Chapter 20

Chardum

My mate was sleeping deeply next to me, her soft breathing easing the rapid beat of my heart. She’d slipped into a deep sleep a few hours ago when we’d returned to bed after some late-night dinner. I had taken her three times. I would have taken her a fourth if not for the yawn that had cracked her jaw with an audible sound.

She was curled against my side, her expression peaceful, and her arms tightly hugging one of mine to her chest. She was adorable, and I wanted to stay there with her forever. But something was bothering me, a feeling of dread that I couldn’t shake. It hadn’t come over me until a few minutes ago and I’d lain there debating on whether I should wake her or not.

She had to be tired, physically exhausted after the workout we’d been up to. She hadn’t noticed it yet, but I’d seen the vines climb over the edge of the roof, curling over our window until a curtain of green covered the whole panel. Sex made her lose control of her burgeoning powers, and she’d covered the farmhouse almost entirely in plants by the third round.

When my skin broke out in goosebumps, I knew I could not ignore this feeling. Someone was invading our territory, breaching the remaining wards Zachary had set so long ago. I carefully started to untangle myself from my mate’s grip and the sheets around my legs. I’d just quickly check this out before I woke her; I would not bother her unless I was certain danger was approaching.

I balanced on my toes as I started crossing the room, trying my best not to make the floorboards creak beneath my substantial weight. A dragon in his two-legged form still weighed a lot, after all, not all that mass disappeared by sheer magic. I had almost made it to the door when I heard her breathing change, followed quickly by a sleepy “Where are you going?”

“There might be intruders. Stay while I check it out. I’ll be right back.” I waited only until she’d given me a quick, worried nod before I darted down the hallway to race for the front door. I didn’t bother with clothing, and as I wrenched the panel free from the grip of the plants that Rosy had covered it with, I was already starting my shift as I careened across the porch into the yard.

As a dragon, my senses were even keener, my eyes as sharp as an eagle’s. I could see the changes Rosy had wrought all over the area. The was house covered by a lush green carpet of climbing plants. I’d passed the living room where her potted plants had burst in an explosion of verdant green and flowers that covered the entire space. Several of the exhausted fruit trees on the other side of the barn had burst into blossoms and a thick carpet of grass covered the yard now.

When I swung into the air, I could see several giant pumpkins and squashes push for space in the vegetable patch, and a dozen tomato plants were bowing to the earth under the weight of the red fruit. It was more than I had expected to see, a demonstration of her power that showed she had far more potential than I had dreamed of. Was it enough to stop the invaders I could see sneaking through the woods above the cliffs?

I landed quietly, but Rosy was already outside and racing for my side. She’d dressed herself in jeans and a warm jacket, but her feet were bare. Her eyes glowed bright green in her pretty face, framed by wild bed hair curls. “On the cliff! I can sense them, Char!” she announced. And as though she had done it a million times before, she scrambled up the side of my front paw and threw herself into a seat at the base of my neck. “Let’s knock some sense into them!”

Ah, how I loved those fighting words. “ Yes, we’ll knock them all the way back to whatever rock they crawled out from under,” I agreed. I didn’t want to give away our approach, but a dragon landing in the woods was not a quiet affair unless there was an appropriately sized clearing. It meant that I had to take her directly to where the Galamut’s prison was located.

When I touched down, she leaped to the ground the way her father would have, her toes digging into the earth, her power tingling in the surrounding air. Once, long ago, a nymph just like her had been responsible for creating the prison this Galamut was trapped in. Only someone with the same powers could truly sense the state of the prison, figure out if it was holding, and if there were no cracks through which the evil could escape or be freed.

“ Is it holding?” I asked inside her mind while I craned my head over the trees and used my sharp vision to locate the intruders. I could see some of them when I focused on my infrared senses, locating them by body heat. That worked well for the shifters, but the vampires ran cooler, and some other creatures blended completely; I couldn’t trust I had the right numbers.

At my side, Rosy had closed her eyes, her mouth curled with distaste as she focused on what was going on beneath her feet. Her brows pinched together the longer she stood there, a shiver racking her spine. “I don’t know! How can I tell?” she finally asked, a hint of panic threading through her voice. I cursed internally. She was so untrained. I should have made her stand here yesterday to teach her how to check on this. I’d just wanted to protect her from being that close to such evil for too long. But it was one of her tasks as a guardian of this place, bound to me like she was bound to this land as soon as she stepped foot on it.

