He was torn to shreds. Bloody and burned. The sight of his injuries hurt her heart.
She’d destroy whoever created these creatures.
Funny, because their creator decided to show up right then.
The entire front wall of the café blew off in a fireball explosion. Through the debris and destruction, an enormous black dragon walked in as if he were strolling down the boardwalk, not the middle of a paranormal war zone.
His eyes burned a deep red, and billows of smoke plumed from his mouth. He spread his wings and took off the roof of the building, including her lone apartment, making room to fit inside.
Holy donut holes. There went the neighborhood.
The demon dragons who hadn’t yet succumbed to the power of the strawberry rhubarb gathered around the black dragon.
A darkness within Jada recognized this specter from hell. The Black Dragon. He was the king of the underworld come to drag them all to his dark domain.
Hell.
Fear wrapped itself around her chest and squeezed. That darkness could easily draw Jada down. She couldn’t let it take Ky.
Ninsy was nowhere to be found. Please let her be okay. No way could Jada handle another death because of some price on her head by the ruler of the underworld.
She crawled off the counter and over to Ky. His great chest heaved, and his cuts and lashes seeped blood.
She’d done this to him, and now because of her, they were all going to die at the hands of the black dragon.
For the first time in weeks, sugar wasn’t the answer to all her problems.
The sun sank in the sky behind the black dragon. Night was falling. More demons would come out to play.
Her kind.
The inkling of a very scary and sad idea formed in her mind. She hated everything about it, because she’d vowed she wouldn’t go back.
It wasn’t like she’d ever kept a promise to herself before. No use starting now.
She knew what to do. There was no other choice.
Jada leaned back against Ky, drawing strength from his weakness. He’d fought a losing battle to protect her. Now she would do the same.
She raised her hands into the air, palms facing the sky, eyes closed, heart and mind open. “Great Lilith, I seek your blessing. I ask a favor of you if it please you, bring forth the one who lies upon sleepers, the incubus Leonard, with whom I share the pact of blood and lust.”
She picked up a broken piece of glass and sliced her hand, letting the blood drip to the ground. “Lilith, please receive this offering. I give it truthfully and willingly.”
The ash and smoke from the battle swirled in a man-sized whirlwind. The form of Leonard emerged, half-naked and pissed as hell.
He hated being summoned. Well, tough. She hated needing him to save her. She’d suck it up, buttercup, if it would save Ky too.
“Leon, help me. I’ll do anything.” What that really meant was I’ll come back to the coven and never leave again.
“Your word is your bond, daughter.” Leon assessed the situation in an instant and faced the great dragon.
The Black Dragon might be the King of Hell, but his realm did not rule an incubus as old and powerful as Leonard, a king in his own right.
He pointed a long finger at the dragon. “What business have you with my daughter, Kur-Jara. Go back to your corner of Hell. This is mine.”
The Black Dragon laughed in the super creepy way serial killers did. “She is yours no more, incubus. She belongs to my world now. You feel it too. Her soul has awakened. I tire of your attempts to keep her from me.”
He spread his great wings, blocking the remaining light from the waning sun. From the shadow a whole new army of demon dragons appeared. They sprang up like scarabs looking for their next meal. Minions with razor sharp teeth to eat their flesh.
There wasn’t enough rhubarb goo in the world to defend themselves.
Leon turned his allure on, radiating power, not attracting, but repelling the beasts. They screeched and shrank back from the force of his will. “I won’t relinquish her. Her soul is unclaimed, not yours. You’ll never have it. Ever.”
The pit of her stomach hollowed, being eaten from the inside out. Leon and the Black Dragon were talking about her and her soul. She wasn’t even sure she had one. Leon had been keeping a lot of shit from her. That would have to wait.
Right now, she needed to put this plan to keep Ky safe into action. She’d let the big boys argue over who owned what part of her all they liked, as long as it kept them distracted.
“Ky, can you move? I need you to shift. I can’t move your big ole dragon butt.”
He didn’t reply. If his chest weren’t moving, she’d think he was dead. “Ky, please. Say something.”
“Mine.”
“Your what?”
A blue shimmer rippled across his scales and he shifted back into his human form. He was covered in blood, and maybe a little jam. If they survived the rest of this day, she’d do everything she could to make up for almost getting him killed. Even if she had to do it from inside Leon’s coven.
“You.” Ky bowed his head, set one hand on the ground and pushed himself up.
Jada scrambled to support him, putting his arm over her shoulder to keep him upright. “We’ve gotta go.”
“Not yet.”
“Yes, yet. You’re about a centimeter from dying.”
Ky touched her face and smiled, blue eyes dancing like he was having the time of his life. He took a deep breath and shouted, “Incubus, rogue dragon. I claim this woman. I claim her soul. She is mine.”
Well, great. Just what she needed. Damned alpha males. As soon as she got him to safety, assuming he didn’t fuck it up, she’d be telling him off for thinking he could—
Ky tipped her head to the side and bit down on the exposed part of her shoulder. He broke the skin and a rush like no drug on the planet could provide struck her entire body.
