Dragon Blood
By
Madelaine Montague
(C) Copyright by Madelaine Montague, July 2010
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Cover Art by Eliza Black, July 2010
ISBN 978-1-60394-445-8
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s
imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living
persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
Special Agent Marlee Madison paused, checking her position and then glancing uneasily at the glint of sunlight pouring through the lower branches of the thick forest that surrounded her. It was nearly sunset. Before much more time passed, she would be stumbling along through cave-like darkness, blind, through unfamiliar territory, and potential prey to things a good bit more dangerous than the men she’d been tracking.
They had been tracking … although from where she stood, it looked to her as if she’d become separated from the other agents taking part in the exercise.
After carefully surveying her surroundings for any sign that the suspects they’d been tracking might be hidden close enough that they could overhear her, she decided it was safe enough to try the radio. Transferring her service revolver to one hand, she scrubbed the dampness from her other palm along the leg of her trousers and unclipped the walkie-talkie from her belt. “Team alpha, come back,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
With the volume nearly at its lowest setting, she lifted the radio to her ear to listen for a response. There was no answer to her hail. Nothing but static echoed back to her. Frowning, she lowered the radio and studied it. The casing was banged up from her fall a little earlier but the damned things were supposed to be practically indestructible!
Maybe she’d knocked it off the frequency in the fall? It looked like the right setting, though. After glancing around again, Marlee shoved her pistol back into her holster and tried adjusting the dial. “Anyone? Team alpha? Team beta? This is Special Agent Madison, come back!”
Again, she picked up nothing but static, although she tried several different frequencies.
Anger flickered through her. Granted, she’d been focused on following the signs left by their target group, but if everyone else had been, how the hell could she have gotten so far from them that she was out of range?
Maybe it was just interference? She tipped her head back and studied the rise above her.
She’d allowed herself to become too focused on her prey and not nearly cognizant enough of her surroundings or the rest of the team, she realized in dismay. She’d caught hell over that more than once during training and it had begun to look like that particular failing was going to cost her the prize.
Or worse.
Shrugging off her uneasiness with an effort, she considered the situation. The exercise had been a planned four day manhunt scenario through dense forest for a group of bank robbers who’d kidnapped a clerk. The teams tracking them were supposed to meet up at sunset each day, however, since the bureau hadn’t wanted to risk losing any trainees in the exercise.
And it was nearly sunset.
Yep! She’d screwed up—again! And all because she’d been determined she was going to bag a bad guy her first day out and prove to the rest of the team that she hadn’t been ‘helped’ through training because she had a pussy and knew how to use it!
Well, fuck!
Was it close enough to sunset that the ‘bad guys’ would already be making camp? Or was she running the risk of becoming another ‘hostage’ if she came out of cover to find the rest of her team?
She glanced at her watch and then squinted at the sunlight again. ‘Officially’, she should have at least an hour till sunset, but the terrain in this particular area made that an iffy prospect. The gloom of dusk was already descending upon her surroundings and she had a bad feeling she didn’t have an hour to locate the rendezvous point.
Clipping her walkie-talkie to her belt again, she pulled her map and compass from her pocket. She’d left the trail approximately thirty minutes earlier. She’d noted the time and looked for a landmark. She’d descended down the ridge marked on the map … at least twenty feet—rapidly—after she’d stepped in a patch of loose pebbles and lost her balance.
She shouldn’t be more than a mile from the trail, she decided. She thought it was closer to half a mile, but figuring a mile at the outside and two more to the rendezvous point marked on the map—she should be able to make it to the site before dark, she thought.
After studying the map, the compass, and her surroundings until she was certain she knew the direction she needed to take, she folded the map again and carefully replaced the map and compass in her pocket, buttoning the flap to make sure she didn’t lose them if she took another tumble. Straightening, she adjusted her backpack and began climbing the slope.
If she could just make it to camp, she could cover her ass and no one needed to know she’d gotten lost off from the group. Not that it would look good that she’d deliberately ignored protocol, but that beat the hell out of the alternative—‘loose cannon’ still sounded better than ‘liability’ to her!
She’d been climbing the steep slope for maybe twenty minutes, pausing from time to time to check her bearings and listen for any sound indicating someone else in her vicinity when she thought she spotted the edge of the trail above her. Her heart leapt with relief and she made her second serious blunder of the day.
She was in such a rush to reach the point where she thought she’d seen the trail that she threw caution and good sense to the wind. She was on top of the bear before she even knew it was there.
Unfortunately, she caught the bear off guard, too, and the bear wasn’t happy about it. Uttering a challenging bellow, the bear stood up on its hind legs. Marlee’s first inkling that she was about to be majorly fubar (fucked up beyond all recognition) was the shadow that darkened her vision just before the paw made impact with her head. The scream that peeled the skin from her throat was instinctive, but she’d barely reached the highest decibel before the blow threw her into a deep, black well.
* * * *
Eli’s head whipped toward his brother, John, as the enraged bellow of a bear cut through the stillness of the forest. For a split second, their gazes met—before the terrified scream of a woman galvanized them. Almost as one, they launched themselves into a run in the direction from which the sound had emanated, racing through the familiar terrain at speeds that far exceeded anything any other animal, man or beast, could achieve. Despite that, regardless of the fact that the rough terrain posed little in the way of obstacles when they could bound over five or six foot tall shrubs with barely a pause to gather themselves before or to regain their balance afterwards, the sight that met them when they reached the scene of attack was appalling. The woman was as limp as a ragdoll and bloodied and torn beyond recognition and the bear had the woman in his maw, shaking her.
