“Stop,” Lenny roared harshly as he entered the room in an enormous cloud of smoke. “Everyone stand back. Now.”
“Is that you Lenny?” my father asked. “I had a feeling you would be here! I’ve missed you so much. It’s wonderful of you to come back. The dungeon hasn’t been the same without you. So many people scream when I play with them. It was so refreshing to have someone who could take it in such stoic silence.”
I swallowed back the bile in my throat as I glared at the abomination who’d sired me. There was nothing about him that I could even call Dragon. He was pure evil.
“Let him make his terms,” Lenny yelled to the crowd. He wore a strange expression and appeared to have aged dramatically.
I was so flabbergasted by Lenny’s order to cave in to my father’s demands that I didn’t notice Maria, Seth and Elaina surround me. Maria touched my shoulder and helped me to my feet. I sagged forward into her arms with relief. At this point I had no clear idea who’d perished, but was wildly grateful that my closest had been spared.
“He is fucking insane,” Maria hissed as sparks of fire danced on her skin. “There is no way in hell we’re related to that piece of shit.”
“Who? Lenny or the King?” I asked.
“Well, right now, both of them,” she snarled.
Maria was correct. This was bullshit and wasn’t going to happen.
“There will be no terms,” I shouted over the din.
“There will be terms,” Lenny contradicted me savagely. “He has the hoard.”
I was dumbfounded that while almost half of our army lay dead on the floor, Lenny was concerned with money or jewels or whatever the hell my father had. Disgust didn’t begin to cover how I felt. Lenny’s selfish materialism was staggering. I clearly didn’t know the man at all—and now I didn’t want to.
Nicolai caught my eye. He was shocked and confused as I was.
“Ahhh yes, the hoard. I just knew they would come in handy some day,” my father sneered and grabbed two of the half dead Dragons by the hair in one hand the second two in his other. “And today is the lucky day.”
He held them high as if they weighed nothing—they did weigh next to nothing. They were completely skin and bones. My heart jumped to my throat as I imagined the unspeakable horror the Dragons must have suffered. I’d seen many awful things in my life, but these poor people were up there with the worst. They’d clearly been treated like animals.
My father’s eye’s lit up with maniacal excitement as he held their faces close to the deadly wall of fire. “Dima, darling I’m surprised you haven’t said hello to your mother and your brothers yet. I thought your manners were far better than that.”
“Wh…what?” I asked in a small voice that seemed to be coming from very far away. What was he saying? They were dead. His games were so vicious.
The half-dead Dragon woman look up and me and cried out raggedly, “Go. You must leave. He will kill you. Go.”
Her voice sounded so familiar. I’d heard those words before. I tilted my head as my body began to shake violently. She was dead. She wasn’t talking to me. That wasn’t possible. A keening wail filled my ears and I wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t stop.
I glanced around sharply to see who was making the awful noise and I realized it was me. I tried to stop but the sound kept coming. Why couldn’t I stop?
Maria dropped to the ground beside me and vomited. Lenny walked toward me, but his face was distorted. He looked so odd. I thought I heard Elaina scream for Nicolai, but surely I was mistaken. The room was floating. We should probably leave. It was getting dark and it would be time for dinner soon. My mother was a wonderful cook. I wondered if she would be upset if I brought my friends home with me. She never got mad.
I pressed at my eyelids and tried to stop my eyes from moving so fast. It was so hard to see when they kept rolling back in my head. Oh thank goodness, Nicolai was here. I wanted him to meet my brothers. They would like him.
The feel of a large hand connecting to my cheek violently jerked me out of the hell I’d descended into. Nicolai stood over me. His eyes were wild with concern and I knew he had pulled me back from the abyss. The burning sting was nothing compared to the pain of reentering reality and having to absorb the horror of what was before my eyes.
My father hadn’t killed them. They were alive—barely—and he’d kept them to use against me one day. I now understood my grandfather’s obsession with the hoard. My mother and brothers were my father’s hoard. Not because he loved them, but because he hated me.
I would listen to his terms. And I would probably agree to them.
“So here’s how it’s going to go,” he purred as dropped my precious broken family to the ground and clasped his blood stained hands in front of him. “You will restore my finances and my reputation. I don’t care how you accomplish this, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I was very impressed with how quickly you ruined me.”
My voice was hoarse from wailing so I nodded my assent.
“You will alert the press that I was sabotaged by a group that goes by The Resistance. You will see to it that all of your names hit the press—every single last one of you. I will then give you a twenty-four hour head start and I will methodically hunt each and every one of you down and kill you.”
“He’s fucking crazy,” Nicolai muttered under his breath.
I couldn’t have agreed more, but I had one last plan up my sleeve.
