Page 111 of Drawn By Dragonblood
I understood her need for haste but glanced at the open doorway, the silence deafening. Unease itched my feet, but I didn’t want to ignore what he’d laid down as a clear command. “He told us to stay put.”
“Disobedience usually means punishment,” Dakota stated, her tone suggestive as fuck.
One of my eyebrows jacked up, and she bit her lower lip. “Do you want to see me strung up again, or are you just curious as hell what strange person managed to slip into our home undetected?”
“Think it’s Ashley? She’s his secretary, so surely she knows where he lives.”
“He said no one knows.”
Dakota chewed on the inside of her lip, and I brushed my thumb over the abused flesh.
“None of that.”
“Let’s go, Jon—I have this weird feeling growing in my stomach, and I don’t like it.”
Hurry.
Trusting her instincts and that goddamned voice in the back of my head, I grabbed my pants and quickly yanked them up over my junk before reaching for my wife’s hand.
As one, we chose to follow after Elijah, and with every step closer toward him, a sense of urgency moved my feet faster.
Chapter 39
Elijah
Only one being—one person—knew about my home and how to get through the wards and my home’s defenses without Sybil alerting me of an intruder.
I sprinted up the stairs, my stomach in knots, hoping like hell Dakota’s senses lied while the beast inside me lay quiet but poised, ready to strike in defense of our mates. I would have preferred to remain in the perfection of how things had fallen into place among the three of us, how fate had steered us through to the point of readiness to bond fully. Jon’s complete submission had been a gorgeous sight to behold, as equally fulfilling as having Dakota connect with her true self and gift her love to me.
But our moment had been interrupted, and I feared what—who—I would find. Memories dragged to the surface of my mind, causing piercing grief to cut me open and make me bleed. I’d hoped gaining my beta’s consent to own him fully would have erased what I’d been desperate to be rid of for years.
I threw open the door leading into the kitchen, and it banged against the wall.
I stumbled to a halt as though I’d slammed into a slab of granite, my dragon hissing his displeasure at the man I’d expected and hoped to never see again after having met my fated mates.
There was a single dragonblood who had the ability to enter my lair without Sybil alerting me.
He’d owned my heart for over seventy years.
“Dolyn.” His name left my lips in a rush, turning the naked man from facing the slider he shut behind him.
The light in his amber eyes, the perfection of his golden body, and his gorgeous yet hesitant smile slammed into me with the force of a sudden gale, leaving me on unsteady ground. “Elijah.”
His voice hit me like a punch to the sternum, ripping the air from my lungs. Why now? Why show up after I’d pined for a decade for his return and had just grabbed hold of what fate finally gifted me?
My heart attempted to pound from my chest, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. “You—you’re...”
Dolyn started toward me, his shoulders broader than I remembered even though they appeared rounded by defeat, his dirty blond hair cut shorter than I’d ever seen. He was still achingly beautiful as ever regardless of the heaviness that hung over him that seemed doubled than when last we’d stood before each other.
He paused an arm’s length away and sank to his knees, head bowed in a show of true submission he’d denied me for our entire time spent together.
My beast growled, but it sounded more like disgust than bitterness to my inner ear. At least the other half of me offered the strength my suffering human side lacked in that moment.
“Where have you been, and what are you doing here uninvited? Walking back in here like you didn’t leave without a trace ten years ago?”
“I—I needed time.”
“Time for what?”
