Page 14 of Emerald Waves (Primordial Protectors #2)

Chapter Nine

Caro

Dinner at Ionus’ was always an affair filled with succulent meats and conversation, though I could see Alex’s influence on the meal too. A huge garden salad sat in the center of the table, along with deviled eggs and a pasta salad I couldn’t get enough of.

Listening to Alex and Emerson coo over the dragonets left my dragon shimmering near the surface, hopeful that someday they’d be cooing at our little ones too.

The only difficulty was avoiding the shrewdly inquisitive looks my older brother kept shooting my way. One glance and I knew that he knew I was keeping a secret. He’d always been that way with us, but his intuition had only grown after our mother had passed on to join our father.

How he’d always known when one of us had gotten up to something reckless was a mystery I’d never solved and likely never would, but I suspected his dragonets would struggle to pull anything over on him.

“Your thoughts are louder when you attempt to silence them,” Ionus said, startling me, because I hadn’t heard him move across the room.

“Maybe, or maybe it’s just that you’re a nosy fucker who can’t stay out of everyone’s business,” I replied, hoping brusque snark would prove to be a successful deflection tool.

“You have a mate and enough offspring to occupy your time, one would think. Isn’t it time you turned your focus on them and left the rest of us to our own devices? ”

“Never.”

One word and he had me fuming, but if I showed any hint of ire, he’d latch on to it like a pit bull with a bone and I’d be the one with toothmarks in my tail when he was through.

Best to do nothing, not even sigh, and wait for Emerson to be through admiring the little ones so we could go back home. Out of sight had always been my go-to defense mechanism against his piercing stare and pointed questions.

He was a master at the verbal art of talking in circles, and I was an abject failure at not falling for the traps he set. Ones that always resulted in me blurting whatever truth I had hidden…and begging forgiveness for keeping secrets from him.

This was the biggest I’d ever withheld, and I was desperate to cling to it until I’d solved the mystery on my own.

Never on our own, not anymore.

My dragon’s insistence came at a rather unwelcome time, as it often did. Goddess, but there were times when I wished my mind was my own, with no one to intrude upon my brooding, or poke around seeking answers as to why I’d withdrawn in the first place.

Honestly, I didn’t know why shutting down and staring off into the endless blue was easier than speaking to him, or any of them, but it was, and I wished they’d leave me to it.

They love us.

I got that, but love could be suffocating too.

And now you ignore me as well.

Yup. I did and I was going to keep on ignoring him until he shut down and took a nap while I struggled to process the unnatural fear that had filled me since the day I’d found that artifact.

A fear of returning to the place I loved more than anywhere else in the world. My beloved seas and oceans. The one true place I could hide. Only one other brother could reach the depths as I could, and he was always off on his own adventures. On land, well, anyone could find me there.

With my size, few lakes or rivers could conceal me, but the depth and berth of the sea had always had the ability to shroud me from even Ionus’ tracking abilities, much to his utter frustration in my younger days.

The moment I sensed him, or any of my brothers, near when I didn’t wish to be found, was when I slipped into one of the currents and slip streams and let it carry me far away from their meddling, jokes, and snark.

“Emerson, we should probably get going soon,” I called out, stepping around my brother and back into the room where Alex and Emerson sat with the dragonets romping around on the floor between them.

“Eventually,” Emerson replied, never even looking up at me, he was too in awe of those tiny purple wings and tails.

Ionus’s chuckle, right fucking behind me, made me flinch and cast a glance over my shoulder to see him with his arms folded and that look I knew too well.

Whatever you’re keeping from me, stop before it effects more than just the good mood I’m in.

Doesn’t look like too good of a mood to me.

Because you are infuriating me right now, and it’s taking everything in me not to call you out in front of our mates and brothers.

It's not a problem that needs to be shared.

But it is a problem.

Goddess be damned he’d done it to me again.

How!

How the fuck did he always manage, with so few thoughts or words, to start ferreting out bits of information when my intention was to remain silent.

