The Dragon Stirs (8 page)

“A likely tale,” his father scoffed. “If that is true, then why are none of us aware of it?” He pointed to the others who all nodded in agreement.

“I’m going to guess that you felt the energy shifts, right?” He looked at Cronus and waited until he inclined his head. “That was us.” He lifted their joined hands. “Together, we are doing that. Not by our choice, but it is happening nonetheless.”

“It is powerful,” Cronus said. “Strong enough to awaken the dragon.”

“You know?” Louk gaped at the Ancient.

“I know much, young one,” he answered cryptically. “And I know very little.”

Louk let their hands drop. “Can’t any of you Ancients give a straight answer? You have no idea the hell we’ve been through today. It would be really, really, nice to have some straight answers.”

“So, you’ve met another Ancient today?” Cronus raised an eyebrow in question and Louk clenched his lips at his error. Damnit. In his frustration, he’d given them information. A juvenile error. “Do tell us about this day. That is why we are here after all.”

“What is going on?” His father stepped forward and glanced between Cronus and Louk. “Isn’t it clear that he’s sided with the Shifters?”

Louk turned to his father. “If that was true why would I bring her here?”

“It’s a trap to ensnare us all,” his father spit out, anger contorting his face to a mask of hatred. 

Cronus held up a hand and gave his father a pointed look. “I want to hear of Louk’s day. If my guess is true, it affects us all.” His father backed off at the Elder’s command, but his fists were still held tightly at his sides, his anger barely constrained in the tight clamps.

Airiana stepped forward and spoke with a grace that Louk was finding hard to maintain. “I am Airiana Draco, great granddaughter of Tubal.” A collective gasp came from the assembled group, and Louk’s gut tightened past the hard ball into a rock-solid lump of cement. They all knew that Tubal was one of the Shifter leaders. But, she showed no reaction and only continued as if her announcement hadn’t just jolted them. 

“Despite my birth, I am no enemy of yours. You should know that the dragon stirs. The time is coming when Gog will rise again. The Shifters are preparing. The Apocalypse is near, and after that, nothing will ever be the same.”

Her words hung in the chamber in the silence that followed. Suddenly, his father burst out laughing, a contorted rumble of disbelief. “You really expect us to believe you? Don’t you think we would know if this was happening? Between the five of us—” he shifted his hand around the room to encompass the other House Heads, “—that we would feel it if this was true? We are not fools.”

“But, it is true,” Louk insisted, feeling like a petulant child demanding that the adults listen. “We saw him. Gog. And he is beginning to awaken.”

“How?” Cronus demand. “How could you possibly see him? He has been trapped and caged deep within the folds of the earth for a thousand years. How is it possible that you saw him?”

“Hell if we know. The damn Ancient sent us there.” Louk took a breath and tried to calm himself. The tension in the room was jacked up to the ceiling. “Believe me, it was an experience we would’ve rather skipped.”

Airiana snorted lightly at the understatement. “Definitely would have skipped.”

“So
you
woke up Gog to destroy us?” his father accused.

“
No
.” Louk shook his head in frustration. “Were you listening to anything I just said? We did not choose to go there. Nor did we wake the beast up. He was already stirring before we saw him.”

“Words,” His father scoffed.

“Truth,” Louk insisted, before he quickly gave them a brief rundown of their day.

When he finished, Cronus held up his hand again before his father could pounce, and they all stilled. The silence echoed through the chamber, his father’s harsh breath cut against the sudden quiet like the deep bur of a saw blade. The Elder clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace before them, his brows furrowed and his head down in obvious thought while everyone waited. 

Finally, after long moments, Cronus stopped and turned back to the group. He stepped forward and reached out to place his hands on the shoulders of Louk and Airiana. 

The energy assaulted Louk in one strong push of power. He lost his breath in the onslaught, and his eyelids closed as he fought to stay upright. The Elder dug into every nook and cranny of his being. Another Ancient who wielded the power of spirit, an exceedingly rare power, but today they’d faced two. 

