He hated to ask the arrogant prick for help even if he was his own brother, but Dragon was the man for the job.
Just because parents were from Warrior families did not mean they exclusively gave birth to Warrior children—a fact that had driven his father to distraction. His sister was a Seer and his brother a Mystic. The royals used the Mystics to enhance their abilities, to teach them how to handle the gifts they were born with. Hadley needed Dragon and it would be Hadrian who would have to pay for it, maybe in blood.
“Hadley, stay here. Don’t try to get up—just relax, if you can, and I’ll be back. I have to make the equivalent of a phone call.”
One eye opened, showing him the beauty of its blue depths. The mysteries hidden in her eyes had been haunting him since he’d first kidnapped her on Earth. “Who are you going to call?”
He sighed. “My brother.”
“The Dragon.”
“He’s not a Dragon, that’s just his name.”
She nodded and grabbed her head. His heart fell into his stomach. This had to stop.
She was killing herself with no hope of controlling it to fix gods-knew-what in Haven. He was grateful to have his mother back in prime condition but he guessed even Leopard wouldn’t want her to die to make things better.
Hadrian walked with determination out of his room and through his home. There was no way Dragon would make this easy on him—he’d probably refuse about a hundred times before he agreed—but ultimately his brother could be relied on to do what was right.
In better days, and in less dire circumstances, he would simply send a message to Astor and wait for his brother to reply. They’d go back and forth debating logistics until Dragon caved and came back, if for no other reason than to see why Hadrian was pestering him so badly. But today required face-to-face contact.
Knocking loudly on his parents’ door, he didn’t anticipate a response and was not surprised to hear none. His mother would be out surveying how much had improved overnight. He twisted the door handle and the door slammed open, hitting the wall behind it with a loud thud, shaking several framed pictures on the wall. A grown man, he still found entering his parents’ domain odd. His father had been big on personal space and privacy, and the children had rarely been invited into their parents’ bedroom.
He waited a beat to see if the pictures were okay and straightened the one in the middle. It was a large framed shot of his family during simpler times. Hadrian couldn’t have been more than one hundred years old, his hair short and shaved closely to his head—he’d just completed his first round of Warrior training. He wore all black, the traditional garb of the newly installed warrior, and he held a satisfied, smug look in his eyes as if he could take on the world. Hadrian snorted. If he could go back and talk to that clueless young man, he’d tell him not to be so cocky.
Dragon, who never smiled, exhibited a half-smirk, the closest he ever got to the real thing, and Hadrian couldn’t be sure but he thought he remembered his mother cracking a joke right before the picture was taken, the cause of their grins. His older brother’s eyes already held wariness inappropriate for a person so young. With all his magical ability, had Dragon seen what was to come when no one else had?
Rabbit, barely grown up, showed signs of the great beauty he was often told she was. It was hard for him as her brother to recognize his sister in that fashion. She, like her brothers, had their mother’s black hair but her eyes, unique for their family, were lilac like the flowers his mother attempted to grow every year in her honor. They were the sign of a Seer—every child on Haven gifted with them grew up with the talent to see what was to come both in their home dimension and sometimes in others. Had it been Rabbit who had seen what had befallen them on Earth? If he ever got to see her again he would ask.
Their father stood behind them all, no joy on his face, but that didn’t surprise Hadrian.
Had he ever seen his father show affection? He wasn’t sure and he wasn’t convinced his mother would have cared either way. The wives of the Warriors knew the kind of men they married. They were hard men. The patriarch of their family stared at him now with cold brown eyes accusing him, challenging him and ultimately condemning him for what had happened.
Hadrian shook his head. No more—it was time to put a plan into motion that would finally end what had begun.
Striding farther into the room, he approached his task cautiously. The communicator was to be used sparingly if at all. When he’d left two centuries before, they still hadn’t been sure about the technicalities of why it worked in the first place. It had always bothered Hadrian. Why were they using something if they didn’t understand it? Who else could be monitoring their conversations?
Attacks on their realm were so rare and far between that Hadrian feared they had become too complacent about things. Like, for example, the possibility that a royal princess could be abducted and drugged into submission to breed children for an Earthman. On his father’s dresser, as if the man still lived and was likely to come through the door at any minute, sat the portal bowl. Next to it sat a ceramic pitcher of seawater from the natural border of the capital city of Astor.
All people of Haven had the same pouring device and bowl. Hadrian wasn’t sure if it was the water that made this possible, the special container or a combination of both, but in any case he was glad to have it available to him now.
He poured the water into the bowl and waited for a moment before he closed his eyes and pictured his brother. Communication was easiest if you knew the person you wished to speak to, but in extreme situations location could work as well. “Send me to Dragon.”
The air in the room thickened, taking on the density of fog, and his skin tingled as if tiny beads of electricity jolted him. Above the bowl a screen appeared, his brother’s face in it. Dragon stared blankly at Hadrian and it took Hadrian a moment to realize he’d woken him up. It wasn’t like his older brother to sleep in, or at least it hadn’t been before Hadrian had left.
Dragon cleared his throat. “So it’s true, then—you have returned.”
