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  The men darted confused glances between each other. The guy whose hair she had in a death grip swallowed and muttered, “I told you fucks we should’ve taken away her weapons.”

  “Honey, the dragon’s the one paying us. Nobody’s holding anyone.”

  “Bullshit. If he weren’t a prisoner, he’d have come to me. Take me to him, or else.”

  They continued staring at her like imbeciles. “Lady, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  She wrenched harder on the Hunter’s head and dragged the edge of her blade along his stubbled neck. He let out a strangled cry and tried to pull away as her knife sheared away part of his beard, but she held firm, keeping him paralyzed with just the barest hint of the Blue dragon magic left in her veins.

  “Holy shit, what are you?” he yelped. “Nobody but a dragon or an Elite’s stronger than one of us. And if you were a dragon, you’d have shifted.”

  “Come to think of it, they both fought like Hunters,” one guy said. “Do you think they’re the defectors?”

  “Nah, women can’t be Elites … can they?”

  “Naaz is my brother. You know, the one you were just threatening to maim a minute ago?” She dug her blade into the man’s neck. Blood welled as the edge cut through skin. How could they not know that she and Naaz were the defectors?

  “Jesus, we don’t plan to kill him! Just … you know, make his job harder. Those were our orders. Make him work to get into the temple, then leave him to it.”

  He let out a yelp as her knife dug deeper. “Tell. Me. Where. He. Is.”

  “Lady, your brother’s on his way to the temple.”

  “Not him! Zorion!” Her wrist twitched with the urge to simply slit the man’s throat and be done with it.

  Before she could give in, heat flooded the room, and her awareness was inundated with power strong enough to make every cell in her body vibrate. Her heartbeat sped up and desire shot through her.

  A breath gusted across her ear as a big hand reached past her and landed over the fist that gripped the blade.

  Smooth, velvet lips caressed the shell of her ear, Zorion’s deep voice barely more than a whisper. “They don’t lie, adara. They answer to me. Now please let this poor man go before he soils himself.”

  She remained frozen, heart pounding, breath caught in her throat as that slight brush of lips moved lower and pressed hotly at the side of her neck.

  Molten heat shot through Neela’s body. Time slowed down. In the scant few seconds Zorion’s hand was in sight, her pulse beat hard through her veins, syncing to the steady, bright throb of light that emanated from the lines of fire that went through his big hand and up his arm. She barely had the presence of mind to look down as she released the blade and it clattered to the floor. He held her hand a second longer before retreating.

  “Zorion. It’s you!” She released her hold on the Hunter, no longer caring about anything but the fact that her dragon had come. She turned to face him, but was met with only shadows and the tingling warmth of where his lips had brushed her skin only a moment ago.

  “Come back!” she yelled into the corridor, but her voice only echoed back at her. She rubbed at the hot brand his mouth had left on her skin and turned around again, desperate now for answers. “Tell me where he is, please!”

  The Hunters all stared back, then glanced at each other. The one who she’d been about to eviscerate rose to his feet and looked down at her. “He’s our paycheck. That’s all. We don’t ask questions. He keeps us alive.”

  “But Meri … the Ultiori … How did you break free of Doctor Waters?”

  “He had a better offer. It wasn’t that tricky to decide.”

  Neela looked around the room at all of them, realizing it was pointless to argue. Hunters were often oblivious to how much control Meri had over their minds. Somehow Zorion had counteracted that control … but had he mind controlled them too?

  She had so many questions now, but none of that mattered. She just needed to find him.

  Giving up on the men in front of her, she turned and jogged down the corridor again, reaching out to grasp at whatever glimmer of a clue Zorion might have left as to his whereabouts.

  “Why the hell do you keep running from me?” she asked the empty air, nearly in tears. No answer came, but she sensed another bright pulse of energy coming from the direction of the center of this odd underground compound. She followed it, the heat of his touch lingering on her skin.

