Cunning Dragon (Dragon Echoes Book 2) Read online

  Lisa could feel his muscles tense under her hand as he clenched his fist. Pent up frustration showed in every line of his body.

  “Fighting isn’t the only way to help,” she said softly.

  “It is when your family is at war,” Verrian shot back. “What use is anything else? Yes, maybe I could have helped morale, or something, but how could I when everyone was trapped in the Mesmer? Now that I’ve woken up to even more war, I’m just as useless.”

  Lisa was torn. She didn’t want to minimise his very real feelings, but she did disagree with them. “You’re not useless,” she said firmly. “Distracting Rita last night helped us get away. That was the opposite of useless. Sometimes being cunning is more useful than just using strength.”

  Verrian shrugged. “It wouldn’t have helped much if it hadn’t worked. Sure, it was only Rita, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But what if it had been Ultrima? It wouldn’t have worked then.”

  “But it did work,” Lisa said firmly. “So that wasn’t an issue.”

  “It won’t work every time,” Verrian insisted. “In the middle of a battle, a real battle, I’m useless.”

  His voice was filled with raw emotion, so intense and overwhelming, Lisa didn’t even know what to do with it. As though once he opened up, he needed to let it all out.

  She wanted to reassure him, but it was clear that wasn’t working. Maybe he needed to vent more yet.

  “What happened in the battle?” she asked softly.

  Verrian stared at his hands, silent for a few moments, obviously reliving the moment. “We were all still reeling,” he said, his voice quiet. “Ultrian had tried to force himself upon Sarian, and Warrian had stopped him. He hadn’t been called Ultrima then. His name had the common Rian at the end, like all Rian clan dragons. And he’d denied the accusation, even though my brother had caught him red handed. Even worse, the other lightning dragons supported him. Almost all of them left when he did. It was the first time our clan had split.”

  It must have been a shock to the dragons. Lisa had been around them enough to be aware that they were very proud of their clan. A split like that must have been a big blow. Of course they’d been reeling.

  “Then Ultrian turned up,” Verrian continued. “That was when he announced his new name, Ultrima, and his new clan. He insisted that we needed to recognise his independence, and allow him, as a prince, to court the princess.”

  “What did you think of that?”

  Verrian laughed. “Warrian laughed in his face. Sarian, as befitting her position of head of our clan, considered him regally. Then she told him that no change in stature would change her mind.” Verrian’s voice was proud as he described his sister. Then it fell. “That was when Ultrima attacked.”

  “He attacked your sister? Some way to win her affection!” Lisa hadn’t liked Ultrima in the first place, his tendency to attack her friends probably had something to do with that, but this new information was a step above that. If the dragon thought attacking a woman was the way to gain her affection, then there was no limit to how far he would stoop.

  “No, it was Warrian he focused on, but it didn’t matter. An attack on any member of our family was an attack on all of us.”

  This fact only changed Lisa’s opinion a smidge, and it probably made little difference to the dragons. They knew how to do family. Not like her family.

  “But surely he didn’t stand a chance?” she said. “There were six of you, weren’t there?”

  This was the bit of the dragon’s story she had never understood. Even with other lightning dragons behind him, how had Ultrima, with only one sixth of the clan’s numbers, managed to beat them so thoroughly?

  A frown crossed Verrian’s face. “I don’t know how he did it. I haven’t had a chance to discuss the battle with my brothers and sisters, but the outcome was certainly strange. It was almost as if our attacks couldn’t damage him, no matter how hard we tried.”

  Lisa wrinkled her nose. She knew that Taurian’s attacks had damaged Ultrima, she’d seen it. And crashing her car into him certainly had. So why hadn’t attacks damaged him in the battle? Had someone been protecting him?”

  Then it hit her. “The life dragon.”

  “What?”

  “Ultrima has a life dragon. Maybe that protected him?”

  Verrian’s eyes grew round. “He does? How? Only lightning dragons left with him. I’m sure of it. At the time, there were only two life dragons in our clan, and both of them remained on our side.”

  Lisa shrugged. She certainly didn’t understand how it worked. “Well, he does now. It was a problem in the last battle.”

  “Why did our own life dragon not counteract its effects?”

  Why was she the one breaking this news to him? Lisa took a deep breath. “Because the Rian clan has no life dragon. The last one died fifty years ago.”

