“No.” She gripped his hand tightly and refused to let go. “I’m not leaving you again.” Cora pressed her lips to his in a passionate kiss. “I love you.”
Her words soothed the still-raw wound of her earlier rejection. He’d seen the orientation of the vehicles. Cora had been coming back to him. He couldn’t fault her for being afraid of changing into a scaled beast. Had he been in her shoes, he might have done the same thing.
“Cora, I love you.” He swallowed a painful lump. He tasted blood and wondered how long it would take for the internal bleeding to finish him. “I love you so much. I want you to live.”
Her protest was interrupted by the unmistakable rumble of approaching dragons. Stig’s core vibrated with awareness of his kind, of his Brothers. Relief saturated his weary muscles. He’d come to their aid in situations hairier than this. Their shared senses of danger were much like those of the mate bond. He should have known they’d come for him.
The ground trembled as Madoc and Griff landed with very little finesse. In such a stressful situation, Stig wasn’t surprised they came in heavy and loud. The Welsh Reds panted noisily as they appraised the scene, the crimson scales on their chests expanding powerfully with each breath. In dragon form, it was often difficult to gauge their emotions, but when their gazes fell on Stig and Cora’s entwined bodies, the shock was evident.
Stig could only imagine how bizarre they looked. Cora, his mortal lover, held pressure on his orange and red mottled abdomen—his decidedly not dragonlike abdomen.
Cora stiffened with fear. Stig used the last of his energy to take her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s all right, Cora. They’re friends. They’ll take care of us.”
Certain Cora was in good hands, Stig finally relaxed. His eyelids drooped and he slipped into unconsciousness. He hoped he’d wake again to the sight of Cora’s sweet face.
Chapter Seven
Cora woke with a start. Her strained neck immediately protested the jerky movement. Wincing, she rubbed her aching muscles and glanced toward the open bedroom door for the source of the sound that woke her. There was an ungodly ruckus down in the kitchen. Apparently Griff or Madoc were trying to make lunch.
She stretched her sore back and sat up a bit straighter. Falling asleep in the chair next to Stig’s bed had put her back and neck in a weird position. She gingerly moved her leg, the cast still heavy and unfamiliar. Her broken arm rested in a sling.
It had been four days since that nightmare of a night but she seemed to be healing surprisingly fast. The perks of becoming a dragon, she supposed. There was little pain, only infrequent bouts of throbbing when she moved too quickly or bumped into something.
Madoc and Griff, the shockingly red dragons who had come to their rescue, had taken very good care of them. They’d been whisked away to the closest Brotherhood safe house where a very scary, very intimidating dragon named Ignatius, their leader, saw to their medical care. She’d been so weak and in so much pain those first few hours were mostly a blur. She remembered snippets. Madoc starting an IV in her good arm. Griff steadying her as Ignatius worked to straighten her leg. The prickling heat of their dragon magic enhancing the human-made pharmaceuticals.
Cora had slipped into a deep sleep at some point and had woken up late the next afternoon. Stig still remained in an almost comatose state. All that regeneration to heal his extensive injuries required a lot of energy. His breathing was slow and deep, his eyelids hardly moving.
The sight of his motionless body in that bed left her aching with fear and guilt. She’d watched her grandmother slip away in a hospice bed and had been the one to ID Hector after he’d wrapped his truck around a tree. Realizing how close she’d come to losing Stig made her never want to leave his side again, not even for the briefest of moments.
The sound of approaching footsteps caught her attention. Moments later, Ignatius appeared in the doorway. He cast a glance at Stig’s motionless form. His scarred face showed no emotion. “He will wake soon.”
Cora sensed Ignatius knew the exact moment when Stig would wake. There was something about his bond with the rest of the Brotherhood that was different. He’d been the one to send Madoc and Griff, the two closest Brothers, to their rescue that night. Ignatius had felt her terror and Stig’s pain.
He lifted the lunch tray clasped in his big hands. “I brought you some lunch.”
Her hungry gaze swept over the sandwich and chips as Ignatius settled the tray over her lap. A glass of iced tea and a few celery sticks slathered with peanut butter and sprinkled with raisins rounded out the simple lunch. “Thank you.”
He allowed the tiniest of smiles to curve his mouth before moving toward Stig’s bed. Ignatius closed his right eye, his only eye, and swept his fingertips over Stig’s forehead. Could he see what Stig dreamed? After a few seconds, he removed his hand and crossed to the empty chair on the other side of Stig’s bed.
Cora felt a little weird eating by herself. She picked up a celery stick. “Hungry?”
He shook his head. “I ate earlier, but thank you. I should tell you that I spoke to a friend and we’ve dealt with that legal issue of yours. You can’t go back to San Antonio but I think it’s a small price to pay for escaping that mess you created.”
Cora blinked at him. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“Stig considers you part of our family now. I take care of my family.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that so she ate. The room fell into an awkward silence punctuated only by the crunch of the celery sticks. When Madoc or Griff sat vigil at Stig’s bedside, Cora found it easy to talk with them. Ignatius was a different story. He was so distant. Not mean, exactly, just…aloof.
“Do you like me?” Cora figured the worst he could do was say no and thought he probably would. His opinion of her shouldn’t matter, but she’d seen the way the other dragons looked up to Ignatius. She didn’t want Stig to suffer because Ignatius disliked her. If there was some way she could make friends with him, she’d damn sure try.
Ignatius seemed a little surprised. “Why would you ask me that?”
She remembered the tale Stig had told her in the kitchen about the deaths that had started the war. “Your brother died because he fell in love with a human girl.” She gestured to a motionless Stig. “You almost lost one of your Brothers because he fell in love me, another human girl. You see where I’m going with this?”
“I do but you’re not Cornelia and he isn’t Sixtus.” He exhaled slowly. “I like you…”
“But?”
He was quiet, as if considering his words carefully. “You make Stig vulnerable and his love for you makes us all vulnerable. His loyalties are torn between you, the woman he loves, and us, the Brothers he’d bled with on the battlefield for centuries.”
Guilt twisted Cora’s belly. “I didn’t know what would happen when I left San Antonio that night and sought refuge with Stig.”
Ignatius’s face softened. “No one blames you. What happened to the two of you was terrible but we managed to recover and destroy two swords, so some good came out of it. Unfortunately, you were just a pawn. The Knights found a way to use you in their nasty little game.”
Anger zipped through Cora. Within hours of waking from her deep sleep, she’d learned the whole ugly truth about the Knights buying her brother’s debts from those loan sharks and using her to draw Stig from the safety of his home. “I still can’t believe they set this whole thing up.”
Ignatius sighed and stretched out his legs. “They’re a treacherous lot. Their seer is particularly skilled. I can’t help but wonder how long she’s known about you, how long she’s been plotting Stig’s demise.”
Cora frowned. “You think Stig’s attack was in the works for some time?”
Ignatius shrugged. “You were meant for him. That’s clear enough.”
“Because my touch makes him humanlike?”
Ignatius nodded. “I suspect there’s a touch of the dragon in you. It’s not common but we’ve come across human descendants of dragons in the past. Human women with supernatural abilities seem to have the easiest time conceiving with us. Back in the old days, when persecution was high, witches and their kind were offered
