Maks grabbed Ivan from behind and heaved him away from us, then tackled him when he tried to scramble away. The flames had risen to engulf most of the room, and I lost sight of the two of them as soon as they moved away.
My clothes were burning now, too, but I fought down my instinctive fear and reminded myself that with Maks’s fire inside me, it couldn’t hurt me. Michael burrowed into my shoulder, but didn’t flinch away from the heat. Zach was wailing as the fire engulfed him—the sight was horrifying, but it only took a heartbeat to tell that the baby was scared, not hurt. Neither one of them seemed affected by the flames any more than I was. I wanted to get them out of the room, away from Ivan and the destruction around me, but it was hard to see through the heat.
“You are weak,” I heard Ivan say to Maks disdainfully, his voice coming out in grunts mixed with the sounds of fighting. “So concerned for a human who has already served his purpose.”
And then I heard the roar of my mate, and the crashing of glass as the french doors shattered. The flames around me roared with new life as the sea air rushed in to feed them.
29
~ Maksim ~
I flung my brother out onto the balcony, ignoring the sting from the broken glass as I dove after him. A part of me knew that his fire couldn’t hurt my family, but the rage that had filled me when he went after them made it hard to think rationally. Ivan didn’t know that Devin and been safe, and he’d put his hands on my son.
I’d told Ben not to kill him, but there was a moment as I followed him outside when it would have been easy to forget that.
Ivan was still in his human form as I shifted, and I clutched his smaller, human body in my claws and leapt off the balcony for the second time that night, winging toward the open ocean. Not thinking clearly enough to know what I wanted to do with him, other than the immediate need to get him away from the people who mattered to me.
“Devin is my mate,” I hissed at him, anger still surging through me at his callous disregard for my family. “He doesn’t ‘serve a purpose.’ I love him.”
“Our kind doesn’t ‘love,’” my brother scoffed, wriggling away from me as he shifted into his otherself. He was too fast for me to grab hold of—my claws barely grazing him as he twisted away. He didn’t go far, though, stopping to hover in front of me—just out of reach—the moonlight picking silver glints from his darker hide. “And you’re right, love is not a purpose. That is your weakness.”
I knew that the dragons he’d known didn’t value love, they saw the accumulation of power and territory as their only purpose. If Dane hadn’t shown me a different way to live, I could have become one of them, never knowing the true friendship of men I admired—not recognizing the love fate intended for me when it came my way. I shuddered at the thought. Ivan had been taught only contempt for the kind of relationships I was blessed with.
“You’re wrong. Love is my strength,” I told him quietly, all the anger draining out of me as I realized how thoroughly I’d failed him. “If I had been able to save you, Ivan, you would have grown up knowing that.”
“‘Save’ me?” he repeated in a mocking voice. “You?”
“Our sire didn’t tell you? When you were born, I… tried. I was there when he pulled you from your human father’s body. As soon as I found out about you, I came for you. I wanted to rescue you from the life he intended for you.”
He laughed coldly. “Then you are a hypocrite as well as a weakling. You wanted the same thing I do now—but your reasons were as weak as your effort. Our sire was right. Your hatchlings will be better off if they are raised to understand their true legacy of strength and power. Your softness will only pollute them.”
His words were ugly, but his disdain didn’t hurt me. It made me pity him… and feel guilty. He deserved better than the life I’d left him to.
“If you had succeeded,” Ivan spat. “I would be—”
“You would be happy,” I cut him off. “You would be surrounded by people who care about you. About you, Ivan, not just about what you can do to preserve a ‘legacy.’ You would have friends, and you would know that there’s someone out there who is fated for you, just like Devin is for me.”
“I don’t need ‘fate’ to find a human when I need one.”
“But only fate can find you the one that you really need, brother.” I sighed, knowing he didn’t believe me. I wasn’t going to convince him to change a lifetime of belief in one night. “You won’t succeed here, Ivan,” I said forcefully. “You can’t. Go home.”
