Dragons Need Love, Too (I Like Big Dragons Series Book 2)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “Fuck,” I said, jumping up.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, following me back inside the building.

  “Laundry room in the basement,” I rushed.

  Keifer didn’t follow me.

  Not that it surprised me.

  He would watch my back, but only from afar.

  Right now, the heir that Blythe was carrying was more important than Brooklyn, me and the whole world combined.

  If it came down to a choice between Blythe and Brooklyn, it’d be a terrible, no good choice.

  I would literally have to force myself to think with my brain and not with my heart.

  But my heart would win.

  Every single time.

  Because Brooklyn was my mate and would always come first…even if it meant the end of the world.

  I rounded the last corner of the maze of hallways that winded their way down to the basement, and I stopped at the door and listened.

  When I heard nothing, I pushed open the door and was immediately assaulted by a goddamned wolf.

  All I saw was a dark silhouette coming at me with white, gleaming teeth.

  “Fuck!” I cursed, putting my arm up when it lunged for me.

  The wolf’s teeth dug into my forearm viciously, tearing and breaking the skin with a vengeance.

  Brooklyn cried out, obviously feeling my pain, and I focused, even through the haze of pain.

  The dog was protecting whomever was in here, the man that’d taken Brooklyn.

  The dog…wolf…whatever the fuck he was, was enraged…and animals didn’t just get enraged like this one.

  They had to be provoked, and me coming through the door wouldn’t elicit that kind of response from this animal.

  No, he had to be controlled.

  My mind automatically went into survival mode, throwing out wards and visions all at the same time.

  My vision went into the hypersensitive ultra-red mode that would help me see in the dark as the wolf dropped off my mangled arm with slow, precise movements.

  And I saw the man crouched down next to a laundry hamper almost too easily.

  I could also see the form of Brooklyn hiding in the furthest washer with the door closed.

  Her head was covered by her hands, and her breathing was erratic.

  I morphed the illusion to a form of mental torture, giving him the illusion that he was tied down, even though he wasn’t.

  He dropped to the floor, as did the wolf, and laid there like babies placed in their cribs.

  I walked over to a roll of twine that was on a table in the middle of the room and walked to the assailant.

  Once I reached him, I reared my steel toe covered foot back, and kicked him straight in the temple.

  He passed out cold.

  My stomach roiled from the jostling the movement had caused my arm.

  I was afraid to look at it.

  Nonetheless, I tied him up anyway, ignoring the pain, not taking any chances at all with Brooklyn’s life.

  Once I was done with him, I walked to the wolf.

  Taking a chance, because I didn’t like hurting innocent animals, I let the illusion fall to pieces, ready to throw it back at him if he moved at me wrongly.

  He didn’t.

  He stayed down, whimpering and looking up at me.

  I reached over towards the wall, feeling for a light switch.

  My hand hit the switch, and I saw the wolf lunge.

  He didn’t lunge for me, though.

  He lunged at the man that I’d thought was unconscious.

  He obviously wasn’t because he was now on his knees.

  He didn’t get far, though, before the wolf, and yes, it sure as fuck was a wolf, hit him like a battering ram.

  The man went down onto his back as the wolf went for his neck.

  I threw the illusion out, not wanting to lose my witness or the information I could get out of him, and the wolf ceased immediately.

  This time I kept the illusion up while I picked up the man, grimacing at the pain in my arm, and tossed him into the laundry basket.

  I followed suit with the wolf, laughing when the breath left the man, and walked to the unit in the corner where Brooklyn was still lying.

  She wasn’t surprised to see me, though, as her eyes lit on me.

  I raised a brow, wondering how she’d been able to slip through my illusion, and promptly found a hundred and thirty-five-pound woman in my arms, knocking me back a step.

  “You’re okay,” I said.

  “Your arm,” she said worriedly.

  I held on to her, even though I knew she wanted to look.

  “Let me look,” she ordered.

  Perdita, come to the back entrance and get us, I said.

  10-10, Captain.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Did she just say 10-10?” Brooklyn asked.

  I nodded. “She doesn’t understand what that means…she tries, though.”

  I gently placed Brooklyn down on her feet, and she winced only slightly.

  “Okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It still hurts. But I think it’s okay.”

  I dropped to my knees and inspected her leg, amazed that it didn’t look like a thing had changed.

  The bite was no more, and her leg looked completely normal.

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

  “What?” she asked worriedly, leaning over to look down.

  “There’s nothing there. God, I was so worried,” I said, moving back up. “I think Angus was wrong. I think that Perdita’s powers did help you, kind of like why I heal so fast. It just doesn’t work like the healing does because it’s a toxin and not a physical injury. I want to say you’ll be fine.”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what I’ve come up with as well. I’m lucky.”

  I agreed.

  She was.

  Very much so.

  “Let’s go. I have some questions I want to ask the man that took you, and the longer you stay here, the more possibilities we have of getting caught,” I explained.

