Jace pulled me to a barstool and went to get glasses and water from the fridge. He poured three and after giving me mine, carried the other out to Gareth. They came back together to find me sitting on my stool with my face in my hands.
“What will happen to him?” I asked my voice sounding weary even to me.
“He’ll be taken care of, he’ll be fine.”
“Sure, if you call being undead fine,” I muttered.
Gareth’s voice sounded tired. “Come to bed,” he remarked. “Nick’s men will guard the door, we’re all tired. Join us Lexi, please.”
I slipped down from the chair, Gareth reached for my hand and I reached for Jace’s. I followed Gareth down the hall. Damned if he didn’t take us to his room, and yes it was blue. I thought we would fall into the bed, but Gareth pulled us into the bathroom and all three of us took turns rinsing off in the shower. All clean and dry, we crawled into bed and pulled the covers over us. I ended up in the middle with Jace curled around me from behind, my cheek and arm resting across Gareth’s chest. I had never slept with a man before, let alone two. But it had been a long emotionally exhausting day and it only took me half a second to fall asleep.
Chapter 8
I couldn’t breathe, not surprising given that I had a thirty five pound cat sitting on my chest. Not how I usually liked to start my day, or was it still the middle of the night?
“Can you get off me?” I wheezed, pushing up on an elbow as Mi removed herself from the center of my chest, sat down beside me, and wrapped her tail around her front paws. I rubbed at my eyes with one hand and looked around. Jace and Gareth were still sleeping on either side. Funny they hadn’t sensed her presence, but then maybe she had managed to step over them and only used me as her path of choice.
“What are you doing here? Has something happened to Mom?”
“Your Mother is perfectly fine; it’s you I’m concerned about, I sent you out to find a suitable indiscretion, not barricade yourself in some subterranean cave with not one but two drakes! I would have been here sooner, except your Mother contacted me in a panic, apparently she felt something had happened to you. From the company you are keeping, I see her concern is not unwarranted,” Mi finished with a sniff.
I frowned. “I tried suitable; it wet its pants and passed out on me.”
“I suggested sex,” Mi continued with a touch of sarcasm, “not dining, could you not make them see the difference?”
“You’ve already heard about last night…?”
She blinked at me and tilted her head to the side, the tip of her tail flicking in annoyance. Hmm… maybe she didn’t know everything? And then she slipped into my mind riffling through my thoughts, like some jacked up mugger might rifle though a stolen purse. I bit my tongue as her mind dug through the events of the past hours, slowing as she brushed past the highlights. Apparently my time in the tub was way more interesting than the party with the Vampires. She took so long pawing through those memories that I actually squirmed and nearly blushed. She’d finally seen enough and released that thread of memory so she could unravel the time leading up to it. She took her time during our little humpty dumpty fest upstairs and again I squirmed and had the overall feeling I’d been caught necking on the porch like an errant adolescent.
Mi flashed her fangs at me in what I supposed was a kitty cat smile and proceeded unwinding the reel. I felt her hesitate when she came to the part where I’d turned to the six men at the table and I could feel her searching their faces, memorizing them. Her thoughts invited me to do the same and their images flashed behind my eyes as she labeled them for me…. leopard, bear, lion, wolf, jaguar, and hyena? Obviously something about them caught her attention. I supposed she would tell me later as the reel started unwinding again. Mi hissed softly as we watched me shimmer crossing the floor and the hair down her back centerline raised slightly as I walked down the street toward the door of the dance club. In fact, seeing the power being aimed at me through Mi’s eyes was nearly enough to raise my own hair. Interesting that I hadn’t felt the power at the time, or perhaps I had, just misinterpreted it as nerves or excitement?
The slide show switched off as I was entering the publishing company just before I’d spoken to Margie. I blinked several times and happened to glance at Gareth lying on his side facing toward me, his arm resting on the bed between us, fingers clenched tightly. I jerked my eyes to his and discovered he was staring not at me, but at Mi, visible on the other side of me as she sat looking back at him, seemingly unaffected by the look of absolute hatred aimed at her. Shocked, I swung around to find Jace also wide-eyed and appearing very angry. Both men looked as if they were carved from stone, so still were they. Only their eyes moved.
“Mi?” I demanded my voice lowering slightly. I was wondering what she had done to them to cause those looks. And truthfully I was hoping it wasn’t going to spill over on me. “Whatever you’re doing to them, stop it!”
Mi ignored me. She did that a lot. Instead she stood to all four feet and spoke directly to Gareth. “I know you Gareth Ak Trirth. You and Jace R Bok. You have grown wrym, but you are still no match for me. I am here to harm neither of you, merely to ensure you do not harm yourself or any…others.”
Gareth’s growl was low and threatening and I actually turned over on my knees and backed toward the end of the bed. This looked more than serious and I decided being naked amidst the three of them might not be such a great idea. No one spoke out loud yet I suspected there was plenty being said. They were all shielded so tightly I couldn’t hear anything.
