Page 26 of The Dragon’s Stone Hearted Mate (Mori’s Mementos #1)
Rho
Dragons had long been a moody species, and my dragon was no different.
After his brother walked through his final door to face the Pit of Frost where his ancestors would do their best to mold him into someone who could rejoin the reincarnation cycle, I took over the planning of our immediate future.
Having the amulet from the earth witch made life much easier.
While Morvan was saying goodbye to his brother, I sent a message to Cutter through Morvan’s therapist’s contacts at the camp. He was still there, unbothered by the soul collecting bird. I breathed a sigh of relief because I wasn’t quite ready for Morvan to find out the truth about Cutter.
The next thing was figuring out where to stay while Morvan wrapped his big-overthinking dragon head around everything that had happened.
For that, I turned not to the leader of the dragon flight but to Teal.
Anyone who cared enough about my mate to leave his mate and children home alone in the middle of the night to save his life was someone I counted amongst my currently limited number of friends.
With a little bit of back and forth we ended up at the very cabin Torvan had once blown up.
Mori even arranged for Morvan’s stuff to be brought over from Camp Air.
Though, I think he secretly wanted to speak with Cutter.
Having someone in his unique position around would probably prove valuable to someone with Mori’s abilities and ambitions.
Teal lingered at Moonglow Cabin with us for a few days as my dragon wandered the grounds in a daze.
Inside his head was chaos. He’d lost Torvan twice and each time he found out truths he’d have been happier living his whole life without knowing.
I followed behind him ensuring he ate and drank but said little to keep from interrupting his thoughts.
I lived long enough standing watch at a grief camp to know extreme grief like this rarely lasted forever. Sooner or later, he’d come back to me.
About a week after we arrived at Moonglow, I woke up to the sizzle of frying bacon and eggs. I smiled to myself as I rolled onto my side and savored the salty aroma wafting through the house. It’d been a long week at the cabin, but it’d been a long week in other places too.
While in transport to the jail because no one knew what else to do with them, Tony ended up killing Georgie.
He had a lethal dose of his boss’s product inside a hidden syringe bracelet.
When he found out, Conall, Georgie’s pregnant mate, ripped Tony to shreds inside a Moonscale courtroom.
The fox shifter didn’t stand a chance against the pregnant omega.
While Conall wasn’t charged, he was taken to an inpatient facility to recover his wits and to prevent the stress from taking the life of his unborn cub.
Mori and Preston had taken up residence with Crilus and the latter was trying to start a knitting club with the bar’s patrons.
Only knitting and drinking lead to a few self-inflicted knitting needle wounds.
Who knew that tequila and knitting needles were a dangerous combination?
Too bad they weren’t made of stone like I was.
Then maybe they could do shots and play with yarn at the same time.
“Are you hungry, Rho?” Morvan called softly from the kitchen.
“I hear you sighing in there. Are you sorting through the flight link again? It’s like a news ticker.
You don’t have to listen to it every morning.
Probably pretty damn depressing to do it that way.
Aren’t I depressing enough for you?” his voice grew closer with every word until he stood in the bedroom doorway, leaning up against it.
His hair was wet from a recent shower, and he only wore grey plaid pajama pants.
“You smell like you’re waking up a bit,” I smiled, raking my eyes down his chiseled body. I’d managed to get enough food into him over the last week to keep him from withering away.
“I wasn’t asleep. I was just --- I don’t know. I was lost again, I guess,” Morvan shrugged. “I spent so much of my time since Torvan died in that state that it started to feel like home.”
“Did you figure out what you needed to?” I asked him.
“I think so. The bright side of my brother not staying dead was realizing there’s so much we’ll never know or remember while we’re alive.
He said he wasn’t alone when he died. He didn’t talk about how it hurt or whatever.
When he finally had the chance to say something it was about the people who were there.
Maybe he didn’t deserve a soothing death.
Maybe none of us do but I think it’s as much information as I’m going to get.
Don’t get me wrong. I think this will come up again.
Life is a bizarre string of events that we have to swim through but that’s the whole point.
