Dragon's Melody (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

“H
olding her breath would have been a disaster, as it turned out. Some part of her kept hoping over the next few days that one or the other of them would show up on her mother’s doorstep and confess his love, begging her to marry him.
Mate him, that’s what they call it,
she reminded herself, and the thought gave her a little quiver of excitement.

Except she hadn’t lied in her letter to them, beseeching them to work things out between them. The last thing she wanted was to be a wedge in the middle of their love for each other. Garen’s misery had grown ever more apparent the last day, and Skye had left her with a hunted look, giving her the impression that he believed he’d committed some sin by daring to have true feelings for her.

“I can’t love you.”
Garen had said. She supposed the words implied that he almost did. That was what had hurt the most—believing he’d been on the edge of actually feeling that way and rejected it. Both of them had fled from her with the exact same look in their eyes. And so she had fled from them.

“It’s better this way,” she said to herself, immersed in the sweaty task of pulling weeds in her mother’s garden.

“What did you say, honey?” her mom asked, tilting her head up and peering at her from beneath the wide brim of her straw hat. A geometric smattering of sunlight freckled her face, reminding her with a pang of sadness of the way Garen’s skin had displayed its odd pattern to her in the sun that first day they’d met.

Melody sighed. “Better that I’m home. I missed you and Alec. You seem so happy now.”

Her mother beamed at her. “Somehow I knew he’d be back. I’ve spent the last twenty years feeling like I was in some kind of holding pattern. Like a chrysallis. I wish I could have been more present for you growing up.”

“You did fine, Mom. I’m just happy you’re not alone anymore.”

Her mother nodded and shifted down the row of pepper plants, frowning into her work and carefully avoiding crushing a ladybug before she went to work again. Her posture remained tense, however, making it clear to Melody that she was working on some kind of lecture that she wasn’t looking forward to saying.

“Spit it out, whatever it is. I can tell you’ve got something on your mind.”

Her mother’s lips tightened into a thin line. “You don’t seem happy, sweetie, and it breaks my heart to see you this way. You never were very forthcoming about your love life with me, but I wish you would talk to me now.”

“My love life?” Melody asked, laughing. “I never really had one to speak of before. I guess it just seemed weird to start talking about it now that I do, especially because the love life I had managed to prematurely abort in a matter of days. Why bother you with the gory details? Can’t I just be vicariously happy for your love life?”

Her mother grimaced at her macabre metaphor but didn’t reprimand her for it like she might have done when she was younger.

“But you talked to Alec about it, didn’t you?” she asked softly. Her tone wasn’t accusatory or hurt, simply curious, concerned.

“I guess I just needed his perspective—as a man, you know. He’s more hopeful than I am. Or he was when I first talked about it.”

“I waited for twenty years,” she said. “And I would have waited forever for him.”

Melody sat back on her heels and looked at her mother, who glanced up at her with a direct blue gaze. She shifted her shoulder slightly and gave Melody a soft smile. “Sometimes you just know he’ll be worth it. Is he worth it for you—the man you left behind?”

Melody tried to come up with an answer that wasn’t an outright lie. She wasn’t sure if her mother would understand the crazy situation she’d gotten herself into.

“I didn’t leave because I was afraid of commitment or anything. I did it because my presence was a complication for him.” In her head she amended “him” to “them”—no sense complicating the conversation with the convoluted details.

“You didn’t answer my question, honey.”

Melody’s chest tightened, her true feelings far too volatile a thing to admit out loud, but she did owe her mother an answer. Getting the actual words past the strangling sensation in her throat was another issue entirely, however.

The tears preceded the words by about a mile and her mother surged over the row and pulled Melody into her arms, oblivious of the plants she crushed between them.

“Oh God, Mama. I would. I would wait forever, too.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

H
e isn’t dead?” Skye asked, incredulous. “How is that even possible?”

Kol shook his head and looked between Garen and Skye, scrutinizing them both. Garen wasn’t surprised, either by the revelation or by Kol’s constant study of them since Melody had left. The man was intuitive and very critical of dragon behavior.

They hadn’t come clean about all the details of their situation, including Melody’s wish for he and Skye to work on their own relationship. And they had. The intervening weeks had involved a lot of soul searching, and they’d finally openly admitted their own true feelings about each other, but Melody’s absence was like a dark cloud that refused to leave. The longer they took tracking down the man who had Blessed Melody to begin with, the more agitated Skye became.

