For the first time, Nikolai answered, forming the words in his mind, unaware his lips whispered along with him.
You are only a figment of my imagination. You know nothing.
A burst of humor.You are wrong. I know everything. But you will find out soon enough.
Mai chittered and pushed herself deep into his hair. Nikolai wished he could hide so easily from the powerful voice in his brain.
But there would be no hiding. Not anymore. He had to face what, and who, he was. Before he did any more harm.
16
The heat and humidity were killing Aria.
Well, not literally. But it was oppressive enough that she thought longingly of a nice, sandy dune in the blazing sun. At least Nikolai’s insect repelling ability meant Aria could reduce her scale clothing to help her stay cool. After three hours of exhaustive climbing, she’d pared it down to cover the basics. Barely.
She’d always considered herself to be fit, but the forest challenged her in new ways. Nikolai acted as though he walked on solid, level ground, never putting a foot wrong as he climbed and leaped. Lucas wasn’t far from that graceful progress, although by his reaction to the creepy crawlies, she doubted he’d ever spent much time in the natural world.
But as a Dragon, when the going underfoot got tough, she’d always had an alternative. And taken to the air without a moment’s thought. Something she couldn’t do at the moment. So she grew her talons and used them to help her through the morass, doing her level best not to fall flat on her face.
Her inability to shift to her beast form bothered her more than she’d like to admit. Was she doing the right thing, sticking with Nikolai? Especially as he’d already stated he couldn’t remove the collar. Or rather, that he didn’t dare try. Aria’s fighting skills in her human form were formidable, but she’d never been constrained to them like this. Without her tail spike, she was limited to kicking and clawing any local predators to bits.
Not her preferred methodology.
Every time she doubted her decision to follow Nikolai, he cast her a glance through those dark lashes—a couple of times, he accompanied it with a pulse of something pure and powerful. Desire? Lust? She couldn’t pin it down. The first burst caused her to stumble into a trunk, with the second she slipped off a branch. Each time, he was there to catch her... and his touch set her world on fire.
Any resolve to leave instantly fell to pieces.
It dismayed her that a single look or—whatever the hell the sensations were—could destroy any intelligent thought on the matter. What was it about him that drew her to follow? It wasn’t based on intellect. It was something much deeper. Something she hadn’t experienced before.
So okay. Maybe she had the hots for the big guy. But what about Lucas? Her overwhelming relief when he’d agreed to come with them confused her. How could she be attracted to two men at once? And neither were Dragons...
Having grown up without maternal guidance, everything she’d learned about Dragons was from Danao. And his knowledge of female matters had been limited. But she knew that Dragonas came into their fertility cycle about every fifteen years, and at that time chose a mate. The intense, pheromone-driven mating took place over a few days, and then the two involved went their separate ways.
The mating cycle was something Aria had yet to experience. Unexplained attraction to males was one of the first signs—did that explain her sense of connection to both Nikolai and Lucas?
If so, she’d better pay attention. Aria hadn’t expected to be faced with a cycle for another five years or so. She’d been told that going through one without mating was virtually unheard of—the pheromones were impossible to resist.
Dragonas not wishing to get pregnant, suppressed the cycles with special herbs. None of which she had access to at the moment. And if not consumed early in the process, they were ineffective.
So if that was what was going on, she was in big trouble. And what other explanation could there be for it? Even Lucas’s decision to accompany them, when he so clearly didn’t trust Nikolai, might be due to her pheromones kicking in. Did they affect species other than Dragons? She didn’t know.
Aria sighed as she clambered over another branch. If she hadn’t been raised by mercenaries, she might not have noticed how Lucas never turned his back to Nikolai. He always kept the big guy in his field of view. And often, he was between her and Nikolai.
The Bellati—if that was what he was—seemed oblivious to it. But then they passed beneath long strands of moss hanging from nearly every branch. Nikolai brushed by it first. Lucas and Aria were a bit behind.
Instead of ducking, Lucas reached to push the moss aside. Nikolai suddenly spun and lunged toward him.
Lucas moved so fast he was a blur. When she blinked, he was standing ten feet away from where he’d started, crouched in a fighting stance, glaring at Nikolai.
For a millisecond, Nikolai’s eyes flashed black, then he straightened and his lips twitched. One hand was clenched around a fistful of trailing moss, and now he opened his fingers.
A snakelike creature wove between them before dropping to the ground and vanishing between two logs.
“It was going to bite you,” Nikolai stated, before resuming his trek.
“Hey,” Lucas shouted after him. “Are there more of those things?”
“Yes,” the big man responded.
