The Dracons' Woman: Book 1 of the Soul-Linked Saga Read online

  They both dropped their eyes, neither of them having a response to that question.

  “Yes, I too am tired of waiting,” Garen admitted. “I want what you want with the same fierceness of need that you feel. But this is a chance that none of our people have had since the Dark Time. It is a slim chance, I know that, but it is still a chance. I am not yet willing to throw that away. I can’t throw that away.”

  Raising their eyes as one, Val and Trey met Garen’s gaze. “You are right,” Trey said, Val nodding in agreement. “We cannot throw away this chance. We owe it to our people.”

  “We owe it to ourselves,” Val added.

  Garen sighed. “It is difficult for me as well,” he said. “But…” Garen trailed off slowly, his eyes losing focus for a moment. Val and Trey tensed immediately, watching Garen unblinkingly, all of their senses alert and instantly poised for battle.

  Suddenly Garen spun around and began running across the hub, pushing heedlessly through the crowds. Val and Trey raced after him, Trey gesturing sharply with one hand, hastily tossing up a shield so that nobody would notice them even as they pushed by. Garen stopped at the entrance to another shuttle spoke, not far from the one they had just exited, and froze for a long moment. Val and Trey watched their elder brother carefully, neither of them sure what was going on, but both maintaining their vigilance. Garen began to growl, a low, deep, menacing rumble deep in his chest.

  “What is it?” Trey demanded as Garen turned to face them.

  “She is here,” Garen growled, a sound quite a bit less than human. Val and Trey gaped at him. Garen’s eyes began to glow, the first sign of a blood-rage. “She is here, and she is terrified.”

  Val and Trey did not ask Garen any questions. If he said their Arima was there, then she was. And if he said she was frightened… Suddenly all three brothers were growling, their eyes glowing, all ready to spill blood. Garen spun to his left and ran across the hub toward another spoke, his brothers flanking him. Trey snarled as he finally picked up the scents Garen had caught. A moment later Val did the same. They could all smell her now, soft, sweet, like roses and honey, but tainted with the sour scent of fear and the sharp, bitter scent of pain. It was all the brothers could do to keep from roaring their fury as they raced down the nearly deserted hall in pursuit of their Arima.

  The moment she looked into the security guard’s face, Lariah knew that he was the reason for the inexplicable fear she’d felt before stepping off the shuttle. The fear she’d forgotten about because of the unexpected flood of memories. He never said a word to her. He simply grabbed hold of her upper arm in a punishing grip, and took off with her in tow. The man was only a few inches taller than her own not quite five and a half feet, but he was many times stronger. Her attempts to struggle free did not even slow him down, and since he was wearing a security uniform, no one paid much attention to the woman being dragged unwillingly through the hub. She couldn’t even scream since her damaged larynx prevented her from speaking much above a whisper. She tried hard not to think of that, of how it had happened, what had been done to her, but it was hard not to think of it with this brute forcing her across the spaceport without a word to explain why.

  The man dragged her into another long hallway, this one nearly deserted and subtly different from the others. The floors and walls were different, more industrial, the lighting harsher, giving her the impression she was in an employee only area of the spaceport. The man stopped suddenly, pulled a card from his shirt pocket and swiped it through a reader mounted on the wall. A heavy metal door slid open with a whisper. He dragged her through the doorway, his hand tightening on her arm when she tried to resist, the pain causing black spots to appear at the edge of her vision. She tried to breathe through the pain, terrified of passing out. She had to stay conscious, figure out what was happening, and try to find a way out of it.

  Stopping again, the man carded open yet another door and dragged her through it into a large room with a high tinted glass ceiling. There were auto-vend machines, chairs and tables scattered around, a few upholstered chairs grouped together. Lariah realized she was in an employee lounge or lunch room. She looked around frantically, but it seemed deserted other than herself and her captor. When she realized there was an exit at the far end of the room, true panic threatened. Once they crossed this room, he would have her out of the spaceport and any chance she might have of rescue. Nobody knew she was here, and nobody here knew her.

