Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Jaron landed in front of the Rubyville Nightclub only to find the doors closed to him.

Of course.

It was still light out.

No matter, though. He would just call Keegan. Surely this was important enough to warrant a call even if it was still daytime.

Jaron pulled out his phone, tapped on the screen, and then realized that he didn't have Keegan's number. He groaned. What a rookie mistake.

He stared at the closed doors and his reflection stared back at him from the dark glass. With a resigned sigh, he pressed the doorbell and waited.

Silence.

He pressed it again, more insistently this time.

He pressed it a third time.

A crackling voice broke through the quiet. "We're closed, come back at dusk," a disgruntled vampire lady said.

Jaron leaned closer to the intercom. "I need to speak with Keegan," he said. "It's important."

"Keegan doesn't keep daylight hours," the vampire snapped, irritation evident even through the static.

"I'm Jaron Tymera," he persisted, "Keegan's mate. Please, let me in."

A long pause followed before the vampire spoke again. "Keegan's what now?"

"His mate," Jaron repeated, louder this time, hoping to convey the urgency without sounding desperate.

The vampire on the other end of the intercom muttered something about Keegan and his stupid plans always bringing trouble. A series of clicks and whirs sounded before the door slowly slid open with a reluctant groan.

"Thank you," Jaron called into the intercom as he stepped inside.

"Yeah, whatever," came the grumbled reply before the connection cut off.

The nightclub was a different world without its pulsing lights and thrumming music. It looked almost mundane now, if a little gloomy. The vampire who'd let him in stood by the bar, polishing glasses. Jaron recognized her as the vampire who'd been behind the bar when he'd been talking to Mordyn. Vitra. She was probably preparing for the club's opening later, and she wasn't happy to have been disturbed.

Jaron approached her. "Where can I find Keegan?"

"You're really his mate?" She eyed him suspiciously.

He held out both hands in a placatory gesture. "I promise, we're mates and I just really need to see him. It's important."

The vampire studied him for another moment. "So you're the reason he's been up all day?" She frowned. "You're not causing him trouble, are you?"

"I wouldn't!" Jaron defended himself quickly. He never meant Keegan any harm, and if the vampire wasn't sleeping, well that was probably because of that vision that scared him. That was tangentially related to Jaron, but it wasn't really his fault.

It was good, though, that Keegan had a family that worried about him.

Jaron smiled at the vampire.

She responded by eyeing him even more suspiciously. "What are you so happy about?"

"Nothing," Jaron said hastily, schooling his features. "It's just nice that you're all looking out for each other."

"We're coven," she said simply.

Jaron nodded, accepting this explanation.

She eyed him for a moment longer before she turned her attention to her task again, wiping at an invisible stain on one of the wine glasses. After a few seconds of silence and Jaron hovering awkwardly beside her, she let out a huff of exasperation and put the glass down. "Follow me," she said. "I'll take you downstairs."

Vitra led Jaron down a staircase, their footsteps echoing in the narrow space. She stopped in front of a nondescript door and rapped her knuckles against it. "Hey, Keegan, you up?"

No response.

She knocked again, harder this time. "C'mon, I know you don't sleep that long."

A muffled grumble that sounded suspiciously like "go away" filtered through the door.

Vitra rolled her eyes. "This dragon who claims he's your mate showed up."

The door swung open shortly after that, revealing a disheveled Keegan. Jaron's heart stuttered at the sight of him. Even with his red hair sticking up at odd angles, he was still the sexiest vampire Jaron had ever seen. But the lack of sleep was apparent as well.

Keegan's gaze flicked to Jaron, and he let out a heavy sigh. He reached out, grabbed Jaron by the arm, and tugged him into the room, shutting the door behind them.

"What are you doing back here so soon?" Keegan asked, his voice rough with exhaustion. "You're aware that most vampires are asleep at this hour, right?"

"I'm surprised you even know what hour it is," Jaron murmured absentmindedly while he took in the state of Keegan's room. Star charts were strewn across the floor, interspersed with loose papers covered in scribbled notes. It looked like the workspace of a mad scientist.

"What's all this?" Jaron asked, gesturing to the chaos.

Keegan rubbed his face. "I've been trying to find a way to prevent the future I've seen."

Jaron's brow furrowed with concern. "Did you get any rest since I left here?"

Keegan shrugged. "They say 'you can sleep when you're dead,' not when you're undead. No vampire's ever died due to lack of sleep."

"So vampires don't need rest?" Jaron asked with a note of obvious sarcasm.

