by Lauren Smith
Panic shot through her like a bolt of lightning, and everything around her seemed to slow down. Drakor began to turn, his face alight with malice as he finally realized that he had the upper hand.
Have to stop him…but how?
She didn’t stop to think her plan through. There was only one way to even the odds. Vial in hand, she rammed her palm into Drakor’s mouth, mid-taunt. The glass shattered over his teeth and cut into her hand, which she held over his mouth, keeping as much of the serum inside as she could. Drakor struggled, gripping her hand and pulling it away. He gagged and spat, a mixture of blood, spit, and serum spilling on the ground.
He howled, backhanding his claw at her chest, even as it began to revert to human form. She screamed, staggering over the edge of the building. She grabbed Drakor’s hand, desperate to pull herself back up.
Instead, he fell over the ledge with her.
Wind whipped across them in a roar of sound. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch her breath as she went weightless in the air. Drakor’s gaze went wide with terror, seeing the ground rising to meet them, yet unable to do anything about it.
But Charlotte wasn’t afraid. Not really. She wasn’t resigned to death, it was just that she knew. She knew somehow what she would see as she looked back up into the sky. She knew it before it even happened.
A great black dragon appeared, falling from the building and diving after them, its golden eyes locked onto hers. As it reached her, its giant claws cradled her seconds before they reached the pavement, pulling her back toward the sky…but it wasn’t enough.
Rurik covered her with his wings and twisted his body so he was beneath her before they crashed into the street, and everything went dark.
37
Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new she could not understand that it had happened. —Rainer Maria Rilke
Rurik had fought a thousand battles, but nothing compared to the one inside him the moment he saw Charlotte pull Drakor over the edge of that building. Every nightmare he’d ever had as a boy of having a mate and losing her came true in that instant. The terror, pure and violent, froze him in place, but not for long. His dragon, buried deep beneath the serum, suddenly stirred.
“No!” His roar shook the already unstable building around them. He didn’t have time to think. He rushed toward the ledge, just as Damien and his team stormed the room. It only took a moment for the hunter to recognize his intentions.
“Rurik, no!”
Rurik leaped from the window, his rage and love blurring together in a swell of emotions that drowned out everything else. His dragon exploded out of him as he hurtled down toward his mate. He tucked his wings flat against his back and shot straight for her. His claws caught hold of Charlotte’s tiny form, but he was falling too fast; there was no way he would pull up in time. At the last moment, he turned his body so he was beneath her, his wings covering her, and blackness swallowed him.
Damien rushed to the building’s ledge, looking down at the massive black dragon hurtling down toward the earth, toward Charlotte. It had to be Rurik; there was no other explanation. There was a deafening boom, and dust billowed up in a wide circle far below, blocking Damien’s view. When the dust cleared, he saw a distant shape on the pavement: Rurik, lying still. Neither of them could have survived that fall.
Grief threatened to drown him, but he buried it fast. The battle wasn’t over yet.
Two dragons tumbled from the roof onto the landing he and his team were on—a gray one and a white one, one of the Silva dragons and the one called Piper. The Silva had a grip on Piper’s silvery-white neck.
“Eyes and torso!” he ordered his team. “Watch fire!”
He raised his AR-15 rifle, taking careful aim for the Brazilian dragon’s head, and fired again and again with marksman-like precision. The rest of the team did likewise, firing pure iron rounds into its abdomen.
The dragon roared, letting go of Piper, blinded in one eye and furious. Piper used the distraction to take the other by the neck and, with a violent thrash, break it. The body of the dragon fell, crashing down toward Damien’s team, only to become human before it even hit the ground.
Something in Damien’s head clicked. Of course. Nobody ever found a dragon body, because when they died they didn’t stay dragons. That meant…
“Grigori!” Damien shouted to the sky, where the leader of the Barinovs hovered, wounded but victorious. “We need to get down there!” He pointed over the edge. The blue dragon nodded and dropped to the platform, letting Damien climb onto his shoulders. If Rurik was still alive, then there was a chance Charlotte was as well. Grigori leapt off the building and glided down to the ground.
