The P.J. Stone Gates Trilogy (#1-3) (45 page)

“Keep going,” Khol’s voice sounded in my head. “Let her guide us to where we need to be.”

So I did the only thing I could think of to do . . . I focused my thoughts on the image of the dragon Queen and began repeating her name in my head over and over again.

Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . . Mori . . .

The last thing I remembered was . . . “Damn it!” I sat up with a start. “Why do I keep passing out, or getting knocked out or whatever?! I swear I’ve spent more time unconscious in the last year than not!”

“Where are we?” I heard Bryn’s groggy voice rumble in response to my rant.

I blinked the fuzz from my eyes and focused in on Bryn’s prone figure lying next to me in an unfamiliar bed. I won’t lie . . . It kind of made me feel slightly better to know that I wasn’t the only one who’d been knocked out this round. “We’re in the Smokey Mountains,” Khol said, sounding not at all like he’d lost the battle with consciousness anytime recently, much to my dismay.

I turned towards his voice and saw that his massive back was angled towards us as he stared out a ginormous window that took up almost the whole wall of the room we were in. “How do you know?” I asked.

“I, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, did not succumb to the magic inside the Gates and remained awake where as the two of you didn’t.”

I glared at his back, which seemed to mock me, I swear, or maybe that was just Khol’s tone. “How long have we been out?” I asked choosing to ignore my feelings of annoyance.

“Just a few hours.” He finally turned so that I could see his face and he regarded me as if his mind was still partially somewhere else. I was just about to ask him if he’d seen the Queen or knew where we needed to go when he dipped down on one knee beside the bed and offered me a letter. “This is for you.”

I suspiciously regarded the letter resting in his outstretched palm for a moment before taking it. The plain white envelope with my entire name printed on it in elegant script was kind of giving me the creeps for some reason. After a few more seconds of staring at it, I finally decided I was being ridiculous and I just needed to open it. With short jerky motions I tore into the envelope to produce a single piece of white paper about the size of an index card. In the same handwriting as was found on the front of the envelope were two lines of text . . .

Let him go. Don’t leave the cabin for any reason.

“What does it say?” Khol asked. Like he couldn’t just pull it out of my mind somehow, or at least get the gist of it. He was so patronizing sometimes.

I responded while still staring at the note. “Where did you get this?”

“So, I’m guessing you saved her . . . again.” Bryn’s irritated voice caused me to whip around just in time to see him pull himself out of bed and stagger a bit before righting himself.

“I’m stronger than you are . . . older,” Khol stated with irritation of his own. And I guess I couldn’t really blame him, we’d been down this road one too many times lately.

Bryn’s face darkened as he gazed at me. “Maybe we should skip this whole waiting to see who the father is and you should just go ahead and mate with him.” He punched the wall in frustration. “Who was I kidding, anyways? He’d keep the both of you safer even if it is mine.”

“Bryn—” I started, but he was already stalking towards the door. His moodiness and childishness directed at Khol had gone way beyond ridiculous. I was tired of having to worry about how he would react to everything. Anger short-circuited my brain and I yelled at him without thinking. “Fine, just walk away! If you were half as good at the dragon stuff as you are at doing that then you’d be the most powerful dragon of all time!” Bryn stopped where he was without turning towards me and I could see that every muscle in his body had gone rigid. I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I hope it’s not yours!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished that I could stuff them back in somehow. I didn’t mean it; in fact, I wanted nothing more than for Bryn to be the father of my child. Having a child with Khol and therefore being mated to him would seem just too wrong for words. No matter how upset at Bryn I got, I knew he was truly the only one for me. He was my home, and I wanted my baby to belong there too.

Bryn made some kind of indecipherable noise that didn’t even sound human before continuing on his way. I jumped to my feet to give him chase, but then Khol grabbed my arm, stopping me short. “Let him go.”

I tried frantically to free myself from Khol’s iron grip but to no avail. “You have no right to tell me what to do,” I snarled at him.

“Not me, it’s what the note told you to do.”

I dropped my tear filled eyes down to the tiny piece of white paper that I was still clutching in my hand and sucked in a shaky breath. “That’s not possible.” How the hell had someone known to leave a note for me about something that hadn’t even happened yet?

“You’re not thinking clearly. You of all people know how possible such a thing is . . . you being a Seer.” Khol dropped his voice to a low cajoling tone as if not to spook me.

Right.
I wasn’t thinking clearly. The whole pregnancy thing coupled with Bryn being an utter idiot had fried my brain.
Of course
I knew the dragon Queen was some kind of Seer, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. “But I can’t just let him go. Who knows what he’ll do when he’s like this.” I bit my lip and unleashed my imploring eyes on Khol. “Will you—”

“No. I won’t—” he started, already knowing what I was going to ask.

“Please.” I whispered as I let my tears finally spill down my cheeks, leaving salty trails in their wake. “Please go talk to him.”

Khol reached out to cup my face tenderly, even as he gritted his teeth in aggravation. “Your tears are my biggest weakness.” He said gruffly before he turned to seek out Bryn.

