I feel it as memories cascade through Ström, so fast they’re just a flicker of images in my mind. It’s like what happened to him when he sent his tattoos to his great-grandfather, but a hundredfold now, as something deep inside him gets broken by Aesa’s Truthstone.
As Ström tried to use his Bone Magic on me just now, it resonated so hard with Aesa’s silver stone that something unlocked inside him. With a terrible scream, Ström jolts, gripping his head as a tirade of memories blisters him.
Lost memories from Copenhagen—missing all these decades.
I feel it as memories of when he ran with a ring of magical thieves in Denmark in his youth go seething through Ström in a tirade now. They’re memories he’s only ever experienced in nightmares; nothing he can recall by day—until now.
As he shifts up into his dragon from the diabolical pain and disorientation of that vast recall dumping into him, it’s all Bjorn and I can do to control him. As Ström thrashes in the water, churning up the ocean until it seethes all around us in a vicious froth, I also have to shift up fast into my drakaina to keep from being crushed.
Because Ström is not home right now in his dragon’s brimstone green eyes as he heaves, fights, and thunders.
Smashing his head against the rocky cliff, over and over.
Bjorn and I curl around him, lightning-fast. Though I still feel terrible from whatever’s happening inside me with Aesa’s stone, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening inside Ström as he heaves, fights, and tries to bash his blocky head against the cliffs.
He keens now, as I feel agony roar inside him. He can’t make sense of the visions that have taken him, can’t sort out the memories that have flooded back, too fast, provoked by him trying to dig into Aesa’s stone with his power.
It’s tearing him apart now from the inside out. Bjorn and I have no choice but to knock him out. As I cinch around Ström’s lithe, firm body in the surging ocean, Bjorn grips his body tight around Ström’s neck. Bjorn coils up hard like a boa constrictor, quick and professional, having done this hundreds of times for other dragons in the military and Kingsguard who got out of control from intense training.
It’s a fast, strong hold, and Ström chokes out. Together, we heave him up from the water, flying him back up the cliffs to the Old Palace. I feel like hot garbage as we make it to the landing plaza next to Ström’s tower; he’s shifted back down to human now, thankfully, since he passed out, and Bjorn has no trouble carrying him as we both shift down.
Bjorn heaves Ström to the magical portal that will get us back up inside Ström’s rooms. Though Ström’s passed out, the magic of the portal recognizes Bjorn and me; in a trice, we’re back inside Ström’s glass and chrome apartment.
His eyelashes finally flicker open.
“What the fuck just happened?” Ström asks, bleary as he comes to.
“Too much,” Bjorn rumbles as his entire body vibrates with a growl. “And all of it is bad.”
14
MATES
It feels like we’re right back where we started, but in far worse straits, as Ström, Bjorn, and I collect ourselves in Ström’s apartments. It’s way past late now, all of us exhausted from the magical shenanigans our careening power has put us through in the past hour, and the night isn’t over yet.
Ström can finally stand on his own as we return to his rooms, but it’s Bjorn who exhales hard now as he flops into a seat at Ström’s glass dining table.
Ström only blinks at him, confused and still not back all the way from whatever he just experienced. I continue to feel like I have the flu from the blistering heat still searing inside me, thanks to whatever my power’s doing with Aesa’s stone.
Through it all, Bjorn has been our rock, both magically and physically, as he kept Ström and me from raging wild as our beasts. He’s exhausted now, however, reaching up a trembling hand as he runs it through his wild golden locks.
Our magical shenanigans shared too much through our bonds.
“Bjorn. Are you alright?” I ask at last, knowing he’ll never say a wordabout how much the mickey has been taken out of him, even when he’s on death’s door.
“I’ll be fine.” Bjorn flashes me a tight smile, but I can see what he’s hiding—pain, from trying to control the shitstorm of magic that blitzed through me, then Ström, just now.
Bjorn fighting to contain all of it through our bonds.
“Well, that was a major fuckup.” Ström is wry now as he sinks to a seat at the table as well. We’re all naked from shifting, but none of us is in a sexy mood now, as I join them at the table.
Sinking into my seat.
“What the fuck is happening?” I wonder aloud as I glance down, tracing Aesa’s silver stone on my chest. It’s ceased to burn with the incredible power it had before, but it’s still warm, like it’s somehow pushing this strange fever inside me. I feel better after the cold plunge in the ocean—it was smart of Ström to think of that—but I still feel fluish, in a way I haven’t for ages.
The product of this strange resonance between Aesa’s stone and my Bloodwalker power.
“I should try to get rid of it, shouldn’t I?” I say now as I look up from the stone at my drakes. They’re both watching me, though Ström has a strange faraway look, as if he’s still not all the way back yet from that vicious storm of hidden memories he just experienced.