  Verrian’s frown deepened. “That is not good. If Ultrima has a life dragon and we don’t, what hope do we have of ever defeating him?”

  “You have us,” Lisa said firmly. “And as I’ve said before, we nearly beat Ultrima in the last battle. There is hope yet.”

  “Humans are small and weak,” Verrian said firmly, as though it were a phrase he’d repeated many times. “No offence,” he added. “But how could you possible defeat a dragon when the six of us couldn’t?”

  He didn’t get it, did he?

  “There’s a lot more to winning a battle than just being big and strong.” Lisa told him. “Humans have had a long history of defeating enemies far bigger than us by outthinking them. If you know your own strengths and weaknesses, you can work with that. For example, humans use technology. We’re not limited by our own size or strength. We can build things that are far bigger, far stronger, and far more capable than we are. That’s how we’ve become the dominant creature on this planet.”

  Verrian was frowning. “Dragons do this too,” he agreed. “Each dragon is taught to learn the strengths and weaknesses of their powers, and learn how to use them to their advantage.”

  “That’s good,” Lisa encouraged. “You must have learned some ways to use your sound powers then.”

  “Sure,” Verrian said self-depreciatingly. “It was all about how to convince people of something rather than fighting them. How to charm them and convince them of your side of an argument. You see, until Ultrima left our clan and attacked us, we hadn’t fought anyone for hundreds of years. Rian clan was the only dragon clan on this continent, so there was no one to fight.”

  Lisa was running out of ideas. All his points were perfectly valid. Why would he have learned to fight if there was no one to fight? This war with Ultrima had obviously come out of the blue. So how could she help him?

  Why did it matter? It didn’t make any difference to her if he had issues. This matter would be sorted out soon, and then she’d be heading home, and what happened to Verrian would have nothing to do with her.

  Rather than making her feel less responsible, that thought just made her feel sad.

  She might not like fighting dragons, their magical powers might even frighten her, but she couldn’t deny that hanging around with them was far more fun and exciting than anything else in her life had ever been.

  That was why she wanted to help Verrian. Because helping him meant she was still part of this adventure, even though her part in waking him was over.

  In the back of her mind, she suspected that wasn’t really true, but she ignored the implications.

  She opened her mouth and started talking to keep those thoughts at bay, without even really thinking of what she was going to say. “You just have to figure out some way that your powers can help in a fight then.”

  “How?” Verrian demanded. “You think I haven’t thought of that? But how can sound be used to attack? It’s not physical. It’s mental. It can help to diffuse the tension in tense situations, but if they’ve already escalated to physical fighting, then no amount of distraction or talking can help.”

  Fr
ustration laced his voice, and Lisa almost regretted her thoughtless words. She wasn’t helping. She was only making things worse.

  “But…” She searched her mind for something to help, some way to turn this around. Then it hit her. “But sound is physical,” she pointed out. “There are, like, sound waves, or something. Those are real, physical things, aren’t they?”

  She should have paid more attention to her high school science. Then she might be able to give a better answer. But it hadn’t occurred to her that any of it would ever matter.

  Verrian shrugged. “Sure, sound is physical. The vibration in the air is what causes it. But it’s so small and insignificant. It takes a very loud noise to even damage ears, and they are small and delicate. How could that be useful in a battle?”

  It was almost like he was looking for an excuse. “Well, Chase’s fireworks do more to distract the other dragons than to harm them, but it sure helped. If they aren’t sure where attacks are coming from, then they’re going to be wasting a lot of time and energy looking for them.”

  It wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t what Verrian was looking for, but she didn’t know how else to help. She wasn’t the right person to help him. She wasn’t any good at this.

  She was still struggling to deal with the fact that she wanted to so badly.

  Chapter 6

  Verrian could tell from the way Lisa’s shoulders slumped that she felt like giving up. It may have made him feel better, to share his troubles with her, but the truth was, he was burdening her yet again. It was bad enough that it was his fault she’d been stuck at her parent’s, now she felt she needed to help him with something that shouldn’t be an issue.

  He didn’t blame her for wanting to give up. He had moments when he did too. Moments when he wanted to go back to the way life was before. When his clan had been whole and happy, and they had time for dancing and singing rather than fighting.

  But wishing for things to be different was a fool’s errand. They were what they were, and he had to live with it.