Your silence has always been a bigger confirmation than the word yes. Haven’t we always been stronger together?

He was right, though he was wrong, too, not that he’d ever see it that way.

Strongest in battle, yes. Strongest when we worked as a collective unit for the survival of our people too.

But when it came to the mastery of our own elements, we’d each possessed a uniquely intrinsic sense of oneness with them that the others simply would not understand.

Until it came to water. I’m really not sure even Mattias was aware of how in tune I was with his element.

The motion of the seas was impressed soul deep for me, like the sound of the waves and whalesong, it resonated on a frequency inside my head that never stopped. It silenced the voices. Only these days, when I tapped into it, those once soothing noises carried with it one I wished to erase.

One I didn’t dare focus on now out of fear I’d share it with him, or the rest of our brothers, though they were all occupied with the little ones now.

The time to speak on it is now, before you bury your connection to both the earth and sea and render me ineffective!

Our dragon’s insistence drove me to push him further away and I turned, shouldering past my brother and out of the room with the dragonets and the rest of our family laughing joyfully at their antics.

Light bursts swam in front of my eyes, shimmering with aqua and the brilliant green of sea grass.

A sense of wrongness washed over me, along with the twisty, turbulent disorientation I’d experienced beneath the waves.

One moment my mind was as silent as I could force it to be, the next, there was nothing but the mind splitting sound that had nearly been my undoing.

Sharp. Violent. I pressed a hand to my head, swayed, and would have hit the floor had Ionus’ not caught me.

The thundering feet of our brother’s rushing into the room were the next thing I was dimly aware of, along with my dragons’ face swimming up behind my eyes, glaring as he hissed at me.

There was a heaviness in my limbs when I struggled to pull away, and I could scarcely make them work, let alone muster up enough power to be successful.

My feeble efforts resulted in barely a twitch of motion and my brother’s scoffing grumble as he guided me to the couch.

What’s wrong? What’s happening?

Great, now I’d even gone and worried my mate.

Nothing but the memory I told you abou t, I explained, refusing to lie to him. It just caught me off guard.

What my dragon felt from yours was more than just off guard, it was blinding pain and a sense of being fractured.

I’m fine. It’s faded already.

Harrumph.

Great, another one determined to put an end to my keeping secrets.

His face swam into view, and I felt horrible for pulling him away from the joy of just getting to know the babies.

His hands cupped my cheek, holding my head steady so he could peer into my eyes, only I couldn’t focus on him.

That sense of wrongness was back, like I was about to be smacked with another wave of sound, only this time I braced for it, grit my teeth and fought to shield while enduring the intensity.

When it was over, I sagged forward, the weight of me against Emerson’s slight form nearly sent him tumbling over backward.

“He encountered something underwater,” I heard Emerson say, from what sounded like a thousand fathoms away.

“It disoriented him and forced his dragon to retreat, leaving him human and vulnerable. There is a statue he brought back with him from his trip. We haven’t had the opportunity to research it yet, but he found it after the encounter.

I’m starting to think it might be connected to these bouts of sound memory he’s experiencing.

We shared a fraction of recollection earlier, and it was loud enough to startle me.

It echoes in his mind even when he tries to block it out. ”

If I didn’t block it out I doubt I’d be capable of much.

Then let your brother help you.

I thought we were going to figure it out together?

Many heads make easier solutions.

Do not get philosophical on me right now Emerson, please.

You are the most stubborn dragon I’ve ever met.

And you are…trying to help, I know, but this is not the way I handle things.

I do not crawl to my brother and beg him to fix the things I screw up.

It might take a ton of trial, error and brooding, but I correct them on my own, when I can keep him out of my head and my affairs long enough to manage it.

That’s ego talking. You have never been a singular I, and yet I sense from your dragon his frustration over you rarely allowing his help either.

How can you divide out parts of yourself this way?

We are mates, which means you are not only cutting me out now but my dragon too.