  She nodded in understanding and limped slightly at my side, following me to the laundry basket.

  “Do you think that’s hurting him?” she asked, looking down into the basket.

  The wolf had a large, clawed foot planted against the man’s face, and deep red marks were starting to form from the rough handling of the man.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s hurting him or not. What I do give a fuck about is him waking up before I’ve gotten him secured; so let’s go,” I said.

  ***

  Brooklyn

  We moved, him with one arm pushing the huge cart, and the other arm wrapped around my waist.

  I gave him more of my weight than I ever intended and walked/limped out of the basement.

  He pushed into an alley two minutes later, and I gasped when the first thing I saw was a massive dragon snout.

  “Shit!” I said, my heart pounding in surprise.

  You did well, Perdita said. No freaking out. No crying. No girling out at all.

  I laughed and walked forward, gasping when a dragon appeared directly beside Perdita with Blythe and Keifer on his back.

  “Jesus,” I said, gasping in a shaky breath. “Can’t y’all warn a sister?”

  Keifer blinked.

  “What?” he asked.

  Blythe snickered and scooted off Declan’s back and walked up to me.

  Once she was within reaching distance, she grabbed me up in a strong hug and started to cry into my shirt.

  “You’re getting my boobs wet,” I said, patting her back awkwardly.

  Keifer and Nikolai snorted, Blythe laughed and hugged me tighter, rubbing her face along my breasts.

  That was the thing about a best friend.

  They made your other friends and family question your sexuality.

  And I could see interest flare in Ke
ifer and Nikolai’s eyes as they took in the scene.

  “Uhh,” I said to Blythe. “Could you stop? You’re giving the guys something to think about that they’ll never be getting.”

  Blythe snorted and let me go, walking over to Keifer and burying her face between his pecs, doing the same thing she’d just done to me, only less successfully seeing as Keifer had pecs and not breasts.

  “I got a man for the guys to question.”

  Keifer grunted.

  “I’ll bring them home. They’re obviously needed more here than there anyway. Plus, they’ve been bitching to come home since the moment we left,” Keifer grunted.

  I vaguely wondered who ‘guys’ were, but decided to question it later when I had a better hold on my ability to keep my eyes open.

  I was fading fast now that the adrenaline wasn’t pumping through my bloodstream to keep me awake.

  I dropped listlessly and Nikolai caught me and placed me up on Perdita’s back.

  Perdita curled her tail up to rest at my back, giving me a makeshift back rest that I leaned against while Keifer, Blythe, and Nikolai studied the wolf and the man in the basket.

  “Do you think the wolf will bite?” Keifer asked.

  Nikolai shook his head.

  “I don’t think he wanted to bite me in the first place. As soon as the hold the guy had on the wolf broke, he turned on the man instead of on me,” Nikolai explained. “I’m going to take her home and make sure that she gets taken care of and then set free.”

  Chapter 11

  Waiters gonna wait. Alligators gonna alligate. Haters gonna hate. Potatoes gonna potate. Sorry, I forgot where I was going with this.

  -Text from Brooklyn to Nikolai

  Brooklyn

  We rode most of the way to the compound in silence.

  Keifer and Blythe were riding directly beside us, and there was a third dragon I’d never seen before on the opposite side of Keifer.

  Nikolai explained that Declan’s dragon was mated to another dragon. Her name was Story; she was absolutely beautiful.

  I could quite clearly see the love between the two dragons, and it made me smile.

  All the way up until the point where a field of cows came into view.

  It didn’t happen all at once.

  We were just riding smoothly along until suddenly we dipped.

  I gasped and grasped Nikolai’s hands, leaning back to keep from falling forward and tumbling to my death.

  Nikolai grasped me around the waist and pulled me more firmly into his hold, sighing in exasperation.

  “What’s going on?” I asked worriedly.

  My question was answered in the next moment when Perdita took one final plunge before her massive clawed feet reached out and grasped one of the cows in the field below us, then lifted right back up in the air.

  I gasped in surprise, watching as the two other dragons at my side followed suit.

  Each of them picked up a cow in their clawed feet and raised back up in the air.

  “What are they doing?” I asked worriedly.

  Before Nikolai could respond, Perdita did some sort of throw.

  The cow went airborne, quite a way above our heads, and seemed to stay suspended for long moments of time before Perdita launched herself forward, and ate the cow all in one single gulp.

  I gasped.

  I vaguely heard the sound of Blythe crying out in alarm, and turned my head in time to see Declan and Story follow suit with their own cows.

  “Holy crap,” I said in awe.

  I’d never really put much thought into how the dragons ate…or what they ate for that matter.

  I’d never seen Perdita eat before…and to be honest, never really had a desire to do it again, either.

  “Well…” I said as we passed through the barrier to the Vassago lands. “That was…interesting.”

  The barrier started to tingle on my skin, ticking down the nerve endings of my arm, legs, and spine.

  Nikolai felt the shiver and pulled me into his arms, mistaking my movements for being cold rather than the discomfort of passing through the barrier.

