Dragon Guardian (Drakins of Wyrmarach) (21 page)

Kiernan studied her
as Wren
stepped closer to allow Maxwell to finger the skin and look at it under
the same magnifying glass. He spoke so neutrally as if his words had no further
importance than what cook might serve for dinner. “You are aware of the
tradition of females being clothed by the skin, a sidhartha of their chosen
mates not by any random male skin offered?”

Wren blushed. “I am not of your kind and I didn’t know this
was dragon skin.”
 
She plucked at the
wrap with her fingers. “I was just trying to cover up after I got pulled
through the portal. If you could help me get it off, I’d appreciate it very
much.”
 
Yes, they’d established that Wren
had accidently triggered a portal. Something about Kiernan’s crisis had pulled
her to his location.

The little man cleared his throat with a “humharumph. There
is no
coming off
. Once you’ve taken
the sidhartha it is yours forever. Normally it is a symbolic small piece of
dragon exoderm that your body uses for minor covering. Did this absorb into
your skin and disappear then return?”

“No
its
always been like this,
wrapped around me. It never disappeared.”

“Harrumph, quite extraordinary, perhaps your body hasn’t
really received it yet. It is quite unusual to have such a large offering to
work with. You can learn to use it. Perhaps if the Goddess accepts your mating
to another, his
skin.
. .ah can be added to supplement
this one.”

“So I’m stuck like this until I mate a dragon?”

Ethan glared, advancing on the dwarf. “I’ll not have a mate
clothed in the fucking,
sidhartha
of this rogue,”
flinging his arm toward Kiernan to emphasize his anger. Caleb pushed around the
couch to get to his brother. Maxwell scurried from Wren trying to get the desk
between himself and the Enforcers.

Wren’s face became a mask of stricken grief. She sat stiff in
the straight back upholstered chair. Kiernan didn’t have to guess what Ethan’s
words did to her. He also noticed that Ethan was oblivious to the pain he
caused. Couldn’t he feel her bleed emotionally at the words,
I’ll not have a mate…?

Wren stood to go. “I’m sorry, I don’t want this. I don’t
understand what you expect from me but I just want to go home. I have a
business to run.”

“I’m very sorry Lady Wren but you are not permitted to leave.
Your store will be taken care of. Isobeau will arrange staffing.”

Caleb and Ethan had him cornered behind the heavy walnut
desk. “She will leave if she wishes to go and you will not stop her.”

Maxwell’s voice had risen to an undignified squeak. “You are
supposed to be guarding that rogue.”

Kiernan heard the door open and the room filled with blessed
warmth as if the sun itself had finally risen to light his darkness. He watched
the woman carefully close the door and turn to face the room. A line of
Watchers followed her in blocking anyone’s exit. All activity ceased.

She moved away from her escort, keeping her eyes down she
searched the floor. “Kiernan is not a rogue. I reported him when he showed an
inordinate interest in Wren, a woman I suspected of being important to the
kingdom. His attention threatened to expose her and I needed his access to her
blocked.

“So, I reported him. The only thing he may be guilty of is
being on this side of the dimension instead of attending to his duties in
Wyrmarach. It’s not for me to say if those very same duties brought him here. I
knew he was cunning enough to go into hiding and evade the Enforcers. I didn’t
realize he had been taken by an enemy.”

This woman that had brought him the heat he never expected to
feel ever again was the one responsible for his losing everything that mattered
in his life. In the stunned silence filling the room, he launched himself on
her before anyone could react.

He pushed her back against the wall with his hand across her
throat, pinning her to the door.
“Yoouu.”
He hissed in
her ear. She accepted his attack passively, her eyes still hooded. Caleb and
Ethan roared and surged toward him.

Kiernan wrenched around holding her in front of his body.
“She took
everything
from me. She
ruined my life.”
 
He held Caleb and Ethan
back “Take another step and I’ll snap her neck.” Wren motioned them back with
an urgent wave of her hand.

Psi-energy tingled across his skin seeking entrance to join
with his. He blocked the power questing for him. No one in this room was going
to manipulate him. He shook his head trying to dispel the images seeking his
mind, holding the woman against him.

Her heat became a kernel lodged in his chest trying to expand
to drive the cold from his body. He closed his eyes, turning his face into her
hair. Breathing deeply he inhaled her exquisite feminine scent.

Her arousal hiding in the light aroma of citrus and ginger
caught him by surprise. She remained quiet in his arms submissive to his will
over her life or death as much as she was aroused by his power over her. This
was impossible, a trick.

Wren’s voice broke through his revere. “Kiernan, listen to
me, don’t do this.”

