“Crazy fucker.” Bjorn laughs; and it’s everything I love, as he strokes Baldur’s scaled cheek, tender.
Because I’ve never felt this kind of tenderness in Bjorn before, for anyone but me; as my heart soars, a beautiful triumph filling me, I kiss Baldur’s scaled muzzle, then scootch under him so I can be with Bjorn.
Bjorn snugs me to him, pulling me to his rock-solid nakedness on the bed. Mikkel and Ström are heaving hard breaths, recovering on the other side of Baldur as I cuddle in next to Bjorn.
Palming my ass as he hauls me half-over him, Bjorn kisses me, deep. The contentment that fills him is everything; a smile beams allthrough my heart, into the ancient skies as our kiss becomes gentle, just a sweet press of lips.
I feel Mikkel and Ström doing the same thing on the other side of Baldur. With a contented growl in his sleep, Baldur nuzzles his head against us, smiling more as his entire body tightens around us. Gargantuan for a Blood Dragon, Baldur’s half-draped over the ruined bed, the rest of him sprawling through the room. I break my kiss with Bjorn, then roll over enough so I can kiss Baldur’s scaled cheek.
“Thank you,” I whisper, as everything feels so right inside our bond.
He smiles more, shifting in slumber as if he heard me. Curses are nowhere on his magnificent blue and white dragon now, as we all cuddle on the bed, recovering.
Bjorn cinches me close, and I sigh. Pushing up from beside Baldur’s enormous head, Mikkel and Ström step over his neck now, laying down beside us. Baldur changes position, coiling his entire body and neck around us all now, forming his own Ouroboros around us as he covers his nose with his tail like a cat.
Bjorn rolls me so I’m in the middle of our cuddle; his big back presses up against Baldur’s neck as I hear Bjorn’s deep, releasing sigh.
Ström is before me, Mikkel curled around him. As he kisses me, Ström grips my hip, pulling us close.
“Not so bad, for our first time fucking all together, huh?” He smiles at my lips, nuzzling my nose.
“Not so bad at all…” I sigh as I smile back.
Then drift off to sleep, spent.
18
MIRROR
My drakes and I lay in a tangled knot as I wake from dreams. As I heave hard breaths, surfacing from nightmares, I take a moment to recover. Because my dark dreams were just as tangled as the pile we’re all sleeping in, intense and strange. Nothing I would expect right now, as I rest in our cozy cuddle.
After our incredible first group lovemaking.
I review those dreams now, as I lay in the crook of Bjorn’s arm, Ström wrapped around my knees. Mikkel has his face pressed to my breast, with Baldur returned to human now upon Bjorn’s other side.
My odd nightmares are nothing I can make sense of, however, as my drakes continue to snore. As they rest, I feel how they’re full of energy now, thanks to us clearing Baldur’s curses.
My energy is recovered, too, though confused memories of my family assault me now, making my senses feel jumbled and strained. Memories of my father, my mother, and my sister, they’re all long gone, though they feel so near now from my dreams.
I hold my living family close now as my dead one assails me; as I breathe in the quiet room, I see their faces, vivid. It’s almost as if theycame to me from the Void of Ancestors as I slept, to tell me something. Nothing sticks with me now, however, except a sudden memory of my sister’s dragon.
I see her now, assaulting the Grand Palace in Stockholm the day Bjorn and I fought her and she died. Crimson with gold markings like me, my sister Lithava was my elder, fiercer in her power though my same size.
As I watch our battle anew, recollections racing through my head, I suddenly see something I’d forgotten about in that event, renewed because of my dream. As the memory crashes through me, reawakened after all these years, I note a black ring upon my sister’s dragon-finger as we fought that day.
It was still there when Bjorn blasted her down out of the skies. I can’t see any detail on that ring in my memories; I catch my breath now, though, as I wonder whether my sister’s black ring might have been connected to the Usurper and the Black Dragon Five, like Emil’s.
It makes me stew now, a vicious darkness taking me, as I wonder whether my sister might have been part of all this long ago. On the heels of that terrible thought comes another one; of whether Maryse knew.
Because Maryse passed my sister over for a position studying at her side. It was something my sister was furious about, ever after—that she had a similar Bloodwalker talent as me, but that Maryse never trusted her to study it.
Those worries came true, when Lithava blamed our uncle for our parents’ deaths at Riksfold and went after his throne, trying to take him down. She died for her vendetta against him.
Blasted out of the skies by my very own First Bloodmate.
I glance at Bjorn now, snoring to beat the band in his heavy sleep, though nobody wakes from it. Sadness about that event fills me; also gratefulness that he was there to back me up when I was injured and couldn’t finish that life-or-death battle against my very own sister.
I lift, kissing his soft lips, though he only gives a low rumbling purr in his sleep and doesn’t wake.
