Dark Embers (16 page)

It was a wild flight—one meant to push them both to mental and physical exhaustion. Hours went by until even Dylan, whose strength was nearly indefatigable, was wearing out. And still Gabe flew. Running from his demons. Running from his pain. Running from the life he no longer had. Dylan could only guess what was going through his friend’s head. He knew none of it was good.

When Gabe finally settled in the middle of the desert, near the caves where they both spent most of their sleeping hours, Dylan murmured a prayer of thanks, even as he landed next to him and began the shift back to human form.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Gabe demanded, getting in his face with a shove that made him stumble back.

“Maybe I should ask you that question,” Dylan said, his voice low.

“I want to be alone. Can’t you see that?” His hands were tight fists at his side, his jaw clenched so that he was speaking through his teeth.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Like I give a shit what you think.”

“Gabe, come on. Let me take you home.”

“Home?” His face contorted. “I don’t have a home. Marta was my home. Lana was my home.”

“I know. I’m so—”

“Don’t you fucking tell me you’re sorry!” Fire shot from his fingertips, hit the desert inches from Dylan’s feet. “What the fuck do you know? What the fuck—” A sob ripped through him.

“You’ve never loved a woman once in your whole, goddamned life. And you’re going to tell me that you know, that you’re sorry? You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re missing. You don’t even know what you’re sorry for.”

The words cut more sharply than his talons had earlier, but that was exactly what Gabe had intended. They’d been friends too long for the other man not to know that he was hitting below the belt.

Anger churned in Dylan’s belly—Gabe wasn’t the only one who had lost Marta and Lana—and for long seconds he wanted nothing more than to let it lose. The fire was already inside him, licking up from his stomach, flowing down his hands.

But he locked his jaw, kept his mouth shut as the older man continued to rage. “Lana had her whole fucking life ahead of her. She could have been anything, done anything, and now she’s dead. Two days and she’s dead, and we still don’t have a fucking clue what killed her.

“And Marta—” His voice broke. Sobs shook his massive shoulders, and more fire shot from him. It hit the ground, sizzled for a few moments and then died out in the sand. “Jesus, Dyl, I want Marta. I want my wife. I want my fucking mate!” He screamed the last and then sank to his knees, as if standing was suddenly too much for him to manage.

“I—” Dylan stopped midsentence. Not so much because he was worried about how Gabe would react to another platitude, but because he was beginning to understand that he really didn’t know. Not the agony that came with losing a child. And certainly not the nightmare of losing a mate. He would have to find a mate before he could lose her.

Just the thought made his stomach clench and his palms grow sweaty.

“What can I do?” He dropped onto the sand next to Gabe, pulled the other man into his arms and held him while he cried. He didn’t know what else to do.

Gabe took the comfort for a moment, then pulled away. He ran his hands over his face. Climbed to his feet. Shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away.

“I can’t be here right now, Dylan. I know it’s a crappy time for me to just bail, but I can’t be here.” He looked out over the desert, his dragon eyes capable of taking in the smallest movement in the dark.

“Okay.”

“Maybe . . . maybe. Someday. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s not today.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I have to be alone.” It was almost a yell. But the next words were so soft Dylan had to strain to hear them. “I am alone. You can’t change that no matter how much you want to.”

“Gabe.”

“Good-bye, Dylan. Don’t follow me.”

“But—”

“Don’t.” And then he launched himself straight into the air. He hovered over Dylan for a second in midshift. “I can’t go back to the house I shared with them, can’t sleep in the bed I shared with Marta. I need to be alone.”

And then he was changing, shifting, becoming the ice blue dragon Dylan knew so well, and streaking away through the night.

Exhausted, disheartened, miserable, Dylan watched him fly away until he was nothing more than another light in the starstudded sky. It stretched him to the breaking point to do as Gabe asked; nearly killed him not to follow. But Gabe’s agony was too overwhelming to ignore, his beast far too close to overwhelming his humanity. Time alone to lick his wounds might be the only thing that would save him.

Ignoring the pain that was racking his own soul—after all this time, he was used to it—Dylan launched himself once again into the air, in the opposite direction from where Gabe had flown. Never had a solo flight felt so lonely.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“
T
hanks, Logan.” Phoebe flashed Dylan’s friend a tired smile. It was late, she had been up far too long and she wanted nothing as much as a shower and a bed. But as Logan showed her to her room—in Dylan’s very large, very impressive house—her eyes nearly crossed with exhaustion. Maybe the shower could wait until the morning.

“No problem. I know Dylan wanted to bring you here himself. But Gabe—”

“I understand.” She managed a quick look out of one of Dylan’s incredible picture windows to the darkness beyond, tried to ignore the fact that it was rimmed with what looked like gemstones. “I wonder where they are.”

“Gabe was in rough shape. He’s probably somewhere blowing off steam, and Dylan’s probably listening to him.”

“I can’t imagine losing my whole family one after the other. He didn’t even have a chance to catch his breath from losing his wife before his daughter got sick.”

“It’s awful.” The pilot’s handsome face was grim. “Losing your mate and then your daughter—Gabe’s really been through the wringer.”

Mate
, Phoebe noted,
not wife
.
Mate
. A slip of the tongue, perhaps, or something more? She couldn’t help remembering those last minutes in Lana’s room, when Gabe had seemed to lose all control. Horrible sounds had come from his chest—sounds that were barely human. She understood grief better than many, but even she had never heard those sounds before. And when she’d glanced up . . . She slammed the door shut on those thoughts. No use freaking herself out when Dylan wasn’t around to answer her questions.

Moving past the windows and what had to be an incredible view of the desert during the day, she asked, “He and Dylan are close?”

