His eyes were half-closed as he hummed along with the song, the low notes vibrating through the floor and up through the soles of her feet.
He was so beautiful. Summer-sky blue, the color of his human eyes, the kind of blue that took her back to perfect childhood days lying on her back in the grass, gazing into the fathomless expanse above and seeing wondrous creatures in the shapes of the clouds. His scales shaded to green underneath, like a hint of those green summer fields, of innocent times when everything was possible.
He gave no indication he’d heard her come in—just closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to see her.
She walked carefully over to him. Despite Thorne’s warning, he didn’t seem angry at her intrusion. Just full of an unbearable sense of failure and sadness.
She sat down next to his head, on the pile of gold bars and coins. It should have been hideously uncomfortable, but the gold seemed to shift and soften, cradling her as she sat.
She leaned against Zane, stroking the side of his face. He sighed, a soft, rumbling sound deep in his throat, as if he’d needed that exact thing but hadn’t known it until she came.
“Thorne told me about your family,” she whispered.
He moved his head fractionally away from her. I didn’t want you to know about that.
She shook her head, moving closer again. “I’m so, so sorry. I know what it feels like to lose everyone you care about.”
At least for you, it wasn’t your fault.
“It wasn’t yours either,” she said.
Yes it was.
She smoothed her fingers over the soft scales above his eye ridge. “Tell me. We’re mates.” She felt it even more strongly now that she was with him. She didn’t know everything it meant, or everything it would mean. But it resonated in her bones.
He moved his claw, and she saw a gold chain tangled around it, with a medallion in the shape of a grizzly bear. Gently, she reached over and untangled it, cradling it in her hand. “Is this the token you gave your sister?”
He moved his head again, a giant headshake. That’s its twin. The one I was supposed to be wearing when she called me. But I was busy, digging for gold and learning to mold it, enamored with my new hoard. I didn’t have it with me. And when I finally remembered and went to get it, it was too late.
“Oh, Zane,” she breathed. She couldn’t imagine what that would feel like.
I knew when I touched it that she’d called me the day before. I flew as hard as I could to get there. I almost made it in time. If I’d been even a few hours earlier…
Blaze pressed her forehead against his skin. There was nothing she could do to make this easier, nothing to make it so it hadn’t happened. All she could do was sit with him while he told it.
So many dead, he said. Nearly the whole clan. I found the bodies piled in the forest like garbage, for the animals to find. Everyone in my sister’s family, except one. Before the attack, they’d managed to hide a baby girl cub in a hollow log in the forest, with my amulet wrapped around her. I followed the signal and found her, and I took her to safety.
His eyes opened, and flashed red for a moment before going blue again. Then I went back and buried the bodies. And I flamed all those murderers to ash and devoured their bones.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “After the raid on the panther clan, when I saw what Silas had turned the coven into, I was so bitter and angry. I carried that bitterness and anger in me for years. It kept me going. But it led me to a dark place, too. I found rogue wizards—the worst ones—and paid them to teach me exactly the kind of dark spells I’d hated the coven for doing.
“I’ve never used them the spells—I told myself they were just to defend against the coven, to prepare myself to fight them. It took me a long time to realize that just learning them made me into a different person—one I didn’t want to be. So I stopped studying them. I magically severed my ties with my old coven and all my teachers, and reinvented myself as a new person. Blaze McKenna. I cleansed myself inside and out, but… I’ll never be the same as I was.”
This time Zane moved his head closer to her, and the golden mound of treasure shifted again so she was cuddled closer to his head. He moved his claw, encircling her in a cocoon of warmth and comfort.
Grief can send you down a dark road, Zane said. Thorne found me. He brought me back.
“He did?” Trust Thorne to leave that part out.
Zane gave a faint nod, gold coins clinking underneath his chin. He taught me the ways of the Draken, how to develop my powers, how to read the Draken language, where to look for gold. He said he was doing it out of duty, but he always says that when he’s being kind. He’s been a brother to me.
So that was another reason why he’d agreed to help Thorne with his quest, besides keeping the remaining branch of his family safe from Vyrkos. Loyalty to the dragon who’d pulled him out of despair.
She stroked his cheek again. “You’re a good man, Zane.”
Dragons aren’t good. We’re selfish and greedy.
“But you try to be good.”
He shook his head, trying to pull away, but she put her hand on his eye ridge to stop him. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “If we’re going to be mates, we have to let each other in.”
He hesitated, then moved his head back next to her, resting it on the gold again. I’m sorry I tried to hurt you, he said. I didn’t mean to. If anything ever happened to you…
His sorrow and regret seemed to rise up out of the gold and envelop her, pulling long-held-back tears out of her eyes. For the first time in ten years, she willingly let them fall.
“I know,” she whispered. She continued to stroke his soft scales, trying to heal him with her touch. “It wasn’t your fault. We were both under the influence of the idol.”
That’s not an excuse. I’m supposed to take care of you and protect you. Even if you don’t want me to. He paused, and the silence was filled with song. You’re my greatest treasure.
