Dragon's Melody (21 page)

But I have a choice now, which I think you gave me, somehow. You both left, and your leaving was what released me, gave me the choice to find the path I was meant to follow.

Please find each other again. If you ever loved me, which seems so implausible, but my exposure to the implausible lately has made me believe it to be true—but if you ever did, or if you still do, please try to love each other first and to give each other the happiness my presence only seemed to distract you from.

When I find my own true path, perhaps it will lead me to happiness, too.

Love Always,

Melody

Skye let the paper flutter back to the table and turned to stare helplessly at Garen.

“How can she leave?”

Garen’s anguish was plain on his face, but mixed with resignation. “She wasn’t a prisoner here, in spite of the contract. She could leave anytime she wanted to, her commitment to the contract was the only thing keeping her, but it seems we’ve succeeded in fulfilling Kol’s wishes if she’s gone now. Kol will be pleased, at least.”

Skye tried to remind himself that the bond had been their primary purpose in creating the contract to begin with, but the satisfaction of knowing it had been broken felt as empty as the apartment without her presence.

Then it hit him that she said she’d known what they are.

“Did you show her your true form?” he asked.

Garen shook his head. “No, but she told me she knew what I was. She didn’t say it outright, and I didn’t confirm it, but I believed her.” His eyes widened when he looked at Skye. “We won’t know for certain how potent her Blessing is until we track down Alec, or his legacy.”

He trusted her—he had no reason not to—but their laws required them to take action if an unmarked human knew their secret. He had to follow protocol. He was at least thankful that as a senior executive he could take the issue to the top without involving the lower level security teams in locating her.

“I will help Kol look for him. You should go find her,” Skye said, turning with the intent to go dress and get moving.

“No. We stay together otherwise this letter of hers means nothing to you,” Garen said, pulling him back with a tug of his hand. “She wants us to be together. If we aren’t together when we go to her, she’ll know we didn’t even try. If you want her, we have to prove to her we tried.”

Garen’s eyes held Skye’s, searching. His friend’s emotions were heightened and uncertain, the question lingering just beyond the barrier of full articulation.
Do you love me enough to try?

There was no question in Skye’s mind. He loved Garen too much to let his friend give up the chance of being with a woman who loved him. He stared down at Melody’s letter again, focusing on the words.
Try to love each other first.

“We will go see Kol together. The Shadows will be the best place to start if we’re going to find out where Alec hid away his treasure.”

PART THREE

Chapter Thirty-Two

M
elody didn’t think freedom could feel like such a heavy weight on her chest. The farther she got from San Francisco, the heavier it settled in her heart. She’d made the right decision for all of them, she was sure of it, yet it had hurt.

That morning seemed like an age ago as she unfastened her seatbelt, trying to ignore how the powering down of the airplane’s engines reminded her of moments that had led her to this point. A tiny part of her desperately wanted to get back on a plane and return to them, to tell them she had been wrong, but her sense of self-preservation was too strong.

Making love to Garen had made the truth all too clear to her. It had taken his final release for her to realize there was no escaping her love for the both of them. And when he’d done the same as Skye and ran from what she could only assume was a fear of her love—they could read her emotions, couldn’t they? She decided it would be better to give them no excuse to avoid each other any longer.

Love was far too potent an emotion—it clouded her ability to understand herself and what she really wanted out of life. She’d never had doubts until those infernal feelings started cropping up, even the first night she’d been with Skye, and probably even earlier with Garen.

She needed to pee, but avoided the plane’s lavatory for fear of the reminder it would give her of the first day she met him, after panicking over voiding the contract and talking to him through the barrier of the door.

The contract didn’t matter now. She’d missed out on a huge payday by not following through with it, but neither the money nor her trip mattered to her any longer. The only thing that mattered was figuring out what the hell to do next. Home made sense. Her mother was there. Old friends she’d lost touch with. The house she’d grown up in … as small as it was, her mother had worked hard to always make sure it felt like home for Melody, even though there had been no man there to help her with upkeep since Alec had left.

She hadn’t called her mother before leaving California, deciding she would surprise her instead. Melody had a credit card that wasn’t quite maxed out—she could still rent a car to drive from the tiny municipal airport out into the countryside where her mother’s house was nestled on a sunny hillside beside a burbling creek filled with trout.

The more she pictured
home
the less of a burden what she’d left behind became. She had something to spur her forward that wasn’t an endless seeking for something she wasn’t even sure she’d find once she reached the end.

So instead of getting back to the beginning by traveling around the world, she had turned around before even taking that leap.

