Layla had thought Dusk would break the ice again, but it was Reginald who did it this time, with his classic haughty panache. “Did they change your bedding properly?”
“Everything was five-star before you insisted on Siren-made sheets, Aldo. This place is far nicer than you pretend it is.” Dusk chuckled as margaritas were quickly brought for Layla, Adrian, and himself. Waylaying the bartender, Adrian also ordered a bourbon though Layla shook her head. More plates of tacos with Caribbean jerked and spiced meat were quickly brought, until their table was positively bursting with things to enjoy for lunch. Dusk smiled his thanks to the servers as they departed, and after the bartender deposited Adrian’s bourbon on the table, conversation resumed.
“This place is hardly five-star, even on the Twilight side.” Reginald observed with caustic non-plus, though his lips had quirked in a smile now. “This is barely a step above camping.”
“You’ve been camping? For real?” Layla’s eyebrows rose as she sipped her margarita, a homemade one with plenty of lime, top-shelf tequila, and a lovely Caribbean sea-salt rim. “I can barely picture that. Are you sure it wasn’t glamping?”
“Reginald and I were shipwrecked long ago, actually.” Fury spoke in his elegantly smooth voice as his midnight-silver eyes glanced to Layla. “On the Danish coast. We were trapped ashore by a pod of orcas, hunting us ever since we left Deep Harbor on a negotiation voyage to St. Petersburg with the Russian Ice Dragons. We were forced to walk the coastline for days, living rough on a rocky stretch of land where no one resided, until the orcas gave up. We swam home in human form, neither of us yet able to transform into our Sirens. It was a long, grueling trip to say the least.”
“Doesn’t beat Adrian’s story of when he was surrounded by a hundred Moroccan Djinn out in the desert for forty days.” Dusk spoke casually as he sipped his margarita.
“Excuse me, what?” Layla blinked as she turned to Adrian, this story one she’d never heard.
“I ran afoul of the Moroccan Djinn Matron, back in my thirties.” Adrian spoke with a slightly self-deprecating smile as he sipped his bourbon, then set it down. “I was hunting Desert Dragon artifacts lost in the Sahara, because a few had properties that could help me build the empire I was starting to amass at the time. I didn’t ask leave to travel through Moroccan Djinn territory, and their Matron took it personally. She surrounded me with her top fighters; wouldn’t let me go until Emir brought a whole host of Wind-Warders to come free me.”
“Couldn’t you fight them?” Rhennic leaned forward with interest, taking a large bite of taco from one hand before having a gulp of his margarita from the other.
“Djinn are monstrously hard for Desert Dragons to fight,” Adrian chuckled, a renegade twinkle in his eyes now. “I did well at first; smelted the fuck out of the desert with my fire and charred a number of them before they could swirl away. In the end, the Matron had them form a wide perimeter and hold it, both around me and above me, locking me down in a barren patch of sand under the Saharan sun to bake me out. I shifted into my Dragon; dug down deep where the sun couldn’t touch me until Emir and his cavalry arrived so I could preserve my water. Even so, I went barking mad from the heat. Trust me, that forty days and forty nights in the desert thing is not really something you want to try, even as a Dragon.”
“So is life as a Dragon ever normal?” Layla snorted into her margarita. She didn’t expect it to halt the conversation, but it did, as all her men glanced at each other.
“Life as a Dragon has many beauties and horrors both, Layla,” Fury spoke with a solemn poetry as he sat back in his chair, watching her with his beautiful midnight blue eyes. “We tell tales of hardship with bravado because we know no other way. But they leave scars. They always do.”
Reaching up, Fury rubbed his sculpted chest where his linen shirt gaped open – and it was then that Layla saw a jagged white scar over his heart. It was the place Reginald’s lance of energy had slain him two weeks ago at Deep Harbor, and only by shoving his silver pearl into his chest and pummeling him with her Bind-power had Layla saved him. Fury had gone through a rough time after that, Layla’s Storm Dragon friend Luke Murphy helping him stabilize between his Dragon and human self again, in addition to a touch-and-go surgery to remove the pearl from his heart.
Layla saw how weakly he moved now, as if his heart still wasn’t working right after his death and resurrection, though Fury held her gaze with a steady presence. As beautiful as Reginald with the same ballet dancer’s exquisitely cut body, he wore his silver and pearl talisman on his left wrist to control the truly massive power of his Silver Siren-drake. But despite its containment, Layla could feel his Siren’s immense oceanic energy coil around their group like a deep tide as he spoke. But it was smooth now, thanks to his inclusion in the Bind.
And as she watched him, Fury’s full lips quirked into a smile.
