“Have we done a bad thing?” she asked. “The two of you seem like your world has ended. I just left Skye up there brooding and saying he wanted a few minutes alone to think.”
“Yes,” he said. There was really no mistaking what they’d done. No doubt Skye was trying to figure out what their next step should be if they went through with leaving her marked by them both.
“Do you regret it?” she asked, and the tentative tone nearly ripped his heart out. She was afraid that they’d reject her for some reason. He turned to look at her finally and took in her beautiful face and wide blue eyes.
“Never,” he said. “But it does complicate things a bit.”
“After all the effort you two put into pushing me into each other’s arms, I was starting to feel like neither of you really wanted me. That I might have been right to think you’d be happier together. You were, weren’t you?”
He tilted his head back and took a deep breath. She should know everything if she was truly going to understand what was at stake. When he met her gaze again, wet tears threatened to tumble from her eyes.
“Melody,” he said, going to her immediately and pulling her into his embrace. “No. It’s complicated. Sweet Mother, you were left in the dark for too long for no reason. Alec had good intentions, but there’s no way he could have known where his actions would lead. Skye and I were too wrapped up in our own personal dilemmas to see what we were doing to you. It’s something I will always regret—making you feel this way.”
“It’s okay,” she said, sniffling into his chest. She pulled away and wiped her eyes savagely, then turned and grabbed a paper towel to blow her nose. Staring down at the floor she shook her head. “I messed up what the two of you had. You don’t have to baby me out of guilt. I saw you two together. I’m not like you—I never can be, can I?”
She gave him a look of such deep longing, tears nearly sprang to his own eyes. “We can’t make you one of us, no. You have to be born this way. But what Skye and I said upstairs … don’t mistake any of it for pillow talk.”
“Then why do I keep going back to the fact that you both rejected me? You both left. What other decision could I make today? I wanted just one more day with you, but all day all I could do was wonder what took you so long and why you both still kept pushing me away. Jesus, Garen, what the fuck do you guys really want?”
He reached for her, his fingertips grazing the wavering bubble of her aura, but she moved away, twitching her shoulders as though she’d felt his touch against that ethereal barrier of energy and rejected it. “We wanted more than we could have,” he whispered. “If you knew Skye better, you would understand.”
“Well, I don’t, do I?” She turned, more defiant now. “I’m as good as a stranger to you.”
“No! Melody, I meant …”
“I don’t even know you, either, for that matter. So why the fuck is my heart breaking.”
“Jesus, Melody! You do know us! You know everything you need to know. It’s so deep inside you I can fucking see it shining through your pores. So you tell me, why do you think your heart is breaking? What’s hurting you so much that you’re crying right now and won’t let me hold you? Be honest, please. With yourself, and with me.”
As he stared down at her, the truth hit him. She was glowing with an unmistakable inner light, her marks the most vibrant of all. Dragon marks only glowed so brightly when their holder was either ready to conceive or had just done so. The second he was about to voice the wonder and astonishment at what he knew had happened, she said the thing that tore him apart.
“I’m afraid to love you because you might leave.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Christ, she hadn’t meant to go down to have this conversation with him. But when she’d woken up, Garen was gone, and she’d missed him. But as she rose from bed, she’d seen Skye lying there, wide awake on his back and staring up at the ceiling.
“Go,” he said. “I need a few minutes to think … I’ll be down soon.”
She’d nodded silently and threw on some clothes. Just before she turned to leave, his hand snapped up to grab her wrist and pull her back to the bed. She found herself wrapped in his arms, his mouth against hers in a desperate kiss that threw her entirely off balance.
“You have no idea how much I needed you,” he said.
I didn’t need you, she thought, astonished that her own mind would go there. But it was true. Neither of them had factored into her plans. She really hadn’t needed to fall in love.
As she turned away, she kept thinking of the stories of the faerie rings that Alec had told her about as a child. He’d told her of young girls stepping into one and getting whisked away to play with faeries for a day, but when they decided to come home, years would have passed. And so they would go back, because that’s what the Faeries really wanted—they were lonely and wanted to play.
At the time, she’d thought she’d love to play with Faeries forever, if they ever chose her.
Now, here she was, chosen for something that could change her life forever—something she’d never have chosen for herself, but somehow trapped by one of the most exquisite webs she could have imagined. Because for all that she felt helpless and panicked by being in it, she was beginning to imagine simply giving up the fight and staying right where she was.
But who was she now? The Faerie or the one caught in time?
“I’m never leaving, Melody,” Garen said, drawing her back to the present with the force of his words, and the solid, gentle touch of his hands on her shoulders. “Neither is Skye.”
Something ached where he touched her, though, and she winced, shifting her arm away from his hand to look down at it. The etched lines of their marks blazed back at her, and suddenly she realized her skin was glowing, too. And it lit up even more brightly every time he touched her.