A red haze of fury swept over Eli. Uttering a roar that vied with the bear’s, he launched himself at it, driving his balled fist into the bear’s snout. The bear bellowed in pain and dropped his victim. Before Eli could follow with another punch, John drove himself bodily into the bear, slamming into the beast with such force that it staggered backwards several steps and fell to all fours. The bear heaved itself up onto its hind legs again almost at once, sniffing the air and uttering threatening growls, but the scent it caught took the urge to fight out of it.
It backed away as the two men stalked it, slowly circling. Snarling, it lunged at first one and then the other, swiping at them with its meaty paws and drawing blood as its nails bit into the bare skin of their chests. The smell of blood maddened the bear, but it maddened the beasts stalking it even more. In concert, they launched themselves at the bear, grappling for a hold, rolling with it when it lost its balance and tumbled to the ground.
John curled a stout arm around the bear’s head, his muscles straining and bulging as he slowly but surely twisted the bear’s head as far as it would go and then snapped its neck like a twig. Eli, who’d grabbed its lower jaw when the bear snapped at him, had torn the bone, skin, and ligaments, ripping its jaw from its head before it dawned on him that the fight had gone out of the bear.
He leapt back as the heavy beast slumped toward the ground. His chest heaving with his exertions, he stared at the bear for a long moment to make certain it wouldn’t rise again and finally turned his attention to the woman.
John had already bounded from the back of the bear, he discovered, and was crouched beside the woman. “She’s alive,” he said grimly as Eli joined him, crouching on her other side.
Eli’s lips tightened as he met his brother’s gaze.
“We agreed to leave the affairs of humans to the humans,” John said quietly.
Eli flicked a look at the woman struggling to hang on to life. “Fuck it!” he growled, slipping his arms beneath her and carefully lifting her.
“They’ll be looking for her,” John said warningly, “and you know who’ll take the blame for her condition when they find her. If they capture even one of us, they’ll find out what we are and they’ll hunt the others down.”
Eli snorted derisively. “Humans don’t believe in dragons anymore—and they’ve no reason to when they’ve slain them all save us.”
“I don’t want to leave her either, but look at her!” John said angrily. “We can’t save her. We were too late.”
“She’s still alive,” Eli said coldly. “When and if she dies, I’ll agree with you.”
Marlee was drifting in and out of consciousness, but she heard snatches of the conversation. Wondering if any of it was even real, she responded anyway, or tried. “Help … don’t want … die,” she whispered, or thought she did.
Eli glanced at her face sharply. Her eyes were still closed, but she was more aware of her surroundings than he’d thought. Shifting her weight to one arm, he curled the arm supporting her shoulders so that he could place a palm over her eyes and sealed them to prevent her from seeing them.
She heard us.
She won’t remember even if she survives, Eli said pointedly.
We’re risking discovery, Eli! And there’s more at stake than the two of us. We don’t have the right to decide for all! What are we going to do with her, anyway? We don’t have the magic of our ancestors! We can’t heal her.
She’s bleeding to death while we argue! Get out of my way if you don’t want any part of this. I’m taking her to the lair.
Gods damn it, Eli! I didn’t say I didn’t want to help. I just don’t see it doing any good!
We can’t if we don’t try! Eli growled, pushing past John and beginning to race through the woods as he had before, moving almost as swiftly burdened with the small woman as he had without any burdens.
John turned to stare after him for a long moment and finally followed—more slowly, taking the time to cover their tracks until they reached the rocky slopes of the mountain where their lair lay. Once they’d begun moving over the rocks, there was little to mark their path beyond the occasional droplet of blood and he thought they’d covered enough ground to make detection unlikely. Leaving the blood for the moment, he hurried to join Eli and the woman.
He discovered once he’d entered the lair that Eli had settled her carefully on the floor of the cave and was busy tearing her clothing off. With mixed feelings, he joined his brother, pulling off her boots and socks as Eli unfastened the belt around her waist and jerked it through the loops. In a few moments, they had her stripped completely.
John’s heart sank as he studied the gashes across her formerly smooth skin from the bear’s claws and even those paled beside the jagged tears from the bites. Gods have pity! She was such a pretty little thing, too.
Even Eli seemed taken aback by the extent of the damage, to suffer doubts that he could do anything at all for her. Abruptly, he leaned toward her and began to lick the closest wound.
John frowned. You think that will help, he asked doubtfully?
It heals us, doesn’t it?
John considered that and finally shrugged. Instead of pointing out that they were dragons and that was why it served them well, he shifted along the cave floor and repositioned himself to help to bathe her wounds. A strange sensation flowed through him the moment he tasted her blood on his tongue—a tingling warmth. He paused, glancing toward Eli, wondering if he’d felt the same odd current.
Shaking it off after a moment, he focused on his task again, trying to ignore the odd circumstance. Within a very few moments, he discovered he had no trouble ignoring it. In point of fact, a strange fever seemed to sweep through him. His pulse began to race. Heat poured through him. His balls tightened until it felt as if there was a tight band around them and blood surged into his cock until it was pounding so painfully he lost focus of anything else.
He began lathing her more and more feverishly—her cheek and neck and then her arms and breasts. When he could find no more blood, he sat back, searching her with his gaze for more. It flickered through his mind that the tears and cuts had vanished with the blood, but he was too focused on finding more to lap to consider the significance of it. Eli, he discovered, had bathed her torso and hips and legs and then had pushed her thighs apart and buried his mouth against her mons. He was lapping at her cleft as hungrily as he’d lapped at her wounds only moments … minutes? ... before.
John’s throat closed as if from deep thirst. “Turn her over,” he said hoarsely. “I need to check her back.”
