Flux of Skin (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 2)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Affirmative washed into her mind, a mixture of images just like all the other times Dragon had felt he was correct—his big head waving side-to-side, his forelimbs braced, his hide bright with confident colors.

  But he didn’t move. He lay there, next to Ladon, his wounded haunch rolled upward so Rysa could reach it.

  The back door swung open. Andreas stood in the evening’s shadows, his bronze skin backlit by the light flooding from the cabin’s wide-open door.

  “I checked all three cabins. We have the circle to ourselves.” He stepped to the side and pointed around the van.

  Through the windshield, Rysa saw AnnaBelinda backing Andreas’s SUV against another cabin, directly across the circle. A third cabin sat opposite the drive back to the main lodge.

  Someone, long ago, had planted trees next to each building. They grew scruffy and thirsty in front of large bay windows.

  Two planters, each with a cactus, framed the door behind Andreas.

  “There’s a small kitchenette in each cabin, a bathroom with a big tub, and a bed. I got extra linens.” He pointed into the cabin. A huge bed sat in the middle of the main room, surrounded by a western-patterned couch and a flat-screen television.

  “For Brother-Dragon.”

  “Are you going to make a bed for Dragon?” she asked. Why would they need the linens?

  Ladon kissed her cheek. “We’ll show you.”

  Dragon nuzzled her shoulder.

  “He says if Andreas checked it, it’s safe and he wants you to go in.” Ladon carefully pulled himself to his knees, then pushed against Dragon until he stood. “Andreas, help her bring in fresh clothes.”

  Andreas frowned. “I need to settle your sister. She’s… fussing.” He pointed his chin across the big parking circle between the three cabins.

  Like a baby, Rysa thought, and immediately regretted it. Both Dracae might dote, and both might get emotional, but neither of them acted like babies.

  Andreas offered his hand to help her down. “I suggest you stay on this side of the court, at least for now.”

  Rysa jumped out.

  “We will find Derek.” Ladon gripped Andreas’s arm and slowly, carefully stepped down. “We’ll get him when we’re healed and Rysa says the time is correct.”

  He said it with a confidence she didn’t share. “How will I know that?” All she saw when she looked for Derek was more clicking-and-locking irreality. It was as if he had vanished from the world.

  Andreas scratched his chin. “We train you. The basics for now. But before Brother-Dragon awakens, we’ll have you set to use your Fate abilities, at least.” He slapped Ladon’s shoulder. “How could you have been too busy to run the basics with her?”

  Busy was one way of describing it. “I didn’t have my correct talisman.” Rysa touched the talon around her neck. “I didn’t have any control at all.”

  “No control? You or him?” Andreas winked at Rysa while he slapped Ladon again.

  “No more hitting, you damned barbarian.” Ladon stepped to the side while Dragon crawled slowly out of the van and into the cabin’s main room. “You know nothing.”

  Andreas laughed. “I know you and women, you damned flabby Roman.”

  Ladon followed Dragon into the cabin, ignoring Andreas. “I need a bath.”

  Rysa watched the two men slap and throw insults like two freshman best buds. Some things never changed, and men the least of all.

  Andreas tossed their fresh clothes onto the bed. “Then take one.” He rubbed Dragon’s snout as the beast lumbered into the room. “Help me move the bed.”

  Rysa glanced around. The king-size mattress rested between two end tables, positioned between the door to the kitchenette and the other door to the bathroom. The room, though large, wasn’t shaped well for a different bed placement. “Where?”

  Dragon shoved a little table and two chairs into the kitchenette. He circled twice, favoring his wounded leg, and lay down like a big cat, his back against the wall and his head on his forelimbs.

  A small flame curled from his mouth.

  “Hey.” Ladon rubbed the beast’s crest. “Don’t worry.”

  He leaned against Dragon’s neck, swaying with the beast, his face against Dragon’s eye ridge.

  Andreas touched her elbow. “Can you hear them?”

  She looked up at Ladon’s friend, this big man who’d come not for the Dracae, but for another woman, her mother. For family. But here he was, with Ladon and Dragon.

