by Kira Nyte
When a young blond woman entered, Malla slowed the pace of the magical projection. She watched the scene unfold. The woman bought a coffee, a pastry, and sat at a table toward the back. To Malla’s eye, she glowed with the bright energy that only Keepers possessed. Strong, brilliant, with the potent zing of ancient power.
Malla approached the table where the ghostly woman sat, looking at an amulet in her palm. She took a few seconds to burn the finer features of the woman into her memory before focusing on the amulet.
She had an instant. An instant to gain as much understanding of its magic and potency as she could before the ghost shoved it into her purse.
That jewel.
That ruby.
The ghost vanished. There was no recasting that particular spell, no playback option. Malla growled under her breath, whipping around to storm out of the shop, releasing the occupants from her spell only once she was through the door.
“You’re positive you have no idea which way she could’ve gone?” she demanded, not waiting for the men to catch up to her. There had to be a clue, a break in the amulet’s power. Foolish girl. The dragon’s blood is in that ruby. If she found the girl, she’d be able to lure the dragon. She stopped abruptly at the alcove where the last remnants of the woman’s essence dissipated. Without a care to the thin stream of pedestrians moving around her, she tried her magic to see if she could produce a vision. “I asked a question.”
One of the men cleared his throat. “No. We followed what we thought was the woman to Bourbon Street only to realize it was nothing more than an image. We came back and the last place we sensed her was here. She doesn’t leave here.”
Malla stared at the image her magic produced. Nothing more than the doorway. No people. No Keeper or dragon.
“Damn it.” With a sharp exhale, she turned to face the two soldiers. “Scour this city. Scour it until your nails bleed, your feet burn, and your bones splinter. Scour it until you find that woman.” She raised a brow when the two men exchanged a fearful glance. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Malla,” they said.
“Good.” When they didn’t move, she scowled. “Well?”
The two scrambled in opposite directions, not looking at her. She rolled her eyes to the sky and sighed. With more than half of their soldiers dead, captured, or wounded after last month’s battle royale with the dragons, she was left with slim pickings in the lackey department. These two weren’t her first choice to put on a hunt. They weren’t trackers. The trackers she once had were gone.
Despite their lack of power and magic in the human realm, the dragons had proved far more resilient and resourceful than she anticipated. Lucky, too, but not all of their victories and the Baroqueth’s defeats were due to luck.
She wanted to find that Keeper. Syn Terravon’s lifemate, Briella. The one who had visions. The one who had seen something significant about Malla, the Baroqueth, or both. The woman may not hold the golden key, but she certainly could put Malla on the path she needed to take.
As long as I stay out of those bedrooms. Anything to stay out of those bedrooms.
Because as the daughter to the leader of their small, dwindling society, she would much rather die than live through such shame.
Chapter Seven
Taryn followed Gabriella with his gaze as she cautiously rounded the dining table to a chair opposite of where he stood. Amelia moved on silent steps to Talib’s cage and coaxed the bird onto her arm. Watching, Gabriella paused, half-seated in the chair.
“Would you like your tea?” Taryn asked, softening the edge of his voice. Gabriella glanced at him without answering, then turned back to Amelia and the bird as she settled rigidly in the chair. If he wasn’t so desperate to untangle the massive web of mystery entangling his lifemate, he might have enjoyed simply looking at her. Instead, he retrieved her tea from the side table by the sofa and placed it in front of her. “Here.”
“What is she saying to the bird?” Gabriella whispered.
Taryn shrugged. “Commands of some sort.”
“I want Talib to watch the streets. To warn us of danger.” Amelia nuzzled the tip of her nose along the crow’s beak, earning her a bowed black head. “Settle in. I’m releasing him out back. Oh, Taryn. The scones and cookies are on the kitchen counter.”
Taryn found the plate of sweets and brought it to the table. He hesitated at Gabriella’s side, wanting to sit beside her, but moved a chair away when she shifted in her seat to put distance between them. Her hands jerked when she reached for the tea mug. Skepticism flashed in her eyes when they landed on the plate of treats.