She stood right in front of him. Had he checked out so far
that he didn’t notice her moving in on him? A detail like that could get a man
killed. She lowered her voice.

“You don’t really want to hurt her. Let her go. She isn’t the
one,
Kiernan,
Ron is the one who hurt you, Not Izzy.
She didn’t know what Ron would do to you. She was trying to protect me.”

Wren was right. He had never hurt a woman in his life. Life
that he fought so desperately to hold onto through all the torturous hell he’d
experienced. What had Wren called her? Izzy, what kind of name for a woman was
Iz?
 
Izzy
 
Ah
, Isobeau. Why had she not struggled
and blocked his attack? He felt her sinewy muscles. She had the build of an
athlete and could have made a defensive attempt.

She fit perfectly to the contours of his body. Her warmth
enveloped him. “E-sa-bow” he rolled the name off his lips without realizing he
had spoken out loud until he felt her gasp.

Had he lost his mind?
I
am Sorrow. I am Strength. You are
Sigh
.

The woman’s body molded more to his, a perfect softness to
his hard muscular frame. “Esabow do you relinquish your life so easily?”

I trust you,
drifted to him on a psychic wavelength.

 
He pulled his hands
away from the girl as if her heat burnt him. He retreated to the corner of the
couch, ice settling around him once again. He wasn’t worthy of anyone’s trust.

He needed to get away from all of them before he hurt
someone. He’d get to the mountains, hide out and heal. He’d pick up a bug-out pack
of supplies he had stashed at his apartment and then be gone. He may have been
worthy at one time, now he was simply a tool, a tool for killing and an
unstable one at that. So, keep the damn prophecy to
himself
and get the hell outta dodge.

≽
∞
≼

Crisis averted
Wren hoped everyone would freaking calm down. Another twenty minutes of Maxwell
studying her like a bug and she knew this wasn’t going to end well.

Maxwell may have drawn confidence from his men in the room.
“Lady Cathwren, you are being hunted and for now, you are under the protection
of the Watchers for your safety. The Mane’tung will be released from
responsibility for your care and to return to their duty.

Ethan drew his sword prepared to fight their way out of the
room. “Wren is our duty. No one takes her from us.”

Ethan and Caleb moved forward on either side of her.

 
Caleb drew his dual
blades from sheaths on his back as he growled. “We came here for your
assistance. You will not take her from us.”

Caleb took her arm and pulled her behind his body. “We’re
leaving.” Ethan stepped in beside her.

She felt Kiernan slide off the couch to stand behind her,
ready to act on her behalf. Five minutes ago her mates and Kiernan had gone
against each other. Now they banded together against a common enemy.

There were things the Goddess had told her, the thing about
choosing her inner circle well. Maybe this mark on Kiernan had something to do
with that. Wren had distinctly felt power around her when she’d touched him.
The guys had seen it. Why weren’t they telling the little man what she’d
said?
 
Gram’s voice spoke out of a
memory.
You can’t trust everyone you
meet.

Watchers lined the door, armed with knives and swords. Caleb
and Ethan were completely out numbered. Kiernan was in no shape to fight. Wren
groaned in frustration. Her men had a one track mind.

They didn’t want her anymore but they still held onto her
like a prize they refused to give up on principle. She had to do something.
Izzy stepped forward between the two groups. “Caleb, Ethan we are not trying to
take her we are trying to protect her. We have the resources to keep her safe.”

Ethan growled. “We’ll protect her.”

Izzy shook her head. “Ethan, if you are spending all your
time guarding Wren you won’t have the time to search out her enemy and end this.
Let us protect her so you can hunt.”
 
Wren recognized the logic in what Izzy was saying. They were definitely
at a stand-off. She felt for Caleb and Ethan with her thoughts. The wall they
had thrown up remained intact.

When Izzy didn’t get a response she continued. “Until the
woman claims you and our Goddess sanctions your bond with marks, you have no
mate authority over Wren. Your duty is elsewhere.”

Ethan couldn’t be convinced. “We trusted you.
Now, this?
It’s wrong to separate
us,
we were moments from claiming before all this. You know that.”

Wren sent a tendril of thought toward Ethan and Caleb to
batter on the wall between them.
Hey. I
want to get out of here but the odds don’t look too good with all these armed
soldiers
. She couldn’t penetrate the blockade between her thoughts and
theirs. Their mental passageway was a stone shield.

They weren’t using good sense. It was up to her to keep them
safe. Their pride would block them from giving in to the reasonable request
Izzy offered.
Unless, Wren took action to end the
confrontation.
She couldn’t think about the possibility that her
solution would drive Caleb and Ethan farther from her.

“I want to stay here with Izzy for a while.”
 
