Macon’s eyes grew brighter with his own escalating anger. “It’s not an excuse, it’s just the way things are.”
They squared off with each other in silent battle, none of us privy to what was really going on between them. It was Jenna who spoke first. “It’s over.” Her voice was ragged. “I can’t deal with all of this dragon bullshit anymore.”
“Your best friends are both half dragon, do you plan on turning your back on them too?” Macon snarled, but there was no mistaking the pain in his eyes.
“I’m not sleeping with them! And besides look at the mess being part dragon got them into! I don’t wanna end up like them!” Ouch. How about telling us what you really think?
“Do you think you’re fooling me? I know you have an interest in someone else. Don’t hide behind the dragon excuse,” Macon growled.
“You don’t know anything! You—”
“Enough!” Khol hissed, his hand gripping mine tighter. “This isn’t the time or place for the two of you to air out your problems.” He turned back to Jeremy, his jaw twitching in renewed annoyance. “Begin. Now.”
Jeremy nodded nervously, his wide brown eyes averted away from Jenna and Macon. I almost wanted to laugh if he thought that was going to keep him out of the argument. Macon seemed to already have a clue about what was going on with Jenna, and if he hadn’t figured it out already, it wouldn’t take him long to find out Jenna’s new object of affection was Jeremy.
A sudden crackling of energy drew my attention to Jeremy and what he was doing and kept it riveted there. I’d never actually seen a Gatekeeper open a Gate before. Sure I’d been taught what to expect but nothing compared to actually seeing it with your own eyes. Jeremy’s hands moved in quick sweeping motions, and he moved back and forth and side to side as if doing some kind of weird dance steps, but he did them with such confidence and grace that I sat back in utter awe of him. Slowly the Gate appeared before us, much like I’d seen in my visions, it looked as if a piece of sky had been ripped into the side of the forest. Different shades of purple and blue with flecks of night shown in a pulsating, changing state. I gasped at its beauty, unable to put into words the true nature of what I was seeing.
Jeremy stepped aside and Khol tugged me forward, and I pulled Bryn with me. I had an errant thought about why the Queen would require us to make this kind of travel when Khol couldn’t open the Gate. In fact, as far as I knew, no dragon could travel the way we were about to, so how could it be tradition? Fear spiked through me. What if we were making a huge mistake? But I had no time to follow my thought thread any farther before I found myself stepping into the Gate and a feeling of ice raced along my skin. I inhaled the cold crisp air sharply and tried to focus my eyes on what I was seeing . . . or rather not seeing. The colors from the outside of the Gate had given way to complete and utter darkness. If not for still being able to feel Khol and Bryn’s hands clutched in each of mine, I would have panicked.
“Keep going,” Khol’s voice sounded in my head. “Let her guide us to where we need to be.”
So I did the only thing I could think of to do . . . I focused my thoughts on the image of the dragon Queen and began repeating her name in my head over and over again.
Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . .
The last thing I remembered was . . . “Damn it!” I sat up with a start. “Why do I keep passing out, or getting knocked out or whatever? I swear I’ve spent more time unconscious in the last year than not!”
“Where are we?” I heard Bryn’s groggy voice rumble in response to my rant.
I blinked the fuzz from my eyes and focused in on Bryn’s prone figure lying next to me in an unfamiliar bed. I won’t lie . . . It kind of made me feel slightly better to know that I wasn’t the only one who’d been knocked out this round. “We’re in the Smokey Mountains,” Khol said, sounding not at all like he’d lost the battle with consciousness anytime recently, much to my dismay.
I turned toward his voice and saw that his massive back was angled toward us as he stared out a ginormous window that took up almost the whole wall of the room we were in. “How do you know?” I asked.
“I, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, did not succumb to the magic inside the Gates and remained awake where as the two of you didn’t.”
I glared at his back, which seemed to mock me, I swear, or maybe that was just Khol’s tone. “How long have we been out?” I asked choosing to ignore my feelings of annoyance.
“Just a few hours.” He finally turned so that I could see his face and he regarded me as if his mind was still partially somewhere else. I was just about to ask him if he’d seen the Queen or knew where we needed to go when he dipped down on one knee beside the bed and offered me a letter. “This is for you.”
I suspiciously regarded the letter resting in his outstretched palm for a moment before taking it. The plain white envelope with my entire name printed on it in elegant script was kind of giving me the creeps for some reason. After a few more seconds of staring at it, I finally decided I was being ridiculous and I just needed to open it. With short jerky motions I tore into the envelope to produce a single piece of white paper about the size of an index card. In the same handwriting as was found on the front of the envelope were two lines of text . . .
Let him go. Don’t leave the cabin for any reason.
“What does it say?” Khol asked. Like he couldn’t just pull it out of my mind somehow, or at least get the gist of it. He was so patronizing sometimes.
I responded while still staring at the note. “Where did you get this?”
“So, I’m guessing you saved her . . . again.” Bryn’s irritated voice caused me to whip around just in time to see him pull himself out of bed and stagger a bit before righting himself.
“I’m stronger than you are . . . older,” Khol stated with irritation of his own. And I guess I couldn’t really blame him, we’d been down this road one too many times lately.
Bryn’s face darkened as he gazed at me. “Maybe we should skip this whole waiting to see who the father is and you should just go ahead and mate with him.” He punched the wall in frustration. “Who was I kidding, anyways? He’d keep the both of you safer even if it is mine.”
“Bryn—” I started, but he was already stalking toward the door. His moodiness and childishness directed at Khol had gone way beyond ridiculous. I was tired of having to worry about how he would react to everything. Anger short-circuited my brain and I yelled at him without thinking. “Fine, just walk away! If you were half as good at the dragon stuff as you are at doing that then you’d be the most powerful dragon of all time!” Bryn stopped where he was without turning toward me and I could see that every muscle in his body had gone rigid. I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I hope it’s not yours!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished that I could stuff them back in somehow. I didn’t mean it; in fact, I wanted nothing more than for Bryn to be the father of my child. Having a child with Khol and therefore being mated to him would seem just too wrong for words. No matter how upset at Bryn I got, I knew he was truly the only one for me. He was my home, and I wanted my baby to belong there too.
Bryn made some kind of indecipherable noise that didn’t even sound human before continuing on his way. I jumped to my feet to give him chase, but then Khol grabbed my arm, stopping me short. “Let him go.”
I tried frantically to free myself from Khol’s iron grip but to no avail. “You have no right to tell me what to do,” I snarled at him.
“Not me, it’s what the note told you to do.”