As soon as he had laid eyes on her in person and heard her speak, he had remembered her. She was not part of the past he had lost when he had sustained his head injury. She was from well before that time, back in the ancient days before humans had begun to walk the earth.
Caerlovena and her war party had come to slay the dragon. That had not gone well for any of them. In fact, the scar she bore to this day was from that ancient battle with Dragos. Healing spells were not very effective in treating wounds caused by dragon fire.
She had attacked him and then had carried a sense of grievance all these years because things hadn’t gone her way. Goddamn Elves.
Now she held all four of them in a tight trap. He and Rune could cover each other’s backs on the field well enough, because even though there were thousands against the two of them, the physical limitations of hand-to-hand fighting meant they faced maybe seven to ten warriors at any given time—and none of them were a match for the two Wyr.
The problem was, the longer the battle lasted, the more damage they sustained. Rune already carried several cuts and bruises, as did Dragos. If the two of them didn’t employ any of their other abilities, Caerlovena’s army would gradually win by wearing them down through sheer force of numbers.
Meanwhile, Pia was in labor. She and the baby needed to be in the hospital with Wyr healers. Carling needed medical attention too, but in Dragos’s opinion Pia was the real urgent situation.
As he fought, he kept an eye on Caerlovena and her two attendants stationed at the cave entrance. Caerlovena paced back and forth, shouting raucous encouragement to her fighters in the clearing until Dragos wanted to ram that fucking megaphone down her throat.
“Oh, we’re having fun now, aren’t we?” she shouted.
And really, as Dragos looked at the growing pile of dead bodies that surrounded him and Rune, that last bit was too much.
“I don’t know, Caerlovena,” he shouted back. “It looks to me like you’re too fucking cowardly to come down here and fight yourself. All you’ve done so far is kidnap and threaten a pregnant woman, stand out of harm’s way, and get everybody else to do your dirty work for you!”
The intensity of the fighting around them eased as some of Caerlovena’s fighters pulled back, doubt flashing across their faces.
Caerlovena glared at Dragos, her powerful body tense with rage. “You seem to think you’re owed a fair fight, dragon. Nothing could be further from the truth! Did any of my people get a fair fight?”
“Your people came to attack me,” he snarled. Smoking blood dripped down his arm from a cut. He carried so much pent-up rage in his body his blood hissed with it. He swung his arm, flinging the blood at his nearest opponents. They screamed and stumbled back as it sprayed their faces.
“Because you hunted us first!” she screamed. “Somebody had to kill you!”
“My point remains—you’re too cowardly to come down here and fight me yourself!” He injected enough force into his words to project to everyone in the clearing as he gestured to the piles of bodies strewn around them. “Instead, you’re sending all of them to their deaths.”
If looks could kill, her gaze would be shooting a spear through his chest. “Pull back,” she said into megaphone. “Everybody, pull back!”
Her followers obeyed, eyeing Rune and Dragos warily as they retreated until they stood at the edge of the clearing.
Caerlovena waited until her army stood quiet and attentive. Then she said in a calm, cold voice, “My point remains as well. You seem to think you’re owed a fair fight. That’s not what this is—this is only round one. Let me tell you what round two is, dragon. You and your gryphon are going to fight each other to the death.”
“No,” he said flatly.
She gave him a vicious smile. “Yes. If you don’t fight, I will kill both your mates right now. If you do fight, only one of you has to die.”
Dragos growled, “Caerlovena, we both heard that lie. You have no intention of letting either one of us live.”
Her smile widened. “What real choice do you have, and how far will you go for a few more minutes of life?”
He exchanged a grim glance with Rune. Sweat darkened the gryphon’s hair, and his T-shirt was soaked in blood. When Dragos glanced up at the mouth of the cave, both Carling and Pia had disappeared. His gut tightened. The only reason why they would have walked away from this confrontation was because something else more urgent demanded their attention.
One of her attendants nudged her shoulder. Dragos could hear him perfectly as he whispered, “My lady—look.”
