shift happens 03 - no were to run (19 page)

Throwing my own needs and hopes to the wind, I asked my question and I needed an answer. “Would my son be safe with you?”

Nicolai barely moved as an icy coldness came over him. I watched him drift from me even as he stood only feet away. Tears blurred my eyes and I wanted to curl into a ball and sob, but I wouldn’t. He would not see me break.

“I am many things,
Princess
. I am arrogant and selfish. I am not good with what humans would call polite social behavior. I’m jealous and possessive, and I don’t like being played for a fool. I may be deadly—and trust me, I am—but I have never killed for any reason other than defense of my people or myself.
I’m a goddamn Dragon, not a monster
,” he shouted with so much anger directed at me, I blanched in shame.

He waited for a response, but I didn’t have one. My fire was extinguished. I was empty of everything and felt numb. Death couldn’t be more painful than this and I wished it would take me now.

“Your disrespect, your lineage, your insane power—all that I could take, but this…” He shook his head sadly then turned and put his clenched fist through my wall. The veins in his neck bulged and he took a deep breath to regain control. “This I cannot take. Your son would have been as safe in my arms as any other child we had together. He is part of you and that is enough for me. However, there is no need to test that theory because I no longer want his mother.”

My knees weakened and I fell back onto the couch and dropped my face to my hands.

“Any woman—including the one fate decreed for me—that thinks me capable of the barbarism that your father enjoyed during his soon to be ended life is not a woman I can love or want. Ever,” he hissed in disgust.

“Nicolai,” I whispered brokenly.

“Stop. Please just stop,” he said, refusing to look at me. “Whatever we had, you broke it. You have killed fate with words so vile I don’t ever want to hear them again. After we eliminate your father, you will leave. I can’t see you or be near you.”

He turned to go and I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I was so sorry, but it was something I had to ask. Daniel’s welfare was more important than mine. I’d grossly misjudged him and I knew it, but time would not rewind. I’d made my lonely bed and I would die in it.

He was not the first man that hated me. I’d known hatred my entire life. I just hoped he would be the last.

“We will work together civilly,” Nicolai said tonelessly with his back to me. “Because of nature, you will still stay away from the men when I’m present. I’d rather die than kill one of my own over you. Junior says he needs a week to be ready. Stay out of my way and I shall stay out of yours. We can communicate through Lenny or my mother. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “You are very clear.”

“Good,” he said without turning around.

And then he walked out the door—and out of my life.

Chapter 15

“Oh my God,” Maria gasped as I pinned her to the ground. “I didn’t see that coming. I want to try again.” She hopped up and took a defensive stance.

I’d gone on autopilot after my devastating exchange with Nicolai. I hadn’t seen him in days, but I’d stayed so busy that I fell into bed exhausted every night. I was training the Dragons to fight like killers. It was what I knew best and I was shockingly good at it.

I fought and bled all day and then at night I spoke to Daniel until sleep took me. I was existing for two reasons only—to kill my father and to see my son.

Even the male Dragons were in awe of my deadly skills and everyone picked up the new methods I taught quickly. Lenny was always hovering nearby, but he hadn’t spoken a word to me since I’d seen him with Junior. He just watched with knowing eyes and then disappeared when he felt like it. He was probably pissed at me too.

Whatever. I had more important things to worry about.

Thankfully, Maria was a good student. I needed her to be ready and strong. If I’d known about her, she’d never have been so woefully unprepared to protect herself. A week wasn’t long enough to teach her everything I wanted her to know, but it was all we had.

Junior respected my desire not to talk about anything that had happened. After asking me once if I wanted him to kill Nicolai, he dropped it. If it was possible, I loved Junior even more. It was difficult to tell him that it was me,
not Nicolai
he should kill, but I told him anyway. He laughed and pulled me into a hug that I desperately needed.

We were on track to bankrupt my father. It was only days away now. It was the only thing that kept me going along with my burning desire to see Daniel. A huge part of me wanted to run away from this place, but these Dragons had done nothing to me. Everything that was wrong in my life was my own fault.

I replayed the scene with Nicolai over and over again in my mind. Sadly, I knew I still would have asked him the same question. In my world fathers
did
kill their sons…Soon I would come to terms that we were not meant to be. Right now it ate at my insides like a cancer.

“Dima, did you hear what I said?” Maria asked as she took my chin in her hand and raised my eyes to hers.

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t,” I replied. “What do you need?”

“I don’t need anything. You do. When did you last eat?” she asked with concern.

“Um…” I couldn’t remember.

I’d avoided the mess hall and most open areas so I wouldn’t run into Nicolai. The compound was huge and I’d been successful.

“Come on, you’re going to eat or you’ll drop. We have a son of a bitch to kill soon and we need you,” Maria insisted as she dragged me from the training area.

“Let me go to my room and change,” I said as I glanced down and winced at my blood spattered workout clothes.

While the training was relatively safe, it wasn’t without a few wounds here and there. I refused to eat looking like an axe murderer.

“Fine,” Maria said as she hugged my tired body. “I’ll meet you there in a half hour. If I don’t see you I will come get you and drag you over by your pretty red hair.”

“Can you speak to your aunt like that?” I asked as a small smile pulled at my lips.

“I just did, didn’t I?” she answered cheekily and flounced off to get changed.

I realized that all the pain was worth it because I now had my niece in my life. I’d only have her for a short time, but it was better than not having known she existed at all.

Maria was right. I needed to eat. It was ridiculous for me to keep avoiding Nicolai. We’d be together in battle. I may as well get used to his presence here so it wouldn’t be distracting when our lives were on the line.