Eli’s head jerked upward. He stared at John blankly for a handful of seconds, his amber eyes wild and blazing with the same fire John felt burning inside himself. Almost reluctantly, he moved her thighs together and caught her hip, rolling her onto her side.
John’s heart leapt when he saw more wounds on her back. He dove for them only to discover that Eli had, as well. Rage flickered through him. “Mine!” he growled, meeting Eli’s challenging gaze.
“Mine!” Eli snarled back at him.
A soft groan from the woman redirected their attention to her. After studying her for several long moments, their gazes clashed again. John bristled as Eli very deliberately lowered his head and lathed his tongue along the woman’s wounds. “You would’ve left her to die,” he growled. “She’s mine.”
Fury raced through John … and a sense of guilt he wasn’t accustomed to, but that only made him angrier when he knew he’d only reminded Eli of their pact. “I would not!” he denied hotly. “I only urged caution! She isn’t one of us! She’s human.”
“She’s mine,” Eli growled.
John wrestled with the urge to settle the argument with battle. “Ours,” he said finally, reluctantly, but it had occurred to him that neither would have her if they abandoned her to her wounds to fight one another. “She’s human—not a mate—and if she were a dragoness we would still have to share. A battle would only settle who mated her first.”
Eli seemed inclined to dispute that for several moments. Shaking his head after a moment, he stared at the woman, frowning in confusion. He didn’t object when John leaned down to resume his ministrations, however. After a moment, he joined him.
When they’d finished, Eli saw with a sense of satisfaction that her flesh was as flawless once more as if the beast hadn’t mauled her. The graying color of death had fled, as well. Her skin was pink with health.
Her skin was smooth and sweet to his tongue. Her scent mingled with his own—and John’s which was less appealing—but it was as heady as strong wine. He’d healed her, brought her back from the brink of death.
She belonged to him.
He lifted his gaze to his rival and discovered that John was studying her with the same possessiveness he felt.
Fury washed through him, but hard upon the heels of it—utter confusion.
Why, he wondered abruptly? Why did he feel the churning need to possess her? She was beautiful, but she was human and they were inclined to eschew the favors of humans until the desperation to spill their seed in the warm body of a female drove them to seek them out.
He frowned, trying to remember the last time he’d taken a human as a lover, but he knew it hadn’t been long enough to explain the way he felt. Nothing explained the way he felt, nothing in his experience!
They shared lovers more often than not and that made the depth of his antipathy toward his brother for sharing this woman all the more incomprehensible. Not that they particularly relished sharing their lovers anyway, but they hadn’t survived so long by being careless and there were six of them—he and his nest mates—the last of their kind so far as any of them had been able to discover. It was far safer to share the favors of one generous hearted woman than for each of them to leave a string of lovers behind to compare notes and perhaps ask too many questions. Beyond that, they had learned to their sorrow the pain their desire to mate could bring them. The human life span was woefully brief, but plenty long enough to tear a dragon’s heart out if he was unwise enough to form any sort of attachment to one.
Because they did not have their mother’s magic, the magic that should have been their birthright. He was certain that was the difference. Their mother had mated with human males to produce them and yet they lacked the human frailties of their fathers. They were pure dragon, despite the human seed their mother had harvested to reproduce. Deep down, they all knew it even though they had no idea how their mother had managed it.
The irony was that not one of them had ever managed to achieve their true form. They had been trapped almost since birth in the human forms their mother had bestowed upon them to protect them.
At least, they’d always assumed that was the reason behind it, that she’d woven a protective spell around them to make it possible for them to hide what they were. They hadn’t had the chance to ask their mother. She’d been slain by the humans, struggling to protect them with her last breath.
* * * *
Marlee knew that shock had enveloped her to protect her from the horror. She welcomed it and the same time tried to fight it since she was still peripherally aware that her chances of survival dwindled every moment she was completely at the mercy of the bear and unable to gather her wits. Unfortunately, even the shock didn’t shield her completely from the pain and that added to the shock made it all the more difficult to try to focus her mind on some possibility of saving herself.
Through a funnel of darkness much like peering through a telescope, she caught a blur of movement, a glimpse of flesh. Almost instantly the pressure of the bear’s jaws vanished. Hope surged through her for a handful of seconds and then confusion and then fear. It couldn’t be the rescue she’d thought, she realized, dismayed. Whatever it was that had attacked the bear was fighting the bear and that made it far more likely that the three animals were fighting over ‘dinner’ than any possibility of rescue.
Unfortunately, even that realization didn’t lend her the strength to try to crawl away. She was still struggling with it when she sensed a presence and discovered a man had knelt beside her. Confusion filled her again. She didn’t hear the bear anymore and then she found that two men were bending near her, studying her. Their expressions were eloquent.
She was fucked!
Before she could dwell on the hopelessness that twisted inside her, the two began arguing and threw her deeper into confusion. Dragons? Where had that come from? It was two men, bare chested, wearing jeans. Men!
It sounded as if they meant to abandon her, though. Don’t let me die! I don’t want to die!
Despite the pain of being picked up, relief flooded her when she felt arms surrounding her, lifting her, when she settled against a broad chest. It soothed her. His warmth began to chase the cold that had been gaining ground within her until she’d begun to think she was going to freeze solid.
She fell into the pit that had been yawning before her when he began to move, sending jarring pain through her. When she clawed her way out of the pit again, she discovered she couldn’t open her eyes. It felt as if lead weights were attached to her eyelids, and yet she was alert enough to feel the tugs as her clothing was removed and the hard, cold surface beneath her.
Hospital, her mind supplied, relief filling her. She was going to make it.