“He was one of the rare few without a mate or progeny when the time for our generation’s ascension came. Our laws have always required the old generation to give the world up to the new brood. And the old generation has always done so willingly. The Ultiori threat is the biggest piece of it. Our parents have a vested interest in our success—sacrificing their entire essence to see us succeed was one way they ensured we had ample resources to protect ourselves from our enemy.”

“But Alec had no one, so who would he give it to?” Skye asked, his hand reaching for the pocket where he’d kept his mother’s box for so long, until the day he’d thrown it in the bay.

The box itself now lay in the darkness of Garen’s pocket. He had found his way back to the inlet where Skye had discarded it. Power that strong hadn’t been hard to pinpoint, and he’d spent a night of cold swimming to retrieve the object. When he’d found it, deep under water, the tiny cube had vibrated under his touch, and sprung open, surprising Garen enough that he’d dropped it and had to swim down again to retrieve it. He still didn’t know exactly what it meant, but hoped when the time came, he would understand. Either way, he needed to ensure Skye and Melody wound up together before returning the box to his friend.

Skye pulled his hand back out of his pocket and left it resting on his knee, fingers tapping in impatience.

“Most bachelor dragons have loyalty to a Court dragon and offer their power to a dragonling’s legacy via his or her parents.”

“Are there never females with this issue?” Garen asked, sure he knew the answer already.

Kol eyed him steadily. “Not in my recollection, no. Females almost never have an issue finding a suitable mate, at least for the purposes of breeding. Males with the issue are frequently unable to perform until they find the right woman. Sometimes it takes so long it’s too late by the time they find a woman that they refuse to mate her at all—but they can always give their power to another dragon, and so they opt to do that instead. Thankfully with the change in our laws we have more choices now, but Alec would have had limited options. Legally, he should have given his power to either the former Queen or the new Queen’s parents if he had no other options. It seems he did neither, however.”

“Where the hell has he been all this time?”

“He did what many do who break our laws—he found sanctuary with an enclave of one of our sister races—the Turul. He’s been with them for the last twenty years and enlisted the Turul’s help with keeping guard over Melody’s mother. He only just showed his face again, once our sister races got word of the amnesty we’ve granted to dragons in hiding.”

“So there is no legacy for Melody to inherit, or her mother,” Garen said, trying to decide if he admired the man or hated him for withholding that kind of benefit from Melody and her mother. The truth was, if he had a lover or a daughter—even one not by blood—he would have given everything he could even while still alive.

“No, but there is a powerful Gold still protecting them, which he’s done for Melody and her mother since before her birth. I haven’t spoken with the man—we’ve kept it secret that we’ve found him, too, but I’m willing to bet that he’s been supporting them both in some way from afar. We all have ways to bypass human customs.”

“Is he with her now? Of course, he must be,” Garen said, unable to imagine any other scenario if he’d been away from a lover for decades. Had Alec been with Melody’s mother in the intervening years or had he stayed away rather than risk being discovered by the Council? He could understand how Alec had fallen through the cracks if he’d had no children of his own. The Council tended not to criticize or scrutinize dragons who were unfortunate enough to not find a mate. Most of them never had that issue, but Garen felt some sympathy for the man, considering he was faced with a similar life himself if Melody didn’t choose him.

“He is. How you two deal with your personal lives going forward is up to you, however. By standing law you still should mate her.”

“Which of us, though? She rejected us both when she left.”

Kol expelled an exasperated sigh. “You two fools need to go to her and work it out. I’ve been lenient because I know how close you two are, but you forget I’ve been with her before. I understand her essence as well as my own mate’s. If she had even the glimmer of a bond with either of you, she didn’t leave because she doesn’t love you. She’d have been back in my office if that were the case.”

“What of Alec?” Skye asked. “Perhaps he’s decided to mate both Melody and her mother.”

“The Shadows who reported said he treats her as a daughter, and that he shows every sign of being close to mating the mother, though he hasn’t done so yet. I don’t think Melody’s shared her knowledge with anyone, but you shouldn’t wait.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

W
ithin another couple weeks the comfortable routines of a rural southern autumn drowned out most of the ache in Melody’s belly until even that started to feel commonplace. Her mother had waited two decades for Alec. If she could do it, Melody could manage for the short term.

