by D T Dyllin
About fifteen minutes later, a very annoyed me still hadn’t figured out where Jenna was. Maybe if I could find Jeremy, I could force it out of him. I wondered if having a Rider in Jenna had dampened his newfound devotion to her? He had to know it wasn’t really her that had sent him to deliver her cookies of death to me. I heaved a huge sigh and was just about to give up when I spied Jeremy, speak of the devil, coming down the hallway. Isn’t that the way it always is . . . you only luck into something just when you’re ready to give up?
“Jeremy!” I called out, hurrying toward him with excitement.
He looked up at me, and a smile spread across his face slowly. “I’m so glad you’re back.” He came to me and wrapped me in a bear hug, swinging me around, causing me to giggle despite myself. Yep . . . I’d missed Jeremy too. Even though he had started out as just another guy trying to play tonsil hockey with me, since his feelings for Jenna had developed, we’d been able to relax into a real friendship, at least I felt that way. “Have you figured out a way to fix Jenna?” he asked with hope filling his caramel colored eyes as he set me back down on my feet.
All feelings of elation instantaneously drained out of me. “Not yet.” I paused to study the ground before gathering the courage to meet his eyes and the disappointment that shone out at me from them. “But I know I will. My birth mother said I could, and she’s never wrong apparently.”
He nodded, letting some hope settle into his tense features. “Okay. So what’s the plan then?”
“I wanna see her Jeremy. I know you’re probably gonna say it’s a bad idea but I just miss her so much, and I just—”
“Yeah. Okay,” Jeremy interjected, thoroughly shutting me up. I’d been prepared to argue with him to get him to tell me where she was. I was shocked at how easily he agreed. He must have read it on my face. “She can’t hurt you, and she knows she has a Rider inside of her. It’s almost like she has a split personality or something. Jenna—the real Jenna—there aren’t even words to explain how awful she feels about—”
“Trying to kill me,” I said dryly.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said softly, like he was partly to blame or something.
I reached up and touched his arm. “But she’s okay besides that? I mean no one is mistreating her, right? Khol promised he’d protect her.” And yet another instance of me turning to Khol for aid. But then again he was the Red Dragon Lord, and I was the Dragon Queen. Technically, I could ask any dragon for assistance and expect them to give to me.
“She’s safe but . . .” Jeremy’s voice trailed off and his brow furrowed with concern. “She’s not doing well. The animals . . . well, they won’t talk to her and she’s just—”
I gasped, cutting him off. “Oh God, no. I never thought about that part—either way.” A Rider with the ability to talk to and in a minor manner control animals—we could have all been so screwed. “I’m sure once the Rider’s gone, they’ll talk to her again.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Jeremy mumbled while studying the floor. He then suddenly looked up at me, as if he forgot for a moment he wasn’t alone and gave me a weak smile. “Come on, we’ll go see her now before anyone else . . .” He raised his fist up to his mouth and forced a cough. “Khol,” he said with a smirk, and he turned and started walking back down the wall in the direction I had seen him coming from, “tries to stop you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I fell into step beside him. “He is a bit controlling, isn’t he?”
Jeremy stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows up to practically his hairline. “A bit?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”
Neither one of us said anything else for over the few hundred feet it took to travel until we paused in front of a huge wooden door. As Jeremy pulled it open, I only hesitated for a second before following him in. Inside, much to my surprise, looked like a bedroom with prison bars in front of it. Like someone had just installed bars as an afterthought. And I suppose, that’s probably exactly what happened. Talk about a whole new definition to being sent to your room.
I trailed along behind Jeremy and scanned the room for Jenna. Only when we were standing right up next to the bars, did I notice her sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She looked so tiny, lost, and forlorn, laying there with black messy hair and light brown roots. I was overcome by the urge to run to her and hug her, but of course, I couldn’t for obvious reasons.
“Jenna,” Jeremy said in a soft tone. “Someone’s here to see you.”