Shouldn’t she be aware of light against her eyelids, though?
They started bathing her. At first, she was so distressed because of the pain she didn’t analyze the circumstance, but as the pain began to recede it occurred to her that her injuries should have had top priority.
Wouldn’t they stabilize her before they considered bathing her? Or was it because it was an animal bite that they’d decided the wounds should be cleansed and sterilized?
She didn’t know, but she stopped worrying about it when she realized just how good it felt. The water was just the right temperature to soothe and even the faintly rough texture of whatever they were using to bathe her felt good. The cold vanished and warmth began to take its place. Amazingly, the pain disappeared, as well.
That circumstance worried her for a little while but the warmth continued to grow the longer they bathed her. She began to feel more than soothed and comforted by the bathing. She began to feel pleasurable tingles and heat that was almost … erotic.
She tried to ignore the inappropriate heat she could feel growing in her belly when they began bathing her genital area, but her mind conjured the image that it wasn’t just an indifferent nurse or orderly stroking the warm, faintly rough cleansing pad along her cleft. The escalating heat conjured the dreamy sensation of having a man’s tongue stroking her with intent.
She was almost sorry when it stopped and they turned her over and she was almost as glad because she thought she might have come and that would’ve been embarrassing.
She drifted when they’d finished bathing her almost in a drug-like state, although she couldn’t recall feeling any sort of injection that would account for it. It struck her as odd and even stranger than that, they seemed intent on nothing else when she was certain she must have wounds that needed stitches.
She didn’t hurt anymore, though, and thought whatever drug they’d given her was like nothing she’d ever had.
The tingling of her skin didn’t dissipate. It began to grow more and more pronounced. She tried to ignore it, to will it away, but it refused to be subdued. She couldn’t imagine why she would feel aroused after what she’d been through. She could understand relief from the absence of pain. She could even understand pleasure arising from the sense of comfort and safety, but what she felt was sexually aroused and it continued to rise in her blood until she began to feel almost feverish.
She tried to convince herself, at first, that that was what it was—fever, but it wasn’t akin to the sort of fever that followed accident or illness. This fever made the blood pool in her pulse points and begin to pound for relief and it grew stronger and stronger until she couldn’t be still. Within a very short space of time, she felt as if her loins had caught fire. The muscles along her channel fluttered, forcing moisture into it. Her clit swelled and ached. Her breasts and nipples felt as swollen as if they’d been stimulated until she was unbearably aroused.
She was unbearably aroused! She hurt with the need. She tried to fight against it, but it almost seemed to grow more marked, more painful until she discovered she simply couldn’t be still. She needed relief. She needed … a dick pounding into her.
She sensed that whoever had bathed her was still close by, and yet despite that, she discovered she couldn’t resist the urge to try to sooth herself by massaging her breasts and her genitals to try to take the ache away.
* * * *
The woman stirred, bringing Eli’s focus from his thoughts to her once more. He had no idea how much time had passed while he stood watch over her, wondering if she was truly healed as she appeared to be or if they’d managed nothing more than to close her wounds and she would die anyway. He saw her struggle for a moment to lift her eyelids and give up. She began to move restlessly and he wondered if a fever had come upon her. He realized very shortly that one had, though it wasn’t in the nature of an infection—at least not from her wounds.
Her skin flushed from light pink to a darker pink as she moved more and more restlessly. She began to pant slightly. Her little pink nipples grew erect and rosy as they tightened.
His groin tightened in response, but he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze from the tight little points. She curled into a ball, moaning slightly.
He flicked a glance at John and discovered his eyes had grown glassy. As if feeling his gaze, John lifted his head and stared at him, swallowing convulsively.
I smell her arousal.
Until John had voiced it, Eli hadn’t realized that it was her scent as much as her movements that had brought the same heat to his groin that he’d felt when he was bathing her wounds. He transferred his attention to her once more, struggling to clear his mind of the fog that was rapidly consuming him again. Unable to resist, he grasped her knees, prying her thighs apart. She resisted for a moment and then relaxed abruptly, allowing him to push them wide.
He stared down at her cleft, at the swollen lips, the gleaming moisture and swallowed convulsively several times. Following the intoxicating scent, he moved closer and finally grasped her buttocks in both hands, lifting her hips from the floor and bringing that tantalizing scent closer.
A red haze filled his mind. Opening his mouth, he covered the moist, swollen lips and began to suck and lick at them hungrily. She groaned, bucked against his mouth, but he was too focused on the pleasure pouring through him to think beyond filling his senses with her. He lathed at her sweet juices with his tongue and sucked them greedily until she began to shake and jerk all over, gasping for breath and finally crying out. It was the high pitched cries that finally penetrated the heated fog.
He lifted his head to stare at her blankly and discovered that John was tugging as greedily at her breasts as he had her cunt. His eyes narrowed. “I’m first,” he growled, settling her buttocks on the floor as he began tearing a little frantically at the closure of his jeans. Ripping them finally when he discovered he couldn’t master the intricacies of zipper and snap, he shoved the jeans from his narrow hips. Grasping her legs, he dragged her toward him, impaling the head of his cock into her opening. She arched her back off the floor, driving him deeper.
He shoved at John even as his brother straightened away from her. Falling over her, he caught himself with one hand and slipped the other beneath her hips to hold her for his next thrust. She arched again as he plunged a little deeper. She was so hot and wet it made him nearly mindless to conquer her depths completely. He curled tightly around her, trying to close his mind to the velvety soft walls closing tightly around his cock and thwarting his efforts as he pumped his hips frantically. He nearly blacked out when he slid home and felt her all along his length. He groaned raggedly, trying to hold on, but it was a losing battle.
