Broken Gates (17 page)

“Khol—I . . .” This was going to be harder than I had originally thought. I loved Khol, I really did. He just wasn’t Bryn. Despite that, my body responded to Khol’s, and a feeling of liquid heat bloomed inside of me. But the difference now was that I wouldn’t let myself get swept away in those feelings. I wouldn’t let the ease of our relationship rule my decisions. No one ever said love was easy.

I felt Khol’s body tense around me and he pulled back from our embrace enough to meet my eyes. His bore into mine, and after a moment’s time, but what seemed like forever to me, he backed away from me completely. “I see.” His voice cracked with emotion.

“Khol—I—please—I’m sorry. You know I love you—you do. And you’ve got to believe me. I never would have done . . .” My voice caught in my throat as my mind skidded over the memories of the intimate moments Khol and I had shared. “I never would have . . .” I tried again, but this time was stopped short by the look on Khol’s face. It was a mixture of hurt and anger. And my heart cracked just a little for him. Why did he ever have to fall for me? Why did things have to be so complicated?

“So, you’re back to wanting Bryn again,” he said without question. “And if he still doesn’t want you?”

“He wants me,” I whispered. “He’s just afraid that being with me will result in my death.”

Khol’s face had lost all emotion, and he looked at me with a mask of neutrality, which was worse because it told me how much he was hurting. “And if it does? Result in your death?”

“Then it’ll be my fault, and none of yours. I should be able to protect myself.” And that was the truth of the matter. No one was ever truly safe, not really. And relying on someone else for security would result in my suffering no matter which way I looked at it. I had to rely on myself for my own protection.

“So my little Seer has finally become our little queen.” Khol gave me a smile that didn’t touch the sadness in his eyes. “I told you that you’d find the strength in you one day.”

I stood and went to him, cupping my hand to the side of his face. “Thanks to you.”

He brought his large hand up to cover mine and leaned into my touch, meeting my eyes with intensity. A familiar feeling of electricity shot through my system. I always felt sparks when Khol touched me. “I can’t lose you . . . again.” His voice was hoarse from raw emotion. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

I tried to pull away from him then, but he held me to his face with his strong fingers. “I don’t care what you think,” I said as anger began to build in me. “I can’t help that I’ve loved him practically all of my life. I need him almost as much as the oxygen I breathe! I loved him before I even met you!”

I could feel the muscles in Khol’s jaw spasm as he ground his teeth together. “And yet you came to my bed. And you trembled so sweetly under my fingers and tongue.” His words were soft but there was no mistaking the underlying cruelty that they meant to inflict on me. “You had no need of him to help you breathe when I let you do the same to me. And you happily made love to me with your mouth.”

My lower lip began to tremble as tears gathered in my eyes. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but I hadn’t expected Khol to be cruel, to use all of my fears against me. He knew I felt slutty for doing what I did with him, and for still being involved with Bryn. There was no way he didn’t know with his close emotional connection to me. He was just trying to hurt me like I was hurting him . . . and it was working. “Don’t,” I squeaked. “Please don’t say those things to me.”

“You mean the truth?”

I opened and closed my mouth not knowing what to say. He was right; of course, nothing he was saying to me was a lie . . . not really. It was then he captured my lips with his, and as I gasped in surprise, he swallowed down all the breath in my lungs. I struggled against him, even as his body made mine hum with excitement. I was attracted to him, still . . . and just because I loved Bryn more didn’t change the fact that I loved Khol too.

He pushed me back onto the bed and pushed my arms up over my head, holding me in place as he continued his assault on my senses. I couldn’t help but moan when he ground himself into me. Even when he had essentially blackmailed his way into my pants by threatening Bryn’s life, Khol had always brought me pleasure. Why would now be any different?

“Khol—stop—please,” I begged when he freed my mouth only to begin kissing a trail of fire down my neck and other more sensitive areas.

“I won’t lose you again,” he growled.

