by Chant, Zoe
But none of that excused the greatest betrayal that one shifter could visit upon another.
How do you convince your clan to follow you, Heikon, knowing that you willingly broke your mate bond?
Only his inner circle knew it, she was sure. Anjelica and perhaps a few others. Heikon had never properly trusted people; he wouldn't have told them. As she had learned all too well, he didn't even trust his own mate.
The thought occurred to her that she could tell them. She could destroy him with a word.
Perhaps she would.
"Here is your suite, Lady Esme," Anjelica said, still without meeting her eyes. The door was wedged in its frame, and Anjelica had to throw her weight against it to get it to open. The entire mountain was like that: corridors slightly askew, window glass cracked, doors out of kilter. When Esme stepped into her room, she found that it was covered with dust that had sifted down from the ceiling during the battle. The copper ewer full of water was overturned on the floor, soaking the once-colorful rugs and turning their load of dust into a soupy, muddy mess.
"I'm sorry for the state of the room." Embarrassment was now written all over Anjelica's face. "I'll send someone to clean it up. I'm sorry, I can't stay; I have to go see to the wounded."
And with that, some of Esme's anger evaporated. She was not so petty as to complain about substandard accommodations when the entire mountain had nearly been destroyed, its people hurt and killed. "It's all right," she said. It wasn't, but she would have it out with Heikon later. Heikon, who still hadn't shown up, who couldn't even look her in the eyes. "Can I help? I don't know much about nursing, but I could fetch and carry things, or perhaps look after the children. I have a child of my own, you know."
"If you could," Anjelica said with tremendous relief, "we would very much appreciate it."
Turning her back on the ruined suite was something of a relief for Esme as well. This wasn't the same room where she'd stayed twenty years ago—the mountain was so different now that she wasn't even certain if she could find it—but it was similar enough to strike a painful chord of memory. That wasn't the bed where she'd dreamed sweet fantasies about Heikon, but it might as well have been.
I was a fool to come here, she thought as she followed Anjelica back down the stairs to the makeshift infirmary on the lower levels of the mountain. I should have stayed away.
She was here, mainly, out of friendship for her old ex-lover, Darius. Although things had been over between them decades ago, she hadn't been willing to let him face the gargoyles alone. Helping save Heikon's clan was an incidental side effect. If it were up to Esme, she'd have let them fall.
Or at least she thought so, until she saw the infirmary with all its wounded. Some of them were still in dragon form, too hurt to shift back. Esme sighed and picked up a roll of bandages.
No. She couldn't have let them all die. They didn't deserve it, no matter what their clanlord had done all those years ago.
She hoped she wouldn't encounter Darius among the wounded. She knew he'd been wounded in the battle. But there was no sign of him, so presumably he was off being tended by his human mate, Loretta.
Esme wished them well, with an earnest unselfishness that genuinely surprised her. It was nice to see Darius happy, and Loretta was good for him.
Still, that didn't mean she wanted to see him, or the two of them, being mated and happy and all the things Esme no longer could say about herself.
The mate bond no longer connected her to Heikon, so she no longer had any sense of him: no idea if he was in the mountain or elsewhere, nor if he was hurt or well. But nevertheless, whether by chance or by some lingering vestige of it, she happened to be looking up when he walked into the room.
He looked no older—but then, he wouldn't. Twenty years was nothing to a dragon who was already more than four hundred when she'd met him. Bronze skin, dark hair laced thoroughly with iron-gray, a high forehead and sharp cheekbones. It was an aristocratic face, a face she'd once found beautiful.
She still found it beautiful. She still wanted to soften when she looked at him.
He had given her up, she reminded herself. He had given them up. In twenty years, he'd never once attempted to contact her. Never let her know that the sudden severing of the mate bond had not meant his death, but rather, an intentional disconnection on his end. She'd had to find out that he was alive secondhand, from Darius of all people, two years ago.
She hadn't even known it was possible to sever a mate bond, until realizing that Heikon had somehow done it. Since learning he was still alive, she'd looked into it, trying to understand what had happened, and had learned that certain poisons were rumored to do away with the mate bond. Heikon must have taken one of those. Essence of dragonsbane was the most likely one.
The man she had known twenty years ago was a firm but fair leader, not a cruel man. With the danger in the clan, he must have set her free in the mistaken belief that he was protecting her.
But what it came down to was that he had poisoned himself rather than remain mated to her. Never once had he asked what she wanted. Never once had he given her the option of choosing to stay and face the danger with him. No, he had sent her away like a ... like a child, and then he had cut the bond.
She reminded herself firmly of that. No matter how much she wanted to like him, no matter how much she missed what they'd had, and no matter how sympathetic his reasons, he had taken it away, and he'd done it on purpose. All that they once had was gone, because of him.
He was talking to Anjelica by the door. Maybe he would leave without seeing her. She rolled a bandage with brisk, aggressive twists of her hands. She hoped he'd leave. She hoped he'd stay. She hoped he'd give her a chance to yell at him properly.
In some small, weak corner of her soul, she hoped the mate bond would roar back to life the moment he turned and his eyes met hers.
