“It’s not that bad and you know—” Lucan stopped and blinked. “Did you say Meda?”
His brother pulled out the parchment he must have jammed back in his pocket when they’d left the lower level. He glanced at it. “Andromeda Hutchens. That’s your Meda, right? I didn’t realize at first—not until Scarlett mentioned the name similarity and I did research. She’s always been Meda Cooper to me because that was your last name and you’ve never called her Andromeda.”
“She hates it,” Lucan murmured, pulling the paper from Janos’ hand. Dread and hope warred in his middle. Though his dreams, which he’d discovered were his gift, had gotten stronger since his change, he hadn’t seen this coming.
Was Meda really his intended mate? Could she ever forgive him for not returning to her once he’d recovered from his first molt? Worse, could she accept what he was now?
He
could barely accept it. How would she? He wasn’t the man she’d known, Lucan Cooper. He was Lucan Aventech, Dragon shifter, loner and stranger.
His finger traced her name. “She’s really my Dragon mate…” he murmured. His brow furrowed, and he looked at Janos’ arm and the sepia mating mark that covered his skin like a filigreed tattoo. “Then why don’t I have the mark? I thought it appeared after intimate exposure to one’s mate—or when a Dragon shifts in his mate’s presence.”
“You hadn’t come into your nature.”
“Right,” Lucan replied darkly.
Come into his nature.
D-day. Age twenty-five and three months. The day all Dragon’s molted for the first time. Janos and Niko had been watching for him to change.
Lucan had been lost as a baby, separated from Alexi, his own twin brother, his parents and his older brothers who were also twins. “Lost” he’d since discovered, was a euphemism for kidnapped. By the time, he’d been found, the kidnappers had abandoned him, and he’d been shunted from foster home to foster home, until eventually he’d been taken in by the Coopers who’d raised him.
When his true parents had found him, he’d been seven years old and settled in a loving family, adopted in good faith by a couple who couldn’t have their own children. His parents had made the most difficult decision of their long lives. They’d left him with the Coopers, knowing in eighteen years, he’d be brought back into their fold. Though they’d mourned the loss of their child, they’d known the wait was short for a Dragon. A blip in time.
Lucan glanced over at his brother. Janos was over a thousand years old. Eighteen years really was nothing—except Lucan’s parents, his biological parents, hadn’t survived until his molting. Just before his return, they’d taken a trip to the Dragon’s home dimension, had never returned and were feared dead.
And it had become even more important to the Aventechs to reclaim their lost sibling.
He looked at his arm, thinking once more of Meda. “So, now, if I’m near Meda, the mating mark should appear?”
“Unless this information is wrong, but I doubt it. So far, every match has been correct, and not just with our clan. The council leader sent Riven to find her, and he finally has. You should reclaim her as quickly as possible. It’s not safe for the Mates until they’re fully united with their Dragons.”
That was the xenophobia again. The Dragon enemies, the Djinn and Elvish, were bent on wiping out the population of Lucan’s people in any way they could. Since attacks were often ineffectual due to the Dragons’ armor and magic, the Djinn and Elvish went after the Mates who had neither protection until they were joined with their Dragons.
“Where did Riven find her?” Lucan asked then started walking again, the thought of another man near Meda causing his stomach to churn. Riven was an oddity, a half-breed of part Dragon and part Djinn. The Djinn were unaware of his mixed blood and his loyalty to his father’s people. He worked as a spy, procuring information for the Dragons using dark, earth magic he’d learned from his mother.
Lucan trusted him, though several Dragons didn’t.
“In a small town in eastern Wyoming,” Janos answered. “She moved from Colorado after your, um, accident. She’s teaching there.”
“Around kids…”
Janos nodded, getting Lucan’s meaning. Unprotected, Meda was in danger from their enemies, but so were any people around her. Lucan needed to bring her back here before anyone got injured or, worse, killed.