I felt his surge of anger at my dismissal, and it was enough warning that when he dove toward me, flaming with his claws extended, I was able to dodge and knock him aside. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he had to know I wasn’t going to let him get past me again.
“I don’t give up as easily as you, brother,” he snarled. “I didn’t expect you would just let me fly away with your hatchling. Our sire did tell me about your failed attempt to take me when I was born. He told me that you were too weak to stand against him. That is what your ‘love’ gets you. You made the choice to run, instead of fight. You abandoned me, when you could have killed him.”
I grimaced, thinking back to that long-ago confrontation. I’d been young, and heart-broken to discover that the cost of my new brother’s life was a human one. At the time, I’d done my best to fight for him, but my sire’s experience and callous brutality had overwhelmed me. Even with Dane at my side, we hadn’t been able to stand against him without the cost becoming too high.
“Killing him wouldn’t have been as easy as all that, Ivan. And not just physically. He outmaneuvered us, both in his fighting skill and in his willingness to hurt others—humans—to manipulate us. I tried, but… I’m truly sorry I didn’t do more.”
“Don’t be. I’m grateful you failed,” he said, glaring at me. “If you had taken me, I would now share your weakness—but I don’t. I never expected you to give up your hatchling without a fight. I came fully prepared to kill you, ‘brother.’”
He was lying, but I wondered if he knew it. I could feel a deeper truth underneath his harsh bravado, a yearning that had him hovering here trading words instead of attacking me again. A longing for something that he didn’t believe in and wouldn’t let himself acknowledge.
I wondered if he knew that this bond existed between us, and that it told me so much that he wouldn’t say. I had never realized it, and it was possible that he wasn’t conscious of it, either… although now that I knew it existed I had no doubt it was what had led him to me.
“You’re not going to kill me,” I said confidently. “And it’s time for you to leave.”
“You’re wrong,” he roared, launching himself at me.
He knocked into my wing, throwing me off balance, and slashed at my head with his front claws. I flamed at him, jerking out of his grasp, and succeeded in loosening his hold enough to twist away. He went for my head again, trying to wrench my jaws open, and I realized with a start what he was trying to do. Our dragon bodies healed so quickly that we were virtually indestructible… in all areas but one. He knew where I was vulnerable, and even though I wanted to believe that he wouldn’t go through with it, he was trying to attack the one spot that could kill me.
I dove at him, shredding his hide as I ripped at his underbelly. It wouldn’t kill him—I didn’t want to—but I was determined to inflict enough damage to get my point across. He grunted, instinctively folding in on himself in protection, and I went after his wings, piercing the tough membrane and driving him back with every slash.
“Leave,” I said, refusing to let up.
“Weakling,” he gasped. “You know this isn’t going to stop me.”
“It will, brother,” I said, whipping my spiked tail across his eyes as I continued to attack him with claws and teeth and the sheer force of my determination. “You have become what you are because I failed you once, but I won’t do it again. I will never give up on you. Someday you’ll remember that I chose to stop you
this way, rather than kill you. I want you to live, and someday, when your destiny finds you, I want you to remember what you found here, and what you can have, if you let yourself.”
“You have nothing that I want,” he spat.
He pushed away from me, his shredded wings laboring, and I didn’t follow. I half expected him to attack me again, but with a muttered oath, he turned and sped toward the open ocean. A glittering rain of scales trailed in his wake, and the sight gave me a moment of concern, knowing how much damage I’d inflicted. Yes, he would heal, but if he was really leaving, he had a long flight across the Atlantic ahead of him.
I tentatively pushed my mind toward him. It felt different than my bond with Devin. With my mate, I could feel everything. His thoughts became mine, his feelings were inside me, his heartbeat felt closer than my own. With Ivan, it was a subtler sense, and not an automatic “knowing” as it was with Devin. I had to try to reach him… and as soon as he felt me trying, he blocked me.
