Forever Rowan Read online

  “I know it’s your favorite,” the younger woman protested with hands raised in mock surrender. Then she sobered. “I don’t want us to fight, Ro. I love you so much, and sometimes I’m so scared I’m going to lose you.” Brilliant blue eyes locked with hers. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, Ro. Not like Mom and Jenna.”

  Rowan had given a rough sigh and sat down at the small table positioned under a window.

  “Give it here,” she said, gesturing to the soup. Erin grinned and all but skipped to the table. “If you’re going to make me eat, the least you can do is join me, brat.” Erin’s smile grew even wider as she plopped down in the chair across from Rowan’s and proceeded to twist her legs into an incomprehensible knot. Rowan shook her head. The kid had always been unnaturally flexible.

  Well, old William must have been feeling especially affectionate. Not only had her mind finally cleared enough for her to recognize the unmistakable sensation of waking from one of her father’s drug cocktails, but she also recognized the feel of thick leather cuffs buckled around her wrists and ankles.

  If she concentrated really hard, she could begin to slit her eyes open. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to. God knew, nothing good ever awaited her in this situation. Still, she figured it would be better to at least know if she was in one of her father’s modified hospital rooms or shackled to her own bed.

  “So,” she’d said, taking a cautious spoonful of steaming soup, “tell me something good, brat.” Erin began to chatter away happily about her current favorite book--the latest Jasmine Haynes, Rowan just had to read it--and who she thought would be the next one voted off American Idol. Rowan had smiled indulgently. She remembered vividly how Erin had been as a child. Chattering like a happy little magpie, excited over every little thing and eager to share her enjoyment with the world. Rowan had seen too little of that joie de vivre from her sister in the years since their mother’s death.

  The soup was perfect, ordered in from LaiLai, her favorite local restaurant. The heat seeped into her, warming from the inside out. Suddenly Rowan was really, really tired. She hadn’t slept well since her aborted escape attempt, and aside from a long stint of unconsciousness immediately after her beating, she hadn’t slept at all in the forty-eight hours since she’d discovered the Dragon. Aidan.

  Erin was still talking, but Rowan was having more and more trouble focusing on what she was saying. Aidan had kissed her wounds. Had born witness to her father’s cruelty. Had honored her. The memory of his lips, the damp heat of his tongue, sent a frisson of electricity through her. She could barely keep her eyes open. It would be so much easier to just let them slide closed and concentrate on Aidan. Those raging sapphire eyes. The hard, sculpted body chained to the bed.

  “Shit!” Erin stopped, a look of surprise and then dread crossing her animated face as Rowan sat bolt upright and forced her eyes open. “What was in the soup, brat?” She knew the soup had been drugged, but seeing the guilt in her sister’s eyes made her heart twist.

  “Just a protein supplement, I swear,” Erin rushed to assure her. “And Father had Jordan add a painkiller.” Big blue eyes met hers earnestly. “We knew you hadn’t been sleeping, and you need to sleep in order to heal.” Her sister’s words were beginning to blur, to fade into static as the drug took hold. Rowan felt herself sinking into her chair, melting like hot wax. A soft hand stroked her cheek. An anguished voice whispered, “Don’t be mad at me, Rowey. I just want to help you.” Then there was nothing but cold, black silence.

  Rowan finally forced her eyes open enough to take in her surroundings. Pea green walls. Stainless steel fixtures. She was in one of her father’s experimentation rooms. Another deeper, more intimate ache had joined the symphony of pain singing out from her back. It shouldn’t surprise her. Not after Aidan had told her someone had been digging around his private parts.

  “What have you done, Father?” She knew he was in the room. He was always there when she woke from one of his little experiments. It took more effort than usual to keep her voice flat and emotionless. She was anything but emotionless regarding her father’s pet Dragon.