God, she was going to be pissed. And hurt. And
pissed
. He could take that. He wasn’t afraid of her outrage, and he’d do everything he could to soothe the hurt caused by his supposed death and the fact he hadn’t gone back to her when he could. Guilt had plagued him all this time. It had taken two years to complete the initial molting—uncontrollable bursts of flames that had made him a danger to everyone who didn’t have scales. It had been impossible to go to her. He could have accidentally killed her. Then after…
Too much time had passed. The shame, the guilt and the determination not to disrupt the new life she’d built had worked together to keep him away. She’d hate him for everything she’d been through when she’d thought he’d died.
And then there was the part about being a Dragon. Shifters were things of fantasy, not real life. Meda didn’t believe in what she couldn’t see. She’d think he was lying unless he showed her the truth—then she’d be horrified and disgusted by what he’d become. She’d never want him again. Never.
He shook his head. How could she be his true Mate?
“Are you sure?” he asked. “That she’s the one? She’ll never accept this.” He swiped a hand in front of his body indicating his unseen change.
“Lucan.” Janos stopped him, placed his hands of Lucan’s shoulders and stared into his eyes, his head bent forward slightly with his fervent intent. “She
will
accept you. You are her mate, and she’ll feel that, just as you’ll feel that. There will be anger, and definitely adjustment, but in the end, you two will be one.”
Lucan nodded. He wasn’t so sure, but for her life and the lives of the innocents around her, he had to try.
Chapter Two
A mix of desire and regret pushed through Lucan as he stared across the potholed street at his woman. She hadn’t seen him yet. When she did, all hell would break loose. And that would be in about thirty-five seconds.
Meda stood before a rundown school building, dressed in jeans and a button-down white shirt. Her hair fell around her shoulders in golden waves as she waved goodbye to a bus. She smiled brightly, but even from this distance, he could see the tinge of sadness around her. Perhaps that was his reptilian senses. Since his change, he picked up on things he hadn’t before. Or perhaps he was projecting. Maybe she wasn’t sad at all.
No, there was something. Her head tipped forward, and her hands went into her pockets. While he watched, her slim shoulders lifted in a sigh. The sun glinted on her hair as it swung forward in a sleek mass.
He couldn’t wait to touch it once more, to feel her warmth against him, to breathe her air…
For that moment before she killed him.
Hell, finding out he was still alive would be traumatic for her. Then he had to cruelly rip her from the life she’d built over the past four years. She seemed settled and content. Lucan’s heart ached for that and what he must do, but it was the only way to save her.
“Buck up, Wolf,” Riven said beside him.
“Don’t call me that.” Lucan glanced over at the man. It was obvious he was a Cruentus Dragon, with his black hair and eyes flecked with yellow. Most of the men of the clan shared the look. Lucan suspected that somewhere, way back before the Dragons had come to inhabit earth, the same blood had flowed through many of the family lines comprising the community.
Riven chuckled, shaking his head at Lucan’s growl, but their attention was riveted across the street. They silently watched the beautiful woman. She brushed her hair from her eyes, looked into the distance, then with a shake of her head, turned toward the school building. Lucan longed to feel those silken tresses along his skin once more and to absorb the heat of her sky-blue gaze as she hungrily watched him.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Riven continued. “She tries to kill you? Your dragon armor will keep you safe.”
The worst that could happen was that she’d hate him.
As she went, Meda waved goodbye to the another group of preschoolers who were leaving with their parents. The children’s welfare alone was reason to step back into her life. The Dragons’ enemies wouldn’t think twice about collateral damage, even if that damage was a child. And since Lucan was a full-blood Dragon and she, though she didn’t know it, was his mate, that made her a target.
Meda.
Just being this close to her stirred his blood. He could sense, as all males of his race could, that she had Dragon’s blood running through her veins and marking her for his people. Strange that he hadn’t felt it like this before they’d been parted, but as Janos had said, Lucan hadn’t yet come into his nature before.
