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“Shane!” I cried. “What in the ever-loving fuck?!”
“Shane?” Ian echoed. “His name’s not Shane. His name is Merrick Brown.”
And that’s when everything started to fall into place.Chapter 22I’ve made it from lying on the bed to sitting up on the side of the bed. There’s no stopping me now.
-Ian’s secret thoughts
Ian
I was glaring at Shane—or Merrick Brown—like he was a bug about to be squished by my boot.
Though, if I had my choice, I would be squishing him. Slowly. With my bare hands.
God, I could gladly rip him apart, piece by piece, until he was nothing but a pile of twitching body parts.
Keifer finally stood, placing a tired looking Blythe down on the chair he’d previously occupied, and pointed at Merrick.
“It’s time for you to start explaining,” Keifer growled.
Shane looked over at Wink in apology, and then turned back to Keifer.
“My life before y’all was normal. Met Mattie and Wink. We became good friends, and then we lived our lives. Until I turned twenty-one, that was,” Merrick sighed. “It started before I was twenty-one, actually. Dogs started showing up randomly at my house. Cats. Fucking birds and squirrels. Then, while I was out in the woods, something happened to me and I was suddenly…more.”
“You came into your powers,” Nikolai guessed.
Merrick’s eyes flicked to the big man who was holding his pregnant mate protectively in the curve of his arms. Once he took in the big man, he nodded, then moved his gaze back to Keifer. “Right. I came into my powers in the woods. About thirty yards away from that cabin.”
My brows went up, surprise leeching into me.
That cabin was becoming more and more interesting by the hour.
“Keep going,” Keifer said with barely hidden annoyance.
Merrick grimaced.
“My dragon came, but it was at a price.”
“What kind of price?” Jean Luc asked this time.
My lips twitched at sight of him.
He was sitting awkwardly next to Mattie, being careful not to touch her. His entire body was stiff and looked uncomfortable as hell.
He was as close as he could get to her without actually touching her.
And it got me to wondering…why was he trying so hard? Was he afraid of what would happen if he did and a bond showed?
But then Merrick’s words captured my attention once again.
“My dragon, Sascha, was already owned. The moment our bond came through, though, the previous ownership—or forced compliance on his owner’s part—was broken and he was now mine.” Merrick looked down. “Sascha hated me. Hated me with a passion, and it took me nearly ten years of trying to win him over before he finally understood the benefits of having me as his dragon rider.”
“But…?” Derek, Keifer’s advisor and another dragon rider, asked.
“But, what I didn’t know, at the time, was that the ownership wasn’t completely dissolved. Although Sascha thought it was, it wasn’t. Robert had just been buying time until he needed the two of us again.” He dropped his head into his hands, looking defeated. “The moment came last year, and that’s when I woke up and realized that I didn’t have any other choice but do his bidding. He planted something inside of me that forced me to his will.”
“The geis,” I supplied for the others.
Merrick looked at me and nodded his thanks, his eyes skittering past Wink’s hot gaze before he could truly read the anger written all over her.
“The geis,” he confirmed. “I had no choice. Everything that I did was by force, and if I didn’t comply, my sister or my friends became targets.”
He gave a pointed look at Wink.
“We were never once threatened,” Wink shot back. “And since when do you have a sister?”
“He found my sister—who I hadn’t seen since we were split up in foster care—and thought she’d do just as well as the others,” Merrick frowned. “He tortured her and her mate, but the geis kept me from doing a damn thing about it. And I’ve spent the last month trying to make everything I fucked up right again. Found my sister’s mate’s dragon, too. But…,” he hesitated. “Can one of you close off this room so what I have to say doesn’t leave this room?”
He looked out the window nervously.
Derek waved his hand, and my ears popped.
“Done,” he said. “Continue.”
Merrick stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the lawn.
All of the dragons were out there.
Every last one of them that was a part of the sanctuary was on the back lawn.
It was definitely a sight to see.
When he got his fill of what he was looking at, he turned to stare at the room as a whole.
“He has more dragons. At least twenty of them.”
That statement dropped like a lead balloon in the small room, and the women gasped.
“Fucking shit,” Keifer growled. “Goddammit.”
Merrick nodded his head.
“And I think…,” he hesitated. “I think that one of the dragons is the mated pair to another of your dragons.”
