“There is nothing.”
Alexei’s face worked for a moment, but at a sharp gesture from the First Dragon, he faced Baltic, and said in a voice filled with more sadness than I thought possible, “Baltic, son of Maerwyn, I hereby cast you from the sept of the black dragons, naming you ouroboros before our eyes.” He slid a glance toward the First Dragon before adding, “May the gods have mercy upon your soul.”
Baltic jerked backward, as if he had been struck, but he said nothing to Alexei. He bowed, instead, a short, choppy bow that must have cost him much, turning on his heel and striding away. He paused as he passed the First Dragon, however. “This changes nothing,” he said.
The First Dragon’s gaze slid away from him and returned to the fire. “It changes everything.”
The fire swirled around me, making me suddenly dizzy, which caused me to stumble forward, my hands outstretched as blindly I attempted to catch my balance.
I stubbed my toe on something hard, swearing under my breath as my vision cleared to show me a bed occupied by a sleeping body.
“Chuan Ren?” I said, grabbing the pillow and hitting the body smartly across its torso. “You didn’t tell me it was Chuan Ren!”
Baltic rolled over, glaring at me sleepily from under tousled hair. “You wish to engage in lovemaking now? You have never wished to do so in the past when it is your woman’s time. Is this some new fantasy?”
“Chuan … Ren …” I said with great deliberation, climbing onto the bed next to him, an abstracted part of my mind glad that I’d sent Pavel into town for fresh supplies, including bed linens. The room still smelled moldy and musty, and I shuddered to remember what state the bedding was in when we stripped it from all the rooms.
“She’s dead,” he said, just as if that mattered.
“She wasn’t six or seven hundred years ago.” I knelt next to him, hugging the pillow to my chest. “She wasn’t when everyone wanted you to take her as your mate.”
He rolled back onto his other side, grunting as he did so. “You’ve had another of those irritating visions.”
“Yes, I did.” I prodded his back with the edge of the pillow. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Chuan Ren that everyone was pressuring you to claim as a mate?”
He sighed and let me pull him over onto his back. “It doesn’t matter. I had no intention of taking her as anything, let alone a mate.”
I slumped down next to him, leaning against the headboard and stared down at my feet, remembering my sadness. “All those dragons, Baltic.”
“All what dragons? Why are you dressed and outside of the blankets? Is your woman’s time bothering you? Do you wish for me to fetch pain tablets?”
I twined my fingers through his, drawing strength and comfort from his touch. “All those dragons who died because you met me instead of the woman you were supposed to spend your life with.”
“A woman? What woman?” He sighed again. “You will remove your clothing and climb into bed so that I may comfort you. I would prefer to make love to you, but I know how you are at this time, so I will simply hold you as you said you enjoy.”
I slid from the bed, slowly unbuttoning my shirt, not with the intention of teasing him, but with a sense of regret so strong, it made me want to weep. “The woman you were supposed to mate with. The human woman that some soothsayer told you would bring you untold happiness, or something like that. And instead, you met me, and we fell in love, and I brought death and destruction to the sept and the weyr. Oh, Baltic, what have we done?”
I wanted to curl up into a little ball, so heavy was the guilt that weighed me down.
Baltic marched around the bed, his hands on my shoulders as he gently shook me. “You insist on having these visions, and now you see what comes of it. I demand that they stop, Ysolde. They distress you, and I do not like to see you unhappy.”
“I can’t help it,” I said, sobbing now. “If only you hadn’t met me. If only you hadn’t come to my father’s castle—”
“You are the woman I was supposed to meet. Chérie, do not weep for such a foolish reason.” He tipped my head back, brushing off my tears with his thumb. “And do not look at me with such accusation in your eyes. I have never lied to you, and I do not do so now.”
“But…” I swallowed back the ache in my throat. “But in the vision, Constantine said the soothsayer foretold that your mate was a human.”
“You are human. You retain a dragon consciousness, but until that has fully claimed you, you appear human.”
I thought about that for a moment, letting him kiss along my jaw, my fingers digging into the warm, satin-covered muscles of his arms. Despite having attained dragon form in Spain, the dragon being within me was still, I knew now, slumbering. It had woken once, and I had hope I could bring it to full awareness again, but for now…well, he was right. I was human.
But I hadn’t always been so.
“I wasn’t human when we met.”
“You thought you were. You had been raised as one. To everyone but the mortals who gave you sanctuary, you were human.” He pulled back enough to look down at me, his eyes glowing with mingled passion, love, and annoyance. “You heard Constantine talk about the soothsayer? That happened the night of my mother’s sepulture.”
“Sepulture? You mean her funeral?”
“Dragons do not have funerals. We burn our dead in a ceremony called sepulture.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that the vision you had?”
“Yes.” I slanted him a look. “We have a lot to talk about. I’ve got oodles of questions.”
He sighed a third time, quickly divesting me of my clothing before picking me up in his arms and carrying me to bed. “You always have questions.”
