The Dracons' Woman (13 page)

“For frightening you last night,” Garen said.  “I promise you, it was not intended.  Although, you startled us as well when you fainted.” 

“I never faint,” Lariah stated firmly.  “I was just really tired.”  She felt Val’s body jerk against her back.  “And don’t laugh at me,” she added.  “The truth is, while seeing you three…transform…was startling, there was something else that shocked me more.”

“What?” Trey asked, his voice rumbling beneath her ear. 

“Remember when you said that I sang to you?” she asked, looking at Garen.  He nodded his head slowly, looking at her expectantly.  “Well, I don’t remember doing it, but, I do remember dreaming about it.”  She hesitated.  Aw, to hell with it, she thought.  “Since I was a little girl, I’ve had dreams about three dragons.  Dragons with fur.” 

Garen stared at her, his expression unreadable.  “Dragon?” he asked.  “Is that anything like a dracon?”

Lariah nodded.  “From the stories I’ve read and the drawings I’ve seen, they are very much like your dracon.”

Garen’s eyebrows rose with interest.  “You have stories on Earth of dracons?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she admitted.  “But not quite.  There are a lot of different stories about dragons, but there are a few things most of the stories agree on; they fly, they breathe fire, and they do not have fur.  I got teased a lot about my furry dragon dreams when I was a child because of that.  Eventually, I learned not to mention them.”

“It’s very interesting that you had dreams of creatures like us,” Garen said, smiling.  “Perhaps there is something deep within you that was aware of your destiny even though your conscious mind was not.”

Lariah’s eyes widened as she considered that.  Could it be true that she was really their Arima?  Is that why she had those dreams?  More likely she was just strange, like everyone had always told her, and her furry dragons were simply the result of an overactive imagination.  That Garen, Val and Trey transformed into furry dracons was just a coincidence.

“Perhaps,” she replied uncertainly.

“I am curious though,” Garen said, “if your legendary dragons didn’t have fur, what did they have?  Feathers?”

“No, they did not have feathers,” she said, smiling as she tried to imagine a dragon with feathers. “Dragons are reptilian.”

All three men suddenly tensed.  Lariah felt the chest beneath her cheek suddenly harden into marble.  She looked up and saw that both Trey and Garen were staring at her intently, and she knew that behind her, Val was as well.  Suddenly Garen hissed, a long, drawn out sound that caused her flesh to pebble. 

“You have reptilian dragons on Earth?” he demanded, his voice so cold she shivered. 

She shook her head, her mouth suddenly dry.  “No,” she replied, her sudden tension preventing her from speaking above a whisper.  “They are stories only, fairy tales.  Not real.”

A long moment later Garen’s face relaxed. “Forgive me, Lariah,” he said.  “I did not mean to frighten you.”  She felt Trey and Val relax against her, both of them stroking her soothingly. 

“You think some of your ancient enemy reached Earth, don’t you?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” Garen replied, a little too casually she thought.

A tense silence fell over the group.  Suddenly, Val brightened.

“I find I am tired of seeing you dressed in clothing that does not fit you properly,” he said. 

Lariah craned her neck around, trying to see his face over her shoulder. “What has that to do with anything?” she asked suspiciously. 

Val shrugged.  “Just that we wish to take you into town for new clothes this morning.”

“New clothes?”

“Yes, new clothes,” Trey answered as he sat up, gently pulling her up with him.  “We have set aside our work for this, so you cannot refuse.”

Lariah looked up at Garen.  He merely smiled and reached for her, lifting her easily out of the bed and cradling her in his arms as he strode toward the bathroom.  He set her on her feet just inside the door, and brushed her forehead with a light kiss.

“Get yourself ready and we will meet you in the kitchen,” he said. 

“Alright,” Lariah replied, watching as all three men smiled at her before they left the room, closing the door behind them.

Lariah closed the bathroom door and stared at herself in the mirror.  She frowned.  It had not escaped her notice that, while Garen, Val and Trey were constantly touching and soothing her, even kissing her on the forehead now and then, none of them had touched her intimately in any way since the previous morning.  Though she had awakened with both Trey and Val practically wrapped around her, they had both been fully dressed, and she had been beneath the covers. 

She studied her reflection in the mirror and admitted that her appearance might have something to do with it.  Her hair was all snarly, her plain gray shirt and shorts were neither flattering nor attractive, and she probably had morning breath.  “Not exactly looking your best Lari,” she whispered softly to herself. 

She reached into the shower and turned on the water.  As she pulled her t-shirt over her head it occurred to her that the reason they wanted to take her shopping was to see if new clothes would improve her appearance.  Actually, now that she thought about it, Val had said he was tired of her clothes.  She sighed as she removed the rest of her clothing and stepped into the shower.  She was all for some new clothes, but that was because the few items she had were plain, oversized, and she’d been wearing them repeatedly for several weeks. 

If they had changed their minds since yesterday morning and no longer wanted her in
that
way, she didn’t see how a few new clothes were going to change anything.  She certainly hadn’t been wearing any when they’d interrupted her bath. 

No, she decided, this was not about her clothing.  Therefore it could only be about her, and something she had either done, or not done correctly. 

She wet her hair and reached for the shampoo, going over the previous morning in her mind.  She had been so sure that they were pleased with her responses to them.  That her submissive reactions had actually excited them.  Now, she wasn’t so sure.  The more she thought about it, the more she realized that all she had done was stand around like a lump.  She hadn’t even tried to touch any of them back.  Her inexperience had certainly showed, and they had undoubtedly been put off by it.

Then there was that crazy idea about her being their Arima.  Standing in the shower alone, with nobody else around to see her, she could admit to her most secret self that she wanted it to be true.  She felt as though she belonged here, with Garen, Trey and Val.  She not only wanted to be with them, she felt as though she needed to be with them.  All three of them. 