  Chapter Seven

  “Fucking hell, not again,” Naaz grumbled when he came over a small rise and saw a group of Hunters waiting on the path ahead. They stood with arms crossed, five across, in front of a cliff that to any outside observer would have looked like a dead-end box canyon. Naaz knew better. The temple entry was beyond that red stone. On the other side of the wall of assholes determined to make his life miserable.

  “Make it easy on yourselves and leave before I have to kill you!” he called. They simply straightened up and stared him down.

  As he drew closer, he frowned. He was sure these were the same guys who had attacked them earlier and been slaughtered, yet they looked no worse for wear. In fact, they looked bright-eyed and ready to fight.

  He sauntered forward, giving them a sardonic look, and stopped a few yards away with his hands on his hips, eyeing them. Yep, these were the very same men. Though one of them did apparently have an injury still, it couldn’t be more than a flesh wound, judging from the bandage taped to the side of his neck.

  Glancing at the man to his left, he grinned, recalling the particularly brutal attack he’d made on the guy’s groin. “How’s it hangin’, friend?”

  The man’s already surly expression turned positively enraged. He dropped his hands, grabbed his blade, and launched himself at Naaz, spewing curses as he moved.

  Naaz crouched, his muscles bunched as he readied to deflect the attack. The others only watched, seeming to bide their time until the first attacker was nearly beaten. Naaz didn’t bother with a fatal blow this time, instead kicking the guy squarely in the groin before knocking him out with the pommel of his knife.

  He rounded in time for the second man to come at him, blade drawn. He proceeded to subdue each of them in turn, all the while baffled by the methodical way they attacked. It was as if he’d accidentally walked into a training drill and they might wake up and try again at any second. Once all five men were down, he stared at their unconscious bodies.

  “Whatever the fuck you guys are up to, I’m not about to let you get in my goddamn way again.”

  He traced a circle into the dirt with the heel of his boot and crouched down, drawing on the dragon power that remained in his blood. He exhaled a puff of red smoke, and with his fingertips directed it into a circle along the path he’d drawn. From there, he mentally commanded it into a shimmering red shield that surrounded the five Hunters. If they came to and breached the barrier, they’d be too overwhelmed by lust to remember they were after him and wander off to hunt for a quick lay.

  He pressed his lips together in a grim line. The dragon blood that fueled his power was diminishing in his body. As one of the Ultiori Elites, he and his fellows had been given regular transfusions to keep them flush with power. The immortal blood was what had kept him and Marcus and Sterlyn alive for as long as it had. It was the power imbued by the Red dragon Gavra’s blood that he’d used to soothe his female counterparts in the breeding experiments his former master had forced him to take part in. Even though the waning of that power made him vulnerable to attacks that otherwise wouldn’t be fatal, he almost welcomed the idea of finally being at risk of dying in a fight.

  Perhaps it would come to that, once he found the man who had taken his sister. If he had to fight to the death to ensure her survival, he would gladly do so. For now, he needed to get into the temple and reach Asha, and hope she had the power to help him.
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br />   At the bare rock face before him, he expelled another small breath, the smoke seeking out the telltale crevices of the stone lock. There were only two dragons within this temple, and either of their mates could trigger the catch to open the door.

  The smoke trailed around in a circle, seeping through in a pattern that made Naaz’s pulse throb in his ears. The red glow turned to ultraviolet, then bright white, and he pressed his palm to the center of the dragon-shaped glyph.

  The cliff face heated beneath his hand, then stone grated against stone as the surface parted, revealing a dark corridor beyond.

  His awareness of Asha’s power grew, the bright pinprick of energy that had led him so far growing to a globe the size of the sun. Up until now, he’d only ever had the sense of her love and expectant longing for him, which he seriously doubted he could ever live up to.

  But now … now there was more.

  “You’re here! Oh, Sweet Mother, it’s finally happening.”

  The lilting feminine voice was music to his ears. “Asha, is that really you, baby?” he said, breaking into a jog.

  A laugh that reminded him of rain filtered into his mind. “I like the sound of your voice. And I like you calling me that … baby. Say it again.”