She stepped toward her friend and away from
her lovers. “I’ll stay with the
Watchers,
just put
your weapons away.”

Caleb’s cutting words laced with sarcasm, twisted in her
sharper than a knife. “I guess The Guardian has
chosen,
an army of Watchers as trump. I’m outta here.”

Wren watched Ethan and Caleb turn to leave without even a
glance in her direction. She wanted to hold them close and tell them to watch
out for each other and come back to her, safe. But she was mad at them.

A dull ache chewed inside her, fighting to erupt in a scream.
She bit her tongue knowing once she let the shriek claw its’ way up her throat
there wouldn’t be a way to contain the voice of her grief.

They had retreated to Kiernan’s
apartment,
mostly because they didn’t want to take him to Wren’s, it didn’t feel right to
split up, so naturally they followed him to his place. The confines of his
small apartment closed in on Kiernan with Ethan and Caleb taking up space
planted in his kitchen.

Kiernan hated his part in accidently disrupting the age old
mating customs of his race between Wren and these males. Kiernan owed Wren. He
had wanted her himself, ached for her, and hoped that the two of them had a
future together. His effort focusing on her had actually helped keep him alive.

He felt an overpowering protectiveness for her. However, he
had a hard on for the dark haired healer, Isobeau. If a paring were occurring
between he and Wren it would not be possible to think of another woman much
less have one so solid in his memory that he couldn’t forget her. Thanks to the
Goddess above he wasn’t mated. He was screwed up enough without that
complication in his life. No, it was more a curiosity for what color the
woman’s eyes were and how she warmed him. After being held for six months he
just needed a night of good hard fucking to help him get his head together.

He slipped his fingers beneath his jeans into the small
pocket the size of a sim chip in his sidhartha. He’d ditched his phone when he
was captured but salvaged the brains contained on the sim chip. Sometimes
phones were a casualty of battle. He pulled open the kitchen drawer retrieving
a spare phone to house the chip. For now the spare would get him back on line
and reconnected.

Caleb and Ethan filled up his small kitchen. They hadn’t
spoken a word since separating from Wren. They were a sorry pussy whipped pair.
It was discouraging to see two vital strong warriors brought so low by a woman.

Despair laced Ethan’s voice as he sat with his head in his
hands resting his elbows on the table. “Well if that don’t beat all fucking
hell, she left us.”

Caleb paced back and forth across the small kitchen area.
“What did you expect with you going all demanding on her
ass.
You talk to her like she’s baggage. You didn’t give her a way out.”

“Give
her
a way
out.
I
didn’t have a way out. She fucking
put her mark on that beast.”
 
Gesturing
toward Kiernan, “Our bed is full enough without bringing home every stray rogue
she comes across. Plus now his stink is all over her. She doesn’t listen. If
she’d have fucking stayed put like I told her, none of this would have
happened.”

Caleb stopped in the middle of the floor, squaring off
against his brother. “First off, his
stink
isn’t that bad once you mix it with Wren’s scent, so get over it. And second,
it’s,” He gestured furiously between them. “--our mark she put on that beast
and lastly, now the Watchers have taken her so you don’t have to worry about it
anymore, anyway, do you?”

Ethan reached a critical mass of pissed off. “Not worry about
it, not worry about it, our mate chose to fucking go with those Watchers and
we’re fucking stuck here with him. I don’t care how she fucking marked him,
he’s not our mate.”

Kiernan opened the fridge. “Whoever said the old cliché’ two
heads were better than one, obviously never met you two. You’re both morons.
And, just for the record, I’m not interested in becoming fuck buddies with
either on one of you.”

Ethan turned toward him. “Oh, just give me a reason to take
some of this pissed off ‘tude out on your sorry ass.”
 
Caleb held him back from launching over the
table at Kiernan. “You useless piece of crap, we want our fe-male, no man love
interests here a-tall.”

 
“Yea, well, I didn’t
ask you to follow me home.” He handed each of them a cold beer. “Here. Think
for a minute.”

 
Ethan settled back
into the chair.

Maybe Kiernan could lead them to where they needed to be
spending their energies. “Why did she volunteer to go with the Watchers?”
 
Kiernan stopped talking to take a long swig
on the bottle draining half of it-- wonderful, cold beer, nectar of the
Goddess.

Ethan took a pull off the long neck.
“Because
she chose the strength of their numbers over the two of us.”

Kiernan smiled. “Oh, so she is a manipulating female, only in
this for the power she can command. Well you’re better off without her.” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Me, on the other hand, I’m all into power hungry
conniving women.”