  “Ah,” William moved around from behind her to stand at the foot of her bed. He liked to do that; to stand towering over her, trying to make her feel vulnerable, weak. “Right on schedule. I’d thank you for doing something right, but I know I owe your cooperation to Dr. Baker’s expertise with tranquilizers.” He rocked back on his heels, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his charcoal silk suit.

  “What have you done?” she repeated. He looked entirely too pleased with himself, and she felt dread curdle in her belly.

  “You like our oversized lizard,” he said instead of answering. “I’ve never seen you strip willingly for a man before.” Shit, she thought, realizing William had video of Aidan’s tender ministrations to her abused back. “And,” he added, “you let him touch you.”

  “If you were watching, Father, then you know I told him to stop and then left. I didn’t let him to do anything.” Again the struggle to keep her voice even. If he had even a hint of how upset she was, how badly she needed to know what he was up to, he’d keep her hanging until hell froze over.

  “I never understood how you and Jenna could feel any sympathy for the monsters, not after the way they killed your mother.” He continued to study her through measuring eyes, searching for a weakness. “I’ve finally concluded that your affinity for the monsters is a gift to me, a tool that I can use in my mission to cleanse the world of their evil.”

  Rowan shook her head. None of this was anything new. “Father, you’ve clearly been digging around my reproductive organs.” He gave a tight little smile at her dispassionate statement, no doubt disappointed she hadn’t spoken more crudely, given him a reason to hurt her. “From what the Dragon said, you’ve been digging around his, too.”

  “Aidan, my dear,” William corrected her. “He asked you to call him Aidan.”

  Rowan gritted her teeth and continued. “Fine. It’s quite clear you’ve got some sort of plan for me and Aidan. Now, what have you done?”

  William responded to the note of intensity she’d finally allowed into her voice like a child showing off his science project. He moved to the side of the bed, made a production of shoving her hip over to make room for himself, and perched at her side.

  “I’ve tried so hard to breed you, Rowan,” he began, a manic light in his blue eyes. “I thought I could just use your eggs, artificially inseminate them, but you were far too stubborn for that.” He smacked her lightly, an absent, open-handed slap as though she had deliberately not allowed her eggs to accept his various samples of donor sperm.

  “I know you’re fertile. I’ve had that checked and double checked. I even had our dear doctor start giving you shots in order to double egg production.”

  “This morning, when I saw you with the Dragon, I finally realized what was missing.” He continued to stroke her face, and Rowan forced herself not to recoil from his touch.”

  “You want this Dragon, sexually. I know your eggs will welcome his seed; I’ve had Jordan test for compatibility. Your spawn will be more powerful than any of my previous experiments, and it will be mine to train and use as I see fit.”

  Rowan was almost too numb to feel the sick horror his words conjured up. He’d been trying to breed her for years. She’d known that. She’d known that any plans he had for a potential child would not be pleasant. She’d known all those things intellectually, but somehow hearing it aloud stabbed a tiny soft spot in her heart she had thought he’d killed long ago.

  “Now you lay here a while and gather your strength.” He patted her cheek briskly and rose to leave. “I’ll have Karl come in presently to unstrap you, and you can go about your day.” He paused and gave her a long look at the door. “You have my permission to consort with the Dragon,” he said after a long moment. “Be as friendly as you like. Maybe if your eggs won’t accept him inside the lab, they will inside your body.” With a brisk nod he left her alone wit
h the knowledge of how deep his evil truly went.

  * * * *

  She’d been gone more than twenty-four hours and, in spite of the many more pressing worries he had, Aidan couldn’t stop brooding over her absence.

  She’d come to him the first time with fingerprints around her throat. The second time she’d been whipped until her blood flowed. He was afraid of what might happen to her before she could return a third time.

  Forcing himself to relax, Aidan took stock of his situation. He’d been tranked twice now. The second time he’d woken much more quickly, and without the distorted vision that had lent his first awakening such a nightmarish quality. That Stone had discovered or manufactured a needle capable of penetrating his tough skin was troublesome. The fact the man had concocted a drug that could shut a shifter down for an extended amount of time was even more so. But even that wasn’t the most troubling, terrifying thing of all.