We’re not seeing everything. Besides, I want to wade through all that crazy with you.
I want to know what happens next and I figure that’s two of the best reasons ever to stop wondering why the world isn’t fair.
There probably isn’t some grand point to everything but we can pretend there is or invent one of our own. ”
“We’ve always been the point as far as I’m concerned, dragon of mine,” I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. “You. Me. The kids. Our friends. The people who we love or help. Sure, there are a lot of assholes out there, but they aren’t the point.”
“Patrica sent me a text telling me it was time to get my head out of my ass and come back to the warehouse because she’s pregnant,” he said, meeting my gaze, his lips pulled up into a smirk.
“What’s so amusing about that?” I asked, smiling back at him because I couldn’t help it. He melted me to my very stoney core whenever he turned those mischief-filled eyes on me.
“Everyone thinks this is a joke on Torvan but it’s not. I figure Torvan’s mate will be as devil-may-care as he is. Then eventually they’ll meet back up. She wanted to get rid of Torvan but now that cat is stuck with him forever. He’ll be her family too.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I haven’t known Mori long but if he were here he’d probably say something like her killing him now has them connected at the souls.
Even if it was the right thing to do. I’m not saying it was.
I’m just saying the universe is like ‘Oh! Yeah! Connected forever! Look what you did?! Now you’re connected by all this karmic mess.
This is going to take hundreds of lifetimes to work out! ”
“Do you want to have some breakfast before it burns?” he smirked.
“I’d love to.”
***
It took us a few more days of spending time together to build back up to the physical intensity we felt on that path in the Other World where Cutter interrupted us for Mori’s visit.
It was as if Morvan had to shake the last remnants of losing his brother before the true-mate magic could find him all over again.
It found him in the middle of the night.
We’d fallen asleep discussing our family tree.
Well, the branches that came from our previous union, anyway.
He wanted to know everything about who we used to be and I told him as many details as I could recall but like much of life the little day-to-day memories faded somewhere along the way.
I woke up to him kissing across my collarbones and then dragging his tongue down to my nipples.
Everything inside me stood up and melted down at the same time.
I was hard and slick, and the sensations came on so fast and insistently that for a second, I thought I might’ve developed the ability to go into heat like a shifter.
The magic of the true-mate response danced across my skin and Morvan’s nimble tongue traced around the tips of my nipples before going lower.
The claiming gland on my shoulder ached with the weight of its fullness. We’d left the ritual exchange of bites half-complete for longer than the magic liked. The magic was rude. It was the same magic that sent Torvan back onto Earthside. How many arms did it think we had?
“I can’t believe we waited so long,” Morvan murmured against my skin as he kissed lower making his way down my chest to my stomach.
He stopped just long enough to swirl his tongue around my navel before licking lower.
His thumbs tucked themselves into my waistband and inched it down.
I arched my hips and wiggled until he had them off me as the magic urged me forward too.
“So long,” Morvan murmured again. “So much bullshit. It’s like everything just crawled in between us.”
“Well, there’s only air and your pajamas between us now, dragon of mine,” I smirked, meeting his reflective, draconic gaze through the dark.
He was as beautiful as ever – strong features that often alternated between moody and kind.
Eyes that gave everything away when I looked into them and big, strong arms that wrapped around me as he kissed his way back up my body to steal a proper kiss.
I died a little when his warm tongue slipped into my mouth. Everything inside me called out for more of him as the magic pushed and pulled us along on its currents. I wrapped myself around him and ground up rubbing my hard dick against whatever bit of him it found.
Morvan was hard too. Hard and thick and oozing precum onto his pajama bottoms.
“Pants, mate,” I whispered. “Take them off.”
He growled against my lips and the sound turned to a throaty laugh as I grabbed the hems of his pants legs and tugged at them with my toes.
I’d get my dragon naked one way or another even if his tongue was spinning and twirling around my mouth and making it nigh impossible to think about anything else.
He rose up enough to free his cock and balls and I took him in my hand as we kissed, playing with him and reveling in the thought of how good he’d feel all buried inside my body.