Hadrian nodded and tried to speak but his voice failed him. Dragon had their father’s eyes, not just in color but in attitude as well.
“You must have some need of me or you wouldn’t be calling. I certainly don’t expect to be invited to some sort of ‘congratulations on your return’ party.”
He wasn’t going to get into a pissing contest, at least not yet. “How are you, Dragon?”
“Pleasantries? Okay, why not? I am fine, Hadrian, how are you?”
“I am, I suppose, well enough. I hope I’m not waking you.”
Dragon narrowed his eyes. “It was a late night. The king has had all the Mystics and Seers working overtime trying to predict what will happen when this Halfling you’ve brought back with you from Earth arrives in Astor. She’s an unknown factor.
Almost no one is getting readings.”
Hadrian raised one eyebrow. “Almost no one?”
“Our sister picks up on her quite nicely. She was how we knew you were back.” Hadrian nodded. Well, Dragon had answered that question for him.
“And you?”
“I see things in relation to Zamara’s daughter but a lot of it is very vague.”
It was really important that Hadrian handled this part of the discussion perfectly, or Dragon would deny him just to watch him fail. “Have you seen anything in relation to yourself?”
Dragon stood and the picture of his face moved with him. “Why would there be any connection between myself and Hadley Pettigrew other than the fact that you brought her back and are evidently hoarding her at our ancestral home instead of bringing her here?”
If it had been anyone else but his brother, Hadrian might have considered explaining what was going on, but instead he thought he’d leave Dragon to stew on that for a while.
“So not a hint about how you might be involved in helping to end this entire problem, then? Okay, sorry to bother you.”
Hadrian poured the water ou
t of the bowl, ending their conversation abruptly. He smirked and walked past his parents’ bed, in the direction of the room’s exit. As he could have predicted, a screen appeared in front of him.
“Hadrian.” His name alone held so much venom, Hadrian was sure if his brother could have reached through the screen and punched him hard in the nose he would have.
Actually, he wasn’t entirely certain his brother wasn’t powerful enough to do just that.
“Yes, Dragon?” He’d play innocent—it was still the best shot at getting what he wanted.
“How could I possibly be involved in ending this entire problem?”
“It seems that darling Hadley,” he thought he saw Dragon raise his eyebrows and he wasn’t sure why, “has the abilities of her mother tenfold. Everywhere she goes, everyone she comes near, is being healed by her presence.”
“That is wonderful news, Hadrian. Perhaps if you had gotten her here earlier much could have been avoided.”
Hadrian bit down on his tongue. He wanted to tell Dragon where he could take his presumptions and attitude but he needed to stay focused on the goal. Hadley was his first priority—he’d sworn it last night, this morning, and every pore in his body stood at alert demanding he take care of what happened to her.
“The problem is that the task is killing her because she has no control over it and no idea how it is happening to her.”
Dragon sighed and through the portal screen Hadrian could see him sit down on his bed. “She hasn’t been trained. There is so much need, it’s overwhelming her.”
Hadrian kept his voice cool and even. “That is what we assumed, and since she’s here in our family’s home, I thought perhaps it was a sign that you were supposed to be the one to help her. But as you said, you’ve had no visions of that.”
“It is, perhaps, a result of the fact that I’ve never been able to have visions of my own future.”
“I didn’t realize that was a problem for you, brother.” Damn, why had he said that?
“Not all of us are gifted with destinies that are so clear from day one.”
Dragon’s inability to be a Warrior had caused a rift between them years earlier and it seemed that chasm would never heal. Hadrian had long since stopped looking for anything from Dragon except barely veiled sarcasm.
Enough. “So will you be coming or should I look for help elsewhere?”
He’d put it out there, given Dragon ample opportunity to take shots at him, and now it really came down to this moment. Either Dragon wanted to leave Astor and come home to help Hadley or he didn’t. Just because he was the best person for the job didn’t mean anything when it came to their animosity toward each other and, since it was Hadrian asking for the help, there really was no telling what Dragon would do.
“There is no one who could assist her better than me.”
Hadrian nodded. “I am aware of that.”
“And you could have had Mom ask me or anyone else, but you asked me yourself.” “That is also true.”
“Big mistake, Hadrian. I would watch the whole world explode before I would offer you one bit of assistance.”
Chapter Eleven
Hadley awoke to Hadrian’s gentle ministrations. He rubbed her cheeks with a cloth that smelled of aloe and another scent she couldn’t identify. It was too bad she was going to die from this craziness—she would have liked to have learned all about the plants and animals that were indigenous to Haven.
As she watched the fine lines of concern and concentration crossing his face, she couldn’t help but realize there were many things she would have liked to know in this place that she had never imagined existed.
She reached out and grabbed his arm. Her dizziness had passed. She didn’t need him to baby her, and it was quasi-pathetic that she enjoyed it.
“Feeling better?” His voice was low, hushed, and as she looked out the window she saw the dim light of the sunset on the horizon. Dear god, she had slept the whole day away. She tried to sit up, annoyed that he restrained her from doing so.
She nodded. “Yes, just a little upset that I apparently wasted an entire day asleep.”