I giggled at the martyred tone in his voice. “At least you can’t say your old Ysolde never asked you questions, because I know full well I did. Why did the First Dragon force your grandfather to kick you out of the sept just because you didn’t want to hook up with Chuan Ren? Why did he say your mother’s death could have been avoided, and that you were responsible for it? And why—”
“Enough!”
“I want answers!”
“And I do not wish to give you anything but extreme pleasure.” He paused, his mouth a hairbreadth from my breast as he glanced down my torso. “Is your woman’s time over?”
“Oh, for the love of the saints. You are the most irritating, annoying, arrogant man I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, I am,” he said, not batting so much as one single eyelash. “Is it over, or must I wait to make love to you?”
“Baltic, I’m tired of your never answering my questions. And I have a lot of them.”
“Your woman’s time is not here?” he prodded.
“By the rood, Baltic! Do we have to discuss this right now?”
“Is it here, yes or no?”
“No!”
He looked down at my breasts with a speculative glint to his eyes.
“Wait! I’ll make a deal with you.” I held him back as he was about to dive for my chest, my fingers taking the opportunity to gently massage the tendons in his shoulders and neck.
“What sort of a deal?”
I smiled to myself. There was nothing dragons loved more than negotiating. “For every question you answer, I will bring you untold, immense sexual gratification.”
He looked thoughtful, but shook his head. “You do that regardless of whether I answer your unimportant questions. I will make love to you now.”
“How about this—” I said, squirming to the side as he started to rub his cheek against one breast. “For every question you answer, I’ll let you bring me untold, immense sexual gratification.”
“You receive that pleasure regardless, as well.”
“Yes, but this time,” I said, sweeping my hand up his chest and purring at him, my leg sliding along his. “This time I’ll let you be in control all the time. You’re always telling me you don’t like me being dominant—although heaven knows you don’t seem to mind it once
you stop complaining and let me get on with things—but this time, it’s all you. One question earns you one minute of mindless lovemaking with you in the driver’s seat. Do we have a deal?”
He smiled, one of those “I am the man, and you are the merest puddle of goo in my seductive hands” sorts of smiles. Unfortunately, I knew I would be a puddle of goo in his hands, and I quickly sorted through all the questions I had, deciding which ones to ask while I could still speak with any sort of coherence.
“I agree to your bargain. But tell me, chérie, just how many questions do you believe you will be able to ask me?”
“Oh, I imagine about ten or tweeee!” The last word ended on a gasp of surprise and pleasure as Baltic suddenly dipped a finger into very sensitive flesh, using his thumb to torment me into instant insensibility.
His fingers stilled. I glared at him. “That was not at all fair. You have to answer a question first, then you can…er…do that again. As many times as you like. And maybe just a smidgen to the right.”
“What is your question?” he asked, bathing me in a light wave of fire.
“No fire!” I said quickly, slapping out the flames on the blankets around me. “We haven’t dragon-proofed the bedding yet. At least, you can, but confine it just to me, and not anything else.”
“Your question?”
“Why did the First Dragon say you were responsible for your mother’s death?”
His head dipped to take one of my nipples in his mouth.
I gasped again. “Gently, my darling. Oh yes, just like…Wait, Baltic, you’re supposed to answer first.”
He released one extremely happy nipple to cock an eyebrow at me. “The First Dragon claimed that my refusal to take Chuan Ren as a mate made her lose face, for which she retaliated. He also claimed that she believed the only way to hurt me was to destroy the one person who loved me. He was wrong. Chuan Ren was searching for a reason to war, and knew I would not suffer the murder of my mother without appropriate action. It had nothing to do with saving face.”
Even now, I felt the pain deep inside him at the loss of his mother, and I knew that despite his claims, he did feel guilty. I slid my hands into his hair and pulled him down to kiss him. “Your father is an ass.”
He chuckled as he turned his attention to my other breast. “So my old Ysolde said on many occasions. I have never had the desire to argue otherwise. What is your second question?”
“Is that why the First Dragon wants me to restore honor to you? Your mother’s death is the death of the innocent he was talking about?”
“I have no knowledge of what passes through the mind of the First Dragon,” he said with obvious evasion that I instantly forgot when he laved my belly with his tongue, his fingers dancing in and around me in a manner that left me squirming on the bed, desperate for the feel of him. “You will have to ask him if that is what he meant.”
“Typical…oh yes, right there, my darling…typical dragon answer.”
He slid down my body, hooking my legs over his arms, a wicked smile on his lips as he looked over my pubic bone. “You have time for one more question, mate. I would advise you to make it a quick one.”
I clutched the sheets with both hands, trying desperately to remember what I was going to ask. “About your talisman…Why would Thala want to take it from your lair? I assume it’s something that only you can use if your father gave it to you to mark you as one of his children, so why would she—”
Never a man with much patience, Baltic had run to the end of his. He dipped his head and filled me with fire, making me arch off the bed at the sensation of all that heat in very sensitive areas, my hands scrabbling for a hold on the sheet when he added his tongue into the proceedings.
By the time he finished tormenting me and slid upward, rocking against me with urgent movements that sent me flying, I knew my time was up. I reveled in the sensation of him moving against and inside me, holding him tight when he found his own moment of exquisite pleasure and cherishing not just the feel of him, but also the knowledge that until the end of my time, his heart was mine.
