Secrets of the Universe

Secrets of the Universe
Naomi

Oakley fainted again. I can’t say I’m surprised. It didn’t take much to have her lay prostrate in Ian’s lap after just the mention of cutting her afflicted arm off, which is not happening. Not if I have anything to do with it. 

That marked the end of the conversation. Fraser, to his credit, simply pursed his lips while the rest of us dove head first into a rather righteous argument about our next steps, and then he put us in our places by offering warmth and food. None of us could argue against the fact that we’ve all spent several days cold and wet in the woods and were slowly losing our minds. 

Ian took Oakley to some room in what I’m now realizing is Fraser’s private wing of this place. His home. His lair. 

Fennec couldn’t convince Wren to come with him, to do what, I didn’t ask, but instead disappeared into the corridors and adjoining rooms and hasn’t been seen since we shared a quiet, exhausted supper of vegetable soup, cooked by Juliette because Fraser doesn’t eat. Or, at least, he doesn’t eat often. Oakley and Ian didn’t leave their assigned room all afternoon. 

Now, I assume it’s close to nightfall, and I’m alone, walking through shadowed, echoing hallways in search of anyone to speak with, anyone who can talk me off a ledge, which are in abundance around here. 

I yank my cloak closed tight while passing another open-air balcony so wide it could fit a hundred men side to side, and it’s just as long. A landing pad, no doubt. Well, some doubts, because I’m not entirely sure any of this is real. 

I scurry around another corner and step through another archway, expecting to find another corridor spreading far and wide into another stretch of nothing, but I stop mid-step. 

“Goddess above,” I gasp. 

Of course, it’s a library, a sweeping library at least twelve stories tall. It’s brightly lit, and a fire roars in a hearth so wide it takes up half of one side of the room. It’s built in the same fashion as the archways littered throughout this underground fortress. It’s beautiful. A dream come true. 

I step deeper into the room, eating up the warmth that radiates to my bones. My sigh of relief is cut short by a low chuckle rumbling nearby, and I whirl, spotting the dragon shifter himself splayed in an armchair, a book resting on his knee. 

“I didn’t know Firestone witches could read. Color me surprised you’d be interested in this room.”

“What?” I take a step toward him and stop, scoffing, then reel myself back in. “This is what you’re up to? Reading? We have a massive crisis on our hands. Ian is expected to shift any minute now.”

“You have a massive crisis on your hands, not me,” he corrects, dramatically flipping a page and adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses he’s wearing. 

My head automatically cocks to the side in confusion, and I forget what I was doing, where I was going, and who I was looking for immediately. “Are you blind?”

“To the drama you’ve dragged into my peaceful tome? No, I’m afraid not. Your cousin simply must submit to what he is. Once he learns to better control his abilities, shifting won’t be an issue.”

“I’m not talking about Ian. Why are you wearing glasses?”

“Because my eyesight is lacking,” he fires back. “Do you mind? Why are you dressed like an archeologist?”

I swish my cloak to cover the boots and rather boyish cargo pants I bought in anticipation of my journey. “I’m shocked you even know what an archeologist is.”

“I’m a dragon, Naomi, not a fucking idiot.”

I scoff again, and he mimics it, which sets a new, fiery kind of rage burbling through my system. “You’re a shifter. Your eyesight should be perfect. That's how it works.”

“You only know of wolves and foxes, so I suppose I can’t totally fault your ignorance on the subject, but some shifters aren’t as blessed in terms of physical, tangible senses. Dragons are, or were, notoriously lacking in the eyesight department. So you’ll have to excuse my spectacles for now.” He flips another page and looks down with a sigh. “Can I help you otherwise, witch? Or are you here to gawk?”

“You’re not taking this situation seriously,” I grind out.

He slams the book shut and rises. “You’re overthinking it.”

“My cousin is out of control, and his mate–”

“I have no way to fix what’s happening to his mate.” Fraser gently sets the book down on the chair, but that gentleness only goes so far. His entire body radiates a very specific kind of violence I find oddly intriguing. I find him intriguing, which is unfortunate because I already hate the man. Loathe. Detest. And yet….

He scrubs a hand over his face, peeking at me through his fingers. His eyes are still tinged gold but favor a regular brown now, human-like. He easily passes for just a handsome man in his early thirties and not the beast I witnessed earlier this morning when he stalked out of his cave and threatened to eat all of us. 

“You said you’d have to cut off her arm.”

“Possibly. If rejecting her doesn’t work, that is an option.”

“It’s not an option!”

“This is what’s happening to that girl, Naomi. I’m going to lay it out for you as simply as I can.” He edges toward me, oozing confidence. “They may be mates, sure. Good for them, I suppose. But she is inexplicably linked to everything happening inside of him right now. He’s in pain. She feels it. He’s being tormented by magic he isn’t yet equipped to handle. She feels that, too. It’s eating away at her, even if she hasn’t realized it yet. He will rise, of course, and get a handle on himself, especially when the transformation is complete, and his body settles into these new changes, but it will get worse before it gets better, and she cannot handle it. It will kill her.”

“How do you know any of this?” I snap.

“I am three thousand years old,” he replies hotly. “I’ve seen this before.”

“And what was the outcome?”

“The mate died, and the hybrid went on to do what hybrids during that time did.”

I shake my head. “I have no idea what time you’re talking about!”