  Suddenly the man jerked to a stop, his grip on her arm becoming impossibly tighter. The pain became so intense that she barely registered a tall figure dressed in black entering through another doorway on the left side of the room. She fervently hoped he was not an accomplice. If he was, she feared she’d have no chance of escaping whatever fate her abductor had in store for her.

  “Release that woman at once,” the man said in a deep, cold voice that vibrated with such anger it sent a violent shiver through Lariah’s body. The man holding her jerked her roughly, and she heard the sharp snap of bone just as her vision narrowed to nothing and the pain sent her down a long black tunnel.

  Barc swore loudly as the woman suddenly became dead weight in his hand. He glanced down in confusion as she slumped toward the floor, clearly unconscious. Before he had a chance to do more than release his grip on her arm his highest level supervisor, Spaceport Security Chief Jackson Bearen, was on him. His startled brain was still trying to figure out how the man had crossed the distance between them so quickly when Jackson picked him up and threw him thirty feet across the room, where he slammed into the wall.

  Barc landed hard, the sharp crack of his leg breaking as he hit the floor giving Jackson a sense of satisfaction that helped him fight back his blood-rage. The sound of the woman’s arm breaking had not been as loud, but he had heard it, and had wanted to kill the man for it.

  “Drag that piece of shit out of here and put him on the first shuttle off-planet you can find,” Jackson ordered the two men who had waited with him for Barc. He made a mental note to let the shuttle steward know that his tip had helped them stop the young woman’s abduction. He watched dispassionately as his brothers each grabbed an arm of the unconscious man and dragged him roughly through the door into the employee access tunnel. They would toss the man into the first cargo hold they came to and to hell with his broken leg.

  Jackson shook his head in disgust as he turned toward the small figure lying motionless on the floor. He started to kneel down beside her, and then paused, his eyes focusing on the door through which Barc had just dragged her. The faint sound of running footsteps grew louder to his exceptional hearing, then a distant crash, followed by more footsteps growing rapidly closer. Three males, Jackson thought, too fast for human, and they just crashed through a steel safety door without a pause. He frowned, then decided to follow his instincts. He backed several feet away from the woman on the floor, and waited.

  He didn’t wait long. Seconds later the racing footsteps reached the door and, with hardly a pause, the metal door burst open. For one long, heart stopping second Jackson stared at the Dracon brothers as they streaked into the room, their eyes glowing with fury, teeth bared, mating fangs extended. Shocked by the sight, Jackson barely retained enough composure to lower himself to one knee, palms out, allowing his family sigil to pulse on the palm of his left hand to let the Dracons know he was not their enemy. The brothers barely spared a glance for him as they sped toward the motionless figure on the floor, all of them dropping to their knees as they surrounded her. Garen immediately threw back his head and roared his fury, his clothing disintegrating as he transformed from the form of a human male into a twenty five foot long dracon with leopard spotted fur, razor sharp fangs and claws, spewing roiling orange flames toward the ceiling.

  Jackson quickly waved a hand, erecting a shield to prevent the building from catching fire even as he wondered what would happen if the other two brothers lost their control as well. There was simply not enough room for three fully rampant dracons in
the employee lounge. Neither he nor the poor woman lying on the floor would survive.

  “Ares tu, dracon ami, ares tu.”

  Jackson gasped at the softly spoken words. He stared as the small figure raised her good arm, reached out, and stroked the soft cream colored fur at the base of one of Garen Dracon’s wickedly sharp claws. “Ares tu, dracon ami,” she said again in a soft, husky, almost musical voice.

  Garen stilled, then transformed back to his human form, fully dressed as he had been before losing control to his dracon. He knelt beside the woman and, with infinite care and gentleness, lifted her into his arms. All three brothers stared for long moments at the unconscious figure, and, as Jackson watched them, it slowly dawned on him that he was witnessing a miracle. Joy burst through him and he experienced a strange stinging sensation in his eyes. He could hardly believe what he had witnessed. He knew that he would never forget it.