I heard Jenna heave a huge sigh. “I told you, I don’t want any visitors. Please just go away.” Her voice was so flat and utterly hopeless sounding, lacking all of the usual life that Jenna always seemed to have in her, it was if someone had sucked out her very essence. My stomach knotted immediately, and I felt bile rise up in my throat.
“Jenna,” I said. “I wanted to see you. Please won’t you talk to me?”
She sat up suddenly and came running toward the bars with a huge smile on her face, and she was still, in that moment, my best girlfriend I’d known forever. But as she got closer and the duel imagery of the Rider inside of her shined out from behind her pixie face, I involuntarily took a step back and let out a strangled scream. My reaction halted her dead in her tracks and her face went ashen. She blinked back tears that were gathering in her deep brown eyes as she looked at me.
“I’m sorry!” I blurted out wanting desperately a do over. “I knew what to expect, it’s just that . . .” What could I say? Seeing an alien living inside of you kind of freaked me out? Well of course—duh. “I—I’m sorry.” Maybe I shouldn’t have come to see her after all. I thought I could handle it, but maybe I was wrong.
Jenna’s eyes finally filled to the brim and the tears spilled out and rolled down her face, her lower lip trembling. “You know I would never try to kill you. I mean—I would never try to kill you. And the animals—they won’t talk to me anymore. I know it’s in there—I can feel it but I can’t see it! Can’t control it when it starts implanting things in my head!” She wailed the last part and dropped to her knees.
Tears of my own began to flow freely down my face and I desperately tried to think of something to say to comfort her. “I’m going to find a way to get it out of you—I promise.”
“What if you can’t? Or what if even when it’s gone it leaves some kind of—I don’t know—darkness behind?” Her whole body began to shake as she sobbed. “I tried to kill you. It made sense at the time. It convinced me that you were to blame for all of my problems . . . losing my family . . . being here . . . just everything.” More huge sobs wracked her body. “It made total sense—to kill you—my best friend.”
“Jenna—I . . .” I looked at her beseeching eyes and began to wonder if it was so easy to convince her I was to blame . . . because I was. I swallowed to try and combat the sudden dryness of my throat, the bile that had risen up had left a burning sensation in its wake. I then turned to Jeremy with wide eyes and shook my head in panic. “I’m sorry—I thought I could—but I can’t.” Those were the only words of explanation I managed to get out before I turned and ran from the room—ran from Jenna, my best female friend who had an alien inside of her.
Once outside of the room I continued to run, not really sure where I was going, letting my feet lead me blindly. Where could I go? Not to Khol. I knew I could find comfort in his arms, but that would be the easy fix, and short lived at that. Not to Bryn either. I wasn’t sure how he would receive me at the moment, and I didn’t think I could handle being turned away from him in the state I was in. So I continued to blindly run, my tears smearing the world into bright water colors before my eyes, until I found myself outside in one of the many gardens surrounding the compound and I collapsed under a huge tree.
As I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them to me, I realized that I’d never been so utterly alone in my life. Sure I might have felt this alone in the past, but I was just being overly dramatic—a truth th
at I felt down to my core in that moment. Now—now I actually was alone. I had no one to turn to—no one who understood me the way that I needed to be understood. Because that’s what I really wanted . . . understanding. Isn’t that what everyone wants on some level? That’s why sometimes love just isn’t enough, because if there’s no understanding, then a lack in communication will drag the relationship down. Look at what had happened between Bryn and me. I just couldn’t make him understand that it’s not his job to protect me, that I only want him to love me.
I sat beneath that tree until no more tears would come, and the air began to grow chilly with the onset of dusk. But I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed until all there was left to do was sleep.