It was a tiny mental whisper, almost too soft to hear.
She looked around the room, filled with more material wealth than could be spent in a dragon’s lifetime. Every piece known and cherished and loved, every piece with its own song.
To Zane, she was more valuable than all this. More beautiful, more worthy of love and care and attention.
If she’d been standing, it would have brought her to her knees.
She turned her head, resting her forehead against him. It didn’t matter if they’d only known each other a short time. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make sense. They’d loved each other in his dreams for a hundred years, and they’d loved each other in her gallery, and in his room among his favorite treasures. They’d fought side by side, been wounded in their souls, and survived.
He was the ally and companion she’d longed for, for ten long lonely years.
You’re my treasure, too, she said, not even realizing she hadn’t said it out loud.
Because he heard.
There was a breathless silence, as every piece of gold in the cavern stopped singing. With a shimmer and a giant inhale, Zane was human again, sitting cross-legged in front of her, his forehead pressed to hers.
For a moment she resisted, and then she let some of the walls inside her crumble, and added her own sadness and loneliness to his.
The pain of losing her father to darkness; the pain of watching her mother die. The years of solitude, terrified of being found by the coven before she was prepared, terrified of forming new bonds, of getting hurt, of endangering others, of giving herself away.
The bitter anger at those who’d betrayed her and themselves—anger that they weren’t stronger, that they hadn’t found a way to fight back. She knew it wasn’t fair—she knew the idol was stronger than all of them. She and Zane were the latest proof of that.
And yet… she was still angry. Anger was better than despair—it gave her power and direction, and she’d held onto it for ten years.
Now she let it flow
out of her, and let the sadness go with it.
Zane raised his eyes to hers, and it was like she could see into his soul. Warmth. Caring. Passion. Love. Longing.
Hope.
Softly, the hoard’s song began again, the harmonics changing. Blaze leaned in, her lips parted, opening under Zane’ touch like a flower.
I love you, he said in her mind.
I love you, too.
Their lips met with a surge of heat lightning that stole Blaze’s breath. They strained toward each other with all the pent-up passion of years of loneliness, devouring each other in their desperate need.
Chapter 39
The song of the gold surrounded them, making them one. Their minds merged together, whispering words like love, heart, and forever over and over. Their lips explored and tasted, hot and hard and soft and yearning, tongues tangling and hands cupping, stroking, finding each other’s most secret and sensitive places with the instincts of lovers who had known each other for years, decades, centuries.
Zane couldn’t just hear Blaze in his mind, he could feel her, feel her sensations as much as his own: the shiver as he kissed between her legs, his own belly clenching as she stroked his hot, hard shaft. Her lips, her teeth, her nails digging into him as she gasped with pleasure, and the flush of her skin as he stroked her, the tension building in her core.
There were no boundaries between them, only shared sensation. The gold beneath them softened and shifted as they moved and intertwined, clothes gone, hot and naked, searching to share the same skin, the same emotions, the same soul.
Hands, curves, hard abs and soft thighs. Wordless cries as his fingers stroked her velvety core, wet and slick with need. Her arching toward him, wanting every part of him. Her mouth and hands on his shaft, creating a hot hard rhythm that traveled up his spine and nearly exploded the back of his head.
His mouth on her breasts, the hard nubs of her erect nipples, the lines of exquisite pleasure that traveled from there to her core.
How she longed for him to fill her the way he longed to plunge inside her, and the exquisite pleasure when he finally, finally slid deeply into her, buried to the hilt in the molten gold of her core.
And then the seemingly never-ending rise of passion, as they took and gave in every possible way: the feel of her soft, sweet ass caressing his thighs as he entered her from behind, the feel of her arms reaching back around his neck as he drew her down on his lap, thrusting into her as he stroked her clit and felt her shatter in his arms.
Her straddling him as he lay surrounded by treasure, her head thrown back in ecstasy as he moved inside her, the feel of her breasts against his chest as she lay on top of him and wrapped herself around him, shaking with another climax.
And finally, laying her down in a bed of gold that cradled and welcomed her, warm and comforting as a blanket, while he lowered himself into her and surrounded her with music and treasure and love and light. The whole cavern glowed with their love, bringing them to the heights, and plunging them over the edge to a final, crashing climax where there was no Zane and no Blaze, but just the shared magic of their bond.
Afterwards they lay twined around each other, still unsure where one ended and the other began.
Their hands drifted in feather-soft caresses, their lips moving in gentle kisses, unwilling to become two instead of one.
After a long time, when words and sanity had returned, Blaze turned in Zane’s arms. “I want to give you the Seal,” she said.
Zane smoothed his hands over her back. He could feel the magic of the Seal, now that he knew what it was. Its magic was intertwined with everything that was good and brave and caring in Blaze, every part of her that turned toward the light.
It drew on that goodness and joined with it to keep her safe. He didn’t want to take that away from her—everything in him resisted making her any more vulnerable to Turner and the idol than she already was.
“It’s protecting you,” he said. “Thorne and Tyr weren’t completely sure they got every bit of the dark power out of you.”
