Damian had forced himself to wait for the last possible moment as Danny roiled, trapped on the ground. The more Hunters that were drawn away from their caches of nets and harpoons, the better. Mills reported in that they were leaving their stations in droves, each of them so eager to get a knife into Danny’s side.
But then he’d seen Andi, running for the other dragon.
Of course, she hadn’t left him.
He should’ve known there’d be no way. The second Danny was injured, her path had been set. By fate or destiny—take your pick—she was going to fight by his fool side.
Just as he was destined to do anything to protect her.
“I know what you’re thinking, brother,” Ryana said, panting from exertion, over their intercom. The only reason he’d let her come on this mission was because if things went south, there’d be no one left at his castle to protect her. “Don’t.”
A wave of Hunters reached the arena floor and were racing for Danny as one.
Damian leapt up to the cement railing in front of him. “Ryana, if you’re lucky, someday you’ll also be mated…and you’ll know I never had a choice.” He pulled out his earpiece and let himself go.
His dragon rose up and overtook him, and for a brief moment they were one and the same. He felt the expansion of its wings, felt the glory of its strength, and heard himself trumpet a challenge with its throat, until he was compressed back inside to the place he stayed when it ran wild.
It launched itself off of the railing, soared briefly overhead, and then landed purposefully in the midst of the Hunters running in, roiling its tail to swipe whole herds of Hunters sideways, flapping its wings to knock down more and building up fire in its throat.
Damian didn’t need his dragon to tell him that it was happy, as it shoved at the nearest burning car with its paw, sending the hot metal skidding back into another row of fighters. It was in its element, using all its senses, tracking and triangulating, as it waded through the attacking Hunters. Bone swords chipped at its scales, and talismanned daggers pricked, but he was a dragon, a mighty beast, and there was nothing that any human could do to stop it. He roared flames at them, catching even more cars on fire, and he would kill and keep killing until Andi was safe.
“No!” he heard her shout, and then she wailed.
His dragon snapped its head in her direction and ran forward on all fours. A woman with a bone sword was there, plunging it into Danny’s side, and Andi was trying to get free of her brother’s claws to fight her.
“Stop!” Andi shrieked, and Damian would never fully know what had happened next, only that he was not himself. He blew out gouts of flame, instantly vaporizing the Hunters on both of Danny’s sides, and then raced up on the hobbled dragon, whipping the woman away from Danny with his muzzle, getting a close up look at her unlined face and the rime of green around her mouth from Danny’s blood as he tossed her back thirty feet.
Andi didn’t stop howling. She was free of Danny’s claws now, and she ran for his side where the sword was still embedded, jumping up to grab hold of it and pull it out. “Danny!” she screamed, and he could scent the salt of her tears as she threw the sword away behind her and sobbed against Danny’s scales, ineffectually trying to wrap her brother in a hug, as the dark green dragon’s body went slack.
Damian was conscious of the fight still continuing around him—his people fighting Hunters, Hunters trying and failing to fight him, but everything narrowed down to this one moment, witnessing the thing he’d been trying to stop from happening this entire time.
Danny was dead.
Andi stumbled back from her brother’s side, holding herself, deep in pain, moaning, taking gasps of air in like she might never breathe again.
His dragon shoved him forward in an instant, knowing that she needed him on a human scale, to be touched by human hands. The men who’d been fighting against him lurched forward as their opponent disappeared, and he ignored them, running through piles of smoking debris to get to her side.
“Princess!” he called for her the second he was near. She stumbled back to standing and ran for him, falling against him, sobbing.
“Dragon,” she whispered. “You were too late.” She shuddered with tears. “He’s gone.”
“Oh, my princess,” he said, soothing her, stroking her back and hair, feeling her wet tears fall against his naked chest. And beyond all the chaos, the sounds of things catching fire and exploding, and the ever-diminishing screams, Damian heard a familiar sound.
The crackling of Forgetting Fire.
The battle was through. Mills must have called it, and now it was Max’s turn, and before they’d left his castle, they’d upgraded the bear-shifter from lantern to a flamethrower. He saw gusts of bright orange flame past Danny’s body, returning the arena to what it once was prior to all their magical damage—and the confused look of any remaining Hunters trapped in its path, who’d just had all their knowledge of what’d happened taken from them.
