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“SHOW YERSELF,” HE growled, sensing the enemy drawing closer. He had reached out telepathically to Marek and Ethyn but got no response. “Dinnae skulk about in the dark.”
In truth, he should be able to see what was coming, but his dragon felt distracted. More focused on Madison if he wasn’t mistaken. Which didn’t surprise him. She had tasted delicious. Better than perfect. And such an obedient little dragon. He should be hearing her cries of pleasure right now. At last, sinking his swollen cock into her eager sheath.
But no. Instead, he was dealing with a cowardly nemesis.
“Show yerself,” he warned again, unwilling to head outside and leave Madison alone. Fortunately, the matter was taken out of his hands. A grunt resounded before a man fell into the cave, face down, passed out cold. Seconds later, Marek entered as well.
His brother put a finger to his lips and shook his head, pointing back outside.
He realized Marek chose not to speak telepathically because the man at their feet wore brown monk robes. The brotherhood was attacking them in their actual form rather than possessing another. Which could very well mean their magic was stronger. Under that assumption, it was best to assume them capable of anything, including the ability to catch telepathic conversations.
He glanced back to find Madison staying put. Rather than fearful, her eyes seemed haunted and sad. Though concerned, he became distracted by someone approaching not stealthily but racing toward them. A blur through the driving rain.
“I have this, Brother,” he said softly.
Blade at the ready, he waited until the perfect moment, then swung the Viking sword at the figure when they reached the entrance. Shockingly, it wasn’t the enemy's blade that crashed into his, but another's.
The last person he expected drove him back into the cave.
“Bloody hell, Cousin,” he exclaimed, stunned to realize Ethyn battled him.
Even worse, he was possessed.
“Stand down,” he roared, trying to get through to him.
As they fought, Marek circled them, trying to figure out how to disarm Ethyn without anyone getting hurt. Something he might have accomplished had his cousin’s bloody wolf not joined the fight.
Hackles raised, Phelan flew in from outside and bared her teeth at Marek, not letting him any closer to Ethyn. His brother growled right back, his dragon eyes flaring. Meanwhile, Cray ducked beneath his cousin’s blade, then spun and tried to knock the sword from Ethyn’s hand to no avail.
“Call off Phelan,” he warned, trying to snap his cousin out of it the only way he could think of. “Call off your wolf, or we will kill her.” He clashed blades with Ethyn once, twice then a third time before he leapt back and tried again. “Do ye hear me, Cousin! Phelan willnae survive us!”
“Nay, she willnae,” Marek agreed. Testing their cousin, he swung his sword at Phelan only for Ethyn to spin away from Cray and meet his brother’s blade before it met its mark.
“Snap out of it, Cousin,” Marek roared, as desperate as Cray to get through to him. Would he listen? Could he push past whatever possessed him?
As it happened, targeting Phelan had been the thing to do because moments later, Ethyn’s eyes cleared. He frowned and lowered his sword, confused.
“Are ye well then, Cousin?” Marek kept his eyes narrowed and his sword at the ready. “Are ye yerself again?”
Ethyn nodded absently, frowning as he noted Phelan stalking off into the night. “What the bloody hell happened?” He took in the cave before his gaze narrowed on the fallen monk. “One moment I was following a lass, the next I was here.”
Cray frowned and sheathed his blade. “What lass?”
“I dinnae know.” Ethyn sheathed his blade as well. “I spied her running through the forest.” He rolled the monk over and frowned. “I sensed I knew her, so I followed only to run into this man.”
Marek didn’t sheath his blade but kept it at the ready as he went to the entrance of the cave and peered out. “Are there any more?”
“I dinnae think so.” Troubled, Ethyn crouched beside the monk. “So one of the bloody bastards possessed me, aye?”
“Aye,” Cray confirmed, just as troubled by the development. None of their own had been possessed until now. “So it seems.” He went to Madison, equally disgruntled by the look on her face. The dampness in her eyes. “What is it, lass?”
“I saw your dragon...” she said softly, “around you.”
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. She had seen what his kin saw on their adventure.
“’Tis all right,” he began only for her to shake her head and cut him off.
“Sadly, it’s not,” she whispered. “It shared something awful with my dragon, Cray.”
Though daunted that his dragon had communicated with her without him being the wiser, he was more concerned about her at the moment. So he urged her to sit, drink some whisky, and gather herself.
“I’m okay,” she said. “What’s done is done.”
“Tell me, lass.” He crouched in front of her and cupped her cheek. “Tell me what happened.”
Madison sighed, her voice wobbly. “Though I tried, I wasn’t the one who ended up sacrificing myself.” She placed her hand on his chest. “It was you, Cray.” Fresh pain lit her eyes, and her inner dragon flared. “And you weren’t alone.”
Strangely, the moment she said it, her inner dragon’s pain became his own, and memories came rushing back. Specifically, what had happened when she vanished into the dying sun at Bull Rock.
He was close.
So close.
Almost there.
But when he reached out, she was gone.
“Nay,” he roared, determined to follow her.
He would not let her go.
He would not let her sacrifice herself.
So he pumped his wings, flew toward the portal, and used all the magic he could muster. The sun was nearly set. He was almost out of time. So he flew harder still, keeping her firmly in his mind, desperate to find her. Be with her.
Save her.
Focusing all he had, everything he was, on connecting with his mate, things began to change. Morph. Suddenly, he could feel her all around him, in his very heart, before power whipped him forward. Air momentarily compressed then whoosh, it released him. He burst free of the odd sensation only to find himself flying not toward the portal but the Stonehenge.
Having just landed across from a unicorn, his mate stood in the circle of stones, staring up at him with horror. Not just him, as it turned out, but who had followed him in his blind desperation to get to her.