“They’ve been best friends for—” Logan broke off abruptly, flashed his killer smile. “For what seems like forever.”

“And you?” she asked, as he shuttled her and her suitcase down a long hallway. “How do you and Liam and Shawn fit in?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s the scientist in me. I like to figure out how things work.”

At the end of the hallway, he turned to the left, then pushed open the first door they came to. Phoebe followed him inside, nearly sobbing with relief when she saw the huge lake of a bed in the center of the room, covered in a ruby-colored comforter. Thoughts of anything but sleep abruptly left her head.

Her ponytail holder came off right after her shoes, and she was almost incoherent before she even hit the bed.

Logan laughed. “I guess I don’t have to ask if the room suits you.”

“You can ask, but if you expect me to carry on a conversation for much longer, I’m going to be speaking in tongues.” It came out garbled, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I’ll leave you to it, then. If you wake up before Dylan gets back and want to get started, call me. I’ll take you over to the lab, help you get set up.”

“Mm-hmm.” She curled herself around a throw pillow.

“Sleep tight, Phoebe.”

“You, too.”

Logan closed the door behind him, and she lay there for a second, trying to work up the energy to open her suitcase and take out her pajamas. In the end, however, all she managed to do was shimmy out of her clothes and burrow under the covers before sleep swamped her.

Dylan let himself into the house slowly, misery weighing on him like lead shackles. Striding through the entryway and down the hall to his study, with every ounce of strength he still had left in his body he cursed the damn disease that was ravaging his people.

Lana, with her bright eyes and endless questions, was gone. Never again would he walk into Gabe’s house and find her making some weird and exotic recipe. Never again would he and Gabe get to threaten some young dragon stud who came sniffing around her.

Never again would she beat him at Monopoly.

He grabbed a glass decanter off the side bar and poured himself three fingers of his favorite Scotch. He slammed it back, then poured himself another. By the time he’d finished the second, the block of ice that was currently doubling for his stomach had begun to thaw.

He stared at the decanter for a moment, debated whether he wanted to pour himself a third. Deciding against it—it was never a good sign when the clan leader passed out in a drunken stupor—he flopped down on the long, black leather sofa in the middle of the room. Stretched out and closed his eyes.

He was tired, exhausted, but images of Lana as he’d last seen her—pale, bloody, face contorted in pain—wouldn’t allow him to settle. Fighting them, and the sadness that clung to him like a limpet, he tried to concentrate on something else.

Anything else.

It didn’t work . . . until he smelled her.

He sat up so abruptly that the Scotch splashed sickly in his stomach, but that didn’t stop Dylan from trying to search her out. Even as he told himself it was his imagination—surely Logan had gotten Phoebe settled at the hotel a few streets over—his senses were flaring out, searching for another elusive trace of her.

A few breaths later, he found it. He was on his feet and tearing down the hall before he could think better of it, turning corners in the labyrinthine halls until her scent—warm honey and wildflowers—nearly overwhelmed him. Pausing outside the door of his favorite guest room, he drank in her scent for long seconds, getting drunk on it in a way he never had on the Scotch. If he could, he’d simply roll around in it. Let it cover him—and the dragon—until they both were sated. Until they could carry it with them everywhere they went.

His thoughts should have put him on red alert, but at the moment he was too tired, too heartsick, too devastated to worry about anything but Phoebe. The dragon was clawing at him again, eager to get at her, and he didn’t blame it. Right now, the idea of pulling her into his arms and just holding her had incredible appeal.

He knocked on the door lightly, told himself that if she didn’t answer he would walk away and let her get some rest. He waited a few seconds, knocked again. Repeated the process a third time, and when there was still no answer, he ordered himself to leave her be.

But even as he promised himself he would do just that, he was turning the knob. Pushing the door open. Walking into the room, his eyes fastened on the bed on the other side of the room—and the woman sound asleep in the center of it.

His dragon shuddered at the sight of her, as did the man. She had crawled into bed naked and pulled the covers over her, but as she’d slept, the comforter had fallen around her waist, exposing one apricot shoulder covered with a light dusting of freckles. Her freckles taunted him again, promised paradise beneath his mouth, and his mouth actually watered with the need to get to her.

Phoebe whimpered in her sleep, rolling over onto her back. His first unobstructed sight of her caused him to break out in a cold sweat, his cock hardening to the point of insanity. For a second, all he could think about was climbing on top of her and sucking her gorgeous, raspberry-colored nipples into his mouth as he slipped inside her.

She whimpered again—the same sound she’d made the day before when he had thrust inside her for the first time—and need overwhelmed him.

He moved closer to the bed, closer to her, shucking off a piece of clothing with each step he took. By the time he got to the bed, Dylan was as naked as she was, his cock so hard that he feared he might lose control as soon as he touched her.

But when he slipped into bed beside her, when he lowered his mouth to her fragile jaw, he was struck by the dark circles under her eyes. Skimming his lips up her jaw to the sensitive spot beneath her ear, he kissed her softly, then pulled just a little bit away.

She was exhausted, completely worn-out, and he couldn’t blame her. She’d spent a day getting ready for the trip, and then, when she’d been resting on the airplane, he’d come at her like a freight train. And yesterday, instead of coming back here and resting after her frantic preparations, she’d spent the day and half the night in Lana’s room, observing and assisting.

Though his hands shook at the effort and a fine sheen of sweat covered him from head to toe—and the dragon snapped and bit at him in an effort to change his mind—Dylan settled on the bed next to Phoebe and pulled her into an embrace that was far too platonic for his liking. Then he closed his eyes and did his damnedest to fall asleep, despite the fact that he was so aroused he could barely think.