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“Did he?” Mara asked.
“He told me to hold out my hand. That he needed to be able to connect with me. My pendant was under my nightie, so he didn’t realize that the reason I was invisible to him was Adara’s protection pendant.” She held up her wrist and flashed the silver rune. “He placed this there, and he has had the ability to track me ever since. He told me I was to leave my family as soon as I turned eighteen. Mom insisted I leave at graduation, so I wasn’t near you when he came. He was looking for magic, but you still appeared not to have any. None he could sense anyway.”
Mara put her hand to her mouth. “Mom told you to leave?”
Alana nodded. “We both assumed you didn’t have magic and couldn’t protect yourself from him. From that day till the day I left, Mom warded me every time I left the house. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they didn’t work on him. He has always been able to track me. As much as it hurt when she asked me to leave, it was the right choice.”
“How does he track you with the pendant? What does that mark do?”
Alana rubbed the rune on her wrist. “It’s like a magical tag. It alerts him when I am close to an artifact that contains magic. I think it is getting weaker as my magic grows. It has been inert since I acquired my onyx circle. Kell said it was a dragon rune and was used to link an unbonded couple prior to mating. When the druid was still too young.”
“Allorin did this?” Mara asked.
Alana shook her head. “He has used a few names. I looked into him now and then. While I didn’t know what he was at first, I do now. He is listed as an acquisitions clerk for the Dark Art Gallery. He is a dark dragon.”
Kell growled from the other room as he stood from the table. “You are linked to a dark, and you did not tell me.”
Alana wrapped her arms around her middle. “It’s been there since I was fifteen and I only recently found out about the dragons. Mom wasn’t sure what he was, and he didn’t attack. He only declared me as his.”
“You belong to me,” Kell snapped.
Alana huffed. “You make it sound like I wanted to have some stalker dragon tied to me for the last eight years. Do you have any idea what it has been like? You should, because when I was at my worst, I connected with you. I thought you were my imagination attempting to work through my trauma, but I was wrong. I’m sorry I don’t live up to your standards, but get in line. I don’t live up to anyone’s.”
Mara stood. “Is that what you think, Alana? That you need to be something other than who you are?”
Alana met her sister’s stare. “You haven’t heard the worst part. I wouldn’t forgive me if I were you until you know the rest.”
Mara glanced at Legion. The dragon leader was leaning against the entrance of the living room. Her face was a mask of indecision, as if she wanted to hold on to those childhood memories the sisters had shared. That Alana’s next words would shatter the last of her illusions about her sister’s intentions. “Tell me everything, Alana.”
“I told you I tried to cast a spell. He was there the next day. He took me aside. He simply froze Mom and you, so we could have a private conversation. He told me my mother was dying and that he would cure her if I agreed to spend my life with him after my twenty-third birthday.”
Mara swallowed. “You had to say no. He wasn’t your mate and Mom would never have wanted you to be a blood donor for a dark dragon, even if it meant her life.”
“That’s the thing. I could have agreed and gone back on my word. I was fifteen. Mom could have had six or seven years before I was forced to renege on that deal.”
Kell shook his head. “If you did not agree to this link, how was he able to accomplish it?”
Alana frowned. “He just chanted a spell, and the rune formed.”
Mara moved toward her sister. “Alana, you were in an impossible situation and too young to know what to do.”
“I called him using magic. I wasn’t supposed to. His coming here was my fault.”
Mara shook her head. “No, it isn’t. The darks were looking for druids long before we emerged. They likely would have found us, anyway.”
Alana held her sister’s kind gaze. “Mom siphoned money from the shop to give me. She transferred fifty thousand dollars into my account the day I left and told me her cancer was back. You know how things went financially after that. I was the reason the store couldn’t recoup its losses.”
Legion rubbed his forehead. The dragon leader had paid off all of Mara’s debt, but that was after years of Mara and Natalie struggling to survive.
Mara sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Alana. You were manipulated and you can’t keep beating yourself up for a choice you made when you were fifteen. This dragon is thousands of years old. He has far more experience at manipulation than you do.”
Legion pointed to the rune. “This is slightly different from a bonding rune. Tell me how it works?”
Alana touched the silver mark. “It alerts him when I stay in one place too long. That usually means I have found something of interest because I don’t have a fixed address and I stay on the move. I rarely stay at the same hotel or hostel in the same calendar year.”
Mara blinked. “You don’t have an apartment? How do you check your emails?”
“I keep a few clothes in a locker in each city. I move my computer between them and only take what I need for the night at each hotel. I have had to leave too many things behind. I can’t sleep too long, or he tracks me.”