Their wee dragon, Ceann.
The memory snapped shut before showing him any more, but he knew she was right. Cray had been the one to sacrifice himself. He just didn’t know how yet.
“However it happened, the brotherhood knew what they were doing,” she whispered. “They knew you would come...” She swallowed hard, sensing the same thing as him. “Ceann was an added bonus.”
“Because somehow he got caught up in it all,” he whispered, awash in the same heartache he’d felt at Maeve’s bedside. The same pain when he had heard his son’s heartbeat start then stop. He closed his eyes to fresh grief when the truth became clear. “’Twas Ceann inside Maeve.” He opened his eyes to Madison’s. “He’s tied to me because of whatever happened at that Stonehenge.”
“And trying to make his way back,” she murmured, sounding certain.
“This sort of thing has happened with our Viking ancestors,” Marek said softly, having joined them, no doubt sensing their dragons’ sadness. He looked from Cray to Madison, giving them hope they weren’t sure they should have. “Wee bairns have found their way across time into their ma’s womb. Returned to their dragon parents against all the odds.”
Though neither replied for fear of getting their hopes up, he saw a little light enter Madison’s eyes. A glimmer of fire as her dragon imagined the possibilities.
“He stirs,” Ethyn warned, cutting into their conversation.
“Aye, let us see what we can get out of him then.” Cray gestured that his kin keep their blades at the ready, then crouched, held his dagger to the monk’s neck, and waited. Eerily enough, when the enemy finally opened his eyes, he didn’t startle at the knife to his throat. Rather, he looked at Cray with an insolent smirk, daring him. His gaze swam with darkness, and his flesh smelled of death.
“Do ye think ye can stop us, dragon?” he rasped, his voice not quite human. “Ye could not then, and ye cannot now.”
“We are stopping ye.” He pressed his blade tighter against the monk's vulnerable flesh. “And we will defeat ye.”
“Nay, not them and not ye,” the enemy rumbled, not one voice but many. He offered a toothless gaping grin. “Especially not ye.” The bobbing motion of his dark chuckle pressed his neck even tighter against the blade, drawing blood. “For ye and yer offspring belong to us, dragon. Us and only us.”
Images of little Ceann flashed in his mind.
They had just landed in the Stonehenge after going through the portal.
Unable to get to his mother, Ceann pressed against Cray, trembling in fear. Whimpering and keening, his little one looked up at him, terrified, trying to understand what was happening.
“Why did ye leave me, da?” He blinked, so very sad. “Why did ma?”
Impacted by the feeling of hearing his son in his mind, he tried to tell him all would be well, but just couldn’t.
Because, though he didn’t know why yet, nothing would be well ever again.
Torn from the memory, he was suddenly so infuriated he couldn’t see straight. Beyond enraged, he growled and sliced the blade, only for the monk to vanish into thin air. Shaking with fury, seeing red, desperate to embrace his dragon, he roared at where the monk had been. He would have kept roaring in what he recognized as grief-stricken rage, too, if a gentle hand hadn’t landed on his shoulder.
“Cray,” Madison said softly, crouching beside him. She angled his chin until his dragon eyes met hers. “We’ll make this right somehow. You can’t let these monsters get to you.” She shook her head, her tone firm. “You can’t let them get you so angry that you can’t think clearly.”
When he didn’t respond, she repeated herself until she got through to him, and his rage started ebbing. Though tempted to argue he saw clearly indeed, he understood what she meant. If he weren’t careful, he would act on anger, and that could bring them more trouble than good.
There could be no disputing they had come far in very little time. Which explained how she could get through to him like this. How she could make him see reason when moments before he was unable to see past his anger.
“Did you hear him, then?” he murmured. His anger swiftly morphed to sadness as their gazes held. “Did you hear wee Ceann?”
“I did,” she said softly. While sad, she was equally determined, the noble dragon and good mother she had been and would be clear in her gaze. “And I think we should serve his memory well by allowing it to guide us rather than cripple us with sadness. He deserves as much, don’t you think?”
“Aye.” He stood and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair for a moment, needing her close. Needing the scent of her all around him. Not to assuage his lust this time but to comfort his spirit. “We will honor him, and if all goes well, set him free.”
That’s exactly what they would be doing, too. Because his spirit was as bound to darkness as Cray’s, feeding the brotherhood’s evil purposes.
“Which makes you wonder,” Madison said a short time later. Having decided to sleep in a tighter knit group lest another monk attack, everyone sat around a fire in the cave. “If Cray’s dragon magic was involved in the brotherhood’s ritual, then does that mean he might have some sort of influence over the brotherhood in turn? Do reincarnated dragons have that kind of power?”
“Though ‘tis sound thinking,” Marek replied, “’tis impossible to know. I think we would need to ken what happened first. What the brotherhood took from him to see through their ultimate plan.”
“It seems we have learned many things, but there is still much to figure out.” Cray looked at Ethyn. “Most pressing is how the brotherhood possessed you and who the lass was you saw in the forest.”
“Did you see her clearly?” Marek asked.
“Nay, ‘twas too dark and rainy.” Ethyn shook his head. “I only caught a glimpse of her dark hair.” He narrowed his eyes. “And though she was fast, I swear she limped.”
“Limped?” Madison exclaimed, her eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”
“Aye, ‘twas not overly noticeable, but I sensed it gave her pain.” Ethyn frowned, likely just realizing that he had ‘sensed’ a perfect stranger. “Why?”
“Because I know somebody with a limp,” Madison said softly. “And yes, rumor has it, it pains her.” She shook her head, upset. “I have a funny feeling there was more than just two enemies about tonight because I’m fairly certain I know exactly who you saw.”