Damien jumped off the dragon’s shoulders and stumbled to his knees beside the body of the black dragon, which still lay motionless. Curled in its wings lay Charlotte, her hand splattered with blood, but not moving. Not breathing. Tears stung his eyes as he cupped her face.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I failed you. I—” The rest of his words died upon his lips. They would never reach her, not where she had gone.
Damien stared at the face of the dragon who had dared to love his sister. All he saw there now was the proud, wise, noble heart of a dragon, not an enemy.
He saw Grigori’s snout nudge one of Rurik’s clawed feet. A shaky breath broke from Rurik’s body, but it wasn’t one that filled either of them with hope. Grigori made a low, rumbling sound that turned to a keening cry. The dragon bent his head, as if resigning itself to the inevitable. Silver tears like liquid mercury poured from Grigori eyes, splashing onto Rurik’s scaled body.
Damien placed a hand on the grieving dragon’s leg, feeling the heat of the scales beneath his palm. There were no words to be spoken, none that could ease the pain of their shared loss. Damien felt he understood what the dragons meant when they said they suffered grief so strongly that it could kill them. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to wipe the tears away.
And that’s when he saw flames rise up around Charlotte’s body.
Snow…
Snow was falling. Charlotte could feel it on her skin before she opened her eyes. She was there in that realm between, feeling Rurik’s beating heart. The warm glow was so close, but as she sat up and blinked, she saw the flames flicker and sputter, threatening to go out.
She surged to her feet and pushed through the thick snowfall as the storm became fiercer, wind whipping at her. She had to reach his heart this time, or else the wall of shadows creeping in at the edges of her vision would overtake her.
Charlotte braced her arms in front of her face, shielding it from the icy wind. Shapes moved ahead of her, but they weren’t shadows. These shapes were…dragons. Hundreds of them, lined on either side of her path to the dwindling glow of Rurik’s heart. Their massive, long-snouted heads bowed, their frills fanning up as they watched her pass by beneath them like giant statues.
“Another comes to the doorstep. Come, brother. Come home. There is so much for us to show you. So much you have never seen…” The words were clear like church bells, sung by unseen voices.
“Keep going, little one. Go!” a lone female voice said from somewhere beside her. “Go to him before it’s too late!”
Charlotte turned and saw an emerald-green dragon with green-gold eyes urging her forward.
“Who are you?” Charlotte shivered as a new wind funneled down the path the dragons had made for her.
“We are the Barinovs, the souls of the ones long gone, returned to our true home, ready to welcome another,” they answered, though their mouths didn’t move.
Charlotte somehow knew what they meant by that. They were ghosts…sort of. This was death…maybe. Yet it was like nothing she’d ever expected to see. And somewhere in this snowy world, Rurik’s soul was here, his dragon half. The part that needed to be saved.
“I can’t lose him. Not now!”
The dragons said nothing.
>
“Did you hear me? You can’t have him!”
The female from before whispered beside her. “There is a way, but it will not be easy.”
“What must I do?” she asked. “Anything. Please.”
“You must give of yourself. Your life must become his, and his heart must become yours.”
Charlotte believed she knew what the dragoness meant, so she nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Take his heart, hold it close, and don’t let go, no matter what. You might yet save him. Go…time is waning, and the shadows are upon us.”
Charlotte faced the glowing heart ahead of her, only a little farther, but the path was harder, and it became more difficult to move with every step.
“I love you, Rurik. Do you hear me? I love you!” She shouted the words into the blinding snow that tried to hide the heart from her. But she would not stop—she would never stop.
She stretched her hand into the flames, curling her fingers around what looked like a giant ruby. Fire exploded around her, burning her hand, her body, her soul. It was killing her, she knew it. If she kept holding on, she would die.
