“Maybe you’re too dragon for me. Maybe I need someone with more human-like emotions,” I retorted, knowing it would bother Khol deep down. He’d never loved anyone the way that he loved me before, and there was a vulnerability he wasn’t used to inside of him because of it. He wasn’t sure he knew how to treat me, not really.
“Enough,” he seethed. He locked his fire backlit eyes with me briefly before he leapt suddenly through the air with lightening speed, pinning me against the wall with his rock solid body. He dipped his head to whisper in my ear as I turned mine away from him. “He doesn’t have a second form. You do.” My whole body began to shake with fear. Khol knew how much I was afraid of being able to shift into a dragon. He’d been very careful to not show me his other form, or to let anyone else for that matter, as to not freak me out now that I knew I was fully dragon. I guess this meant we were playing for keeps, pushing an entire elevator’s worth of each other’s buttons.
“No. It doesn’t mean I have to change, not ever. Not if I don’t want to.” Yep, that’s right, I fully intended to rely on complete denial when it came to shifting into a dragon. I refused to lose that part of the illusion of my humanity.
Khol chuckled low and dark in response. “You won’t have a choice. It will happen. It’s just a matter of when.”
His words sunk in slowly and when they finally hit home, I cried out as if I was in physical pain. “No! Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why should I believe you now?”
“Because I didn’t want to scare you. But now it’s obvious you need more than just a simple dose of reality. Things won’t work with him. I don’t understand why you insist on trying.” Khol’s voice had dropped down to a barely audible level, and I could hear the pain that had been hiding under his anger. I had hurt him deeper than I ever had before, because this time he had dared to hope for it all.
My anger slipped away, causing a dull ache in my chest. “I can’t help the way that I feel,” I croaked. “I’m sorry.”
“What changed? What changed while you were away?” Khol’s voice sounded so small, and so brittle.
I closed my eyes tightly and let the fresh tears that had been gathering in the corners of my eyes spill down my over heated cheeks. “I don’t know. Things just seemed to become clearer to me somehow.”
“It’s that damn bracelet. It keeps me from you, and you from me. Your birth mother has clearly been meddling in our lives. I should have known from that letter. I should have known from . . . everything.” He reached up with one hand and started to bend the bracelet off.
A chill ran down my spine. He was right; my birth mother had been meddling in everything since before I was even born. What if the bracelet did more than just make me untraceable and unreadable to Khol? What if it was messing with my head somehow? “What did the letter say?” I asked on a shaky exhalation. But Khol ignored me and focused on removing the bracelet. “Khol, tell me please. I deserve to know.”
“She wanted me to be prepared for a change in you when you returned. She wanted me to give you some space,” he growled while he still struggled with the piece of jewelry. “I thought she meant—I don’t know—not that you would come back and suddenly not want me any longer.” He abruptly released me and turned away from me. “It’s welded on. We’re going to need a special tool to get it off,” he said with frustration oozing through his entire body as he stood perfectly still.
“What? What the hell?” How did it become—wait—it was my fire magic—I distinctly remembered the bracelet growing really, really hot back at the creepy Murder House. “I reached up and clutched at the dragon pendant Khol had gifted to me. It was perfectly fine. “Why didn’t the pendant—”
“It’s been charmed to be fire magic proof. It was made for our kind specifically,” Khol answered before I could finish my question.
“Oh.”
“Get dressed. We have more important things to worry about right now.” I didn’t know how to react. One minute Khol had been ready to force himself on me, and the next he’s acting like I was the one who was focusing on our little love triangle to the detriment of everything else. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.” He stalked out of the room without so much as a backward glance at me.
“Okaaaay,” I mumbled to myself. Not that I wasn’t ecstatic for the reprieve from Khol, but I wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened. Had Khol accepted that I wanted Bryn and not him? I highly doubted it, and yet he had walked away . . . literally. Maybe he’d just realized we did have more important things to worry about at the moment and the rest could wait.
I harrumphed to myself as I located my discarded clothes and pulled them back on. I for one was ready to get back to dealing with the Rider inside of Cliff instead of focusing on my messed up love life. Because screwed wasn’t even a good enough word to describe my situation at all . . . not by a long shot.
16
Terrance blinked his human host’s eyes in complete disbelief as he settled back into the familiar body. When he was ripped from it, he had thought it would be the last time he would exist outside the red stone that imprisoned him. He knew many others that had been placed there by his master to never return. He looked up questioningly at his master and immediately averted his eyes in submission.
“They have my son,” his master growled with fury. “Consider this your last and second chance at this life.” There was a long pause before he spoke again and Terrance didn’t dare so much as to twitch a single muscle. “Get him back no matter the cost.”
Terrance rose and left the room without a single word. He didn’t need to say anything. His master knew that he understood what was truly at stake. And he had no intention of losing his freedom again.
I knew I needed to focus on the Rider inside of Cliff and getting any kind of information we could out of him. The opportunity we had was priceless, and yet all I really wanted to do was to go to Bryn. I needed to tell him how much had changed in the short time I’d been away. Well . . . at least from my perspective. I was still pregnant and didn’t know whether he or Khol was the father, but none of that seemed to matter in regards to wanting to be with Bryn anymore. But what could I say to him this time around that I hadn’t already said before? He’d told me that love wasn’t an issue, and that love, in fact, was what was motivating him to give me up . . . for my own protection. I just had to make him understand somehow . . . make him see that it wasn’t his job to protect me.
What I really needed was to talk to Jenna—the real Jenna anyways. I hadn’t allowed myself to think in much detail about her being possessed by a Rider while I was away. I had too many other things to deal with and it was just easier to pretend what had happened with her was all a really, really bad dream. Yep . . . I was not only the new Dragon Queen but the queen of denial as well. I was suddenly overcome with the irresistible urge to visit her. I missed her more than I ever thought possible. Sure, she’s completely self-absorbed at times, sex obsessed, and utterly annoying but—she was Jenna and I loved her. I knew if I asked well—anyone—to take me to see her that they would disagree with that line of thought and prevent me from doing so. The only way I was going to get to see her, I knew, was if I found her on my own. Now . . . where would I stash her if I were Khol?
About fifteen minutes later, a very annoyed me still hadn’t figured out where Jenna was. Maybe if I could find Jeremy, I could force it out of him. I wondered if having a Rider in Jenna had dampened his newfound devotion to her? He had to know it wasn’t really her that had sent him to deliver her cookies of death to me. I heaved a huge sigh and was just about to give up when I spied Jeremy, speak of the devil, coming down the hallway. Isn’t that the way it always is . . . you only luck into something just when you’re ready to give up?