by Zoe Chant
But Nils was giving him no chance to withdraw, no quarter. They roared and tore at each other. Gunnar tasted blood in his mouth, and felt the dragging pain of injuries sapping at him. And yet, there was something freeing about it—when was the last time he'd really been able to let his bear go like this, with no chance of anyone smaller or weaker getting hurt? Their heavy fur was like armor; even their roaring, unleashed bears did relatively little damage to each other.
But he could feel himself starting to tire. Nils was slowing too—but not as quickly. This would be the make-or-break point in the fight, when they both started to make mistakes. This was when a single moment of inattention could be fatal, when the fight might yet drag on for hours or be over in seconds.
With his bear's tunnel vision focused entirely on the fight, Gunnar hardly registered his surroundings until something huge slammed into both of them, knocking them apart.
Gunnar tumbled into a clump of brush. Panting, confused, he rolled over and pushed himself up on his front legs. Nils—his fur matted with blood, one eye twisted shut—was also picking himself up, growling in fury.
Melody's dragon thumped to the ground, wings outspread and hissing angrily. "What are you doing to my mate?" she demanded. The gold chain on her neck glinted as she tossed her head.
Gunnar shifted so he could talk, wiping blood out of his eyes. Exhaustion and pain hit him hard enough to nearly knock him down again, no longer cushioned by his bear's raw strength and pain tolerance. "Melody, be careful! He's fast." Her dragon was large, compared to a bear, but he was still terrified for her. Could she take on a thousand-pound killing machine, finely honed by training and designed by nature for one purpose only? Melody had the advantage of size, and she had wings, but she was a bookworm who rarely shifted. Fighting was Nils's trade.
Nils seemed to be thinking the same thing. He growled and tensed in what Gunnar recognized as preparation for a charge.
"I'm not afraid of him," Melody declared. "And my father is on his way. If you think you can fight one dragon, bear, I'd like to see you take on two—ahh!"
As Gunnar had tried to warn her, Nils was fast. But Melody was fast, too. She flowed gracefully aside, using her wings for assistance, and Nils's attempt to snap her slender neck with his paw instead glanced off her scales. One of his claws hooked the chain. It snapped, but not before the locket was crushed against her neck.
Melody's graceful retreat turned into a lurching stumble. Gunnar smelled a sharp, bitter scent that hadn't been there a moment before. Melody was shaking her head as if she was trying to shake something off. Nils looked equally confused, looking down at his paw with the chain tangled in his claws. He shook it to free it of the glittering gold links.
"Melody?" Gunnar said, struggling to his feet. "What's wrong?"
There was really something the matter with her. He thought at first that Nils had hurt her after all, but there was no blood on her silver scales. However, her hindquarters folded and she abruptly sat down, her wings drooping. She raised one forepaw to touch her neck, and then shifted, the great silver dragon-shape collapsing into a small human woman with her fingertips tentatively brushing her throat.
"Melody?" Gunnar said again.
She turned to look at him, her eyes huge and frightened. "Gunnar ..." she said faintly, and then collapsed.
He lurched toward her, forgetting his own pain in his fear. He had no idea what had happened, but something clearly had. When he fell to his knees beside her and gathered her into his arms, she was limp and cold to the touch, her breathing fast and shallow.
"What did you do?" he shouted at Nils.
Nils lowered his head and growled. He was readying for another charge. This time Gunnar didn't know how he was going to defend her, defend them; he had to shift back, but that meant abandoning Melody, suffering from unknown injuries that had taken her down faster than anything he'd ever seen.
But he couldn't do anything less than go down fighting. He prepared for a shift. Maybe he could wait until the last minute, shift and come up from underneath when Nils charged, and get the drop on him that way—
He didn't even get the chance to try. A dark shadow floated over them, blocking the stars, and a huge dragon crashed to the ground between them, raising a cloud of dust. Gunnar had thought Melody was big, but this dragon dwarfed her. A head as big as a minivan lowered ominously toward Nils, lips drawing back from teeth like a mouthful of swords.