Louk felt Airiana’s energy drifting away, separating from his under the strength of the Ancient’s energy. He started to panic, his breath coming in short intakes of air. Sweat beaded on his skin, and his head began to feel faint. What was Cronus doing? Louk tried to pull away, to jerk his shoulder from the man’s grasp, but he couldn’t. Cronus held tight, his fingers digging through the material of Louk’s clothes to hold him in place.

And then it was gone. Airiana was gone. 

The blackness descended on him instantly. The raven crowed, flopped on his side and quivered in pain. A pain matched by his own. The energy clawed for its partner, but it was nowhere to be found.

Empty. 

He was lost. Alone. Without her.

Louk felt his legs give out, and his knees cracked against the hard marble floor. He fell forward, barely conscious enough to put his hands out to catch his body before his face hit the ground. 

Cronus was gone, his energy removed. But, so was Airiana’s.

Louk felt like he was crawling through sludge, his mind stuck in a fog, his energy moving in half time. In the distance he was aware of a commotion going on. Voices rose and fell in angry tones—bodies moved and scuffled around him. 

She was gone. That was all Louk could process.

“
Louk
.” Airiana’s voice broke through his haze and jolted him awake. He jerked his eyes open and turned in the direction of her voice. Red, searing rage fired through him at what he saw.

Airiana struggled, clawed and fought as she was dragged away in the arms of his brother, Phelix and the leader of the Guard, Xander. 

“Airiana.” His voice came out in a barely heard whisper. Fear clawed at his chest. He couldn’t lose her. This was wrong. But, he couldn’t move. His body was immobile despite every thought he that had to move. To fight. To go to her.

“Stay where you are, Louk.”
The voice sounded in his mind, and he struggled to process what he was hearing. They were almost to the door with Airiana. 

“You must wait. You will see why I have done this.”

Louk looked around to see Cronus staring at him. Every other eye was on the struggle at the door. Cronus was speaking to him in his mind. A power exclusive to the Spirit Energen and Cronus was the only one in the room with that ability.

What was the man thinking? He couldn’t do nothing and let them take her.

But, his body wouldn’t move. He was pinned to the floor as soundly is if there were metal nails in his hands and feet. 

He had failed. She’d trusted him, and he’d failed her.

The raven screamed, a cold wet tear streaming from its eye to drop on Louk’s clammy skin. The finality of the moment ripped across his soul to tear it in two.

She was lost.

Chapter Eleven

Desperation pulled on Airiana, banking down the fear and firing the anger. His energy was fading, drifting away and leaving her empty and cold inside. Why was Louk just crouching there, doing nothing? 

He let her go. Let the men take her.

She pulled on the arms that held her, jerked her shoulders and kicked her feet in resistance, but there was nothing she could do. The two men dragging her from the room were too strong. 

Louk did not rise to help. Did nothing to stop them. 

Her heart tore at the sight—he simply looked at her from his position on the floor and watched them pull her away.

Why? She’d trusted him. Believed him.

The energy didn’t lie. Did it?

He was hers. 

But, he did nothing.

Her dragon fired in anger, the heat stoking over her skin and raising her own ire. The injustice of the moment kicked her in the gut and spurred her own sense of self-preservation. If he didn’t believe in her, trust her, want to fight for her, then screw him.

Screw them all.

The change took over before she could double think the action. It had been over a hundred years since she had shifted, ever since she’d discovered the oddity that separated her from her people. But, that didn’t matter now. Here. With
them
. She had nothing to lose.

If she was going down, she would die there. Now. Not in some cell fifty years from now.

The fire rippled through her, then burst into a full inferno. Her nerves snapped, and she felt it coming. Her dragon stretched and prepared, freedom only seconds away.

Her bones cracked, her tendons stretched, then the change was executed in a smooth blending of form. The energy pushed and she shifted into her dragon shape with a fiery roar. Flames burst from her mouth and raged across the chamber at the people who stared in shocked amazement at her.

