Chapter 15

Chardum

I was not in the least surprised when Rosemary stalked from the porch like she had something to prove. Her hips swaying, her hands on them in a fierce fashion, and her beautiful dark skin gleaming in the sunlight. Beneath her feet, little leaves unfurled and flowers sprouted, and when she walked over the papers she’d scattered, the earth seemed to swallow them up, erasing them from existence.

“Where do I get on?” she said, and I opened my front paw and beckoned her to step inside. She did so without hesitation, muttering under her breath about how this was just like crossing a magical threshold. She held on to one of my long claws as she balanced on the palm. I closed my paw to gently grip her, then I raised her to my shoulder.

She swung her leg over me, settling at the base of my neck where she had several spikes she could grip. “ Hold on, my love,” I warned her, settling back on my haunches as I spread my wings. When I felt her fingers curl in a tight grip around each spike, putting pressure against my scales with her thighs, I leaped.

“Holy crap,” she muttered, “This is crazy.” I laughed, the sound rumbling through my chest. It was daylight, and if I climbed too high, I would be visible from the town. So I aimed toward the cliff, skimming over the trees at the top, and then kept myself just above the trees until I’d reached the clearing. I was no longer feeling so amorous and placid, my senses switching to high alert as they always did when I visited.

I landed softly, my wings pushing hard to slow our touch down. Rosy didn’t rush to climb down when I was with four paws back on the earth, something that Zachary absolutely would have done. He hated being away from the earth so badly, but perhaps, in this, Rosy’s human blood won out.

“What is this place?” she asked, still sitting astride my neck. I could answer her like this, but it felt better to be face-to-face. I shifted, my body scattering into light particles and reforming on two legs. My mate tumbled as she fell from a good thirty feet down to the ground, but I was there to catch her.

“This is a prison,” I said, her body dangling bridal style in my grip. Her face next to mine, eyes huge and shocked, though even when falling, my brave little mate hadn’t screamed. She still slapped me on the shoulder roughly, warning me not to scare her like that and I grinned, for a moment letting her push away the gloomy atmosphere of this place.

“A prison? Are you serious?” she asked, her head swiveling left and right as she studied the woodland clearing with critical eyes. I knew what she was thinking. This didn’t look like any kind of prison she was familiar with. It was a verdant clearing in a lush, beautiful forest of oaks and hickories. You could easily picture some deer grazing here at dusk, but I knew they never would.

Though my instincts told me to keep my mate in my arms, to hold her away from this soil, I knew it was the only way she’d understand what it was we were supposed to do. I lowered her slowly, sliding her curves down my body until she could touch just her toes to the ground. “A prison. Can you feel it?”

She closed her eyes, goosebumps breaking out across her silky skin; it even pebbled along her cheeks. I held her tighter around her waist, pressing my warmth against her everywhere I could touch her. I was not letting her closer to this earth anymore than she needed to be. Zachary had preferred touching the prison over being away from the earth, but I could already tell that it was not the same for Rosy.

“What is that?” she muttered, horrified. “It feels… evil! What the fuck is this place, Chardum? Is this what we’re guarding?” I liked that she already considered it her task as much as mine, but it made me ache a little too. Suddenly, tying my vibrant, beautiful mate to a place that harbored such evil felt wrong, even if it was for the good of the world.

“This is the prison of a Galamut. One of the few we still know the location of, and of which the key has surfaced several times in history.” My explanation was only making her more confused. A history lesson was required, one that not even the long memories of many of the immortal creatures that roamed this earth remembered.

“They are elemental creatures that came to earth to conquer it, a very, very long time ago. So long ago that most immortals don’t even remember it. And this prison? It houses one of those creatures. For the past thousand years, Zach and I have been guarding it. Preventing anyone from locating its cage and setting it free.”

She yanked her feet back up, and I happily pulled her higher in my arms while striding away from the deceptively peaceful clearing. “It slumbers in there, and the greedy and the power hungry seek to control it, so they can control the world. We can’t let that happen.” I’d reached the edge of the woods, the cliff from which we could look down onto the farmhouse that Zachary and I had built and maintained for the last hundred years. Ever since the werewolves made a deal with Zach to live here, the town thriving under Mayor Liz, the werewolf alpha.