It was with those words I knew how truly desperate he had become to have me for keeps. He was about to do what he swore he would never do to me again. He was going to take from me without asking—he was going to claim me against my will. As in the past with Khol . . . it wouldn’t be rape . . . not really . . . but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted either. At least not mentally. Or maybe this is what it means when someone says another person seduced them? Was Khol seducing me? As my body arched up into his touch, I was pretty sure I had the answer, and I was not happy.

“Don’t do this to me, Khol,” I hissed. “You promised.”

“And you promised to wait—to wait until the child was born. We all agreed.” He freed me from my shirt and bra, and while he still held my arms over my head with one hand, his callused palms skimmed roughly over my naked flesh, eliciting a moan from me. And I hated him for it.

“You were going to cheat. You admitted it—and I changed my mind,” I grated as I felt my dragon fire magic push up through me as my anger began to heighten. How dare he pull this crap with me again? Maybe he hadn’t changed as much as I thought he had. “Khol, stop, before I make you.” My voice had changed, dropped to a low animalistic growl. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Paying no mind to my words, Khol tugged at my pants, tearing them from my body. I lay before him now, with only a tiny lace thong keeping me from being completely naked—something in the past that would have been sexy, but now—
I was pissed
.

An inhuman scream erupted from my chest as I pulled the strength from somewhere to push Khol off of me. In fact, not only did I manage to push him off of me, but I threw him clear across the room to where he landed in a heap on his ass with a dazed expression on his face. I pulled myself up to my full height and let my fire magic explode from my palms.

Khol, with almost no effort at all, captured my magic in his own palm and smiled at me. “This little display of power—it only makes me want you more,” Khol rumbled as his eyes raked over my nearly naked self, causing goosebumps to erupt all over my flesh. “You’re acting more and more dragon with every passing moment, and that means I’m the one you belong with.”

“I belong with Bryn.”

“He’s too human. And beyond that, he’s a Black Dragon. Your powers clash. Your flames would consume him and leave nothing behind. Even weaker Red Dragons are no match for you.” Khol paused and offered three words to me in a hushed voice, “Think of Drake.”

I knew what he was referring to—when I had first discovered my dragon fire magic I’d nearly killed Drake—a Red Dragon. “I would never hurt Bryn. I love him too much.”

Khol raised one of his eyebrows at me in question. “Like Jenna.”

“That was different. That was—”

“Over me.” Khol’s voice held a note of triumph, like making that point alone would win me over. All it did was make me angrier.

“Maybe you’re too dragon for me. Maybe I need someone with more human-like emotions,” I retorted, knowing it would bother Khol deep down. He’d never loved anyone the way that he loved me before, and there was a vulnerability he wasn’t used to inside of him because of it. He wasn’t sure he knew how to treat me, not really.

“Enough,” he seethed. He locked his fire backlit eyes with me briefly before he leapt suddenly through the air with lightening speed, pinning me against the wall with his rock solid body. He dipped his head to whisper in my ear as I turned mine away from him. “He doesn’t have a second form. You do.” My whole body began to shake with fear. Khol knew how much I was afraid of being able to shift into a dragon. He’d been very careful to not show me his other form, or to let anyone else for that matter, as to not freak me out now that I knew I was fully dragon. I guess this meant we were playing for keeps, pushing an entire elevator’s worth of each other’s buttons.

“No. It doesn’t mean I have to change, not ever. Not if I don’t want to.” Yep, that’s right, I fully intended to rely on complete denial when it came to shifting into a dragon. I refused to lose that part of the illusion of my humanity.

Khol chuckled low and dark in response. “You won’t have a choice. It
will
happen. It’s just a matter of when.”

His words sunk in slowly and when they finally hit home, I cried out as if I was in physical pain. “No! Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why should I believe you now?”

“Because I didn’t want to scare you. But now it’s obvious you need more than just a simple dose of reality. Things won’t work with him. I don’t understand why you insist on trying.” Khol’s voice had dropped down to a barely audible level, and I could hear the pain that had been hiding under his anger. I had hurt him deeper than I ever had before, because this time he had dared to hope for it all.