Next time, he promised himself, unable to still the jerky movement of his hips for more than a handful of seconds. The promise was enough to rip the last shreds of his control from his grasp. He began to thrust into her frantically as he felt his body building toward an explosive release. His belly tightened abruptly, ejecting his scalding seed. He caught his breath with an effort, grinding against her in a desperate effort to drive his seed as deeply as he could. For a handful of seconds when his body finally stopped convulsing, relief filled him, but it was woefully brief. His cock had already begun to rise again when John punched him on the shoulder, pitching him off of her.
Anger instantly replaced the satisfaction of only moments before, but the release had left him weak enough that John had already mounted her and was pounding into her frantically before he managed to gather his wits about him enough to get up. He paused, debating whether or not he could tear her from John’s grasp without harming her and finally decided that was unlikely. Grinding his teeth in impotent fury, he watched John through narrowed eyes, reminding himself that he’d planted his seed deep. His would have the first chance at the egg and, that being the case, he could count it as his.
Reason should have reasserted itself, particularly with that reflection. It didn’t. As soon as John ground himself against her, uttering a deep throated growl of triumph and finally ceased jerking with his climax, he shoved his brother off of his woman and mounted her again. She was well seeded and there was nothing more potent, they knew, than the seed of a drake, and yet he could still smell the unclaimed egg. No amount of trying to reason with himself that his seed simply hadn’t had time to claim it served to cool the heat that seemed to be consuming him from the inside out or his ardor.
It seemed likely the fever was the only thing that prevented bloodshed. He resented John’s determination to claim the egg he was working hard to claim for himself and if he hadn’t been so intent on that he might have yielded to the desire to stop long enough to beat John unconscious. Eli had already expended himself over and over, however, and it was beginning to wear on his stamina by the time he heard the shout that finally distracted him.
“Gods! What in the bloody, fucking hell is going on here?”
He recognized Gabriel’s voice. Instead of deterring him in any way, however, he renewed his efforts to sow whatever seed he could summon before Gabriel could stop him. He managed to eject it before a blow to the side of his head sent him spiraling close to black out. Shaking his head, he turned to give the attacker a deadly look and slowly rose from his woman.
“She’s ours!” he snarled.
Gabriel gaped at him a split second before he slammed his fist into his face again. That time, it sent him flying backwards. He was stunned enough when he hit the back of the cave wall and slid down it that it took him a few moments to collect his scattered wits. Gabriel and Luke each grabbed one of his arms, hefted him to his feet and slammed him against the wall again before he could launch a counter attack.
“Eli!” Gabriel bellowed, almost nose to nose with him. “Have you lost your fucking mind? That’s a human woman, you idiot! And the woods are crawling with men searching for her like a stirred ant hill! There’s a fucking army of law men out there!”
Eli struggled against their hold on him, a mixture of fear and fury churning through him. “They can’t have her! She’s mine! I’ve claimed her egg!”
“It’s mine!” John bellowed. “I mated with her!”
Gabriel and Luke exchanged a perplexed look. Shaking his head, Gabriel drew back his fist and aimed it at the point of Eli’s chin. His head bounced off the stone wall behind him at the blow. His knees gave out as his head rebounded and Gabriel and Luke lowered him to the floor of the cave.
After staring down at his unconscious brother for a moment, Gabriel glanced at Aaron, Joshua, and John. John was unconscious by that time, as well, however, crumpled on the stone floor as Eli was.
The lair wreaked of sex. The mingling scents acted upon Gabriel as if he’d been shot up with an aphrodisiac. Heat washed through him. His pulse began to pound as a backlash and blood engorged his cock. “It’s the woman,” he said hoarsely, staring at her hungrily, struggling to hang on to reason when desire was chipping away at it faster than he could remind himself of the consequences of yielding to it.
Joshua dragged in a deep breath. “She’s in heat,” he growled.
The comment was enough to jar all four men. They exchanged challenging glances.
“We have to get her out of here,” Gabriel said abruptly. “Gods! Get a grip or we’ll all go down for this one!”
Luke stared at him dizzily, wondering if he was trying to redirect their minds or his own. He swallowed with an effort. “She’s in heat,” he echoed Joshua’s comment.
“Gods!” Gabriel growled. “She’s in our lair! The humans will be at our door before we can spit!”
“So … we move her!” Aaron said tightly.
“We remove her!” Gabriel retorted harshly. “They aren’t going to give up until they find her.”
“But she’s here now! I need to fuck her. I’m going to explode!”
“Eli and John have damned near fucked her to death already!” Joshua ground out. “They will have claimed the egg!”
“Gods!” Gabriel snapped, grabbing Luke’s arm as he surged toward the woman and slugging him so abruptly and without warning that Luke staggered from the blow. Striding swiftly toward the woman, he scooped her up, grabbed the rags beside her, and strode from the lair with her. The others trailed him.
He halted and turned to glare at them. “Get back into the lair and keep an eye on those two morons!” he bellowed.
The three stiffened, glaring at him, but they didn’t move to follow him when he began jogging rapidly down the side of the mountain with the woman. The urge to protect what little remained of his clan—his nest mates—rattled through Gabriel’s mind, colliding with his own urge to find a place to rut her in peace and plant his seed as Eli and John had. He managed to focus on what seemed of lesser importance to him at the moment, though, carrying the woman far enough from their lair, he thought, to insure that they wouldn’t be forced to slaughter the humans to protect themselves.
Even so, he discovered his reluctance to release her was akin to pain. It was only the threatening scent and sound of the searchers that finally convinced him to leave her and do what he could to ensure they couldn’t track him back to their lair.