He shrugged. “You were sick, you needed the rest.”
“Why won’t you let me move?”
“I don’t want you to get dizzy again. If you must sit, let me help you.” He reached behind her back and helped her, propping her against the cushions of the bed.
Who was this Hadrian? The man who’d tended her last night was so different from the one who had told her she was a means to an end. Even the thought of that terrible remark made her bristle with anger. “You have to stop helping me, Hadrian. People might actually think we’re friends. Don’t you have a job to do? My mother is still on Earth potentially getting ready to be impregnated again, right?”
“I will not leave your mother there to languish but neither did I bring you here to watch you die.”
When she could finally speak through the utter confusion that clogged her throat, she could barely vocalize the words. “I thought I was just a means to an end to you.”
His eyes were soft, gentle. He placed his hands behind his neck and sat back in his chair. “If I live a million years, Hadley, I’ll wish every day that I hadn’t said that to you.”
She sighed. He looked so sincere she had a hard time continuing to be angry. “If I live a million years I’ll wish you hadn’t meant it.”
He leaned forward, his hands gripping the side of the bed. He stared into her eyes and she decided she’d been wrong all along. His eyes weren’t the sea, they weren’t the stars—they were the color of the moss that grew on the outside of his family’s stone cottage. He was as natural here as the very plants that fed off the soil.
“Here’s the thing, darling, I don’t think I did.”
He pushed the chair backward when he stood and it toppled over into the side of the room. She swallowed. Whenever Hadrian showed strong emotions he frightened her and, she hated to admit, turned her on at the same time. Her breasts ached for his touch.
“What does that mean?” Maybe what she should have said earlier was that if she lived a million years she’d never understand why men did what they did and said what they said.
“It means I wanted to mean it. I thought if I said it I would have to mean it, because not to mean it, to allow myself to feel what I feel for you and think what I think of you seems like the worst kind of betrayal I could imagine.”
Hadley looked down at herself. She still wore only his long shirt and she hadn’t showered. Not exactly in the physical state of beauty she would have preferred to have this type of conversation. She rolled her eyes. Who was she kidding? She’d never be that good-looking.
“A betrayal of Annabelle.” For her it wasn’t a question—the love of his life had died, and the woman also happened to be her sister. She could see how he would think his feelings for her, Hadley, were a betrayal.
“Of her, yes. Of my men. Of our cause. Of everything.” She nodded.
“Why don’t you just take me to Astor and leave me there? I’ll be out of your way, we won’t have to see each other anymore and whatever this is between us will end when we are out of each other’s sight.”
He slammed his fist against the wall. “No.”
“Why not?”
In lieu of an answer, he stormed across the room, sat on the bed next to her and claimed her mouth with his own. For a second she was so stunned she did nothing but sit there straight-faced and unmoving, but within seconds his tongue had skillfully forced its way into her mouth and she was lost in the sensation that was Hadrian.
His skin was rough—he hadn’t shaved—and his long black hair fell over her as they embraced. The feel of it, comparable to silk, sent shivers down her back and made her moan.
He pulled her closer until she was supported entirely by his weight. She wrapped her arms around his neck and met his tongue thrust for thrust, wishing it were his cock plunging in and out of her. His hands fisted in her hair as he pushed
them both onto the bed. He pulled the covers down her body to expose her legs.
His right hand left her hair to stroke her leg. She shivered and he pulled his mouth from hers. They both panted heavily.
He grinned. “You’re wearing my Druggy T-shirt.”
She shook her head. “Who is Druggy?” Closing her eyes, she let the sensations of the moment fill her.
“Not a who, a what. It’s a game children play, similar to soccer. I’ll teach it to you. But not now.”
He kissed her again, hard, and she sighed. She could get used to this. Her eyes flew open and she pushed at his shoulders. That last thought scared the hell out of her.
Managing to pull her lips from his, she scooted backward even with him on top of her. “Stop—we can’t do this.”
His eyes, glazed over, looked confused. “What’s the matter?” He rubbed a hand through her hair and she almost relented.
“This is wrong. Completely wrong.”
He took a deep breath and she noticed that his hands were shaking. Hell, she couldn’t remember if she’d ever had a man so turned-on before that he shook. Pulling himself into a sitting position, he scooted off the bed. She had to give Hadrian credit— he had self-control.
Clearing his throat, he smiled weakly. “Why is it wrong, darling?”
“Because five minutes ago you told me all of this went against your memory of Annabelle, your duty and your promises to your men. I can’t just jump into bed with you knowing it comes with all that baggage.”
He put his right hand on his forehead. “Someday I’ll have to learn to not say everything I think and feel to you.”
Hadley sat up even further, straightening her back. She narrowed her eyes. “See, there you go again. You’re pissed so you get cruel. Just another reason I’m not sleeping with you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and hoped she looked determined and not at all as if she was going to cry. He shook his head.
“I’m going for a walk.” He pulled the door shut behind him with surprising restraint. Hadley sank into the cushions. Was she the most stupid woman she’d ever met? How much had she lusted over Hadrian, and now that he wanted her she complained because he had reservations?
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