“My mother and my brothers. You will give them to me or I won’t agree to any of your terms,” I ground out through my raw throat.
“These old things?” he asked as he kicked my mother. “You can have them. I don’t want them anymore.”
I was so consumed with hatred I couldn’t see straight, but I stayed outwardly calm. The bastard was about to win. Unless I could pull some massive magic out of my ass, I was helpless to do a damned thing about it. I knew he had no intention of releasing my mother and brothers. That did not work for me. Staring at him, I tried to remember if I ever loved the man.
He continued to make more demands, but I could no longer hear him. It was fuzzy, but I think he might have held me once or twice as a child. What had happened for him to become such a monster—or was he just born a monster?
All I needed to do was pull up some magic. I watched his mouth continue to move and I turned my focus into myself.
Concentrating on his face, I drew on all the raw hatred I felt for him. It wasn’t difficult, there was nothing in him to love. The magic refused me, no matter how hard I tried. My world had just gotten good after hundreds of years of sorrow and fear. He’d ruined my life by killing the ones I’d loved most—or so I’d thought. Was I seriously going to let him get away with it again?
There would never be a moment of peace for any of the people I cared about. We would all be running for our lives for eternity. He would get his money and reputation back and he would rebuild even stronger than he was before. Unacceptable.
It was one thing for me to have lived hand to mouth for centuries, it was another thing altogether for that to happen to Nicolai, Lenny and Maria. I loved them all—me, who didn’t even rediscover what love meant until I had my child. I loved Nicolai and Seth and Elaina and Maria. I loved Lenny and Junior and Essie and Hank. I worshiped the ground Dwayne and Granny walked on and Daniel…I loved him more than life itself. And my mother and brothers, Sean, Timothy and Matthew—the four people I thought were gone forever—I’d loved them desperately for almost five hundred years.
My heart sped up and something beautiful and unfamiliar coursed through my blood.
Oh. My. God.
That was it. Magic wasn’t based in hatred. It was rooted in love.
Why did the hardest questions always have the simplest answers?
“I accept your terms,” I said cutting my father off mid sentence.
“I wasn’t finished yet,” he pouted. “There’s more.”
My Dragons were on edge and unsure what I was doing
, but no one contradicted me.
“How long do I have to accomplish this?” I asked.
A heartless smile split my father’s face and he feigned deep thought. “A week. I’ll give you a week. If it’s not to my satisfaction, I’ll behead your sweet mother and brothers and send you the footage. How does that sound?”
“It sounds fine,” I said looking for an opening to get at him. The fire wall was an issue…but maybe not.
“I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” Nicolai hissed inside my mind.
My eyes shot to Nicolai’s and my mouth opened into a small O.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, wary yet hopeful.
“I can. Are you mind speaking with me?”
“Apparently. Do you have a plan here, Princess?”
“I do.”
“Wanna share?”
“No, but you could help me out if you would cause a distraction on the right side of the room,” I said getting more excited with each passing second.
“Big one or little one?” he asked.
“Big. Very big.”
“Are you going to cross the fire wall?” he demanded tersely as he eyes narrowed dangerously at me.
“In a roundabout way. Just please trust me and create a motherfucker of a diversion.”
“You’ve been hanging out with Maria too much,” he said as he turned his head to hide his grin from my father who was still adding to his list of demands.
“This is true. I love you, Asscanoe.”
“Back at you, Princess. On three?”
I gave him a small nod. “On three.”
Chapter 25
“This is bullshit,” Nicolai shouted as he strode purposefully across the large room, planted himself in the far right corner and glared at me menacingly. “I’m in charge here and I do not accept these ludicrous terms.”
“Dima, I’d suggest you control your mate,” my father hissed with deranged glee, most likely hoping we would kill each other and save him some time.
“Screw you,” I shouted at Nicolai as the Dragons began to mutter in confusion. “You are a lowly common Dragon. I’m a Princess. You will bow down to me, you stupid man. You’re pathetic and your Dragon is an embarrassment.”
Smoke began to waft around the room as the Dragons tried to figure out which side they were supposed to be on. Only Lenny and Seth were calm and smiling.
“You want to see an embarrassment?” Nicolai roared. “I’ll show your spoiled Princess ass embarrassment!”
I held my breath and couldn’t believe he was going to do it. When I’d said big, he’d taken me at my word.
“I’ll give you to the count of three to take back all you have said,” Nicolai growled and bared his teeth.
I simply flipped him my middle finger.
My father sat down on his throne to watch the impending violence play out. He was safe behind his fire wall no matter what happened on our side. His smile was rabid and his position could not have been better.
“One,” Nicolai ground out through clenched teeth as small fires broke out all around him. “Two…three.”
