Wounded Wings

by Ariana Hawkes

  Why had he done it? Was it because he wanted to, or had he felt he needed to? It had seemed like he was enjoying it. His breathing had been fast, his hands running all over her body, his mouth hungry on hers. The recollection delivered a little jolt between her legs. But if he’d enjoyed it, then why did he say it shouldn’t have happened?

  Her heart ached a little. Because she knew he was right— it shouldn’t have happened. He was her bodyguard. And they couldn’t be more wrong for each other. He had lived on two very different planets; he had a serious job; earned his own money; and his life was organized. She had lived in the shadow of her father; she hated her job—and it wasn’t even truly hers; her life was a mess. He had the life of a grown-up, and she that of a child.

  She needed to quit obsessing over these thoughts. Nothing good would come of it. But if only he wasn’t so damn sexy!

  She took another shower and dressed, choosing gray jeans and a black V-neck top that showed a little of her shoulders. She combined that with an emerald pendant necklace and examined herself in the mirror. She looked casual and maybe even a little sexy. She liked her shoulders. She always received compliments on them.

  She went out to the living room and gasped at the sight of a man she’d never seen before in her life sitting on her sofa. He had an angular face, thick eyebrows and dark messy hair, which was standing on end.

  “Who are you?” Eden demanded.

  “I’m Eurus.” He stood up, “your new bodyguard.”

  “What happened to the old one?” Eden forced her voice to sound casual and she headed to the fridge, turning her back to the new guy.

  “He was needed on another job.”

  She opened the fridge and exhaled slowly, her heart racing and her throat feeling tight.

  “Oh,” she said. Why was she staring into the fridge as if it was going to come up with some answers?

  She took the milk out, made a bowl of cereal for herself and offered one to Eurus, who refused. Was it a coincidence that Notus was needed on another job right after they’d kissed? Was he now trying to avoid her? He probably kissed a lot of girls as a part of his job, so it couldn’t be a big deal for him anyways. Maybe he took them all on a bike ride, sang for them, then kissed them. Perhaps that was his routine to keep his damsels in distress calm while he was guarding them. But maybe he’d hated kissing her, and he couldn’t face seeing her again.

  Trying to ignore the cold feeling running down her spine, she ate her breakfast at the dining table while messaging with Martine, who was updating her on her new life and job in Norwich.

  “Mind if I join you there?” Eurus asked.

  “Feel free,” she said.

  He sat down on the chair opposite her and slid a small turquoise box across the table toward her.

  “Notus left that for you,” he said.

  Eden felt a pang of sadness. Was it a parting gift? She pulled the delicate white bow that was wrapped around the box and opened it. Then gasped at the sight of the necklace inside. It was made from a big black diamond stone in an asymmetrical shape and was fixed at its four edges to a silver, irregular triangle. Eden lifted the chain that was attached to the triangular base so the necklace hung in front of her in all of its beauty.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “It’s so beautiful!”

  Eurus craned his neck so he could see the necklace and Eden turned it to him.

  “Looks nice,” he said, nodding.

  “It’s spectacular. And it’s exactly my style,” Eden said. She took off the pendant she was wearing and put the necklace from Notus around her neck.

  “It suits you,” Eurus said.

  “It must have been so expensive, though... Why would Notus give me something so precious?” she asked, searching for the answer in Eurus’s eyes.

  He shrugged. “Money is not a problem for us. When we fell to earth, a gemstone we’d been playing with fell with us. We sold it and made a lot of money from it. It was quite big.”

  “Why were you playing with a gemstone?”

  “We’re royal dragons and we had a lot of gemstones in Ethereum, so we’d often use them as toys.”

  “You’re what?” Eden wasn’t sure she heard correctly.

  “We’re royal dragons. We’re descended from a noble clan of chameleid sky dragons,” Eurus said simply.

  Eden felt a little stupid. Why had she never spoken to Notus about any of this? She was even more confused now. So, the meathead was some sort of a royalty, a prince, or maybe even a king, with noble sky dragon blood running through his veins.

  “How did you not know that?” Eurus wrinkled his forehead. “What did you and Notus speak about for two days?”

  “Uh.” Eden hesitated. “We—”

  “Oh, right,” Eurus said, thoughtfully, apparently understanding something she hadn’t. Eden wasn’t sure what that was, but she was sure she didn’t want to ask.

  “Anyways, I was thinking of going shopping today,” she said, changing the topic.

  “Sure thing. We’ll just have to go to places where you don’t normally go. Like in a different town or whatever,” he said.

  “There’s a shopping complex on the edge of Boulder, about fifty miles away. I’ve never been there,” she said.

  Eurus nodded and raised a thumb in approval.

  “I’ll get ready,” Eden said, heading for her bedroom.

  “You don’t seem to share Notus’s passion for sexy cars,” Eden said to Eurus four hours later as they put her bags full of shopping in the trunk of the old, beat-up, navy Honda Civic he drove.

  “This is just an undercover car,” Eurus said. “We’ve got a pool of these in our underground garage. A range of the most common makes and models, in the most common colors. They blend in perfectly, so people never notice them. We use them for anonymity, as an extra precaution, in case someone is watching our regular cars.”