No one tried to stop me as I padded across the floor and into Gareth’s walk in closet. Grabbing the first thing I could find, I pulled on a cream colored button up shirt which came nearly to my knees, rolled up the sleeves, and shoved buttons in holes before crossing back to the bed.
All three sets of eyes were watching me closely as I stood at the end of the platform and stared back at them. Thank goodness we’d left a light on in the closet. I would have turned up the overhead lights, but it seemed unfair somehow with me being dressed and them so not. And despite the tense atmosphere, I couldn’t help admiring both men. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the last time I’d ever see them like this. Mi had a way of complicating my life, or maybe it was just who I was that did that for me.
Mi had moved nearly to the end of the bed and was sitting with her back to both men watching me. I suddenly had the sense that I was about to get that explanation I’d been promised. “So I’m guessing you three know each other?” I asked, climbing onto the bed with one leg while allowing the other to dangle off the side. I might need a quick get away.
“They are honor bound not to injure you if I release them,” Mi informed me in a voice that seemed full of hidden meanings. Apparently I was a little slow this morning, if in fact it was morning, since I was totally lost.
“Cat!” hissed Jace in a voice laced with poison. If we were going to get physical here I wasn’t so sure letting them go was the right decision.
“Me?”
“You are with me, and they… retain some animosity toward me,” Mi explained. “It would make sense for them to strike at you since they cannot injure me. But what I’ve just explained to them is that hurting you is neither wise nor prudent.”
Not to mention how much it would just plain suck to have them try. “So you release them and what? Do I get to play twenty questions or is someone just going to tell me what is going on?”
“I would prefer we leave,” Mi stated with a sigh. She looked disgruntled, “but I realize you will only come looking for answers on your own, and have decided it is safer this way. So we will explain.”
Mi curled her front paws under her body as she lay on the bed next to me. Her tail wrapped around her and I wasn’t surprised that the tip flicked back and forth. For all that she looked calm; there was too much tension in the room for any of us to be. She blinked up at me and must have dropped whatever hold she had over the men. Jace quickly raised
himself to a seated position while Gareth rolled to his back and put his arm over his face. Both of them looked to be doing deep breathing exercises. No one likes to be controlled and I imagine it wasn’t fun for either of them, especially given they couldn’t retaliate.
I suppose I was expecting Mi to speak so I was somewhat startled when Jace’s deep voice began, “Millennia ago we lived in a world that was very different from this one. It was a world of beauty, but one destined to die. And just as this world borders the Everlasting, so too did our world. When our planet began ripping itself apart though earthquakes and volcanoes, we sought the help of the Merecats, the keepers of knowledge, to guide us into the Everlasting. It was our only option.”
“It was our death!” Gareth rasped.
Jace and I both looked at him and Jace nodded slowly. “A slow death, but our death nonetheless.”
“We did not know what the consequences would be,” Mi murmured, her voice sounding sad and tired. “No one suspected until it was too late.”
“Too late,” Jace agreed, bowing his head and glancing down at his clasped hands. His fingers were entwined and I could see that they were white with the pressure he was exerting.
“We began changing,” Gareth continued, his arm still covering his eyes. He spoke in a voice that seemed to lack all emotion, as if he was holding himself back from feeling anything. “We learned to shift in the Everlasting. We thought it was a wondrous new gift. This ability to become any shape or size, many shifted and never came back. It was as if they could no longer remember who or what they had been, or perhaps they simply no longer chose their Dragon form. Our females…” he said and a broken sound escaped him and he stopped speaking, as if the thought was too horrible to express.
“The females, even those who didn’t shift were changed,” Mi continued. “They became infertile, asexual. They no longer required drakes to become impregnated, and yet their clutches wouldn’t hatch.”
Jace looked at me, his eyes full of pain. “In human form, our females lack the appropriate physiological structure to allow them to mate, male to female.”
“In short,” Gareth explained, “they have dangly parts.”
The room fell silent for a few minutes as everyone pondered their own thoughts. That an entire species had been warped so cruelly was too tragic to contemplate, yet it certainly explained their reaction to me. But that wasn’t all of it, there was still something they weren’t telling me.
Jace drew in a deep breath and Gareth slowly drew his arm away from his face, pushing himself into a sitting position. His eyes were blue fire and his voice was very low. “Faced with a life of sterility and their physical changes, our females went mad and worse… they sought to end their lives.”
“They killed themselves?” I asked quietly, thinking how utterly horrible that might be.
“Dragons mate for life,” Mi added softly. “Or they did.”
Jace bared his teeth and glared at Mi. “Dragons are very difficult to kill.” He spoke harshly, his green eyes flashing as he turned to look at me. I could see the anger and pain in his expression.
“We did what we had to,” Mi responded, her sherry colored eyes calm.
“You killed our mates!” Gareth yelled, his voice ringing off the surrounding rock and reverberating through my skin and bones, the anguish in his voice cutting me to the quick.
