by Lizzy Ford
Distressed by the reminder, he closed his eyes again, no longer caring where Dillon took him. Instead, he focused on clearing his thoughts and awaiting the inevitable: his death at the claws of a slayer.
The air chilled even more, until his cheeks went numb, too, and his body shook out of control.
It was some time later when Dillon’s speed slowed, and he began circling, preparing to land somewhere.
Chace roused himself, irritated to find his eyelashes were frozen together. He swiped his face against Dillon’s rough claw and blinked rapidly. They were descending out of the clouds towards a snow-covered tundra next to a grey sea. Ice was everywhere, freezing much of the water in place and coating the snow below.
Grimly he realized that Dillon wasn’t going to just drop him out of the sky for a quick death. No, the slayer-shifter wanted him to freeze to death. To what end, Chace didn’t know, except that Dillon wasn’t quite right in the head.
Dillon dropped him a good ten feet from the ground, far enough that Chace’s breath was knocked from him when he hit the hard tundra. He gasped until air reached his lungs. Blood smeared from his wound onto the snow beneath him. He pushed himself up, dizzy and disoriented from the flight.
“That didn’t do it,” Dillon said, frustration in his voice again. “I figured the flying might trigger something.”
“I’m telling you. You’re wrong about this.” Chace looked around. Cold didn’t begin to describe the grey-white world around him. Snow sank through his jeans, cold enough to burn the skin beneath.
He rose, shivering.
“What you know about your lineage could fill a peapod,” Dillon snapped. “You don’t feel any different?”
“No.”
“No urge to light a fire to keep from freezing to death or change into a dragon form so you can fly away or stay warm?”
Chace laughed. “I do want a coat.”
“You and Sky … you have the shittiest senses of humor.”
“I love her humor. It’s so inappropriate. But no surprise. She’s wild like me.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“I do,” Chace said. “She fucks like a dragon, that’s for sure.”
Dillon’s head snapped around towards Chace. Chace didn’t need the experiences of a thousand years to recognize the hot jealousy on Dillon’s face.
“You know, I am feeling something,” he said. “Kinda like … hmmm.” He pretended to consider. “Oh, yeah. It’s what I feel when her thighs are wrapped around my head. Satisfaction.”
Dillon’s punch caught Chace off guard. It was too fast for him to see let alone block, a reminder that he no longer had the agility, power and speed of an immortal shifter.
Chace landed on his back in the snow and spit blood from a busted lip. He laughed. With the pain of the punch and the burning chill of the wetness sinking into his clothing, it was the only thing he knew to do.
“Look, Dillon. You can kill me or stick around and let me talk about how much I enjoyed fucking your girl,” Chace said. “Or you can just … get the fuck out of here and leave me to my fate.”
Dillon’s face went red, and his eyes flared with inhuman fire. Chace saw his skin ripple beneath the emotional turmoil as the shifter began to transform involuntarily.
“I hope your death is painful and slow!” Dillon all but spat. He dropped to all fours, his clothing tearing. His body contorted and expanded until the mythical griffin stood panting before Chace.
Dillon lifted himself into the air and paused, watching Chace climb to his feet.
“Have a good life, Dillon,” he said with sarcastic cheerfulness Skylar would approve of.
The griffin smashed a wing into him, slicing the side of his head open.
Chace went down again, this time struggling to control the agony working through his system. Blood ran into one eye and down his neck, the only warmth in the otherwise unforgiving cold of the Arctic.
The griffin soared away, disappearing into a cloudbank.
Chace wiped his face and sat, grimacing at the pain. He looked around, unable to stop shaking. Blood splattered the area to his left, the stark red against snow disturbing him for more reasons than one.
“Well, Chace, this is what you wanted,” he muttered. “To become a human and end it all.”
Resting on his knees, he touched the wound on his head gingerly. He didn’t expect to be dropped off at the North Pole by a griffin and left to freeze to death. No, that was never part of the plan in becoming human, growing old and finally dying, the only way to end the pain of watching those he loved die while he remained immortal.
He looked around, unable to pinpoint when the plan had become so unappealing. Or when he’d decided he didn’t want to be human or to die alone.
He wanted Skylar. Whether or not protectors lived forever like shifters, he had no idea. But did it matter, if he spent at least another eighty years falling asleep beside her each night and waking with her each morning?