“He’s gone, Damian. And now it’s just me.” She looked up at him with an expression of pure sorrow, and it was like he could feel the very breaking of her heart. It made his break for her.
“Andi,” he whispered, holding her tight. He could feel the heat of the Forgetting Fire at his back, and turned them so that it was at hers instead, bowing his head to touch hers, saying words only she could hear. “It’s not too late to fight your destiny, princess, and I can take away your pain.”
She blinked up at him, eyes red with tears, eyeliner smudged. “How?”
“The same as I first offered you in the pond. If you turn around and stare into the Forgetting Fire, it will be as if none of this ever happened. You can forget the nature of your brother’s death, your uncle…and me. All of this will go away. It will not bring him back, but at least you won’t carry the burden of these memories. And I’ll understand if that’s your wish, although it will destroy me.” Damian felt her gasp as he continued. “But if you can manage it, princess, then you should know that I will be at your side forever. And you will grieve, yes, but I will make sure that you are happy, too.”
She stared up at him and ran her hands into his hair, trapping his face to hers. “Do you really think that I could ever choose to forget you? No matter how bad things got?”
“No,” he said, giving her a soft, sad smile. “But I didn’t want to just trust in fate, Andi. I wanted to have faith in you. I love you with all my heart.”
His hand rose up to dry her tears, and she kissed his palm as it neared. Then she closed her eyes, ducking her head against him as he lifted her up, cradling her in his arms to walk her away from the worst of it, while casting his gaze around. “Is everyone safe?” he called.
Ryana piped up first. “I saved his life!” She leapt on top one of the magically restored vehicles and Damian could see several tears in her wings as she pointed wildly at Austin.
“Just the once,” the werewolf grumbled, stepping out between other cars.
“Stella…stop!” they heard Zach shout, and everyone turned. The weregirl had her gun trained on a kneeling man. He had khakis on and a mint green polo smeared with ash. A toothpick jutted out between his lips.
“I know him!” Stella shouted back, as Zach strode up to press her gun down.
“But he doesn’t know you,” he growled at her, pointing at the pool of urine growing by the Hunter’s knees. “Not anymore. They’ve all forgotten.”
“I don’t care. He killed my brother,” Stella said, her voice like ice.
“I didn’t! I swear!” the Hunter pleaded, his toothpick falling to the ground.
“Shut up,” Zach and Stella both told him at once, and then glared at one another.
“He is not innocent, and I will never forgive him,” she swore.
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying don’t murder him in cold blood.”
“You’re not in charge of me,” she growled, but Zach stood his ground. She reholstered her weapon and pulled out her earpiece to throw at his feet. She then stalked for the nearest exit, abandoning their team. The other werewolf watched her go.
Max walked up with his flamethrower. “Everyone alive has been wiped except for us. But I still have a ton of clean-up to do.”
“I’ve been diverting the authorities as best I can,” Jamison reported, with the glazed look he had when he was communicating with technology. “I can give us at most another fifteen minutes, but then the cavalry’s gonna hit here, hard, so we need to get out of Max’s way.”
“We’ve got a real ‘call me Ishmael’ situation happening here, Damian,” Austin said, coming closer.
“Is this where I say yippee-kai-yay?” Ryana asked Austin, and Austin chuckled.
Andi squirmed and he delicately put her down as Mills came up. “Andi…about your brother.”
“I know,” Andi whispered, and Damian realized she hadn’t yet turned back around. “I was here the whole time. You all did the best you could. Thank you for trying, I know it was dangerous.” She held herself and Damian wrapped his arms around her, trying to shoulder some of her burden. “I just wish he’d believed me.”
Damian watched Mills’s eyes widen at something behind him, and whirled, crouching defensively.
“What if he did?”
Andi wasn’t sure she could believe her ears. Because the person she’d heard sounded an awful lot like Danny, right down to the cocky tone of voice. She turned right after Damian did, and there was her brother, smeared with green, one eye swollen shut, holding a scrap of upholstery leather over his crotch.
“Danny?” she asked, her voice going high.
Her brother looked past her at the rest of Damian’s crew. “Man, you guys are like a well-oiled machine.”
Andi shoved Damian aside and walked up to him. “You’re alive?”
“No, I’m totally a ghost dragon now.”
