Dragon Guardian (Drakins of Wyrmarach) (23 page)

Izzy had executed a curative to heal Kiernan’s dragon. She’d
burned frightening sums of therapeutic energy performing the healing. Caleb had
to wonder if there was something more between the two of them than gratitude
for Izzy’s medicinal intervention.

Ethan stood next to the double chair looking down at Wren
sleep. She curled on her side cuddling the sword like a body pillow. He had
insisted on bringing a small couch in for Wren to lay on when she wouldn’t
leave and go to a real bed.

Caleb imagined what her soft hair felt like. His brother
reached down and brushed a strand off of her face. “We’ve screwed up pretty bad
bro, haven’t we?”

Ethan nodded his head in a short jerk that communicated the
loss he felt.

Caleb tasted the bitter tang of the deep sorrow they shared.
“Do you think she will forgive us?”

“Words can’t be taken back once they’re said.”
 
Ethan’s voice sounded heavy with fatigue and
sadness. “The important thing is keeping her safe and supporting her destiny as
Dragon Guardian. That’s all that matters right now.”

Caleb wanted to touch her so bad but was afraid he would wake
her. He couldn’t face her, knowing their harsh angry words had pierced her with
the sharpness of arrows destroying their bond before it had a chance.

She groaned and nuzzled against Ethan’s hand. Caleb wished it
was his hand. He paused to memorize the lines of her face in the shadowed light
while she slept. She seemed too ethereal to be real.

He put his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out to
touch her. One touch wouldn’t be enough and he didn’t possess sufficient
control where she was concerned.

Thunder boomed and rumbled with a loud drum rolling echo,
loud enough to vibrate the glass windows. Kiernan shifted uneasily rattling his
wings at the noise.

Ethan mouthed,
let’s do
this.
Caleb could have spent the rest of his life watching her sleep and
wishing he could get back the love they’d damaged with their anger. He nodded
and crept to Ethan’s side.

They pulled together tuning into the eddy of energy filling
the room, searching, just as they had that morning in front of Wren’s store,
struggling to find the patterns to follow.

Caleb sifted through the possible threads, examining them for
meaning. Precognition began to unfold the scene for both of them to view. The
power drew them to the middle of the Victorian ballroom and revealed the future.
After all they’d done, everything they’d tried, nothing could stop the events
from their conclusion.

Kiernan would die.

A violent chain of dragon screams
erupted in
the pitch blackness of night. Phaux then released a piteous groan that stopped
mid moan.

Wren woke, the sense of other surged within her, sharing her
psyche and moving her toward the animal. Izzy jumped from the floor where she’d
fallen to rush to him.

Out of the corner of Wren’s eye she noticed Maxwell charge
into the makeshift dragon hospital. “What is the meaning of this?” He shouted.
No one paid any attention to his question.

 
Something was
drastically wrong. Wren looked at Izzy who frowned at the hulking dragon. The
room was too quiet, too still. The sense of other moved Wren to follow Izzy to
the dragon’s massive head. Izzy paled and reached out to the beast.

“No, No. Oh Goddess no. He’s not breathing. She felt for a
pulse, shaking her head when she didn’t find one.”

The beast’s lungs didn’t move the massive hulk with each
breath. The stillness of a life simply shut off.

Izzy’s shocked disbelief shook Wren. “The damage was worse
than I thought. I should have insisted sooner he stay for healing.” When their
eyes met, Izzy unraveled, sobbing her loss in Wren’s shoulder.

She hugged her grieving friend.

“I did all I could, Wren. I did all I could.”

Caleb and Ethan looked at the floor as if waiting for the
women to accept the inevitable loss.

“I know Izzy. I know.” How would Izzy go on? So much had rested
on Kiernan’s recovery. All the potential of this warrior, just ended?

The flare of indignation sparked through Wren. This wasn’t
the way things were supposed to be. Her sword warmed in her hand. The weight of
infinite changes in the universe because Kiernan wouldn’t be present to do the
many things he was supposed to do, assaulted Wren’s consciousness.

“This is totally unacceptable. I told you the Goddess wasn’t
finished with you yet and I meant it.”
 
Wren followed the cues that came from beyond
herself
instructing her actions. The broad blade tingled in her grasp, sparkling with
an inner fire.

Wren then turned to the noble dragon. Wickedness had robbed
him of life. Goddess had a continued need of his service. She placed the tip of
the blade on the wide forehead before her, closing her eyes she saw a bright
trail of energy unraveling like a braided cord that had lost its fastener. One
of the thick ropes had black strings binding it in looped knots. It didn’t look
right.