“Don’t let go.” The dragoness’s voice echoed all around her. “Focus on your love for him.” Charlotte closed her eyes, unable to scream as her body seemed to burst apart, and her life drained away. As her life force left her, something of his came to fill the void. Something strange. Something alien. Something…Rurik.
With a powerful burst of light, she fell to the ground, her fingers still clutching Rurik’s heart. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw snow everywhere, but it wasn’t the between-world she’d just been in. Gone were the Barinov ghosts, the shadows, and the storm.
Wherever she was now, the snowflakes were suspended in midair, as if time itself had frozen over. She tried to stand and jolted when she realized she was not herself any longer. Her arms were covered in obsidian scales, and her fingers ended in razor-sharp claws. Her nose had lengthened into a lethal snout. A sense of something—or rather someone—else sharing her body was eerie but not unwelcome. It was the dragon. It was part of her now. It was also part of Rurik. Rurik was part of her.
Her dragon-self stirred, managing to stand, and she turned to see a beautiful black dragon lying in the snow, still as death. In that dragon she saw her mate, and she saw herself.
Rurik. She moved forward on shaky new legs and nuzzled his chest, huffing warm breaths across his throat. He didn’t stir.
“My mate…” she crooned, singing a dragon song buried deep within her.
“Little rose?” The response was like a faint echo, but she kept singing. The dragon part of her knew there was magic in dragon song. The sweeping notes spun spells in the air, and her mate lifted his head weakly, his golden eyes fogged with pain.
“Come back to me, Rurik. Don’t be afraid to live. I love you.”
This time when he lifted his head, she saw the gleam of returning strength in his gaze.
“You’ve changed. How?”
Charlotte nudged him, urging him to stand. She and her dragon needed to see him up and moving before they could relax.
“Ho-ly fuck,” someone said behind her. She turned and saw someone she recognized, but her dragon also felt him to be a threat, and she bristled defensively.
Damien. The name was there, along with the memories, but her dragon growled, forcing her brother to stumble back. He fell into the snow next to a large sapphire-blue dragon. Rurik chuckled inside her head, and the sound filled her with joy.
“Let the dragon go, little one. She’ll slide back beneath your skin, and then you’ll be all right.” She turned to Rurik and watched him change, his dragon morphing into the beautiful, battle-scarred man she loved.
Her need to be with him was so strong that she collapsed into the snow, trying to get to him, her body doing just as he suggested. The dragon sank back into her, present but hidden. She fell on top of Rurik, and he curled his arms around her. Tears crept from the corners of her eyes.
Rurik kissed her temple and held her close. “It’s all right to cry.” With those words she gave in to the outpouring of emotions that had been bottled up.
“Is she okay?” Damien rushed over, but his voice made her bury her face even deeper into Rurik’s neck.
“She’s overwhelmed. Mikhail saw this with Piper when she first transformed,” Grigori said, having changed back to human form. “What I don’t understand is how. We have no dragon stone.”
“I am not sure what happened—or how,” said Rurik. “But I recognized the dragon I saw just now as my own.”
“What do you mean?” Grigori asked.
“I can’t explain it other than that. My dragon and Charlotte’s…are the same dragon but shared between her body and mine. I think we now share the same dragon soul.”
Charlotte listened to the men talking around her, but she wasn’t ready to face them, not yet. She felt vulnerable and exposed and weak. She didn’t want to open her eyes or let go of Rurik. He was the only thing she could cling to in that moment.
“Um,” Damien stammered to Grigori. “Do you guys need clothes? I…just realized that everyone here but me is completely naked.”
“I’m naked?” Charlotte said weakly. “And Damien’s here? Oh God…” She’d survived a fall from a skyscraper only to die here now of embarrassment.
Rurik’s body rumbled against hers with laughter as he stroked her back. “It’s all right, Charlotte, my mate. Everything will be all right now.” Charlotte raised her head, slowly opening her eyes. Her gaze locked on Rurik, and she knew nothing would ever be the same again. And she couldn’t be happier about it.