***
Skye stared after Melody’s departure through the door, following her with his senses down the stairs until he couldn’t bear his need to linger on her every action any longer. Yet he couldn’t block her out, and neither did he really want to. Her every emotion was still broadcast as though he were tuned in specifically to her. It had been this way since they’d met, and he’d loved it at first.
Now, it nearly tore him in two to know how uncertain she still was, even after the afternoon they’d spent together. Even after giving her the mark. And then giving her their seed.
Garen’s words weren’t comforting her, either, and Skye knew why. As much as Garen was dedicated to the truth, he could only give Melody half of the truth she needed to hear.
“Fuck you for having second thoughts,” he said to himself. The brief solitude had given him the smallest measure of clarity, but now he realized it was just another lonely moment to slide back into unproductive thinking. He’d already given up everything for her, simply to prove to Garen how much he didn’t need her. But the act of throwing away his inheritance had only made him more aware of how much he needed them both. He still had his wealth, and his position, but he had nothing of true worth except for what they were willing to give.
And he would take it, if they would still give it, even if it meant losing all the things he did still possess. Status and possessions would be stripped of him for the breach in their laws. Worse could still happen—the extent of which he wasn’t even sure.
He hated that he’d be disappointing Alec—the elder’s presence had been an odd comfort to him over the last day, a reminder that maybe change really was possible among their race. But if even an elder was concerned about this situation, Skye should listen.
What did any of the rest matter if they couldn’t proclaim their love for each other to the world? Or his world, at least, if not hers.
You are her world, he corrected himself. At least, he and Garen had succeeded in somehow becoming Melody’s world over the last month. All they’d really sought was to
override the bond Kol had accidentally made with her and then let her choose whether to stay with Skye or leave, free of any burden. His own bond was not that strong with her for her to be so attached—to either of them.
Nor his to her.
Yet here they were.
He suddenly missed his mother with a vengeance. She’d have had wise words, no doubt. Perhaps she’d say something like, “If you are faced with a choice and one of those choices is love, then there is no choice.”
Mora had been a Gold dragon, though, with very different outlooks and sensibilities than his own. Being Blue, he was tortured by not only the emotions that clouded the world around him, but also his own tormented soul.
Garen was always the best balance to his confusion. The Guardian managed to see through the tangle of Skye’s mess of feelings to the truth, and tell him so. And now there was Melody, who was the truth.
She’d given that to him, and now it was time for him to return the favor.
But when he found them downstairs at the edge of the kitchen, the hum of a magic far more powerful than Garen could produce distracted him. A bright golden halo that resembled Melody’s aura filled the entire room, making Skye blink in confusion.
The pair of them stood to one side, Garen holding Melody by the shoulders, his face intent and full of emotion. He looked up at Skye just long enough to share the news. “Our seed took. She’s pregnant.”
But even as perfect as the news was, it still didn’t explain the swirl of power that began to twist around them.
“Did you do this?” he asked out loud. Hhe looked at the table, attention drawn to the box that he thought he’d been rid of. His inheritance. And from it emanated the familiar golden power of his mother’s essence.
Garen pulled away from Melody and dropped his hands. “I couldn’t let you give it up. Not after seeing what was inside.”
Skye stared at his friend, astounded at Garen’s audacity—and loyalty. “You’ve seen the contents? What did you see?”
Garen started toward the table, but instead of reaching out and picking up the box he only gestured toward it.
“Mora’s essence was all I saw, but with it was the certainty that I needed to stay by your side until you found your way to opening it yourself. I think it’s for you to see now.”
Skye hesitated. He’d given it up, resigning himself to having no more than the power he’d been born with. That his mother had seen fit to bind her final living essence into a box had seemed like the cruelest joke to him, even though he knew she never did a thing without considering closely the outcome she desired. He only wished she’d given him better clues to her true wishes.
He had no reason to expect it would open now, though. Yes, he had taken a mate, but he hadn’t just taken a human woman. He’d marked Garen, too—his oldest, closest friend and someone his mother’s essence was likely to recognize.
“It won’t work,” he said, yet continued to stare at the box as though it were some alien creature with sharp teeth.
“You won’t know until you try,” Garen said.
“What’s so special about the box?” Melody asked, and Skye gratefully directed his attention toward her.
“My mother left it to me when she died. It contains my inheritance, but I couldn’t access it until I was mated to a human woman. I’d given it up when I decided to give you up to Garen.”
“Given it up?” Melody asked.
“He threw it away,” Garen said, his voice tense enough to make Skye cringe. The underlying accusation was clear from the impression he had of Garen’s emotions. You threw it away the same way you were willing to throw Melody away if it hadn’t been for me.
He glared at his friend, but Garen’s expression remained intensely resolute.
“Fine,” Skye said, taking a step forward and reaching out for the small golden box.