Brood if you must, but you aren’t going to tackle this one alone, I forbid it.

Forbid it? Seriously? Do you really think you can…

Whatever else I was about to think to him was cut off by that sound again, and there was no blocking to keep him, or my brothers from hearing it.

Writhing, I pressed my head to the arm of the couch and shook as pain coursed through my head, like someone had taken a scrub brush made of broken glass and drug it over my brain.

My dragon was in agony too, his roars a dim echo beneath that other sound. I kept them all from experiencing this with me that day under the water, but I was helplessly caught in its web now with no way to protect any of us.

“We need answers and to study that artifact right fucking now!” My usually unflappable elder brother declared. “Where is it?”

“Our horde.”

“Has he given you access yet?”

“Just a few hours ago.”

“Odem, go with Emerson to retrieve it, in case something happens when he touches it.”

No! No!! No!!!

I could barely think the words, while speech, at the moment, was impossible.

Don’t let him go beyond the door, Emerson. Please. I know you don’t understand, but keep him out of the horde, please, nothing happened when I touched it, it all happened before. Of all of them, not him, I’ll never live it down if he sees what’s in there.

Of all my mishaps and mistakes, this was the worst of them, hands down.

I could not gain control of the situation, I could scarcely make my wishes known, all I could do was suffer, over and over, as the sound kept coming like it was attempting to drown me.

The mental shields I’d prided myself on were in tatters, leaving me miserably exposed and weak.

Weaker than I’d felt in my long lifetime.

I could hear the echo of my mate’s voice as he struggled to communicate with me, but I couldn’t make out a single word. My snarly ass dragon wasn’t even roaring anymore, it was curled in the corner of my mind, hissing occasionally, like it struggled to muster up the effort to do even that.

What a pair we made.

“Caro, focus on me, dammit!”

Two curses, that was never a good sign. Ionus sounded pissed. I hated when he was angry at me and truly, his tone was beyond furious. So far beyond that it rivaled only the high-pitched wailing inside my head.

For a moment, it almost reminded me of the dragonets’ cries when they needed something, only on a much grander scale.

“Caro!”

Goddess be damned I was trying.

“Go get the statue, now!” Ionus barked as the sound eased its grip on me.

Some guardian. Some protector. I couldn’t believe how powerless I was against it.

Shame followed the sound, crushing me in a way the ocean depths never could. Filling me with bitterness and rage.

“Stop staring at me!” I snapped or tried too.

It came out like a weak croak and took way more effort than it should have. What the hell had I done to face such torment, especially when it could not be endured alone? Why had my goddess forsaken me?

“Brother, please, look at me.”

Ionus rarely said please. He rarely sounded like anything but the gruff, stern taskmaster he’d always been. Right now, he sounded almost broken, and I was gripped by a second wave of shame, this time over what I was inadvertently doing to him.

It was the only thing that made me move, and I fought to turn my face from where I had it buried against the cloth arm of the couch. Inch by painful inch, I managed it and blinked bleary eyes up at him in an effort to focus.

“Can’t see you clearly,” I muttered, blinking again.

What I wanted was to sleep and hope the sound wouldn’t find me there. My dragon already slumbered, silently coiled in a tight mound in its corner. When had his hissing stopped? I couldn’t pinpoint the moment, not when thought was the last thing I wanted to attempt.

“And I can barely feel your dragon,” Ionus said. “I can barely feel you and you’re right here beneath my hand.”

It was only then that I realized he was stroking my hair the way he used to when we were children, and I’d cringe and shake while lightning tore across the heavens, accompanied by the booming echo of thunder.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, unable to keep my eyes open any longer. “Tired. I’m sorry. Tried so hard. Could never live up to what you expected of me.”

And there it was. My greatest fear, my biggest failure, even worse than the one I suffered through now.

No matter how hard I tried, I’d never grown into the kind of dragon he’d become or the protector he’d tried to forge us into.

My final thought, as the turbulent haze in my mind was swallowed up by black, was please, forgive me.