Page 19 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Celestina

“Trace! The clan can’t attack anyone who comes looking for me. I’m bonded with General Kitmun,” I shouted as I chased after Trace through the tiny downtown as he made his way home from the party. “Soren and I can’t be apart. You can’t keep him away from here. And you can’t kill him. We’re bonded. Forever. There’s no breaking the connection we have.” Not that I would want to. “If he dies, I die.”

“Celestina, the collar bonded you to the vampire general,” Trace said gently. “And the collar is gone. You’re free. You’re free of him now. The dragons will protect you from him.”

I started shaking my head. “No. No. We’re bonded. We had a ceremony where we joined together. He sprang it on me without explaining what it all meant. But he had to link his life to mine to protect me, to keep certain members of the court from trying to kill me. He made a great sacrifice for me…to keep me alive.”

Trace stopped walking. We stood facing each other in the middle of the village’s downtown. Trace leaned toward me as he frowned. “That’s not true. I don’t understand why you’re lying to me about this. You’re no longer his prisoner. You’re free. You don’t have to feel like you need to protect General Kitmun, not anymore.”

“I’m not lying. We’re—”

“No, Celestina.” For the first time, Trace sounded angry. “General Kitmun is bonded to you. I get that. But it was the collar that bonded you to him. You didn’t complete the bonding ceremony. You didn’t tie yourself to him. And when your magic broke apart the collar, you freed yourself not only from Queen Beatrice’s hold over you, you also freed yourself from General Kitmun’s.”

“How—?”

“I was watching over you. Even when they took you behind Fein’s closed borders, I followed. I have always watched over you. I know what happened in Fein’s royal court. I know what he did and why he did it. But it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here. You’re home. You’re safe. No one will be taking you away from us. I won’t allow it. The clan won’t allow it.”

As much as I wanted to let his words comfort me, they felt like heavy stones pulling me under the water. I was drowning from them.

“I-I-I can’t just walk away from him.” A sudden pain flared in my chest like the collar was punishing me. But the collar no longer encircled my neck. It no longer held power over me. And instead of a burning down my back, it was my heart that ached. I rubbed my chest. “I-I-I—they’re my friends, my family. They care about me.” A sob escaped, and the tears I’d fought to keep at bay started to fall. “I care about them. You can’t hurt them for coming to find me. You can’t stop them from being just as worried about my safety as you have been.”

Trace slashed a hand through the air. “They may have pretended to care. And I understand why you fell so hard for them, especially for General Kitmun. He is handsome and charming. But, Celestina, he’s a vampire. Vampires use their charms to trick others, to pull them under their control.”

“No, he didn’t—”

“They can’t help themselves. It’s their nature to deceive.”

“No,” I cried. “No. The stories, they’re wrong.”

“Are they?” Trace sighed deeply. “Celestina, I hate what has happened to you. Not a day passed that I didn’t fight the need to save you from your upbringing. I grieved knowing you were taught to believe you weren’t worthy of love. Not a day passed when I didn’t want to rip you away from those cold people who pretended to be your parents and, later, to rescue you from the vampires. But Queen Frieda had promised to kill you if we tried to rescue you. She’d tied your life to that spell she’d cast on you, the same spell that keeps you trapped in your human body. And Queen Beatrice only made matters worse with that damned slave collar. You can’t imagine the frustration I’ve felt, the sleepless nights knowing you were at the mercy of those vampires.”

“But I lov—”

“Celestina,” he groaned. “Celestina.” He lightly cupped my tear-dampened cheeks with his large, calloused hands. “Those vampires are not your friends. They were using you.”

“No, they were helping me. They were trying to get the slave collar off me.”

“Because they needed to free you from Queen Beatrice’s control. They needed it off so they could use you against her. She’s planning to attack the Fein with a magically enhanced army. The vampires were planning to use you as a weapon against her. They didn’t need the slave collar, not when they could use their charms and powers of compulsion against you.”

“No, Soren would never—”

“Search your heart, search your memories, I think you’ll find you already know the truth. Painful as it is, you know the vampires didn’t really love you or care for you. You’re nothing but a weapon to them. They are just like the Tiburnians who captured Amaya to use as a weapon for their country. The Kingdom of Earst under Queen Beatrice’s rule is attempting to make a big move against the other kingdoms. And as things stand now, she’ll win.”

“No. That’s not true. Her army is weak. They had to call in help from the Fein and from the Asterian armies to push back the Tiburnians for her.”

“Her call for help was a ruse. She begged those armies to help her so she could assess their strengths and weaknesses. I know. I was there watching. If you give yourself a moment to think about it, you’ll know it, too. General Kitmun puts duty above all else. He’ll do anything to protect the Kingdom of Fein and the people living there. That’s his way.”

“No.” Sure, I’d had the same doubts. But my heart knew better. Soren’s love for me was true and honest. “He wouldn’t…”

The Tiburnian captain had spoken about Soren’s plans for using me. And Soren hadn’t contradicted him. But that was simply Soren playing a political game. The Tiburnians were Fein’s enemies. He had no reason to be honest with the captain, no reason to tell him anything.