"What I need is answers," Keegan countered.

Jaron reached out, his fingers brushing against Keegan's arm. "I'm sure you will find them. But not like this. Not by running yourself into the ground."

Keegan pulled away from Jaron's touch. "You don't understand. Every time I close my eyes, I see it. I see you…"

He trailed off, his jaw clenching.

"See me what?" Jaron prompted gently.

Keegan shook his head. "It doesn't matter. What matters is finding a way to stop it."

Jaron watched as Keegan's eyes darted around the room, as if the answers he sought might be scribbled in the margins of his own frantic notes. He needed to know what Keegan had seen, needed to understand how they could avoid that future.

"It does matter," Jaron insisted. "Tell me what you've seen in your visions."

"No." Keegan took a firm stance. "Telling you would alter the future in ways I can't predict. It's dangerous."

Jaron huffed in frustration. "Is that why the predicted kidnapping victims were wrong?"

Keegan shot him a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"

"Someone not on your list was kidnapped," Jaron explained with a twinge of dread. "Apollo is wondering…"

"Wondering what?" Keegan pressed.

"If you did it on purpose."

Keegan's gaze bored into Jaron for a few seconds, then he asked, "What do you think?"

Jaron tried not to squirm under Keegan's intense scrutiny. He had nothing to hide, and yet it felt like the vampire was taking him apart with his eyes. "I don't think you did it on purpose."

"So you think I fucked up?"

This wasn't fair. Jaron couldn't win no matter what reply he gave.

After another second, though, Keegan released him from his examination with a soft smile, making Jaron feel like he had passed some sort of test. "You're not wrong to think I can fail," Keegan said. "Though I'll admit I didn't expect to be wrong about the victims. I'm not scheming or plotting anything right now."

'Not plotting anything right now .' That said a lot about the vampire.

Jaron chose not to focus on it.

"What went wrong?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Keegan said. "Maybe I got overconfident."

"Could you be missing something about your other vision as well?" Jaron suggested.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Keegan said, gesturing at the notes and star charts strewn all across the room.

Jaron picked up one of the star charts. "How does this help you?"

"Honestly? I'm not sure that it does, but I'm willing to grasp at straws." There was such an open and honest quality to his words that Jaron felt disarmed.

If only he knew what it was that scared Keegan so much…

His lack of information made him helpless.

"Shouldn't we be tackling this issue together?" he asked. "As a team?"

Keegan's lips drew into a thin line, which somehow made him appear even more tired. Jaron almost regretted that he'd asked, except that he'd had to. "No one can help me with this," Keegan said as if that was a fact.

Whatever 'this' was, Jaron hated it.

"So what do you expect me to do?" he asked. "Stay away? Because that's out of the question." He'd found his mate, and his dragon would never let him abandon Keegan, no matter what Keegan saw in his visions that was so horrible.

"I know you won't stay away." Keegan sighed, but there was no great emotion behind it. "I don't want you to stay away. I just need to find a solution for both our sakes."

"What kind of solution?" Jaron sat on the bed next to Keegan, half-tempted to reach out and draw his vampire into a hug. Keegan tried so hard to look like he could handle everything by himself, but Jaron knew that wasn't true.

"The event in my vision is fated to happen," Keegan said with grim confidence. "So I need to find a way to change fate."

Change fate…

Yeah… right.

"Is that all?" Jaron asked, faking easy confidence for his mate's sake.

"Yeah." Keegan gave him a weak smile. "Sometimes the future is written in stone."

"Stone can be smashed."

"Not easily."

Jaron puffed out his chest and unfurled his wings. "I'm a dragon, hear me roar."

The image he presented must have been so absurd that it got Keegan laughing.

Good.

"I don't care what fate says," Jaron insisted. "I'll face any obstacle with you."

"That's ironic."

"How so?"

"Because that's also fate's doing," Keegan said. "You want to be with me because we're 'fated mates'." He made air quotes around the words.

"Is that how vampires see it?" Jaron asked, genuinely curious, because that wasn't exactly what he'd been taught on the subject, and maybe he could get Keegan around to his way of thinking.

Keegan frowned at Jaron's question. "Is there another way to look at it?"

"Yes." Jaron shifted closer to Keegan on the bed, their thighs now touching. "A dragon's mate isn't chosen by fate. Not really."

"Oh?" Keegan made no effort to move away.

