by Selena Scott
“The pain was bad at first,” Mel continued, sensing that O still didn’t want to talk about it. Some of this story she knew, and some of the details he was sending her way as they all spoke. “He didn’t know if he’d be able to keep his wing. And if he’d ever be able to fly again. But then he- he met me and Ike. And the pain started to lessen. He could feel his dragon form healing inside him, when he was in human form.” Now she added her own information. “He shifted for us yesterday, just to show us, and he said it looked about a million times better than before.”
Amos leaned forward. “How did you shift?”
“O sniffed out a portal,” Ike threw in casually from the floor.
Amos and Lucy looked at each other. “Sure, okay. The Oracle can sniff out portals. Of course,” Lucy said.
“He took us through and showed us,” Ike said. “He wanted to be honest with us. It was cool.”
"You're gonna be fine, O," Amos said. "Anybody who has enough power to, you know, sniff portals or whatever, is bound to be able to heal up a scratch or two."
O grinned, but Mel could see the strain behind it. Mel watched O’s hands fidget a little and did the only thing she could think to do. Rearranging herself on the floor in front of him, Mel tipped her head back into his hands.
O grinned down at her hugely before immediately starting to braid her hair. Mel let the gentle touch and repetitive motion soothe both of them.
"Wait a second, though," said Lucy. "What does pain have to do with you not being able to find the man from your visions?"
"Pain obscures my power, even stops it. You know when you stub your toe and all you can do for like 20 seconds is hop up and down and curse like a dog?" O, busy braiding hair, was back to speaking for himself.
"Sure, of course," said Lucy.
"Well, it does the same thing for oracle powers. I think there's something about this guy that causes me pain of some kind. Maybe something that I'm blocking out?"
Amos and Lucy exchanged another glance. "Are you sure you want to find him, O? Are you sure you can handle it?"
He shrugged. “We don't really have choice. He’s the only way to stop Dalyer. Something about him. I can’t quite place what. But it has put him in the way of Dalyer’s destiny. We need him. Which is why we came to you. Four years ago, I asked you to start looking for him. Four years you’ve moved from temporary house to temporary house.” He gestured around at the simple house, their few possessions. “I can tell that we’re all getting closer, but at this point we really have to put everything we know in one pot and try to bang this thing out.”
Amos and Lucy stared at one another, having a silent conversation. Finally, Lucy leaned over to O, took his hand.
“We found him already, O.”
O’s hands missed a beat over the braid but that was the only indication Mel got that the news affected him.
“Wow. Okay. Way to bury the lead on that one, you guys,” Mel said. She tried to keep her voice light, but she was a little annoyed that they’d let O go on for so long without telling him all the info.
“How did you find him?” O asked, his voice deceptively light.
“It was coincidence, really,” Amos started, scratching a hand over his stubble. “I picked up a gig on a construction crew, just over the mountain. Something to get us through the winter. And he was one of the guys on the crew. I recognized him right away, from when you showed us his image.”
“And?!” Ike jumped up from the ground, startling baby Rudy. “Get to the point, you guys! You’re killing me, here.”
Amos chuckled a little at the boy’s outburst. “I don’t know how to tell you this, O. But trust me, the guy doesn’t know anything about the dragon realm. He’s human. There’s no way he could be the type of warrior that could defeat Dalyer.”
“What else do you know about him?” O sounded tired. It was the first time Mel had ever heard O sound tired.
“He lives up in the mountains in a cabin. His mom lives closer to town, but she raised him out there. All alone. His name’s Idris.”
O’s hands were like lightning now, tugging her hair into an intricate braid. She could feel his agitation. Suddenly he tied off her hair.
“We’ll go tomorrow. To his cabin. You’ll take us, Amos.”
Mel wasn’t sure if O was just making a plan or telling the future, but she knew she needed to calm him down.