  “But Notus drove his regular car,” Eden said. “Why are you being more cautious now? Are things getting more dangerous?” She didn’t understand why they were taking extra measures.

  “I’m just being extra careful, that’s all,” Eurus said and started the engine.

  Eden adjusted the recline of the passenger seat to make herself comfortable. She was a little restless, random thoughts jumping around in her head. She was still a little upset about Notus leaving so abruptly. Rationally, she understood that he probably didn’t have a chance. Maybe it was urgent, and he had to leave on a short notice to work on this other case or something—but she still felt bothered that he hadn’t said goodbye.

  The necklace confused her, too. It must have cost an absolute fortune. Sure, he was a rich royal dragon, who loved expensive cars and bikes, but why would he give her such an expensive gift? Men made such grand gestures only when they had feelings for someone. Notus surely didn’t have any romantic intentions toward her at all. He’d regretted kissing her almost the moment it was over.

  Who knew where the truth lay, though. He wasn’t an ordinary man. He was half man, half dragon, and royalty on top of it all. The rules of his world must be very different to the rules of this world. Maybe dragons gave women ultra-expensive necklaces all the time. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe all of Notus’s clients had been gifted one.

  I need to stop torturing myself with these thoughts, she reminded herself. He was just a guy who worked for her father, and one day he’d be gone from her life. And all that time she’d spent analyzing what he’d done or hadn’t done would be a giant waste. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of other things to think about, like her new life in Norwich, the self-defense business she wanted to start, Axel. Yup, these were all worthier of her attention than a ridiculously hot, unattainable dragon.

  “So, what case is Notus working on?” she asked ten minutes later, her unmanageable curiosity ruining all of her good intentions.

  “A kidnapping,” Eurus said. “He’s the expert in kidnapping cases, way better than the rest of us.”

  “How is that poss
ible when he can’t even fly?” Eden blurted before she could stop herself. Her face went red and she wished she could curl up in the foot well.

  “Well, he’s very perceptive and persuasive, so he’s the best person to negotiate with kidnappers,” Eurus said thoughtfully. “But he also has psychic abilities, so he’d have visions that can lead him to the place where victims are held.”

  Eden stared at Eurus, as if she was trying to discover the truth on his face. Notus seemed to have quite a few tricks up his sleeve. First the car, then the bike, then his voice and guitar playing, and now his unrivalled perception and psychic skills. He was also an amazing kisser who chose great gifts. Interesting. He was actually nothing like the meathead she’d assumed him to be.

  “He developed his psychic skills here on Earth, so it’s a new thing,” Eurus said, as if he’d felt her confusion. “He lost his ability to fly, and at the same time got his psychic visions. So he has a bit of a love-hate attitude to it. He’s helped save quite a few people, but I think it’s always a painful reminder for him of what he’s lost. He used to be a master of the sky. Fastest flyer any of us have ever seen. And he loved it so much.”

  Eden lowered her head, overwhelmed with shame for having made fun of Notus’s inability to fly. Her jokes must have hurt him. Her heart ached at the thought of that.

  “It must be very difficult for him,” she said.

  “It is. He’s a shadow of himself right now. He used to be the jolliest person in the room. Always so bright and happy. The soul of the group. And nowadays he just seems to be full of anger and darkness.” Eurus laughed mirthlessly.

  Eden got a lump in her throat. She’d be easier on him if she saw him again. And the thought of not seeing Notus again tightened her throat even more.

  Chapter 6

  Notus

  Two miles away, Notus jumped out of his chair and slammed his palms down onto the table in front of him. “It’s not working. I can’t get to her!” he shouted, his blood boiling in his veins. “I don’t hear anything. Not a single thing.” He was speaking more to himself than to the rest of the clan, who were watching him with a mixture of alarm and concern on their faces. They were still not used to seeing his furious side. He started pacing around their Dragn Protection office in circles, clenching his fists. The room felt small and suffocating.

  “What’s going on?” Xephyr asked, his voice softer than usual.

  Notus raised his arms up. “Nothing. That’s what’s going on. Absolutely nothing.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Caden offered.

  Notus turned abruptly and pointed a finger at his red-haired friend. “You don’t think I know that?”

  Boreas stood up and spread his arms wide. “Everyone calm down,” he said. “Fighting is not the answer. The only way we can win this is if we stick together.”

  “I need some time and space,” Notus said and walked to the door. He needed to be alone.

  He took the stairs out of the building, his temples pulsing and his ears ringing. It’d already been almost a day since their client was missing, and he still didn’t have the faintest idea of what’d happened to him and where he was being held. He couldn’t connect with the Oracle at all, and every failed attempt had increased his frustration to the point where he felt like a glass balloon about ready to explode into a million pieces.

  Nature had given him his psychic power to connect and speak with the Oracle after he’d lost his ability to fly. The damage to his wing had been more traumatic than he admitted to anyone.

  When the clan had fallen to earth, he’d landed on a sharp rock which had almost cut his wing off. The sound of the impact, which he still heard in his mind sometimes, sickened him. The shock had forced him to shift into his human form, which had made the pain even more unbearable, and he’d spent the first few days drifting in and out of consciousness. The others had looked after him, bringing him water and food, and had taken turns to make sure there’d always been someone around.