“In time, Celestina, you’ll understand.” Trace let his warm hands drop away from my wet cheeks. “In time, you’ll come back to us.”

His vow felt like a manacle closing around my throat.

The red dragon that had flown overhead earlier, shot like an arrow high in the air from somewhere over my shoulder, making me jump. It hovered above our heads for a few seconds before dropping to the ground in front of us.

The movement of the dragon’s wings stirred up a wind that had me staggering backward. Dragons were huge, so much bigger than I’d realized from always watching them from my bedroom window in Earst’s castle tower. The red dragon towered over Trace and me in a way that made the dark sky disappear. I swallowed hard and fought the urge to run.

A power rippled through Trace as he stood taller, though still dwarfed by the red dragon. He stared directly at the red dragon as if challenging him. The red dragon bowed his head and then, in a shimmering blink, disappeared.

I sucked in a shocked breath.

It took a moment for my eyes to notice the man standing in the dragon’s place. While tall and well built, he was a fraction of the dragon’s height.

Now that I saw him, I realized I was seeing all of him . The blond-haired man wore nothing.

As in nude. Completely. Utterly. Nude.

His blue eyes narrowed. His fists opened and closed as his nostrils flared as if scenting the air. He took a predatory step toward me.

“Are you serious?” Trace said. He stepped in front of me. I peered around Trace’s back. I had a feeling it would be a mistake to take my eyes off the nude man.

“What?” The man took another step toward us. “I need to have a word with you, Trace, and I also wanted to meet our mythical moonlight dragon.” He gave me a smile that showed off a mouth filled with sharp dragon teeth. “It’s a good thing Trace already has you locked down, Moonlight. You’d start a war if anyone thought they could win you as a mate.” For a heartbeat, his eyes flashed a glowing red in the darkness.

“I’m sorry?” I didn’t need to ask for clarification. What he’d said was pretty damn obvious.

“Gods, Anther, could you just shut up and fly away?” Trace bared his teeth. They were equally as sharp, equally as menacing as the other man’s…er…dragon’s. I didn’t remember his teeth looking like that when he’d smiled before. No, I distinctly remembered them looking like normal human teeth.

These men weren’t human. No one in this village was human. That naked one had been a terrifyingly large dragon just a moment ago.

Anther chuckled as he looked me over once again. “One of the patrols just returned from the southern forest. They spotted vampires heading this way. A council is being convened to discuss our response. My father requested that you be there.”

“Me?” This could be my chance to convince the village leaders that they allow Soren and whoever he’s traveling with—Raya and Gray, I hoped—to enter the village.

“No, darling Moonlight. My father wants to see your mate.”

“Mate?” Soren? No. They didn’t think of him that way. And Anther was looking at Trace when he said it. I shuddered. Was that what they thought of me? That I was a prize to be awarded to Trace in exchange for him giving up more than twenty years of his life to watch over me?

“Dude, shut the fuck up already.” Trace said sounding much less patient and calm as he had with me.

Anther chuckled. “Do you need me to stay and watch over your—?”

Trace growled. It was powerful enough that Anther raised his hands in surrender and danced back several steps. But not so powerful to wipe the smug grin from the naked man’s face.

“See you at the manor, then.”

In another shimmering blink, the red dragon returned. He stirred up another great wind that threatened my balance as he moved his wings in a graceful arc that lifted him into the air.

“Anther, he is the one who set fire to the ship I was on.” The same ship Trace had doused with the wave he’d sent crashing over us. “Was he trying to kill me?”

“He was upset over Amaya’s abduction. She’s his sister, and he took her capture personally.”

“Soren didn’t abduct her.”

“In Anther’s eyes, it didn’t matter. We flew to find you, to see if Amaya was somehow with you. When he didn’t find her there, he lost it. We’d been searching for her with no luck for days at that point. His sanity had been hanging from a thread.” He gestured for me to walk alongside him. “Come. Let’s head to the manor house.”

The three-story brick manor was located on the edge of the village. It backed up to the edge of the plateau’s cliffside, making it look as if it might tumble into a dark abyss at any moment. Lights flickered in the many windows as we approached the home that was far larger than any others in the village.

“Mate?” I asked. “Do I even have a say in whether I want this or not?”

“Celestina, it’s not…” He dredged a hand through his hair. “You’re a gift to our generation. The last of your kind. But that doesn’t mean you have to be the last.”

“My value to the village is as some kind of broodmare?” That was worse than being thought of as a savior.

“No! No, Celestina. The stories say that you’ll bring great changes to our lands and our people. Think of the future—one with the night skies glowing with moonlight dragons again.”

“How does this work? If I mate with you, a green dragon, wouldn’t we end up with light green dragons? Or—?”