Soon enough, his agitation calmed. Drake and Lila woke up from their naps and were just as excited to be with O as they had been before. Mel could tell that playing with the children soothed him. He loved them and they loved him.
Her heart ached to watch him carefully spoon applesauce into Rudy’s open mouth. Or to see Lila tuck her head against his shoulder as they watched a movie before bed. But she thought her heart might explode when Ike fell asleep during the bedtime movie. When the credits rolled, O easily lifted her boy up, carried him like a baby to his sofa bed in Drake’s room.
When O crawled into bed beside her that night in Amos and Lucy’s guest room, she didn’t hesitate to turn to him. Mel’s mouth anchored to his. She drank from him deeply, trying to pour all of her feeling for him into the kiss. She wanted to fill him up with love. She needed him to know. To know everything.
His hands were all over her, in her hair, grabbing her ass, her breasts, stroking over the soft skin of her back. She leaned into his touch like a kitten. But that wasn’t what she was here for tonight. Tonight was for him.
Before he could get any more ideas, Mel rolled off of him and dragged him so that he was sitting up, his feet planted on the floor beside the bed. She instantly knelt between his knees, dragging her hands up from his ankles.
Some men would protest, she knew, out of some honor code she’d never understood. Some men didn’t want their women to be too comfortable with their sexuality. But not O. O wanted her exactly the way she was.
His eyes were glinting in the dark as he stared down at her. “Yes,” he said, brushing the hair away from her face. “Fuck, yes.”
Mel took his straining cock in her hand and pumped it once, her eyes never leaving his. His eyes were going back and forth between her cleavage straining against her tank top and her hand around his cock.
Mel shifted her hips, she couldn’t remember the last time she was this aroused. Maybe never. Her wetness dripped down her thighs as she leaned forward and dragged her tongue up his shaft. He inhaled swiftly and his hips came up off the bed as she circled the tip, sucked it into her mouth and swallowed.
“Mel.” His voice was strained and raspy. Mel swallowed him again and again, her taking him as deep as she could as she pumped him with one hand. His breath became more and more ragged. On impulse, Mel came up off his cock and flipped her tank top down, revealing her large, soft breasts.
“Yes,” he said again, his voice strangled. Her breath choppy, her pussy sopping wet and hot, Mel leaned forward and rubbed his cock between her breasts.
“Yes.” O grabbed her hair and thrust his hips forward, halfway between pulling her away from him and keeping her on.
Mel wasn’t done; she reached her head down and took him all the way in her mouth again. His hand tightened in her hair and this time he really was pulling her off of him. He stood up off the bed and pushed her down onto the floor. He covered her body completely with his, trapping her as his eyes burned into hers. She loved that about him. She loved that such a gentle soul could be so rough in bed.
“This is it, Mel,” he growled. “I don’t care about the future, I don’t care what I see or don’t see. This is it. You’re it. There’s no going back.” His breath was ragged. She was completely pinned beneath him, at his whim. “You’re my fate. You’re the only thing I see. You’re my future.”
On those words, he thrust his pulsing cock inside of her and Mel arched up off the floor. Only the back of her head and her heels touching the ground. She’d never felt anything like the electricity of him in that moment. He filled her pussy completely, stretching her. And
every inch of her skin was pressed against every inch of his.
He pulled out only a little bit before he thrust back into her. It was almost like he couldn’t bear the pulling away, all he wanted was to move forward, into her, farther and harder. They began to inch across the ground with each monumental thrust.
Mel’s hair got caught beneath them but she liked the bite of pain that came with it. The pressing weight of him over top of her as he groaned into her neck. He began circling his hips at the apex of each thrust, rubbing his pelvic bone against her clit. Mel wanted to circle her legs around his hips and her arms around his back, but he kept her pinned in place. All she could do was take what he was giving her.
