His claws closed around her middle and her feet left the ground. Her heart beat a little faster and she let her confusion take a back seat. She didn’t think about the curly haired dragon man or the bond that didn’t seem to fill her heart with love like she thought it would.
There had been a time when she and Ken were happy as friends. She’d been young and so happy to have a friend among all the dragons. She’d introduced Kenji to video games and the online communities for them. She’d introduced him to frozen yogurt bars and the fun of filling the cups with as much candy as possible.
Then, she made the foolish mistake of sleeping with him. Kenji said that was when he first realized the mate bond. Who was Quinn to question that? She knew nothing about the magic of dragons.
When her feet touched ground again, she stumbled a bit. Her head was light and still spinning from her confusion. Was there any way to drown it out, she wondered? Was there a way to ignore her life for a few days?
Immediately, she turned toward the bike parked in Ken’s driveway.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked behind her.
Quinn paused. “I need to clear my head… before we start in on exposing GOE. I need some time.”
The silence behind her was telling. She knew he wanted to ask questions, wanted to drag her inside and try to make things the way they were before he told her the truth. Before he told her they were mates.
Quinn didn’t give him the chance. She jammed her helmet onto her head and kicked the stand up. There was no map leading her in any particular direction. There was no beacon that beckoned her into the distance. Quinn would just drive until she felt her mind clear. If she had to, she would crash at a cheap motel for the night. It would give her the space she needed.
“Remember, when the bugs are flying in your face at 60 miles an hour to avoid the honey bees. Do your part to save the planet,” Kenji said with a half-smile, as if he knew she was running away from him. His brand of humor was not lost on her.
With the dark visor over her eyes, she gave Kenji one last glance. In that moment, Quinn wished she could give him what he wanted from her. The dragon beside her was a good man, a dragon who deserved to become a leader, who could make the world around him smile. Kenji was a good friend. He deserved to be loved in return.
Quinn tried imagining swerving around each insect she passed and laughed. “I’ll think of your request when I’m flying over the guard rails for a bee.”
Kenji smiled. There was an echo of the love she once felt for him, that soul crushing fall that happened when they first met, but it was an empty feeling. The rumble of the motorcycle’s engine filled her ears. Kenji’s lips moved, but she couldn’t hear what else he had to say as she sped away.
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Chapter Two
Quinn decided to give Ken another chance. This did not mean being with him. She wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment because she knew once she took that step, he would never let her get far. Her aunt’s mate had been much like that, although her aunt seemed much happier about the situation. No, Quinn decided she would try to spend more time with Kenji.
As of late, she’d only visited with him for a few moments at a time, trying to rekindle the friendship they once had until he became too intimate with her and she ran away. The longest she’d spent with Ken had been the trip to the American Dragon Territory, and that had been with him in his water dragon form for most of it.
“Lunch?” Ken asked, almost hesitant. He was aware of Quinn’s flighty habit, too.
She nodded, her stomach dancing nervously. If Ken said they were mates, she would try to trust him. Time was all they needed. “Yes, lunch. I thought we could grab a bite to eat before you lead the American dragons here.”
“I take it that means you aren’t coming with me.”
She wanted to fly again, but if all she did with Kenji were the things that caused a thrill to snake through her heart, then she was afraid she would get more and more confused. The two emotions, thrill and love, might become interchangeable after time and she wasn’t sure that would be healthy. Especially for her.
“I have things to do around here before the American dragon decrypts the files we have. It could take some time.”
“Lunch it is then,” Kenji said as he nodded. Quinn noticed that he was keeping his hands in his pockets, even if he did walk a little too close to her. “What did you have in mind?”
Her stomach rumbled and the list of local restaurants she’d found danced through her mind. “How about sushi?”
Kenji raised an eyebrow as he looked down at her. It took a moment for her request to sink in, but when it did she laughed.
“Just because I’m Japanese does not automatically mean I love sushi.”
Quinn smiled, the gesture feeling real for the first time in a while. “We can pick something else, then.”
He shook his head and the look he gave her afterwards made her a little uncomfortable. It was the kind of look that said she could get whatever she wanted. There was no friction because he was ready to hand her the world on a silver platter. Her stomach danced. Was that how this was supposed to work? Were dragon men supposed to bend to their mate’s every whim?
“Sushi is fine.”
It took some convincing to get Ken on the bike. He looked at it with clear hesitation until Quinn told him he could change shape if there was an accident. His dragon scales would protect him. Besides, his dragon healing made just about any accident an easy bounce back for him. She was the one who really should have been worried each time she threw her leg over the seat.
Eventually, Ken got onto the back of the bike, a helmet sandwiched over his head. With the engine roaring beneath them, she couldn’t hear his words of protest as the bike leaned from side to side. She didn’t hear him tell her she should be more careful with her own life. She didn’t hear him say he wouldn’t let her ride this every day if he had his way.
