“Dead,” Ronyn says.
“We were bound,” Kelan says quietly. “By the goddess. To keep magic from harming the world again.”
“To be watchers over the world,” Darial adds.
“That sounds lonely,” I murmur.
Darial’s smile is sad. “We have each other.”
“That’s something.” I try to imagine what it would be like to have friends or family who were with me through tough times. I can’t.
“Are you related?”
Darial laughs softly. “These guys wish they had my exceptional genes.”
“Be careful, Aura,” Ronyn warns. “His head has a habit of expanding to fit any space.
“How old are you?” I ask, wondering how dedicated they’ve been to each other.
Darial smiles and shrugs a shoulder lazily. “When you pass one hundred, the years don’t seem to count in the same way.”
“More than one hundred years?”
He shrugs again. “Dragons don’t age like humans. We will keep this form for millennia.”
“Millenia?” The prospect of being alive that long would fill me with dread. Then another thought strikes me. “Shouldn’t the goddess have provided you with a dragon mate. One who’d live as long as you?”
I crane my head to check the expressions of Kelan and Ronyn. Both are dark at the suggestion of my mortality.
“The goddess is wise,” is Kelan’s reply.
Wise? In her wisdom, she allowed me to go through hell, to suffer the worst at the hands of beasts, to break in ways I could never imagine, and still find a way to put myself back together.Why?To what end?
My fingers clasp the fur, gripping it lightly. “The world is an unfair place. I don’t believe in a goddess who would look past all the misery and suffering in the world and do nothing.”
My voice hitches over the last word, and Darial’s face responds with sympathy. He reaches out to me, but then thinks better, remembering my no-touching rule, once again proving that these dragon men are nothing like the beasts in Blackwood Forest.
“It is hard to reconcile,” he admits. “But through hardship, we learn lessons about others and ourselves. We build strength. We find ways to make the world better for others.”
His perspective forms a lump in my throat. Lessons? I’d rather I hadn’t learned the lessons I have about others: howeasily they use and abuse, how thoughtless they can be to the suffering of others. These are lessons I’d have gone to my grave happily ignorant of.
And what of the lessons I’ve learned about myself? That I will beg and plead for my life and my safety, even when I know there is no point. That I would give up a child of my womb because I cannot face the unending reminder of the horror behind her creation.
“I learned I'm not a good person,” I tell him, through tightness in my throat that threatens tears.
“I don’t believe that,” Ronyn says.
“You don’t know the things I’ve done,” I whisper.
“You're our mate,” Kelan says, ignoring my no-touching rule by laying a hand on my shoulder. It’s so heavy, and the reassurance it provides is immediate.Our mate.He says it like that single fact could erase the worst of past sins and smooth over all future strife.
“I deserted my child,” I tell them, hoping it will disgust them and push them away. Then I could return to my simple life alone.
“Gregory, an alpha wolf shifter, forced me to get pregnant with a bear and a wolf. I knew they intended to use the child for their evil purposes, so I bided my time and used my magic to escape. I left her where I knew someone would find her.”
“Where is she now?” Darial asks.
“With a family of three wolves and their human mate. She is looked after and happy.”