“Too late now,” he said aloud. His voice was the only sound, aside from the wind that had already numbed his face.
With no coat or way to escape the cold, he debated his next move. He could sit and bleed to death or he could try to find shelter.
And bleed to death while warm?
It struck him that he didn’t know the first thing about how to dress a wound. He had healed automatically for almost his entire life, and this particular knowledge from his first twenty-six years or so as a human was lost.
“Shit.” He rose. This time, his anger was directed at himself, pure fury for not appreciating what was before him before he’d traded her to the blue dragon. Hadn’t he made a similar decision a thousand years ago?
Hugging himself, he started walking away from the sea. He was lightheaded already and soon, his body started to feel too heavy to go far. He looked around the white world for some indication of where to go: a path, smoke from a hidden chimney. Lights.
Nothing. Dillon had dropped him off in the middle of nowhere on purpose.
Chace gritted his teeth against the biting cold and trudged forward. His toes were soon hurting from cold and wet, the thick strands of his hair frozen.
He paused again and looked up at the sky.
“If I had it to do again, I probably wouldn’t have made those last few major life decisions,” he told the heavens with wryness. “Or maybe, I just would’ve stayed in the cabin with Sky and told the rest of the world to go fuck itself.” It was the best solution yet, one that seemed so obvious, he didn’t know why it took freezing – or bleeding – to death in the Arctic for him to realize.
So much for second chances. He was dizzy and becoming weaker, the blood on his skin and clothing frozen.
“What did the dragon who cursed you say?”
For a moment, he thought the voice was a figment of his imagination, a sign he’d become delusional with pain and cold.
Chace turned with effort, not expecting to see Gavin’s dark form before him. The shifter didn’t look cold, but he appeared angry.
No. Furious.
“I heard a rumor it wasn’t really a curse,” Chace said. “And you didn’t really cure me of it.”
“Did you hear why I didn’t give a shit who I had to lie to?”
“To get your daughter.”
“Exactly.”
“I get it.” Chace shook his head to keep focused. “You here to finish what the others started?”
The muscles in Gavin’s jaw ticked, and fire was in his eyes. He strode forward and smashed a fist into Chace’s nose.
Chace went down hard enough that he didn’t feel like getting up again. The world blurred and swirled like the snowflakes falling from the sky.
“That is for marking my daughter,” Gavin said, crouching beside him. “As much as I want you to freeze to death out here, I can’t let you.”
“Because she likes me?” Chace asked curiously. He dabbed at his nose and pushed himself up, too cold and numb to feel the
wetness creeping into his clothing this time.
“Because she’s the other half of your heart,” Gavin grated. “Which means if you die, so does she.”
“So you’re essentially my father-in-law.”
The dragon shifter rose with a curse and paced a short distance away.
“What did the shifter who unlocked your magic tell you?” he demanded once more.
“So it’s true,” he murmured. Chace hesitated. He hadn’t told anyone the whole story in a thousand years. Gavin’s words confirmed Dillon’s claim – that he had always been a shifter. He didn’t know how to feel about it after believing for so long he didn’t fit in. “I was born a shifter.”
“There’s only one way to become one.”
“Then why am I not like other shifters? Why do they die when I don’t?”
“Dragons are the most powerful of the shifters. It’s why you have control of the bar and your cabin, why you can survive what would kill others,” Gavin said impatiently. “Now. What did she say?”
“Why does it matter now?”
“Tell me.”
Chace got to his feet once more, wobbling. “She said one day I’d learn that arrogance and selflessness can’t coexist. I’d learn to care for someone else more than I do my own concerns. That I’d relive her heartache for the rest of my years.”
“Did you?”
Chace frowned, not expecting the personal question.
Mr. Nothing – Gavin – was glaring at him, clearly disapproving.
“You won’t let me die,” Chace guessed. “You didn’t spend so long trying to find your daughter just to let me kill her by freezing to death. I’m assuming you’re trying to figure out if I’m deserving of her.”
“You’re not. You’ll never, ever set foot near my daughter again. Ever, Chace,” Gavin snarled. “Now answer my question.”
The intensity of the shifter’s declaration hit Chace hard. It wasn’t undeserved; after all, he’d traded Skylar with no guarantee she’d be safe. He lied to her to get her to go with him docilely then turned her over, never knowing she was the daughter of the man he went to meet.