There was no doubt who this was. Darius, Melody had said her father's name was. Right now, Gunnar didn't care if Darius planned to kill him or save him. The important thing was that Melody was dying in his arms, her rapid breathing growing fainter.
"There's something wrong with her!" he cried frantically.
Darius turned his head and inhaled, then jerked back, his nostrils flaring. "Dragonsbane," he rumbled, and turned to look down at Nils, who had flattened his ears and bared his teeth in a snarl. "You. You dare attack my daughter, my blood."
And, without waiting for a reply, he pounced.
There wasn't even the slightest chance of Nils's survival, not with a dragon that big and that furious after him. Gunnar cried out helplessly, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't leave Melody, and anyway, he could see that even two of them together wouldn't have been a match for Darius at the height of his fighting rage; all he could have done was die along with his brother. He couldn't tell if Nils himself realized how badly he was outmatched, even at the end. As far as he could tell, his brother kept fighting right up until the last, when Darius's jaws closed over his neck and ended it with a snap.
Darius flung the body aside and whirled around. As the dragon strode toward Gunnar, who still held Melody in his arms, he shifted in mid-stride: one minute it was the huge gunmetal dragon, the next a tall man with silver-streaked dark hair and sharp, clear eyes that reminded Gunnar of a hawk.
"Wipe that stuff off her," Darius ordered sharply. He tore off his jacket and flung it at Gunnar. "I can't touch her until you do."
Gunnar hadn't even noticed there was anything on her, but liquid glistened in the hollow of her pale throat. He scrubbed at it with Darius's jacket. She was so terribly limp and still, her breathing so shallow—"What's doing this to her? Can you help her?"
"If I can get her back to my estate in time." Darius crouched beside her. "It's concentrated essence of dragonsbane. Lethal to our kind. Where did it come from? Did you know of it?"
"I've never heard of it." Gunnar refused to recoil from the menace in Darius's tone. "Whatever it was, she had it inside a necklace." He pointed to the ribbon of moon-touched gold in the churned-up soil. "That."
Darius took a stick and used it to poke at the necklace, as if investigating a venomous snake. He gave Melody another look, and Gunnar glimpsed the veiled anguish on his face. "She was wearing this?"
"Ever since I met her. At least since the first time I saw her with her neck bare." Talking about it helped distracted him from Melody's terrible stillness in his arms. He scrubbed vigorously at her neck, wishing he had water. "I thought it was a keepsake."
"It was," Darius murmured, "but not hers." He turned abruptly. "That should be enough. At least, it must be, if I have any hope of saving her. Give her to me."
Gunnar's bear snarled defensively. Only we can protect our mate! Human reasoning overruled it; if Melody had any chance, it was with someone who knew what had happened to her and how to fix it. Gunnar carefully transferred her into her father's arms, and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes, steel gray meeting clouded blue. They might not have anything at all in common, but the one thing they did have was the one thing that mattered: they both loved this woman, in their own ways.
"Can you take me with her?" Gunnar asked.
Darius shook his head. "I can fly faster alone. Anyway, that panther son of mine is on your trail. I saw him from the air; he'll be here soon."
With that he shifted, so deftly that Melody's hair hardly stirred as the human arms holding her be
came a dragon's front legs. Gunnar stepped back as Darius launched himself skyward with a tremendous downbeat of his massive wings.
Gunnar stood watching the dragon dwindle in the night sky. It almost felt as if he could feel his connection to Melody, like a silver chain binding them, stretching as the distance between them grew, but never breaking. Not even death could do that.
Hold on, love. Hold on.
A crashing in the brush announced Ben's arrival. The panther trotted out of the woods and paused, taking in the scene—Nils's body, the torn-up brush and other evidence of the fight, Darius's discarded jacket—with his cool, luminous golden stare before shifting back to his two-legged form. "So," he said laconically. His sharp gaze took in Gunnar's battered condition. "You need a hospital?"
Gunnar shook his head. "I'll heal." Wordlessly, he held out his hands, wrists together.
"And what's that for?"
"Handcuffs."