And then he did turn.
His face went still and startled. His eyes were just the same as she remembered, dark and piercing and utterly arresting.
Deep inside, her dragon stirred, rising with a sudden surge of hope.
But there was no miraculous reawakening of the mate bond. Where once she had seen his dragon in his eyes, now she saw only the man.
Her dragon sank back in disappointment, and she turned away: furious with him, and furious with herself for hoping.
Heikon
For twenty years, Esme Lavigna had filled Heikon's thoughts during the day, and his dreams at night.
He was still unprepared for the effect on him of actually seeing her.
She must have come to the infirmary straight from the battle with the gargoyles, because she was dusty and smudged, rather than her usual put-together self. Her thick red-gold hair was coming out of its braid. There was a bruise on one cheek, and she looked tired.
She looked like a warrior goddess just back from a fight.
She also looked incandescently furious with him. While he stared at her in blank shock, he watched fury spread across her face, blooming in two bright spots of color on her cheekbones. She looked down at the tangle of bandages in her hands, biting her lip.
Before he could stop himself—as he'd stopped himself over and over for twenty years—he started across the room toward her.
She turned, giving him a literal cold shoulder.
He wanted to stop. He didn't. He kept walking, through the beds with the wounded, until he reached her side.
"Go away." Her voice was low and fierce and infinitely beloved, melodious even in the depths of her weariness and anger. He hadn't heard it in twenty years, but it was as familiar to him as if he'd heard it this morning.
"Esme," he said, and touched her arm. She turned to look at him.
Her eyes ... there was a time when he'd lost himself in those eyes. They were green, shot through with gold. When he looked into her eyes, he used to sense the rustle of wings just over her shoulder; he used to see the wildness and glory of her dragon.
Now, they were mere
ly the eyes of a woman, human to all outward appearance. But they were still very beautiful eyes.
They were also nearly black to the rims with fury.
"Will you let me explain?" he asked quietly.
"The time for explaining was twenty years ago."
He really couldn't argue with her there. He was also aware that they were starting to draw looks. Whatever this conversation was going to turn into, he couldn't have it with an audience.
"Esme, are you staying here in the Aerie? I can visit you later—"
"No," she whispered fiercely. The word came out in a hiss. "You may not. Now or ever."
There were a few silver threads squiggling through her heavy mass of red hair. She wore them unashamedly. Those were new, he thought. She was younger than he was, by nearly 200 years, but she hadn't had those twenty years ago.
He loved them, as he loved every part of her.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
But damned if he was going down without a fight.
"I am going hunting tomorrow with some of my guard, to bring back fresh meat for those who are healing. You're welcome to join us, if you'd like."
She turned away from him, presenting her shapely shoulder to him, and went to check on one of the patients.
Well, he thought, that had actually gone much better than expected. She hadn't shifted into a dragon and tried to eat him. She hadn't thrown anything. She hadn't even raised her voice, although part of it, he was sure, was that Esme disliked a scene as much as she did. In private, it might have been a different matter.
Still, he thought, maybe there was hope.
Maybe, one of these days, he could get her to listen.
* * *
He didn't expect her to show up, but she was there, wearing a warm-looking green wool dress with a high collar that snugged right up to the bottom of her chin and a jacket over the top of it. If she was wearing it an attempt to make herself look unsexy, it didn't work. She would have looked sexy to him in a dress made from lampshades and traffic cones. Her hair was twisted into a thick red braid and wrapped around her head.
"Hunting, are we?" she declared with a raised brow. "Lead on, mighty hunter."
The flight of dragons shifted one by one, leaping into the air. Heikon led them, but he was very aware in his peripheral vision when Esme shifted. Her dragon was dazzling in the sun, still that same fresh leaf green, the same shade as her dress.
He hadn't hunted so terribly since he was a fledgling. He completely missed a dive at a deer exposed on a mountainside and nearly slammed into the trees. He failed to notice obvious prey on hillsides and mountaintops, only to have others dive past him to snatch mountain goats from clifftops or deer from meadows.
One by one, the rest of the dragons in his flight peeled off and flew back with their catches for the Aerie's kitchens. He and Esme were the last two remaining. It intrigued him that she hadn't taken a dive at any of the obvious game they'd seen. Surely she wasn't as distracted as he was.
Or was she?
A fat mountain sheep caught his eye on a ridge below. He folded his wings for a dive, only to have Esme flash past him, wings angled back for maximum speed.
Oh, that was how it was to be, was it?
He pulled up to let her take the prey. However, she merely swooped over without making contact with her claws. The sheep bolted for cover. Esme swooped upward and spread her wings to turn around and face him.
"What kind of chivalrous nonsense is this?" she demanded, her voice resonant and sibilant as it was reshaped by her powerful dragon's chest and the nonhuman throat and tongue. "You could have easily had that sheep!"
"You were already on it. I wasn't going to interfere."
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" she snarled, and turned with a hard flex of her wings and a huff. "Instead of us doing things side by side, it was always you doing it alone and leaving me alone, wasn't it? Why didn't I see it?"