As she turned to stare into the cave, Dragos caught a whiff of Pia’s blood on the breeze. Despite the carnage that surrounded him and Rune, he would know her scent anywhere, anytime. Raw fear slashed at him with razored claws.
“Who did that?” Caerlovena exclaimed. Then, in a louder, enraged shout, “Who did that? How did that get in there? HOW DID SOMEBODY GET INTO THIS CAVE?”
Her other attendant turned to stare into the cave as well.
For one pulse beat, none of three people standing on the ledge paid any attention to what happened in the clearing below.
Dragos lunged.
Pushing harder than he had ever pushed in his life, he raced at the cliff face. As he ran, he cast a panic spell that blasted out from him like an atomic bomb. When the wave hit the surrounding army, they plunged into screaming chaos.
In the same moment he leaped, arms outstretched. No time to leap, cast magic, and shapeshift all at once. Instead, he strained upward, reaching, reaching—and he achieved just enough height to grab hold of Caerlovena’s ankle in one hand, and the ankle of one of her attendants in the other.
As he did so, a gryphon shot past overhead, arrowing in murderous silence toward the second attendant. On the same intolerable hair trigger as Dragos, Rune had acted the very moment he had.
Caerlovena and the attendant Dragos had grabbed lurched as he yanked them off-balance. With an enraged scream, she drew her gun and spun to face him. He braced one foot against the face of the cliff and shoved hard.
As he fell backward, he dragged both his prey down with him.
Even as they fell, Caerlovena brought the muzzle of her gun up. Bullets tore into Dragos’s body. He didn’t know how many. He wasn’t counting; he didn’t care. All he cared about was her expression of terrified horror.
All three slammed onto the ground together. Pushing to move despite a wave of searing pain, Dragos flipped to land on top of the Elven woman’s body.
Ah, splendid. She wasn’t dead yet. He knocked her gun away and got her into a headlock. Struggling against his weight, she coughed and reached back to claw at him, trying to gouge out his eyes.
Turning his face from her clawing fingers, he tightened his hold around her neck. Civilized thought had vaporized, obliterated by the dragon’s rage. Only one rule of law remained, the oldest and most savage in the Great Beast’s domain—kill or be killed.
He had her. He had her, and he could have made her ending quick.
“You’re a cruel coward,” he whispered in her ear. Her body strained and arched as she fought to breathe, and his hot blood soaked into the clothes on her back. “Only a true monster would treat a pregnant woman the way you did. You don’t deserve a quick death.”
She couldn’t talk any longer, but she could telepathize. I’m delighted with my death, because l get to take you with me when I go. I sh-shot you point blank.
Vaguely, he was aware that bent and broken metal bars rained down around them. He didn’t have to look up to know that Rune had torn apart the mouth of the cave to get to his mate.
None of it mattered. Dragos was surrounded by silence, filled with it, this singular, pure moment.
Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring his vision. He thought he saw Azrael walk up, hand in hand with Pia.
She looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. She wore a bra and torn shorts, and she was liberally streaked with dirt and blood. Her wild,
tangled hair was everywhere. Shadows as dark as bruises circled her bloodshot eyes. In one arm she held a tiny, swaddled baby.
His son.
Pia handed the baby to Death, picked up a length of metal, and swung it like a baseball bat at a man who stood over Dragos and Caerlovena.
Only then did he become aware again of the attendant he had dragged off the cliff ledge along with Caerlovena. The man hadn’t died from the fall. Instead, he was in the process of taking aim at Dragos—until Pia’s blow smashed into the back of his head.
The man dropped without a sound.
Dragos let go of Caerlovena’s body. At some point she had died. Pia’s arrival had distracted him, and he discovered he no longer cared.
He managed to roll onto his back as he stared at his mate. He didn’t want to miss a moment of this.
“You look terrible,” he gasped.
Her face twisted. Kicking the man she had just felled, she snarled, “Why can’t assholes let me be a pacifist the way I really want to be?”