The light stubble on O’s face chafed against her neck, her breasts, her cheek. She felt her orgasm rise inside of her the way champagne rises in a glass. It was coming for her. Something big. Something bigger than she’d ever felt. The sun was coming up inside her. A less brave woman would have turned away from the intensity, from the burn and the light. But Mel was no coward. She threw out her arms and swan dove into love, into pleasure. And she took him with her.
O quivered in the aftershocks of coming. He lay over top of her for only a moment before he shifted his weight onto his elbows. His eyes lasered into hers.
“I love you,” he said.
He covered her mouth with his before she could speak. “I love you,” he said again, his words muffled against her lips. “I love you.”
“I-,” she tried to speak but he cut off her words when he pulled out of her, sat up and dragged her back on the bed.
“You love me, too,” he said. “I know that.”
Mel raised her eyebrows at him. “Yeah, well just because you’re an oracle and you already know doesn’t mean you should steal my thunder.”
“Me?” He twinkled his eyelashes at her. “Steal thunder? Well, I never.”
She traced a hand over his perfect, surfer boy face. “It feels good to hear it, even if you already know it, you know.”
“I’m all ears, sugar.”
Mel cleared her throat dramatically. Opened her mouth, coughed, cleared her throat again. She opened her mouth. “Mi-mi-mi-mi-MI-mi-mi.” She sang a scale.
O rolled back onto the bed, a smile spreading out, filling the whole room. “You’re killing me.” None of his earlier tension was there, he was relaxed and happy. “Is there anything better than teasing somebody you love?”
“Maybe actually telling them that you love them,” she said, matching his grin. “Like this.”
She rolled over him, pinning him the way that he had pinned her. “I love you,” she said, looking straight into his eyes.
She felt his heart bang against his ribs. He gave a little shiver. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
Smiling, she melted into a kiss with him. It was a kiss that spanned hours. They rolled and stroked as time spun out around them, him slipping inside her when the tension became unbearable. But they kept kissing after that, even when the light became grainy and blue in the room. Only when the sun started to rise did they collapse into one another. Into the energy they created together. Into what they were making.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
O enjoyed the view as they hiked up the steep mountain path. Mel’s ass was at perfect eye level and looking particularly juicy in a pair of plum purple shorts. Her white tank top rode up a little, revealing a perfect smile of skin. Her coppery hair tumbled down her back, just the top pulled back in a small, intricate braid she’d allowed him to put in this morning.
Lucy and the kids had stayed at home. So Amos led the way, out in front, and Ike was all over the trail, jumping from boulder to boulder, swinging from branches, following trickles of water to larger creek beds. He liked watching her boy galavant around.
Her boy.
Soon to be his boy, too.
Their boy.
Something flipped in O’s stomach. He wouldn’t tell anybody that future for anything in the whole world. If he told, then there was a chance that the future would shift, change because of the knowledge. He would never take that chance. Not with his family.
They were hiking up to this guy’s cabin. Idris. They were just gonna knock and see if he was home, O guessed. He still couldn’t see two feet in front of him where this guy was concerned. And part of O was terrified of that. The other part of him was thrilled by it. For once, he was free of the burden of the future.
It made him light on his feet as they hiked up the mountain. Light with hope.
Ahead of them, Amos halted for a second. He turned back toward O, a smiling smirk on his face. “You smell that, O?”
O sniffed at the air, curious at what he meant. He caught the scent immediately. “There’s a portal around here?”
Amos threw his hands in the air. “Well, fuck me. You really can smell portals, huh?”
O grinned up at his friend. “And you doubted the all-powerful Oracle?” O said as he slipped a little on a spray of pebbles and had to steady himself on Mel’s shoulders.
“Smooth,” she said, grinning back at him.
“Yeah,” Amos said. “Drake and I found it a few months ago while we were hiking around up here. He actually jumped right through it. He shifted immediately. Couldn’t believe how good it felt. Hurt my heart a little, actually.”
“Really? Another portal?” Ike asked, huffing and puffing to catch up to them. “Can we go see it?”