  Chapter 2

  Garen stared in wonder at the unconscious woman in his arms. If there had been any doubt that she was their Arima, it had fled the moment she had sung him out of his blood-rage. Only an Arima was capable of such a thing, and it had not happened in living memory. He didn’t understand why she was unconscious though. Had she sung to him, and then lost consciousness again?

  He studied her delicate, heart shaped face. She had a fine, straight nose that turned up just a bit at the end, hinting at a touch of stubbornness, and a chin that stopped just short of pointed. She had full, pink, delicately shaped lips that seemed to invite a kiss. Her skin was pale with a light sprinkling of tiny red-gold freckles across her nose and cheeks that contrasted oddly with her glossy black hair and eyebrows.

  Slowly and lightly, Val traced one delicately arched brow with the tip of his finger, his touch extraordinarily gentle. Trey, standing next to him, did the same. Garen raised his eyes to his brothers and they met his determined gaze with their own. This woman with the pale skin and freckles was suddenly and forever the most important being in their world. They did not know what she looked like beneath her baggy clothes, they did not know what color her eyes were, or whether she had a sense of humor, a hot temper, or both. They did not even know her name. But from this moment forward she was everything to them. They had waited for her for more years than they cared to consider, and they would never, ever let her go.

  Garen turned to face Jackson Bearen and nodded shortly. Jackson rose to his feet, unable to contain his smile.

  “Please excuse my loss of control,” Garen said, the calm tone of his voice belying the smoldering fury in his eyes.

  “There is nothing to excuse, my Prince,” Jackson replied. “On the contrary, I believe that in such a situation, no other could have held onto his control as well.”

  Garen acknowledged the statement with another short nod.

  “Where is the one who harmed our Arima?” he asked, his voice deceptively soft.

  “Shit!” Jackson exclaimed, reaching up to tap the vox in his ear. He rapped out a question in the ancient tongue, tense with hope that, for once, his own brothers had been slow to follow his orders. A moment later he got his reply and sagged with disappointment.

  “I am sorry, my Prince. The man has already been sent off-planet.”

  Garen’s lips tightened. He wanted very much to shred the man limb from limb and smell his pain and fear as he did so, but he bottled those thoughts and feelings up. He had lost control already once, and he could not do so again. Not with their precious Arima in his arms.

  “Please have him detained and returned,” Garen asked.

  “It will be done,” Jackson assured him, then turned and stepped away to give more orders to his brothers.

  Lariah opened her eyes and found herself staring up at three identical male faces. Fear whipped through her and her entire body stiffened, causing a sharp, intense pain to sear through her arm. A moan slipped out before she could stop it.

  “Easy, sharali, you are safe now,” said the man who, she suddenly realized, was holding her cradled in his arms as though she were a child. His voice was deep but soft, soothing in some indefinable way. She found herself relaxing and spared a moment to wonder at that.

  “Who are you?” she asked, wondering for a moment if she knew these men and had somehow forgotten them. Had she had an accident? Considering the pain in her arm, it certainly seemed so. Had she also bumped her head? They felt so familiar to her somehow.

  “I am Garen,” the man holding her replied, his low, gentle voice sending unfamiliar shivers up her spine. “These are my brothers, Treyen, and Valen.” Lariah looked at the other two men, each of whom gave her a tiny nod.

  No, she decided, from the way he introduced himself and his brothers, it seemed obvious that she didn’t know them. So why did she feel that she did? She realized that they were all staring at her intently and she started to feel nervous. On top of that, she realized she had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten there. She tensed in Garen’s arms and he automatically pulled her closer against his chest.

  “Do not worry,” he said gently. “We will allow no further harm to come to you.”

  Lariah’s eyes flashed back to his and again she felt herself relax.

