Chapter 16

It was easier to remain a dragon after the truth was out. If Morgan became a human right now, he might just throw himself into Auban’s arms—arms that were strong enough to hold him up now, to support him and cradle him close—and cry like a child, and Morgan couldn’t afford that kind of weakness right now. He needed to get ahold of himself quietly, in private.

He slowly pulled back from Auban once his song was over, and Auban let him go, let him slither back into the water with a look of infinite regret combined with understanding on his face. “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked, and Morgan nodded before turning and swimming off into deeper waters. He seemed to be doing this a lot recently. There had to be a better way of getting control of his emotions, and yet …

The Agnarra were people of the water. They lived surrounded by it and in it for most of their lives. It set the rhythm of their year, dictated when they fished with the currents and when they planted with the rains, determined when they drew together as a tribe and when they allowed themselves to drift apart. The water was everything to them, and so it made sense that the water was also the best place to seek solace and comfort.

Morgan thought he could remember his brother disappearing for hours into the water after they first came to this new island. It had upset him at the time, made him wonder whether Brevaer was abandoning him, like he had felt their parents had done. But Brev had always come back, and even when he was brusque about Morgan’s tears, he had wiped them all the same, held him close and told him that he wasn’t going anywhere. Morgan had never seen his older brother cry, but perhaps that was simply because Brev had given all his tears to the sea.

Morgan dove down, down, until the water wrapped around him and held him close like a lover might, until it was so dark even his eyes could no longer distinguish details. He curled up and drifted for a bit, listening to the sounds of other creatures moving in the depths. Their motions were like sounds in his skin, flickers that danced across his nerves and told him where they were, how they moved, what they might be.

A pod of whales … hmm, a shark perhaps, not big enough to worry about, though. A school of cod—running late, you are. And a … hmm. There was one feeling he couldn’t quite identify, the lightest touch of something that seemed to be enormous and many armed. A giant squid, perhaps? Morgan had heard about them before, but he’d never seen one—they tended to stay deeper than his people were comfortable with.

He let his interest drift away, along with all the other sensations and cares he held with him, until he was left with nothing but himself in the darkness of his mind. Himself and Auban, because try as he might to center himself and find solace in the solitude, it seemed like Auban was right there with him, like he could feel him if only he reached out a fin to touch.

He really is my mate.Morgan wouldn’t be so attuned to him otherwise. A mate, he had a mate, a beautiful, impossible mate, and he loved him so much that he didn’t know how his heart could bear it. He didn’t know how he was going to bear it once Auban was gone. Auban had to go … but if he cared for Morgan the same way, would he be happy once he was back with his own kind? Did humans mate the same way, or was it a more temporary thing for them? If so, then Auban would recover from their separation swiftly.

But what if he didn’t? The fact that Morgan felt him so plainly now, felt him in that part of himself that was reserved for family, was telling. It made him think that it was reciprocal after all, that Auban didn’t just love him, he was bonded to him. The thought was glorious and intimidating and the most frightening thing that Morgan had ever experienced.

He is mine, and I must lose him.

Or … or he could go with him, but then Morgan would have to live in the human world, and he didn’t think he would survive that. They would know he wasn’t one of them, know it from his green hair and the way he moved and how he needed to stay close to the water at all times. He would be hunted and killed, and Auban would surely suffer the same fate. No, Morgan couldn’t live with humans. He could only die with them.

We can find somewhere to be together, alone. Another island, a place just for us.That option, too, was riddled with flaws. Living required a community—you couldn’t go it alone. Two people, even two people who were hard workers, would confront extreme privation with just the two of them attempting to live wild on these hard, northern islands. And Morgan would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the hardest worker, and Auban was still injured and might never recover his full strength, and …

No. It couldn’t work, it couldn’t, and he needed to resign his stupid heart to it. Irritated and incredibly sad, Morgan tried to shove the presence of his beloved out of his mind.

It didn’t work. Rather, the shove he gave deepened his connection to Auban momentarily, taking Morgan’s sense of him and amping it up to new heights. And as it sharpened, he could feel Auban’s stoic fa?ade fading into something fearful.

Fearful? Why was he fearful?

There was motion, a few words, an entreaty of some kind and then—

Ow!Auban was hurt! He was being hurt right now, injured by someone that Morgan couldn’t fight for him.

Not yet at least. Morgan uncoiled and flared his fins, propelling himself hard through the water, harder than he ever had before in his life. He had never been a fast swimmer, but his months of training on land had translated to a fitter, stronger body now. It took less than five minutes for him to return to land, five terrible minutes in which he felt his mate injured, wounded, felt his pain like it was his own, and Morgan had to go faster because if he didn’t get there soon, Auban might just be killed, and that was unacceptable.

He burst out of the edge of the water and transformed in midair, then stumbled when his feet hit the rocky surface of the beach that had become his second home. The skin on his soles split, but the pain was nothing to the fury coursing through his blood, fury that rendered all but Auban blurry and indistinct.

There was his love, there, held on his knees by some enormous brute. Morgan surged forward with a scream, beat back two sets of arms that tried to hold him, and finally got close enough to Auban to enfold him in his embrace. Auban couldn’t hold him back, not with his arms bound as they were, but he tilted his head against Morgan’s.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should have been more careful.”

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Morgan whispered.

“You see?” a high, nasal voice insisted from somewhere off to the left. “I told you he betrayed us with this human! I told you he was false, and now you know it’s true!”

That was Drenikel, Garen’s loathsome cousin … but then who was holding Auban captive? Morgan lifted his face and looked up at the shadow looming over them and saw—

Oh shit. Brevaer.