Her mind went haywire and her body went oh-hell-yeah. An energy coursed between the two of them, spinning and swirling from his system to hers and back. Their two became one, linked, together, complete.
Something shimmered across her skin, filing her with light and love and lust.
He released her, licked over the wound and blew an icy cool over it, soothing the skin. The bite had taken less than a second.
She reached up and touched the flesh where he’d bitten her. It was tender, sore, and her fingers grazed across new raised skin.
What the hell had he done to her? She glanced up at him and the lust in his dark blue eyes hit her like the iceberg that hit the Titanic, skidding across her psyche, sinking her. The wounds on his body had healed, the color returned to his skin, and a new power surged around him.
“And I am yours, aroha,” he whispered.
Fear and worry and despair, and a big burst of how-dare-you churned up from the dark hidden places inside where she kept them. She’d belonged to Leon, the Black Dragon wanted her, and now Ky had taken it upon himself to make her belong to him.
Jada reached out and slapped Ky across the face.
He didn’t move but frowned and searched her eyes. “Save that for the bedroom, mate.”
The Black Dragon roared and lifted up into the air, flying over their heads, wreaking havoc from above. His demon dragons jumped around, screeching like flying monkeys.
Leon raised his hands, exactly as she’d done to summon him, then fisted them tight and whipped them down, spreading drops of blood from the palms of his hands.
Dozens of her brothers and sisters, including Portia manifested in tornadoes all around them. Leon turned to her and Ky, and mouthed the word, “Run.”
Ky shifted back into his dragon form, snatched her up, and took to the air too. He pivoted and dove, while Jada screamed and squealed.
Down below Leon and her siblings ripped the demon dragons to shreds. They fought like a well-trained machine, protecting each other’s backs, forcing the enemy to retreat.
She cou
ldn’t fight like that. She’d never even seen any of them so much as punch each other in jest.
She was definitely signing up for some self-defense classes, like Kung Fu or Krav Maga, after today.
She kicked her feet, catching one demon dragon in the jaw, before Ky lifted them higher into the sky.
“Hold on.”
“To what?” He had his talons wrapped around her shoulders like a harness. Jada grabbed onto them like they were the straps to a parachute pack. It was really going to suck if he dropped her.
The Black Dragon roared again and shot a swath of fire through the sky. It dove for them, its claws outstretched, reaching for her.
Shit, shit, shit.
Ky flipped in the air, and Jada’s stomach flipped out. Puking was better than dying.
The Black Dragon missed her leg by a millimeter, slicing her pant leg clean open. He circled around and attacked again.
Ky blew icy water into the other dragon’s wings, tilting him off course, giving them a chance to dart in the other direction.
They flew down the beach and out across the water. Ky’s grip on her tightened. “Hold your breath, Jada.”
Ack. She gulped in three big breaths of air, waiting for him to drop into the sea. On her last big inhale Ky dove into the water, tucking her tight against his chest, and sped through the currents, away from the Black Dragon and his minions of hell.
Just Keep Swimming
Ky slipped beneath the waves and formed a bubble in the water around Jada. She sputtered and took in deep breaths, but then remained silent.
Too silent. It had been evident all over her face she’d known who the black rogue dragon was. The question was how.
Fleeing from a battle pricked at Ky like the spines of a lionfish. He never retreated. A dragon warrior fought until the bitter end.
His people looked to him to lead them, in battle and in life. All responsibilities he gladly accepted as the first son of the Blue Dragon Wyr.
The responsibility for another’s soul, that’s what he’d taken on when he claimed Jada.
Even in his dragon form, healed of all his wounds from the cool water of the Atlantic soothing him, he could still feel the sting from the slap to his face. He’d claimed her, and she’d fucking slapped him.
She didn’t realize the torture that inflicted on his soul. She didn’t want him, and he could think of nothing but claiming her again and again, until she accepted him, accepted them.
He never thought he’d have a mate. Told himself he didn’t need or want one. There were plenty of women to share his bed.
The feel of her in his arms, when he kissed her, when he’d claimed her, tossed his lonely existence right out and into the dirt to be eaten by the dogs.
He’d never been so completely connected to another being’s soul. Could he trust her with his own?
A mate.
Jada was Ky’s mate now. He’d claimed her.
She filled his soul with such a sense of rightness, completeness, purpose. He knew, without a single doubt they were meant to be together. Jada not only doubted, she actively rejected the mating.
Too bad. She was his whether she liked it or not.
He may have lost the battle against that black dragon and his legions of demon dragons, but he would win the war for Jada’s heart.
He simply needed a plan, and maybe some advice from his Nana Kiki.
Despite his wounds and exhaustion from the battle with the demon dragons the conversation between the incubus and the black dragon had cut him deeper than any other injury.
Jada’s soul had awakened. What did that mean?
He knew so little about a succubus, he couldn’t even come up with the right questions to ask.
As soon as they got to safety, he would be asking a whole lot of questions anyway. He was tempted to hit the Gulf Stream and straight back to Europe. But, he hadn’t yet found Cage’s soul shard.
What he really wanted to do was swim all the way back to New Zealand and his home on Waitaria Bay, where he could take his beautiful curvy demon straight to his bed and make her come until she begged to be his mate. Either that or lock her up in his lair with the rest of his treasure.