Ben spread out his arms. He was as naked as Gunnar. "Does it look like I have handcuffs on me?"
Gunnar might have smiled if he hadn't been so worried. If he wanted to escape, he knew, this was his chance. Ben didn't have weapons or a phone, and both his shifted and human forms were smaller than Gunnar's.
But he didn't have the slightest desire to do that. Instead, he crouched beside the broken necklace and picked it up carefully. The bitter smell was stronger this close. Turning it to the minimal light of the sliver-thin moon, he examined the twisted catch of the locket, the smashed pieces of whatever had been inside.
"What's that?" Ben asked, bending over his shoulder. Then he jerked away, coughing.
Gunnar waved him back. "You're part dragon, right? Better not touch this. It's poison to you guys."
Ben bent over, hands on his knees, through a violent coughing fit. "I'll say," he managed at last, stepping back. "That's dragonsbane, isn't it? Wait—" He sucked in a sharp breath and suppressed another cough. "Melody and Dad."
"Melody got it on her," Gunnar said heavily. He stared at the locket, not at Ben. "Your dad took her somewhere. Said he might be able to help her. She was still breathing, last I saw." His voice trailed away.
"If you had anything to do with this ..." The panther's growl underlay Ben's words.
"Not me."
"Your brother?"
Gunnar shook his head. "She had it on her. Melody."
"Wait." Ben sounded thoroughly puzzled. Gunnar looked up. "My sister was carrying around dragonsbane? It's lethal! No dragon would want to come within a mile of that stuff. Why?"
Gunnar lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug. "I don't know. Guess you don't either."
"I have no idea." Ben pointed to the discarded jacket. "Wrap it in that and leave it here. Derek can dispose of it later. With Tessa carrying a part-dragon child, I don't even want to risk getting it on me, let alone anywhere near her."
Gunnar nodded and obeyed. Meanwhile, Ben went over to inspect Nils's body. "Dad, I'm guessing?" he asked, bending over to examine the wounds.
"Yeah. He was pretty upset about Melody."
"He's not the only one."
The growl was back. Gunnar chose not to point out that Ben's panther probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes against Nils's bear. It didn't matter now.
Nothing mattered, without Melody.
He stayed on his knees, staring at the coat-wrapped bundle, until a hand settled on his shoulder. Startled, he looked up at Ben.
"C'mon. Let's go." Ben prodded at him. "Probably easier to head back if we shift. I don't look forward to a naked hike in the woods, do you?"
"And then what?" It was strangely difficult to care about anything, knowing that Melody hovered on death's doorstep and there wasn't anything he could do about it. His brother was dead; he still couldn't wrap around it, couldn't sort out any of the things he was feeling. "Am I under arrest?"
"Not right now." Ben's voice was gentle. "After we get back to the farmhouse and get cleaned up, I'll take you up to Darius's place. I expect Tessa's going to want to be with Melody, anyway. Derek can handle things here." He glanced at the heap of immobile white fur that had been Nils. "Any requests for what you want done with your brother's body?"
Gunnar shuddered and shook his head.
"Since he died as a bear," Ben said, "there's no way to prove to the authorities that he's actually dead. I guess he'll just remain at large indefinitely. As for the body ... there'll be time to figure that out." He held out a hand. "Let's go."
Gunnar let Ben help him to his feet. Ben shifted, and Gunnar followed suit a moment later, the slim black panther and the big white bear.
If Melody survived, Ben was going to be his brother-in-law. It looked like Ben was starting to come to terms with that.
And if Melody didn't survive ...
Well, in that case, he didn't really care what happened to him, after.
Chapter Fourteen: Melody
There was heat and cold in waves; there was pain, but distant and muffled, as if she was somewhere far away from where her body was. There were voices. She thought she heard her father, and Tessa and Ben. Of the other voice—the one she strained to hear, the one she wanted to hear most—there was no sign.
He'd survived, surely? Fear penetrated her hazy half-awake state, and she struggled to claw her way back to the waking world.
Instead, she clawed her way ... somewhere else.
