Dragon's Heart (12 page)

Draakar
rolled onto his back. His thoughts were not only of her. He also needed to find
his son, and see his son’s mate protected until she came of age. The Stones
were still conveniently silent as to the exact whereabouts of either.

The
weight of his responsibilities lay heavily on his shoulders this night, but at
least he had found Maya. Hope existed for them where there had been none
before. Together, he and Maya would be able to restore the balance on Akgon
until Talon could cede him. First they had to save Earth from this old threat,
and the sooner he found his son the better. Draakar already had a private
investigator, who possessed a little brethren blood, out looking for him. He
had the man searching for Talon in the States because his young mate lived
there. Draakar had been able to glean at least that much from Mother Earth.

M
aya thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep after their
exchange, but she rolled over and the next thing she knew, a sliver of sunlight
had slipped through a break in the closed curtains. She must have slept after
all. Morning had come.
 

Good morning, golden-bronzed one.
Hurry up. I am waiting for you.

Good grief, already! Could that
designation be any longer? At least let me get up and have a cup of coffee
before you begin to harass me!

Ha,ha,ha…I’ll wait for you. Will
you take a shower again this morning?

Maya
let lose another surge of energy along their link, a little stronger than the
first instance. This time he must have expected it because he sent it right
back at her, albeit toned down. He’d changed her original energy to a more
featherlike caress against the right side of her face.

Oh, don’t do that. I warned you not
to touch me.

I didn’t. I merely returned what
you sent to me.

Laughing
outright this time, Draakar closed their connection.

“Oh,
that man! That…dragon!” Maya wailed to no one in particular. “I am so going to
make him sorry he did that!” Throwing off her covers, she stomped to the
bathroom to get ready to do battle with her nemesis for the rest of the day.
 

A
surprise awaited her when she opened her sitting room door. Ian stood with his
hand raised to knock. Maya greeted him with a smile. “Good morning, Ian. Did
you need something?”
 

“Yes,
Maya,” he said. “Ah, may I come in for a minute? I just needed to talk to you
before you go down to breakfast.”

“Sure.”
She stepped aside for Ian to enter, just as Draakar opened his door. A low
growl sounded from his throat. He stepped out of his room toward her. She
smiled and closed her door in his face.

What is this?
Draakar
sent to them both.

Not any of your damn business.

Ian!
Draakar
roared in his First’s head.

Forgive me, Dark Lord, but I must
speak to Maya about Cass…uh, Cassandra. I want to make sure there are no bad
feelings between my Lady and one of her chosen.
 
Cassandra was wrong to do what she did yesterday and is
truly sorry for upsetting her.

Cassandra has nothing to fear from
me. However, Maya is her queen and she must answer to her.
She should not have upset her, Ian.

I know Lord and she didn’t mean to,
she is still much grounded in human ways of ah…attraction.

Yes she is, but that is no excuse.
Truemate bonds are life bonds and she knows she is not mine. It is Cassandra
who must face Maya, Ian. But don’t worry. All will be well.
 
Maya has nothing to worry about and she
knows this. Do not tarry long in her room.

No Lord…I mean yes, Draakar, I will
not.

Whatever happened to Draak?

Maya
could picture a smiling Draakar as he cut off his thoughts from Ian and headed
to the kitchen. But he stayed in her mind.
It
has been a long time since I have been able to smile so much. Leadership is a
burden I have gladly worn but thank you for bringing a lightness to it. Whether
you want to admit it or not, you give me hope.
 

Maya
did not respond to his thoughts. What could she say? Instead she chose to
continue her conversation with Ian.

“Well,
what did you want to talk to me about, Ian?”

Ian
shifted his attention back to Maya. “I’m sorry, Maya. I just wanted to ask you
to try to befriend Cassandra or Cass, as she prefers. Please don’t hold her
initial attraction to Draakar against her. It was no’ her intention to insult
you.”

The
more nervous or emotional he became, Ian’s brogue grew more pronounced. She
immediately put him at ease. “Well, of course I wasn’t insulted. I’m the one
who should apologize for acting the way I did yesterday. I was just a little
tired and out of sorts. Please tell her she has nothing to fear from me.
Draakar is a grown man, eh, dragon. His personal affairs are none of my
business. He certainly means nothing to me.”

I heard that outrageous lie.

It is no lie.
Maya
savagely blocked the link, though each time it got harder and harder to keep
him out of her head. The more they communicated mind-to-mind, the easier it
became to do so. She turned her attention back to Ian, who watched her with one
eyebrow raised as if he too didn’t believe his own hearing.

 
“He is the leader of the brethren,” she
felt compelled to add, “and I’m here to try to help his people, race. As part
brethren, we all must do what we can to help him. I’m sure he’ll tell us what
needs to be done after the other two people, ah brethren, arrive.”

“Whatever
you say, my Lady. By the way, the last two are already here. I put them in
their rooms before I came to see you. Thank you, my Lady. Cass really is a verra
bonnie lass and wants to be friends.”

“Please,
just call me Maya, and I’m sure Cass and I will get along just fine.”
As long as she stays away from Draakar.

By your command.
Ian bowed.

“Stop
that! Come on,” Maya said opening the door, “I’m hungry. Let’s go have
breakfast. I’m sure we’ll have to conjure it up. What are you going to have?”

“You’re
right. I hadn’t thought about that. Mmm, I think I have a taste for some of me
mum’s white hog’s pudding with tomatoes, and brown soda bread, or maybe baked
beans.”