  With, Rysa guessed, the people he’d always thought of as his true brother and sister.

  “I see images from Dragon, when he pushes them to me. I think he’s too tired right now.”

  Andreas pointed. “See that pattern, the one on his back? The greenish-brown squiggle? He does that when he doesn’t think he should sleep.”

  She recognized it. He’d carried almost the exact same pattern from the moment he’d pulled her from the Burners to when Ladon had taken him into his nest.

  All that time, he wouldn’t sleep because he thought he needed to protect her.

  She crawled over the bed and wrapped her arms around his big head. “It’s okay. You need to sleep. Your sister’s here. She’ll stand guard so you can finish healing. Okay?”

  Dragon sniffed her face.

  “He says you’re making a calling scent for him.” Ladon’s face brightened and he curled his arm around her waist, sniffing at her hair, his lips close to her ear. “We love you, too,” he whispered.

  All that had happened—everything with her Fate family, with that psycho Vivicus deciding she was a target, with the Burners and her fever—it all knotted up into a big ball at the base of her throat. If they’d not found her, if they’d walked on by, neither of them would be wounded right now.

  But they’d also be alone in their silent van somewhere, probably outside of Branson, drinking vodka and watching cows moo in a random field. Or worse, sitting in the cave, drinking even more vodka, listening to their sisters admonish them for being bad brothers.

  Wounds aside, the man with his arm around her watched her with brilliant eyes and warmth in his heart. The beast she leaned against nuzzled her with great care.

  She made them happy.

  Rysa hugged Dragon and leaned against Ladon. “I’ll fix him up while you sleep. How’s that sound, my wonderful Dragon?”

  The beast snorted.

  “He says that’s fine.” Ladon kissed her temple.

  Andreas cleared his throat. “I don’t need to see this.” He rolled his eyes. “The Dracas needs attention. I need food. The SUV needs gas.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll turn it back on when I leave. Can’t now or your sister will split open my head.”

  Ladon waved him off.

  “Sleep well, Brother-Dragon.” Andreas bowed. “And you, young lady, clean up the poseur.” He waved back at Ladon. “Some godling you are. Getting shot. You’re a freakin’ idiot.”

  “Dragon says you can go now.”

  “I will do just that. I will leave and I will fetch food for the lot of us. Some tasty greens for the Great Sir and the Great Lady, maybe some carrots, because I know how you like your orange-colored foodstuffs.”

  Dragon snorted.

  “Get a full bag of oranges, please.” Rysa rotated in Ladon’s arms so she faced Andreas. “And if you find any Cara Caras, get those.”

  Andreas frowned, looking between her and the beast. “Let me guess, you introduced him to these ‘Cara Caras?’”

  She smiled.

  “You, Great Sir,” Andreas walked toward the door, “are as predictable as your human. Do you two have this under control?”

  Ladon waved him away again, not saying anything. He swayed with the beast, his breathing matching the pulses of Dragon’s hide.

  Andreas scratched his arm. “Rysa.”

  She turned away from Ladon and Dragon. Andreas watched them all, standing on the other side of the bed, his face intense as his gaze followed the patterns slowing along Drago
n’s back.

  “Get some sleep. We start with the sun tomorrow.” He bowed to her, as well.

  “Yes, Grandpa.”

  “You’re a singular. You’re dangerous.”

  “What?” She glanced back at Andreas.

  “My brother doesn’t understand the balance of the universe. He doesn’t understand that the godlings have gained power and that he’s poked a true hornets’ nest this time.”

  “I don’t understand.” She was hornets? With her attention issues, Andreas’s metaphor was closer to the truth than he realized.

  He stopped in the doorframe. “There’s a balance to everything. You’re…” He stopped, his lips bunching up. “You’re here for a reason.”

  It sounded like so much hocus pocus to her. She’d spent her life with a head full of attention deficit. Nothing happened for a reason. The universe, it just was. And it just did.

  “He’s right.” Ladon’s hand moved across her waist and settled into hers. “You’re our reason.”

  Andreas rolled his eyes again. “Oh, for the love of all things good in this world, will you stop with the gushy poetry? You’re pathetic.”