 But, she had learned long ago that just because she wanted something to be true did not mean that it was true, or ever would be.  From the moment Garen told her that she was their Arima she had believed that there had to be a mistake, that such a thing could not be possible.  Perhaps they had come to the same conclusion. 

She felt a hot stinging sensation behind her eyes and tilted her head up, letting the water spray into her face.  It was a long time before she was able to stop the tears and finish her shower.

Chapter 8

The moment Lariah stepped into the kitchen wearing the baggy outfit she had worn when they had first seen her, Garen knew she was upset.  His first instinct was to ferret out the reason for it and try to fix it.  But, another look at her face told him to leave her be.  She was trying very hard to hide her feelings, indicating to him that she didn’t want to discuss them.  He met his brothers’ concerned eyes, and shook his head slightly.  They would allow her this privacy.  For now.

“I need to find a bank so that I can access my money,” Lariah said. 

Garen frowned.  She was facing them, her eyes forward rather than focused on the floor as she sometimes did.  Her silky, red-gold hair was pulled back from her face and gathered into a long ponytail, so she was not hiding behind it.  But, for all of that, she didn’t look at any of them directly. 

 “We said that we wanted to buy you some new clothes,” Val said, emphasizing the
we
in his statement.

“That’s not necessary,” Lariah replied, looking down at her pants and brushing away some non-existent lint.  “I have my own money, and am able to purchase my own clothing.”

“Lariah…”  Trey began warningly.

Lariah sighed.  “Fine, whatever you guys want,” she said.  “I have no desire to argue about it.”

Garen gritted his teeth.  He had already decided to leave her be, and he would stick with the decision.  But it wasn’t easy.  There was a sad note in her voice that bothered him a great deal.  What could have happened between the time they left her to her shower and now?  He sighed, wishing for one brief moment that their mother was here.  Then he winced inwardly.  On second thought, trying to understand one woman was difficult enough. 

 “Let’s go,” he said finally, leading the way out of the house, feeling Val and Trey’s disapproval of his decision.  Well, he thought to himself, he didn’t much agree with it either, so it was unanimous.

Lariah knew that the guys could sense her unhappiness, and that it bothered them.  She felt guilty about that.  They hadn’t done anything wrong, and they didn’t need to be worrying about her.  She knew that if she didn’t pull herself together, she was going to ruin this trip for all of them, and that would not be fair.  She firmly decided to set her own problems aside. 

At first, she wasn’t sure she could actually live up to her decision.  However, after Trey drove the ground-car out of the building it was housed in, she looked out the window beside her seat and all of her worries fell away. 

She had never seen so much sky, grass, and trees, such wide open nature, in her entire life.  It was all so beautiful she didn’t think she would ever get her fill of it.  And the animals!  There were cows, horses, birds of all description, rabbits, squirrels, and even some sheep.  She knew that they were all originally native to Earth, but such animals were not plentiful on Earth any more and hadn’t been for a very long time.  The first time she saw a horse with someone riding on its back she squealed with delight.  The brothers smiled at her indulgently and answered all of her questions patiently.  They even agreed to teach her to ride.  It was all she could do not to beg them to take her back to the ranch and begin at once. 

The ride from the ranch house to a large arch stretching over the road took nearly an hour.  Trey slowed the ground-car to a stop and jumped out.  Lariah watched curiously as he walked quickly to one of the thick towers that supported the arch, opened a panel and began to fiddle with something.  She turned to let her eyes roam over the herd of cattle grazing nearby, a thought suddenly occurring to her. 

“How do you train all of those cows?” she asked. 

Val’s brows rose in confusion and he looked quickly to Garen.  Garen followed Lariah’s gaze out the window.  He saw the cow herd, then shifted his gaze to Trey standing at the field tower.  He started to shake his head when it suddenly hit him.  He grinned, pleased with himself as he turned back to Val.  “She wants to know why the cows don’t wander away when there are no fences to keep them in,” he said.

Lariah looked at him and grinned, pleased that he understood her.  She knew that her brain had a tendency to get ahead of her mouth sometimes, and that she often said things that others did not understand.  That they even tried to understand her was a first.  Most people just ignored her.

“Ah,” Val said, smiling at her as though he enjoyed her, not as though he thought she was strange.  Another first. 

“We use magic in combination with technology to create an energy barrier,” he explained.  “It works better than a fence as we are able to program it to prohibit specific items or life forms to cross it, while allowing others.”

“So you are able to program it to let people through, but not cows or horses?” Lariah asked.

“Exactly,” Val replied.  “We can, and in fact do, program it to block energy weapons from crossing, or certain types of ground-cars by specifying their energy source.”

“Can you program it to block a person?” Lariah asked, attempting to keep her voice as casual as possible.

Val shook his head, frowning slightly.  “No,” he answered. “We can program it to allow all humans, or bar all humans, but we cannot program it to bar one specific human, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh,” Lariah said, her disappointment obvious.

“What person would you like barred,
sharali
,” Val asked.

“I was just curious,” she hedged.  “So is that what Trey is doing?”

“No,” Val replied slowly, as though he were considering pressing her.  Then he seemed to change his mind.  “He is checking to see if the towers need to be recharged.  We must periodically recharge the parts of the system which require magic.  The dissipation is never predictable.”

Lariah nodded her head vaguely.  It was clear that some of her enthusiasm had left her, and both Val and Garen felt frustrated by her refusal to allow the subject they wanted to know about the most to be raised.  They had given her several openings, but she had shied away from them.  They had all agreed not to press her on the subject.  From Riata, they knew that she had suffered, and they did not want to force her to relive any of that.  But the knowledge that someone had so severely harmed her, and that the person was still out there somewhere, was very nearly more than they could stand.