  He couldn’t shift.

  Not since his twelfth summer, his Summer of Transformation, had Aidan been unable to release the Dragon. He could feel the beast, coiled inside, waiting to burst free, but instead of the whiff of sulfur and burst of sweet release that accompanied his transformation, he suffered through the ice-pick slice of pain through his brain and down the back of his neck.

  Stone had done something to him. He was pretty sure Rowan knew what, but her pain had distracted him from his questions during her last visit. Just the memory of it distracted him now. Her skin was pale, satiny and fine as a baby’s. Except for the knotted scars and whip slashes that ranged from palest pink to angry, crusted red. The scars showed her strength, but now Aidan found himself imagining her softness. The cushion of her hips in his hands, the heaviness of her breasts in his palms... He remembered his first reaction to her: Here was a woman who could take all he had to give without breaking.

  He was so focused on her that it didn’t even startle him when the door whooshed open and her scent teased his sensitive nose. He turned his head slowly, no fast, painful movements this time, and raked his eyes over her silent form, looking for new injuries.

  He couldn’t find any obvious damage, but she hovered near the door, seeming uncharacteristically hesitant.

  “I’m thinkin’ we need to talk,” he rasped out, before his dick overruled his brain and he begged her to strip down to that creamy satin skin and straddle him.

  “We do,” she agreed quietly. “About more than you know.”

  She moved slowly across the room, finally coming to perch on the edge of his cot. Aidan turned his hand, laid his fingers over hers and kept his voice deliberately soft.

  “I think you’d better start, Luv.” He met her burnt caramel eyes somberly. “Why can’t I shift?”

  Her eyes slid closed for a moment and a look of relief crossed her face. Then she opened them with a sigh and answered.

  “My father and his scientists have developed a kind of computer chip that, when implanted at the back of the neck, makes it impossible for a shifter to transform.” He stared at her in disbelief as she continued. “I don’t really know how it works, only that it sends some sort of electrical current that floods your nervous system with pain when you try to shift.”

  He wanted to laugh in her sober face. True, he couldn’t shift, but her story was straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  “This isn’t a Joss Whedon story, Luv. You can’t be serious.” He kept the words light, mocking, hoping his ridicule would make it untrue.

  “No, Aidan, it’s not.” He was almost distracted by the sound of his name on her lips. Almost. “It’s reality.” She leaned in and slipped her fingers behind his neck. “My father made Jordan implant the chip here.” He felt her trace a short line of stitches at the top of his spine. “As long as it’s there you won’t be able to change.” Irrationally he focused on that name, Jordan, which she said with clear affection and nearly missed the tail end of her explanation. “And as long as it’s there, whenever your adrenaline spikes, whenever you become aggressive or even try to shift, you’ll suffer debilitating pain.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed for a minute, desperately falling back on his training, breathing, letting Dragonsong fill his mind until he thought he could speak without roaring.

  “What else?” he finally gritted out.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her words drew his gaze back to her face, but she looked away. He tightened his fingers on hers and gave a little tug.

  “Could it actually be worse than what you’ve already told me?” Great Mother, how could it be worse?

  “He intends to breed you.” The words were a wisp of sound, and she still wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  At least this was something he could put her mind to rest about.

  “He can’t breed me.” That brought those brown eyes back to his. He lowered his voice, well aware that the room was most likely wired for sound at the very least. “A Dragon can only reproduce with his or her mate.” She looked confused, which didn’t really surprise him. Dragon physiology and ritual wasn’t something they shared with the human public.

  “But he said--” she started, and then stopped abruptly.

  “He said what?” Aidan coaxed, ignoring the fact that with any other being alive he’d be demanding instead.

  Her face flushed red, and she looked away again and whispered, “He said we’re biologically compatible.”

  Aidan froze for a moment as he worked out just how Stone would know such a thing.