The pull back to San Francisco still hadn’t subsided entirely when she exited the airport with her bag into the muggy southern heat, but in spite of the cloying moisture in the air, she at least felt like she could breathe a little easier.

Going home wasn’t as hard as she expected it would be, in spite of her disappointment in herself for not seeing her journey through. When she’d left, she’d vowed to herself that she wouldn’t come back until she knew what she really wanted out of life. She still remembered the sadness in her mother’s eyes and had added the further silent promise that whatever it was she found, the next time she came home she would have something amazing to share with the woman who had given her everything.

Driving those familiar rural roads was like traveling into a fantasy land. Nothing had changed in the few years since she’d left, like everything had been held in a kind of magical stasis, hibernating and simply waiting for her to return.

It had been late summer then, too, and she’d taken for granted the wooded hills and farmhouses as she passed by in her need to escape. They represented the prison her mother had locked herself in for Melody’s sake. Even though her mother refused to leave—had said she loved it there—Melody saw her own escape as a kind of liberation for her mother as well. If only because she hoped her mother would find some vicarious freedom from Melody’s journey.

Nothing about it felt like a prison now, though. It was simply home—the same twists and curves in the road were still there, the same vine-covered stop sign by the Wheeler farm, and the same ridiculous little dog standing in the middle of the yard, barking its shrill warning at the passing cars.

The turnoff by her mother’s road was no different, except the stand of six mailboxes had been freshly painted, one with vibrant rainbow stripes reminding Melody of her mother’s comment that she had new neighbors. “
Lesbians bought the Merritt house
,” her mother had said.
“I brought them a pie and they cleaned out my gutters.”

A bright orange swath of daylilies provided a nest of sorts for the line of painted mailboxes, and the grass along the road had been freshly mowed, the ripe green smell filling her nostrils.

The Merritt house itself was more perfect than she remembered it, lending to the fairy tale impression that refused to leave her. Even the lanky woman on the riding mower, waving as she drove past, couldn’t break the feeling. When she was growing up, it had changed hands so many times she’d lost count, but had always carried the name of the original owners though they had long since sold it and retired to Phoenix.

When she slowed to take the steep, gravel turn and her mother’s small house came into sight, the impression of wandering into a magical world was even stronger. The sun was setting behind the house, all the windows lit and glowing, sunflowers in bloom along the edge of the garden, and her mother’s hydrangeas bright blue and white pom-poms along the fence. Her mother’s summer flowers were still in full bloom and a breeze blew through, sending the wind chimes tinkling and the wind socks fluttering and twirling.

There were two cars parked in front, however. Her mother’s familiar old SUV was no surprise, but the sleek shiny Range Rover made Melody wonder if maybe she should have called first after all. She hadn’t spoken to her mother for about a month, which was unusual for her, but she’d been too distracted by the incident with Kol and then the following resolution, then caught up in the entire whirlwind of the contract.

Of course her mother’s life had gone on. She taught English at the local high school and had a nursery business that took up every second of spare time. She spent her evenings fending off dates with various local men, none of whom Melody considered worthy in any sense. The last man she remembered her mother spending any significant time with was Alec, and he’d been gone for over twenty years. Did she have a new boyfriend?

Oh God, could Melody handle it if she did? She’d come home to try to regroup, and the solitude of her mother’s house was crucial to that. If there was a strange man there, she had no idea how she would cope.

Her mood darkened as she parked and grabbed her things from the trunk of the rental. She’d have to deal with it somehow if that were the case. Perhaps she was overthinking it, because while she wanted the comfortable familiarity of simply being home with just herself and her mother bumping quietly around the house. She did hope for her mother to find someone, and someone who drove a car like that might actually be close to good enough. Of course, it might just be a friend visiting for dinner.

Before Melody could make it up the walkway to the porch steps, her mother’s curvy, golden-haired shape pushed through the screen door, her hair a halo backlit from the lights within.

“Melody! Is that really you?” she called out, her face lighting up in a delighted smile.

“Yeah, Mama. I’m home.”

A second later, a larger shape darkened the door—a man with wide shoulders, tall enough that his curly, dark blond hair brushed the lintel. His familiar smile shocked her to her core. Even more shocking was the sudden understanding that she
knew what he was
. It had never been so clear to her until now
.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“A
lec?” Melody stopped short when the big, beautiful man came through the door behind her mother. Christ, he looked just the same as she remembered him the last time she’d seen him. The scent and texture of the markers was still fresh in her memory from the day he’d given her the tattoo when she was five. The phone call that had taken him away from her came moments later, and she’d been dazed by the abruptness with which he’d left.