Falling to her knees beside Dragos, she searched his body frantically, counting gunshot wounds. He looked past her crouching figure to Azrael and growled, “If anything happens to my son, I will pulverize you.”
“All I’m doing is holding the baby!” Azrael snapped. “Everybody always thinks I’m out to get them.”
“Blah blah fucking blah!” Pia snarled over her shoulder. She was really beside herself. Dragos had never seen her so frenzied. “What is it with you! You’re always poor me, I’m so fucking misunderstood!”
“Your wife is really a bitch when she’s in labor,” Death informed Dragos, who tried to take in a deep enough breath to laugh.
“Dragos!” Pia slapped him, not lightly. His attention snapped back to her. “Call for help!”
Oh. Right.
Reaching out telepathically to the others waiting at the forest’s edge, he said, Mayday. Mayday.
Almost instantly twin cyclones blew into the clearing as the two Djinn who had been on standby arrived, transporting the medical team with the two doctors, Seremela and Medina, and a select fighting force comprised of Graydon, Bayne, Aryal, Duncan, Claudia, and Luis.
And that was it.
Some of Caerlovena’s army recovered from Dragos’s panic spell enough to put up a fight against the newcomers, but when Caerlovena died and the others arrived, Dragos knew it was over. The tide of fortune turned firmly in their favor.
He held on to consciousness until he saw Medina swoop down on Pia and Stinkpot. Somehow Dragos had missed Azrael handing the baby back to Pia. In fact, he noticed that Death no longer stood anywhere near them.
Good enough.
Seremela fell to her knees beside him, her head snakes swirling in agitation, and he let himself fall into velvet black.
Briefly, a little while later, he surfaced when they started to move him. Aryal was holding his hand. The harpy had tears in her eyes.
“She shot you six times,” Aryal told him. “You’re not even supposed to be alive, let alone conscious.”
Moving his mouth to form words was harder than he had expected. “I’m too busy to die.” As he spoke, he angled his head, trying to catch sight of Pia.
Aryal said, “She and the baby have already gone to the hospital with Medina. She made me promise to stay with you and hold your hand.”
“Healers know better than to separate wounded Wyr mates,” he muttered.
Seremela appeared in his line of vision as she bent over him. The medusa’s expression was kind. “Hang tight, Dragos,” she said. “They needed to go the hospital, and we needed to get you stabilized before we move you. You’ll be joining Pia and the baby shortly.”
He glanced back at Aryal, who nodded. Only then did he relax again. “I want this fucked-up forest burned to the ground.”
“Don’t worry,” Aryal said grimly. “We’re on it. Bel says this land is crying out in pain… which is creepy as fuck. And Alexander and Quentin have already petitioned the Elder Council to finally take decisive action on Devil’s Gate. Either there needs to be a real law presence out here, or they need to chase everyone out of here. It can’t be a breeding ground for thugs and criminals any longer…”
Speaking out loud was too much trouble.
Aryal, he said telepathically. Hush.
She stopped her diatribe in midsentence. “Okay, sure.” She sounded meek, for her. “Just… don’t worry about anything. We’re on top of all of it.” As he started to drift again, he heard her say tearfully to the medusa, “I love that big, stupid dragon.”
And then, for a formless time, that was all he knew. Later he would learn they’d transported him to the Wyr hospital in upstate New York where he went through hours of surgery.
If he’d been able to shapeshift into the dragon, the bullets would never have pierced through his tough hide. As it was, one of the bullets had lodged against his heart. If he were human, he would be dead, but his heart was much tougher than a human’s and surrounded by a thick protective wall of flexible, fire-resistant sinew.
He’d taken two other bullets in the chest. One had ripped through his right lung. Kathryn Shaw, the surgeon on retainer who specialized in Wyr sentinel injuries, grounded him from shapeshifting and flight for a month.
The other three gunshot wounds were relatively minimal by comparison. Caerlovena had started shooting as she brought her gun up to his chest, and his wounds followed the same trajectory—thigh, hip, and just under his ribs. Those bullets managed to miss major organs, bones, or arteries and passed clean through.