  “To come up with that shit he’d need to have taken samples.” She nodded. “The incision behind my balls,” he stated flatly, and she nodded again. It was probably good that she was refusing to look at him. What she might see in his face would probably scare the life out of her. “He’d have had to test you, too.” He finished. This time she didn’t nod, just stared silently at the floor.

  “Rowan,” he heard the rumble begin in his chest, felt the pain begin to knife up his neck. “What did he do to you while you were gone from me?” The pain was more intense now, but his gritted his teeth against it, determined to get her answer.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, still looking at the ground.

  “Don’t you lie to me, woman.” The rumble became a growl. The pain was nearly glazing his eyes. “What did that sadistic bastard fuckin’ do to you?”

  She tried to pull away, but he clenched his fingers around hers. The growl escaped, a strangled, pain filled sound that finally brought her eyes back to his face.

  “Oh, God, Aidan,” she gasped, leaning in closer and laying her free hand on his cheek. “You’ve got to calm down.” She petted him almost frantically; his face, his neck, his chest. “The chip won’t allow you to shift, and I’m afraid if you don’t calm down, it’ll damage you somehow.”

  He gritted his teeth, nearly roaring out his rage. He’d been violated, which pissed him off, but what sent him into a rage the likes of which he’d never known was the knowledge that Stone had violated her. Rowan, with her scars and softness and courage. Stone had defiled her, and that was something Aidan wouldn’t tolerate, and neither would his Dragon.

  “His tests were wrong, Rowan. A Dragon has never produced a child with a human. Never.” He squeezed his eyes shut, to think her father had violated them was more than he could bear.

  Tears filled her big brown eyes, and her frantically stroking hand landed on his chest. Square over his heart.

  Fire shot over him, strong and lightning fast. Not the kind that brought pain. No, this was the kind that signaled desire. His heart pounded and his cock got hard. Rowan’s eyes locked with his, and suddenly everything inside of him went still. Then the glow began, rising from his chest to wrap around her hand. When she gasped and tried to pull away, he knew it was futile. She was effectively locked to him, sharing a dance as old as the first Dragon.

  Aidan watched the blue Dragon glow wind up her arm and slide across her chest, twining around her torso and down until she was glowing from head to foot. Her eyes grew huge, showing
fear for the first time. He sympathized. She had no idea what was happening to them. He knew what was happening, though he couldn’t fuckin’ believe it, and it scared the ever livin’ shit out of him. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came forth. Aidan could have warned her of that, if the magic hadn’t held him just as deeply in its thrall. Then out of her mouth, it came. A fierce red smoke.

  No! NO! Aidan wanted to scream, but it was too late. Rowan’s aura wrapped itself around Aidan’s prone body, skimming sensuously over his blue glow. Their auras merged in the space between them, forming a brilliant amethyst light that separated to enclose them both.

  He felt the new, combined aura flicker over his skin like electricity. The small hairs on his body stood on end, and Rowan’s hair floated around her face like a halo. Great Dragon, even in the midst of this disaster, she was so beautiful to him.

  The world went silent for an endless moment. The amethyst light surrounded them both, connecting them with a force Rowan didn’t understand and Aidan didn’t want to accept. He could feel her heartbeat in his own chest. Her breath moved his lungs. Then the light sank into them, saturating their bodies until time and the world restarted with a rush.

  Rowan collapsed against his chest. Her breathing was hard and heavy, matching the tempo of his own. He shook his head violently, ignoring the pain from the damned chip, ignoring the tingle of power still ghosting over his skin. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t take on his dragon form, so how the hell was his Dragon spirit able to perform his po’sadh, his marriage?

  Fuck, Fuck, Fuck. This could not be happening. He squeezed his lids shut, trying to call back his calm. It was no use. She was there inside of him. A part of her now rested permanently within him, as he was now a part of her. Permanently. His Dragon would never accept another female, not in his life or in his bed.