Before his hand came within an inch of it, the tight bubble of power it exuded pressed outward toward him, as though reaching to him and beyond. When he picked it up, it was warm to the touch, and the aroma of orange blossoms wafted from it, evoking a sudden impression of his mother from his earliest memories.
The mechanisms were familiar enough to him now, after all the times he’d worried them in an effort to open the box over the last several months, to no avail. Yet his two lovers—the pair of people who had provided true balance to him for the first time in his entire life—had both succeeded in seeing the contents of it.
He pressed the tiny button on the top of the box and simultaneously twisted the bottom. As though responding to a lover’s touch, the box sighed and the invisible seams at each corner split open. A glowing golden X appeared in the top and grew bigger as the pieces spread apart. Like a blooming flower, the inside was finally visible to him, the swirl of energy so intense it looked like a tiny galaxy floating within a solid gold well.
He was only dimly aware of the gasps of astonishment from either side of him as Garen and Melody both gazed into the center of it, and then the lights exploded outward, crashing into him with even more intensity than Melody’s last climax and the rush of her Nirvana sinking into his soul.
The world disappeared and he found himself in full dragon form, flying in a bright cloud of magic, his mother’s essence as absolute around him as though he’d been transported back into her womb. When her voice spoke, it came from all around him.
“My sweet, beautiful son, how I’ve missed you. I had faith that you would see your way to my essence, but I sense that it was not an easy route for you.”
“Mother, that’s an understatement. I’m still not quite sure how it is I managed to accomplish it, or precisely what it was you hoped for me to do.”
“My greatest wish for you was always the simplest wish—for you to find a love strong and true enough to sustain you in more than just body, but deep in your soul as well. You were ever a complicated child. You sacrificed too much for your ideals, for our race, for those around you whom you loved most. You needed more than a simple task of finding a mate—but I couldn’t tell you everything. It was something you needed to discover for yourself. And it seems you have.”
“I still don’t understand,” he said, frustrated at her cryptic words. “Do you mean Melody? Am I supposed to make Garen nullify his mark on her? Because if so, I refuse. If anything it’s my own that should be taken back.”
“No. I would not have you sacrifice your love for anything else. It was a thing I lacked too often over the centuries and wished for. My love and hopes for you were what sustained me. And now you’ve found love, twofold. Never give it up for anything. Laws will change. Opinions will change. The love you have for these two will endure forever. The child you have conceived with Melody will carry my Blessing as well as the Blessings of two other dragons. No other dragon child has ever been so Blessed, but this child of yours will need the three of you still. The world is changing for our kind and my grandchild’s generation will need every Blessing it can get.”
Before his eyes, the massive white shape of Garen appeared in full, winged splendor. Melody sat astride him, clad only in the brilliant, beautiful glow of her aura, her silken waves flowing around her like a halo. Her lower abdomen pulsed with a deep inner glow, and Skye knew that his mother spoke the truth.
The realization that it was his child she carried made his course of action clearer than ever before. He’d been a fool to consider ever leaving her or Garen again, especially after marking them both. Hearing his mother’s voice obliterated the last remnant of the idea that had lingered in his mind. Staying together was not the mistake. Failing to see their love as anything less than his fate and his right as bestowed, not only by his mother, but also by the Mother of them all, had been folly.
“You see the truth of it finally,” his mother’s voice said, permeating his mind. “The Mother’s blessing on you all, my son. Keep your new family close, for they will b
e your true salvation, but you must see them safe until the Laws of our race are prepared to accept your union. You must make this happen.”
“Thank you, Mother,” he said, knowing he wasn’t only thanking her with that word. His gratitude was directed first toward the Mother, their goddess—their creator, to his own mother second, and finally to the mother of his unborn child. To Melody.
Within the cloud of power, his lovers shimmered, their gazes fixed with love on him, and he went to them with purpose, convinced for the first time that nothing in the universe could keep them from staying together.
The real world faded back in when he reached them, the late afternoon sun streaming through the high, west-facing windows of the dining room, landing on his face where he lay on the floor, staring up at the pair of faces he most loved in all the world.
The return to reality brought with it the need for a true solution to their dilemma, however.
“We have to leave,” he said, his voice rough and scratchy to his own ears.
Garen nodded. “Melody and I heard everything, but where should we go?”
Skye sat up and shook his head. “I don’t know. The Monastery would normally be the ideal retreat, but in this case, farther from the Council would be better. But there’s no place far enough to wait out their judgment.”
“Take Melody to the house in Yosemite. I will go deal with the Council,” Garen said.
“I can’t let you do that. Our child will need us both if it’s to be as Blessed as Mother promised. Once the Council has judged either or both of us, there will be no power left for the baby. Not before it’s too late.”
A blur of movement caught his eye out the window, a huge, winged silhouette blocking out the deep pink of the sunset for a second before shrinking into a human shape as it descended to the deck. Alec’s broad-shouldered shape came toward them, his clothing fading into existence around him just as he walked through the door.
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