It would be war if they did. Not one of them had spawned and they had no intention of being the last of their kind.
Chapter Two
“Oh my god! I found her! Over here!”
The voice penetrated the deep fog that seemed to envelope Marlee and she struggled to lift her eyelids to see who was yelling and what they were yelling about. She managed to pry her eyelids high enough to get a glimpse of the man, but she didn’t recognize him or the uniform he was wearing. It seemed only a matter of moments later that she was surrounded.
Discomfort wafted through her when someone dropped something over her—a jacket, she thought—making it clear she’d been as naked as the day she was born before. The sights and sounds escalated. She groaned as she was lifted and her discomfort escalated to pain and then felt her back settle against a flat surface that was marginally more comfortable than the ground she’d been lying on.
Confusion and disorientation followed as she felt herself moving. The thing she was strapped to felt dangerously unstable as it bumped and pitched in first one direction and then another, making it clear that she would’ve hit the ground over and over if she hadn’t been strapped down. Finally, the sound of a helicopter drowned out the excited voices around her, though, and for a handful of moments, she was settled on a flat surface that didn’t move. Her stomach went weightless as the helicopter went airborne, dipping and swaying with the movements until she thought she was going to puke.
She focused on not throwing up for a while and then felt her stomach dip and knew the helicopter had settled. The confusion that followed told her she’d arrived at a hospital. She endured bumping along a corridor on a moving gurney, being poked and prodded, scanned, and eventually was plunked on a bed that didn’t move and sank into blessed, peaceful oblivion. Erotic dreams chased terrifying nightmares for a while and eventually she rose toward awareness and opened her eyes to discover she was, indeed, in a hospital. She lay for a while trying to figure out how she’d gotten there and why, but she discovered to her dismay that her memories were nothing but spotty images mixed with the nightmares and the erotic dreams.
A hard faced man and woman appeared beside her bed.
“Do you know where you are, Special Agent Madison?” the man asked in a clipped, professional voice.
Marlee blinked at the man, wondering if she was supposed to know him, feeling a flicker of alarm when she didn’t recognize him. “A hospital?” she guessed, startled to discover her voice was little more than a hoarse croak.
The man glanced at the woman beside him. “I’m Special Agent David Fox and this is Special Agent Marge Strouse, Agent Madison. Do you know why you’re here? Do you remember anything that happened?”
Marlee’s alarm increased. “What happened?”
Fox frowned. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. You don’t remember anything?”
Marlee blinked at him and turned to look at the woman, searching for a clue. A vague memory surfaced and she puzzled over it, trying to decide if it was really a memory of part of the nightmare she’d kept having. “The bear ….”
Again the two exchanged a look. “We found a bear.”
Marlee’s heart jerked in reaction. “You found a bear?”
“I think you’re going to have to give her a little more time before you question her,” another man said, moving forward abruptly until he was within view. This man was dressed like a doctor.
Marge Strouse and David Fox both looked annoyed but finally shrugged and left to Marlee’s relief. The doctor checked her and scribbled on a clip board. “How bad?” Marlee asked anxiously.
The doctor frowned, seemed puzzled. “You’re going to be fine. You were suffering the effects of exposure when they brought you in, but nothing dire. You should be good to go by tomorrow.”
Marlee gaped at him blankly. “But … the wounds?”
Something flickered across the doctor’s face. “You didn’t have any wounds,” he said slowly.
Shock washed over Marlee like a tidal wave. No wounds? Was the bear attack just a nightmare then? And if that was a nightmare, what had happened to her?
* * * *
“What in the fuck has been going on here?” Gabriel demanded when he returned to the lair and discovered his brothers, Eli and John, had recovered enough that they’d begun pacing the cave furiously and Luke, Joshua, and Aaron were standing guard.
The violence that rumbled in Gabriel’s voice pierced the seemingly endless, rambling chaos of conflicting thoughts in Eli’s mind and he halted abruptly, staring at his brother and wrestling with the urge to attack him. It was the very violence of his feelings that finally shook him from his intent. They’d had their differences over the years. There’d been plenty of times that he’d wanted to beat the shit out of him, plenty of times he’d tried, and even a few when he’d succeeded, but it had never crossed his mind that he wanted to kill his brother.
A vague sense of nausea washed through him. The confusion from before assailed him again. Struggling with the resentment of being questioned, prompted by it to focus, he cast his mind back over what had happened.
“We heard the challenging bellow of a bear and a woman screamed—the woman we brought here,” he said slowly. “By the time we got there, though, the bear had already mauled her.” He stopped again, swallowing sickly at the memory. “I thought she was dead already and ….” He stopped again, frowning.
“The bear challenged us and brought our beasts to the fore,” John added when Eli stopped. “We killed it. Eli went to check on the woman, but I could see she was dying and there was nothing we could do. I reminded Eli that we’d agreed not to interfere in the affairs of men, but he was determined to try to save her and I ….” He glared at Gabriel. “We couldn’t just fucking leave her there, Gabe!”
Gabriel’s lips tightened. “So which of you had the brilliant idea of bringing her back to our lair?” he growled.
Eli glared at him. “I did!”
Gabriel’s hands flexed several times as if he was struggling with the urge to plant his fist in Eli’s face. “Then what?” he asked tightly after a few moments.
Eli’s face tightened with rage as he stared at his brother. After a moment, though, confusion flickered through him again. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fuck! I don’t remember a hell of a lot clearly after I realized she was going to die if we didn’t stop the bleeding. It was just …. I think my beast was still in control. It seemed like bathing her wounds as we do ours was the thing to do.”