And then he did it.
My glorious mate shifted into his big, beautiful, deadly Dragon and completely blew out the palace wall. Brick, glass and plaster crashed to the ground like a tornado had ripped through the building. It was magnificent and all kinds of perfect. It was the mother of all diversions.
As Nicolai’s Dragon roared and sprayed fire I closed my eyes and transported directly behind the throne. I’d traversed the magic fire wall without walking through it. The pain was intense, but I’d made it through and come out in one piece. In the chaos, my movement went unnoticed. My ego wanted my father to see me before I ended him, but pride would be my downfall.
It didn’t matter if he ever knew…it was enough that I would.
With strength honed through my years of having to fight for my life, I clamped my hands around his throat and squeezed—gouging my fingers deeply into the arteries to halt the blood flow. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would make what I was going to do far easier. I knew this macabre fact because I’d done it before.
I prayed I would never have to do it again.
The chaos and noise in the room seemed to disappear. My heartbeat thundered in my ears and all I could see was the back of my father’s head. All I could feel was the frantic pulse in his neck as he tried to pry my grip open. The movie of my family’s brutal death replayed over and over like a broken reel that would never end. I saw a girl who resembled Nicolai and Seth being skinned alive and I visualized all of the horrors Lenny had endured.
Faces I didn’t recognize joined the ones I did and with sickening clarity, I understood that by touching my father I could see his sins. Blood, terror, greed and power bathed my mind and the only thing I wanted to do was run. But I would never run again and neither would anyone that I loved.
The scream that left my body was horrifying—completely animalistic and straight from the darkest part of my soul. Using my feet to brace myself and the love I’d found to guide me, I did what I did best.
I killed him.
I jerked my father’s head back over the jagged, ornate wooden carvings of his precious throne and twisted it with a violent white hot rage. With an ease that ashamed me, I tore his head from his shoulders. I let the bloody mess carelessly fall to the ground with a thud at my feet. The top half of him fell forward on his throne and slowly began to turn to ash. The King’s decapitated body emitted small puffs of acrid black smoke as he disintegrated before my eyes and the wall of fire splashed to the ground and dispersed with his last breath.
I was finally free.
I felt nothing. No joy at his death—no sadness. There was no regret. I searched my soul for guilt and I found none. He’d been nothing to me for so long that his death—even at my own hands—was nothing as well.
Maybe the adrenaline hadn’t worn off. Maybe one day I would feel remorse, but somehow I didn’t think so.
An enormous velvety Dragon nose gently pushed at my stiff body and Nicolai huffed. “You’re done now, my love. It’s time to go home.”
I laid my head on his powerful body and ran my hands over his smooth jet-black scales. This day would not have come without him and the others. My goal would have never been accomplished on my own.
“We did it,” I whispered as tears filled my eyes. “He’s gone.”
“You did it,” Nicolai said as black and silver smoke wafted down and wrapped a warm cocoon around my exhausted body.
“No. We did it,” I stated firmly as I finally glanced out at what was left of our people.
They had gone to their knees for me. It was humbling…and it was all wrong.
“No,” I called out. “Stand. We bow no more.”
But they didn’t listen. They began to chant my name along with Nicolai’s. I would tackle the prostrating problem later. Right now there were four people I needed to touch.
Easing down to the floor I took the nearly lifeless body of my mother gently into my arms. Lenny ran forward as did Elaina, Seth and Maria.
“Hi, Mamma,” I whispered into her tangled and matted hair.
Even through the years of degradation and filth, her delicate floral scent still remained. I breathed her in and my soul calmed. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. My brothers were being lovingly attended to. I would go to them next.
“I’m going to take care of you now. You will never have to live like an animal again,” I promised her as tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed on her parched and cracking lips.
“Dima,” she said so softly, I wasn’t sure she’d spoken. “My daughter.” Her smile was weak and her heartbeat even weaker.
I glanced up as I heard a ruckus in the back of the room and saw the Cows. All eight of them were primed and ready—top half, dressed and bottom half, naked. I couldn’t believe I was capable of laughter after what I’d just done, but I was. Fate was kind and God was good. Only after Cade, who th
ankfully was still alive, explained what had gone down did the gals pull up their pants.
“Well, I guess they are girls,” Nicolai said with a grimace and chuckle. He was back in his human form. He sat down beside me and wrapped his strong arms around both my mother and me. “And I think I need some eye bleach.”
“I told you,” I said as I tried to bite back my laugh. The Cows did not deserve our laughter. They’d been instrumental in our victory…but it was damn hard when they entered pants-less en masse.
My mother had fallen asleep in my arms with a contented smile on her lips and I carefully brushed her hair from her gaunt face.
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