But I was willing to bet he could still hear me.
I’m not giving up on you, I reminded him. And then, even though I suspected it was a wasted sentiment, I added, Be safe, brother.
For a moment there was silence. Maybe I had been wrong, and the bond didn’t work the way I thought. But then I heard him.
My safety is not your concern, мудак.
With that final insult, he shut me out. Still, now that I’d discovered the bond, I retained a faint sense of him even after he blocked me. He wouldn’t be able to surprise me again.
As much as I wished things could be different between us, I was glad he was gone for the moment. I longed to be back with my mate, to hold my children and put our lives back in order. But someday, under other circumstances, I hoped to see my brother again.
He was family, too.
30
~ Devin ~
Ben had hustled me downstairs and managed to put the fire out, but the master bedroom was a total loss. He offered to sleep in the nursery with the boys so Maks and I could take the guest room he’d been using, and he went to prepare it for us while I took care of the babies.
I stripped off the scorched remnants of their clothing as soon as I could and went over every inch of them. Their dragon blood seemed to have protected them from the fire, but I couldn’t quell my instinct as a parent to see for myself. Michael patiently sucked on his fist while I fussed over him, then promptly went to sleep when I put him down. I could already tell he was destined to be an easy baby.
Zach was a different story. Even after knowing him for just one day, I trusted that his current crankiness had more to do with his personality than with any harm from the fire, but I still needed to make sure. He was restless, and quick to fuss—“Energetic,” Ben had labeled it indulgently—and as he squirmed and twisted away while I tried to wash and dress him, I frowned. I didn’t see any damage from the fire, but he had a faint mark on his shoulder in the shape of Ivan’s grip.
I kept trying to get Zach to hold still long enough to get a good look at it, but he wasn’t making that easy. The skin on his shoulder was discolored. I was sure it hadn’t been that way before, but it didn’t seem to bother him. It definitely wasn’t a burn or a bruise. When the light caught it there was a silvery glint to his skin that reminded me of Maks’s hide. And Ivan’s.
Eventually I gave up worrying about it and got him to sleep. The fuss had been distracting enough that I hadn’t worried too much about Maks, and by the time I was free to, he was already back.
I’d known that he wouldn’t let Ivan harm us, and I wanted to ask what had happened, but I let my curiosity go as I felt his need for me—his need to feel connected after having both found and lost his brother in such a short window of time. Questions could wait.
“The boys?” Maks asked as he came to me and pulled me into his arms. He knew that they were okay—our bond saw to that—but I could tell that he wanted the reassurance of hearing me say it.
“Both fine, and sleeping.” I would tell him about the mark on Zach’s shoulder later. “Ben is with them in the nursery. We’ll take the guest room tonight.”
Maks nodded, taking my hand and pulling me up the stairs with a grateful smile. He grimaced as we walked past the remains of our bedroom, and as soon as we entered the guest room he closed the door and pulled me against him.
“I can still feel him,” he said, and I knew he meant Ivan. “He feels so… empty. He didn’t think you were important, Dev. He didn’t understand that I could love you, rather than just use you. I’m afraid that the way he’s been taught to think of humans is going to condemn him to being forever lonely. He can’t even think of other dragons in terms of anything but a threat, and I doubt he’d be able to recognize his own fated mate if the man was standing right in front of him. I abandoned him to that life. I left him with our sire. I let him get brainwashed into a life of being so alone. It’s my fault.”
I covered his mouth with my hand, shaking my head. “It’s not your fault, Maks,” I corrected him, pushing through our bond so he could feel that it was true. “You were young, and you did your best. You weren’t the one who taught him to be that way, but you can be the one who shows him that there’s another option. Your lives are long. Don’t give up on him yet.”
“Our lives,” he reminded me, smiling down at me even though I could still feel a lingering sadness inside him. “Our lives are long.” He pulled me closer, resting his head on top of mine. “I know you’re right, love. I just wish it could be different for him. And I told him the same thing, that I won’t give up on him, but… it could have been me. He’s living the life my sire intended for me.”