“What do you know about your father?” Taryn asked. His fingers flexed over the back of the chair but he didn’t sit. His dragon snarled for him to move closer to Gabriella when her eyes lowered. Her obvious battle of shame, submission, and spark was as confusing as the thoughts that filled her mind. Nothing made sense. One thought splintered in several directions. Her heel tapped a quick tempo against the floor. “I know my words mean little to you right now, Gabriella—”
“Gabby.”
He nodded once. “Okay. Gabby.” He’d settle for it for now. “I mean it when I say you’re safe here. With me. With Amelia.”
She made a sound of disbelief and shook her head, keeping her gaze averted. She pushed the mug away and tilted her head, nervously curling a chunk of blond hair around her fingers. He folded his own fingers into his palms in an attempt to smother the sudden itch that pushed him to touch her.
“What did Janice tell you about your father?”
She shrugged.
He waited for her to answer, but nothing followed. “Did she tell you what he was?”
Her gaze flicked to his face. “An abusive asshole.” She gave him a sharp once-over. “Who taught who?”
Okay, so maybe he deserved that. “He was not abusive.”
“And you learned nothing from him. Sad.”
The wit. This was the side he wanted to see. The fighter. Not the defeated hopelessness she expressed far too often. It made the corners of his lips quirk.
Her eyes narrowed. “You find that funny.”
He chuckled and finally took his seat. “Actually, I find this smoldering fire you’re hiding fascinating.” Nostalgia settled in his chest as he leaned back. “Familiar.”
“Narcissist.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Gabriell—”
“Gabby.”
“Gabby.” He raised is hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I am. I just find your full name beautiful.” He lowered his hands, quieting his humor. “But I’ll call you what you wish.”
Her skepticism could burn through him like an iron spear. Her eyes pierced his confidence.
“I’m not a narcissist. Far from it. But you’re in danger, and now that I’ve found you, I will do whatever I must to keep you safe.”
“The side you’ve seen of him was caused by confusion. Similar to the confusion you’ve been experiencing, only for different reasons,” Amelia interjected, slipping quietly into the dining area and taking a seat across from Taryn. She had picked up her mug along the way and now cupped it between her hands close to her mouth. “I assure you, he’s kind and generous beneath the fierce exterior.”
Gabriella’s attention flipped between Amelia and him. It didn’t take him long to realize her discomfort and part of where it stemmed from. He was pretty sure if the tables were turned, he wouldn’t be fond of his lifemate hanging around with another man.
At last, Gabriella’s hands dropped to the tabletop and she straightened in the chair. “Listen, can you guys get to the point? I have no idea what’s going on here. I don’t know who you are”—she jutted her chin toward him—“what you want with me, who those men were, what is going on, and whatever else you’ve yet to do and show. I really don’t want or need this crap in my life. I’ve got enough to deal with without seeing and hearing things that make me seem crazier.”
Taryn opened his mouth to refute her commen
t, but silenced himself when that painful swirl of hopelessness returned to her eyes.
He barely realized he had stood up or moved until he angled a chair to face Gabriella, took her hands, and used their bond to force a sense of calm into her. The tension that rode her muscles peaked, then slowly relaxed.
“If you’re crazy, then I’m crazy, too. But neither of us is crazy.” He held her gaze. “I don’t know the demons you’ve faced in your past, but I don’t want to contribute to their effects. I see those effects in your eyes more than I want to. More than should be there to begin with.” Taryn opened himself to the swell of emotions that tumbled through her. He’d seen enough in his short time with Gabriella to know Janice’s ugly mind was in no part a piece of his lifemate. “Did your mother tell you anything beyond the negative about your father? About Corvin? My Keeper?”
She gave her head a sharp shake. “What is this Keeper thing? This is the third time I’m hearing it since last night. How do you know my father?”
