Page 24 of Driven by Dragonblood (Blood Born #3)

Primrose

I had hoped the agony in my chest would lessen with every mile speeding past beneath me faster than any commercial jet, but tears continued to spill from my eyes, whipped away by the wind as I shot northward in dragon form.

Inept and untried with the opposite sex, I had no idea how to deal with relationships, how to traverse through the truth of Jaxon’s words, his desires, and the pain we shared.

What should have bonded us closer only managed to intensify the pain of my alpha’s rejection, making me want to flee as far from the hurt as possible.

Within a matter of hours, I could make out the jutting Tetons in the distance.

Home for most of my life, the largest of the snow-capped mountains welcomed me, beckoned me closer as though wanting to offer comfort.

I landed on the veranda of the cavern-like house my ancestors had carved with molten fire, the sinking sun leaving me in cold shadow on the mountain’s eastern side.

Once shifted to my human form, a whisper of my fingers over the old, oaken door pushed it inward without sound. I stepped into the warm interior, the door swishing closed on its own behind me as my grandpapa, his alpha, and his female’s scents swarmed my nose.

Chicken and…dog, I realized, breathing in.

“Tiggy!” I called as toenails clicking on stone hurried my way. I knelt to hug the bundle of fur that had kept me company until Grandpapa’s return.

“She still hasn’t learned to knock,” a low voice said while chuckling—Vanni.

“Primrose?” Grandpapa lounged on a new couch to my left, his bare back resting against the equally unclothed chest of his alpha, who continued to smirk at me and my lack of manners he’d made note of when we’d first met.

Ashley, their female, lay sprawled over Grandpapa’s front, naked as the day she’d been born, cum smeared between her thighs.

“Oh!” I averted my gaze, heat flooding my face, as I realized that I, too, didn’t wear a stitch of clothing.

Announcing myself prior to entering would have been best.

Requesting clothes from them before entering, even better.

A low woof sounded, toenails clicking on stone.

“I’m sorry.” I quickly stood and hurried across the open expanse of the main living area toward the hallway in front of me, taking the rough-hewn rock stairs two at a time, my dragon sight allowing me to see in the pitch black.

I had plenty of clothing and underthings in my dresser from when I’d left months earlier, and quickly pulled on an old frock that would hide what belonged to Jaxon. A sob caught in my throat as my fingers shook while attempting to button my nakedness away.

“Primrose?” Grandpapa stood in my bedroom’s doorway, jeans now hiding his lower half. Although four hundred some years of age, Dolyn Kemmerly, my full-blooded dragonblood grandfather, still appeared to be in his twenties, with the golden-brown eyes I’d inherited. “What’s going on?”

A sob released from my heaving chest, and we moved toward each other at the same time. I sank into his strong arms, so brokenhearted that I didn’t recoil from the scents of his mates’ cum lingering on his skin. I could imagine he smelled the same on me—Jaxon’s luscious evidence of loving me.

I cried harder, clinging to the only family I had left.

Grandpapa’s inner dragon made soothing noises in an attempt to ease my suffering.

A long few minutes passed before I could catch my breath and quieted, Grandpapa’s steady heartbeat beneath my ear comforting to my human half and inner beast who’d been quiet in her agony from having been ripped from our beta.

“You found one of your mates.”

The pain in my chest pierced with the fierceness of a pissed-off dragon, but I stepped from Grandpapa’s hold, trying to swallow the scratchiness from my throat.

“I—I thought this would be easy . My beta accepted me with open arms and mind, but our alpha…” My voice caught again, and I wiped my wet eyes on my sleeve, determined to be strong in the face of absolute misery. “He d-didn’t want m-me.”

Grandpop’s brow furrowed, a murderous glint in golden glare. “You spoke with him—and he denied you?”

“I k-kissed him, even, but his human side is strong , Grandpapa. I’ve never come across a dragonblood who had the ability to lock their inner voice behind a stone fortress inside their soul.”

“Did his dragon communicate with yours?”