“Fuck you,” she told him, as she wrapped him up in a hug.
He grabbed her with his free arm. “Fuck you too,” he said back, laughing.
When their hug was over, Damian loomed near. “How,” he demanded.
“Well about the time you started shouting we were on the same side, I realized you were right, but it was too fucking late for me.” Danny looked around them and Andi saw his eyes light on his car with relief. He started angling there and she followed. “By then the only way I could help was to let them capture me, so that they wouldn’t be manning those harpoon launchers against you.” He jerked his chin at Damian, and she heard Damian grunt. “The only way to get them away from those things was to play on their greed, and nothing makes a Hunter lust more than the thought of tasting dragon.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Damian said dryly from her side.
Danny was in front of his car now, looking at it from all directions. “What happened to your keys?” Andi asked with a snort.
“Since when has a lack of keys ever stopped me?” He gave her an eyeroll, switched his loincloth to his ass, and bent over to do something with the side door. It sprang open, and he pulled out a set of clothes inside. “Give me a second. I can’t take myself seriously hanging out all au natural like this dude.”
Andi covered her eyes while her brother changed, while noticing that Damian never once looked away. He didn’t trust her brother in the least…which was probably for the best.
“And,” Danny went on, now in another Nike shirt and jeans, “I knew Andi was still going to fight beside me. Which meant that you were going to fight for her. And likely save my sorry ass in the process.” He shrugged with his entire body and then winced. “I trusted in fate, pretended to be struggling more than I was for a little bit—distracting many of the Hunters from you, by the way, and you’re welcome…and now I’m fine.”
“I saw her stab you, Danny,” Andi said.
“But was it a dragon bone sword? No.” He shook his head. “I mean, it hurt like hell, don’t get me wrong, but we both know I’ve been through worse.”
Andi knew he meant everything their mother had done to him. His entire separate and painful childhood without her. “Danny, would you change all this, if you could?”
His gaze softened on her and he took a long breath. “Not if having this happen to me stopped it from happening to you,” he said, and Andi knew he meant it. She was and would always be his Andi-bear.
“Daniel,” Damian said. “We need to know where your other people are.”
Danny tore his eyes away from her to look at the other dragon. “You’re going to make them forget, aren’t you.”
“It’s the only way to keep you safe from them…and us,” he said, putting a protective arm around her.
Danny shook his head and closed his eyes. “But I’m so close—”
“No, Danny, you’re not. Mom left me some letters too. I found them when I got home last night, inside my old pool cue case. Right where somehow she’d known I’d look, at just the right time. She told me that you and I are the only people that can become dragons, Danny, because we were her children. Those people at your lab, you’re really just torturing them.”
“Screw them. You can become a dragon too?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to,” Andi said, shaking her head quickly.
“Can I see what she left you?”
“No. I burned them.” Andi felt Damian tense in surprise beside her.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth then?” Danny said, advancing on her.
She placed a hand on his chest the moment before Damian would’ve intervened. “If you don’t trust me after all this, Danny, you really are an asshole.”
Danny stared her down for half a second more, and then laughed. “All right. Fine. You win. Here’s where the lab is,” he said, rattling off an address. “Wipe them clean, and I’ll start over someplace else.”
“With Uncle Lee?” she asked.
“Most likely.” His gaze lifted up to Damian’s. “But I know I owe you, and I want my sister happy. You disappoint her though,” he said, looking back at her, “and I’m always just a phone call away.”
“I will do my best to keep her happy for the rest of her life,” Damian promised.
Danny inhaled, gave a still-naked Damian a look up and down, and Andi started blushing furiously. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re like the whole package, huh? Emphasis on package?”
“Oh, God…Danny, I love you. Be safe, but just go away.” Andi grabbed Damian’s hand and started pulling him back as Danny laughed.
“I love you, too, Andi-bear,” Danny called after her. “Make sure he wears a condom!”
“Fuck you,” she called out over her shoulder, flipping him off with her free hand without turning around.
“Your family relationship is really strange,” Ryana informed her, coming over to her side, before looking up at Damian. “Mills says we need to leave now, and she called your car.”
“Good and thank you,” Damian told her. “I’ll see everyone at home.”
“Damian, I killed so many people,” his sister went on. “I was like the Terminator! Max is so proud.”
