Chapter 23 Immortals
THE DRAGON
“It was the blue-skinned monster.”
Hale turned away from the beds holding the two other people dearest to us.
Unconscious, their ages were apparent. Young. Same birth year.
In his unconsciousness, Vampire-boy’s face was free of the perpetual crease of irritated lines around his mouth.
That unsatisfied pout at the world. And I could have smiled at the memories that came flooding back at the sight of him like this.
Those years when I pushed him to blind rage just to beat his ass and dunk his head at that lake, a part of our lessons on restraint, self-regulation, and control.
Hale was standing before me now, staring in surprise.
I shrugged, feeling sudden exhaustion. If this was what a dying dragon felt like, it was horrible.
“Nympahea came back, and I did not know it.” It shamed me to admit it, but he was the only one in the world I could be vulnerable with.
“How?” His brows lifted high in his head.
“I guess I'm really losing my powers. I barely managed to take their pain away just now.” I walked over to the wolf-girl's bedside and stroked her beautiful auburn hair with my knuckles, “I couldn’t heal them.”
“Nonesense. Your mind was just heavy or something.” He turned his back to me, walked towards the window and pulled the blinds down. “Everything has returned to normal since the wedding. Even the babies are on the mend now.”
My fingers shook as he walked back, soles clipping against marble.
“Then how the hell did I not feel my wife’s return.”
“Maybe the bond between you two has weakened?” he sighed. “You just called another woman your wife.”
He took two more hesitant steps closer. “You have never done that in all the years I have known you.”
“It was a mistake, I was flustered.” I bit off angrily, and his eyes dropped from my face to the place where my knuckles were still stroking her hair.
I pulled away immediately.
“You have never made that mistake, Daine.” His voice was gentle, but somehow managed to stir the lava in my belly regardless. “It’s completely natural if you aren’t as strongly connected anymore. It’s been over a hundred years.”
“That’s my wife!” I crossed the floor in three strides, and poked his chest. “A thousand years, a million years, it means nothing. Nymphea was built from my own soul.”
I stopped, taking in a shaky breath.
“Do you think I could lose this connection between us if you suddenly disappeared for the next century?” I squinted at him, and he had no response to this.
Turning my back to him, I gripped the foot board of the bed and stared down at Wolf-girl who, I couldn’t help thinking for the thousandth time, was a puzzle. She looked too ethereal to be this weak.
“Besides, there’s no way another dragon would be walking this planet and I wouldn’t know.” I added more quietly.
“True.” Hale walked over, and hugged me from behind. “So what does your boyfriend want?”
I could not help smiling at his silliness. “He doesn’t know where she is either.”
“So, if my guess is correct, he did this. He spread this virus that could have wiped out sixty percent of the paranormal population here, for what? How does it benefit him if he kills her?”
His reason did not concern me as much as how he managed to pull it off. But I shelved the thought away.
“He told me she was in this city. And now that I think about it, this was the fastest way to do a headcount of everyone. This is the biggest pack hospital after all.”
The idiot. He would have killed innocent people if the hospital did not save the vaccine from the last time this happened in the forties.
I pulled away from Hale and headed for the door, suddenly desperate for air.
For the next few days at least, I will have to cancel my flights. Vampire-boy would be OK.
But Wolf-girl, she worried me. I could not understand how she had such a strong wolf, but her body and especially mind were so weak.
I had to stick around till I was certain she was alright.
The thought of finding another woman if anything happened to her made me nauseous.
Hale’s footsteps reached me, and soon he was walking beside me as we turned left and burst into the main lobby.
At first, I wondered why people hurried out of our way, and jerked their eyes in other directions. Then I remembered we had activated our ceremonial faces.
“Showing up during this almost-pandemic would score you such a big point among your pack,” I said to Hale as I observed that there were less people in the lobby.
They were healing already.
“They are your people too.”
I shrugged. “You’re the Alpha, I do not feel connected to them.”
“Pity they do not care. They call us the Hearthrown Alphas in case you have forgotten.”
I stopped before a vending machine and sneered at the sight of all that sugar. I turned my back to it, “Seems your name barely rubbed off on me.”
After partially shifting tonight, I ached for the wind. To spread my wings and take to the highest point in the sky, surf between clouds.
“I could rub other things off on you.” Hale moved closer, and I leaned in till my lips were against his ears.
“Off on me, or off of me?”
“Whatever you like, Draki.” That baritone was a barbed dare dipped in sinful promises. His hand reached for me.
But I caught his wrist. There’s only so much I wanted to advertise about us.
“It seems blue-skin did not find what he was searching for.” I looked past Hale’s shoulder at the man in a clean-cut black suit walking out of the hospital.
Hale jerked his head around.
“What?”
“That’s him, in the suit.” I snickered.
The idiot was wearing the same human skin he had mocked earlier.
Anger flashed in Hale’s narrowing eyes as he watched the man, who looked like a handsome banker in a black designer suit, walk past the glass doors that swung close behind him.
It soothed something in me to see he was wrong. That I had not suddenly lost connection with my wife of over four hundred years.
The arrogant bastard.
“How is he walking around without her soul’s energy though?” I muttered as Hale turned back to me.
So far, it has played out the same way. Nymphaea reincarnated, and he was woken from his cursed slumber. With enough vitality to continue being a bloody pest.
Without her soul for an anchor, he could sleep through centuries.
“Is this pride, Daine?” Hale leaned in to whisper harshly. My head jerked back in surprise.
He cut me off as my lips parted with a retort. “If she returned, determined to hide herself from you both in this lifetime, you think you could find her?”
“I would at least feel her.” I cut in. My heart was thumping at the implication of what he just said.
Why would she want to stay away from me when she promised she would always come to me?
Three times, she had promised and never broke it.
“I would know it if another dragon was here,” I added, as if I hadn’t already said so.
Hale gave me that patient, aristocratic look he used to give his college students. “Remind me again, darling, was there any rule that she would only return as a dragon?”
I let out an incredulous huff. “ What else would she be? We’re dragons.”
“She wasn’t before your lives together,” he breathed in my face, his hand moving to grab me by the elbow. “What was Nymphaea before she descended to marry you?”
And I felt like he had just punched me in the throat. “The lunar queen.”
“Why did you get up?” Hale had that angry look that only appeared when he was worried about the people he loved.
I spun around to find Vampire-boy up and hobbling towards us. Anger flared like wings beneath my ribs.
“I need to tell you something.” He winced as Hale rushed forward to hold him up. “It was my fault. I… I had no idea it was gonna turn out that way. I’m sorry.”
My body stiffened. He never apologized, not with such humility at least.
“What are you talking about?” I closed the distance between us.
“I kissed Lys.”