  “I think she has a broken arm,” someone said. The voice did not belong to any of the three men hovering over her, but seemed familiar. She frowned, trying to remember. It all came back to her in a rush. Getting off the shuttle, the security guard dragging her through the spaceport, the grip on her arm in the exact place of her recently healed injury, the cold voice bringing her captor to a halt, the snap of her bone breaking yet again, the pain, then nothing. She still didn’t know where the three big men surrounding her had come from, but she assumed they had come in while she was unconscious.

  Careful to keep her injured arm motionless, Lariah took a deep breath. “Please let me down,” she said, sounding far more hesitant than she’d intended. The man holding her, Garen she remembered, glanced at her arm and frowned.

  “We must take her to the med-center at once,” he said, looking over his shoulder at whoever had spoken.

  “Follow me,” the voice replied.

  Garen looked back down at her, and she noticed that his eyes were gold. Gold with light brown flecks. She stared at them for a long moment. She had never seen eyes that color before and she thought they were the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. Curious, she looked at the other men’s eyes. The one named Valen had eyes the color of summer storm clouds, and Treyen’s eyes were the exact blue-green color of the stone in the antique ring her mother had given her. She looked back at Garen’s eyes and knew that if asked, she would never be able to choose which was the most beautiful.

  Garen’s mouth turned up at one corner. She dropped her gaze, then set her jaw and looked back up at him. “Please, let me down now,” she repeated, striving for a firmer tone. It was difficult when her voice was so damaged, but she did her best.

  The man shook his head. She raised her good arm and pushed against his chest. It was like pushing against a wall. “I am perfectly able to stand,” she insisted, feeling frustrated at his refusal to comply with her wishes. But not afraid. She froze for a moment as that sank in. Why was she not afraid? She had spent the last two months being afraid almost constantly, and now, without apparent reason, her fear was gone.

  Garen turned and began walking, still cradling her close to his chest. A quick glance told her that both Valen and Treyen followed closely, their eyes still watching her as they moved. “I suppose you aren’t going to let me walk on my own two feet, are you?” she asked, feeling the need to break the silence, uncomfortable being carried this way by someone she didn’t even know.

  Garen’s golden eyes met hers as he shook his head slightly. “Not just yet,” he replied. Lariah sighed and decided to just go with it. It wasn’t like she had much choice. The arms on the man were darn near as big as her waist. Maybe bigger. And he carried her as easily as she might carry a kitten.

  “Oh, my bags!” she exclaime
d. They weren’t much, but they held all she owned and she had no desire to lose what little she had left.

  “Be calm,” Trey said from near her head. “We have your belongings.”

  “Thank you so much,” she breathed in relief. Trey looked down at the small canvas satchel, and the smaller handbag. “Do you have other luggage that you would like us to retrieve for you?” he asked.

  “No, but thank you,” she said politely. “Those two bags hold all I have now.”

  Trey, Val and Garen all heard the sadness and regret in her voice. “Then we will be sure to guard them for you carefully,” Trey replied.

  The tall man leading the way paused and opened a door. “If you will wait here, I will get a physician for you.”

  “Thank you Jackson,” Garen said. “I would ask for a report when you have news.”

  “Of course,” Jackson replied with a short bow. “Shall I contact you directly or shall I report to Faron?”

  Garen smiled faintly. “Directly please. The Lobos are on security sweep and out of touch for a few days.”

  “Lucky Lobos,” Bearen said with a smile. “I shall report to you as soon as I have word.”

  “I look forward to it,” Garen replied, then entered the room, Val and Trey close behind.

  Lariah recognized a med room when she saw one. The exam table in the center of the room looked a bit softer than she was used to, but other than that, the bright lights, panel of med displays, supply cabinets, gleaming floors and counters were certainly nothing new to her.

  Garen laid her carefully on the table and took a step back. She immediately sat up, biting her lip at the pain in her arm, and got her first real look at the three huge men standing in front of her. She blinked. Then stared.