She had to act quickly, watching as the glowing binding
unbraided more. Wren tried but the threads slipped out of her metaphysical
hands. She needed help. More of the intricate pattern dissolved before her
eyes.

“STOP.”
She shouted and the glowing
fibers froze in place. She reached unsuccessfully for them again. There was
a blackness
in her awareness that kept her from exercising
the power she needed. What was that barrier? Caleb and Ethan, the place where
their thoughts and energy had been and was now blocked acted like a loadstone
to her magic.

Wren thrust power through the barrier with a ruthless stab
piercing Caleb with a swift slice opening the invisible lines of communication
that had been clogged with misunderstandings between them.

Focus
she ordered
Caleb. The backlash of her effort grabbed Ethan, demolishing the shield he
helped construct between them.

Anchor us
, she
commanded. She examined their incredulous appraisal of the power she’d used to
blow their mental doors open. They whispered,
Wren, It’s too late
.

Too bad, I need you NOW
.
She demanded their metaphysical chi energy and they gave it without reserve.
Wren wrapped the two men into a bond with her. She used their power to augment
her own and examined the metaphysical rope before her again.

She didn’t have time to sever the black threads. She grabbed
the lines with the ethereal hands of her psi-energy through the prism of the
sword and pulled the glowing cable, weaving the strands of filament back into
their intricate design. A thick black tar substance coated some of the strands
causing them to slip through her fingers. There were dark blue threads so
tangled with the black slime that she couldn’t grasp them either. How important
were they? A motherly voice whispered to her.

Yes, you’ve done well
my
daughter,
h
ealing
his soul is the task for another. What we will do is sufficient.

Sweat broke out on her forehead stinging her closed eyes,
running in threaded trails down her sides. The
other
calmed and reassured her that the pattern she wove was true.
Ethan and Caleb’s vitality bolstered her. She kept twisting, braiding until the
Goddess within her nodded and smiled in satisfaction.

Good, place the rope
right there.
The Goddess instructed and she complied.

The dragon’s psychic voice rumbled in her mind.
Phaux is no more, I am now Sorrow.

Yes, the darkness in his fractured soul left him with much
sorrow. Yet, she knew it wouldn’t be forever.
I accept you Sorrow. You will become Strength when your soul is healed.
He was alive and yet somehow miraculously reborn with a new dragon chi that had
entrusted her with his sacred name.

I am as I ever was.
 
The weariness echoed in his mental voice.

She felt the dragon moving beneath her hands and opened her
eyes. Izzy was staring at her aghast. Maxwell was by Izzy’s side dressed in
ridiculous pajamas with cars on them, more suited for a ten year old. Rhys and
Haydn stood just inside the entrance; obvious from their look of reverenced
incredulity they’d seen the entire event. Caleb and Ethan flanked her, their
expressions unreadable.

A slight edge of wonder filled Caleb’s voice. “You changed
the course of events we’d witnessed as happening in a precognition, again. How
do you do that?”

“Follow me.” Time for a settlement between Wren and these two
slightly misogynistic dragon shifters, if they were going to stay in her life
and in her head there were going to be some new rules.

≽
∞
≼

Wren had experienced
the twin’s distress over the breach separating them when she’d merged into rapport
to draw on their power for healing Kiernan. She’d not had the time to spare for
niceties when she’d grabbed them. Now she considered what she’d seen and felt
in their psyche connection.

They followed her through the house to the large family room.
Extra furniture from the ballroom was stacked around but at least they had the
guise of privacy. She sighed wearily, had it been only last evening that she
and Izzy had relaxed here?

“You weren’t listening to me. I needed your help and you
didn’t consider that I was a capable adult. You treat me like I’m this fragile
porcelain doll that has to be bubble wrapped and cushioned from everything. You
don’t give me credit for the ability to think and act with any level of
intelligence.

‘You were quick to tell me that you weren’t going to have a
bond with someone who wore the skin of another dragon. Did you think for even a
moment how that would make me
feel
?” Ethan and Caleb
at least had the decency to look chastised, while they shrugged and nodded to
punctuate what she was telling them.

“No you didn’t. You’re both always making decisions without
even the briefest consideration for me, ordering me around and hollering at me
when I don’t do things to suit you. Even though I’m stumbling into this not
knowing half of what I should know.

‘You stormed into my life, telling me your outlandish story.
I was supposed to believe you at face value and take it all in stride. Well,
I’ve got news for you. As one-hundred and twelve year old dragons you should
know better.

‘I’m pissed and things are going to change.” She was on a
roll now and didn’t even pause for them to answer her. She had them both backed
up against the wall while she ranted and gestured with her sword. They’d better
be listening.