There were more pressing concerns at the moment, anyway. Alec continued evading Melody’s questions about whether he intended to “make an honest woman” of her mother. Now that she had a clearer picture of what that really meant for both him and her mother, she was surprised by his hesitance.

“You said you were going to do it the night I showed up. Don’t let me stop you,” she told him after the novelty of being home again for the first time in years had finally worn off. “You know you shouldn’t wait.”

“No, but I am going to. Just a little longer. We will have all the time in the world when I do it.”

“Are you waiting on my account? Because if you are, I really wish you wouldn’t. I want to be able to tell her the truth for once. I’ve been so circumspect since I got home—I hate it.”

They were taking a walk the half-mile down the dirt road to the Merritt house to return some tools they’d borrowed from Anya and Viki, the women who had been her mother’s neighbors for the last two years.

“Everything in its own time, Melonhead,” he said. “You may have given up hope for yourself, but I haven’t. I’ve been around awhile—guys like me don’t exactly like to rush things.”

Melody snorted. “Not when you have forever. You’ve never actually told me—how old are you, anyway?”

“He’s older than you’d think,” a female voice said from behind them. Melody turned to see Anya, her dark hair coiled into a messy knot at the back of her head. She was really a striking woman, Amazonian in stature and built with steely strength. She and her partner, Viki, had been the friends her mother needed during the last few years. She held her hand out for the tools.

“How old do you think he is?” Melody asked, wondering if the woman somehow knew more than she let on. She had a strange sense that there was more to her than met the eye, the way she always sensed about certain people, yet Anya wasn’t quite the same as Alec or Garen and Skye. Simply different in a way Melody believed was something a little more than human. The rest of the conversation confirmed it.

Anya gave Alec a wry look. “When did we first meet, was it in Italy when my people invaded and your parents defended the countryside? You were such a wild boy back then. War was much more fun, too.”

Alec laughed. “I’d never seen a Turul before. I knew you existed but I guess there were creatures out there even my people considered myths back then.”

Melody blinked. “You invaded Italy?”

Alec waved a hand. “Ancient history, literally. I’m close to a thousand years old. When I was young, we had bigger reasons to remain in our true forms. I’m just glad the Turul are our allies now.”

Anya turned her dark, slanted eyes to Melody and gave her a once over. “She’s got the look of a marked human, but she’s no more yours than her mother is. Except that is definitely your magic underneath those webs of the other two. And yours has been there a lot longer. Tell me you’re not trading in the mother for the daughter, Viki might take issue with that. But then your kind has never had any qualms about taking more than one mate, have you?”

Alec grabbed Anya’s arm and hauled her away, but not far enough that Melody couldn’t hear them. “You know damn well Julia is the only woman I love. Why else would I have had your people watch over her the last two decades?”

“And you still haven’t claimed her, yet you’ve done something to claim the daughter. You’ve always flouted convention, Alec. By their laws you should be dead now. What are you up to coming back like this? Did you come back for Julia or for Melody?”

Irritated by their dismissal of her, Melody stomped through the grass and stabbed her index finger at Anya’s chest.

“Alec’s always been like a father to me. He
loves Mom
. And you can bet that if he doesn’t do what needs to be done, she’ll know the truth from me.”

“Jesus, Mel. You can’t tell her.” Alec looked stricken.

“Are
you
ever going to?” she asked, emotion tangling in her stomach. She’d spent a week with only a vague idea about Garen and Skye, patient because she knew they were working up to sharing the details of a secret she already knew. She could forgive them for their reluctance, but her mother’s peace of mind was far more important than her own.

Something caught Anya’s attention and she looked away from their argument. “Looks like you might not have to,” she said.

A split second later a piercing female scream carried through the air from the direction of her mother’s house. Without even blinking, Alec took off at a dead run, disregarding anything in his path. A split-rail fence stood between Anya’s yard and garden, which he vaulted over like the earth was a springboard and kept going.

“Oh God, Mama!” Melody yelled, but there was no way she could keep up with the blur that was already retreating into the distance, dodging tree trunks in the stand of hardwoods that separated the two properties.

Anya clutched her shoulder. “She’ll be fine. I’m guessing these particular guests aren’t unexpected or they wouldn’t have shown up the way they did. C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home so you don’t have to chase the west wind.”