The sushi restaurant Quinn found a few days ago was a small business sandwiched between a postal store and a pizza place. Quinn pointed toward the pizza parlor and told Ken he could get that if he really wanted, but he seemed dead set on sharing a meal with her and declined her offer.
Inside, they sat at the counter in the nearly empty sushi bar. There was only a man behind the counter, laying covered containers onto a conveyor belt, and a couple seated in the far corner booth.
As she reached for the container labeled Crunchy California Roll, she spoke. “Do you think the family will ever try to unify with the American dragons?”
Ken paused, his eyes on the rotating conveyor belt while he thought. Quinn glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She knew how to extract information from people, even if they didn’t want to give it up. She thought there might be another reason for contacting the American dragons. The family could have gone to anyone to have the files decrypted. It wasn’t a matter of trust because they knew the American dragons just about as well as anyone else in the world.
“I can’t say that the council hasn’t thought about it,” Ken admitted. “It would give some a more stable environment. You know how some of the more broken dragons have trouble adjusting with each move.”
“We’ve been all over the country so far. The family is never in any one place long enough for those dragons to adjust.”
“Exactly, if they were given the choice to integrate with the American dragons and live on the government Territory, then they might have a better life.”
Quinn had a feeling that contacting the American dragons was about much more than the mental health of a small handful of their dragons. The family they lived in had done well enough helping those dragons up until this point.
“Their leader seems… easy going.”
Kenji tore the lid off his sushi choice. Quinn couldn’t help but laugh. He�
��d managed to find a burger sushi roll. The center was filled with ground burger, cheese, and onions. The sauce drizzled over it looked more like the sauce burger chains used than the spicy mayo she loved.
“I am surprised that man has kept control of the largest group of dragons in the country,” Kenji admitted. “He doesn’t strike me as the type. Sure, he’s a big man, but he treated his dragons like his friends. He didn’t even scold the curly haired dragon for speaking out of turn.”
The curly haired dragon. Quinn’s mind returned to him, the image frozen like a snapshot. His eyes had bored through her and she could have sworn she saw infinity in them.
“Quinley? You there?”
She sucked in a breath, coming back to the surface that was reality. Kenji was staring at her, a soy sauce bottle in his extended hand. He raised his brows while concern flitted across his eyes.
“Sorry,” she said, taking the offered bottle. “I was thinking about everything I need to get done.”
It took her a moment to realize he’d used her given name. As she chided him for it, she realized her moment to dig for information had passed. If she kept pressing, she feared he would catch on. Ken wasn’t dumb by any means. His brains might not be the first thing he thinks of using, often relying on his charm and strength to get through just about anything, but he wasn’t a meat head.
Quinn had questions that she needed to understand. Why were the leaders just now contacting a group of dragons they’d long known existed? Quinn understood why the Avilas had requested the American Territory family keep the twins away. Their situation was always a precarious one after the experiments. Quinn shivered, thinking about it.
The dragon man beside her had undergone similar experiments after being taken from his parents at a young age. He was able to get out fairly quickly with the help of their family’s leaders, but not before he was cut open. Other dragons had not been so lucky. Some had spent decades in the captivity of GOE scientists. Others never left the facility.
They had to do something about the state of the Guardians in America. It was good to see that something had already begun because of the Avila boy and his mate.
***
Isaac had been doing well with distracting himself. He tracked the nearby storms as they moved across the states and took to the gym Luc had set up in the modular home. Lifting weights helped Isaac expend the energy buzzing through his muscles. It kept him out of the skies, kept him from flying directly to Quinn as if he had any idea of where she might be.
One storm in particular had Isaac concerned. It raged to the west of the Territory, roiling and preparing to strike. It was charged with power, many meteorologists asking people to evacuate their homes or, at the very least, stay inside until the beast of a storm passed over.
Isaac knew he should head into the skies and direct the storm somewhere it wouldn’t hurt anyone. No one knew what it was about Isaac that made this happen, but storms liked to follow him. They tracked him like lost puppies or spurned lovers. Most times, he liked to take the storms to the desert in the southwestern states and watch them fizzle out and die.
Not too long ago, he’d made the trip from the airport to the Territory without checking the weather radar beforehand. It caused them to run into a storm heading across the Midwest. Had they known about it, had they checked the could have dodged it and the Avila brothers could have used their control over the winds to push the storm away. Meeting Isaac had given it the power to amplify itself and lightning had struck Marc.
He still felt awful. That feeling had kept him grounded for the past two weeks.
“I don’t need to go,” Isaac said, shrugging off the dire need to go. Not only did he crave the skies again, he wanted to see Quinn again. He wanted to see her smile and toss her hair over her shoulder. He wanted to feel the storm inside of him lean in her direction.
Dane studied Isaac’s feigned indifference before shaking his head. Could the leader see through Isaac so easily? “We need you to help decrypt the files they have. Then, Quinn the water dragon’s mate can help us take what we have to the media.”
No, it seemed Dane had not completely seen through Isaac’s charades. Unable to deny the need any longer, Isaac packed up his laptop and various cords and external hard-drives to follow his leader.