“They begged us,” Mi told him softly. “It was done out of mercy. And I am sorry. Sorry for your loss these past six hundred years. Sorry that we could not prevent the change. Sorry that we did not know and could not halt it. But mostly I am sorry that it has taken so long to find some way to make this right.”
I glanced sharply at Mi as bits and pieces mentally fell into place and I realized…I was the grand scheme. Amazing since I’d always thought I was simply a freak of nature created in some underground lab by my missing father and over protective Mother. A lab pet that had to be kept hidden, lest secrets buried in my DNA be used for some nefarious reason or other. I wasn’t sure if I should be angry or not. If what Mi said was true…was I expected to do what? Repopulate the entire species, all by myself? Was that even possible… could I even reproduce?
“You were… created in a lab?” Jace asked softly, his face holding an odd mix of curiosity and confusion.
“Worse,” I told him bitterly. “I believe I actually began life in a glass beaker.” I so didn’t want to be having this conversation. I didn’t want to feel their pity or horror and simply raised my shields, ignoring the quick intake from Jace and the way Gareth stirred on the bed. My gaze dropped to my hands, which were held loosely together on my lap, so I neither saw nor felt the gathering anger around me.
“Don’t you dare!” snarled Gareth. “Don’t you sit there and withdraw from us, hide like you have anything to be ashamed of!”
He was practically yelling at me and I wasn’t sure how I should take that. I didn’t have long to decide because he leaned forward, grabbed my wrist and yanked me across the bed and into his lap. The abruptness startled me and I struggled wildly. He growled at me and wrapped his legs around my body, completely surrounding me with arms and legs, then rolled me onto my back and pinned me to the bed. His eyes were like blue diamonds, hard and unyielding as he stared down into my eyes.
“You are insulting me, again,” he informed me coldly.
“Wh… what?” I stuttered, completely confused.
He leaned in closer and spoke slowly as if I was some kind of arrested development victim. “You are insulting me.”
“Us, she is insulting us,” Jace replied. Though his voice didn’t contain the level of anger in Gareth’s, it still held a steely thread that confused me even more. So much so that I lost my shields again and immediately felt the pressure of both men pressing in on my mind. It was like having a fresh smelling fuzzy blanket wrapped around you so tightly you can’t move. Not unpleasant but slightly suffocating over an extended period. I could actually feel their total rejection of my earlier comments. Their urgent need for me to… like myself? It was so odd that I simply stopped struggling.
At the end of the bed Mi made a strangled sound and I glanced in her direction. I couldn’t be certain, but she looked….extremely pleased. As if everything was going according to plan. I didn’t have long to ponder her reaction because Gareth apparently didn’t like my ignoring him and took the opportunity to give me a meaningful shake.
“I’m… sorry?” I responded. I may not be sure of what I was apologizing for, but I’d been raised to be respectful of my elders and right at that moment I couldn’t help feeling like a naughty child being scolded.
“Naughty child…” barked Jace and then immediately covered his face with his hand. I suspected so he could prevent himself from smiling.
Gareth looked slightly pained. I think he would have said something but Mi chose that moment to delicately clear her throat and we all glanced at her.
“Copper, green, silver, red, bronze, brown, white, black, grey and blue; these are the new colors we made for you,” she remarked in a sing song voice. Her eyes blinked slowly as she looked directly at me. “But only one gold, just one,” and she dropped her head as if weighed down by a great sadness. “Beware the red and the white who are like thieves in the night and will steal your very essence. And the black will attack to take you back into the Everlasting. But the green and the blue shall be your friends true. Heed my words Lexi, do not return home. I can no longer protect you myself,” she told me abruptly. Then she turned to Gareth and Jace. “The six you entertained upstairs last night are not what they appear. Guard her well; she is our gift to you and the future of your race.”
When she finished speaking she simply faded until all that was visible was the tip of her tail, then that too was gone.
I wanted to call her back, to stop her, but I was too shocked to speak.
“I think… we get to keep her,” Jace whispered almost reverently.
“Only one gold?” Gareth responded.
He looked me over in an almost territorial manner. As if he was seeing me in a new light, and I suddenly remembered Mi’s warning that Dragons mate for life. I was pretty young to be mating for all eternity. Besides, you don’t grow corn by hiding your kernels under a basket. I’d been raised with the understanding that somewhere out there were a host of potential mates, not life mates, mates and that it would eventually be my job to track down and try them on for size, so to say.
“Do you think the new colors she referred to are female?” Jace asked, his voice sounding excited.
I found my voice and told them both. “No, they’re all males, my males. Tailor made for me. Or should I say I was tailor made for them since they’d been created first.”
Jace looked disappointed, then curious. Gareth looked… annoyed? Was it the thought of competition? I wondered.
“What to do you mean you were tailor made for them?” Jace demanded.
I jiggled my hands, still held tightly in Gareth’s, asking for permission to be let up. He released me reluctantly and settled back onto the bed, one arm resting on a raised knee, his eyes watching me intently.
Dragon Lust Page 8