Page 41 of Promised in Blood

She nods, her bright-blue eyes so full of trust and innocence that my heart aches.

Elpis, did you talk to anyone else in the mortal realm this morning?

Only you, Dragon Whisperer,comes her swift reply.

I brush Ophelia’s hair back from her face. “Say something to her.”

She blinks. “Like what?”

“Anything, Ophelia. Just speak to her.”

She presses her lips together.Um, hi, Elpis. It’s very exciting to meet you.

Well, who is this delightful creature, Alexandros?

So she can talk to dragons. I should not be surprised by this given all I have learned about her extraordinary abilities, yet I am. It is such a unique gift, one that I have not shared with another living creature since my uncle died over a millennium ago.This is Ophelia.

I can feel the excitement in her. See her in my mind’s eye standing to her full height and shaking her scales.And she shares your gift? She is a vampire too?

She shares my giftis all I tell her for now. I trust Elpis with my life, but the fact that both Ophelia and I can communicate with her when she is in the netherworld… whilst interesting, it is also unnerving.

“Dragons are real!” Ophelia squeals. “And I can talk to them?”

I press my finger to my lips, signaling her to be quiet before she wakes the boys. She presses her lips together and nods.

It was wonderful to hear your voice, old friend, I tell Elpis.And we will speak again soon, but right now I have some business to attend to.

She snorts a laugh.Vampires!And then, as quickly as she arrived, she is gone.

I focus all my attention on Ophelia. “Dragons?” she says, her voice quiet yet exuberant.

I nod. “Dragons.”

“So they’re real? Why haven’t I ever seen one? Why don’t people know they exist?”

Always so many questions. I am distracted from answering by the fluttering pulse in her throat, and I trail my tongue over it, letting the taste of her sweet skin flood my senses. My fangs protract.

“Alexandros!” She admonishes me even as she tips her head back and tangles her fingers in my hair. “The dragon?”

With a sigh, I stop short of biting her so I can answer her questions instead. “Dragons roamed the earth long before humans or demons. Even dragons themselves cannot say how long they dwelled here. Human measurements of time are meaningless to creatures of such age. But it is certain that they survived their dinosaur cousins. They possess a great magic. Some believe they were the cradle of where all magic began.” I tuck her hair behind her ear as she listens with rapt fascination. “And that made them the targets for creatures who wished to use their magic, to exploit it for their own ends. Almost a thousand years ago, they grew tired of being hunted and manipulated, and they emigrated to the netherworld, where they have remained ever since. Until today I was never able to reach them through the veil that separates our worlds.”

“So today was the first time you spoke to Elpis in almost a thousand years?”

I nod.

“Wow! How long do dragons live?”

I shrug. “Nobody truly knows, but Elpis was born centuries before I was.”

She blinks, and questions race around her head at such speed I am surprised we are not both dizzy. “So can all vampires talk to dragons?”

“No. It is a unique gift of a chosen few vampires from the line of House Drakos. A gift that very few beings have ever possessed. The last man I knew who shared my gift was my Uncle Antony.”

“So nobody else that you know can talk to dragons?”

I shake my head. Her unrestrained awe is so pure that it makes me smile in spite of the lingering melancholy from my conversation with Elpis. I have not thought of her kind for so very long, choosing to erase their existence from my conscious asmuch as possible. Their loss was almost as painful as that of the elementai, albeit less bloody and not marred by the same soul-obliterating betrayal.

Ophelia sucks in a breath, drawing my attention back to her, and more specifically to her chest and the hard nipples protruding through the fabric of Xavier’s faded red Montridge T-shirt. His scent combined with hers is intoxicating, and I suppress a growl of frustration as my patience for her questions, as well as my resistance, grows weaker by the second. My restraint is never so uncharacteristically close to snapping as it is when I am with her. “So why can I?” she asks.

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