  Rysa chuckled as she kissed Dragon’s eye ridge and Ladon’s cheek. “I like it.”

  Ladon waved Andreas away again. “She likes it. Your argument is invalid.”

  Rysa snickered, and folded against Ladon’s side. The damned bloody shirt poked at her skin, but she didn’t care. Ladon smiled and Dragon relaxed, admitting, finally, that he could sleep.

  “Have you two always been like this?” She glanced at Andreas as she nodded toward Ladon.

  Andreas shrugged. “Occasionally, over the centuries. Most of the time, he’s putting me in my place.” He stepped back into the shadows. “I won’t steal this one from you, Ladon-Human. I swear on the grave my mother should be in.”

  Ladon’s back straightened. Dragon’s colors sped up even though he slowed to sleep, and a deep growl pushed from the beast, but neither of them spoke.

  Andreas’s big arm flexed when as he gripped the door. “You’ve enthralled them, Rysa Lucinda de la Turris. The Dracos are now yours.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The door shut behind Ladon’s Second. His shadow moved away from the front window as a long darkening across the curtains. Then he vanished into the sunset’s brightness.

  It is good Andreas has returned. Dragon nuzzled Rysa again, his hide slowing and flattening into a square blandness as he manipulated his body into a bed shape. I will sleep.

  Dull ache crawled from Dragon’s mind into Ladon’s. His and the beast’s mixed together, two vintages blended into a heady pain familiar to both the man and the dragon.

  They’d been injured before. Once or twice, as badly as this time. Dragon always slept and always awoke healed and healthy. Ladon, on the other hand, took weeks to recuperate.

  But this time he had a healer leaning against his side. A beautiful, wonderful healer who had said “mine.” And all Ladon could do was grin, the pain be damned.

  “You’re cooling.” Rysa stroked her hand along Dragon’s snout. “And your coat is changing. You feel like a bed.”

  Rest, Human. The beast’s hide stopped, his coat and colors now mimicking the real bed just behind Rysa and Ladon.

  “Is that why Andreas brought in extra sheets? So we can make him look like a bed?” Rysa grinned. “Does he do this all the time? Look like a bed? Or does he make himself into a couch?” She frowned. “I don’t ever want to see him as a couch.”

  Standing next to Ladon, still within arm’s reach, his love’s lower lip pouted out in the exact perfect way to make him want to pick her up and hold her off the ground, his face buried in her neck, breathing her in and feeling her heart beat against his cheek.

  But she glanced away, looking at the door as if Andreas was about to walk back in.

  He didn’t feel her seers. “We’re safe here. You don’t need to worry.”

  She blinked when her gaze returned to his face. Blinked with slack cheeks and lips, the way she did when she’d lost all her confidence and wanted to run away.

  Consternation, annoyance, anger perhaps—Ladon didn’t know what he was feeling. But it popped into his mind as an overlay on the room. His perception changed—the bed, the walls, and Rysa all appeared as if someone forced him to look through one of the sheets soon to be covering Dragon’s hide. Ladon’s eyes were telling him here we go again.

  But he had no right to expect her to go from an overwhelmed young woman to full warrior in less than a week. She still needed training and confidence in herself and her abilities.

  And in him.

  Ladon nodded toward the door. “Andreas trained the first Draki Prime.” Andreas also had a special bond with Sister. He knew ways to calm her down. When he said he was the Dragons’ Legion, he spoke the truth.

  Rysa picked up the extra sheets off the bed. “So Fates and Shifters can get along.”

  Ladon shrugged. “He always got along better with Marcus than Daniel or Timothy. But all three listened to him.” The bloody t-shirt crackled when he moved. Damned thing had started to smell, too. “He never used his calling scents to manipulate them, and he won’t with you, either.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she threw a sheet and blanket over Dragon, and dropped a pillow on his back where his neck ridges made his dragon-mattress lumpy. “There.”

  They’d have to move the real bed over if they wanted a true walking space to the kitchenette. Right now, they’d need to turn to the side to get through. Ladon pushed at the frame with his knee. Not on casters. He thought about it for a moment—it might be more effort than it was worth.