“It’s time for us to face the future,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” That was all that mattered. The love that even in death had kept them together and saved them, because love was the strongest magic, the oldest magic. Even death couldn’t stop it. “Now, get me some clothes before I scream.”
Epilogue
Above us, outlined against the brilliant sky, dragons crowded every available perching space on the Rim. And the sun made a gold of every one of them. ―Anne McCaffrey, Nerilka’s Story
The sound of the door chime at Rurik’s apartment made Charlotte tense. Madelyn and Piper both giggled at her, but Charlotte wasn’t laughing. After she’d almost died the day before, everything had become a chaotic blur. She’d been staying at Rurik’s apartment while her brothers and Rurik’s had seen to handling the cleanup of the dragon battle. She hadn’t been sure if they would agree to come when she and Rurik had invited them over today.
“It’s going to be fine,” Madelyn said. “They fought together against Drakor and the Silvas.”
“And your brother saved my ass,” Piper added. “That counts for something.”
Charlotte bit her lip, studying her future sisters-in-law. Behind them in the kitchen, Grigori and Mikhail were teasing Rurik about being mated, just as he’d predicted. He’d put up with it long enough, it seemed, because she heard him hiss in warning and saw his brothers jump back, though still smiling.
The doorbell chimed again. “Go on, answer it.” Madelyn nudged Charlotte toward the door.
She paused at the entrance, her hand settling on the silver knob. It had been only a day, but already everything felt…different. Her human body had changed, with eagle eyesight, intense olfactory senses, and greater strength. And beneath all that, she was a dragon. A creature her brothers didn’t trust.
Open the door, little rose. Rurik’s reassuring words came through their bond. He stayed back, letting her greet her brothers privately, hoping to show respect and also to show that he wasn’t controlling her, though the truth was even harder to understand.
She turned the knob and pulled the door open. Damien and Jason as well as the rest of their strike team stood there in civilian clothes. That boded well for this official meet and greet.
“Hey,” Damien said, a bashful look on his face that Charlotte had never seen befor
e.
“Hey,” she murmured and stepped back. “Come on in. We have food and drinks…” She trailed off, suddenly feeling incredibly shy.
Am I still his little sister to him? Will he still call me family? Her worries knotted her stomach. She laid a hand over her belly, trying to quell the anxiety.
Rurik and his brothers remained at the edge of the kitchen as the hunters entered the spacious apartment.
Madelyn came forward, Piper right behind her as they filled the awkward void. “Welcome! I’m Madelyn, Grigori’s mate, and this is Piper—she is mated to Mikhail.” Madelyn held out a hand, which Damien shook.
“Damien MacQueen. This is my brother, Jason, and my team—Tamara, Nicholas, Meg, and Kathryn.” He pointed at each in turn.
Finally, Rurik stepped forward, his brothers close behind him. The moment of truth.
“Glad you decided to come,” Rurik said, locking eyes with Damien. “Hopefully we can avoid the handcuffs and drugs this time.”
Silence fell over the room. Charlotte’s eyes widened in shock, but her brother’s impassive face slowly cracked a smile. It was Jason who broke the tension, however.
“In Vegas you’d have to pay extra for that.”
Rurik cracked a grin. “Indeed.” He then gestured to his brothers. “You haven’t been formally introduced. This is Grigori, and this is Mikhail.”
Grigori held out a hand to Damien just as his mate had done. “Mr. MacQueen.” Damien hesitated only a moment before placing his hand in the dragon’s.
Beside Grigori, Mikhail stood with his arms crossed. “I never thought I’d be in the same room as the Brotherhood, let alone offering them our hospitality, but I believe it’s time for things between us to change.”
“I agree. This is long overdue,” Damien said. Charlotte could smell her brother’s tension, a soft dark scent with just a hint of fear. It was so peculiar to be able to smell things like that now. There was so much she could pick up from sight and scent alone.