“I want you both. But I need a relationship where I and my
mates.” The word sounded a little strange on her tongue but she didn’t have a
different one that would conceptualize the level of intimacy she desired.
“…are…are working together, trusting each other, relying on each other,
building something together.”

“Am I your Queen and mate or am I a decoration to parade in
front of your people as an empty figurehead? I want an equal partnership with
respect and thoughtfulness. If you can’t provide that you’d be better off
marrying those two girls you mother has ready to hook you up with because I
don’t think you’d be very good kings anyway.” That statement seemed at least to
set Ethan off to say something.

Wren almost laughed as Caleb nudged him with a sharp jab from
his elbow and said, s
hut the fuck up.

But
she...

I don’t care, shut it.
Now is not the time to argue with the woman with the sword-- especially when
she is right, and you know she is.

She lowered the blade and leaned it against the couch. After
what happened last time she was pissed with them, maybe it was better to set
the thing down.

Caleb took her right hand and knelt, turning her palm to his
lips. Ethan did the same on her left, with a tender, apologetic murmured kiss
to her palm.
“Our Queen.”

Caleb echoed “and Our Guardian.” They continued interweaving
their voices back and forth together as they spoke, their words forming a
pledge and a promise. She opened herself to feel the intensity of their
declaration on a psi-level.

“All we have, all we can be is yours if you will have us. We
have looked for you longer than you can imagine. Help us to be mates worthy of
you. We pledge our vow to do all we can to struggle to be the dragons you
deserve. Please forgive the beasts that we are. Give us a chance to be the kind
of males you need and Goddess
help
us, we will.”

Their yearning desire to have the kind of relationship she
described throbbed through the link between them. She leaned forward bringing
her lips to Ethan’s. His mouth devoured hers hungrily matching the starving need
she radiated-- breaking the kiss to claim Caleb’s lip so as to be understood he
was hers too. Nothing was more important than the connection they shared. She
accepted that now and knew what to do as she reached for more.

≽
∞
≼

Caleb and Ethan stood
pulling Wren into their arms. Her mind latched onto Caleb’s psychic being and
pulled the twins combined metaphysical power. They would not deny her anything
she needed. Ethan and Caleb still shared the connection that had allowed them
to work silently. Each man gave, responded to her draw as if no other option
existed.

Their joined awareness tumbled down into her mind-- memories,
his, hers, theirs, flashes of joy over common emotions, thoughts, experiences.
The tidal wave of sensation swamped Caleb as the trio merged. Seconds passed
like minutes, they became one mind, building speed, faster and faster, until a
blur of combined moments, combined lives, combined souls all connected.

The structure of their world
changed,
realigned as if three magnets pulled together with a strong snap, echoed by a
crisp pop deep inside each of their brains, followed by a clarity that made
their entire existence up to this point, seem like a faded approximation of
living.

The shared bonding swept away mind barriers and surrounded
the men with the gentleness of her spirit. Three individual lives, melded to
begin a shared existence as mates.

A sliver of each other’s essence remained, exchanged in the
moment with the potential of linking them together forever. The lightness of
spring and the promised passion of a summer storm made a place in each man’s
soul and called it hers.

The savory extract of Ethan’s steadfast, earthy nature
remained as a solid depth next to the woman’s. Caleb’s strong spiritual focus
settled in Wren and Ethan an aspect of being both spontaneous and impetuous.

Wren absorbed the men’s warrior loyalty and fierce courage to
face any challenge and finish any task without shirking no matter how hard.
Their essence layered onto a core strength she’d always possessed but hadn’t
allowed
herself
to exercise, one of leadership and
power.

An equal exchange, a giving and a taking, as quick as the
claiming began, the experience ended.

Ethan punched his breath out in a heavy exhale. “Fuck, yeah.”

≽
∞
≼

Thoughts rattled
around
in Caleb’s
head,
left him unable to form
words. He’d often wondered how the bonding would happen for them, when or
if
the time came. How often he’d begged
for it to be a triad joining. Nothing he’d imagined could ever compare with the
reality.

How could he have lived this long without realizing his life
was missing something, someone? No, missing her. The woman’s psyche claimed
them, owned them and the change was irrevocable. Her presence deepened the
intensity of bond with his brother.

When he drew back, his twin’s eyes caught and held his,
revealing a wildness that seemed barely controlled as Ethan spoke in Caleb’s
mind.
The entire bonding focused through
your chi.
You
filtered it all. She claimed us…
together.

Feeling Ethan’s calm composure break apart struck Caleb as
extraordinary. The three of them clung together like shipwreck victims tossed
adrift at sea. Caleb, lightheaded, grappled for balance, hugging himself closer
to Wren and Ethan.