"Esme!" It was torn from his throat in a snarl of frustration. "Esme, listen. I know you think I abandoned you. But I didn't dare contact you. I've been fighting for twenty years to get my clan back. The last thing I wanted to do was redirect my enemies toward you—"
"You could have asked me what I wanted!" she roared, and dived at him.
Startled, he winged to the side. Her charge missed and she spun around in midair. Heikon backbeat his wings and then folded them and dropped. He landed lightly on top of the ridge, shifting as his claws touched down so his weight settled on his boots instead.
It was simply too hard to have this conversation with Esme in a form where she could attack him.
But she didn't land. Instead she circled above him.
"Esme, come down here. Let's talk."
"We have nothing to say to each other," she declared from above. "I am going to finish this hunt and then leave, and I will never see you again. Do not contact me. All that there was between us was burned away twenty years ago."
The mate bond. He still shuddered to remember it.
* * *
Twenty years ago, Heikon's favorite place in the Aerie, other than the sakura grove, had been his study at the top of the mountain. It was at the pinnacle of the mountain, just above the lounge privately referred to as the Clubhouse where only Heikon and his elite warriors were allowed. From the walls of windows, he could look down upon all his lands and watch his clan going about their business, as safe and happy as he could make them.
He had never had a chance to bring Esme here. There was no time. Someday, he had thought then, when all of this unpleasant business with his brother was finished, he would bring her here.
And it would be finished soon, he hoped. A week, he'd promised Esme. Four days of that week were now elapsed. He'd received a brief phone call from her when she and Melody had landed in Greece, and a tightness in his chest had relaxed, knowing she was safely away. Meanwhile, Heikon had been keeping tabs on his brother Braun and the handful of Braun's co-conspirators that he'd identified so far.
It was understandable, he thought, for a younger brother to crave the power and prestige of a dragon clanlord. But Braun was really taking this too far. Maybe it would be necessary to lock him up for a decade or two in the dungeon beneath the mountain. If worst came to worst, he could challenge Braun to a duel in front of the entire clan. His brother was larger, but had always been a worse fighter due to his rashness and haste; Heikon was confident he could beat him. He just didn't really want to. They were brothers, after all.
But he really needed to do something. He shuffled the papers on his desk, the product of his private investigation. His brother could not be allowed to get away with this—
And then it happened.
A sudden, horrible weakness washed over him. His knees sagged and he collapsed into the chair behind his desk. His first, astonished thought was that he was having a heart attack. It almost felt like it. But then he realized that it was not his actual heart that was under attack, but the Heart of his hoard, the seat of every dragon's strength and power.
In the back of his mind, he felt a sudden surge of alarm that was not his own. Esme! All the way on the other side of the world, she had sensed that something was wrong.
He was able to lean on that bond for strength, slowly gathering himself again, with Esme's strength and courage providing a foundation beneath his own. He'd just risen to his feet, prepared to shift and go find out what was happening, when the door to his study burst in. At the same time, there was a thump against his window. He looked around in shock to see several dragons clinging to the railing outside his study, while his brother strode through the door at the head of a group of those Heikon had identified as the core of the conspiracy against him.
Heikon smiled fiercely, revealing teeth beginning to lengthen into fangs. They had done something dire to the Heart of his hoard—he couldn't wait to make them pay for that—and now they expected to find him helpless. But with the mate bond to strengthen him, he couldn't lose.
; Esme's alarm beat against the back of his mind. Between a dragon and its mate, the bond could sometimes be strong enough to allow two-way communication in times of great peril. He had always wondered if his would be that sort. Now he knew that it was.
*Heikon! What's wrong?*
*Don't worry. It will be all right,* he sent back, not knowing that those were the last words he would ever speak to her.
As Heikon threw himself into his shift, some of Braun's conspirators halted and began to fall back, realizing they were about to face not a weak and sick man, but a very angry dragon. There was room in the study for Heikon to transform, but no room in the hallway. He had, in fact, planned it that way. The advantage was his.
Only Braun looked unworried. Instead, his brother smiled thinly and said, "Goodbye, brother."
He made an overhand throwing motion.
Heikon finished his shift just as whatever it was, a tiny glass object, struck him in the snout and shattered.
There was a strange smell, almost odorless, a peculiar taste on the back of his tongue. He realized in an instant what it was, what it had to be, especially when Braun leaped quickly back and threw his arm across his face to keep from inhaling.
Concentrated essence of dragonsbane. A lethal poison to their kind, whether inhaled or absorbed through the skin.
Heikon threw himself backward, flinging his massive body into the window. The glass shattered, and the dragons gathered at the railing threw themselves out of the way rather than allowing themselves to become contaminated.
His head spun; his stomach rebelled. That much dragonsbane would kill him. Everything was failing: his ability to control his limbs, his connection to his dragon.
His connection to Esme.
He had to get it off. That was all he could think of. His wings carried him, somehow; he soared into the night, thinking of the many mountain lakes around the Aerie. He had to find one of them, dilute the poison, wash it off.
He couldn't feel Esme. All he could feel was the burning under his skin.