She remembered it all too vividly now, and she especially remembered how devastated her mother had been in the weeks that followed. Her own five-year-old emotions had been inconsolable.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

She glanced at her mother, whose face was pinched with chagrin. “I should have told you, honey. I ….” Her mother glanced up into Alec’s tanned face, then back to her. “I was afraid you’d cut your trip short if I did, though.”

“My
trip?
” Melody gaped at her mother. “Mom! It’s been almost four years since I was here last! It wasn’t a trip, it was an escape! But you’re right. I would have come for him.” Nothing could have kept her away, for that matter.

Alec’s deep voice carried through the evening toward her. “Glad to know you haven’t forgotten me, Melonhead.”

Tears sprang to her eyes at his old term of endearment for her, and she rushed toward him. “God, like I could ever,” she said, crashing against his chest and letting him wrap her in a tight embrace.

“Come inside and let’s catch up, okay honey?” her mother said, smiling and accepting Melody’s hug when she finally tore herself away from the only man in her life she’d ever considered a father, even though she knew now that he wasn’t. He wasn’t even human.

***

“Does she know?” Melody asked sometime later when she and Alec sat on the back deck in the glow of the windows, watching fireflies flicker in the air over the back yard. Her mom puttered around inside, cleaning and organizing in her already spotless kitchen. Melody smiled at the thought of how little everything had changed. Her mom could never really sit still for long. They’d had a good talk over supper already, so her mom had urged the pair of them to sit out back and relax, seeming to sense that they needed time for some catching up of their own.

Alec remained silent for several seconds, took a long swig of his beer, and shook his head. “I broke enough laws just to stay alive,” he said, “I didn’t want to risk her life by telling her too soon. I was going to tonight, but then you showed up.”

“But you did something to me, didn’t you? Those old stories you used to tell me, they were always true.”

“Mostly, yes. There was one part that wasn’t, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate to tell you, as young as you were.”

“I know,” she said, watching him stare down at his bottle and start picking at the label. It was such a
human
thing for him to do—so normal compared to how Garen and Skye tended to behave.

He turned to look at her, his irises shifting to the glow she always remembered seeing, but that had new meaning now. “You found a male like me, didn’t you? I can sense the bond,” he said. “But you aren’t marked yet. Do the two threads of energy wrapped around your aura have something to do with that, sweetheart? Or the fact that you’ve shown up here alone and filled with as much sadness as the day I left?” He blanched when she only stared at him, wide-eyed at his open sharing of details she had only managed to guess at so far. The understanding that he could actually see the evidence of her time with Skye and Garen was even more shocking, though. “How much
do
you know about us?” he asked.

“Some … it’s only been a week since all this started for me. How can I feel this way after only a week?” She gave him a beseeching look, hoping he could shed some light on the overwhelming feelings she’d been having for the last two days.

“That’s my fault. And I’m sorry, but I had to make sure you were protected, and short of waiting until you were old enough to mark you myself, it was the only way.”

“What was?” she asked, her voice coming out a little frantic. “What did you do to me? I don’t remember ever
not
being able to tell you were different, but it never seemed so odd until I met another man who was like you. Three of them, in fact.”

Alec sighed and rested his head on the back of the deck chair he sat in. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure her mother wasn’t within earshot. “When I met your mother, she was already pregnant with you. I don’t think she even knew she was pregnant yet, but suspected. She was honest with me about it when she found out—she’d been with your biological dad not long before she met me—so she wanted a paternity test. I told her I knew you couldn’t be mine because I couldn’t have kids. It was a lie, but I didn’t want her believing, or letting you believe, that you really were mine. I owed that much honesty to her since I had to lie about what I was. She was alone and desperate and so, so beautiful. I couldn’t imagine life without her, even though by our laws I had very little time left. I hadn’t yet decided I wouldn’t go through with it, though ….” He finished off his beer and reached for another from the six-pack between them.

“Are there a lot of these laws? I had to sign a contract, but I never would have told anyone what I knew.”

“A contract?” he asked, sounding concerned. “I suppose that’s not surprising. You were working for Kol Magnus, I knew that much. He’s a very cautious man. And there have always been a lot of laws, but they’re changing now, which is why I came back.”

She felt her cheeks flush at her obfuscation of the truth about her relationship to Kol. He turned his golden-eyed gaze on her and furrowed his brows.

“What aren’t you telling me, Melody?”

“The contract wasn’t exactly for non-disclosure, though that was a clause in it. It was for …” She cleared her throat and quirked her mouth as she glanced at him, still too modest to say the words but remembering an alternative he’d understand. “It was for laughter. All of mine, just for one man.”