He betrayed her, the way he had the dragon shifter a thousand years ago who awoke his gift out of anger when she’d been spurned. Skylar was too good to want revenge, too smart to trust him again, too much a part of him for him to walk away.
“No,” he whispered. “I didn’t learn anything.” Sorrow filled him, accompanied by anger. “She made my heart whole, and I sold her out.”
“Exactly. There should be no question as to your suitability to be anywhere near my daughter.”
Chace said nothing, uncertain how to respond. The reality of what he’d done sank into his mind like the cold did his skin. He wanted to agree and make things right by simply leaving her in peace.
“I can’t just … walk away,” he replied.
“You don’t have to. You were too weak a thousand years ago to awaken your own magic. All I have to do is keep you as far from her as I can.” As he spoke, Gavin stepped away to give himself room to shift. “You’ll never fly again, Chace, and you’ll never find her either. You don’t deserve someone like Skylar.”
The anger boiling in Chace’s chest grew. He didn’t deserve to feel it, to want to interfere with Skylar’s life anymore than he already had.
I’m her dragon. She’s my Sky. We belong together.
In the seconds while he thought, Gavin had shifted into his other form. The massive blue dragon was beautiful and graceful, its beating wings causing the snow to fly around them both.
Chace was snatched up in talons the way he had been not long before and taken into the clouds. Cold assaulted him while blood dribbled from his head, nose and arm. He was feeling nauseous, more so by the force of their breakneck speed. Snowflakes pelted him hard, while the darkness at the edges of his mind tried to take him.
Did his mind want him to sleep or die?
If he died, so did Skylar. He owed her the ability to stay alive, if nothing else.
Afraid to close his eyes, he blinked rapidly against the moisture and wind. Much faster than Dillon had flown, Gavin soon broke free of the clouds and was flying at top speed over the ocean. The air currents grew warmer, the night sky replacing the white light of clouds and snow.
Stars blinked overhead, reflected in the depths of the ocean below.
Barely aware of the world around him anymore, Chace hung limply in the dragon’s talons and waited for them to land.
At long last, they did, back on his beach, next to his cabin.
The dragon set him gently onto the sand, and Chace lay still, gathering his strength to move. A fire started near him, and he lifted his head to see the bonfire Gavin started nearby. The small effort was enough to make him nauseous. He rested his head on the sand again, hurting.
“The shifter who fucked you up a thousand years ago was right to do so. She failed, but I won’t,” Gavin said in a hard voice. “If any part of you cares for my daughter, you’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
Chace closed his eyes briefly, hearing both the threat and the promise in Gavin’s voice. He drew a shaking breath and tested his body, dismayed by what he learned.
He was in bad shape.
Wind whipped by him, and he opened his eyes in time to see the blue dragon take flight.
Fear flew through Chace, and adrenaline forced the darkness at the edges of his mind to retreat.
Gavin was seriously leaving him, even knowing Skylar’s life was tied to Chace’s.
Chace struggled into a sit. Sand mixed with the blood in his hair. His blurry gaze settled on the cabin. Only twenty feet away, it may as well have been twenty miles. His body didn’t respond when he tried to stand.
He focused internally instead, seeking the part of him that Dillon and Gavin insisted was there, the magic of a shifter deep within him.
If it was, he wasn’t able to find it. Opening his eyes, Chace eyed the cabin once more.
If any part of you cares for my daughter, you’ll do whatever it takes to survive.
He’d failed to conquer his selfishness a thousand years before and again with Skylar. With both despair and anger boiling over in his blood, Chace pushed himself to his knees. Grimly, he realized he’d had it easy as a dragon. This time around, he wasn’t going to make it, if he didn’t learn his lesson.
“Here I come, Skylar,” he said then gave a strained laugh. “Maybe.”
Chace drew a deep breath and climbed to his feet. At the very least, he knew Skylar was safe with her father. If it took him one step at a time and an eternity, he’d find the other half of his heart, no matter what the blue dragon told him.
Besides, no dragon worth his fire ever, ever missed a pizza date with a beautiful woman.
I’m not about to start now.
***
Heart of Fire
“Charred Heart”
“Charred Tears” – December 16, 2013
“Charred Hope”
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
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