  I patted his hand.

  “I’m not cold,” I explained. “It’s the barrier.”

  “The shield?” he asked, an odd tone in his voice.

  I nodded.

  “Yeah,” I confirmed.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

  “It sends shivers down my spine,” I said.

  I could feel his apprehensiveness.

  “You felt it?” he asked in confusion. “We haven’t gotten to it yet.”

  I was frowning now, too.

  “Well, what was the thing we just passed, then?” I inquired.

  Perdita was listening, and she added her input now, too.

  Maybe it was the Heart she felt, Perdita offered.

  “The Heart?” I asked.

  “Perdita, can you take us by the heart again?” he asked.

  Perdita banked hard right as I felt the familiar buzz of something over my skin, letting me know that Nikolai was letting Keifer know telepathically where we were going.

  Except when I felt the ‘barrier’ again, it wasn’t the heart we were at.

  “This,” I said.

  Perdita landed by a fallen down oak tree and gently lifted her tail so Nikolai and I could get off without having to jump the whole way to the ground.

  Nikolai helped me down, and I shivered again once my feet hit the forest floor.

  “Here,” I said. “Whatever’s right here is making my heart shiver.”

  I looked up to Nikolai’s beautiful face and frowned in response to his frown.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The heart is over two hundred yards away,” he said. “There’s no way you’d feel it until you got within its own protection shield.”

  His explanation made me nervous.

  “Then what’s right here?” I asked.

  He looked around, then let me go to explore.

  “Where do you feel it most?” he asked.

  I started walking first in one direction, and then in the other when I felt the feeling growing fainter.

  “This way,” I pointed.

  Nikolai stayed at my side, Perdita stayed at our backs, and we walked another fifty yards when the feeling of utter wrongness started to wash over me.

  “I can’t go any farther,” I said.

  “Hmmm,” he said, taking his own step forward.

  He didn’t seem to have the same problem as me as he moved forward as if whatever was weighing me down like a wet blanket didn’t affect him in the slightest.

  He kicked rocks over, shoved bushes to the side, and genuinely made a mess of everything in his way, but instinctively stayed away from the one thing that I could feel the cause of my shivers emanating from.

  “The stump,” I said, pointing. “Check the stump.”

  He frowned and looked around.

  “Where?” he asked.

  I pointed to the stump.

  He looked down and scowled.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  It was my turn to be confused.

  “You can’t see it?” I asked. “It’s right between your feet.”

  He shook his head.

  Concentrating, I focused on what it looked like to me, and projected that image out to him.

  It was like me showing him what it looked like by playing a video of the scene straight from my eyes into his brain.

  He inhaled deeply, then dropped to his feet.

  “Weird,” he said. “Is what you’re feeling bad shivers, or good shivers?”

  Perdita stepped up to where Nikolai was crouched down.

  He kept his eyes on the stump, though.

  With one hand, he started to peel the bark away.

  Something broke off.

  “Not good or bad, I guess. It’s just making me feel like cold liquid; someth
ing is pouring through my veins,” I explained.

  “Hmmm,” he said.

  Perdita was the one who started acting weird.

  Drunk, even.

  She swayed first one way, then caught herself.

  She overcorrected, then swayed back the other way before rolling completely over.

  She started to writhe on the ground.

  “What in the world…” I said.

  Then an explosion of light poured through the dimly lit forest, and I was thrown ten feet backwards until my back slammed hard against the tree.

  It felt like it was cushioned, though.

  Almost as if I slammed against a mattress rather than a tree.

  Nikolai was still in his same spot, staring at me like I was a demon coming up from the pits of hell.

  The picture I’d been projecting at him cut off abruptly, and he was left staring at his hands which were around something that he couldn’t see.

  I, on the other hand, could see perfectly.

  “Whattttt the fuuuuck,” I drawled, looking in awe at what Nikolai had exposed.

  “What?” he asked worriedly, freezing.

  It was good he did, too, because suddenly the tiny little things, the size of a hamster, started pouring out of the hollowed out shell of the tree stump.

  Nikolai froze when they started to climb up his hands.

  “Don’t!” I cried, stilling his instinctive reaction to brush them off.

  “What…what the fuck is it?” he asked.

  “I…” I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Show me,” he demanded.

  I frowned and sat up, crawling on my knees until I was directly across the log from him.

  Once settled, I stared in awe at the tiny little pixie…things.

  Then I projected the image to him.

  He froze, his hands falling limply onto his knees, palms up.

  “Holy…holy shit.” He breathed shakily. “Oh, holy shit.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “Tell me what it is.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did, and croaked as he tried to speak.

  He cleared his throat, licked his lips, and then tried again.

  “They’re Fairy dragons,” he said. “Fairy dragons are the smallest of all types of dragons. More like pets than actual dragons. Fierce and loyal. They’ve never been on this side of the ‘pond’ before.”

  Perdita rolled onto her back and started to scoot across the forest floor like a large dog.