Satisfied in knowing that Khol would bring Bryn back to me, in a manner of speaking, I sunk back down on the bed and studied the note that had to be from the dragon Queen. The first part of
let him go
had already come to pass, but what about the second part? How long would I have to remain in this cabin? I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

And what about the whole Bryn and Khol situation? By letting fate decide the outcome of who I would mate with, was I really being cruel to both of them? I was determined not to need either one of them, but I was kidding myself if I thought I wouldn’t
want
either one of them.

I sat on the bed and stared out the window until the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars crested the night sky. Where the hell were Bryn and Khol?

“Paige Joplin Stone, awake now . . . for we have much to talk about and a very short time to do it in.”

“Huh?” I mumbled as I reached up to groggily rub my eyes with the backs of my hands. Then realization hit me. “The Queen!” I blurted as I tumbled out of bed focusing in on her. But there was something not quite right. She stood before me, exactly as she had looked in my visions, except she seemed almost transparent.

“Be careful. You wouldn’t want to injure the little one growing inside of you,” she said with tenderness in her voice.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked without thinking, and then flushed with embarrassment. One simply shouldn’t ask a Queen what was wrong with her, at least I would imagine because I’d never met one before, human or otherwise. “I’m sorry. I—”

She brushed my comment aside with a wave of her dainty, yet almost transparent hand. “Surprisingly, you remind me much of myself at your age. Or rather I should say it might surprise you, because of course it’s no surprise to me.” She smiled at me and I found myself studying her more closely. It was the first time I’d seen her smile, and there was something very familiar about it. If only I could put my finger on what it was. She stepped towards me, distracting me from my current train of thought, and focused down on my stomach. Her gaze glazed over for a moment before she looked back up to meet my eyes. “He will be beautiful.”

My heart skipped a beat. “You can see him? Can you also see who the father is?” If she could tell me—

“Yes, I can see who the father is, but I won’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I demanded in a shrill voice. “If you know—”

“Because it will change the path for all of you and I cannot let that happen. Too much is at risk already. Just know he will be perfectly healthy.”

Then her words truly sunk in.
A boy
. I was having a boy. An image of Bryn when he was a child flashed in my mind, his black hair tousled and hanging in his bright blue eyes that always seemed to glitter with mischief, his patented smile complete with dimples inviting me to join in on the fun. My heart clenched. I wanted it to be his so desperately. “Why am I here?” I asked trying to dislodge the image of the Bryn that had first captured my attention when I was still a child myself.

“First I will answer your question of what is wrong with me.” Amusement twinkled in her eyes. “I’m not really here. At least my body isn’t. This is the only way I could come to you.”

“But if you could leave your body, then why make me travel to you? Why not come to me if it’s so important?” I was about to bombard her with more questions but then I stopped myself. She was the friggin’ dragon Queen after all, not just some random dragon. I could at least
try
to show her some respect.

“I want you to be at ease with me,” she said in a very Khol-like manner, in which I mean it was as if she had plucked the thoughts right out of my mind and answered them. But then again if Khol could do it, then I’m sure the dragon Queen could do it as well. I exhaled a huge breath as she continued on. “I’m very near death—I have been for some time now, and I only linger to finish the tasks I have set into motion.” I nodded my head unable to find a response. She was dying, or near death . . . the same thing in my book. What is someone supposed to say to that? “My body is near here, protected by Dragos, who awaits my death to follow me into the afterlife.”

That got a response out of me. “My biological father is near here? Does he want to meet me?” The real question was . . . did I want to meet him? And what did she mean by follow her into the afterlife?

The Queen’s face tensed and she turned away from me so I couldn’t see her eyes. “No, he has no interest in meeting you. Although he would never harm you—he blames you for the deterioration of our relationship and ultimately my death, and therefore his death as well.”

After seeing what I had in my visions I could understand why he blamed me for the deterioration of their relationship, I suppose, but her death? And his? “I don’t understand.”

“Dragos knows the outcome of my visit here, but not the reasons. As for his death . . . he is my mate and he does not wish to go on without me. It’s even doubtful if he could. Mates such as us sometimes follow each other into death because our bond is so tight.” I inhaled sharply at her words. Was she implying something that would happen today—with me—would ultimately cause her to meet her demise? And my biological father too? He was my birth father and even though I was unsure about my feelings for him, I didn’t want him to die. “I couldn’t let him know the truth. It would have ruined everything.” She began pacing the small area in front of the huge window. “There were so many pieces and one wrong step could have meant the end of this world. It still can. I looked at it from every angle, fought to find another way . . . There just wasn’t . . . isn’t. I sacrificed so much, letting him be with another, it ruined us despite our love, and I still have one thing left to do.” She brought her illuminated golden eyes up to mine abruptly. “I must give my powers, and therefore my life, to you . . . my daughter.”

“What?” I backed up until my knees caught the edge of the bed and I tumbled back onto it before sitting up so I could look at her again. “You’re not my mother.” But her smile, her face . . . “Everyone always said how much I looked like my mom,” I whispered.

“That’s why she was chosen.”

“What? No.” My mind was reeling. And yet her words, deep down, felt right to me somehow.