  His throat constricted and he paused for a beat at the top of a wide spiral staircase that led down into darkness, the only light coming from the fire-imbued opal the walls were made of. He couldn’t give her hope that he was the one. God, was he just going to use her, though? Saving his sister meant everything, but was it worth defiling this perfect pure light that had filled him with hope for so long?

  “Baby … we need to talk before I get to you.”

  “Uh oh. That sounds so serious. What’s wrong?”

  “I … need your help. My sister was supposed to be with me.”

  “Yes! I know. Zorion has been beside himself over her arrival. Is she there too?”

  “She’s been captured. I need your help to save her after you’re awakened.”

  “I will do anything you need me to do, my love. She is my family too. Or will be, especially once you and I are bonded, and she to my brother.”

  He reached the bottom of the staircase and emerged into a cavernous throne room. If Erika and the others’ accounts of their own discovery held true, the hibernation chambers would be through doorways behind the throne. He spied the doors and ran for them, nearly falling flat when they opened smoothly with the barest touch of his hands.

  Walking slowly, he approached the pair of huge doors within, each one crafted specifically with the chamber’s occupant in mind. One door stood ominous in shining black, shot through with veins of multicolored fire. Beside this one was another, striking in its contrast and every bit as breathtaking. This door was pure, opaque white variegated with the same rainbow of flickering tendrils. Asha’s door, and beyond it, she lay waiting for him to perform an act too vile for him to comprehend. He didn’t know how he would complete this, only that he needed to, but he needed her to know the truth.

  “Baby, I need to wake you up, because I need your help to find Neela. But you need to know that I’m really not the man for you. I … I’ve done things. Terrible things. If you turned me away now, I would get it. I’d make do. But please … before you take my advice and wait for someone better, help me find my sister.”

  He stood outside her door, staring at his feet with one hand raised. His palm itched to press against the surface, but he didn’t want to start this if she told him to leave now.

  Warmth enveloped his mind like a big, soft hug. “I’m not giving you up. Yes, I will help you, but because we belong together. I’ll do it for my brother and for you, and for me too. Because I love you. Ever since you found me that first time and Papa hid me from you, I have dreamed about you. Papa told me how good you are, Naaz. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  Naaz let out a shaky breath and shook his head. “I don’t deserve you, Asha. Please think about it.”

  “Why don’t you get in here and wake me up, and we can talk about it face to face? I’ve waited for you forever! Stop wasting more time.”

  Feeling supremely guilty for even letting her talk him into going through with it, he pressed his palm to the door. Energy pulsed against his skin and the doors swung open, displaying an ornately decorated room.

  In the very center of the room was a low oblong pedestal, upon which rested a sarcophagus Naaz would have known anywhere. And on the far side of the room opposite the door was a bed more luxurious than any he’d set eyes on. A fleeting image of making love to Asha, tangled among those silken sheets, passed through his mind just before he banished it. The bed would get no use. He would do what needed to be done to wake her, and nothing more.

  But when he approached the sarcophagus, he faltered. It was the same ancient treasure Nikhil had hoarded away from him millennia ago. At the time, he’d had no idea what it was, or what needed to be done with it—only that it meant everything to him, and that he was willing to slaughter thousands in exchange for his master’s allowance to even set eyes on the thing once more.

  That had never happened, but now that he was here, he realized he had no idea what to do.

  Before he and Neela had left Nikhil’s army, they’d had an evening to talk with Erika and her team about their experiences awakening the current brood of dragons. Only the Court dragons had required the infusions of Nirvana that were fed to the Queen, who in turn channeled her power to the other dragons to end their hibernation. But in all their stories, the dragons had been merely frozen in their true shapes for the humans to touch and caress and make love to.

  What lay before him was nothing like the true shape of a woman, or even a dragon. It was only a stylized representation of a female, shrouded in a white robe with a gilded headdress and painted eyes.

  He walked to the side of the sarcophagus and brushed his fingertips over it. Though the stone was smooth, it was cold and uninviting.