I shifted partially, a feat not many shifters were capable of, but I wasn’t just anyone. Still covered in scales but on two legs, wings arched from my back. I towered over her, nearly twice as large as I’d be if I shifted completely to my human form. I crouched, my wing curling around her shoulders, my voice deep, though I tried to force it into a whisper. “There are edges. Can you feel them? Like a square box, no bigger than a coffin.”

She closed her eyes again, searching for the prison with her senses. I was impressed with how tenacious she was, and how far she’d come from the girl with the stick, ready to whack what she thought was a lunatic talking about fantastical, but very mythical, things. It was not easy to accept such reality-altering truths, but she had, and in only a short week.

As she worked on her task, I did mine. Flicking out my still dragonish tongue to draw in scents to analyze against the roof of my mouth. My eyes scanned beneath the trees. Was it a mistake to go directly to the prison? It would tell them exactly where it was, and maybe they had not discovered it yet. No, the scent of the female vampire had been all over the clearing; she’d visited it a few weeks ago. They knew.

“I think it’s all intact?” Rosy murmured. She shuffled closer, her feet nearly on top of my clawed paws so she wasn’t quite touching the earth any longer. “I don’t sense any cracks, but it feels like I’m almost touching something alive. Like I was stroking a centipede. It’s disgusting!” She shuddered, and I stroked her shoulder, lifting her a little closer still.

“I know, but that means you did it right. That’s exactly how your father always described the prison. Like touching a slimy bug. And coming from him that was saying something, he worked with dirt all day, he didn’t mind bugs.” She smothered a soft chuckle, her hand rising to pat against my scaly chest. She could not reach higher than my midriff, but she took that in stride. Didn’t even seem surprised at my strange hybrid appearance.

“Very true,” she said, nodding along. I checked her face quickly, trying to decipher how tapped she was after growing all that green at the farm. Did I need to figure out how to get her away from here and fight the oncoming tide of greedy power grabbers on my own? She had no circles beneath her eyes, and her complexion was clear. I still wanted to throw her over my shoulder and take her away some place safe.

“I think they’re almost here. What do we do?” she asked. Fuck, she was right. They were about to reach the clearing, and there was no time to stash my mate, so I could fight alone while she was protected. I pushed her behind me, bracing my legs and flexing my claws. My eyes scanned beneath the trees for them, and it didn’t take more than a second to pick out the shape of the weretiger and the two coyotes from before. A dozen more accompanied them.

“You protect the prison and restore it should any damage occur. I will kick their puny asses,” I said, and then I leaped forward to tackle the first to come out from between the trees. Digging my claws into his flesh, spouting flames from my partially shifted head.

I had to do my best to keep the fight as far away from Rosy and the Galamut, and I had to figure out as quickly as possible if they had the key with them or not. Without the key, the threat was small. With it, we might be in trouble just like twenty-six years ago. Then a different vampire had almost succeeded in opening the cage.

Whirling through the woods, I kept to my hybrid shape for better mobility beneath the trees. The weretiger was a tough one, clawing and biting; when shifted, he was agile and fast. I saw no sign of Elie, and that worried me. I was sure she was the one who’d have the key.

And the entire time I fought, my focus remained on the clearing and the lone figure of my mate standing at the center. She was so small and fragile, I could not let any of them get close to her. I realized then and there that my purpose in the world had shifted fundamentally. I cared about my task as a guardian, but I cared far more about keeping Rosy safe. My heart was hers, I loved her, and without her, I would not even care anymore of that Galamut got out.

I loved her. I needed her in my life as much as I needed air to breathe. So when the weretiger broke through the woods and charged the clearing, I was a full-sized dragon in a heartbeat, coming down, roaring between him and my mate. Flames spouting, tail lashing so that trees toppled.

I didn’t expect the vampire in charge to spring from the ground beneath me. A shard of pale green raised in her hand. It sank into my chest, cutting through my scales like they were butter. I didn’t feel pain, didn’t feel anything but coldness wash through me.

The key… but why had she stuck it in my chest? My vision blurred and my muscles went weak. My thoughts spun, my brain growing fuzzy. What was happening? It felt like a herculean effort to lift my head and spout flame directly into the air above me.

“Rosy, where are you?” I couldn’t see her, couldn’t feel her.

No.

This couldn’t be the end.