Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,103

pounding. The portal’s colors changed, shifting for a final time before the end began to slide open like branching lightning. “Here goes…” she whispered. She started to move toward the exit, but Ares grabbed her wrist.

“Wait,” he said, pulling her gently behind him just in case. “Give it a sec.”

He watched carefully as it opened the rest of the way. He couldn’t cast up any more shields or anything while in the portal, but he could at least act as a shield himself.

But when the widening circle revealed a field of tall grasses and wildflowers in the early morning sun, some of his concern abated. And then Lily Kane stepped around the portal and peeked in, giving them a wave.

Behind her stood a colonial styled home atop a grassy hill in a real live prairie. The entire area felt very heavily warded. Now Ares knew they were where they were supposed to be. He nodded back at Kane in acknowledgement, but then he turned to face the woman behind him.

“Leia,” he said earnestly, “you wanted to ask me, I know you did. But you had so many questions, and I was asking my own, so there was no time.” He swallowed hard; his throat felt so damn tight. “So I’m just going to tell you now.” In case everything goes to hell and I never get another chance.

Annaleia stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Ares, what – ”

But he placed his fingers to her lips to silence her.

“Fifty years ago, when I first met you, I swear to every god in existence that I was positive I was falling in love at first sight. It made no sense, not for me, not for a black dragon. But that’s how it felt, damn it. And even so, I still didn’t tell you I was a dragon because, well, I’m a dragon, Leia. I obviously can’t go around just telling people. You know?”

She nodded dutifully, her eyes lavender saucers in her flushed, fantasy-worthy face.

“But then I got to know you. And Christ, the more I got to know you, the more I realized that my first thought about you was right all along. I had fallen in love with you at first sight. It was fucking impossible and I’d still done it. I just hadn’t known why.” He cupped her cheek with a warm palm, and slid his other arm around her waist, drawing her against his chest. Anna’s breath left her in a whoosh, but she steadied herself with her palms against the front of his leather jacket, and for some crazy reason he swore he’d never let another woman touch that jacket so long as he lived. It was hers now and hers alone. Just like everything about him was.

He kept going, needing to say it all. “And by that time? By the time I realized you were the one? I couldn’t tell you I was a dragon because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

He just had out with it. All at once. The thing he should have told her a long time ago.

He shook his head, and closed his eyes, pushing a hand through her shining gold-touched hair to pull her head against his chest. She went willingly, but he felt her stiffen uncertainly against him. She was worried about him, about his behavior – because it wasn’t like him.

The fact that she worried made him crazy love her even more. He bent over her close and whispered in her ear. “I’m the meanest dragon in the world, Raindrop… and I’m a fucking coward.”

All true. All she had to do to verify it was ask the guys. But he hoped she never would.

“When the chips are down,” he told her, “I would rather stop existing once and for all than face the prospect of existing another single fucking moment without you.”

Not another breath, he thought. I don’t want another goddamn breath unless she’s there in my world to share the air with me.

Annaleia slowly slid her arms around Ares’ waist, and he could feel her trembling beneath her grip. He listened closely and caught the sound of her heart fluttering, her breathing uneven with emotion.

“Tell me you forgive me, Leia. Tell me you can live with that side of me and absolve me.” His voice dropped into a low and dangerous note, barely a whisper above a growl. “Or I don’t know what the hell I might do.”

Annaleia went very still in his arms. Ares followed suit –