Disgust flickered across Gabriel’s face. “And then fucking her seemed like the thing to do after that?”
John glanced at Eli uncomfortably.
“Yeah! It did!” Eli snapped angrily.
“It wasn’t really a decision,” John said angrily. “I don’t know what the fuck happened. It was … like a fever, like some kind of … madness. At first I was focused completely on just trying to keep her from dying and the next thing I knew I had this … urge that I couldn’t shake. She was in heat, gods damn it!”
Gabriel’s lips tightened. He glared at his brothers for a moment and finally turned away. Stalking to a rocky ledge, he settled on it, turning what they’d said over and over in his mind. “She wasn’t in heat,” he said finally. “I’ll admit something strange came over me, too, but I wasn’t so out of it that I would’ve mistaken her scent. She wasn’t a dragoness. She was a human and humans don’t go into heat.”
“Something happened!” Eli growled. “I know gods damned well it wasn’t just my fucking imagination! I smelled her arousal! I smelled her egg!”
“I smelled it, too,” John said after a moment. “All I could think was that I had to have it.”
Gabriel glanced at the others questioningly.
Luke shrugged. “They’re right. I smelled it, too.”
Joshua frowned. “Maybe it was them healing her wounds?” he said thoughtfully. “Has anybody ever done that before?”
Aaron stared at him blankly. “What the hell could that have to do with it?”
“They both did it!” Joshua snapped. “I don’t know. Maybe it confused the scent?”
“Not that I think that explains it,” Gabriel said slowly, “but there might be something to it. Have any of you ever tried to heal a human like that before?”
They all glanced at one another questioningly and finally admitted they hadn’t.
“But it worked?” Gabriel prompted. “I would never have thought it would.”
“You saw her. Honest to gods, Gabriel, the bear had mauled her something god awful,” John said a little sickly. “I don’t know how she survived long enough for us to try it.”
Gabriel got up. “Well—maybe we’ll figure it out … sometime. In the mean time we’re going to have to keep a low profile until the humans calm down and stop looking for answers.” He fixed Eli and John with a hard look. “Can I trust you two to steer clear of the damned humans until this dies down?”
Eli glared at him angrily. “We aren’t hatchlings,” he growled. “I’ll admit I screwed up … to an extent. I know it’s a damned poor idea to get too close to the humans—ordinarily. This wasn’t an ordinary situation, though, and I’m damned if regret helping her.”
“I’m sure fucking her half to death really helped her recovery,” Gabriel growled sarcastically.
Eli flushed, but as much as he wanted to knock Gabriel’s teeth down his throat, he was uncomfortably aware that his brother had a point. He would’ve liked to know why he had gone from concern about her to a grim determination to plant his seed in her, but it wasn’t likely he was ever going to figure it out. There wasn’t a hell of a lot they had figured out by themselves. It seemed to him that their mother might have given them a little more to go on.
He immediately felt guilty at the thought. She hadn’t had a lot of time to pass them any of the knowledge they needed beyond the bare essentials for survival. If he felt resentment, it should be focused against the damned humans for taking her life before she had the chance to nurture them, not their mother.
“Eli’s right,” John said tightly. “I tried to talk him out of it, reminded him of our pact, but I didn’t want to leave her out there to die either—and she would have. The humans wouldn’t have found her soon enough to save her. But you’re right. It’s done. We did what we could for her. We need to focus on damage control now. It’s too soon to make another move. There’ll still be humans alive that could remember us.”
* * * *
She was pregnant?
How in the hell could she be pregnant, Marlee wondered, too shocked to take it in? “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” the doctor informed her, his expression carefully neutral. Four to six weeks along as near as I can tell at this point. If you could give me the date of your last cycle I can calculate your due date.”
“But … I can’t be pregnant!” Marlee exclaimed. “I haven’t even had sex in months, damn it! I haven’t had a damned date in damned near a year!”
The doctor gave her a speculative look. “I don’t think it’s immaculate conception,” he said dryly. “The test was conclusive. We can take more blood and run the test again, but I’m guessing the results are going to be the same. I wanted to get more blood anyway. We didn’t get enough to run some of the other tests I wanted. I’ll send somebody in here to take blood and then you can get dressed. When you’re dressed, come to my office and we can discuss options.”
Bastard, Marlee thought furiously when the doctor had left to allow her to dress. She hadn’t had a hard enough time getting through the damned academy? Now she was pregnant and hadn’t even reported for her first assignment?
That was going to look just fucking great in her file!
She was going to be lucky if she wasn’t flying a desk for the rest of her career—which she hadn’t even started, damn it!
She’d come through the rest of her physical with flying colors—even her psyche evaluation—which was saying something considering ‘the incident’ a couple of weeks earlier—but that wasn’t going to count for shit now!
And what kind of tests did he need to run that hadn’t already been run for that matter, she thought as the lab tech drew more blood? She was done with her physical! She’d already gotten the results on that.
It flickered through her mind as she left the examination room to simply take off and ignore the ‘invitation’ to discuss the matter further. She needed to think and she was too upset at the moment to think straight. About the only thing rambling around and around in her mind, replaying over and over, was the doctor’s announcement and her frantic attempts to figure out how it was possible.
It was the half formed hope that the doctor would offer her a way out of her dilemma and the anxiety that ignoring the subtly worded order would make matters worse that turned her toward the doctor’s office. She sat down in front of his desk when she arrived, fidgeting with her clothes and then trying to assume a front of professional detachment when she heard the doctor heading toward the office. Instead of entering and settling at the desk, however, he merely poked his head in. “Just a moment.”
