There were more pressing concerns at the moment, anyway. Alec continued evading Melody’s questions about whether he intended to “make an honest woman” of her mother. Now that she had a clearer picture of what that really meant for both him and her mother, she was surprised by his hesitance.
“You said you were going to do it the night I showed up. Don’t let me stop you,” she told him after the novelty of being home again for the first time in years had finally worn off. “You know you shouldn’t wait.”
“No, but I am going to. Just a little longer. We will have all the time in the world when I do it.”
“Are you waiting on my account? Because if you are, I really wish you wouldn’t. I want to be able to tell her the truth for once. I’ve been so circumspect since I got home—I hate it.”
They were taking a walk the half-mile down the dirt road to the Merritt house to return some tools they’d borrowed from Anya and Viki, the women who had been her mother’s neighbors for the last two years.
“Everything in its own time, Melonhead,” he said. “You may have given up hope for yourself, but I haven’t. I’ve been around awhile—guys like me don’t exactly like to rush things.”
Melody snorted. “Not when you have forever. You’ve never actually told me—how old are you, anyway?”
“He’s older than you’d think,” a female voice said from behind them. Melody turned to see Anya, her dark hair coiled into a messy knot at the back of her head. She was really a striking woman, Amazonian in stature and built with steely strength. She and her partner, Viki, had been the friends her mother needed during the last few years. She held her hand out for the tools.
“How old do you think he is?” Melody asked, wondering if the woman somehow knew more than she let on. She had a strange sense that there was more to her than met the eye, the way she always sensed about certain people, yet Anya wasn’t quite the same as Alec or Garen and Skye. Simply different in a way Melody believed was something a little more than human. The rest of the conversation confirmed it.
Anya gave Alec a wry look. “When did we first meet, was it in Italy when my people invaded and your parents defended the countryside? You were such a wild boy back then. War was much more fun, too.”
Alec laughed. “I’d never seen a Turul before. I knew you existed but I guess there were creatures out there even my people considered myths back then.”
Melody blinked. “You invaded Italy?”
Alec waved a hand. “Ancient history, literally. I’m close to a thousand years old. When I was young, we had bigger reasons to remain in our true forms. I’m just glad the Turul are our allies now.”
Anya turned her dark, slanted eyes to Melody and gave her a once over. “She’s got the look of a marked human, but she’s no more yours than her mother is. Except that is definitely your magic underneath those webs of the other two. And yours has been there a lot longer. Tell me you’re not trading in the mother for the daughter, Viki might take issue with that. But then your kind has never had any qualms about taking more than one mate, have you?”
Alec grabbed Anya’s arm and hauled her away, but not far enough that Melody couldn’t hear them. “You know damn well Julia is the only woman I love. Why else would I have had your people watch over her the last two decades?”
“And you still haven’t claimed her, yet you’ve done something to claim the daughter. You’ve always flouted convention, Alec. By their laws you should be dead now. What are you up to coming back like this? Did you come back for Julia or for Melody?”
Irritated by their dismissal of her, Melody stomped through the grass and stabbed her index finger at Anya’s chest.
“Alec’s always been like a father to me. He loves Mom. And you can bet that if he doesn’t do what needs to be done, she’ll know the truth from me.”
“Jesus, Mel. You can’t tell her.” Alec looked stricken.
“Are you ever going to?” she asked, emotion tangling in her stomach. She’d spent a week with only a vague idea about Garen and Skye, patient because she knew they were working up to sharing the details of a secret she already knew. She could forgive them for their reluctance, but her mother’s peace of mind was far more important than her own.
Something caught Anya’s attention and she looked away from their argument. “Looks like you might not have to,” she said.
A split second later a piercing female scream carried through the air from the direction of her mother’s house. Without even blinking, Alec took off at a dead run, disregarding anything in his path. A split-rail fence stood between Anya’s yard and garden, which he vaulted over like the earth was a springboard and kept going.
“Oh God, Mama!” Melody yelled, but there was no way she could keep up with the blur that was already retreating into the distance, dodging tree trunks in the stand of hardwoods that separated the two properties.
Anya clutched her shoulder. “She’ll be fine. I’m guessing these particular guests aren’t unexpected or they wouldn’t have shown up the way they did. C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home so you don’t have to chase the west wind.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Skye worried that it had been too long already. In his own timeframe it had been the blink of an eye, but humans lived their lives much more quickly. Three weeks may have seemed like a lifetime to Melody.
The truth was, every second since he and Garen had read her letter had been another second too long away from her. As Garen flew alongside Skye, carried along by the jet stream over the Rocky Mountains, he could sense the other dragon’s urgency, a mirror to his own.
They hadn’t wasted time after leaving Kol’s office, heading straight to the roof and shifting together the second they realized Alec was alive and would likely have returned to Melody’s mother—exactly where they knew Melody to have gone already.
