The curtains parted instantly to show Illarion, looking every bit as befuddled as she felt. What happened?
“I don’t know.” Feeling sick and weak, she wiped at her neck to find the smallest trace of blood there. “He drank from me?” She hadn’t even known that dragons could or would do that.
The color drained from Illarion’s features. What?
She showed him her bloodstained hand. “He bit me… bit me,” she emphasized, gesturing toward her neck, “and then I woke up here. Why?”
Blaise came rushing up behind Illarion. “What’s going on?”
Illarion let out a deep, guttural growl. Max just took her blood so that he could track their dragonets on his own, then sent her back here without him.
Cursing, Blaise ground his teeth. “Why would he do that? We had a plan! A fairly, almost decent one… That could have almost worked. Maybe, in the right light and with good timing. Why would he alter it?”
Because this was his plan, all along. To face them without putting any of us in danger. The stupid bastard plans to battle them alone. ’Cause he’s an effing idiot! I knew better than to trust him. I knew it! He shook his head. Why did I ever trust him?
Horrified, Seraphina pushed herself to her feet. “We can’t let him do that! One bite. One scratch and he’ll become a gallu!”
Illarion laughed bitterly at her concern. That’s not our worst fear.
“How in the name of the gods is that not our worst fear? Barring his death, that is.”
Illarion sobered as he faced her with a dry, cutting glare. You really, truly don’t know anything about my brother, do you?
8
Max felt the forbidden darkness that stalked him. It was the same one he’d battled the day Hadyn had died. The same evil that had been after all of his kinikoi since the hour they had taken up their sacred posts. Because of who and what they were, danger was a natural part of their existence. They’d always known of it and accepted it as an ever-present threat waiting to explode and kill them and anyone in their vicinity.
It was why they kept to themselves and did their best to let no one close to them. Because anyone they cared about could be used against them, at any time.
Given that, he should have known better than to ever try to have a family with Seraphina. But she’d been so irresistible that night when he’d been in mourning. He’d needed physical comfort to ease his grieving heart and she’d needed a male to ease her cravings.
Now…
In dragon form, he banked a hard right, skimming away from the foreign sounds he’d never heard before. In his mind, he carried Sera’s memories of their children. And the total love, devotion, and adoration she bore his dragonets warmed him deeply. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that she loved him, too.
And what he hated most was how much he wished he had that part of her. But at least she loved a part of him.
The best part.
Quick-tempered and lighthearted, Edena was the very image of how her mother had looked in the bloom of her youth. Long, flaming red hair with bangs that were forever obscuring her eyes and causing her mother to chastise her for hiding their vibrant gold color from the world.
His son was strong and tall, defiant, and far too quick with his snarky comebacks for his mother’s patience and sanity. Hadyn’s hair was a deeper shade of auburn, and his skin the dark olive of Max’s. Where Edena had her mother’s porcelain skin with a bit of freckling across her nose, Hadyn had none whatsoever. Both had Max’s high cheekbones and the sharp catlike shape of their mother’s eyes. But it was Edena’s deep dimples that weakened his heart most. Like her mother, she had a smile that could light up the darkest night and weaken the sternest resolve.
May the gods have mercy on any man she ever turned that smile against.
And he was so grateful that they’d been born human. That they’d both been spared their mother’s hatred for his kind. That neither child had ever seen in Sera’s eyes the contemptuous condemnation he’d glimpsed directed toward him at times, whenever he did something too dragonesque around her.
But those days of hiding his true nature were behind him. If they wanted to tilt the dragon…
The dragon was here and he was ready for war.
Bring it, bitches.
Angling his wings down, he swooped low, following their scents until he was sure his children were near the crumbling remains of an old temple. Then he partially changed over to his human form, leaving only his wings so that he could keep a lower, yet equally lethal, profile as he scouted the entire area. A chill raised the hair on the back of his neck as he listened to the winds rustling the ground around him.
He still felt the presence of haunting evil. It caressed everything around him. But more than that, he caught the scent of something even more peculiar…
Arcadian.