That brought Ethan off the kitchen chair sending it flying
into the wall while Kiernan took another sip of beer-- nothing like good cold
beer.

Caleb,
blocked Ethan’s path while he
tried to shoulder over or past him.

“Wren is not like that. You just shut the fuck up. I’ll take
your head if you talk about her that way again. Fuck, maybe I’ll take your head
because you irritate the crap outta me.”

Kiernan hoped Caleb could contain his brother. He sat his
beer down on the counter. “Didn’t you pick up any of her emotions through your
shared psi-bond?”

Caleb shook his head. “We blocked the connection to her when
she showed up in your skin and had apparently placed her brand on you. We had no
way of knowing it didn’t represent a mating mark. Now, we’re not able to hear
her.”

Kiernan took time to think, as he picked up the beer, drained
the rest of the bottle and pitched the empty in the trash. Beer and beef he had
missed the most.

He opened the freezer to pull out steaks. Thank the Goddess
he’d made good investments and arranged automatic bill pay to keep his
utilities on and money flowing while he was away. He had originally set up the
system for long vacations with blonde beauties.

One steak, just for him, the two clods drinking his beer
could fend for themselves. He already felt like he’d taken them to
raise
, emotionally, with their female problems.

Thank the Goddess he was exempt from the meddling of women.
The heavy meat would probably make him sick after being starved for so long. He
set the microwave to thaw before he spoke.

“Okay you dumb shits, then tell me again, why would she
choose to go with over a dozen
heavily
armed
Watchers instead of you two?”

He opened the fridge to get another beer, twisting the cap
off.

“If you were so stupid to close the door to your mate’s
thoughts you’ll have to figure her out the hard way, like human males do.”

He leaned back against the counter, hands in his pockets.
They couldn’t understand the simple motivation which he found completely
obvious.

The realization dawned on them slowly. Ethan was the first to
speak. “Fucking hell, she thought she was protecting us.”

Caleb put his head in his hands.
“Oh, hell
no.
What I said to her.”

“Yep.”
Kiernan lifted the bottle to
his lips. “I believe you’re referring to the verbal knife blade in the back of
your protective mate. But hey, don’t take my word for it. They say I’m not
quite functioning in reality. So what are you going to do about it?”
 
Perhaps there was hope for the human shifter
race after all.

Neither paused before answering
simultaneously.
“We’re going to fucking get her back.”

So much for hope, for the future of the
race.
“Yeah, seeing as how things turned out earlier, that’s probably a
workable plan.”

“Fuck, this is going to be a bitch to make right.”

A noise from below on the street echoed through the glass of
the windows.
“Boom Boom Chucka Boom Boom Boom.”

Down on the street a car at the stop light pounded a low
throbbing bass beat loud enough to rattle the windows. Damn.

His next lucid moment found him with his cheek ground into
the hard plastic of the microwave over the stove. The defrost cycle ended with
a ding. A hard muscular arm gripped him around the neck and twisted his up
behind him in a hold that was both restraining and fairly painful. He couldn’t
make words form in his head.

Ethan leaned close to his ear speaking slow and distinctly.
“Drop.
The.
Bottle.”

Kiernan felt the beer held by the neck in his free hand. He
opened his fingers to let the bottle fall with a clatter to the floor. What the
hell had happened?

Ethan kicked the container away from them, glass crunching
under his feet. “You seem to be back with us so, I’m going to let you go, and
you’d better not come around swinging or the next time I’ll break your arm.”

He then released his hold and stepped back. Kiernan turned
around to find his kitchen in chaos. The table was turned over, chairs strewn
around the room. Glass was shattered on the floor.

Caleb held a dish towel to his forehead putting pressure on
what was evidently a gash from the volume of blood all over him and the cloth.
Ethan had a purple bruise already swelling his left eye shut and blood leaking
down his chin from a lip cut.

Kiernan couldn’t really figure out what had transpired in the
room so he stood staring and trying to think.

“What you didn’t like the music?”
 
Caleb pulled the towel away from his head to
look at the blood soaked mess. “Seven hells, you clocked me with a beer
bottle.”

Kiernan still couldn’t form words. He was responsible for
this destruction? Pain shredded him like something was clawing its way out
through his vitals.

Ethan was staring at him intently. “I think we’d better get
on back to the Watchers. If I remember right, your dragon needs a wicked bit of
healing that you should have tended to before now.”

Kiernan looked toward the door. He needed to beat it to the
back country. That was the safest course of action at this point. Something in
his head was totally fucked up.

Caleb seemed to read his intent. “You don’t want to do that.
We’d just have to come after you and that would leave Wren unprotected.”

Great, take Phaux back to
see the devastation he could unleash on the innocents.