He frowned. “For Kol? He shouldn’t have needed …”

Her face heated further but she found the will to cut him off. “Not him! Though he was my first experience … and after him things got really complicated.”

“Melody,” he said softly, “I’m not a stranger to the way we work. You can be honest with me.”

“You first,” she said.

He nodded. “Fair enough. Your mother never knew what kinds of resources I had, and I didn’t tell her because I was afraid I’d be forced to go through with the Renunciation and leave her behind. One of our laws is that we have to mark our partner when they learn our true nature—preferably before. The mark can be a gift, but at the ends of our lives it means our mates go with us. If I’d done that, and then went through with my own Renunciation—giving up my life’s essence to the next generation—you would have been an orphan. You weren’t my child, so you weren’t like me and wouldn’t have had the care of my kind if that had happened. The alternative wasn’t much better. If I didn’t go through with it I would have to hide—there are other races like us, who harbor members of our race sometimes, and allow us to live in hiding. I could join one of these groups—and hope that the new Court were as open minded as they turned out to be. But I knew I couldn’t leave you entirely without protection. Even before you were born I loved you, Melody, as much as if you had truly been my own. I gave you the Blessing you carry the second I knew I’d never love another woman but your mother.”

“What is it?” she asked softly. “Because it’s kinda tortured me my whole life.” She gave him a shaky laugh. “I mean … I never liked many boys growing up. I did like laughing, though,” she gave him a sly grin that provoked a chuckle from him. She grew serious again. “But I never fell in love like all the girls I knew kept doing.”

“You weren’t meant to love anyone but one of us. Perhaps it was unfair of me to control your life to that degree, but it was the only way I knew you’d be safe and healthy and cared for, once your Blessing was recognized by the right male and he managed to supersede it with his own bond and his mark.”

“Nobody would have measured up to my memory of you, anyway,” she said. “But I don’t think it worked the way you meant for it to. I pretty much threw myself at Kol after an incredibly
funny
encounter with him and his wife because I couldn’t imagine life without him. The man’s a regular comedian.”

She meant the last part to be a joke, but Alec didn’t laugh. His jaw clenched and he set down his beer. “I didn’t expect it to be a Court dragon you found first,” he said softly. “They’re far too powerful for the magic of my Blessing to stand up to. I created it to ensure you always had a choice in the matter, but if his magic got to you first, it would have affected the Blessing—taken that choice away from you depending on how he channeled his energy the first time.”

“He was pretty damn intense,” Melody said, her pulse increasing at the mere memory of that afternoon with Kol and Hallie. “And he’s definitely the boss for a reason.”

“He’s more than just the boss to the rest of us, but if he didn’t mate you I have to assume he had a good reason.” He paused and glanced at her. “I wish you would tell me why you’re here … alone … when I can sense very clearly that you’ve left something behind, and that it wasn’t Kol Magnus. Your aura’s all wrong for it to be him.”

“Did your blessing account for there being two men?” she said, unable to suppress the bitterness in her tone.

Alec went very still for a second. She wished she were like him and could see things the way he did. But his shift in demeanor told her just enough to know he hadn’t been prepared for that statement. After a second he relaxed again and looked at her.

“The two of them, they were kind to you?” he asked.

“Mostly, yes.” Her stomach knotted at the memory of the last day when they’d both chosen to desert her, one after the other, after making love to her in the best possible way either of them could. Then retreating as though being
too
amazing was against some law of theirs.

“How were they not?” he asked, his voice gruff and commanding, his jaw muscles twitching. In that moment he looked a lot like Kol at his most imperious.

“They were perfect gentlemen, until they couldn’t be. Dad, it all happened very fast.”

Her mouth snapped shut the second the word came out. She hadn’t called him “Dad” to his face in over twenty years. She’d been told not to by both him and her mother—because he wasn’t her father, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him like one. She’d somehow understood why without asking, yet in her head she’d always thought of him that way.

She still did, even knowing what he was finally and having her fantasy shattered that there might be a possibility that he really was her dad.

She started to rise and take their empties inside, but his hand lashed out and grabbed her by the wrist.

“Do you love them? Both of them?”

The need to confess it made her want to cry. “God yes. But they have their own issues. I couldn’t sit there and wait for them to work things out.”

She wrested her arm from his grip when he didn’t say anything else. He retrieved the last beer in time for her to slot the empties back into the cardboard holder. As she headed back through the French doors into her mother’s dining room he called to her.

“They’ll be here. If they’re worth their horns, they’ll come find you.”

“They know where I am, I wasn’t exactly secretive about it. Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath, Dad.”

She loved saying that word and not having him object. With the odd glow he got afterward, she suspected he liked it, too.