Melody found herself standing on an endless plain made of fine gray sand that shifted under her slippered feet. The sky was dark, with no stars.
Her dragon sat before her, on its haunches like a dog, silver head upraised and intelligent gray eyes fixed on her.
Melody gazed up at it, awed. She'd never actually seen her dragon before, except from the inside, and its beauty took her breath away. There was grace and power in every clean line of its body, and a predator's cool appraisal in the way its alien eyes studied her.
She'd never quite realized how alien it was before. Other shifters, most of them, shifted into beasts that had real, Earth analogues. They might be larger and more intelligent, but fundamentally they were bears or wolves or dolphins or honey badgers, just like their normal, wild equivalents.
But there was nothing else like dragons on Earth. The only dragons were the shifter kind like Melody and her clan.
For the first time, she thought to wonder, Where did we come from? Who are we? Are there non-shifter dragons somewhere, under some alien sun?
Her dragon spoke then, in a musical voice like a pipe organ, somehow different from the way it sounded when her own voice spoke in those fluting tones. It sounded accusing. "You wanted to banish me."
Guilt slapped her in the face: guilt not just for herself and her dragon, but also for Gunnar. "Not you," she protested. "Never you."
"Gunnar then?" her dragon asked.
"No!" she protested. Her gaze dropped to the sand underfoot; she couldn't meet its eyes. "It was me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "My fear. My pride. I just wanted a choice."
"And if you could choose now?"
There was a curious timbre to her dragon's voice. She looked up at it.
"Is it true what they say about dragonsbane?" she asked. "Can it break the mate bond?"
"It might. Is that what you want?"
The answer came back to her in the form of memories: Gunnar's sure hands on her body, his warm laugh, the shy way he'd opened up about things he'd never discussed with anyone before. All his courage, his heart, his love, all waiting for her.
"No," she said firmly. "If there is a choice, I choose him. Now, today, and every day. Forever."
"Good," her dragon said, sounding pleased.
It settled down on the sand, folding its great legs under it the way Melody had done for Gunnar to mount on her back. She hadn't realized how catlike it looked from the outside. The dragon seemed to be waiting, so Melody went up to it and laid her hand on the silver neck, feeling the pulse of its heartbeat beneath the scales. It felt real. She felt real. Nothi
ng else here felt real at all, but this was real, she thought.
"I like being able to talk to you like this, face to face," she said, a bit shyly. "I like being able to see more of you than just what I can glimpse out of the corner of my eye."
Her dragon nudged her face with the tip of its great snout, which turned out to be unexpectedly warm and soft. "I am you," it said. Its voice was fond and indulgent. "I'm your courage and your secret hidden heart. I'm the fierce part of you and the jealous part of you. I'm the part of you that stands up when everything else falls down."
"Someone's a little full of herself," Melody teased, pushing playfully at the graceful silver neck as she might have shoved her brother when they were children.
Her dragon laughed, a soft laugh for such a huge creature. It was a familiar laugh, Melody realized, because it was her own. "I think you should wake up now. There are others who would like to see you. But remember, I'm part of you. I'll never be farther away than your own soul."
It nuzzled against her face, and then her eyes snapped open, and she woke up.
Her body dragged at her, aching and heavy. She had to blink a few times, trying to clear her vision, and finally raised her hand to her face before she understood that her vision wasn't going to clear; she didn't have her glasses on.
For the first time she realized she hadn't been wearing them in the dream—or vision, whatever it was. She'd been able to see perfectly clearly without them.
Oh well. I guess dreams don't have to follow real-world logic.
"Melody?" a voice said. A moment later, Tessa's blurry face loomed in her vision. "Melody! You're awake! Can you hear me? Can you sit up?"
Too pliant to offer resistance, Melody let Tessa help her to a sitting position. Her friend fussed around her, propping pillows behind her back and bringing her a glass of water. She didn't have to ask where she was; despite the blurring, she recognized the glitter of gold everywhere and the lush opulence of the bed, which was big enough to accommodate four people. She had to be at Darius's mansion.