The two men who had held her backed away in cautious retreat from her serpentine body. She swung her head and the soft hairs of her mane caressed her jaw. It was glorious to return to her dragon shape. The power stoked through her, fulfilled her with an energy that purified her in a way that only happened when she shifted. 

Now, she was in control. She had the power.

She swung her tail and smashed the pointed end against a row of seats, the hard marble crumbled into pebbles under her strength. The sound echoed through the room and she followed it with a roar that shook the very foundation of the structure.

Slowly she meandered across the back of the room, assessing her opponents, preparing for their attack. For attack they would. 

She scraped the claws of her three toes over the marble and relished in the high-pitched squeal that vibrated over the space and made the others cringe and pull back against the sound.

“Airiana.” 

Louk. She snapped her head to the right and crouched. He stood now, his face filled with awe. She paused and tilted her head in contemplation. She had expected revulsion, but she didn’t see any.

He approached her, slowly, cautiously. She retreated back until her legs hit against the bottom row of seats. Still he moved toward her, hands down and exposed. Weaponless.

“Airiana,” he said softly. “You are beautiful.”

She hissed a breath of fire in denial. He had to be lying, a trap. 

“Stop her,” his father yelled as he lifted his hands.

“No,” Louk roared back. He turned to his father and lifted his own hands in preparation for battle. “You will not harm her. She is mine, a part of me. And I will defend her even if it means hurting you.”

Could he mean it? She blinked and swished her tail—smoke escaped from her nostrils and twirled effortlessly upward as the room halted. 

“She is evil, filled with negative energy,” his father insisted. “And still you pick her over your own family?”

“She is no more evil than you are. Than I am.” Louk looked back at her and what she saw in his eyes melted the ice around her heart. “And yes, if I am forced to choose, then I’m afraid, you lose, Father.”

It didn’t matter that she was born a Shifter, that she was raised to believe what they preached. She didn’t feel it. Never had. It was the doubt that plagued her for most of her life and caused her to hide her true feelings. Her true form.

It was that very doubt that had sent her out seeking answers that morning.

And Louk recognized that. He saw
her
.

She watched, frozen, as Louk backed toward her until he stood next to her head. She looked at him, her breaths heavy and labored, her heart thumped against her chest.

Louk held her gaze and cautiously reached up to gently lay his hand against the cool scales of her neck. His energy flowed hot and urgent into her and warmed her blood. She turned her head into his hand and softly rubbed her nose against his cheek.

The energy hadn’t lied.

“You,” he said softly.

Her
, her mind reverberated. Her. He chose her. Over his father. Over his people. Over everything else.

He saw
her
. He chose
her
.

His energy soared through her, kissed her skin and engulfed her in its passion. 

Slowly, in intricate detail, Airiana revealed her shame. She let Louk see, everyone there see, the one thing that no one had ever seen before.

The one thing that could mean death. 

Or salvation.

Louk watched—stunned, immobile, in awe—as two wings slowly unfurled from the smooth sides of Airiana’s long dragon body. Two wings that had been curled around her middle, concealed and hidden, camouflaged to blend with her pearly, powder blue scales.

Two wings that stretched and fluttered with their expansion to extend five feet out on either side.

Two wings that hadn’t been seen on a dragon in thousands of years.

Two wings.

Softly, she flapped the silken extensions, the air stroking over them in a ruffled purr. She looked at him with leery eyes, the big chocolate orbs waiting for his reaction. She shuffled backward a step before she tossed her head to stare at the others in the room. 

In challenge. In pride.

No one moved. No one had so much as breathed since she’d revealed her wings. What did it mean? Wings.

She fucking had wings.

He didn’t need to see what the others said. Their reaction meant nothing because only pure joy pumped through his chest. Through his heart.

In one large leap, he used the air and lifted himself up to straddle her back. He sat astride her body and felt the power surge through the two of them. Her body twisted, her wings stretched wide and her head tilted up to let loose with a long, blazing stream of flames.

Pride puffed up his chest and crushed right next to the other emotion that blasted through with the clarity of a bell. Love.