My anger slipped away, causing a dull ache in my chest. “I can’t help the way that I feel,” I croaked. “I’m sorry.”

“What changed? What changed while you were away?” Khol’s voice sounded so small, and so brittle.

I closed my eyes tightly and let the fresh tears that had been gathering in the corners of my eyes spill down my over heated cheeks. “I don’t know. Things just seemed to become clearer to me somehow.”

“It’s that damn bracelet. It keeps me from you, and you from me. Your birth mother has clearly been meddling in our lives. I should have known from that letter. I should have known from . . . everything.” He reached up with one hand and started to bend the bracelet off.

A chill ran down my spine. He was right; my birth mother had been meddling in everything since before I was even born. What if the bracelet did more than just make me untraceable and unreadable to Khol? What if it was messing with my head somehow? “What did the letter say?” I asked on a shaky exhalation. But Khol ignored me and focused on removing the bracelet. “Khol, tell me please. I deserve to know.”

“She wanted me to be prepared for a change in you when you returned. She wanted me to give you some space,” he growled while he still struggled with the piece of jewelry. “I thought she meant—I don’t know—not that you would come back and suddenly not want me any longer.” He abruptly released me and turned away from me. “It’s welded on. We’re going to need a special tool to get it off,” he said with frustration oozing through his entire body as he stood perfectly still.

“What? What the hell?” How did it become—wait—it was my fire magic—I distinctly remembered the bracelet growing really, really hot back at the creepy Murder House. “I reached up and clutched at the dragon pendant Khol had gifted to me. It was perfectly fine. “Why didn’t the pendant—”

“It’s been charmed to be fire magic proof. It was made for our kind specifically,” Khol answered before I could finish my question.

“Oh.”

“Get dressed. We have more important things to worry about right now.” I didn’t know how to react. One minute Khol had been ready to force himself on me, and the next he’s acting like I was the one who was focusing on our little love triangle to the detriment of everything else. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.” He stalked out of the room without so much as a backward glance at me.

“Okaaaay,” I mumbled to myself. Not that I wasn’t ecstatic for the reprieve from Khol, but I wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened. Had Khol accepted that I wanted Bryn and not him? I highly doubted it, and yet he had walked away . . . literally. Maybe he’d just realized we
did
have more important things to worry about at the moment and the rest could wait.

I harrumphed to myself as I located my discarded clothes and pulled them back on. I for one was ready to get back to dealing with the Rider inside of Cliff instead of focusing on my messed up love life. Because screwed wasn’t even a good enough word to describe my situation at all . . . not by a long shot.

16

Terrance blinked his human host’s eyes in complete disbelief as he settled back into the familiar body. When he was ripped from it, he had thought it would be the last time he would exist outside the red stone that imprisoned him. He knew many others that had been placed there by his master to never return. He looked up questioningly at his master and immediately averted his eyes in submission.

“They have my son,” his master growled with fury. “Consider this your last and second chance at this life.” There was a long pause before he spoke again and Terrance didn’t dare so much as to twitch a single muscle. “Get him back no matter the cost.”

Terrance rose and left the room without a single word. He didn’t need to say anything. His master knew that he understood what was truly at stake. And he had no intention of losing his freedom again.

I knew I needed to focus on the Rider inside of Cliff and getting any kind of information we could out of him. The opportunity we had was priceless, and yet all I really wanted to do was to go to Bryn. I needed to tell him how much had changed in the short time I’d been away. Well . . . at least from my perspective. I was still pregnant and didn’t know whether he or Khol was the father, but none of that seemed to matter in regards to wanting to be with Bryn anymore. But what could I say to him this time around that I hadn’t already said before? He’d told me that love wasn’t an issue, and that love, in fact, was what was motivating him to give me up . . . for my own protection. I just had to make him understand somehow . . . make him see that it wasn’t his job to protect me.

