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A loud snarl in his head snapped his thoughts out of the swirling fog and he cursed himself. Saved by his dragon. He’d let the damned iara distract him when he should have been paying attention to his mate, who was in danger.
Jerking his gaze to Luka, he found his mate leaning back on his hands away from the iara as if he’d intended to crawl away from her but was now frozen.
His dragon didn’t like this. Not at fucking all. It was clawing at his insides to shift and let it tear the iara apart, but he couldn’t act. Not yet. Amaru needed time to gather as much of the song as possible.
The iara swam closer and closer, her song growing louder, but it couldn’t touch his mind now. His thoughts were full of Luka and his own frantic dragon. Why didn’t Luka move? Was he even breathing? He needed to give some sign to show he was okay.
The devil fish lifted up out of the water enough so that the waves lapped at the undersides of her breasts. Her sleek dolphin-like tail splashed out of the water once as if excited. She placed one web-fingered hand on the edge of the rock where Luka was resting. Reaching out her left hand, her black-clawed fingers just touched the toe of Luka’s hiking boot and Vasily’s control snapped.
Power rushed through him, stretching muscles and reforming bones into his dragon form in the blink of an eye. He extended one wing over Amaru’s head to protect the mage from falling debris. The iara had snatched her hand back from Luka but not withdrawn completely, as if still debating whether she could pull her prey into the dark, swirling waters.
Vasily pushed his head through the brush and snarled low and deep in the back of his throat. “Mine.”
Luka tipped his head back toward Vasily and grinned. “Took you long enough,” the bastard taunted, proving he’d had no problems with the iara’s song.
The iara let out an ear-piercing screech and dove into the water, disappearing in a quick splash.
“You were waiting for me?” Vasily grumbled.
Luka leaned his head in, bumping his forehead against Vasily’s snout just like he did when they were both in their dragon forms. “I know you like to rescue me every once in a while.”
Vasily huffed. Cheeky wretch. He shifted back to his human form and turned his attention to his other mate, who was screwing the lid on the final jar. Amaru pulled the song-canceling plugs from his ears and scooped up the jar at his feet.
“Look at that! We filled two jars! Two!” The mage did a strange little dance as he held the jar in the air.
“That’s good?” Luka asked as he walked over to join them.
“Good? It’s amazing!” He held the jars up to both of them. Inside each of them was a purplish cyclone that was battering the sides of the glass. “You can tell by the dark color that she was very old and powerful. That means we have more than enough to work the spells on the slumber system, help Sam, and still have plenty left over to help tons of cursed Jaeggi. We shouldn’t have to harvest from another iara for a long time.”
“Excellent. One down,” Vasily murmured.
Amaru flashed them a bright grin. “And one step closer to freeing my people.”
He couldn’t sleep.
He’d slept at one point, thanks to a pair of tantalizing dragons determined to wear his ass out.
When the sex was over, he was just a pile of sweaty, limp limbs trapped under two dragons. There wasn’t any better place to be in all the world. He’d passed out to the feeling of someone gently wiping his body with a cool, damp rag.
But now he was awake, his brain racing and heart pounding for no reason whatsoever.
Normally, people liked to sleep. Sleep meant rest and hopefully feeling refreshed the next morning. He used to feel that way about it. After five hundred years of being locked in his own skin, knowing that something was wrong but unable to force his eyelids open, sleep was the furthest thing from restful. Now, sleep felt like a prison.
Amaru knew this was not the right way to look at it. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew the human body needed rest. He could manage naps—something less than an hour. But true, deep sleep? Emotionally, he just could not look at it the same way. It was why he kept avoiding Sora whenever the man tried to talk to him about it. He knew he was being irrational, he did. He did know sleeping now would not mean he would be asleep for another five hundred years. But explain that to his panic. Reason with his anxiety. Amaru had tried and utterly failed.
Nope. No going back to sleep now even if he was comfortable. Soft snoring drifted from both Vasily and Luka, providing a pleasant harmony to the night sounds trickling out of the forest around them.