“We don’t know for sure, since there hasn’t been a moonlight dragon on the continent for eons, but we know from other pairings that when two powerful dragons mate, some of the offspring will be like the father and others will reflect the mother. We expect— hope —the same would happen with you.”

I started to respond, but what could I say? That I wasn’t some object to be handed out to the strongest in the clan? That I didn’t want to be used as a baby dragon factory? That I wanted to leave ? Goddess, I wanted to leave this place.

Trace seemed to take my silence as acceptance. “It’ll be nice to finally get back to my weaving. I can have a second loom made. We can do the work together. And my mother, she’ll love you to pieces. I can’t wait to see what she’s been inspired to paint in your honor. Ever since your return, she’s kept herself locked away in her cottage and won’t let anyone see what she’s been working on.”

I clasped my hands in front of me. My fingernails dug into the backs of my hands. And I kept walking toward the massive manor house.

Trace talked some more about the weaving shop he owned. He’d opened it on his twentieth birthday. It had been the same year I hatched from that ancient egg they’d been hoarding. He’d barely had the opportunity to run the shop or to discover whether he enjoyed weaving as a career when he left to watch over me twenty-three years ago.

Before then, his family had lived in the manor house we were walking toward, Trace explained. It had been his family’s home for three generations. The alpha of the village made the manor house their home. After his father’s death at Queen Frieda’s hands, a new alpha was named, and his family had to move out.

“I’d already left home, though. I was living above my shop with my brother.” His lips twisted. “The one who is now an outlaw.” He fell quiet. The only sound was the crunch of stones under our boots. “It was harder on my little sister and mother. While in the depths of their grief, they had to vacate their home, leave the memories of my father behind in the manor house, and watch Drix and Juniper move in with their children. Anther, who’s my age, moved back in with his parents to help guard Amaya.” He shook his head. “The past two decades have been challenging for everyone in the village.”

“I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been,” I said, meaning it. Just because I didn’t want to make my life with Trace, didn’t exclude me from feeling compassion for what he’d suffered.

“But you’re wrong, Celestina. You can imagine it. You lived it. What we suffered is part of you. It’s part of your story, too.”

No. I’d been a newborn at the time of his family’s tragedy. I had no memories from my life before the abduction. Trace was twenty years older than me. He’d already lived half of his life with a loving family. He was a dragon. And the more time I spent with the dragons, the more I felt tied to my humanness. If he was air, I was soil. What could the two of us possibly have in common? Sure, Trace was handsome with his mane of brown hair, square jaw and shoulders, and kind smile. And in a way he’d been right about me falling for the first male to show me kindness. If Trace had whisked me away with him before Queen Beatrice had locked the slave collar around my neck, I would have fallen gratefully into his arms. I would have agreed to learn how to weave, to take care of his household, to bear as many babies as he wanted. He would have become the embodiment of my lonely girl’s childhood dream.

But, although I’d wished and waited and watched for him, the green dragon hadn’t rescued me. Soren had.

And I had no doubt that Soren would come fetch me again and again until the end of time. I wanted that. I wanted Soren.

I needed to make the dragons understand.

Trace had said that in time I’d come to accept my life with the clan, that my feelings for Soren would fade. When I’d been wearing the collar, I’d worried that the collar’s magic had compelled me to feel close to Soren. Now that I was free from its influence, I was finally able to listen to my thoughts and know they were my own. Even without the collar’s urgings, my thoughts kept going back to Soren. I needed to know where he was. Was he safe? He had to be just as worried about me as I was for him. Would he forgive his brother? I hoped he hadn’t done something rash and killed Cullen. He’d never forgive himself if he had.

I tightened the hands I had fisted together. I was obsessed with Soren, which had to mean my feelings for him had been, and still were, real. My body ached for him.

I needed to make the other dragons understand that my heart—and quite possibly my soul—belonged to Soren. It always would.

Goddess, it wasn’t in my nature to allow myself to feel anger. Growing up in Earst, outbursts of anger easily got a person killed. Only the queen could pull off shouting and screaming and killing with no repercussions. And Queen Beatrice did love to vent her frustrations with a great deal of slashing and maiming and bloody killings.

I considered myself a peacemaker. I was as different from the warriors in Soren’s army as water was from oil. But as we walked through a long hallway that took us to the center of the manor house, my nerves started bristling. In the flickering light of the wall sconces, Trace continued talking as if our pairing was a done deal.

“I’ll make sure the council understands the importance of keeping you safe,” he told me as we reached a pair of doors. Amaya, the midnight dragon, was leaning against the wall next to them. Trace gave her a nod. “Stay with Amaya. I’ll come looking for you when the meeting is over.”

“But—” I tried to protest.

“Don’t worry, Celestina. You’re safe within these walls.” He swept into the room where the council was going to discuss what to do about the vampires. The door closed behind him with a click that echoed in the hall. And a fire I’d never felt before stirred in my chest.

No. I wasn’t going to let them keep me out. The council needed to listen to me.