, barely able to speak as I try to figure out how I can now see things a human can’t. “Tell me the guy who did this is dead.”
A shadow passes behind Easton’s eyes, and he blinks and looks away. “They’re all dead now,” he says softly even though I sense his body tighten. “Water under the bridge.”
“The water under your bridge is full of two-headed snakes,” I say with a smile. “Is that how they died?”
That weird feeling behind my eyes comes back as I see Easton smile again, see the scars on his face glow as if each of them wants to tell me its story. Though clearly Easton himself doesn’t want to go there right now.
But I wanna go there, I think as I become acutely aware of his hands on my back, his body against my bosom, his breath against my cheek. He smells like smoke, but smoke that doesn’t suffocate me. I take a deep breath of that smoky musk, feeling it fill my lungs, bubble through my bloodstream, setting me on fire from the inside out even though I know I can’t burn.
“A White Dragon,” I murmur, blinking away the images of snow-white wings, talons like chiseled diamonds, eyes of deadly blue. The images should terrify me, but they don’t.
Because I know that what I’m seeing is inside me.
I know that what I’m seeing is me.
“Yes,” says Easton. “I should have guessed you were destined to be a White Dragon. According to the scrolls, White Dragons are infused with the essence of diamond. It makes complete sense now, Ellie. Who other than a White Dragon could lead me to the Red Diamond?”
I nod very earnestly, which seems appropriate when you have no idea what’s happening and you’re so far away from understanding that you might as well pretend like it all makes perfect sense. “Yes,” I say in a singsong voice that reminds me of the little girl in every horror movie who’s about to go bat-shit crazy and kill everyone with an axe. “It does make complete sense. I’m a White Dragon, you’re my mate, and I have a treasure map that will lead us to a big ol’ red diamond.”
“Wow,” Easton says, raising an eyebrow and looking down at me suspiciously. “Does it really all make sense to you?”
“No,” I say with a shrug. “But I wouldn’t even know the questions to ask that would make sense of any of this. So I figure I might as well ignore the whole thing and maybe it’ll go away.”
Easton takes his hand off my back and runs it through his thick, dark hair. “I apologize,” he says. “Let me try to explain. Close your eyes, please.”
I raise an eyebrow as I wonder if this is a trick. There’s a twinkle in Easton’s green eyes, and I still get that overwhelmingly protective vibe from him, that sense of being totally safe in his arms even though I have no idea what’s going on.
“All right,” I say. “There. My eyes are closed.”
Easton doesn’t say anything, but I feel his breath against my lips and I know he’s drawing close, pulling me closer, closer to that place where the questions don’t matter because the answers flow from my heart, from what I feel, from what I know is truth, reality be damned.
His lips are achingly close, and as my eyelids flutter I feel my Dragon twist and turn inside me. Somehow I know that there’s an animal inside me, a being of magic and myth, its energy joined with mine, its destiny merged with my own.
Easton caresses my cheek, strokes my back, presses his body against my hips until I’m hot and wet and everything in between, melting like an ice cube in the summer heat. I hear my animal screech inside me, and I break into a smile when I realize I just heard a she-Dragon’s mating call.
So I nod my head and prepare to be taken into
this world of myth. I prepare to face my fate, to be claimed by my mate.
I’m smiling so wide my jaw hurts, and Easton’s lips brush against mine as he teases me to the point of madness. He’s so close he’s almost inside me, and I’m bouncing up and down in anticipation when suddenly the silence is shattered by a horrendous clanging noise, like a band of monkeys going to town on empty pots and pans!
My eyes go wide as I glance around in terror, and Easton roars in anger as he pulls back from the kiss.
“What’s going on, Easton?!” I shout, feeling my Dragon scream inside me as our moment is destroyed by what is surely some manifestation of dark magic or evil power! “What the hell is that?!”
“The doorbell,” Easton growls, leaning his head back and listening. “Stay quiet. Maybe they’ll go away.”
I almost lose my shit, I’m so turned around by arousal and the confusion and the infernal sound of that fucking doorbell!
“Ohmygod, make it stop!” I squeal, hopping up and down like there’s a spider in my ear.
“Now would be a good time to have a fucking squire,” Easton mutters. “Stay here. I’ll be right back after I kill whoever it is.”
I almost laugh, but I feel my Dragon’s mad anger and somehow I wanna go down there and kill someone too! The thought shocks me, but somehow I accept it. Somehow I understand that it comes from this new part of me. It’s my Dragon’s instinct, and like all instinct it’s pure, without judgment, a part of this creature’s energy.
Easton looks back at me just before leaving the room, and I feel the need in both of us. This feels like instinct too, but it’s coming from the woman in me. The new woman in me.
“Wait for me,” I say, scampering to the door and grabbing it before it shuts. I want to stay close to Easton—and that’s coming from both the woman and the Dragon in me.
Easton is already at the front door by the time I catch up (though I did get lost a couple of times . . .), and when he yanks it open and prepares to yell the ears off whoever it is, I beat him to it with a shriek that almost gives that doorbell a run for its money.
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