Taryn offered a sad grin. “He was my protector. My friend. He was the man who trusted me with his life and who I trusted with mine. He died after we were attacked by Baroqueth slayers in our home. The Baroqueth are the sorcerers who trailed you from the café.” He spoke quietly, slowly, observing Gabriella’s reactions. Her attentiveness gave him a sense of relief. “He died trying to save innocent lives and I couldn’t get him out of The Hollow in time. He was a hero. The very core of what a hero is. He sacrificed himself to save others.”
“They all did, Gabby. The dragons and the Keepers.”
Taryn pressed his lips together as Amelia spoke. Gabriella lifted her head to the witch. “Did you say…dragons?”
Amelia smiled. “I did. Dragons.” She looked at him. “Like Taryn. Like Syn, the man with Taryn at the club last night.”
“Wait.” Gabriella pulled her hands from Taryn’s, but her focus turned to his fingers. “No. What are you two playing at?”
“Those weren’t claws. They weren’t. Dragons aren’t real.”
“Briella, the woman with Syn, is like you. A Keeper. Actually, the daughter of Syn’s Keeper. She’s Syn’s lifemate, just as you’re—”
“There’s no such thing. None. That stuff’s for fairytales. This is reality.”
“Gabrie—Gabby,” Taryn corrected himself, though Gabriella didn’t seem to notice his slip of the tongue. “I don’t know what poison Janice filled your head with. I can only imagine. But what we’re telling you is as truthful and real as it gets. The Baroqueth have been hunting us for centuries. The night your father died, the sorcerers nearly killed us all. A small fraction of the dragons and Keepers escaped. Those who survived split up and went into hiding. The Baroqueth reemerged only recently and we learned that female Keepers were being born. Females are rare. So rare that they are believed only to be born when we’re on the brink of extinction.” Taryn sighed. “Sadly, with only eight of us left, we’re exceedingly close to extinction.”
“Eight. Eight…what?” Gabriella asked, her voice brittle with caution. Taryn didn’t miss her attempt to deflect what had already been stated. He wondered about her defense mechanisms and whether she would be able to handle the truth. “Eight of what left?”
“Dragons. Firestorm dragons.”
She stared at him for a long, heavy minute.
“Show me.” Gabriella lifted her chin. “Show me.”
Taryn raised his brows. That was not what he was expecting. “Show you that I’m a dragon?”
Gabriella shrugged and waved a hand at him. “You say you’re a dragon. In my world, dragons are myths. Lifemates are jokes. And money is something unobtainable. So what do I have to lose? Another piece of my sanity?” She made a strange sound of tortured amusement and waved imperiously at him again. “Go for it. Show me something.”
Taryn cleared his throat before he could respond to another one of her self-demeaning comments. “I think I showed you more than I should have a little while ago. You fainted.”
Gabriella laughed again, but the sound lacked all humor. “I was scared. I was seeing things.”
Taryn rapped his nails—now partially extended black talons—on the table, drawing her attention to his hand again. For added proof, he began to shift his fingers into his dragon’s claw. Burnished red scales rolled over his skin.
Her sardonic smile dropped away and her eyes shot up to his. He allowed his vision to change from that of a human to that of his dragon. He knew what she saw in his slit-pupiled eyes as he watched the thermal temperatures of her body increase by the second.
He reined in his dragon and grinned at Gabriella’s stunned reaction. “Was that enough? I promise, you’ll see the whole thing in the near future.” He couldn’t help but chuckle. “I think Amelia would descale me if I transformed here and destroyed her quaint home. I wouldn’t fit.”
“You’re serious. This wasn’t”—her stormy gaze, filled with wonder and fear, cut to Amelia—“some of your magic?”
Amelia shook her head. “No. I can’t make the dragon appear by magic. Only Taryn can bring his dragon forth. It’s part of him, entwined with the very core of his genetic makeup. One cannot be without the other.” Amelia took a sip of tea. “If not for him being in this world, my magic and power would be nothing compared to his.”