“Hogs
what? Baked beans for breakfast!” Maya exclaimed incredulously.

“There’re
other things you can have for breakfast besides bacon and eggs ya know.” Ian
laughed probably at the look of revulsion on her face. “And the white pudding’s
best for breakfast because there’s no blood in it,” he further explained.

“Okay,
so I admit I was going to go for a western omelet,” Maya said, “but still hog’s
pudding and baked beans…maybe I’ll try the beans for dinner. You can keep the
pudding, bloodied or not.”

“Trust
me, you’ll love it.”

She
raised both eyebrows and stared at him. “I don’t think so.”

By
the time Maya and Ian entered the dining room together, they found everyone
already seated and two more people at the table, a man and a woman. Both
appeared in their mid-twenties and were people of color, but she didn’t know
their nationalities. She did know they were brethren, perhaps because of the
rush of blood through her body alerting her to the presence of her own kind.
They faced Maya and quickly stood, bowing their heads.

“Ah,
hello,” Maya murmured a bit self-consciously, unwilling to acknowledge the bow
or the reason behind it. “Sit down, please. Sorry to have kept everyone waiting.”
 
After they sat, she approached the
newcomers and they looked up. She shook the woman’s hand first. “Hi, I’m Maya.”

“Good
morning, my Lady. My name is Sheri Besnard.” The woman spoke with a French
accent. Maya liked the sound of her voice, low and smooth. It made a person
want to smile and have her talk some more. She returned Maya’s stare with
beautiful large slanted eyes, giving her an exotic look. Her almond complexion
suggested a racially mixed background. Come to think of it, they all had mixed
racial backgrounds.

“I’m
Darryl Jenkins, my Lady,” the man said interrupting her thought and shaking her
hand. She stared at his upturned face, the color of dark chocolate, with an
infectious grin on his handsome features. She smiled back.
 

“Are
you American?” she asked, hearing a little bit of ’hood in his accent.

He
nodded his shaved head. “Washington, DC, born and bred, Lady.”

“We’re
practically neighbors. I live in Maryland. Please sit down. And call me, Maya.”
She walked around to take her seat near Draakar, but did not look in his
direction. She didn’t want to see satisfaction or desire in his stare. If she
looked she’d find both there. His emotions beat at her own, or maybe they were
all hers. She clamped her mind down tight.

Ian
laughed. “I guess we have to come up with breakfast, too,” he said. “Maya and I
have been discussing what we want.”

The
group found it easier to wield magicks today. The new comers were a little
behind but the others gave pointers and Draakar presided over them all,
confident they would soon catch up. He waited until they finished breakfast
before he gained their attention.

Now that we are all here, I can
tell you everything. It is time for you to understand who you really are, and
to help all brethren. It is the reason you have been called.

One
minute everyone sat at the dining room table, the next they all stood in a
circle in an enormous cavernous chamber. Everyone seemed shocked and glanced
around. An area aglow in a rainbow of colors illuminated etchings of dragons
with various colored gems for eyes around the walls. The sweet smell of clean,
crisp, mountain air tickled their noses, and the rough ground of baked dirt and
stone could be seen beneath their feet.

Draakar
stood in the center of the group. “You all have been imparted with most of the
knowledge of what you are and how you came to be here,” Draakar began, turning
slowing to make eye contact with them all. “What you do not know is I have come
to understand why the brethren left the world of our beginning in the first
place. I believe the Dragon Lord who led them could no longer sustain the balance
of powers on Akgon, and so came here to a world were they would be able to
adapt and survive.”

“Because
of the magicks here?” Maya asked.

He
swung his gaze to her. “Yes. Earth held magicks dragons could wield and a
habitable environment to our kind, at least initially. Now that your dragon
blood has awakened you will come to understand for dragons to survive our life
energy must feed off the energy created by magicks. Earth has it in abundance.
Only a handful of dragons survived to make the first crossing. They were the
last of the brethren and the strongest. The memories are sketchy here, so bear
with me.” He shifted, clasping his hands together behind him and glancing
around the chamber again until he’d met each of their curious gazes.

“Even
though we retain our history through imbedded memory in our blood, we do not
retain much of the first brethren’s memories.”

“Why
is that?” James asked.

“Neither
myself nor my advisors, the oldest of the brethren, are sure. We don’t even
have a memory of the exact numbers of the brethren who survived the crossing or
exactly who they were. We believe the survivors would have been a Dark Dragon
Lord and his elite Firsts, as you are mine. So because my memories of this
period are not complete, I also know your memories of brethren history are even
less so. Even after you come into all of your powers they may never be fully
intact. But I digress. In dragon form, these first brethren were both revered
and feared. Many humans came to worship them and for a time, dragon and man
lived in peace.

“Well
what happened to change that?” Paul asked.

“The
brethren were always curious about humans and wanted to walk amongst them. They
were also probably lonely for companionship. We are not sure if there were any
mated pairs among those first brethren. We do not believe there were because we
also think they were primarily males. Dragons do not mate with their own
gender; it is just not our way, and they would have wanted to find truemates.
The one soul placed in the world to complete theirs has always been of the
opposite gender in order to call forth all of their magicks and preserve the
strongest of the brethren bloodline.”

Draakar
paused and looked pointedly at Maya, who stared unblinkingly right back at him
as if his words had nothing to do with her. But he sensed the slight increase
in her heartbeat.
 
His words
affected her.

“I
think the first Dark Lord,” he continued, “used Earth magicks to shape-shift
into human form and showed the other brethren how to speak to Mother Earth and
gain access to the magicks.”