Tell Erin I will be thinking of her until the end, and when I sleep, I will be dreaming of her.
Sincerely,
Isaac Morningstar III (Zach)
Zach still couldn’t believe it was less than a day since he’d left Erin. It already felt like a million years.
When they’d made love, it had the opposite effect of what she’d intended. Instead of making him realize everything could work out, it made him understand she was far too precious to ever risk spending her life with him.
As he approached the beautiful castle where the oracle lived, he realized it didn’t hold as much comfort as he’d once thought.
Maybe it was the long flight he’d taken using the magical little money card she’d given him for a ticket home.
All he knew was inside were lush, opulent rooms, yet he dreaded seeing them because it meant he was no longer on the mainland with Erin.
He walked reluctantly up the stairs to the main doors, where he’d acted as bodyguard for the oracle for some months before being sent out into the world. For the last time, he fingered the collar at his throat.
It would never come off now; he’d assured that. Perhaps the oracle had always seen this coming. Perhaps she’d always known he would never have it off, that his dragon was never meant to find its place in this world.
The world had moved past him. He just wished he hadn’t had to fall in love with a human before he figured that out.
Good thing he’d at least told her. And left her the only gift he could.
As he swung open the door, he was greeted by a short, angry woman with curves and purple hair (she changed it often through magic) waving a white, electronic tablet at him.
“What is the meaning of this journal entry?” she asked.
He kept his face impassive, leaning against a marble column and cocking his head as if he were bored. “Just a regular entry.”
She put on her reading glasses and cleared her throat.
“Ahem. Dear Diary, Humans suck. I want to burn them all with fire. I should probably be put back to sleep. I’m the worst. Sincerely, Zach.”
He bit his lip. Maybe he should have said something a little more convincing.
“I don’t get it,” she said, striding up to him and poking him in the chest. She was so tiny compared to him, yet with her power, she could ruin him. “I thought you’d found a human who could be your mate. You seemed to be making progress. What on earth happened?”
He looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it. You saw what I wrote. I’m ready to go to bed.”
“I thought a lot of things about you, Isaac, but I never thought you were a quitter.” She glared at him with those misty gray eyes as she removed her reading glasses and let them hang on a chain around her neck.
He shrugged. “I know when to quit.”
“You don’t honestly think I’m just going to listen to you, do you?” she asked, shaking her head as she turned to walk to her office, crooking a finger for him to follow.
“I think you should,” he said. “And anyway, I came back early and haven’t bonded with humans, so it’s time to take off the collar.”
She eyed it and then ran her eyes over him with a stern glare. “I decide that. Since when have you ever been the one in charge here?”
He gaped and then shut his mouth stubbornly. That was true. He reluctantly followed her into the office, dragging his feet, which felt like they were filled with lead.
She sat behind her ornate wooden desk, from which she’d counseled so many shifters, and stared at him. “You’re different.”
“I’m beaten down.”
“By how much you hate humans?” she asked sarcastically.
“Maybe,” he said. By how much he loved Erin.
“Tell me what happened with your mate, and I’ll make my decision.”
“She’s not my mate. Not anymore.”
“But what caused your sudden change of heart?”
Seeing as the oracle was clearly not going to fall for the simple lie he told, he decided it couldn’t hurt to give her a little more info. “I met more modern dragons. At first, I thought their whole setup was stupid, but now I think they are tailored to what the world has become.”
“And you aren’t?”
“I saw inside myself during a fight yesterday,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I saw violence, bloodlust. I took down ten men, and I would have had pleasure in burning them to dust.”
She stared at him thoughtfully. “Go on.”
He might as well get it all out before he went down for the count. “I knew Erin deserved better. If I mated her, and my collar came off, who knows what kind of danger she’d be in? And even if she wasn’t, if I somehow wasn’t dangerous, I couldn’t protect her the way the other dragons do. I can’t give her a dragon power.”
She looked at his hand. “Where is your ring?”
“I lost it,” he lied.
“That’s bullshit,” she snapped. “No dragon would lose their family treasure. You left it with her for protection, didn’t you?”
He slowly nodded. How had he thought he could lie to the oracle? Still, he hadn’t mated Erin. He hadn’t completed his part of the deal. She’d have no choice but to put him back to sleep.
The oracle was tapping her hands on the desk. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with me either. Other than put me back in cryo.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’d be a sad waste of your powers.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point of powers if they come in a cruel package?”
“For goodness sake, Isaac, I didn’t lock up your personality, just your wings and scales. You really don’t think you’ve changed? You don’t think I picked you because, of all the dragons in cryo, I though you had the best possibility of being good one day?”
He shrugged again. “Bad bet.”
“Bullcrap again,” she said. “Even now, you put a human before yourself, yet you insist you aren’t safe to be with her.”
He hadn’t thought of it like that. Nervousness waved through him as he caught her train of thought. “No,” he said, sitting back as she leaned forward, reaching for his collar.
