The Island Of Dragons: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (14 page)

A short while later, after we’d each been given a clean bill of health, we returned to the living room amidst more crashing and booming coming from the east. Joanna and Melody were gone, and Davy asked where they’d went.

Sadie, who was sitting in an overstuffed chair with a pillow behind her head, smiled at him. “They went into one of the bedrooms to welcome your new little sister into the world. By the sound of a feisty little cry I heard a minute ago, I think she’s here already.”

Davy turned to me, big brown eyes wide. “I’m a big brother now, Miss O’Brien. Ultimate zero number of gotchas.”

After I’d congratulated Davy and given him a big hug, Hugh took me aside and congratulated and hugged
me
.

“You did it, kid. You took that mean old ocean, and you said, ‘Look here... I’m tougher than you. You swam in it, and you were strong, and you not only survived, you helped two other people survive, too.
Three
other people, to be technical. And I bet you weren’t even scared.”

I pulled my face from Hugh’s shoulder to look at him. “No... I was. But just somewhere underneath. Mostly, I felt driven to protect, and help. And that made the fear part just kind of melt away.”

Hugh grinned, giving me a light pat on the back. “Congratulations again. In my opinion, Miss Ellie O’Brien just became the bravest young woman in Knight’s Shore tonight.”

Soon I went back into the bedroom Dr. Benson had examined me in to wait out the battle. Sadie brought me a towel and dry clothes, and gave me a hug and a few kindly pats, and then left. I curled up in the bed, listening to the distant booms, which were getting quieter and father apart now. I cried. I prayed for Warren’s safety. I prayed that he was okay. And somehow, unbelievably, in the midst of it all, I fell asleep.

***

When I awoke hours later, I thought I was in a dream. Pale sunshine was streaming in through the windows, and Warren was beside me in bed. He looked healthy and whole, and his full lips were curved in a smile.
I’m dreaming
. But his fingers, which were stroking the side of my face, felt solid and real enough, and when he spoke, his voice seemed real enough, too.

“Good morning, you gorgeous creature.”

Acting on impulse, I pressed my lips to his, hard, finding them as solid as his fingers. This was no dream.

“The golem... did you destroy him? And are all your men okay?”

His smile got even bigger.

“Yes, and yes. Things definitely didn’t go as smoothly and easily as I’d hoped, but in the end, I was able to gain the upper hand. And my men aren’t entirely without injuries, but everyone is going to be just fine after some rest and recovery.”

Weak with relief, I heaved a sigh. “Oh, thank God. I’m so glad.”

Still smiling, Warren stroked the side of my face some more before speaking again, expression serious. “You’re amazing, Ellie. You’re awe-inspiring. Last night, everyone told me what you did. Davy told me how you protected him and held onto him even through the biggest waves...and even in the midst of everything going on... I just couldn’t help but think about what an amazing woman you are... and I also couldn’t help but think about what an amazing mother you’ll make someday.”

I smiled, twining my fingers with his, heart soaring. “Well, that’s funny, because I’ve been having thoughts about what an amazing father you’ll make someday.”

Warren’s delectable mouth curved into a sexy half-grin.

“Hmm... interesting. Because now with the golem destroyed, I think we’re going to be able to spend more time together and maybe talk a bit more about some of these thoughts we’ve both been having.”

I hiked a leg over his slim hips, sure I was grinning ear-to-ear. “Hmm, maybe so. And what do you say we start on that spending a bit more time together idea right now. What do you say we head over to your castle and see where things lead?”

With his coal gray eyes twinkling, Warren rolled out of bed and scooped me up in his arms. “
That
, Miss Eleanor Christine Elizabeth O’Brien, esquire, is a fantastic idea.”

A short while later, we showered together in his marble-tiled master bathroom, our hungry mouths and bodies only parting just long enough to briefly soap each other up. Now, with the golem destroyed, we could finally be together again physically, and it didn’t seem as if either one of us was willing to waste a second of it.