“I know,” Blaze said. She’d figured that out from the way Thorne had evaded her questions. “But… it isn’t meant to protect just me, is it? It’s supposed to protect everyone, by keeping Vyrkos in his tomb. What kind of person would I be if I kept it all for myself, just because I’m afraid?”
He stroked her back, breathing in the scent of her skin, wrapping his fingers luxuriously in her flame-colored hair. He loved her hair. He loved every inch of her. He’d loved her for a century.
Nothing bad could ever be allowed to happen to her. Any risk was unacceptable. That’s what all his instincts were telling him.
But it wasn’t right. They both knew it.
Still… “We don’t know what will happen if you try to give it to me. I’m not even sure how you could.”
“The same way my mother gave it to me,” Blaze said. “It was hers, and her mother’s before her. She transferred it to me just before she died. She told me… she always told me it was for good luck and protection.”
It was one of her last memories of her mother. So weak, but so insistent that Blaze should have the tattoo before it died with her.
“Did she have any idea what it really was?”
Blaze shook her head. “I’m sure she didn’t. It was passed down magically from mother to daughter for generations, until everyone forgot why, I think. But I remember exactly what she did to pass it to me.”
“We could try it, I guess,” Zane said dubiously. “Although, me having it as a tattoo isn’t any more useful to our mission than you having it as a tattoo.”
“You’re just afraid a dragonfly tattoo is too girly for your virile manliness.” She kissed his bicep, and then let her lips travel up his shoulder and over his collarbone. It made his skin shiver and his belly tighten again.
“There’s that.” He couldn’t keep the breathlessness out of his voice. Every touch, every kiss set him on fire. She was the spark to his flame, always.
“But it’s what the story says to do,” she said. “Maybe it works differently when the Keeper gives it to her destined Guardian.”
“Maybe.” If the story was accurate. If it worked with a Wild Dragon who wasn’t really a Guardian.
“I need to try.” She sat up, and he hated even that small distance between them. She sat cross-legged on his pile of gold, putting one hand on his chest and one on his shoulder.
Closing her eyes, she said softly, “By the power and grace of our ancestors, I offer you freely their love and protection in the form of this charm. As it goes from me to thee, may it keep you safe and bring you always to the light.”
A white glow spread out from her back, up to her shoulders and down her hands. Zane felt life and love and healing spreading down to where she touched him. It lingered for a minute, and then gradually faded away.
There was no tattoo.
Blaze twisted around and showed him her back.
“It’s still there,” he said. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Was that why the transfer didn’t take—because he hadn’t truly accepted her gift?
“Maybe it doesn’t work on dragons. Or on men,” he said.
Blaze bit her lip, obviously frustrated. “But I’m supposed to give it to you. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? So there must be a way.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s go talk to the others. Maybe one of them will have an idea.”
Chapter 40
Ten minutes later, they were dressed and in the Batcave. Thorne and Tyr were both in there: Thorne in his usual place at the computer console, and Tyr at the conference table, surrounded by piles of books and scrolls.
He had several books open and seemed to be cross-referencing between them, making notes on a yellow legal pad.
They both looked up as Zane and Blaze walked in. Tyr raised his eyebrows. “We didn’t expect to see you two for the rest of the day,” he said. “We could feel the hoard
singing from here.”
Blaze felt her face get hot, and Tyr’s grin got wider.
“That’s none of your damn business,” Zane growled. “Keep your perverted thoughts away from my mate.”
“Well, since I don’t have my own mate to get perverted with, I have only my imagination to console me. Deal with it.”
Blaze twitched her fingers, magically smacking Tyr on the back of the head. “Ow! Hey!” He rubbed the place she’d hit him. “What was that for?”
“Imagining perverted things about me. What are you doing?” She sat down at the table next to him.
“Trying to figure out how the Seal ended up physically embedded in the Keeper. Which would be you. As far as I can tell, the Seals Arkyld took were physical objects.”
“Do the others have tattoos?” she asked. “Rebel and Tempest?”
Thorne answered from the computer console. “If it were only so easy. I spoke to Tempest while you were sick, but neither she nor Rebel has a tattoo. At least, not a magical one in the shape of the Seal.”
Tyr looked interested. “What other ones do they have? And where?”
Thorne just shot him a disgusted look and shook his head.
“So it’s just me,” Blaze said. Damn. She’d hoped that they all had tattoos, and they would be able to figure this out together. If they could seal up the tomb once and for all, it would limit the idol’s power—maybe even destroy it.
Everything both she and Zane had worked and sacrificed for would come to pass.
“Tell me how you ended up with the tattoo,” Tyr said, pen poised.
“It was my mother’s. She gave it to me when she was dying.” Blaze explained how it had been magically passed down the generations, mother to daughter. “She’d been sick for a long time, growing weaker and weaker, and no one knew why.” She thought back. So many things that hadn’t made sense to her before made sense now.
“Now I realize it started not long after the time the coven began working with the idol. She had bouts of fatigue and weakness, and sudden high fevers. The same symptoms I had before I passed out.”
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