What I really needed was to talk to Jenna—the real Jenna anyways. I hadn’t allowed myself to think in much detail about her being possessed by a Rider while I was away. I had too many other things to deal with and it was just easier to pretend what had happened with her was all a really, really bad dream. Yep . . . I was not only the new Dragon Queen but the queen of denial as well. I was suddenly overcome with the irresistible urge to visit her. I missed her more than I ever thought possible. Sure, she’s completely self-absorbed at times, sex obsessed, and utterly annoying but—she was Jenna and I loved her. I knew if I asked well—anyone—to take me to see her that they would disagree with that line of thought and prevent me from doing so. The only way I was going to get to see her, I knew, was if I found her on my own. Now . . . where would I stash her if I were Khol?

About fifteen minutes later, a very annoyed me still hadn’t figured out where Jenna was. Maybe if I could find Jeremy, I could force it out of him. I wondered if having a Rider in Jenna had dampened his newfound devotion to her? He had to know it wasn’t really her that had sent him to deliver her cookies of death to me. I heaved a huge sigh and was just about to give up when I spied Jeremy, speak of the devil, coming down the hallway. Isn’t that the way it always is . . . you only luck into something just when you’re ready to give up?

“Jeremy!” I called out, hurrying toward him with excitement.

He looked up at me, and a smile spread across his face slowly. “I’m so glad you’re back.” He came to me and wrapped me in a bear hug, swinging me around, causing me to giggle despite myself. Yep . . . I’d missed Jeremy too. Even though he had started out as just another guy trying to play tonsil hockey with me, since his feelings for Jenna had developed, we’d been able to relax into a real friendship, at least I felt that way. “Have you figured out a way to fix Jenna?” he asked with hope filling his caramel colored eyes as he set me back down on my feet.

All feelings of elation instantaneously drained out of me. “Not yet.” I paused to study the ground before gathering the courage to meet his eyes and the disappointment that shone out at me from them. “But I know I will. My birth mother said I could, and she’s never wrong apparently.”

He nodded, letting some hope settle into his tense features. “Okay. So what’s the plan then?”

“I wanna see her Jeremy. I know you’re probably gonna say it’s a bad idea but I just miss her so much, and I just—”

“Yeah. Okay,” Jeremy interjected, thoroughly shutting me up. I’d been prepared to argue with him to get him to tell me where she was. I was shocked at how easily he agreed. He must have read it on my face. “She can’t hurt you, and she knows she has a Rider inside of her. It’s almost like she has a split personality or something. Jenna—the real Jenna—there aren’t even words to explain how awful she feels about—”

“Trying to kill me,” I said dryly.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said softly, like he was partly to blame or something.

I reached up and touched his arm. “But she’s okay besides that? I mean no one is mistreating her, right? Khol promised he’d protect her.” And yet another instance of me turning to Khol for aid. But then again he was the Red Dragon Lord, and I was the Dragon Queen. Technically, I could ask any dragon for assistance and expect them to give to me.

“She’s safe but . . .” Jeremy’s voice trailed off and his brow furrowed with concern. “She’s not doing well. The animals . . . well, they won’t talk to her and she’s just—”

I gasped, cutting him off. “Oh God, no. I never thought about that part—either way.” A Rider with the ability to talk to and in a minor manner control animals—we could have all been so screwed. “I’m sure once the Rider’s gone, they’ll talk to her again.”

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Jeremy mumbled while studying the floor. He then suddenly looked up at me, as if he forgot for a moment he wasn’t alone and gave me a weak smile. “Come on, we’ll go see her now before anyone else . . .” He raised his fist up to his mouth and forced a cough. “Khol,” he said with a smirk, and he turned and started walking back down the wall in the direction I had seen him coming from, “tries to stop you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I fell into step beside him. “He is a bit controlling, isn’t he?”

Jeremy stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows up to practically his hairline. “A bit?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”

Neither one of us said anything else for over the few hundred feet it took to travel until we paused in front of a huge wooden door. As Jeremy pulled it open, I only hesitated for a second before following him in. Inside, much to my surprise, looked like a bedroom with prison bars in front of it. Like someone had just installed bars as an afterthought. And I suppose, that’s probably exactly what happened. Talk about a whole new definition to being sent to your room.