“I told you I’d release you if you could prove you’d be on the side of the humans,” she said. “In loving Erin more than you love yourself, in protecting her even if it means oblivion for you, you have earned your freedom.”
He jerked back. “I don’t want it removed,” he protested, alarmed. “I don’t want to know what’s inside me. I’m used to being a human. I just want to go to sleep like this.”
She held out a hand and twisted it, pinning him in an invisible vise with her incredible power. Even if he tried to struggle, it meant nothing.
He sat there frozen as she walked around the side of the desk. She caressed the side of his head.
“I release you, dragon,” she said, touching the collar and letting it fall with a click into her hand.
Zach roared as power washed through him, overwhelming his every cell. He fell forward out of the chair and onto the ground, holding on to his head as he tried to keep it together.
No matter what happened, he couldn’t lose who he was. He couldn’t lose what he meant to Erin.
He held her in his mind as he felt wings trying to sprout from his back.
Human. Human. I want to stay in my human form right now. But the dragon who had been pent up so long was dying to burst forth.
He bolted from the room and ran toward the front steps, trying to hold everything inside him as the oracle cackled behind him.
He ran blindly down the front steps and onto the grass, sinking to his knees, wind whipping around him. He stared up at the sky as he felt wings erupt out of him, his body growing and changing, rising into the air as he heard flapping around him.
His eyes felt hot, burning, and the cool air around him did nothing to cool the fire inside him.
He saw
the oracle walking out to meet him, and she looked up in amusement as he twisted in the air.
What did you do to me? he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t speak. Memories of the past flooded him. His other life as a dragon. Everything he’d done. With relief, he realized he hadn’t been too bad. Apathetic maybe. Selfish maybe. Lazy maybe. But not vicious like some of the other dragons had been.
Yet with the power coursing through him, he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t been a complete despot.
It would be so easy.
His body was giant, strong, invincible. He almost couldn’t remember how to reach his other form. His small, fragile human one.
Well, fragile in comparison.
He grinned down at the oracle as he slowly floated down to the ground.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Listen, Isaac, I knew all about your life as a dragon before you went to sleep. I knew what I was getting. But I knew you could be even better than that. I needed you to see that, too.”
He nodded as his talons touched the lawn. Slowly, with deep breaths, he came back to his human form, feeling stretched and exhausted and tired.
Luckily, dragon shifters kept their clothes between shifting. The only shifters that did, due to the magic inherent in their transformations.
She walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she said. “I know this is all foreign. I know you don’t think this world is meant for you. But I can assure you there will be a time you are needed. And you will be glad you are here.”
He nodded.
“Now what are you going to do about Erin?”
Fear still flooded him at the thought of being around her, hurting her. But then he allowed his dragon to share his head space and thought of her.
He would never hurt her.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She’ll be pissed that I left, won’t she?”
The oracle grinned. “Unbelievably pissed. Abandonment is one of the worst things you can do to a woman.”
He gritted his teeth. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was trying to protect her.”
“And now you see that you don’t need to. At least not by sacrificing yourself.” She laughed, a musical sound, like the tinkling of bells. “Stupid dragon.”
“Hey…”
“Well, come in for dinner, and we’ll talk about it,” she said. “You’ll need to gather your strength for the flight back, won’t you?”
He nodded. “I had to use a plane to get here. Using that small card you gave me.”
“A dragon on a plane. How droll.” She waved for him to follow her back into the castle, and Zach felt his joints aching as he walked.
It was good to know who he was under all that restraint. Good to know he was safe for Erin.
But now he had a new fear—how to get her to forgive him and take him back.
Would she give him another chance?
“Humans are forgiving,” the oracle said, looking over her shoulder. “I think we should be able to work this one out.”
Zach certainly hoped so.
15
Erin still couldn’t believe Zach had left her. The impossible dragon had pushed himself into her life, insinuating himself into everything and forcing her to love him, and then just disappeared like so much smoke.
Ran and Draven had shown her his letter, which only served to make her angrier.
How dare he make a choice like that for her? How dare he think he could just walk out like that? How was it possible he thought he was going to just go back to sleep and dream of her?
That was the most heartbreaking part of all she’d read. He would just get to go to sleep and forget about how he’d felt, while she’d be stuck with this love for a lifetime.
Even if he came back now, groveling, she didn’t know if she’d ever forgive him.
If he’d just never come into her life, she would have been fine. She wouldn’t have to remember how good he was in bed or how much he made her laugh or how his touch set her on fire or how hot he was in a fight. Or the way his eyes twinkled like the night sky.
Her eyes teared up, and she blinked furiously as she glared at the ring he’d left on the nightstand.
So she’d remember him, presumably.
She slid it on, crossly, and it fit perfectly. She couldn’t stand to see it there, so she tried to tug it off, but it wouldn’t budge. Perhaps she was swollen from crying. Or something.