He closes the distance between us in two steps. “Before the veil. During the Great War. Long before your time and the time of the Old Kings. I was there. A warrior. A soldier. A prince. You think you know magic, witch. You think certain things are impossible. Nothing is impossible. I should be proof of that.”

Something liquid and hot simmers between us. My heart rate spikes against my will. He tilts his head to the side, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say his golden brown eyes were drinking me in. He reaches for me, then hesitates for a beat before brushing a lock of my hair over my shoulder. 

“You’re proof of that, Fireheart.”

I jerk back to reality in an instant and step away from him. Amusement dances behind his eyes. 

“Could rejecting Oakley save her life?” I ask, but the words wobble off my tongue. A thousand other questions plague my mind, and selfishly, none of them have to do with Ian and Oakley. 

“I noticed her scars, and yes. I believe there’s still time.”

“Then the scars are truly a timer?”

“Not quite, but close.”

“Do you even know what a timer is?”

“I’m done with your line of questioning.” He turns on his heel and walks back to his chair, which is the only worn-down piece of furniture I’ve come across in his slice of utopia. It’s his favorite. He has spent… millennia in it. 

“But what if I have a few more questions for you that have nothing to do with the matter at hand?”

He’s actively easing into the chair but halts and stands straight with a rough sigh. “That depends on what they are.”

“You don’t seem lonely for someone who’s spent three thousand years alone.”

“Is that a question or merely an observation?”

“You seem peeved you have guests.”

“Not a question.”

I eye him curiously, and he gives me the same skeptical look. “Are you truly alone here?”

“Yes.”

“For so long?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes, it is.”

He looks down at his boots, tucking his hands in the pocket of his pants, which are black and well-tailored. They don’t look very old, and that only adds to my questions. “I am under the impression I am the last of my kind, at least here. I’ve heard rumblings of dragons still alive in Pantharas and beyond but have yet to see one after the war.”

“What happened to everyone else?”

“They’re dead.” A deep sorrow stains his words, and he fails to bite it back. 

I struggle to swallow past the lump in my throat. “Did you kill them?”

Fiery golden eyes meet mine. “No.”

“What about the people who work in your castle-within-a-castle-within-a-mountain?”

“There is no one else here.”

“But it’s so clean.”

“I have a lot of time on my hands,” he cuts in sharply, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. 

I turn to peer aimlessly at the thousands upon thousands of books spiraling to the top of the library, where the ceiling disappears into the aether, while debating my next move.

But he surprises me by adding, “Dragons have the ability to hibernate, which I do more often than not. It slows my natural aging in this form significantly. I hardly look a year or so older than I did when the Great War ended. Beyond that, I keep myself busy by taking care of this place.”

“You… just sleep?”

“In my dragon form, yes.”

“For how long?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “At first, when it became clear I was likely alone, the last dragon of my kind left, I’d sleep for a few centuries at a time. Sometimes I’m pulled out of sleep when there’s something amiss, like a war, or nearby strife, like the foxes and their constant drama.” He steps to my side but doesn’t stop there. Instead, he reaches high above my head for a book and pulls it down from the shelf. “This might interest you, but I doubt you know the language.” He hands it to me, and I take it, our fingertips brushing ever so slightly. I hold his gaze. 

“You’re right, I can’t read this. What is it?”

“An answer to every question you’ve ever had.” He smirks, and I immediately know he’s teasing. 

“Well then, I’ll remain blissfully ignorant to the secrets of the universe.”

“And dragon kind,” he adds, tapping the cover of the massive leather-bound tome. “Everything you want to know about me and the others who were like me is in there.”

“It’s useless to me like this.”

He takes the book from my hands. Soft echoes drift toward us as someone walks at a steady, but unsure, pace toward the library. 

Fraser dips his head to brush the next words over the tip of my ear. “Then you’ll have to return so I can read it to you.”

My heart leaps. 

He turns, leaving me stupidly breathless, and walks toward the source of the footsteps. “You’re ready then?”

“What will this entail?” Ian’s gruff reply makes it clear he had to physically tear himself away from Oakley, and for the first time in my life, I feel a pang of sympathy for him, for anyone in love. 

“Oh.” Fraser sighs. “I don’t know. We’ll see. If you get too frisky I can end things quickly, so don’t worry about that. You won’t have a chance to do much damage to my home, your friends, or me.”

“Do you have potions available or something?” I ask, but I make the mistake of looking between the men. 

I know Alphas. I know them so well. They don’t need a mind-link to convey the true meaning behind Fraser’s words. 

Fraser, however, makes his intentions  very clear to me. “I’ll shift and kill him. It’ll be so quick, he won’t even feel it.”

“Ian,” I gut out, stepping toward them. “You do not have to do this.”

“I don’t have a choice, Naomi.” Ian starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Please stay with Oakley. She’s asleep. I want her to stay that way.”

“Ian,” I beg. I catch Fraser’s gaze and notice a single flash of real sympathy behind his eyes before he turns back to my cousin and shrugs out of his worn leather jacket. 

“Please,” Ian rasps. 

“We’ll do this in the throne room. Come.” Fraser motions for Ian to follow. 

I gape after the men. It’s a struggle to convey how I feel and find the words I need to essentially plead for options we obviously don’t have. 

Ian disappears into the shadowy corridor, but Fraser halts in the archway, his shoulders slumping with a huge exhale. He turns his head to look at me over his shoulder. “This will not take long.”