Andi bit back a chuckle. “As well he should be,” Damian told her, and she could hear his grin. “You can tell me all about them later on. At home,” he reinforced.
Ryana turned to her. “I’m Ryana, by the way,” she said, like they’d never met before, giving Damian a devilish grin. “I’m an actual princess.”
“Ryana,” he growled in irritation, and she laughed, running away from him.
“Is it really over?” she asked him now that they were alone. The arena had recovered in the same way her hospital had, everything that’d been magically imbued or damaged was gone…which actually left a lot of bodies and nonmagical harpoons behind. It looked like two angry gangs of roving whalers had done the MMA version of West Side Story. She didn’t envy the police who were going to have to sort all this nonsense out. Who knew, maybe in a few years she and Sammy would be watching it on Unsolved Mysteries.
“It is,” Damian told her, as they were nearing the exit. A limousine with the darkest tinted windows she’d ever seen was waiting right outside, its door already open, driver safely back in his seat. Damian strode for it like he knew it was for them, and had the graciousness to let her get in first despite his lack of clothing, pulling the door firmly closed behind himself. “The next start-up I invest in is going to be a fleet of these,” he said, knocking his hand against the door. “Pay enough money and you can order up a no-questions-asked limousine, with a no-questions-asked driver. They won’t mind bloodstains, sewer smells, or casual nudity.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to just avoid all those things?”
Damian gave her a baffled expression—on purpose, she could tell. “What would be the fun in that?”
She laughed as he leaned in to kiss her, and threw her arms around his neck, sliding up against his body. He tasted good. He tasted free, and Andi was going to spend the rest of her life making out with him…and other things….
“I bet I can make you come three times before I get you home,” he murmured, the next time she came up for air. His hands were at her waist and she was already straddling him, albeit with her jeans still on.
“We are downtown, and it is rush.” She cocked one hip and an eyebrow.
“Hmmm, then five,” he promised, twisting her down against the limo’s wide seat. “Aren’t you going to bet against me?”
“Why the hell would I?” she laughed. The limo stopped, and Damian pulled himself on top of her.
“Princess,” he began.
“Dragon,” she teased, pushing his dark hair back.
“I want you to hear me say it. Free and clear.”
Andi smiled up at him, winding her legs around his waist, pulling him to her. “Okay,” she told him.
“I love you,” he said, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. “I’ve loved you since I saw you at that bus stop the night I hired you. I wouldn’t have been able to admit it, but I saw you and I knew my life was changed.”
She brought her fingers down to trace the edges of his lips. “You do realize the only reason I needed that money was because of Danny, right?”
He nipped at her fingers lightly. “So what if we’re bound? Just because we’re fated doesn’t mean it’s bad. But I have given you all the freedom that I can stand, Andi. From here on out, I need you near.”
The part of her that was always afraid people were going to run away thrilled to hear it and even dared believe. “I need you near, too, Damian,” she whispered.
He made a satisfied sound above her, and then animalistically licked up her jaw, before bending back and lowering his hands to her waistband.
She moved to help him. It wasn’t fair that she was still in clothes when he was already all skin. She kicked off her boots and wriggled as he tugged, freeing her, and once he’d done so, he caught her nearest ankle and kissed it. She made a soft moan and sighed, as he started kissing up, and she pushed herself back on the seat so that he had as much room to lay down as she did, trailing his kisses up the inside of her calf, her knee, her thigh, giving her time to anticipate what was coming until he was finally there, his mouth buried between her legs, tongue swiping, chin grinding and she was crying out with one hand in his hair.
She’d always given herself over to him completely, holding nothing back, but now, knowing that he loved her and that this was real, everything was hot and heady, as she moaned and kicked her hips up for him, one foot arched behind him on the shoulder rest, the other on the limo’s floor.
“Damian,” she whispered, and she saw his ass clench in return, grinding himself against the seat, and then he pushed fingers inside her and started rubbing and she felt so good and full. “Damian,” she whined his name, lifting her hips up high, his mouth following her, his gaze watching her, watching him make her come. “Oh, Damian…yes!” she shouted and thrashed, curling up as spasms took her, and he kept licking until she was so sensitive, she couldn’t take it anymore. She whined again and twisted and he raised his head up from her hips to wipe his lips against her thigh.