17
I dreamt that I was in a maze, not knowing which way was out, and as I ran around one of the corners, I saw Bryn. He smiled at me, giving me one of his patented lopsided grins complete with dimples, and turned to run from me. He glanced over his shoulder and called out, “This way Peej.” As if I was supposed to follow him. And of course I did. Or at least I tried. But bands of steel held me around my waist, keeping me from moving from the spot I stood. I yelled at him to wait but he didn’t seem to hear me. I struggled against the bands, and when I looked down I realized that they weren’t bands at all, but arms. I whirled around in a panic to see who was keeping me from following Bryn, half expecting to find Khol, but instead I found Drake. He grinned at me and whispered harshly, “You belong with my lord. And I’ll make sure he gets you.” That’s when I screamed.
“It’s okay, it was just a nightmare.” A heartbreakingly familiar voice murmured from underneath me. My eyes snapped open and I inhaled sharply the scent that I’d come to think of as home . . . Bryn! His hands pulled through my hair, smoothing it back away from my face. “Peej,” he whispered my name like a little prayer as I swept my eyes up the line of his chest to meet his fathomless dark blue eyes. My whole body tightened with need, and I pushed myself up so I could slant my lips over his. I needed him, needed to taste him, needed to feel his skin underneath mine. I’d never been so singularly driven to possess Bryn in such a way in all of my life. It was as if I couldn’t have him . . . all of him . . . as soon as I could manage . . . I would just shrivel up and die.
As I pushed my tongue into his mouth, demanding him to accept me, I pulled myself up so I could straddle him. He immediately responded to me, a low growl rumbling in the back of his throat as his hands threaded into my hair and pulled me tighter to him. I frantically ground myself against his growing need, wishing that there were no clothes separating us, wondering if I could possibly wait one moment longer or if I possessed the skill to just burn them off without injuring him. “I need you . . . now,” I gasped into Bryn’s mouth as he lifted his hips up to meet me while I continued my frantic gyrating rhythm. I swore I’d never need anyone again . . . especially a man . . . but I did. I needed Bryn in that moment more than I needed oxygen in my lungs to breathe. It’s exactly what I’d told Khol, and it was true. I was so empty without him and I needed him to fill me up, to make me feel . . . more.
And then he just stopped . . . everything. “No. Peej. We can’t do this,” Bryn croaked raggedly as he grabbed my wrists to keep me from holding on to him and slid out from under me.
“I need you, Bryn. Please,” I begged as I looked up into his tormented face. “I don’t wanna be with anyone but you. It’s been you, and only you for as far back as I can remember. It’ll be you—always.”
His sea storm eyes suddenly began to churn with anger as he regarded me darkly. “You never seem to have a problem getting cozy with Khol. It seems to me you want him plenty.”
My mouth dropped open and any sort of reply stuck in my throat. Bryn’s lips turned up into a cruel smile. “Even the first time when I was sent away, you couldn’t seem to keep your hands off him.”
White-hot fury coupled with adrenaline shot through my system. “Nala—that’s all I have to say about when you were sent away—Nala.” I ground my teeth together. “And as for the rest”—unbidden and unwanted images of the intimacies I’d shared with Khol played across my mind’s eye—“you practically put a bow around me and handed me to him.” It was true, if Bryn hadn’t walked away like he did from me, and he had just let our—even if it was semi-permanent—mate bond reform then I never would have so much as kissed Khol.
“A willing gift,” Bryn growled.
I rose up onto my knees so I could reach him, swung my arm through the air, and slapped him across the face with as much force as I could manage. “I love you—you stupid asshole!” And I was showing him in a very peculiar way at the moment.
Bryn blinked his dark lashes over his shocked blue eyes at me, all anger draining from his face. “You hit me,” he said as he brought his hand up to cover the small red spot blooming on his perfectly chiseled jaw. “I can’t believe you hit me,” he mumbled numbly as he continued to stare at me.
“You deserved it,” I said with conviction.
Bryn shook his head slowly and the shock turned into some emotion I couldn’t quite read. “I think you should leave.”
I raised my chin at him petulantly. “No,” I replied simply.
“No?” Bryn said incredulously.
