Page 7

Chapter

Three

Emmerich

“ E mmerich,” Rumi panted as I carried him through the doorway and straight into my bedchamber in the dragon castle near the dancing pavilion. His voice was weak and wispy, and when his eyes fluttered open, I could tell he didn’t see me.

“I’ve got you, my love,” I said as comfortingly as I could, carrying him to my bed.

I was afraid to put him down, afraid to let him go in case holding him was the only thing keeping him tethered to this life. Everything I could feel from him through our bond was weak and faded, like a reflection of what my mate once was and should have been.

Rumi was dying from his wounds, and it felt like there was nothing I could do about it.

“Hang on,” I told him, putting my fears aside to settle him on the soft, green coverlet .

It took another few seconds of praying before I felt safe to let him go.

As I pulled my arms out from under him and stood looking down at him, my throat closed up.

My mate looked so small and helpless. His tunic was completely wet with dark, red blood.

He’d grown too weak even to moan or clutch his belly, like I knew he wanted to so he could protect our egg.

Our egg! I caught my breath, hunching down so I could place my hands over his belly.

The sword strike had crossed right over his womb, but as far as I could tell, the paused egg hadn’t been touched or hurt at all.

I could feel it vaguely through what remained of my and Rumi’s bond.

Embryonic as it was, I sensed that the egg was aware that its papa was in distress.

“Hang on,” I repeated, speaking as much to our child as my mate. “I can save you. I will save you.”

I had no idea how I was going to do it.

Even though I was exhausted, I tried again, closing my eyes, placing my hands over the sword wound marring my beloved’s body, and channeling every last bit of magic I had into healing the wound.

I managed to stop the flow of blood, but for some reason, Rumi’s flesh was stubborn.

It refused to knit back together or close up and regenerate itself.

I chased away any element that would cause infection, but Rumi’s body was irreparable.

I huffed out a breath as I gave up my efforts and slumped over Rumi’s form. He’d either passed out or fallen asleep with both of our efforts to keep him alive. I covered him with my body, pressing my chest into him in a last, vain hope that if his heart could hear my heart, all would be well.

It was no use. As soon as I stopped using magic, blood began to flow once more. I could only stop it with a concentrated effort, and I didn’t have the strength to spend every waking moment channeling magic into my mate.

“You bastard!” I growled, sending the curse to the nameless, faceless sorcerer who I knew was responsible for the wound.

The traitor in Osric’s camp was the reason someone as harmless as Nikkos had taken up a sword, likely with an enchanted or poisoned blade, and attacked my omega.

The sorcerer had turned friends against friends and set Osric’s army against itself.

For all I knew they would attack each other until every last one of the loyal men and women who had pledged themselves to defeat the evil of King Freslik was dead.

The hopelessness was too much. Big and strong as I was, I burst into weeping, hugging my dying mate’s body tightly.

“My son, what is the matter?” Mother’s calm, gentle voice spoke behind me a moment later.

She rested a hand on my shoulder, but I had already gasped and jerked around to face her.

“Mother!” I said, hope renewing within me. “Mother, please. Save him. Save my omega. I’m not strong enough to fight whatever is killing him, but I know you are.”

“Your faith in me is humbling, my darling,” Mother said, her smile warm and her eyes sad.

I stood and turned to face her. Mother always seemed small unless you were looking at her directly. As I knelt, she appeared tiny, but when I rose to my feet, I was still looking up into her kind eye and her gentle face.

“You can do it,” I said. “You are everything. You are all love and all power. You can accomplish all the things I cannot do.”

Mother laughed modestly. I wanted to be annoyed that she could appear so calm and unflappable when the love of my life lay dying on the bed beside us, but that was merely Mother’s way.

“I cannot heal him as he is,” Mother said a moment later, changing my entire opinion of her.

I frowned in frustration, balling my hands into fists at my sides. “Cannot or will not?” I demanded.

Still, Mother showed no signs of being perturbed or upset by my anger. “His body cannot heal because someone has paused him.”

I sucked in a breath and released my clenched fists and a great deal of emotion with them.

Of course! Rumi’s body couldn’t knit back together because I had paused it.

