Page 60 of Dragons' Mate
Tavias curses at him, the words rolling off like water from a duck. For a moment, everything seems normal again. Quinton brooding on guard, and Hauck driving Tavias mad while Cyril quietly surveys everything, plans already forming behind his intelligent gaze.
“I can help rebuild,” I offer, pulling my cloak tight around me as I stand and stretch my hand toward the low hanging branches of the nearest tree. I’m not sure how I intend to weave the branches together, but there is power inside me now and it’s itching to get out.
“Don’t,” all four males say at once.
“Why—” The branch explodes, shards of bark and pine raining down on our heads.
Tavias clears his throat and I remember what he’d once told me about not being permitted in haylofts while he was growing into his affinity for flame. Just then, a clump of snow drops onto my head and slides down the scales along my temple. The sensation is so intense I jump off the ground and Cyril grabs me before I stumble into the fire.
“I think I’m suddenly in the mood to do work,” Hauck says, jumping to his feet with feline grace. He pulls on his britches and saunters off to join Tavias.
All isn’t normal. Not at all. I’m a dragon. A dame. A creature that the Order of Orion had hunted into extinction to slowly kill off the dragons. I’m supposed to be the hope that Cordelia’s life and death had ushered into being. The one that’s supposed to change everything. Except I can’t even manage the basics of keeping myself alive.
I know I should hold my head up and grab the torch of my destiny like a flag for all dragonkind. That’s what my mother gave her life for. What everyone awaits. And instead, all I can think about is how much of a mistake the fates have made.
With only her shall dragons find, a future thriving and entwined,I recite the final lines of the prophecy in my mind. It says that the dragons can’t have a thriving future without me. It doesn’t say that with me they’ll actually succeed.
Pulling away from Cyril, I finish getting dressed and help out with rebuilding the old fashioned way. Not that I’m much use. My body doesn’t move the way it did before. With my changed strength, I misjudge half the wood I place onto the encampment and make the roof cave twice before Hauck suggests I aid in some other way. Except when I walk toward the fire, Tavias blocks my path outright.
Cyril catches a rabbit. It looks so enticing to the new primal dragon inside me, that I can’t help snatching it out of his hands—only to get a mouthful of fur when I realize that despite my new instincts I’ve no idea how to eat a raw catch. Stars. Not only am I useless, but I’m a greater liability than I ever was as a human.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Cyril as he leads me away from yet another near averted disaster and into the newly re-erected shelter. Hauck and the others put extra effort into reinforcing the shack, and it's even more spacious and comfortable than the original. There is even a cleverly arranged place for a small fire, laid out in a way as to keep the wooden walls and roof from going up in flames. Provided I don’t do something stupid.
Cyril sits against the wall and pulls me against his muscled chest. His hand covers mine the way it has so many times before. I remember how his hand has always felt. Warm and rough and strong, providing a feeling of security that soothed me. Now I feel the whole tapestry of the peaks and valleys in his palm, the hard won calluses and tiny soft spots, the weight of history each mark carries. I feel the energy that flows between us. And I don’t know what to do with any of it.
“Magic takes time to control,” Cyril says. “We had decades to grow into our bodies and our power. You’ve had hours. Let’s set our expectations a little more realistically.”
Tavias tosses Cyril another cloak, which Cyril wraps around me, even though I tell them that I'm not cold. I think the males are all terrified of me freezing again and are not taking my word on anything that has to do with my new body. I can’t exactly blame them, but still.
In the mountains beyond, a howling wind rips through the trees, accompanied by the distant sound of falling clumps of snow. But it isn’t just a howling now. It's a symphony of varying wind currents, shifting branches and the subtle groans of the mountain itself. Suddenly I’m out there again, cold and paralyzed. Unable to even move mouth away from the suffocating snow, or blink away specs of debris.
I don’t realize I’m shaking until Cyril and Tavias and Hauck are all crowded around me, soothing me with their touch and voices. Quinton doesn’t leave his station from outside guard duty, but I can feel his worry pulsating through the bond. A bond that I now realize I forced on them. They mated me because it was the only way to keep me alive. To keep Quinton alive. And now they are stuck with me.
“What was that thought?” Hauck asks suspiciously, his green eyes narrowing on me. He catches my chin before I can lower my face. “Tell me.”
I shake my head.
“You know I have my ways of getting to the truth.” He wags his brows, then blows along my scales. A shiver of electricity darts from each scale to the very base of my spine and lower, as if each tiny place is a receptor to a hidden world of sensation. My thighs tighten and rutting need surges through me, almost too intensely to control. Intensely enough to ache. Hauck gives me a knowing grin. “Ask me how long I can keep that up.”
I shut my eyes, drawing deep breaths to get my damn body back under control. “Can you just stop,” I growl with more force than I intended. Now that I’ve started though, the emotions spill from me. “All of you. Can you just stop pretending?”
I can feel them shifting. Exchanging glances. “Which part do you imagine is pretend?” Cyril clarifies carefully.
My eyes snap open. “The part where you pretend you are alright with this. With any of this.” I wave my hands at myself. “You bound your lifeforce to me to save my life. But we all know you shouldn’t have. I’m not—”
“I bound my lifeforce to you because I love you,” Cyril says, interrupting me harshly.
“You? What?”
“I love you.” This from Hauck.
“I love you.” Tavias.
A jolt of heat through my mating bond with Quinton. My breath catches.
“We love you, nymph,” Cyril says again, his voice having that note of confidence and command that I first saw on the Phoenix. The kind of voice that leaves no room for doubt. He brushes his thumb along my lip. “Stars, don’t you understand that by now?”
“But what if I’m…” it hurts to say it aloud, but I do. “What if I’m not strong enough to be the dragon Massa’eve needs?”