“You owe me an answer,” I told him sometime later, when I could restart my brain and utter things other than moans of purest ecstasy. “I’d make you answer it now, but that performance has earned you some rest, so you have a pass until tomorrow morning. Really, Baltic, I swear you’re getting better at this. I didn’t think it was possible, but you are.”
He grumbled as he pulled me against him, one leg draped protectively over mine, his breathing soft against my head as he fell asleep.
There were so many things to worry about, so many concerns that nagged me. I examined them all as I lay in his arms. Prioritizing them, I decided which ones demanded my attention, and which could wait.
“At least we’re all together again,” I said softly, snuggling into Baltic’s chest. “Brom is safe. Holland and Savian are recovering, and Constantine is going to help make everything right again. I guess there’s nothing more I can hope for.”
“Go to sleep,” Baltic murmured against my temple, his arm tightening around me as he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “You are tired. You need rest.”
I glanced up at him, wondering…then shook my head, and did as he said.
Chapter Eleven
“Ysolde, you insult me. Again.”
I gave my hair an annoyed flip while passing Baltic, who was seated in the chair in the hallway, a newly purchased laptop on his knees. “You’re the only one who thinks that checking on Brom is insulting to you.”
“I will not allow harm to come to my son again.” He looked up from the laptop and leveled a frown at me. “The first time you checked on him was forgivable. This is the third time.”
“I’m a mother. I worry. It’s what I do best, all right? You’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.”
“You will trust that I will protect you and Brom, and return to bed where you should be,” he announced, his gaze once again on the laptop screen. “And you are incorrect.”
“I am?” I hesitated at the door to our room. “About what?”
A little smile curled the edges of his mouth, although he didn’t look up. “Worry is not what you are best at.”
I blushed at the heat in his voice and returned to bed, intending on going over again the plans for Constantine, but despite my nagging need to repeatedly check that Brom was safe, sleep once again claimed me until morning.
It took some doing to get Savian up, washed, and dressed, but we managed it in the end.
“Of all the embarrassing, annoying things I’ve ever had to do,” Maura grumbled as she climbed out of the bathroom window, tucking her shirt into her jeans.
“Look, you wanted privacy, and having one of us stand right outside the window while the other does her business is the best we can do. It’s my turn now, so I’d appreciate it if you turned on the radio, because I have an extremely shy bladder.”
“Mind your owies,” I told Savian as he hoisted himself up and into the bathroom. “They look much better, thanks to the healer’s attentions, but you’re not fully healed up yet.”
He gave me a stern look down the long length of his nose. “I am not Brom, Ysolde. I do not have owies.”
“My apologies. Just mind your wounds.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, and with a glare at Maura, pushed the window down until it was just wide enough for her arm to dangle inside.
“Radio!” we heard him bellow.
“How about I talk to her instead?” I yelled back.
“All right, but no stopping to listen. My bladder can’t take it.”
Maura rolled her eyes, a little giggle escaping her. “Just when I think I can’t stand another minute of it, and I’m ready to kill him, he says something funny.”
I laughed. “I know the feeling.”
“I’m sure you do, although…this may sound rude, and I don’t in any way intend for it to be so, but Baltic has such a sinister reputation. I’ve heard
him referred to my entire life as the ‘dread wyvern Baltic,’ and yet he doesn’t seem that bad to me. I mean, a man who would sit up for half the night just so that you wouldn’t worry about your son doesn’t scream badass to me.”
“He isn’t bad, but he can be very protective.” I thought for a moment. “How did you know he was sitting up for four hours?”
“Eh? Oh.” To my surprise, she blushed. “I…er…He came to check on us once. Er…” She cleared her throat, not meeting my gaze.
“Why would he do that?” I asked, sensing a mystery. I loved mysteries! “I told him before he went to relieve Pavel that Savian had fallen right asleep when I tucked you in for the night.”
Her blush deepened. “Savian was making…noises.”
“What sort of noises?”
“Just noises! Does it matter what sort of noises? A noise is a noise is a noise!” She took a deep breath.
I eyed her, wondering what was going on, but decided now was not the moment to press her. Not when I had other things to discuss. “He wasn’t in pain, was he?”
“Not in the way you think.” The words sounded as if they were being ground through her teeth. How very intriguing this was. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
I let her change the subject, making a mental note to ask Baltic later about what he heard. “You’re not going to like it.”
“What else is new?” she said with a slump of one shoulder.
“It’s about Thala….I know you’re probably going to resent my questions, and I think you know me well enough now to be aware I wouldn’t wish to cause you undue distress, but my son’s welfare is at stake here, as well as everyone else’s. I know full well that you are bound in loyalty to Thala and the other dragons in your tribe. I’m not trying to undermine the sense of camaraderie or friendship that you feel with them. And I know it’s going to be a difficult thing for you to go against everything you swore to uphold with the tribe, but I really have to ask if you know where Thala is right now, and if she has any intention of trying to harm Brom or the rest of us.”