I shuddered, and he tightened his arms around me.
“The thought of never finding you, of not having you… I can’t imagine it,” he went on. “If anything ever happened to you, Dev, I wouldn’t want to go on.”
I got a lump in my throat. I felt the same, and I’d never been as grateful to know that his fire truly did bind us together. As long as one of our hearts beat, so would the other. “You’ll never have to,” I reminded him. “You know I’m yours.”
“I’ve known it since the first time I saw you, love,” he said, and I could feel his gloom lift as he teased me. “I know you’re mine, and my dragon knows it, too. If I remember correctly, you didn’t seem to know it, at first.”
“I knew it, I just couldn’t admit it,” I insisted, laughing. “You can’t hold that against me—I was married. And I love you for respecting that, Maks, and for waiting for me.”
“I’m glad the waiting is over,” he said, his teasing smile turning into something hotter.
“And I’m glad this fated mate thing includes such fast recovery time,” I said, my pulse starting to race. I’d been big with the pregnancy for so long that I’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be in his arms, pressed flat against the hard planes of his chest. His heart beat under my cheek as I leaned against him, and I savored the delicious feel of his cock hardening against my stomach.
“Are you sure you’re really recovered, love?” he asked, concern flashing across his face as he sensed my rising excitement.
If I’d been human, it would have been impossible so soon after giving birth, but his fire had restored my body almost as soon as he’d taken the babies from me. And I was sure. I was very, very sure. I wanted him. I needed him—and I loved knowing that he needed me, too.
As soon as I nodded up at him, he gave in with a groan, pushing me gently to my knees.
He’d come straight to me after shifting, still naked from the change, and I let the last of my lingering fears fall away as I lost myself in the pleasure of his hard body under my hands as I sank down in front of him. He was here, and he was safe, and we had a lifetime stretching ahead of us. A long lifetime, as he’d reminded me.
I rubbed my cheek against the silken hardness of his cock, breathing in the musky scent that I loved. His tip was already leaking, and I swirled my tongue around the head, lapping up the
salty evidence of his arousal as his fingers worked through my hair, finding purchase.
Maks rarely came in my mouth—usually he stopped me when he got close, preferring to fuck me. Normally, I had no objection to that, but this time I wanted to taste him, to give him the chance to let go completely, with no holding back. As much as I loved it when he took control, this time I wasn’t going to give it to him until I got my way.
I licked my way down his shaft, cupping his balls as his hips started swaying toward me. He was huge, and I normally couldn’t take his whole length, but tonight I was determined to try. I looked up at him and sucked him into my mouth, massaging his cock with my tongue while I worked it deeper and deeper into my mouth.
“Dev,” he sighed, his grip tightening on my head. “That’s good, baby.”
His breathing sped up, and I would have smiled if my lips hadn’t been stretched so wide. His thick head bumped the back of my throat, and I flattened my tongue and relaxed my muscles, drawing him deeper as he groaned his appreciation.
He was delicious, and I hummed around his cock, making my throat vibrate around his swollen length. The spontaneous thrust and sexy grunt he rewarded me with sent all the blood rushing straight down to my own cock. God, he was hot. And for once, he was lost in his own pleasure—it was fucking gorgeous.
He fisted his hands in my hair, and when I grabbed his ass and pulled him in tighter he gave up and started fucking my face with abandon. He thrust into my throat, using me the way I’d hoped he would, losing himself in the tight heat I offered. I could feel every moment of his enjoyment through our bond, and even though I didn’t touch myself, I felt my balls start to tighten and my cock leak with excitement as his thickened and swelled in my mouth.
“Fuck! Devin! God!” Maks shouted as he came.
Scorch: M/M Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance (Dragon's Destiny: Fated Mates Book 2) Page 16