They’d taken off right way, with the wind off the Pacific carrying them soaring over the city for miles before they had to resort to their own power to keep them aloft. They’d flown through the night, over city lights, small towns, and pitch-dark wilderness of the country as it passed beneath them. The sun had fully risen and they needed to land before they were seen, but Skye could finally sense her energy, the faint tendrils still discernible amid all the other human impressions beneath him
“She is close!” Garen sent to him, just before diving lower to the ground, searching. They were over a rural area now and the worst he could do was spook some livestock. Skye followed.
Before he knew it they’d found her. Her lush figure stood, face upturned to the morning sky, a straw hat in one hand in the middle of a flower garden. The emotions that reached him were odd, however … subtly more jaded than the Melody he remembered, but happy. Maybe even too happy considering what he and Garen had put her through. He slowed his flight, hesitating, but Garen sped up.
“She will see us for what we are finally.” Garen’s elation was infectious, but didn’t dampen Skye’s worry. They shouldn’t approach her this way—not after the time they’d had apart. Yet he could sense his friend’s need to reach her after so long. In spite of Skye’s sleeker, quicker form, Garen had more stamina. After the long flight, the Guardian still possessed too much energy for him to overcome.
Melody’s blonde head glimmered in the morning light. She was surrounded by purple daisies and looked completely at home and purely content, just before they came around to hover right before her, wings still flapping to slow them down.
That was when she opened her eyes and he realized they’d both made a huge mistake.
There was no turning around now, however. Not when the woman’s blue eyes, so much like Melody’s, went wide with fear upon seeing the pair of winged monsters that had just landed outside her garden fence. Garen’s dismay hit Skye as swiftly as his own and they both shifted and clothed themselves. But the damage was done, as evidenced by the scream the woman wh
o wasn’t Melody let out before brandishing her gardening spade at them both.
“Get the fuck out of my garden!” Her aura flashed dangerously close to panic, and in spite of the vehemence of her yell, Skye could only sense acute fear coming from her.
He held his hands out, palms up and let out a long exhaled breath, sending it toward her to attempt to reason with her from the inside.
“I must apologize, Julia, we didn’t intend to startle you. We came for Melody—and from the air, you looked like her.” He grimaced at the tone of his words, and the mistake—Melody’s energy was so close he could feel it reaching for him, but the threads he should have followed didn’t end in this garden. The woman before them had obviously not been mated yet, in spite of their understanding to the contrary, and was now panicking at being presented with two seemingly alien creatures landing on her property, and Skye essentially telling her, “We come in peace.”
She backed up several paces when he took a step toward her, her eyes widening. The red handle of a shovel jutted out of the earth behind her and he tried to tell her to watch her step, but she sped up, paying no heed to her direction as long as it was away from them. She kept moving back, holding the spade out in front of her. A second too late he saw her foot falter on a clod of dirt and she lost her balance, arms flailing.
“Fuck!” he yelled, surging toward her and barely catching her as her temple grazed the corner of the shovel’s blade just below the end of the handle.
She fell limp as he caught her in his arms, her head lolling back and a thin stream of blood trickling over her cheek. He sent his breath deeper into her mind, testing, and with relief determined she wasn’t badly damaged, but she would have a headache when she woke up.
“Come heal her, quickly,” he called to Garen. His friend approached and with a gentle swipe of his hand, Garen uncovered the gash at the edge of her brow bone.
Garen gazed down at the woman in Skye’s arms. “She’s beautiful. Sweet Mother, Melody is the spitting image of her mother.”
“Melody’s not this fragile,” Skye observed, marveling at the light, delicate weight of the woman in his arms. He could sense every bone, and the depth of emotional stress that had left the woman so light. She was still infused with deep loss. The steady, healthy glow of her aura let him know that she was just coming back from it. Would Melody have wound up in the same state as this woman if they’d stayed away longer?
Garen bent over her, nearly pressing his lips to her skin to let out a concentrated healing breath that closed the wound. He was just pulling back when the blast of wind hit them, a flurry of wings sending them flying and claws simultaneously extracting the limp body from Skye’s grasp.
“What have you done?” the deep, resonant voice boomed.
The unrestrained power in the voice made Skye blink in confusion. He stared up into the eyes of the largest Gold dragon he’d ever met, Melody’s mother gently cradled in his grasp. The dragon shifted her body to one giant claw, caressing her still bloodied cheek delicately with one long, shining claw.
Her lids fluttered, and with a puff of air from his lungs, the Gold shifted into the form of a large, blond, and very naked man.
“Alec?” she whispered. “What happened?”
“Shh, love. You fell and hit your head, that’s all.”
“You haven’t mated her, have you?” Skye said silently.
Alec ignored him, smiling with such love down at the woman in his arms, oblivious to how naked he was.
“Why have you waited?” Skye asked, standing up and following when Alec turned to walk away. Garen followed close on his heels, brushing dark dirt off his own backside.
“There was something here …” Julia said, her voice quavering. “Did I hallucinate it all?” Her head turned to look over Alec’s shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of Garen and Skye still following. She pounded on Alec’s shoulder. “Stop! It was real. They’re still here! Jesus Christ, they’re as big as you.”