***

I rounded the corner to the mess hall and stopped dead in my tracks. There was an argument in full swing and I was the subject.

Shit.

“You’re a stupid asshole,” I heard Maria shout at the top of her lungs.

Oh dear God, please don’t let her be yelling at Nicolai.

“Why would she think differently?” she went on at full volume. “Most of her life she’s hidden among the humans while running for her life. Before that, she watched her father murder her mother and her brothers. Tell me, O great and compassionate leader, how would she know to think differently?”

My stomach dropped to my toes. My niece was accosting Nicolai in my defense. This was a clusterfuck. As much as I tried to move forward, my feet were stuck to the ground. Literally. I couldn’t lift them.

Someone touched my shoulder and I would have screamed if Lenny hadn’t gently put his hand over my mouth. He put his finger to his lips and indicated for me to be silent. He was all kinds of crazy and I was all kind of out of here.

Did I really have to relive the horror from a few days ago?

“Let me leave, Lenny,” I hissed. “I don’t want to hear this. I have to stop her. I fight my own battles.”

“Shhh, child. Some battles are not meant to be fought alone.”

“You’re an ass.”

“I’ve been called far worse.”

“I’m not like her father,” Nicolai bellowed angrily. “She should know that.”

“You are the dumbest man alive right now. I’d kill for a mother like her—someone who put me before her own happiness. Hell, I want to be just like her someday, but because you’re such a pigheaded jackass, she won’t be around to see it.”

“Explain yourself,” Nicolai demanded furiously. “And refrain from calling me every foul name you can think of.”

“I’ll call you what you deserve, assface,” Maria informed him rudely.

She was definitely my niece, but I didn’t want her to be banished from her weyr for defending me. I wasn’t going to be around much longer and these people were her family.

“I will ask you once again,” Nicolai ground out through clenched teeth. “Why won’t that
woman
see you as a mother?”

God, could he not even say my name?

“Because when she turns 500, she’ll die unless she’s mated, you canker sore. She’s from the fucked up Royal Dragon Line. Apparently we have some very stupid rules to contend with. I have to follow the same fucked up edict, but I have time. Dima doesn’t because you screwed everything up.”

“I did no such thing,” Nicolai snarled. “She did that herself by putting me in the same category as the cold blooded killer who murdered my sister.”

He was correct and Maria had overstepped her bounds. She needed to stop, but Lenny’s magic had encased my feet. He was going to get an ass kicking very soon.

“If you’d pull your self righteous head out of your Dragon ass for a moment, you’d understand her fear,” Maria snapped.

“Maria’s right,” I heard Elaina say. “Dima has lived in fear her entire existence. She knows very little of love and trust. She’s only recently found it and it wasn’t even with her own kind. It was the Wolves and Vampyres that accepted her—not us.”

Kill me now. Was everyone going to put their two cents in about my pathetic existence?

“I’d have to say you’re pretty much a jackhole,” Junior chimed in. “You need to get down on your knees and beg.”

“She thought I would kill her son,” Nicolai shouted.

“Would you?” Elaina asked.

“Are you out of you ever loving mind?” Nicolai snarled. “I would never kill her son. My God, does everyone think I’m murdering imbecile?”

“No, my child,” Elaina said calmly. “But with Dima’s past, the question was fair. It doesn’t reflect on you or your character. It reflects what she’s gone through. You need to tell her you would never harm her child.”

“I did tell her that,” Nicolai growled and then swore viciously. “I might have added a few other things as well.”

“Awful things?” Maria demanded.

“Possibly,” he admitted.

“You are such a douche,” Maria added somewhat quieter, but still loud enough to be heard. “She will die because of you.”

“No, she won’t,” Nicolai said. “I will find her and make this right.”

Oh God no. I would not mate with him out of pity. I was better off alone. Everyone’s time was up eventually and mine was up in a few months. If I mated with him because he didn’t want to be responsible for my death, my heart would wither and die…

I’d much rather spend my final months with my friends and my son. An eternity with a man who despised me but felt it was his duty would be a death worse than the real thing.

Grabbing Lenny by the collar, I got in his face. “Let me go now or I will come back and haunt your ass for the rest of you unnatural life. And trust me, it won’t be pleasant.”

“As you wish,” he said and then disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

I was free and I didn’t waste a second. I turned and ran as if the devil was chasing me. I knew I couldn’t go back to my suite—that was the first place Nicolai would look. I didn’t want to be cooped up inside anyway. I knew exactly what I needed to do.

Tearing at my clothes, I let my Dragon come out. She was giddy with joy and I launched myself into the air with reckless abandon. I needed to fly. I needed to soar above the clouds and be away from all the anger and confusion.

A couple of hours—that was all I would take. But when I came back, I would be whole. I would be a strong Dragon who just happened to be a single mother. The wind and the sun would give me the strength I needed to get through the next few days. I didn’t need a mate. I didn’t want a mate. And I certainly didn’t want a mate that was forced to accept me.

My father needed to be taken down so he could no longer hurt anyone. I wanted to hold my son in my arms and hear him laugh. I wanted my niece to visit me and meet her cousin.

All of that did not include a man. Nothing I’d done worth anything had ever included a man. I was well aware that Daniel’s father had helped in his creation, but he never even knew. We weren’t trying for a child. The child came after he was gone, so the child was all mine.

The wind on my scales was glorious.

I would live out the rest of my days like the wind—carefree and wild.

Chapter 16

I’d successfully avoided being alone with Nicolai. It was difficult, as everyone I knew was trying to make it happen, but I’d been running my entire life. I was very adept at getting away. My inner dragon was livid with me, but I was beginning to think she was more trouble than she was worth.