By the time we emerged from the warm spray of the shower, Warren’s thick shaft was rock-hard, and the feminine folds between my thighs were slick and swollen. I wanted to make love right away, and I told Warren so, but instead, he carried me into his bedroom, saying that we needed to take things slowly.

I stared at him, incredulous. “Cruel. You’d be absolutely cruel to tease me at this point.”

“Maybe. But still....” After setting me down on his bed crosswise, he cocked his head to one side and looked off into the distance, as if thinking. “But still, I think I want to.” With his full lips twitching, he returned his gaze to my face. “And I’m going to. And I’m afraid you don’t have a choice about this, Eleanor. So, just sit back, relax, and try to enjoy my cruelty if you can.”

With that, he pulled my hips to the edge of the bed, got down on his knees, and began planting kisses along my inner thighs, slowly. I knew what was next, and I wanted it, but I felt like I just couldn’t wait for it. I couldn’t wait for Warren to take his sweet time.

“Warren, please... I’ve been deprived for too long.”

More slow kisses along my inner thighs.

“Warren, don’t be cruel. You’re being inhumane.”

He began moving his kisses inward a bit, but his mouth still didn’t connect with the exact spot I wanted it to connect with. The spot I was desperate for it to connect with.

Truly feeling a bit tortured, I arched my back, gripping and twisting the blanket in both hands. “Warren, please... don’t make me beg.”

To my extreme relief, he didn’t. The moment I felt his firm, full lips touch the spot I was so desperate for them to touch, I cried out, arching my back even further. Before long, I was writhing in ecstasy, panting, as he rapidly raked his tongue over my most sensitive spot, slowly stroking his beyond-stiffened rod while he did so, in a feat of pretty impressive coordination. When my passion reached its final crest, I held his head in place between my thighs, tangling my fingers in his thick, dark hair.

A full four hours or so later, after a marathon lovemaking session broken up by only a few brief rests, we finally fell asleep, naked limbs entwined. We didn’t wake up until three in the afternoon.

After another shower together, this one a little more leisurely than the last one had been, Warren went to check on a few of his men who’d been injured. After he’d made sure that they were all okay and improving, we enjoyed a delicious dinner of tequila-lime glazed chicken and shrimp that Sadie cooked for us. Warren’s phone dinged with a text alert just as we were finishing a heavenly dessert of mango sorbet.

He apologized to me, adding that he felt that he had to look at his phone in case it was a message about any of his injured men, and then he looked at the screen briefly before speaking. “It’s from Dr. Benson. Dalton has his memory back, and he wants to talk to us both.”

We literally flew to the clinic. Warren flew in dragon form, and I flew on his back. Once inside the clinic, we raced down the corridor to Dalton’s room and found him sitting up in bed, looking healthy and well with an empty dinner tray in his lap.

When he saw us, he pushed the tray aside and got right to it. “I remember everything, and I’m ready to tell you both everything. Everything about this island, the Forms, the golem, and even why I said that the two of you couldn’t have relations until the golem was destroyed. See, as you correctly suspected, Chief Knight, I’m not just a scientist here for a look-see. My father was one of the computer scientists who designed this island. Incidentally, he was also your father, too, Ellie. We’re half-siblings.”

I stood speechless, stunned, and he continued, his gaze on Warren now.

“But all that isn’t important right now, Chief Knight. What
is
important is that the golem was the least of your problems. This island is set to self-destruct in thirty days. And no one, not even you island leaders, can get off the island now. If my calculations are correct, which I think they are, the portals have closed. We’re all going to die.”

Warren suddenly had to hold me up with an arm around my waist because my knees had buckled. I leaned against him, trembling, barely even able to process what I’d just heard, let alone believe it. But if it
was
true, if the island
was
going to self-destruct in thirty days, I wasn’t going to let it happen without at least trying to stop it. Now that I knew I had at least some bravery in me, I wasn’t going to give up my life and my future with Warren without a fight.