Frowning, Marlee glanced at him and caught a glimpse of another man standing in the hallway just a little further away.
Despite her turmoil, several things instantly flashed through her mind. First and foremost was the fact that the man looked completely out of place. The second impression was a conviction that he was a government man, although she couldn’t decide what had given her that impression, and the third was that he looked vaguely familiar.
It was enough to shove her anxiety about the doctor’s announcement to the back of her mind and bring a cold wave over her. Although she wasn’t certain what had jumpstarted her sense of threat, she was keenly aware that the adrenaline pumping through her wasn’t something she should ignore. Her instincts were well honed by her training, now, although they hadn’t been exactly dull before or she wouldn’t have been FBI material to start with.
She couldn’t place the man, although she strained with her memory until a dull throb began in her head. She’d seen him, though. She didn’t know where or when, but her senses were telling her he was some sort of threat.
And she didn’t think that would’ve been the case unless she’d noticed him more than once before, however peripherally, and in a situation where he was as out of place as he was now.
The doctor looked more nervous, if possible, when he entered the office with a file. More in possession of her own facilities now, Marlee realized with a leap in her pulse that he’d been nervous when he examined her.
She watched him warily when he settled at his desk and opened the file he’d brought in, scanning the documents. It seemed to her, though, that he was already familiar with everything in the file and was merely using it as a ruse to gather his thoughts.
“There isn’t much here regarding the debriefing after the incident in the park,” he said finally.
“Because I didn’t remember much,” Marlee said a little stiltedly.
He lifted his head and studied. “Is that still the case? Or have you remembered anything?”
Marlee wrestled with the urge to point out to him that he’d told her the pregnancy would be the topic of conversation. Wariness finally won out over her instinct to tell him to shove his questions up his ass. “Nothing new,” she said neutrally.
He nodded. “It says here that you thought you’d been attacked by a bear.”
“That’s what I thought. I remember seeing one. I guess I fainted.”
“What do you think might have given you the impression that the bear had attacked?”
Marlee stared at him blankly, trying to think of a response.
“There wasn’t a mark on you, I mean. A lot of blood—no wounds.”
She shrugged uneasily. “I’m afraid I don’t remember anything else—nothing to explain it.”
He nodded again. “They did find a mutilated bear not far from where you were found. Did you know that?”
A fresh wave of cold washed over Marlee. She hadn’t been told that. “Actually, nobody mentioned it before. Do you think there was a connection?”
He frowned, seemed to wrestle with something. “Some of the blood on your clothing matched the bear’s.” He paused. “You didn’t notice any … strange lights? Sounds?”
Strange lights—strange sounds—animal mutilation. Feeling abruptly as if she’d stepped out of her body and was looking down at the scene playing out, Marlee connected the dots and realized the doctor was hinting about reports of alien visitations.
And he was connecting her pregnancy with the incident! She knew abruptly, with absolute certainty, that he was, although she hadn’t connected it to the incident in the park.
Because he had suggested she was four to six weeks pregnant and the incident had only happened a couple of weeks before.
And he’d just been talking to a man who looked like he worked for the government!
And she thought she’d seen the man at least once before.
“The only thing that sticks in my mind was the sound of the helicopter they brought in to airlift me out of the park,” she said slowly. “I think I must have been unconscious.”
“That’s another curious thing, though,” the doctor said. “Nothing was found to explain the period of unconsciousness you apparently experienced.”
Marlee shrugged with an effort. “Well, if I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Could we discuss the pregnancy? It isn’t too late to consider terminating it, is it?”
He looked taken aback. “I’m not sure you’re in any state of mind to consider that right now,” he said tightly. “Why don’t you go home and think about it? Make an appointment on your way out and we’ll discuss options at the next appointment.”
Despite the fact that the doctor’s reaction to her question about terminating the pregnancy pretty much confirmed her fears, relief at the offer of at least temporary escape flickered through Marlee. “I guess you’re right. I’m still in a state of shock.” She grimaced. “You know, I’d forgotten about a hook up I had not too long ago—not that that makes me anymore inclined to go through with this. I don’t even remember the guy’s name.”
“Well, you should think long and hard about it before you consider taking that step. We didn’t find any sign of disease, but it’s dangerous to have unsafe sex these days. Regardless, I have to tell you I’m not inclined to terminate what appears to be a healthy fetus for anything less than rape. It was consensual?”
Marlee felt her face reddening, but she doggedly pursued the lie she’d manufactured, even though she could see he didn’t believe it for a moment. “Uh … does drunk count?”
The doctor smiled thinly and got up, her cue to take her leave. “Poor judgment, unfortunately, isn’t an excuse.” He forced a chuckle. “If it was, half of us probably wouldn’t be here.”
Marlee was marginally reassured when she didn’t see any sign of the man she’d seen in the hallway, but only slightly. She was under surveillance—probably had been since she’d been released from the hospital after the incident. She’d just been too focused on her own concerns to notice.
Not that that was an excuse for not noticing, she thought angrily!
She’d hoped when she was done at the doctor’s office that he was going to give her a clean bill of health and she could go to work. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen—now. By the time she got to her apartment, she’d considered the situation obsessively.
Still more than half convinced it was purely paranoia, she combed her apartment for electronic surveillance nevertheless.
It didn’t help her feelings when she found what she was looking for.
How insane was it that her own government was watching her … and because of some crazy idea that she’d been … what? Abducted by aliens and impregnated?
She should have felt like laughing at the absurdity. Instead, she was terrified. Except for those bizarre, erotic dreams that she’d been having since the attack, she hadn’t been with a man—which meant they weren’t dreams at all if she really was pregnant!
* * * *