But it was more than the Dragon’s blood…
She was his, and he could feel it with a deep gnawing in his gut, a gnawing that grew to a painful need at being this close to her. The need, stronger now, had plagued him for years. It could have been worse. If he’d been a full Dragon before they’d parted, the pain of being separated this long would likely have killed him. At very least, it would have driven him mad.
“How do you want to do this?” Riven asked.
“What?” For a moment, Lucan had been so consumed with Meda, he’d almost forgotten the other man stood beside him.
“How do you want to take her? You can’t just walk up to her and say ‘hi’ then bring her home to the compound, Wolf. She thinks you’re dead, and I expect she’ll cause a problem about going—they all do. I haven’t met one yet who hasn’t.”
They
being Dragon’s mates.
“Well, actually…”
“Lucan!” Riven rasped as Lucan started across the street. Meda was alone now, and approaching her might truly be his best course of action. He didn’t feel particularly comfortable leaving her unprotected in this somewhat seedy area—and that had nothing to do with his enemies. His blood pounded as he drew nearer, coming up behind her as she turned to go inside the building. A tingle ran up his arm as he lightly touched her shoulder. The first touch after so long…
If only the change and his fear of her revulsion hadn’t kept them apart.
Startled, she swung around at the whisper of fingers on her shoulder. “Can I help—”
Her eyes went wide, the color draining from her face.
“Meda,” Lucan whispered, greeting, claiming and longing all wrapped up in that single word.
She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she saw. Her legs wobbled, and he reached out to steady her, but she scrambled a few steps backward.
“No,” she breathed, putting voice to her disbelief. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Her head snapped from side to side. Her spine went rigid, and her eyes narrowed to outraged slits. “Who…are…you? And you sure as hell had better not try to say ‘Lucan’.”
“Meda…” he pleaded. “It’s me. Love, please… It’s me.”
“No,” she denied, rejecting the possibility.
“Yes. I’m Lucan.”
She backed toward the ramshackle door to the school. It looked as if it wouldn’t keep out a rabid raccoon, much less a full-blooded Dragon. Her bottom lip trembled, her shock palpable as she stared aghast at him and appeared a breath from screaming.
He couldn’t blame her. He’d been “dead” for four years.
“You’re not…Lucan,” she whispered. “Lucan is… Lucan would never leave me and let me think he’d been killed in a car accident. A
horrific
accident. He’s dead. And you’re…I don’t know who you are. You’re…cruel—despicable to even
try
to make me believe… Just…just get away from me. Stay away from me!”
Her pain shredded him. He’d always known it would. He’d felt it. Meda’s presence had never left him as he’d adjusted to being a Dragon and gone through the ugly, painful molting. Like a phoenix, he’d risen again, stronger and harder, nearly invincible, but he was empty save for loneliness and the burning flames of desire for this woman.
“Get away from me,” she yelled as he took a step forward. Her hand whipped out of her pocket. Suddenly, a stream of liquid shot into his face, blinding him. His eyes burned, but the pain was far less than what his body had endured during molting. Valiantly, he fought to keep from shifting into his Dragon form, which was his natural defense and the only thing that would instantly disable her assault. Yet, that would terrify Meda, so instead, he reached for her, but the rickety door slammed before he caught her arm.
A deep, very male, very amused sigh sounded beside him. “Well, that worked,” Riven commented as he grasped Lucan’s arm. “Come along, Wolf.” He pulled Lucan away from the doors. “Okay, shift. It’s safe.”
Trusting Riven because it was too damned painful not to, Lucan changed to his Dragon form. The burning on his face and sinuses instantly cooled as the reptilian armor slid over his human skin, he grew a half foot in height and gained about fifty pounds of muscle. Impatiently, he counted to ten then allowed himself to shift back. Breathing heavily against the familiar agony that came with the change, he waited for his body to shrink back to his smaller shape and for the discomfort to alleviate. Others assured him that the shape-shifting would eventually be painless, but so far, that wasn’t the case.