CHAPTER TEN

Waiting for Dalton to explain exactly why he’d said the island was going to self-destruct, I stood against Warren, trembling. Perfectly steady and not quaking in the least, Warren tightened his arm around my waist, continuing to hold me up.

With his dark gray eyes just slightly narrowed, he looked at Dalton and spoke in a low voice that exuded authority. “Please explain everything. This second.”

Sitting up a little straighter in his hospital bed, Dalton took a deep breath, seeming like he was going to do just what Warren had asked. But before he could speak even a single syllable, something funny happened: the tile flooring in the room seemed to ripple or shake or something. At first, just for the briefest of seconds, I thought my rubbery legs had simply begun to get even worse. I thought I’d begun literally shaking like a leaf. But a quick look at Dalton’s face, and then Warren’s, told me this definitely wasn’t the case. Judging by their twin expressions of confusion and alarm, they’d both felt the floor shake, too. Warren began to say something but halted abruptly mid-word when another tremor rippled through the floor, this one even more pronounced. This one was strong enough to make a few paper cups on a tray table skitter over the edge and fall to the floor.

Flinging off a sheet and swinging his legs over the side, Dalton began getting out of bed. “It’s happening already. I expected there would be earthquakes. We need to get outside before the building collapses on us.” Frowning, he started pulling an I.V line out of his arm while at the same time jamming his feet into a pair of slippers. “Something just tells me this could be bad.”

Warren wasted no time getting me to safety. Instead of wasting seconds by leading me out of the room and down the hallway to the building exit, he whisked me over to one of two large open windows in the room, yanked the screen up, and lifted me through the window, telling me to run from the building.

“But don’t go near the castles. Just get to open space where nothing can fall on you. I’ll see Dalton out, and I’ll be right there.”

I did as I was told, getting a good distance away from the clinic, and into the open sandy, rocky terrain adjacent to it. Not even a hundred yards from me, the clear, turquoise ocean glittered in the last rays of the sun, though I could hardly see it over a line of tall dunes studded with a few palms. What I
could
clearly see in the distance, however, was the long row of castles facing the water, and just a bit to the east, the rest of the stone buildings that made up the heart of the village.

As Dalton emerged through the same window I’d come out of, with Warren behind him, the ground quaked again, though quaked wasn’t even a powerful enough word. What happened to the ground felt more like an explosion, even though nothing had exploded. The force of the tremor was so powerful it knocked me off my feet and onto my rear in the sand. While a horrible, strange, groaning-scraping sound assaulted my ears, several of the two-story castles in the distance seemed to rise up and out of the sand a few feet, shaking, and then their second stories partially collapsed, sending their turrets and big slabs of stone crashing to the sand beneath. One of the castles was Melody and Josh’s, and the other belonged to Joanna and Lucas. I knew Joanna and Lucas’ bedroom was on the second floor, as was Davy’s bedroom, and as was newborn baby Abby’s nursery.

I screamed, jumping to my feet. “No!”

Taking off running wasn’t even a conscious decision that I made, it just kind of happened. Next thing I knew, my feet were just flying over the sand. I was sprinting faster than I’d probably ever sprinted before in my life, for any reason. I had to get to the village. I had to help. That was all I could think. Warren’s request that I not go near the castles had left my mind entirely.

Though very soon, I was reminded of it. I was reminded of it because Warren tackled me and brought me down to the sand. And not roughly at all; in fact, he seemed to cushion me in his strong arms as if I were a piece of fine china. But it was crystal clear that I would not be taking a single step further.

“No, Ellie! You can’t! You stay right here, and—”

“No! Let me go!”

Thoughts focused solely on my friends and the children, I kicked, struggled and twisted like some wild, ferocious animal, desperate to escape his encircling arms.

“Let me go, Warren!”