“I heard it whispering to him—assuring I belonged to him, encouraging him to take me. ”

Grandpop’s brow rose. “And he claimed not to desire you?”

I nodded, my shoulders drooping as I stared at my hands. “It was like Patrick slammed a lid atop his dragon, shutting him out. Sealing him off.”

“I’ve never read of a human capable of controlling his inner dragon like that.”

“No books in the library speak of such a gift,” I said as a shiver—a chill —raced down my spine for the first time in my life.

“Come.” Grandpapa reached for my hand. “Perhaps Vanni and Ashley can offer some insight on how you might sway your alpha into your arms.”

I hated that word as much as I did manipulate, but I grew desperate to see my dreams come to fruition, the fulfillment I craved.

Both of Grandpapa’s mates had covered their nakedness when we returned to the living space below, but Vanni continued to smirk, his bright green eyes alight with laughter.

Ashley took one look at my face and hopped up to hug me tight, murmuring apologies for something she hadn’t even caused, while Tiggy circled around us.

I hadn’t been held by a woman since before Grandmother had passed, and I fought off another round of tears as Ashley smoothed her hand up and down my back. “What happened, Primrose?” she asked, stepping away to meet my gaze with empathy while holding my upper arms.

“It’s a long story, but you need to listen so you can offer some advice,” I stated abruptly, my fingers finding the top of Tiggy’s head for a quick scratch.

“Still haven’t learned any tact, either,” Vanni said, smirking.

Ashley shot him a glare before turning toward me. “Come sit. Tell us everything.” She settled between her mates, and the purr of all three inner dragons revealed what I had wondered.

Grandpapa and his two mates had bonded.

Jealousy curdled what was left of the ice cream still in my stomach.

I sat across from them in a single chair facing them, wishing desperately for the same as Tiggy settled against my bare feet, his tongue giving a quick wet kiss to my ankle. “Have you shifted?” I asked, my gaze flitting from Vanni to Ashley. “Flown?”

“Oh, we’ve taken to the skies, all right,” Vanni said with a grin, stretching his arms along the back of the couch. “Strapped to Dolyn’s body, experiencing the rush of wind, that euphoric feeling of soaring to the heavens.”

Sexual tension sprang to life among the three of them, and I grimaced. “I don’t want to know.”

Vanni chuckled, Ashley’s face flushed, and Grandpapa glanced at his alpha. “Vanni shifted long before our female?—”

“Because I’m a direct descendant of the royal line,” Vanni interrupted, pride lacing his tone. “It’s why I was able to enter the vault where your ancestors’ orbs rest.”

I’d never been into the vault since I wasn’t an alpha male, but I’d read about the room and how royal blood was required in an alpha in order to open the sealed door.

“Is that what made you finally submit?” I asked, turning my focus onto Grandpapa.

“No, but it certainly made me look at him in a different light.”

“You’re no longer a racist asshole,” I stated what I read in his mind.

“Primrose.” His lips stretched thin at the curse.

My face heated. “My beta is fond of swearing, and I fear I may have picked up his bad habit a bit over the last couple of days. ”

Grandpapa muttered under his breath about unworthiness as his mind thought it, but I glared. “He is worthy. He’s mine, and you have no say about who I spend the rest of my life with.”

“Well, that settles that,” Vanni said with a chuckle.

“You would have accepted your alpha regardless of his lineage, wouldn’t you, Grandpapa?” I asked, my head tilted to the side while peering into eyes framed by thick lashes like my own. I already knew the answer, but wanted to hear him confess the truth.

“Eventually, yes.”

The happiness radiating from him returned the ache to my chest.

A whisper of…something other—not from the four of us met my ears.

I glanced around the room, my brow furrowed. “What is…”

New life.

I jerked my head toward Ashley, gaze settling on her lower abdomen where her hand rested. Swallowing hard, I fought to find my voice. “Are you…”

“Yes,” she murmured as our dragons silently conversed the truth. “As of yesterday, actually.” Her face flushed, and Vanni kissed her temple, tucking her against his side. Grandpapa settled his hand atop hers.

