It was then that she noticed an odd feeling in her chest, like her breasts were sore from PMS but deeper. Unwanted ideas,
feelings!
bombarded her thoughts. She cared about the big, stupid dragon. Fuck, she might even be a little bit in love with the guy. He sat up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, burying his face in her hair. Damn, she didn’t even mind anymore when he sniffed her. It actually made her feel…flattered maybe? No, safe.
His voice rumbled against her neck. “You are the most alluring, enticing, wonderful lover I could ever hope to find.” Alara wished she could shrug off the compliment, rather than melt from it. “Even if I sampled all the part-human and reptile species on the planet, I would not find a female such as you.”
Kai’s stupid flattery just made her heart swell more. Her skin suddenly too tight, Alara tensed in his grip.
“What’s wrong, my love?” He drew a hand to her face, but she slapped it away.
“You made me care about you, you jerk!”
His eyebrows drew together. “But, I feel the same—”
She cut him off. “This is not about you! I know you care about me. But I—”
“You think I’m going to leave? Is that the problem? Because after what the Council Chair did, I’m not so sure I want to return to his service.”
A little twinge of hope sprouted in her heart, but she crushed it before it could take root. “Even if you lived here, this is a dangerous time for me. I can’t be getting soft, relying on outsiders to take care of us.”
He took her hand and placed it on his naked chest, right over his heart. “I vow to you, Alara, that I will stay on Murrough Island and serve you and your cause for as long as you need, and for as long as you’ll have me.”
That damned hope sprang up like a pixie in her chest and started dancing around. Alara just gritted her teeth. “Thank you, dra…Kai. I appreciate it. But…” She searched her mind for the right words. “I’m not the type of female you need. A guy like you wants a damsel in distress that you can slay a…Okay, maybe not
slay a dragon
for, but someone who you can protect. Someone…girly and…and…
feminine
!”
His fathomless black eyes took an uncharacteristically wise expression. “Is this about what happened when you were held by the shark-shifters?”
She flinched. “No.” Catching his disbelieving expression, she stiffened again. “Okay, maybe a little.”
He took her hand in his much bigger one. His thumb stroked her knuckles. “What happened, Alara?” When she didn’t respond, he pursued her. “Were you tortured?” His voice lowered to a whisper.
“No. No it wasn’t that…” She stroked his smooth dark skin, like she was calming him instead of herself. “That’s what so fucked up about the whole thing. They didn’t touch me. I was a royal, so I guess they were scared to actually hurt me. So instead they made me watch stuff.”
Now that she’d started talking the words poured out like a verbal waterfall, as if with enough explanation she could make him understand. “It wasn’t even that horrible, the stuff they showed me- just crew members’ punishments and stuff like that. And…well, I guess this was the worst…this one guy would come down and jerked it in front of my cage. It’s stupid, I know! But I was only a kid.” She bit her lip, loathe to admit the truth. “I was scared.”
She thought he’d laugh at her. The big drama of her life being nothing more than bullies frightening a little girl. Instead he nodded, never taking his eyes from hers.
The dam burst, and suddenly she was talking and couldn’t seem to stop. “Everyone said I was so brave for escaping! But they didn’t understand. Every day I hoped and hoped my father would come, or maybe one of his soldiers. But they didn’t. The day I escaped, I was shaking so hard I could barely walk. They…they’d told me that they’d do all these things to me if I tried to get away.”
She slowed, getting her breathing back under control. She felt her shoulders square and the line of her lips still quivered. “In the end, they relied on my fear to hold me. I guess that’s why they forgot to lock my cage one night.” She laughed. “I swear to the fucking gods, I was shaking like a leaf when I snuck off that boat. I thought it was a test, that maybe they were watching and would drag me back and…y’know…”
Kai cut in, stopping her ramble. “You
were
very brave. You acted despite your fear.” He held her against him, sniffing her neck, a move both familiar and comforting. Surprisingly, her guilt and embarrassment about the incident faded.
He stroked her neck and pressed a kiss on her shoulder with smiling lips. “So—no head?”
“No.” She smiled. “My father started that rumor. That way nobody tried to act all pitying toward me. That was one of the many reasons I loved him so much.”
He held her in silence for a long time.
“Alara?”
“Hmm?”
“I can’t promise I will save you from every threat, but I will stand by you as best I can.” She nodded against his chest and breathed his musky-ocean smell. Dual pixies of trust and hope leapt in her heart and mind, and she wondered whether to silence them or to let them dance.
* * * *
As Alara approached the meeting with the nation’s advisors, Kai hung at her side, a gun in his hand and a sword across his back. His bulk served as a silent threat, because Florian certainly knew she was up to something when she called the meeting.
The faces of her father’s and now Florian’s advisors met her expectantly. Peter Friedson, who she’d helped her father choose as Minister of Economic Affairs, looked up at her with kind expectation. Several others nodded encouragingly. A few scowled. Florian sat in his chair like it was a throne, wearing a smirk she wanted to smack till next Tuesday.
“Thank you all for coming.” She flipped open her laptop and projected the first document onto the large screen.
Florian’s eyes narrowed, but he merely pulled out his cell phone and appeared to text message while she presented her evidence of his betrayal. Gasps and moans met several of her screens, and the advisors loyal to her father scowled in disgust. Alara carried out the entire presentation exactly as planned, wondering all the while that Florian didn’t argue or refute her claims.