I had frozen every cell of generation within him so that our egg remained in a freshly conceived state.

I’d had no idea that would stop everything else as well.

Without another word, I turned and knelt by Rumi’s side. I placed my hands on his body once more and reached into him, finding my old spell and breaking it with ease.

As soon as the spell broke, Rumi sucked in a loud breath, his eyes going wide. His entire body convulsed, and a moment later, his face contorted in pain as he hugged his wounded torso.

It was heartening, but I was once again completely exhausted and could do nothing but flop against the bed.

“Mother?” I appealed to her.

With a bright, tender smile, Mother placed one hand on me and one on Rumi. I felt the warm rush of her all-powerful magic encompass both of us, independently and together.

Slowly but certainly, every bit of exhaustion drained away from me. The minor muscles strains and a few cuts I’d received during the battle and before faded away. My body felt stronger and more vibrant than it had in years.

Better still, through the bond, I could feel Rumi gaining in strength as well. I lifted enough to watch as the sword wound I’d laid bare when I pushed aside his tunic closed up and fused back together. Even the blood disappeared and his clothing cleaned and repaired itself.

Within a minute, Rumi was resting comfortably, his body fixed and his dirty battle clothes transformed into soft, silk pajamas in a light shade of green. My darling mate breathed out a sleepy sigh and rested one hand absently on his stomach before dropping off into a deep, healing sleep.

“Thank you,” I told my mother from the bottom of my heart, standing to hug her.

I came away from the hug completely clean and restored in body.

“Tell me what has caused your omega’s wound,” Mother said, stepping down to the end of the bed and bidding me to sit there with her.

It felt strange and awkward to sit on the foot of the bed for a chat with my mother when Rumi was still sleeping through recovery from a wound that had nearly killed him.

My mind still raced with battle readiness.

I could hardly sit still, and only when I rested a hand on one of my mate’s bare feet did I feel anything close to calm.

“The battle between Lord Osric and King Freslik’s forces for control of the kingdom has begun,” I told Mother, racing through my thoughts to recall everything that had happened before my world had almost imploded.

“Osric’s forces well outmatched Freslik’s, but as we had been warned, there was a traitor in Osric’s camp, a dark sorcerer, who turned Osric’s men against each other. ”

“A dark sorcerer?” Mother asked, curious despite the eternal calm that always radiated from her.

“Yes,” I said, shifting to face her more fully, though I kept one hand on Rumi. “Whoever he is, he has allied himself with Freslik and is working for him.”

“For what aim?” Mother asked.

“I don’t know for certain,” I said with a shrug and a shake of my head. “What is it that the wicked want most of the time? Power? Gold? Dominance?”

“And yet, those things never bring happiness when they are sought after for their own ends,” Mother said with a sad sigh. “It is a pity that so many believe those things to be the only ones of any value.”

I agreed with her, but the sense of urgency within me prevented me from sighing along with her, as if we were having tea in her garden throne room.

“Freslik has an unfair advantage in this war, Mother,” I went on, knowing I had to be convincing to make my case.

“He is employing magic to win, and so far, he will almost certainly be victorious. He will be victorious unless you release my brothers and I from the restrictions you have placed on us not to use magic in this conflict.”

Mother smiled sadly and reached out a hand to rest on the side of my face. “Ah, my darling boy. You know I cannot do that.”

Her simple words and the goodness with which she said them made my stomach drop.

“Mother,” I pleaded with her, “while I most definitely appreciate your intentions in forbidding us from using magic in the cruel world to win this war, I am now convinced that we won’t be able to win without it.”

“But if you win with magic, it cannot truly be considered a victory,” Mother said .

I was only just able to stop myself from growling in frustration. Now was not the time for a philosophical debate of ethics. “We need to use magic,” I said. “We are not powerful enough to defeat Freslik without it.”

“You were on the verge of victory without magic before this dark sorcerer joined with Freslik,” Mother pointed out. “You have proven to yourself that you do not truly need to bend and break the rules in order to triumph.”

“That was before the dark sorcerer,” I said, trying hard not to lose my temper. “Now Freslik has a weapon on his side that we cannot counter without a weapon of equal strength.”