“Shit,” Isaac snapped. “I guess I forgot about that.”
“You forgot that what the other family needs was something only you could do?”
Isaac ignored his leader’s pointed gaze. As much as Dane tried to catch Isaac’s eye, the storm dragon managed to avoid it.
She has a mate, Isaac reminded himself when the image of Quinn ran though his mind once more.
Lies, the beast hissed inside Isaac’s mind. The creature’s voice was often short and sweet, hitting the nail on the head when Isaac took the long way around.
Unable to respond to his beast’s inability to accept the hand fate had dealt them. Quinn was a beautiful woman, that was for sure, but she was not the woman fate had given them. It didn’t matter what the feeling in his stomach told him.
“Or, did you purposefully put it out of your mind?”
Isaac ignored his leader’s digging comments and questions. He would not get what he wanted out of this dragon. Instead, he asked, “Should we bring another dragon? You know, for more security?”
Dane threw a glance over his shoulder, thin tendrils of violet smoke leaking from his nostrils as he raised an eyebrow.
Right, boss.
Dane’s gift was a toxic gas that, in small doses, could knock a dragon out for hours. In larger doses, it could poison a dragon to the point of death. It was a great help against crowds. Besides, the only other dragons they would have brought with them had been barred from visiting the family.
That had been a fun experience. Upon hearing the news, Luc had fallen into a heap. It was just about what Isaac expected. From the outside, Luc looked like the unpredictable dragon, but Isaac had lived with them for too long. It’d been Marc who picked up the nearest item and chucked it across the room. The sound of ceramic shattering hadn’t satisfied the dragon man so he’d stormed to his bedroom, Luc and Isaac listening to the crashing thunder from the living area.
A familiar, wingless dragon touched ground before them. Kenji didn’t bother shifting shapes. Instead, he used his tail to beckon them forward. Isaac had taken precautions. He’d checked the weather radar, double and triple checked it even. The big storm still raged to the west of them, but if the flight was quick, it wouldn’t take notice of him.
Isaac found that he was disappointed when he didn’t see the blonde with the wing-less dragon. Where was Quinn? Isaac had assumed she would be crucial in their joint project, considering her profession as a journalist.
Isaac let his dragon form slip forth. The beast inside him yawned and stretched, happy to be given power for the first time in a while. The large form took a moment to adjust to, the world brighter as his dragon eyes picked up the electrical currents coursing through the world.
His scales automatically changed color to reflect the shades of the sky. He glanced up, seeing the blue expanse above him. The scales across the back of his knuckles slowly shifted from stormy gray to a pale blue. He shook out his wings, reveling in the feeling of the air moving through them. It had been too long since he let his beast take to the skies. It was safer that way, but it didn’t mean he liked it.
The massive, black scaled beast before him that was Isaac’s leader took a moment to look back before his own wings beat against the air. The wingless creature didn’t have to catch wind like Dane and Isaac had to. He simply coiled up into the air while Isaac and Dane had to get a small, running start before the wind caught them and lifted them.
Isaac often compared it to a mother lifting her child. It was an analogy he never shared with anyone. Perhaps it was a memory trying to get past the wall erected in his mind. He had a feeling he might never know. The wall seemed impenetrable. All Isaac knew were the paths of storms and t
hat his new family was as good as any blood family.
They followed the wing-less dragon across the skies, time ticking away. Isaac saw Dane taking in the scenery, tracking the ground beneath them to tell where they were. This was their country and they knew it like the back of their hands. But, time ticked on and Isaac lost track of how many miles had passed beneath them.
A settlement came into view. It was one of those new construction sites, the beginning of a gated community. When the people on the streets paused and looked into the skies, they didn’t run screaming or start pointing into the air. This was where the second dragon family was hiding.
The landing was about as smooth as it could be when their landing zone was a round cul-de-sac street. Isaac was forced to drop his too large dragon form and hit the ground with human feet. His run was too fast, though, and his feet tangled beneath him until his body lurched forward and he fumbled into a roll.
The world spun into a blur until he crashed into something else. It fell down with him, a heap of a disaster. Until the thing he crashed into started to laugh. It was a familiar, tinkling bell of a laugh. The sound became contagious. Laughter bubbled through him and erupted into the world while he laid on his back in the grass. His hands gravitated toward the woman tangled in his limbs.
The world could have ended right then and there. Her hands moved over his chest and her face appeared over him, haloed by the sun behind her. His breath caught in his chest and his hand slipped over hers as if he could keep her from leaving. The moment was perfection, a thing Isaac had never known in his sloppy life.
Then her eyes slipped upward and her smile fell. Faster than Isaac could recover, she slipped from his gasp and disappeared. Isaac was left empty handed and wanting.
“Get off the ground, you buffoon.” Dane’s voice bit out the sharp command that had Isaac rolling to his feet.
The Dragon's Lover (Elemental Dragons Book 2) Page 3