“Actually,” O said, sniffing the air again. “I’d like to take a look at it. There’s something familiar about the scent. But it can’t be.”
O left the trail to jog along after the scent. Soon, Amos was right next to him.
“What part of the dragon realm does it lead to?” O asked Amos.
“A part I don’t know very well,” Amos replied. “In the foothills of the mountains.”
O kept his pace light, but his heart was racing. They came upon the portal quickly; it almost seemed to pop out of nowhere. It was just off a jetty of rocks, a long cliff opening up beneath them. Nothing but thin air all around the portal.
“You let your son go through there?” O asked in amazement.
“He went on my back.” Amos said. “We shifted as soon as possible. I flew him to the ground on the other side.” Amos cleared his throat. “Don’t, uh, mention it to Lucy, though. Humans don’t understand that kind of thing.”
O craned his neck up and around, trying to see through the portal. See what he suspected was on the other side.
Soon enough, Mel and Ike came skidding up to them. Mel grabbed Ike around the shoulders when she realized they were standing on the edge of a cliff.
O wracked through all the options in his head. He put pieces together. Tore them apart. Reassembled them.
“Amos, you said that Idris lives in a cabin up the way?”
Amos nodded.
“And that he was raised there by his mother?”
Again he nodded.
“And no father?”
Amos shrugged. “None that he ever talked about to me.”
“Do you know the mother’s name?”
“He mentioned it once or twice. Her name is Felice.”
O’s body was electricity. Every molecule was rearranging as truth and understanding streaked down his spine. “We have to get through that portal. Right now.”
“What?” Mel’s face went a little ashen as she peeked over the edge of the cliff. “Why on god’s green earth would we ever do that?”
“Because I have to talk to my father,” O said. “And he’s just on the other side of this portal.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I don’t care if you see a prophecy of him sprouting wings like a 747, O. My son is not jumping through a portal 300 feet above ground and hoping that Amos can catch him in his dragon claws on the other side.” Mel’s voice was rising in both pitch and aggression, she knew she needed to calm down. She wasn’t making the situation any better, but also, yelling at O felt like shit.
“Ok
ay. Yeah. You’re right. We’re not putting him in danger like that.” O nodded his head and scratched at his light stubble, thinking hard. “And there’s no telling whether or not I’ll be able to fly on my wing, so Amos, you’re gonna have to go get him. Bring him back here, okay?”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. He lives in a cabin on the south side of a big prairie about two miles west from the portal. You’ll know it’s him because he’ll be the one trying to battle you in midair for coming onto his property.” O leaned toward Ike in a fake whisper. “He’s a wee bit overprotective of his privacy.”
Amos pressed a hand to his temple for a second. “And you say that this is the only way to move forward? We can’t approach Idris without talking to your dad first?”
O nodded. Amos sighed and then started stripping his clothes off.
“Okay! Wow.” Mel and Ike turned away. But turned back just in time to see Amos dive off the cliff, straight into the portal, and immediately transform into a gigantic, amber dragon on the other side. He swooped out of view.
The sun creeped across the sky as the three of them waited atop the hill. O and Ike tinkered away on their friendship bracelets, chatting about the movie they’d watched last night. Mel lay on her back and watched the leaves. She tried not to let her mind stray too far from the moment. If she let it wind out too far, she’d end up panicking.
She looked up as she heard the heavy swooping of wings making wind. The three of them sprang to their feet and peered through the portal. There was Amos’ dragon, amber and glinting in the sun. He gained a good deal of speed and catapulted himself through the air toward the portal. Halfway through, he shifted to his human form, the inertia from the lunge flinging him safely onto the outcropping.
Amos shook his head like a dog and reached for his clothes. The other three peered back through the portal, trying to catch a glimpse of what was there. A prism of light flashed at them. Something bright was reflecting colors. A light green dragon. The color of O’s eyes, Mel realized. He was going to do the same move that Amos had. Catapulting himself through the portal and shifting on the fly.