But all that knowledge came much later.
The next thing Dragos knew was when he opened his eyes, he was lying in his own bed at home in upstate New York. The bedroom was shrouded in shadow, but outside the window he could see a pale blush of color had begun to lighten the night sky.
Pia lay sound asleep beside him, on her side facing Dragos, curled around the baby who nestled in the curve of her arm. His hungry gaze fixed on them. They were both clean and resting peacefully. Safe, together, home. Pia kept one hand on Dragos’s arm.
He didn’t like being transported without his knowledge. He also didn’t like the lingering scents of antiseptic along with the faint trace of blood, but on balance he would rather wake up in his own bed than in the hospital, so he decided to let it go.
Watching Pia breathe made him light-headed with relief. He soaked in the details. Protecting the baby, keeping track of where her mate was… for someone who was sound asleep, she seemed awfully busy. One corner of his mouth lifted in response.
He hadn’t moved, but then without any warning, she opened her eyes. As Wyr mates so often do, she had sensed his attention. Watching her smile was like watching the sun rise after a long, dark nightmare.
The healers had done an excellent job, he noted with approval. It might take a while for her body chemistry and immune system to fully recover from the pregnancy, but her beautiful eyes were no longer quite so bloodshot, not nearly as hollowed out.
His gaze dropped on the tiny infant that lay between them, and his own smile faded.
Caerlovena had cheated him out of his son’s birth and put Pia through hell. An echo of his earlier ferocity burned through him, and he wanted to kill the Elven bitch all over again.
“The baby?” he murmured. His voice felt rusty.
She told him telepathically, He’s perfect.
He made a huge effort, snagged her hand from his arm, and brought it to his lips. Switching over to telepathy as well, he asked, And you?
I’ll get there, and I know you will too. Her smile had disappeared too. She looked calm but sober. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but none of that has to happen right this minute.
No, none of it did. He lost himself in the pleasure of her warm fingers against his lips. Put the baby on my chest.
She stirred, looking alarmed. No way. You just had surgery to remove six bullets. Half of them pierced your chest-cavity wall.
He managed a faint sno
rt. They pumped me so full of healing spells you could park a Hummer on my chest.
She closed one eye and squinted at him. In your case, that might literally be true.
He coaxed, One little bitty baby isn’t going to make any difference. How much does he weigh anyway?
Six pounds, three ounces, she crooned as she gazed at their younger son. There was so much love in her telepathic voice, Dragos’s mind felt luminous with it. He really is just a little bitty baby.
All those details he had missed. He said roughly, I wasn’t there for him. I wasn’t there for you.
Fierce reaction flashed in her expression. Don’t ever say that! You were there for us in every way that mattered. In EVERY way, Dragos.
He felt his eyes grow damp. But not in the way I wanted to be.
She closed her eyes, fingers tightening on his. Then she pushed to a sitting position, eased the baby off the bed, and leaned over to settle him gently on Dragos’s chest.
Pleasure and lightness sank into the dragon’s old bones as he felt the slight weight of his son press against his skin. Running the tips of his fingers lightly over the baby’s relaxed body, Dragos learned his scent.
Pia scooted closer, curving herself gently against his bigger frame and resting her head on his shoulder. Angling his head, he kissed her forehead. After such a storm of violence, this sense of peace was indescribable.
But then he frowned and just had to ask: What do we need to talk about?
Up popped Pia’s head. She regarded him with narrowed eyes and a set mouth. “Oh, I don’t know, Dragos, what do you think we might need to talk about?” she whispered. “Hint—it probably has something to do with your brother.”
He narrowed his eyes back at her, then turned to look up at the shadowed ceiling. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Oh no?” He knew that tone of voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her sassing him with a little wiggle of her head and neck as she said, “Well, you don’t get a say about that. How come he hasn’t been around for Thanksgiving or Christmas, huh?”
“We’re a bad influence on each other,” he muttered. “Trust me, it’s just best to avoid him altogether.”