He might have run from the last battle, but he would not abandon the war against the demon dragons, or their new leader.
The dragon warriors had encountered the beast before, when Steele had found his mate. After that last battle with the black dragon, Match and Jakob assigned two of their dragon warriors to the South-Eastern seaboard of the United States.
Steele and Fleur had battled the black dragon before. They could provide shelter and information. That’s where they would go. Soon the waters would warm as they headed south.
This country was too fucking big.
They’d need hundreds of dragons to be able to patrol the whole thing. A few dragons lived on the west coast, where some of his blues liked to fish in the warm waters, but there were too many people in this part of the world for his Wyr’s liking. He’d have to contact Match as soon as possible to get some more reds out this way.
They could send in all the troops they wanted, but until he had an idea of where to send them and what they should do, there wasn’t a whole lot of point. He had to find out more about the black dragon.
“How do you know the black dragon?”
She didn’t respond.
“You may have information that can help us defeat him.”
Still nothing.
“Talk to me, Jada, or when we get to shore I’m going to spank that luscious ass of yours 'til it’s red.”
She wriggled around in his talons, kicking and slapping at him so much he nearly dropped her. Maybe he should. Let her cool off.
Yeah, but she’d probably kill him when he got her back to shore.
“Stop fighting, aroha. I promise not to spank you. Unless you ask me to.”
“Get out of my head, you big lizard.”
Big lizard? At least she was talking to him.
“We are going to seek shelter and regroup with another dragon warrior and his mate.” Maybe Jada could get some tips on how to not kill him from Steele’s mate, Fleur. That witch was full of sass and more sass.
“Oh, yeah? Maybe she’ll show me how to…”
Her how-to list was filled with such a litany of creative swearing, mostly themed around threats to his balls, that he mentally crossed his legs.
Ky kept his thoughts to himself and when they got close, he chose to fly directly to Steele and Fleur’s new home instead of wasting time on land.
He didn’t love being in the air like Cage did. But, he couldn’t risk running into more demon dragons on the ground. There was also the distinct possibility that Jada would try to run away from him if given the opportunity.
Ky spotted Steele and Fleur’s home and circled down to it. Vines climbed the walls and one corner of the back garden was covered in little white flowers. A green dragon and an earthy flower witch’s delight.
At least they had a pond in the back too. The things he’d like to do to Jada in that pond.
He carefully set her on the walkway to the front of the house and shifted immediately into his human form. Instead of bolting like he expected her to do, she stretched her shoulders rolling her head back and forth.
A blue dragon tattoo, matching his own but smaller peeked out along her collarbone. His mark. The bite had shimmered and swirled forming the symbol on her skin right before his eyes.
There was no mistaking what it meant.
But Jada hadn’t yet seen it.
He took her hand, not giving her any more opportunities to get away from him and walked them to the front door.
He expected her to try and yank her hand from his. She surprised him by holding it tight.
Her skin was warm and sent heat up his arm. If he let it, that heat would sink into his whole body. Her sensuality was already trying to work its way toward his cock.
It would have to wait. A long fucking time given the wa
y her mind was freezing him out. Good to know at least her body reacted to his.
A sign on the door with a stylized green dragon painted and old-world script read: Here there be dragons.
Ky knocked on the door.
He scented sex in the air, and mentally apologized for interrupting. They waited only a few seconds before they heard voices on the other side of the door.
“Go away.” Steele’s voice came through the wood.
“It’s Kaiārahi Tarakona Puru.” He used his alpha voice, not wanting to waste any more time.
“Shit.”
The door opened to a cute and curvy woman in a green bathrobe tied slightly askew who had daisies in her sex-mussed hair and an angry dragon warrior wearing nothing but a fig leaf.
“Hi, come on in.”
Steele’s adorable mate led them into the house with walls covered in living plants. Halfway down the hall she noticed her mate wasn’t wearing anything and smacked his ass. “Go put some pants on. We’ve got company.”
Steele laughed and disappeared down another hall.
Fleur led them past a tree growing right in the middle of the house and into a sunken living room, where Steele rejoined them wearing pajama pants.
She offered an outstretched hand to Jada. “I’m Fleur, and this ill-mannered dragon is Steele.”
Jada sucked in a sharp breath and squeezed his fingers like she didn’t want to let go and shake hands with Fleur.
Before, she couldn’t wait to get away from him. The scent of a new anxiety wafted from her. She had nothing to be nervous about in this house. These were friends.
He gave her hand a squeeze and then let go, showing her it was okay.
Jada swallowed, pushing a mask over her fear, and took Fleur’s hand, but only for a fraction of a second. She threw her thumb over her shoulder indicating him. “Is he as big of a dickhead as this one?”
“Oh my.” Fleur laughed. “So, it’s like that. Come on in to the kitchen and have some tea with me for some girl talk. I’ll tell you all about the time I made Steele sleep in the bathtub.”
Jada hesitated, but followed Fleur. As soon as she was out of earshot, Ky breathed a long sigh. Steele glanced down at Ky’s glowing soul shard and clapped him on the back.