I trailed along behind Jeremy and scanned the room for Jenna. Only when we were standing right up next to the bars, did I notice her sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She looked so tiny, lost, and forlorn, laying there with black messy hair and light brown roots. I was overcome by the urge to run to her and hug her, but of course, I couldn’t for obvious reasons.

“Jenna,” Jeremy said in a soft tone. “Someone’s here to see you.”

I heard Jenna heave a huge sigh. “I told you, I don’t want any visitors. Please just go away.” Her voice was so flat and utterly hopeless sounding, lacking all of the usual life that Jenna always seemed to have in her, it was if someone had sucked out her very essence. My stomach knotted immediately, and I felt bile rise up in my throat.

“Jenna,” I said. “I wanted to see you. Please won’t you talk to me?”

She sat up suddenly and came running toward the bars with a huge smile on her face, and she was still, in that moment, my best girlfriend I’d known forever. But as she got closer and the duel imagery of the Rider inside of her shined out from behind her pixie face, I involuntarily took a step back and let out a strangled scream. My reaction halted her dead in her tracks and her face went ashen. She blinked back tears that were gathering in her deep brown eyes as she looked at me.

“I’m sorry!” I blurted out wanting desperately a do over. “I knew what to expect, it’s just that . . .” What could I say? Seeing an alien living inside of you kind of freaked me out? Well of course—duh. “I—I’m sorry.” Maybe I shouldn’t have come to see her after all. I thought I could handle it, but maybe I was wrong.

Jenna’s eyes finally filled to the brim and the tears spilled out and rolled down her face, her lower lip trembling. “You know I would never try to kill you. I mean—
I
would never try to kill you. And the animals—they won’t talk to me anymore. I know it’s in there—I can feel it but I can’t see it! Can’t control it when it starts implanting things in my head!” She wailed the last part and dropped to her knees.

Tears of my own began to flow freely down my face and I desperately tried to think of something to say to comfort her. “I’m going to find a way to get it out of you—I promise.”

“What if you can’t? Or what if even when it’s gone it leaves some kind of—I don’t know—darkness behind?” Her whole body began to shake as she sobbed. “I tried to kill you. It made sense at the time. It convinced me that you were to blame for all of my problems . . . losing my family . . . being here . . . just everything.” More huge sobs wracked her body. “It made total sense—to kill you—my best friend.”

“Jenna—I . . .” I looked at her beseeching eyes and began to wonder if it was so easy to convince her I was to blame . . . because I was. I swallowed to try and combat the sudden dryness of my throat, the bile that had risen up had left a burning sensation in its wake. I then turned to Jeremy with wide eyes and shook my head in panic. “I’m sorry—I thought I could—but I can’t.” Those were the only words of explanation I managed to get out before I turned and ran from the room—ran from Jenna, my best female friend who had an alien inside of her.

Once outside of the room I continued to run, not really sure where I was going, letting my feet lead me blindly. Where could I go? Not to Khol. I knew I could find comfort in his arms, but that would be the easy fix, and short lived at that. Not to Bryn either. I wasn’t sure how he would receive me at the moment, and I didn’t think I could handle being turned away from him in the state I was in. So I continued to blindly run, my tears smearing the world into bright water colors before my eyes, until I found myself outside in one of the many gardens surrounding the compound and I collapsed under a huge tree.

As I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them to me, I realized that I’d never been so utterly alone in my life. Sure I might have felt this alone in the past, but I was just being overly dramatic—a truth that I felt down to my core in that moment. Now—now I actually was alone. I had no one to turn to—no one who understood me the way that I needed to be understood. Because that’s what I really wanted . . . understanding. Isn’t that what everyone wants on some level? That’s why sometimes love just isn’t enough, because if there’s no understanding, then a lack in communication will drag the relationship down. Look at what had happened between Bryn and me. I just couldn’t make him understand that it’s not his job to protect me, that I only want him to love me.

I sat beneath that tree until no more tears would come, and the air began to grow chilly with the onset of dusk. But I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed until all there was left to do was sleep.