He didn’t, and instead, he held me even more firmly, though still without hurting me.

Half-insane with blind desperation, I began thrashing even more furiously. “Let me go! Let me go, goddammit!”

Warren’s arms may as well have been steel bars around me. He continued holding me, shushing me. “You have to stay safe, Ellie. You have to stay safe right here.”

Another quake rippling through the ground, immediately followed by more horrific grinding-crashing noises in the distance, only intensified my desperation.

“Warren, you have to let me go help! My friends need me!”

“But you
can’t
help in this case. Can you lift several-ton slabs of rock if need be? I don’t think you can, but
I
can. And you’re preventing me from doing that right this moment.”

Right away, I realized he was right. I obviously couldn’t lift massive slabs of stone like a shifter could even in human form. In my desire to help, I was actually delaying help from reaching everyone. I stopped struggling, and while another tremor shook the sand beneath us, Warren spoke in a low voice near my ear. “Swear to me you’ll stay here if I leave you.”

Now desperate for him to just go and help, I nodded. “I swear it. I swear it on my life. Just please go help everyone.”

After helping me to my feet, he gave me a lightning-fast kiss and then took off parallel to the dunes, jumping into the air and shifting into dragon form. Enormous and dark against the peach and lavender sky of early evening, he beat his wings so forcefully that I could feel the breeze from them even on the ground.

I shifted my gaze from him to the castles, horrified by what I saw. More castles had been damaged, and one of them, a single-story structure, lay in ruins, a heap of pale, salmon-colored rubble. Next to it, a two-story castle made of dove-gray stone appeared to have been cracked right in half, with a gap at least several feet wide running through the side. People were now streaming out of the castles, and I could hear their panicked shouts even from as far away as I was.

Making a noise something between a cry and a sigh, I folded my hands together so tightly my fingers hurt, though I barely noticed. “Please let everyone be okay. Please, please, please.”

Just then, I heard a moan coming from somewhere behind me, and I turned to see who’d made the sound. I’d forgotten all about Dalton. He knelt in the sand with his head in his hands, wincing, as if in pain. “Oh, it hurts. It hurts so bad.”

I dashed over to him, asking what was wrong, and he said it was a headache.

“It’s like an ice pick in my brain. Dr. Benson said I might have some terrible headaches for a while, especially when getting up, because of my head injury. Guess I got up way too fast.”

While more tremors made the ground shudder, I guided him to lie down, clearing a few rocks out of the sand behind his head. “Just rest for a minute. Just rest and try to relax.”

Wincing again, he closed his eyes, and just before he did, I noticed for the first time that they were the same unique shade of pale, hazel-ish green as my own. The exact shade, actually. Which maybe shouldn’t have surprised me, since apparently, he was my half-brother, though I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around that right then. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how that might be true. Though at the same time, I couldn’t quite deny it, either.

Now that I was specifically looking for similarities, they were numerous. In addition to our eye color, we also shared the same high cheekbones, roundish faces, and small, subtly cleft chins. Both of us on the shorter side, our physical builds were also similar, as was our hair. Mine was a light strawberry blond, and Dalton’s was more of a light golden brown with definite strawberry tones.

We certainly weren’t virtual twins, by any means, but a family resemblance was definitely there. My father’s looks were prominent in both of us. I just had no clue as to how on earth that had come to be. And how on earth we’d both managed to end up on Black Lake Island. I knew coincidence alone could not be the answer.

While the sky began to darken, I glanced between Dalton and the village, miles beyond anxious. There wasn’t anything I could do to help Dalton’s pain, and there wasn’t anything I could do to help my friends, and I hated it. I could handle danger, and I could handle stress, as I’d proven when I’d pulled Davy from the ocean, but I couldn’t handle powerlessness. It was tantamount to torture for me.

Dalton moaned, squeezing his eyes shut, and I realized that I was just going to have to have faith. Faith that he’d be okay, and faith that Warren and his men, many of whom were now in dragon form as well, would be able to free everyone trapped in the ruined castles, and in a short enough span of time that lives could be saved.