As she started to wrap up, her brother stood from his seat and yawned. “This has been really interesting, Alara, but I have to go.”
Alara followed him across the room, Kai at her back. When they reached the door, she found twenty dragon soldiers with cocked rifles pointed directly at her chest.
Kai whipped Alara backward and slammed the door as the squadron fired. Bullets tore through the thick metal, but he turned the lock before the group could advance. Gunfire demolished the lock and Alara looked to the wall-sized window. Snow rested against the glass, reaching up the dragon’s knees and up to the waists of some of the older mere.
The first shooter entered, and Kai dragged the soldier forward by the tip of his rifle and cold-cocked him with his own piece. The rest of the group rushed the door, and Kai took two more to their knees before they even cleared the entryway. As she watched more men pile over the others, she admired Kai’s efficiency. He fought like a machine, his fist slamming again and again like a battering ram.
Alara pulled a gun away from a soldier and fought hand-to-hand. She slammed one soldier’s head into a wall, then swung her leg out to fall another. Someone grabbed her hair and pulled her backward, but a huge pale fist shot out to meet with her attacker’s jaw. Turning, she watched Laird’s uppercut send another of Florian’s thugs flying. Erling led more of her troops through the door.
In what seemed like a split second, Laird and two other dragons she did not know had several of Florian’s dragons in head-locks. Kaylee and Erling had showed up and trained guns on the soldiers still collapsed on the floor. Hans and Olaf ducked their heads into the room, leaning around the piles of groaning bodies.
Hans said, “Florian took off. A couple eyewitnesses say they saw him leave on a snowmobile. Should we go after him?”
Every face in the room looked to Alara with expectation. Even the dragons waited for her response. Her eyes met Kai’s in silent understanding. He nodded once and leapt out the door. Alara shouted, “Laird, go help him!”
Once both dragons had left, she leaned her head to the side, listening to the satisfying crack when her joints popped. “I think the advisors and I have come to an agreement that Florian is unfit to rule as triton?” The older meres nodded vehemently, either in fear of or in agreement with Alara and her dragon consort.
“We’ll each draft written support for the change leadership immediately.” Friedson said. Then he walked out the door, pointedly stepping around the dragon soldiers who rose to their feet under Erling and Kaylee’s trained rifles.
Chapter 16
Battle heat tunneled Kai’s vision as his snowmobile streamed after Florian’s. A motor buzzed loudly behind him, signifying that Laird was not far behind. The deposed triton turned and fired a gun, forcing Kai to swivel around a bush.
The black and gray of Florian’s snowmobile looked like a bug against the white on white of the rolling landscape. Laird and Kai separated, trying to herd their prey away from the coast, inland to where he might become dehydrated. But the princess’s brother drove expertly, evading their efforts.
A shot pierced Kai’s thigh, crumpling him over against the handles of the machine. The pain burned like a coal in his skin, but he gritted his teeth against a sensation that might force a change. He gained on Florian, but the shots kept coming. Several more tore at his limbs, but Kai dared not swerve lest he loose his quarry.
Neck in neck with Florian, Kai launched forward, shifting to dragon form as he flew. He caught several bullets in his reptilian head before tackling his prey. Great jaws opened wide, clamped hard over the fallen triton’s head and twisted.
* * * *
Her booted feet paced the walkway outside the Glass House as Alara awaited the dragons’ return. She’d sent E and Hans after the dragons, but none had come back yet. The sounds of snowmobiles vibrated faint in the distance, but she couldn’t yet decipher the distance. The humming buzz grew, became focused in one direction, and Alara ran toward the noise.
Three snowmobiles crested a nearby hill. Kai’s was not among them.
When Laird approached, Alara swallowed hard, but steadied her voice, trying to appear nonchalant. “So, where’s Kai?”
Laird’s eye twitched. “He’s been injured.”
“And you just left him?” She heard the pitch of her voice rise.
“He took dragon form. We need a large vehicle to move him as he’s drifting in and out of hibernation.”
Erling looked nervously to Laird, then Alara. “He didn’t seem able to shift back to human.”
Her heart sped up. Laird stepped forward, placing a firm grasp on her arm and looking into her eyes as if willing her to read between the lines. “He was seriously injured. It would do him good to be tended to by a loved one.”
Alara shouted to E and Hans to get the TIGER, and threw her leg over the seat of her snowmobile and started the engine. Laird darted off in front of her. The streaming snowmobile reminded her of riding her dragon through the water, and she hoped with all her heart that Kai would be okay.
She arrived to find Kai sprawled on his side in a melting puddle of his own blood. His shallow pants each sent dribbles of blood out his nose and jaw. Wide gashes and bullet holes decorated his scales, each oozing slightly.
She spun to Laird. “You left him like this?” Her ringing shout echoed over the hills.
The pale dragon opened his mouth, but Kai growled. “Get…her…away!”
Her knees fell to the snow. She petted his head, trying to stroke a part of him not covered in bits of broken flesh. “I’m here, babe. You’re going to be okay. You just need a healing burst.” She looked up at Laird questioningly. The shift to human healed all but the most severe injuries in mere, but she wasn’t sure dragons worked the same way.