Jaron looked down at their thighs, organizing his thoughts. How to put into words a truth that was as old as his kind? "A dragon's mate is the other half of his soul, separated by the goddess a long, long time ago," he recited the stories he'd heard growing up. "If the two halves meet again, they cannot be kept apart, but not every dragon finds their mate. In fact, most dragons never do."

Keegan's gaze fixed on Jaron. "So, you're saying our meeting was more like a cosmic coincidence than fate?"

Jaron waved the question away. That wasn't the part that mattered. "I don't know if it was fate that led me to you, but I know it wasn't fate that made you my mate." He reached out, his fingers gently tracing the line of Keegan's jaw. "You would be my other half regardless."

"Is that so?"

"Yup." Jaron put both of his hands on Keegan's shoulders and pushed him backward until he lay on his bed. Then he climbed on top of him, pinning him to the mattress. He half expected Keegan to fight the treatment, but he didn't. Instead, he gazed back up at him with those piercing blue eyes that always seemed to see more than anyone else did, making Jaron's heart race as he looked down at the vampire, his mate, the missing piece of his soul. That moment, he wanted nothing more than to claim him, to make Keegan his in every way possible.

"I don't care about fate." Jaron leaned down, pressing his forehead against Keegan's. "I care about you."

"You don't know me."

"And yet my soul recognizes yours." Jaron leaned up and smiled his best smile, knowing it would disarm Keegan.

Keegan huffed. "You're being corny."

"Maybe, but I'm not wrong. You and me, we're meant to be together. You know it's true." He kissed the corner of Keegan's lips. "I care about you."

Keegan let out a shuddering breath, his eyes closing. For a few seconds, they stayed like that, frozen in time.

"I wish…" Keegan started, then paused. He opened his eyes, meeting Jaron's gaze with a look that spoke of all the longing he kept in his heart, all the things he hid from Jaron for reasons Jaron could not understand.

"Tell me," Jaron urged. "What do you wish?"

Keegan smiled at him then, but there was a sadness to the curve of his lips. "I wish our story could end happily."

Jaron swallowed hard at the weight behind those words. This was more than Keegan had been willing to share so far. He'd seen some kind of terrible ending for them—and no way to avoid the tragedy.

No wonder he was so reluctant to give in to their connection.

But Jaron refused to surrender. "How far away is our ending?"

"I'm not sure," Keegan admitted.

"Days, months, years?" Jaron prompted.

Keegan hesitated. "Impossible to tell."

"In that case," Jaron leaned close to press a gentle kiss to Keegan's neck, breathing in the scent of him, "shouldn't we make the most of the time we do have?"

Keegan's hands slid over his shoulders and into his hair. "I don't?—"

Before Keegan could finish that sentence, Jaron kissed him, effectively shutting him up. Whatever Keegan had been planning on saying, Jaron knew he wouldn't want to hear it. So what if this was going to end badly? Was that reason enough never to have it in the first place? Never to have each other?

No. No, it wasn't.

It didn't matter that he wasn't going to get a fairy tale ending. He'd never expected one.

Even if he only got to spend a few days with his true mate, that already made him luckier than he'd ever thought he would be. Luckier than most other dragons out there.

Oh how they'd laughed at him on the playground, the little dragon who couldn't breathe fire. 'Not a real dragon,' they'd called him. Well, who was laughing now, huh? He had something they would never have. He'd found his other half.

He wouldn't give that up for anything, no matter the consequences.

"Let's not worry about the ending," he murmured against Keegan's lips, trailing kisses over his chin and jaw until he reached his ear. "Let's focus on the now."

Keegan let out a shuddering breath. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Jaron nipped at his earlobe. "Sure I do," he whispered. "Let me show you." If Keegan just gave him the slightest opportunity, Jaron would claim him, show him that he wasn't afraid of anything. He wasn't going to back down.

"Please," he breathed against Keegan's skin, pressing the hard bulge in his pants against Keegan's thigh.

"Jaron… No." Keegan pushed at Jaron's shoulder, and Jaron reluctantly moved back to give him space.

A frustrated sigh lodged itself in his throat, only overshadowed by the growl that also wanted to escape. His inner dragon was getting increasingly agitated at being rejected by his own mate.

Jaron took a deep breath, fighting his instincts as best he could while Keegan got up and sorted his notes as if those were important now.

Urge to growl: rising.

Keegan bent low, his red hair falling into his face as he showed off his ass.

Jaron fought the temptation to nail Keegan to the floor and fuck him right on top of those stupid notes.

He was a civilized dragon. He would not let himself be ruled by base instincts. He would not.