  And one day, when he’d been feeling well enough to know he wasn’t hallucinating, he’d heard the voice of the Oracle telling him that Eurus had fallen with them, too, but was stranded on the other side of the island. The voice had been so real and so unmistakably hers, gravelly but with a sing-song tone. The others were doubtful, but she had turned out to be right. He’d relayed her message to Xephyr, and he and the others had gone on a search and found Eurus later that day.

  From that moment onward, Notus heard the voice of the Oracle regularly. She’d help them with their cases, warn them off things, or just share a random observation. After a while, Notus had discovered that he could get in touch with her, too. Normally, he just needed to will the communication, but sometimes it was more difficult than that, and required deeper concentration.

  So, he couldn’t fly but he could speak to the Oracle. Sure, it was a crappy tradeoff—he’d choose flying over psychic powers in a heartbeat—but he was nevertheless grateful for the gesture.

  Until now, when it seemed like his psychic abilities were abandoning him, too.

  He put on his sunglasses to shield his eyes from the setting sun and walked toward his bike. Thoughts of his bike ride with Eden flooded his mind—the way her small arms wrapped around his waist, her thighs spread and gripping his own. But they were quickly replaced by guilt, creeping up his spine. He’d had to leave in a hurry yesterday when Xephyr had called him, and he didn’t want to wake her up in the middle of the night, so he hadn’t said goodbye to her.

  He shook his head, hard. He needed to stop doing this. Everything reminded him of her and it was driving him crazy. His bike, music, work—along with things that had nothing to do with her, such as the sun and the smell of the air. What was the matter with him?

  He was also starting to suspect that his obsessive thoughts of her were interfering with his ability to connect with the Oracle. Maybe he wasn’t concentrate deeply enough or something. Which made things even worse, because the kidnapped person, the one who Notus was trying and failing to speak to the Oracle about, was Eden’s father. And the idea that something might happen to him filled Notus with horror. Not just because the guy was his client and Notus was supposed to protect him, but because his dragon was determined to protect Eden and her feelings.

  He climbed onto his bike, started the engine, and took off with a deep, throaty rumble. He decided to go on his favorite bike ride around the mountains. It was a peaceful and exhilarating route, along tree-lined roads, winding up the hills, and the combination of speed and nature always calmed him down. He could do a half an hour circuit before resuming his efforts to locate Eden’s father.

  He accelerated and tried to clear his head. The last few days had been absolute torture for him. His dragon, which had already been acting like a desperate animal, had become even more frantic after Eden admitted she didn’t have a boyfriend. As if his damn animal saw that as an invitation to mate!

  But he couldn’t lie. He’d felt relieved by the revelation, too. At the time, he’d been considering whether to take her to see her boyfriend, because it was her birthday and he wanted her to be happy, but the thought of watching her in the arms of another man had made him so cranky and snarly.

  And then, their motorbike ride yesterday, her body pressed against his so sweetly, had driven him absolutely crazy. He’d needed a very cold shower after that. And then he’d gone and kissed her. He’d lost control. What an idiot.

  But she’d returned the kiss. He’d been half expecting a slap, as feisty as she was. She’d been mad at him afterward, though. Was that because she hadn’t enjoyed it? She’d told him she didn’t want him to sleep in her room. That had hurt a bit, but he’d also been grateful since his dragon was getting all kinds of mischievous ideas, and it would have been a torture to share a room with her.

  He seriously had to stop thinking of Eden in this way. She was his client, and he couldn’t have such intentions toward her. Sure, his dragon was convinced she was his mate, but what did it know?
He was starting to think the fall to earth had somehow brought a separation between him and his animal. That would explain a few things, including its desperation around Eden and its uncontrollable, impulsive behavior.

  What he needed was a strong female dragon who knew how to tame him, whose strength would hopefully help restore his own. Eden was a very strong person, but she was a human, and he couldn’t mate with a human, so he’d better put an end to this craziness and focus on finding her father. That was his job.

  He parked his bike in front of the office building, looked at his watch, and ran up the stairs toward the office. His time was running out. He had to get through to the Oracle. There was no other option.

  Chapter 7

  Eden

  “Axel!” Eden raised her hand in the air and waved to her ex-boyfriend, who was walking on the opposite side of the busy main street. He waved back and made a signal that he’d come over to her. She dipped beneath the awning of a bookshop to protect herself from the burning mid-morning sun, in the midst of a row of shops, cafes, and restaurants.

  “That’s my...uh, friend,” she said to Eurus, unsure why she didn’t want him to know that Axel was her ex-boyfriend. Eurus was following Axel’s movements across the street with a furrowed brow, and she could tell by the expression on Eurus’s face that he wasn’t dying to meet Axel.

  When Axel reached them, he said “M’lady,” while touching the brim of his beanie. He took Eden’s right hand in his and planted a kiss on top of it in his typical theatrical manner. He was wearing black ripped jeans, and an unbuttoned red and black checkered shirt on top of a black T-shirt.