“I have to have you, princess,” he warned her, and all she could do was helplessly nod, as he crawled up her body, aligning his hips with hers, sheathing himself inside her in one bold stroke. She moaned as he landed and then caught her breath as he held himself over her, stretching her tight. “You’re mine now, and you know it.”
“I do,” she breathed, looking up at him, running her hands up his chest and down his shoulders, kneading the muscles there.
“And the things I am going to do to you,” he promised, in a tone that made her shiver.
“I don’t know if I should look forward to that or run away.”
He chuckled low. “I would like you running away, consensually, of course, to catch you very much. It’s a predator and prey thing.”
Andi swallowed, suddenly realizing just what she’d willingly signed on for and feeling ridiculously small.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared now, princess,” Damian teased, holding himself higher over her to give her more space. “Unless you truly are, and then I want to know.”
She shook her head. “Not scared. It’s just…this is real now. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything real before. Oddly, you are far less frightening than the thought of being happy for the rest of my life.”
Damian tilted his head and licked his lips thoughtfully before speaking. “Reality isn’t perfect, Andi. No matter my good intentions, I can’t promise infinitely happy tomorrows. You know that.”
Andi nodded. His curse. “I do. But…you want to try, Damian. And I’ve never had anyone want to try with me before.”
He gave her a soft look. “I’m not sure if that’s due to fate, princess, or that every other man in your entire life you’ve ever met has been a fool. But either way, yes, I do want to try.”
She reached up to touch his face. “Because you’re my mate,” she whispered, and she felt him gently nod.
“I am. And you are mine.”
She moved beneath him then in a way that she knew he’d take to mean he should keep going, and he did, slowly pulling out of her only to slowly push back in, and she made the soft sounds she couldn’t help but make and that she knew he loved to hear. He held himself carefully over her, kissing her between each thrust, taking his time, as she kissed him too and ran her hands up and down the strong muscles of his back. It was like they were kindling a slow fire between them, the kind that would go out if either of them blew too hard, but if they moved just right, timing things perfectly, they both knew that it would eventually catch flame.
“Princess,” he growled in her ear after kissing just below her earlobe, as she wound a hand into his hair. “Andi,” he named her next stroke, starting to move faster as she moaned. “My love,” he said not long after that, as Andi felt her hips begin to wind and her pussy grab him tight, as he ground his hips against hers. She heard him rumble and he mounted her deeply, so hard and arrow-straight inside. “My mate.” He claimed her, and she was on the brink, moaning beneath him, so close to coming, she just needed one more stroke to rub her right, inside and out. “My mate,” he purred again and ground his hips up, as if knowing what she needed.
“Damian,” she warned him. She wanted him to come too, she needed it inside her.
“Yes,” he promised, as she came for him with a shout of release. His hips followed hers through her spasms with strong strokes and then pressed in, keeping their seal tight as he grunted, and then his hips shuddered as he pumped himself inside her still grasping pussy, making hot groans of satisfaction in her ear. Their bodies moved as one, rocking against each other, perfectly matched, perfectly mated, just like he’d told her.
They both lay there afterward, breathless and mirrored, until he nuzzled her neck, breathing her deep. “My mate,” he said reverently, then prepared to push up.
Andi wound her arms around him in an instant, holding him to her tightly. She wasn’t ready to be through. “My mate,” she whispered in his ear, and felt him shudder in response, at being claimed.
She was his, and he was hers.
For as long as they had.
He kissed her neck and slowly pushed himself up. She let him go, until she could see his eyes again. Damian often looked open after sex, but now, his expression was boundless. Pleased, satisfied…and hopeful.
It made her hopeful, too.
She bit her lips to stop from smiling. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it, Damian,” she told him in a serious tone.
He blinked, focusing immediately. “How so?”
“If we keep making love instead of fucking, there’s no way there’s going to be time for three more orgasms before we get back to your place,” Andi said and giggled as she blushed.
Damian laughed aloud. “That’s rich, princess, but you assume I didn’t think of that.” He jerked his chin over his shoulder. “I’m paying this man an ungodly amount of money to circle downtown until I tell him not to.”
“Cheater!” Andi gasped.
“Please, princess,” Damian said, sounding affronted before laughing again, and beaming down. “You know when it comes to you, I’ll never play fair.”