He bit the inside of his lip hard enough to make it bleed.

"I can't do this now," Keegan said, not looking at him.

Something inside of Jaron softened. "It's alright," he managed to squeeze out past the lump in his throat. He got up from the bed and helped Keegan pick up some of his papers to busy himself.

Finally, Keegan turned to Jaron. "I know this must be difficult for you."

Difficult was an understatement.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I want you more than anything."

An expression of desire flashed across Keegan's features, then he turned away again to put his notes in order. "I'll find a way," he said. "I promise you."

"To avoid the bad ending?"

Keegan's lips thinned. "Yeah."

There was still something he wasn't sharing, something important. But Jaron was starting to understand that he wasn't going to get anywhere by trying to push Keegan.

This was not a man who could be pushed.

"You might be able to think more clearly if you got some sleep first," Jaron said.

"I'll consider it."

Right.

Jaron grabbed the bag he'd brought and pulled the blue scarf out of it while Keegan wasn't looking, busy with some papers on his desk. Jaron stepped up to him and loosely wrapped the scarf around his vampire's neck.

Keegan was startled by the contact before his gaze fell on the scarf. "You're giving me this now?"

What an odd question to ask. Maybe not so odd from Keegan. "Have you seen it before?"

"In a vision." Keegan touched the soft material of the scarf. "You got this from the witch you live with."

Jaron had never told Keegan about Malkira, but he wasn't surprised the seer knew anyway.

"I knew you were going to give this to me," Keegan said, running his fingers over the wool. "I just hadn't expected it to be so soon. This thing means a lot to you."

"It does," Jaron conceded. "But so do you." He lightly tugged on the scarf to bring Keegan closer. "You're my other half," he murmured, brushing his lips against Keegan's. "Anything I own is yours. Besides," he drew back a little, "it's got protective power. I don't know how much help it'll be, but it might come in handy."

Keegan toyed with the material. "This is enchanted?"

So he hadn't known that much. Jaron grinned. "Yup."

"To keep me safe, huh?" There was something odd about the way he said that, as if the sentiment amused him and made him sad at the same time.

Jaron didn't understand, but he was starting to accept that he would never understand everything Keegan said or did. He'd drive himself mad trying. "Do you like it?" he asked instead of trying to dig deeper.

Keegan gave him a smile that warmed his heart. "I love it."

Jaron was tempted to kiss his vampire again, but just when he was about to go for it, his phone rang in his pocket.

"You should get that," Keegan said.

With a frustrated groan, Jaron pulled back and fished his phone out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen and saw Malkira's name. He couldn't ignore her call.

"Hey," he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"Jaron, I'm sorry to bother you, but could you come home? We have a bit of a situation here." Malkira sounded apologetic, but there was an undercurrent of tension in her voice.

"What's wrong?" Jaron asked, his brow furrowing.

"Your brother is here. Casca."

Jaron's eyes widened. "What's he doing there?"

"He seems a bit upset. I think it would be best if you came home to talk to him."

Jaron sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Alright, I'll be there soon."

He ended the call and turned to Keegan, who was watching him with a curious expression. "I have to go," Jaron said. "Family emergency."

Keegan nodded. "Go, talk to your brother."

Jaron was about to ask how Keegan knew about Casca but he caught himself before the words could slip out of his mouth. "Do you know why Casca's upset?" he asked instead.

Keegan looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing his answer. "It's about your parents," he said in the end.

Well, that was helpful.

"He'll be fine," Keegan added, as if he could see that he'd worried Jaron. "He's got you."

"Right."

"Go home," Keegan said. "I'll make another attempt at figuring out the kidnappings while you're gone."

Jaron didn't like that idea. It was good that Keegan wanted to make up for his mistakes, but there was no guarantee that he would get it right if he looked again, and every guarantee that the exercise would exhaust him more. "You're going to fall over if you keep pushing yourself."

Keegan waved off his concern. "I'm sturdier than I look."

Jaron shook his head at the vampire, but what more could he say? "I'll be back later. Reserve at least some energy for me, will you?"

Keegan laughed. "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

"You don't think I'll be back tonight?"

Keegan tilted his head at him. "Maybe you will. You tend to surprise me."

"I like surprising you." To underline his words, Jaron did go in for another kiss. He kept it short and sweet because he didn't want to be carried away while his brother might need him, but it was worth it for the look on Keegan's face, as if Keegan might have wanted to keep him from leaving after all.

Jaron grinned at him. "See you later."