Alec glanced over his shoulder, glaring at Skye. “Yes, love. They won’t hurt you. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I make sure you’re all right.” A cloud of gold smoke drifted from his nostrils and settled over Julia’s body.
She sighed when his breath took effect and rested her head against his shoulder. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes, honey?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said in an indulgent tone. His breath trailed over his own body, coalescing into a pair of worn jeans and a white t-shirt. A pair of brown work boots materialized around his feet.
Skye’s impatience finally got away from him and he called after them both. “Where is Melody?”
“I’m right here. And where the fuck have you been?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
She knew she was being uncharitable by being pissed at them now. After all, she’d been the one who told them to work out their issues when she left. And the truth was, she’d spent the last three weeks trying to mentally prepare herself for the eventuality that they worked them out so well they never actually came for her.
Hell, for all she knew now, they had merely shown up to tell her she was right—that they really did love each other after all and to thank her for showing them the truth.
She could live with that, couldn’t she?
Garen’s looming shape stepped up behind Skye, a protective glower on his face as he watched Alec disappear into the house with her mother in his arms. When Alec disappeared, Garen’s expression softened and he rested a hand at Skye’s waist, fingers digging in ever so slightly, but Melody didn’t miss the gesture.
Still, their expectant looks confused her. Her irritation subsided in the midst of it. If they’d found each other finally, and for real, who was she to get between them? Her heart ached at the thought of losing them both, but she would survive if she had to. Coming home had made her realize that much, at least. If her mother could last two decades, so could she.
Except goddamn if she didn’t already know who she loved now, just as much as her mother had known she loved Alec all those years ago—enough to wait for him. And waiting out a relationship between two men who clearly loved each other just as much wasn’t something she thought she could do. Especially not when the two of them could outlive her by several centuries.
In a shaky voice, she said, “You guys should come inside so we can talk.”
They both eyed the front porch with some trepidation. Melody sighed in exasperation. “He’s fine. As long as Mom’s fine, anyway. And if she isn’t then Alec’s got nothing on what I’ll do to you. Come on.”
They trailed after her like a pair of puppies … two very large, chastened yellow Labradors, with their shining golden hair and wide shoulders. They all paused just inside the door at the sound of Melody’s mother cursing.
“I’m fine! I don’t need ice. I need to see those two again. Prove to myself they exist! Naked men don’t just appear out of thin air in my garden every day.”
“Naked men, huh?” Melody asked, stepping through the door. “I think you might’ve gotten heat stroke, Mama. They’re right here and they’re definitely not naked.”
“Oh, there you are, honey. And you didn’t see what I saw, either. That one …” she pointed at Garen, “Is hung like an ox, and that one …” she aimed an accusatory finger at Skye, “Had an erection when he saw me. It was pretty damn huge, too.”
Skye cleared his throat and Melody heard him mumble, “Thought she was you …” when she glared at him.
“Are you all right, Mama?” She glanced at Alec who was still crouching at the edge of the sofa beside her mother, a kitchen towel filled with lumpy ice cubes held in his hands.
“I’m fine, honey. Are you going to introduce me to your well-endowed friends?”
Melody closed her eyes, wishing for patience and fortitude and maybe to just disappear. After a second of gathering her s
anity, she opened her eyes again and smiled. “This is Garen and Skye.”
Her mother directed her gaze to the men standing just behind her and smiled broadly. “I’m so glad you two could make it. We’ve been expecting you. Melody’s told me so much about you both.”
To her surprise, Garen and Skye both stepped forward and one at a time, bowed low, taking her mother’s free hand in theirs and kissing the smooth back of it.
Her mother looked positively delighted at the deferential treatment, her blue eyes lighting up. She sat up a little straighter, looking more like a regal figure in spite of her messy hair and dirt-streaked plaid shirt that was tied in a knot at her waist. “You’re staying for supper. I’m making a rib roast with summer squash. Melody can show you where to clean up.”
“Mama, are you sure you’re feeling all right? They don’t have to stay, and you don’t have to cook.”
Her mother glared at her. “Honey, it’s my house. And I’d really love to know how they got here.”
Melody let out a deep breath and shot a beseeching look at Alec. He nodded, resigned understanding clear on his face.
“Julia,” he said. “We need to have a talk—one that’s long overdue. And I’m sure Melody needs some time alone with her friends.”
Melody grimaced inwardly at the conversation that needed to happen the second she did get them alone. Their gazes kept slipping to her. She did her best to keep her focus on her mother while they stood there, both exuding a kind of pent-up need. Not for sex, she didn’t think, but that was precisely where her mind went. Making love to them both within hours of each other had been her tipping point, and seeing them now made her realize how off balance she still was, even after weeks away from them.
The fact that she still wanted them both like crazy didn’t help matters any.
Her mom tried to object to Alec’s insistence that they go to their room to talk. He gave up arguing and her mom let out a yelp of protest when he hoisted her in his arms.
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