“I am not as weak as I seem, Layla,” he murmured, his eyes flashing with the silver of his Siren-drake as he easily read her mind with his magics. “Only my human form remains temporarily troubled from my recent death. And even that is waning. I have you to thank for my life: bringing me into the Bind saved me. I shall be forever in your debt.”
And just like that, all the intensity of the past two weeks came crashing back – in addition to Layla’s current predicament with her absentee Dragon. Silence fell around the table as everyone took sips of their drinks and Rhennic took another taco, munching thoughtfully.
“So, Layla.” Rhennic spoke around his bite, though he watched her with a piercing attention in his violet eyes. “Tell us the situation with your Dragon. What did you find out with Rake André this past week?”
“A few things. And not nearly enough.” With a sigh, Layla took a deep drink of her margarita. Of course, Rhennic would approach the situation with his usual General’s frankness. And though it darkened her day a bit, Layla was glad he’d begun the conversation they really needed to address. Taking a deep breath, she thought back over her week with Rake.
And then began her story, telling it to all her men as they listened.
CHAPTER 8 – BREAK
As Layla finished telling her men about her time at the Dreaming Canyon, she suddenly realized the palm trees around the garden were spinning. Glancing around the table, she discovered everyone was many more margaritas in, the table cluttered with glassware and empty plates. Layla didn’t know how long she’d been talking, but five empty margarita glasses sat in front of her, her plate littered with the remains of a pork taco. As if he’d been waiting for a break in their intense discussion, the bartender suddenly summoned a small army of waiters to remove their empty glassware and plates, replacing them with a fresh round of drinks.
Feeling a drunken heat in her cheeks, Layla realized she wasn’t enjoying the benefits of her Dragon metabolism now that her drakaina was coiled up inside her. Most of her men seemed fine after so many drinks, though Dusk was adorably flushed from the tequila, and Fury had ceased drinking after only his second margarita. Rhennic had a metabolism of steel, no fewer than ten margarita glasses removed from before him as he dug into what was probably his twentieth taco. Sometime during Layla’s tale, Reginald had switched to dry martinis, Adrian eschewing tequila for more bourbon as they listened attentively.
But as they all stared at her upon the conclusion of her tale, Layla felt like the afternoon sun was suddenly burning despite the shade of the palms and the arbor. Glancing to the pool, it looked immensely inviting, and she wondered how long it would be before she got to take a swim and dump all this heavy shit for a while.
“Well, at least we know what’s happening with your Dragon now, and why.” Reginald spoke at last, swirling his martini thoughtfully. “Yourfinal strikeon Hunter was impressive, Layla. And though some part of you fears what you are now capable of, we’ve all been in that position – of being shocked the first time our magic hurt someone in an unpredictable way.”
“Yet we’ve all known what was possible with our Lineage’s magics since we were born, Aldo.” Fury spoke soberly to his twin, glancing to Reginald. “Layla’s met no other Binds. She’s spoken with no-one about what she might expect from her magics, other than Hunter. And to say our father is supremely unhelpful in educating the young is an understatement.”
“Hunter is no help here, if he lives.” Rhennic joined in decisively, wiping his lips with a white napkin and pushing his plate aside. “Layla’s fighting against her power, now that she has five immensely strong Royal Dragons in the Bind. She’s fighting between her mind and heart – intellect versus instinct. All of us have known for years what our Dragon-instincts might have in store for us as we matured, but Binds are different. If we knew of any other Binds out there, I would send Layla to speak with them, to learn how to bridge the gap between her human and animal natures… and figure out how to re-awaken her instinctual power, and thus her magic.”
“Hunter once told me there are other Binds out there,” Layla mused, thinking back over the conversations she’d had with him. “He insinuated they were aligned with his aims, but I wonder now if that was entirely the truth. Based on how he’s manipulated us, I wonder if there aren’t a few Binds out there in hiding – hiding from his awful string-pulling.”
“We know of at least one Bind out there in the world.” Dusk cocked his head though the movement was slightly inebriated. “Your father, Layla. No one knew who he was, but from how strong your magic’s become, it’s clear he was some sort of exceptionally powerful Royal Dragon Bind. Maybe he was hiding from Hunter, which was why he never told Mimi his name when they mated thirty years ago in Paris. Perhaps avoiding Hunter was why your father disappeared shortly thereafter. You never heard the story, but Mimi beamed with love whenever she talked about your father. She and he had an incredibly intense connection the night they were together. But somehow, she seemed to understand he couldn’t stay. And she was never sour about raising you alone.”
“TheDragon of Seven Winters, that’s what Hunter called my father, one time when we spoke about it.” Layla blinked. “Does anyone know who that is, or what that means?”