But just sitting back and having faith had never been my strong suit. Almost without thinking, I began getting to my feet, gaze on the village, wondering if maybe I should just get a little closer so I could see better, but Dalton pulled me back down by my sleeve.

“You promised Chief Knight. You swore it. You said you’d stay right here.”

I had, of course, and I hadn’t forgotten. And now I felt bad that I’d made the slightest move to break that promise, even though that move had been somewhat involuntary. I also felt bad that Dalton probably thought I’d been going to abandon him.

I nodded, sinking back down to my knees beside him. “You’re right, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here. I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”

To my extreme relief, at that moment, Dr. Benson appeared over one of the dunes, heading toward us. In the fading light, I could just make out the outline of her short, spiky red hair. She’d left the clinic to take a walk just as soon as Warren and I had arrived.

Unaware that she was coming, Dalton began mumbling with his eyes closed again. “I knew there would be earthquakes, I just didn’t think they’d start so quickly.”

Another quake shook the ground right then, and I waited a second or two until it had stopped before responding.

“Well, what are the quakes from? Why are they happening?”

Rubbing his temples, Dalton opened his eyes just a crack. “They’re precursors to the island folding in on itself, closing the wormhole, via the lake. The lake is the epicenter.”

A little quake with its epicenter seeming to be my stomach trembled through my body. Dalton had said earlier that the island was going to self-destruct in thirty days, and I still didn’t even know why, let along how that might be stopped.

But I knew first things had to be first, and first things at present were making sure Dalton was okay, and then hopefully soon, when the quakes stopped,
if
they ever stopped, making sure everyone in the village was okay. So, I resolved to try to focus on those things alone. Warren and I would get further answers from Dalton later. Even if he was willing to say more at that moment, I knew it might not be wise to have him explain things in front of Dr. Benson. Whatever was going on with the island, and whatever was going to happen, it would be Warren’s choice as to when he told others. I was certain he’d want to fully understand what was happening before causing a possible panic.

Once she’d reached us, Dr. Benson knelt next to Dalton, simultaneously asking if he was okay and taking a bottle of pills from the pocket of her white lab jacket. Soon, after swallowing a pill, Dalton appeared to fall asleep, even while the ground continued to rumble beneath us, though seemingly with less force now.

Dr. Benson sat back on her heels, her expression the very picture of concern. “I knew his headaches would be brutal. He’ll probably be out like a light until tomorrow morning. Which is good, so he can just sleep through the pain, but also because I have a feeling I might be busy all night with other patients, even though I pray that somehow, no one is hurt over there in the rubble. But the way it looks....” She looked from my face to the village, frowning, making the deep creases between her eyes even more pronounced. “I just pray no one is badly hurt. Our castles obviously weren’t built to withstand an earthquake.”

Soon the mini-quakes ebbed, becoming barely-perceptible little tremors of the ground. Just when I thought I couldn’t stand sitting around and waiting any longer, Warren lifted off from the ruins of a large castle and began flying back over to the dunes. I was on my feet in an instant, and the second he landed, I asked him if everyone was okay.

He shifted into human form within the blink of an eye and began striding over to me, nodding. “Everyone’s okay, and alive, though we have many, many injuries. I need to take Dr. Benson over immediately.”

Literally weak with relief, I sank to my knees, saying a silent prayer of thanks that no one had been killed. Dr. Benson and Warren decided they should take Dalton along with them, since Dr. Benson was going to set up a makeshift medical clinic between the village and the actual clinic, so that no one would be caught inside or near buildings again in the event of more quakes. They’d transport people over, then set up tents for the wounded, and use generators to supply electricity to the various machines that Dr. Benson would have to move outside. Once she and I had situated an unconscious Dalton on Warren’s back, not without some difficulty, the three of them took off.