“And if you did call upon your magical powers to attack, what do you think would happen then?” Mother asked.

I opened my mouth to say that we would win, but a different thought sparked in my mind.

If we countered the dark sorcerer with magic, it was likely that the sorcerer would use even darker magic to try to defeat us.

My brothers and I would then pool our power to fight back, and the sorcerer would do the same.

We would escalate the fight to an exponential degree, and there was a real chance that we would destroy the cruel world in the process.

Other worlds had been destroyed in similar manners throughout time.

I blew out a breath and sagged, squeezing Rumi’s foot to comfort myself.

“You see?” Mother said as if I’d spoken my train of thought aloud. “Escalating power never leads to good ends. If I allowed you to fight back with magic, there is no telling what sort of destruction would follow.”

“But it feels as though we are doomed to fail if we don’t try everything in our power to win,” I said, appealing to her one last time with a look .

Mother smiled and rested a hand on the side of my face.

“You are more powerful without magic than you know, my love,” she said, her words like an embrace.

“You have resources at your disposal that the forces of darkness could never comprehend. That is the sort of power that the likes of Freslik and this sorcerer cannot counter or defeat. They are what make you, your brothers, and your mates so strong.”

“It doesn’t feel as though we’re strong right now,” I said, trying not to sound like the sullen, sulky teenage dragon I once was.

“That is because you have not looked inside yourself to find your power yet,” Mother said.

She leaned forward to kiss my forehead, then rose.

“Do not fear, my son,” she said. “The forces of darkness always defeat themselves in the end, with or without magic. Greed and selfishness can only gain temporary footholds. The world is not enough for people like that, and since they will never be satisfied, they will never rest or hold dear the joys and blessings they already have. Evil is its own greatest enemy.”

“I suppose so,” I sighed. “It doesn’t feel that way when you are actively fighting it, though.”

“It might not feel that way, but you and I both know that good always triumphs in the end, even if the battle is a long one.”

Mother was right, though I didn’t like the part about the battle taking a long time.

I wanted to say more, but Rumi stirred. I twisted quickly to look at him and to put both my hands on him so that I could feel the life pulsing through him. When I turned back to say more to Mother, however, she was gone.

I blew out a breath and shook my head. “You always do that,” I said. “You always leave before the argument is over so that you don’t have to defend your final word.”

“No, my son,” her lighthearted voice said from nowhere. “I leave so that you are spared from tying yourself into argumentative knots for the sole purpose of soothing your ego.”

I grinned and shook my head. Mother was probably right.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Rumi made a plaintive sound in his sleep and his face pinched. He squirmed a bit, and in no time he drew in a breath and stretched a bit as he awoke.

I moved quickly up the bed so I could sit by his side and take his hand in one of mine. With the other, I smoothed back the hair from his forehead.

“Rumi, my love,” I said, then leaned down to kiss his lips quickly. “You’re awake.”

“Where am I?” Rumi asked breathlessly, squirming a bit and blinking as he looked around the room.

“You’re in my room, our room, in the dragon castle,” I said, cradling the side of his face. He was warm to the touch, and I didn’t know whether it was a good thing or a bad one. Mother had healed him, which meant there was almost no chance of infection.

“In your room?” Rumi asked, more awake with each passing second. He sucked in a quick breath, his eyed finding mine. “The battle,” he said. “Nikkos.”

“The dark sorcerer turned him against you,” I said with a frown. “He turned all of Osric’s army against itself.”

“We have to find him,” Rumi said, attempting to sit up. “We have to fight back.”

A moment later, his face pinched, his hand went to his stomach, and he let out a moan. It wasn’t a moan of pain, though. It was more like a moan of longing and desire.

“Emmerich,” Rumi panted, glancing up to meet my eyes.

I drew in a breath, finding the honey and lavender scent of my omega rich and strong in my nose. The warmth that radiated from him suddenly made sense. So did the increasing wet spot on the coverlet where Rumi sat.

Somehow, against all odds and even the laws of nature, despite already being with egg, now that my sweet omega mate was no longer paused, he’d gone right back into heat.