  “This can’t be you …”

  Asha laughed. “No, silly. I’m inside. Open it. Pretend I am a present for you and it’s Christmas. I’d like to see what Christmas is like for real someday.”

  His lips quirked at the innocent lilt of her voice, but it reminded him of how very inexperienced she was, despite the pair of them being only a few years apart in age. When you had lived more than three thousand years, a difference of three years meant nothing, yet he had done so many things in his long life … horrible things … while she had lain here, chaste and pristine.

  He drew his hand back, hating himself for even thinking he could reveal her innocence to him. He abstractly wished the roles were reversed—that he could be one of the Guardians trapped in hibernation, waiting for the Virgin to claim him.

  “We can pretend you’re a statue and I’m a virgin, if you want. After you wake me up, though—if it will make you feel better.”

  Naaz let out a sigh. “I’m not sure anything will make me feel better about what I’m about to do.”

  He slipped his fingertips beneath the edge of the sarcophagus and lifted, hooking his hands around the heavy carved stone lip to gain better leverage. With all his strength, he hoisted the stone likeness of the woman up and heaved it off the other side. The cover smashed against the floor in a resounding thud, cracking into pieces on contact.

  His breath caught in his throat at the sight before him. Asha’s pale skin was marbled with prismatic fire. Her shape was perfection, from the pure white silk of her hair and her full, ripe breasts with her hands folded above them in the center of her chest, to her tiny navel. His gaze skittered past the juncture of her thighs, refusing to dwell too long on the smooth skin and tickling thoughts of what lay between—how she might taste, how she might feel.

  The warmth of her hit him then, startling him into action. It couldn’t be … Despite the inhuman coloring of her skin, she had a glow that was contrary to what
he’d expect from a hibernating dragon. From all the accounts he’d heard, they were indistinguishable from statues, as hard and solid as stone. Yet Asha looked real, and when he ventured a shaky hand to reach out and touch her cheek, he drew back in alarm as if she’d shocked him.

  “What is it, my love?” she asked.

  “Your body isn’t stone. It’s flesh. Oh, fuck. I can’t do this. I won’t … do this to you.”

  “Do what? All you need is to give me your Nirvana. Is it hard to do for you?”

  Naaz let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, baby, that’s never been hard for me. My filthy dick has a one-track mind, and it certainly wants you. But you can’t move, and somehow I’m expected to make love to you like this. I just can’t do it.”

  Chapter Eight

  The beacon lured Neela into yet another room where a surprise awaited, but Zorion himself was nowhere to be found. Fragrant steam wafted from the room, concealed only by a gauzy curtain blocking the path. When she passed through, her breath caught at the magical sight. Candle flames flickered from small ledges carved into the walls, and from around the edges of a sunken bath wide enough for several people to lounge without touching.

  Neela wandered to the edge and crouched, dipping her fingers into the hot water. Her aching muscles responded to the prospect of a relaxing bath by screaming their reminder of how long and arduous a trip she’d taken to get here. But the merry chase Zorion was leading her on was starting to make a little sense now.

  “Sweetie, if you wanted to get me naked, all you had to do was ask.”

  A faint shadow seemed to travel around the room, causing all the flames to quiver and the hair on her nape to stand on end. She raised her hand to rub at the still tingling spot where he’d kissed her neck.

  If this was what he needed to show himself, then she’d happily do it.

  “I don’t know what your deal is. If it’s my B.O. that’s keeping you away, you could’ve said so.”

  She kicked off her dusty boots and undressed, taking her time and making a show of it, sure he must be observing from the shadows somehow. He could be a Shadow, for all she knew. His father was none other than the Void himself, but she knew a dragon’s colors and its very nature were determined by the relationship its parents had more than genetics. There was no telling what Zorion’s true nature was, but that brief glimpse she’d had of him suggested something more unique than she’d ever imagined. Clearly he need a little encouragement, though, if she wanted to see him face-to-face.