“Power.” Gabriella rubbed a hand against her forehead. Taryn rested his fingertips, talon free, against her forearm.
“She told you nothing. Nothing about who I am. What I am. Nothing about your father. Nothing about yourself. She spent the last thirty years or so telling you…what?”
His lifemate closed her eyes and her brows pinched with the same tension as her tight lips. It was then that he noticed the tremble of her chin.
“Gabriella.”
She didn’t protest the use of her full name. Instead, she looked up, her stunning blue eyes glistening.
“Tell me.”
“Nothing worth repeating. Nothing but horrible things.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Horrible, horrible things about you. About my father. But always she insisted I deserved what was owed to me, saying I had an inheritance.” Her eyes hardened. “I don’t want it. I just want freedom. From her. From…”
Taryn shifted a little closer, gently closing his hand around her arm. She looked away, her inner turmoil palpable. He played with his questions, the ones he wanted to ask, but knew she feared to answer. She protected her vulnerability, but that same vulnerability was slowly destroying her spirit.
He glanced at Amelia, who silently observed them while sipping her tea. She knew about Gabriella’s past, but as she’d said, it wasn’t her place to tell him, as desperate as he was to comprehend.
“I don’t understand how you know my mother, knew my father,” Gabriella finally said, her voice low. “How old are you?”
“Ancient,” Taryn said with some humor. It brought her pretty blue eyes back to him and he gave her a small shrug. “Well, ancient in human terms. I have no reason to lie. Nor would I want to lie to you. She’s tortured you for thirty years too long.”
“You’re very forward.”
“I’ve learned over the course of my long life that sugar-coating things can be more damaging than kind. And when it comes to Janice, I’m not going to be kind.”
“She doesn’t deserve kindness.”
Ahh, perhaps his lifemate understood her mother more than he thought.
“You’re really a dragon?”
“Last time I checked.”
The sadness that had held Gabriella in a tight vise began to ease. “With wings?”
“Yup.”
Her brows went up. “You can fly?”
He laughed. “Yes, angel. I can fly. And one day, you’ll fly with me. Far away from here to where your mother can’t touch you and I can give you the happiness you deserve.”
Something fluttered through her eyes. Something that drew a soft smile across her lush mouth. Her head tipped to the side and a stray wisp of blond hair fell over h
er cheek. He reached up and brushed it back, tucking it behind her ear. The simple contact, a tender touch he would never have considered performing minutes ago, brought a light blush to her cheeks.
She effortlessly chiseled down the emotional walls he kept erect with the nearly imperceptible tilt of her head into his fingertips. Those cautionary, jaded walls that forced him to keep his distance even when his body wanted to be near. His fingers burned to touch her. His dragon yearned to hold her.
She was his fate, his future, every hope and dream he’d once believed dead and gone.
“So.” Gabriella straightened, shook her head, and cleared her throat. She pulled her hands from his, off the table, and tucked them into her lap. “Now what happens?”
Just that like, the moment of tenderness was gone.
Taryn stretched out his legs and settled back in his seat. “We sit and enjoy Amelia’s baking and do the things normal people do when the world is crashing down outside.”
She looked at him quizzically and he elaborated.
“We relax.”
Chapter Eight
“I hope you’re in the right frame of mind tonight.”
Suzanne spoke as Gabby tied her black apron around her waist.
Gabby’s day started out in the pits, then dropped deeper until what she thought would be just one more living nightmare turned into something altogether unexpected. She had no idea when or how it happened, but her afternoon with Taryn brought her comfort she never had the luxury of knowing. Not even on a good day with her mother amid a lag of anxiety attacks.
He made her smile more in a few hours than she had smiled in any given week in decades. He put her mind at ease until she almost forgot the reality beyond Amelia’s door. Only when the witch’s pet crow returned and, through some crazy human-animal language, relayed a safe message did Gabby reluctantly take her leave.