“No,” I said again.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to make you,” Bryn retorted as his face morphed into a mask of zen. All cold clean lines, and no emotions . . . at least none I could read. Which was beyond frustrating because I used to be able to read him so well, or at least I thought I could. He reached for me, and I slipped out from under his grasp, reached up and smacked him across his other cheek this time.
His arms immediately dropped to his sides and he gazed at me with renewed shock. “You hit me again.” Thanks, Captain Obvious. Next would you like to tell me that the sky is blue?
“Yeah, I did. And I’m gonna keep hitting you until I smack some sense into you.” Did I really just say that? When did I become so violent? Since Bryn started refusing to see reason, that helpful little voice whispered in my brain. As if to punctuate my point, I reached up and hit Bryn again. This time he just stood there as still as a statue, his big blue eyes blinking in confusion at me. His lack of reaction only angered me more. So I hit him again . . . and again . . . and again. He continued to just stand there. What the hell? The sound of my palm meeting his face, first on one side and then the other was the only sound besides our harsh breathing. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. Crack, crack, crack . . . a steady rhythm was taking shape, and I seemed to be a slave to its dance.
Finally Bryn reacted. He moved with the speed of a dragon and Guardian mixed as one as I abruptly found myself pinned under his body on his bed. His eyes blazed the fiercest dragon blue, and even though I couldn’t see them, I was positive mine glowed just as brightly. What would he do? I absentmindedly wondered, too focused on his perfectly formed face, and how even contorted with rage, it was the most beautiful one I’d ever laid eyes on. “You may be quick to give me away Bryn Aries O’Bannon, but make no mistake—you always have been and always will be mine,” I spat at him with more harshness in my voice than I intended.
A low growl erupted from his chest and before I really registered what was happening, his lips came crashing down on mine. He covered me with his entire body, pinning me with his weight down into his mattress. I moaned my approval as his tongue plunged into my mouth, hot and wanting. This is what I needed; this is what I’d been waiting for. As he ground himself into me with wild abandon, I lifted my hips up to meet him with each thrust. His clothes needed to be off . . . like yesterday. I was more than happy to help him with his not being naked issue. I tore at his clothes with a desperation he seemed to match, and within what seemed like the blink of an eye, Bryn loomed over me, naked and ready to finally give me what I needed . . . him.
But he paused, despite the raw hunger I saw in his eyes as he looked down at me. “Peej—we shouldn’t—why won’t you just—”
“Let you go?
” I snarled at him. “Never. I’ll never let you go. You promised always and I’m here to collect.”
Bryn’s pupils noticeably dilated further and he looked at me with wonder. “Always,” he murmured, and as the word left his mouth, I could almost see the acceptance wash over his face. He finally understood . . . He finally realized he belonged to me and when he promised always, there would never be any going back. We didn’t need to be mated as dragons for that to be the truth between us. Being mated to him would merely be an added bonus. He brought his lips back down to mine in another onslaught of need, and in one quick motion he came to find his home . . . inside me. I cried out as the pleasure of feeling him again rippled through my system. “I love you Peej . . . always.” Bryn’s voice was a guttural sob as he began to build a blistering pace.
And that’s when I felt it . . . my magic . . . my new stronger magic flowing up to wrap around us. I just instinctively knew that this time, our mate bond would be complete . . . the real deal. No words were needed between us like when Khol had claimed me; Bryn’s soul and mine were linked together on a much deeper level. I cried out at the pure joy of knowing he was finally and completely mine. Our session was much quicker than normal, but then again we hadn’t been together in quite some time and our current need was completely primal. Even still, the familiar feeling of ecstasy began in my center and pushed its way out through my body before I fell to pieces in his arms shouting his name to the world. I heard Bryn call out my name with his own release just before I slipped into darkness.
18
“You don’t look well,” I said, knowing there was no way to tell Bryn that tactfully. “Were you sick or something?” I thought back to the vision that had me so worried about him when he woke up as if from a nightmare covered in a sickly sweat.