Page 47 of Defy Me

Wyvern.

The first son of the First Dragon.

The first son.

"Jett?"

He should probably be doing something, saying something. He couldn't seem to get his arms or legs or anything else to work. Yeah some great Wyvern he was going to be, frozen in place by fear in hell. The brothers he'd known in their withered forms no longer squawked and hissed. A thousand mental voices filled his head until he couldn't hear his own thoughts.

...you're more than the man who has to save the demon dragons...

"I think they're all waiting for you to say something since you dad just up left in a poof of rainbow sparkles."

Yeah. They probably were waiting for him to say or do something. Hell if he knew what. He didn't know anything about being a leader. Where would they live. Who was going to teach them all about how to control the shadow. How many dragon warriors would they have to fight before--

Yvaine grabbed his cheeks in her hands and yanked his head down to hers. She planted her lips on his and snuck her tongue inside his mouth before he even finished his dark thoughts. He resisted her for a split second before closing his eyes, threading his good arm into her hair and kissing her like his life depended on it.

It did.

The good part of his life anyway. The part he wanted to live with her. "Yvaine."

"There you are. I like it when you growl my name. It's very sexy."

"What would I do without you?" She could maintain that she hadn't saved him, but he would always believe that without her he'd still be slumming it in some bar waiting for the cure for all his ails to simply appear. She changed everything and made him want to be a better man. A better dragon. A better demon dragon.

She smiled up at him and patted his cheek. "Apparently stand around with your thumb up your butt. Hey, if you're like the king now, does that mean a get a crown?"

He scanned the room and saw his Wyr, each and every one of them also trying to figure out what had just happened. All but one. The brother who'd first broken Ereshkigal's curse. Maybe with Yvaine's blood, maybe not. "You can have whatever you want, love."

Yvaine traced the path he was staring and pulled away. Too bad. "Maybe after we get out of hello kitty."

"Really? Hell is one of the words you can't say. It's just a place." Granted one laced with evil, tortured souls, and destruction.

She shrugged.

Two demon dragons scuffled in one corner of the cave drawing Jett's attention away from his lovely soul mate's lips. He supposed if he left the demon dragons to their own devices much longer they would all start getting ideas about fighting for dominance. He needed to establish the hierarchy and a chain of command now so they knew where they stood and what they could and could not do in this new world they were all living in.

He cleared his throat and opened his mind to all of them. When he spoke there was a new tone to his voice. One of the alpha. "Brothers. The tide of our fortunes have changed, thanks in part to your determination to throw off the yoke of Erishkigal's spell. The First Dragon has granted us a new lease on life. I can not promise it will be easy. We will have to find a different way of living than any of us have ever known before. I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to make sure you each get a fair shake, but there will be no handouts from me or the dragon warriors. Each of you will have to work for everything you need."

Several demon dragons stepped forward and shifted into human forms. They looked surprised at first that they had the power to assume these new forms, then the first one spoke. "What about mates. How did you steal the soul to get yours? Will you teach us?"

"No." There were so many growls from the demon dragons the room vibrated with the noise. "Because I won't need to. We were taught by Ereshkigal and the Black Dragon that we were soulless. They were wrong."

More demon dragons shifted. "But we do not have shards like the dragon warriors. How do we know we have souls?"

Good questions. Jett took Yvaine's hand and thought carefully about how she'd helped him understand that his own life had that inherent value. It wasn't her words, although they'd helped drive it home. It was the way she'd simply believed in him all along. "Look inside yourselves, that glimmer of magic, the part that you can feel the shadow moving within, the piece of you that says live, damn it, live. That is how you know you have a soul."

Some of the demon dragons nodded, understanding. Many more scowled at him. It would take time for them to believe their lives were worth living, that the worthlessness that had been beaten into them for so long was wrong.

"And mates?" His brother stepped to the front of the pack. The fire in his eyes burned with a covetous light at Yvaine. She didn't flinch. Jett wanted to. He didn't want anyone thinking about her in any way other than as mate to their Wyvern. Except he'd probably looked at Azy and Ciara the same way. Without having seen how a mate had changed Cage and Jakob, Jett might not have wanted one of his own. His Yvaine was the shining light of promise to each of the demon dragons that there could be someone who loved them out there in the world too. He could not deny them that.

"How will we get shards of our souls to give to them. We've all seen the dragon warrior's shards glow when they are with their mate. They give that piece of their souls over to their mate for safe keeping. We don't have that. How will we know?"

"You'll know. Trust me. You'll know. We are not the same as the dragon warriors. We will have to figure out what is right for our Wyr, together." That seemed to appease the majority for now. He answered a few more questions, one about names that he couldn't answer for them. He didn't know where he'd gotten his own name, only that he had one.

Yvaine supplied the answer. "It will be a right of passage for you all to choose a name for yourself."

His brother, still at the front of the group turned and addressed the Wyr. "I have been in the world in this form and I choose for myself the name Neo."

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