“And that vampire woman working for Sunworld. Is one such threat? That’s what you think, isn’t it? Was she the one who trapped you and cursed my father?” Rosy asked. I let her down from my arms so we could stand side by side on the cliff, far enough away from the Galamut’s prison that she should no longer sense it. We were standing close to where I’d been trapped myself, just a few hundred feet away from the Galamut. As I’d lain there, I’d heard its whispers, seeping through the ground toward me, urging me to do unspeakable things.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Twenty-six years ago, we were surprised by a group of creatures. All kinds, banding together to battle the two of us. The curse that kept me trapped, and that snapped the bond between Zachary and I, that had to be the work of a witch. I have no special recollection of a vampire…”

That past battle filled my memory; I’d played it out in my mind over and over, trying to figure out what had happened, how I’d become trapped the way I had. I thought that Zachary had escaped. I recalled that it was him that had brought on the rock slide. I’d been badly injured from the fight, sleeping like the dead for years as my body sought to repair the worst of my injuries without any sustenance to draw from.

I had not been alone in that prison, but I was the only one that had survived it. That is why I believed at first that it was Zachary’s work. But he didn’t free me, and his bond was broken, something that could only happen if one of us was dead. Dead or so changed that I would no longer recognize him.

To my mate I said, “Zachary had just come home from a trip. Happier than I’d ever seen him, talking of Azara, who had claimed his heart. Talking of the child they had conceived and how eager he was to bring her here to share his life with his new family.” She went even more quiet and pensive as I told her this, but I sensed that it was soothing a pain deep inside of her.

“Azara, that’s my mom’s name. So he really loved her, huh?” Her hazel eyes, which had turned greener over the past few days, turned crafty now. I held my breath, eagerly waiting to see what she’d say. “Were they mates? That’s what you called me, isn’t it?”

Ah, my clever little mate had caught that slip of the tongue. I hadn’t meant to explain the bond between us yet, not when she had so much else to process. If I were more of a gentleman and less of a beast, I would have given her more space physically too. But I couldn’t wait to ignite the passion that simmered between us. I couldn’t stay away.

“Soulmates,” I said quietly, “We are. They were not. But that didn’t matter. Zachary had never loved a woman as much as he’d loved Azara. Soulmates are rare, almost impossible to find. An occurrence I’m told happens less and less as each year passes.” I tilted my head away, gazing out over the recovering farmhouse and the fields beyond. They were still overgrown, tangled with brush and young trees, but I had no doubt that next year, corn and wheat would grow proudly once more.

Rosy was watching the same thing I was, but from the corner of my eye, I could tell her body language indicated she was relaxing. “Huh, so you and I, we’re just meant to be. That’s it?” She gestured around her, “I’m meant to protect the world from this monster escaping, and I’m meant to be yours?”

My heart started racing at hearing the words so boldly proclaimed, said as if she wasn’t objecting, rather stating facts. “Yes,” I said, my mouth dry as ashes. I hadn’t felt nervous in so long that the feeling was foreign, but there it was. This tiny half-nymph, half-human, held my heart in the palms of her hands. If she were to reject me, it would crush me far more than that miserable pile of rocks ever had.

“Okay,” she said, her shoulders rolling in a shrug. “I guess we’ll figure it out together? Though it is a little weird to be seeing a guy who’s old enough to be my dad.” That was not rejection, not an outright celebration of our bond either, but I’d take it. She wasn’t opposed, she just needed time, and a thousand year old dragon knew how to be patient, sometimes.

I grinned, hoping to lighten the mood, “Old enough to be your father, probably two-hundred times over. But age doesn’t matter when you live in the supernatural world, not in the same way it does for humans. You are twenty-six, you are mature. That is all.”

“That is all,” she sassed beneath her breath. She rolled her eyes too, but I pretended I hadn’t seen it. She could sass all she wanted, but when I turned her into my arms and tilted her mouth to mine, she met my kiss eagerly.