  “Stop that.” Rysa pressed her fists into her hips, a stern look bunching her gorgeous lips into a pucker. For a moment, she looked more like a parent than a Prime Fate.

  “Stop what?” He pressed his knee into the bed again. Maybe he could distract her from whatever mood had begun frothing up from her all-too-deep well of issues.

  “Why do you do that?” She pointed at his side. “You’re wounded! You were shot, Ladon. You lost a lot of blood. And you want to move the bed?” She threw her hands in the air. “Next thing I know you’re going to be carrying me around because I’m tired and you don’t want me to walk! Do you have any sense at all of your own body?”

  A parade of retorts strolled through his mind, banging away on his thoughts the way obnoxious children banged on their parents’ pots—I’d rather have a sense of yours. Then I’m a caveman, remember? I’m supposed to act this way. Followed by Come here and I’ll give you a sense of my body.

  He kept his mouth shut, but his thoughts must have played across his face because a big, amazed laugh burst out of Rysa.

  “We need to get the t-shirt off you. It’s too gross for words.” She fished around in the supplies Andreas had dropped on the bed next to their fresh clothes. “Into the bathroom right now, gorgeous.”

  He knew he was grinning and that he shouldn’t be. He had work to do, but she crawled onto the bed, on all fours, her perfect back dipping the perfect amount to accent her perfect backside, and work became the least of Ladon’s concerns.

  She popped off the other side, the medical supplies bag in her hand. “Shower, Mr. Immortal. Now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He grabbed her free hand and pulled her in after him.

  The bathroom was split into two small rooms—one with the sink, a wide mirror, a stall shower, plus several cabinets full of towels and extra pillows. A sliding door separated the second room with the toilet and a large soaking tub with a handheld showerhead. A panoramic window opened up the entire back wall behind the tub and gave them a nice view of the hills surrounding Flaming Gorge National Park.

  “Dragon and I will take you camping in the gorge. We’ll start in Utah and travel the entire length, up to south of Rock Springs.” Maybe they’d visit it for their honeymoon. But it might have to wait. She had school business in Minneapolis. Maybe they’d take her up to the B
oundary Waters instead. He and Dragon hadn’t been camping on the Canadian border for a good long while. Wyoming could wait, anyway. They’d have a lifetime—several lifetimes—to explore the West.

  Ladon leaned against the sink as Rysa flipped on the lights. The two big overhead recessed canisters burst on. He blinked.

  His responses were slow. She was right; he needed rest.

  “Hold still. I’m going to cut off the shirt.”

  Ladon glanced down at his chest. This shirt was softer than most of his others and he liked it. But it did have a bullet hole in it, along with several new rips.

  “It can’t be saved.” Rysa dropped her hand away. “We should burn it. And the jeans.”

  But the jeans weren’t his. “Derek won’t be happy.”

  “He’ll be more unhappy if you give him back his pants covered with set-in Dracae blood stains.” She frowned, but continued working on the shirt.

  “True.” It wasn’t like Ladon wanted to burn Derek’s favorite hat. The jeans he could live without. “He’s probably more pissed he’s wearing sweats.”

  Ladon hoped his brother-in-law was angry and that Vivicus’s enthrallers hadn’t turned him into a babbling child.

  The entire Seraphim were going to learn some manners.

  Rysa glanced down at her breasts. “I’ve ruined his Russian t-shirt.”

  It took all Ladon’s effort not to drop his face to her chest. His wounds ached and the best place on the planet for comfort was in Rysa’s arms.

  Her seers blipped, first her past-seer, then her present-, then her future-seer. They ran by his mind like a train speeding past—first an oboe, then a flute, then a piccolo—all three clear and as beautiful as the woman herself.

  “Did Andreas teach you that in the van while we drove? Your seers felt distinct.”

  She shrugged as she cut away his shirt. “I’m having a hard time seeing Derek.” Lack of confidence draped over her voice as if she spoke through wool. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m not a good Fate or if I can’t see him anymore.” She paused and peeled a strip of solidified t-shirt off his chest. “Maybe Andreas will help.”