She looked up as someone knocked on the door. “Come in.”
It was Melissa, the dragons’ mate. “Are you okay?” the other woman asked softly.
“No,” Erin admitted. “How could he just leave me like that?”
Melissa swallowed. “Have you thought maybe this could be really overwhelming for him?” she asked. “A new world and seeing all of this with the new dragons? Have you thought he genuinely believed he was doing the right thing?”
“How can it be the right thing to waste all the good things about him by just going to sleep.”
“If that’s what’s worrying you, don’t,” Melissa said. “Ran and Draven are sure the oracle isn’t going to let him go back to sleep. She needs him.”
Erin touched the crumpled letter. “He doesn’t think he’s needed.”
“It’s hard,” Melissa said. “Coming to a new place and feeling like you don’t belong. I know because I had to come into the dragon world, not even knowing it existed.”
“But your mates never abandoned you,” Erin retorted.
“My mates were always aware of how deserving they were,” she said, a small smile quirking her lips. “Maybe a little too much. But they did leave the door open for me to leave if I wanted to. But as I let myself get used to it, I found I wanted to stay.”
“And Zach didn’t,” Erin said bitterly.
Melissa put a hand on her shoulder. “Give him some time. He may have just reacted. Draven said he read his mind and he was disturbed about something that had happened during the fight. He’d felt his dragon had wanted bloodshed, or something like that.”
“He did seem a little out of it,” Erin said, thinking back. “He almost scared me; he was so intense. But never at any point did I feel he was out of control.”
“Maybe he just has to go work that out,” Melissa suggested. “Anyway, I’m going to enjoy having you stay with us, and you’ll be safe. I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. Shifters need their mates. Zach will come around, and the oracle is not going to put a valuable dragon back in cryo. Not when he’s proven he will put a human before himself.” She shook her head. “From what I’ve read about dragon history, that’s unheard of for someone from his generation.”
“He really was special,” Erin said, swiping at her tears. “I still hate him.” She laughed.
Melissa put an arm around her. “So do you want to go get anything in order to be more comfortable here?”
“No,” Erin said. “Wait, yes. My kitten. Zach and I, we just adopted him. I want to see him.”
“A kitten! Cute!” Melissa said. “I’ll have Ran drive us, and we’ll go get him. Just keep him away from Rin. I’m not sure I trust him with small animals.”
Erin grinned. “Sounds good to me. Just give me a minute to get myself together.”
“Okay,” Melissa said. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
Erin walked to the bathroom and cleaned up the best she could. She sighed at her reflection—puffy face, red eyes, hair a mess—and told herself it would be okay. To buck up. Crying wouldn’t fix anything.
She looked down at the ring on her hand. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to keep it on. To keep her thoughts of him, at least the good ones, a little while longer.
She pulled her hair back, put on jeans and a sweater, and headed downstairs to go pick up Bo.
“What do you mean he’s not here?” Erin asked Jen, fear flooding through her.
Jen looked at her with slightly glazed eyes. She looked like she’d been drinking all night, yet
Erin knew Jen wasn’t like that at all. She was always dependable. That’s why she’d left Bo with her.
“I don’t…” Jen rubbed her head blearily, her short, blond hair sticking up in all directions. “I don’t know if I remember. I feel like I’ve been asleep so long.”
“Try to remember,” Erin said, reaching forward and taking her by the arms.
Ran and Melissa were standing down at the bottom step, watching curiously.
“I guess there was a guy. Yeah, a handsome one now that I think about it. He said he was looking for something. Someone. He asked to come in.”
“And you let him?”
Jen blinked, eyes clearing, slowly looking more awake. “I did. I did?” She shook her head. “That isn’t like me, letting a stranger in the house. I know this is crazy, but it didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
Erin cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“He just sort of… froze me. I don’t know. I couldn’t say no to him. I just… let him in. And then…” She racked her brain. “He saw Bo. He said he was borrowing him.”
“And you said yes?” Erin asked, ready to scream at how stupid that was.
“I… did.” Jen’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry. I know how stupid it sounds. I just… couldn’t do anything.”
“Can we come in?” Ran asked. “I want to see if he left anything.”
“Of course,” Jen said.
“What happened after he took Bo?”
“He just sort of looked back at me, lifted his hand, and blew something. I just dropped. Honestly, when you rang the doorbell, I was lying here, right in front of the door.” Jen looked horrified by the thought.
Erin guessed that made sense as to why Jen looked so out of it, but everything about this situation was wrong. Plus, she was scared to death for Bo. Why would someone just take him like that?
Ran pushed his way into the house and began looking around, and Erin helped Jen over to a couch. When she was sure the other woman wasn’t hurt, just stunned, she walked over to where Ran was talking with Melissa, looking at a piece of rumpled paper.
She grabbed it from them, and Ran looked at her seriously.
Onyx Dragon (Awakened Dragons Book 1) Page 11