“It’s a boy,” I claimed as the whisper of dragonblood reached out to me from her womb.

“Told you!” Ashley declared with light laughter but quickly sobered. “Tell us why you’re here, Primrose, and how we might help you.”

I started at the beginning, sharing what I had encountered after leaving them months earlier, keeping the sexual encounters between me and my mates to myself. All three frowned upon learning my alpha didn’t want me—had outright denied me and ordered me to stay away from his presence.

“Strip down, kneel at his feet, and offer the man a flogger,” Vanni said, glancing over my simple frock.

Grandpapa leaned forward and, reaching around Ashley, backhanded his alpha’s chest.

One of Vanni’s eyebrows shot up as he glanced at my grandfather. “You’ll pay for that.”

“Good.” Grandpapa’s mutter curved my lips, but my mind went straight to seeing Jaxon tied up and taken by Patrick exactly as he’d painted the picture in my mind earlier while eating ice cream.

I shifted on my chair and glanced at Ashley.

She chewed on her lower lip, her gaze still on my face as though unaffected by the men on either side of her, the threat of violence, and the promise of sex.

“Perhaps he just needs a little while to process everything you’ve told him.

If I were you, I would continue to bump into him here and there, keep you fresh on his mind.

A little flirting goes a long way—and if given the opportunity after he’s a bit more familiar with you, perhaps trying to seduce him might work. ”

Vanni sat back, arms crossed. “If the man is a true dominant, one with a dragonblood’s sex drive, I doubt he’ll be able to resist. Keeping my hands to myself with Ashley was hard as fuck—pun intended—and the second she lifted her limit on physical touch, I dove in, half-crazed with lust.”

“And that’s when I slammed a fist into your face,” Grandpapa growled the words.

Vanni’s grin reminded me of Jaxon’s. “There’s been a hell of a lot of slamming ever since.”

I bit back my smile as Vanni laughed, and Ashley’s face turned red again. I’d seen evidence of Vanni’s sex drive—and Ashley’s response to him .

Because I hadn’t knocked. At least they had finished this time before I barged in on them.

“In all seriousness,” Grandpapa said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, “what about Jaxon?”

“What about him?” I asked.

“You abandoned him without explanation, and you’ve come far enough away he’ll have lost all connection to you. I can’t begin to imagine what he must be thinking right now, how he must be feeling.”

“You left us once upon a time, too, beta ,” Vanni stated, rubbing Ashley’s shoulder as she leaned against his side. “It felt as though a part of me had been ripped away.”

“Like a missing limb,” Ashley murmured, the memory of hurt echoing through her inner dragon to mine.

Did Jaxon experience the same?

I stilled, barely breathing as I contemplated the results of actions I’d taken while not considering how my taking off like that would affect him.

“I learned the hard way that running—flying away—isn’t the correct choice,” Grandpapa said, his pained gaze flitting toward me once more, and his sense of continued guilt for doing so swept through my mind.

“Staying and making things right, resolving issues, is what I should have done. I—I would have known your mother if I had. You wouldn’t have been alone for all those years. ”

Although shame flooded through my soul for being so selfish, I had to focus on Grandpapa’s emotions first since he sat a few feet from me. “I forgive you, Grandpapa, same as Grandmother did,” I whispered, rubbing over the pain in my chest. “She never stopped loving you.”

Neither Vanni nor Ashley’s dragons growled, and I longed to be loved in the same way, without jealousy over the past, with assurance of the future.

Sudden yearning to return to my beta swept through me like a firestorm, stealing my focus. “I need to go back.” I hopped up, displacing Tiggy from where he’d rested so sweetly. I gave him a quick pat, but since he belonged to Grandpapa, I didn’t feel bad leaving him behind for a second time.

“That’s the best choice, even though I would love for you to stay longer,” Grandpapa said, the pride in his heart radiating from his eyes.

All three followed me to the front door, and we quickly hugged before I rushed outside into the darkness. I threw myself off the veranda—ruining yet another set of clothes, Grandpapa’s holler to be careful whipping away in the wind.