  “I appreciate your help,” he said gently. “But this is my problem. I will find a solution.”

  Somehow.

  Lisa frowned. “There has to be something,” she insisted. “I really wish I could remember more of my high school science, then I’d probably know what you could do. I bet Karla could suggest something.”

  For some reason, the thought of opening up to Taurian’s human wife made Verrian extremely uncomfortable. Yes, he’d just told his whole sob story to Lisa, but that was different. They had some sort of connection.

  Karla was just a disembodied voice over the phone.

  The fact that his brother had mated with her though, had to mean she was someone of worth.

  Once he met her, he’d probably see her the same way he saw Lisa. They were both human women. It wasn’t like he knew Lisa well enough to feel something for her.

  Yes, they’d slept together, but that didn’t mean much.

  Not enough to explain why he’d told her about his worries so readily.

  Verrian shook his head. He didn’t want to examine the possible reasons that closely.

  “It doesn’t matter right now, anyway,” he said. “Hopefully there won’t be any fighting and we just need to stay quiet until things settle down. I’m sure once I’m back with my clan, I will figure out a solution. Everything was so unexpected, we didn’t have any time to plan the battle last time. When we have a plan, I’m sure it will be fine.”

  He only meant to sidestep the discussion that was making him feel bad. He didn’t even think about the fact that his words might sound dismissive of Lisa’s help, but her face fell.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m sure your family will have a lot better ideas than I do.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” Verrian said immediately. How did he manage to put his foot in it every time? He’d been trying to take some pressure off her, not make her think he didn’t want her help.

  It hit Verrian that he did want her help. Very much.

  When he was with her, he… well, it wasn’t that he felt any less useless…

  He just didn’t feel so alone.

  Lisa shook her head. “No, it’s okay,” she said, her cheery voice forced. “Once this is sorted out, I’ll be heading home anyway. So it really doesn’t matter.”

  Home? Her comment distracted him from his own bad feelings. “But we just left your home,” he said in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t live with my parents,” Lisa explained. “I live a few hours away in the city. I have an apartment there, and a job. I was just here on holidays and got dragged into this mess by accident. I’ve loved helping out, but if I don’t go home soon, I’ll lose my job.”

  A few hours drive away?

  Verrian wanted to protest the thought of Lisa being so far away. He wanted to insist that the dragons needed her help.

  He needed her help.

  But that would be selfish.

  And unfair. He’d already been too much of a drain on her. And since he had no intention of getting any more involved with her than he already had been, insisting she stay would be under false pretences. She deserved better than that.

  She wasn’t any more interested in a long term relationship than he was, so what did it matter? Better not to pretend that either of them felt something they didn’t.

  “Hopefully we’ll hear from Karla soon and find out where to go from here,” Verrian said. “You’ll be able to go home soon.”

  Her eyes flew to his and it hit him. She didn’t want to go. Not anymore than he wanted her to.

  What were they going to do about this?

  It had to be the result of the close connection from the Mesmer bond. What they needed to do was to get out of here as soon as possible and get some distance.

  What they should not do, under any circumstances, was let themselves get closer.

  As soon as he thought that though, he was achingly aware of her hand still on his knee, and her leg pressing up against his. He could almost smell the light floral scent of her hair. He could definitely hear her heart beating as fast as his was.

  The urge to lean in closer and kiss her was overwhelming.

  He knew he should ignore it. Knew that it wasn’t real. He only wanted it so badly because he couldn’t have it. It had to be a product of the Mesmer bond. It would only get worse if he gave in.

  But it wasn’t like they would have to be around each other forever. In a few days, she’d be going home, as she’d said, and once they had that distance between them, this crazy feeling would fade. It was amazing it had lasted this long, really. The connection from the Mesmer bond should have faded long ago.

  The way he still felt so attached to her must be because he had no one else. Being separated from his family and clan made him feel vulnerable. It made sense that he wanted to latch onto anyone who felt familiar. Once he was back with his clan, it would fade.

  Given all that, it wouldn’t hurt to give in to it, just for a few hours, would it?

  They’d only slept together once. He could sleep with her again without any risk.

  His thoughts hung in the balance, torn between desire and common sense.

  “I’m not sure I want to go home,” Lisa whispered. Her eyes were haunted. She was feeling this as strongly as he was, and she was just as thrown by it. “My life is going to seem very boring after all this.”

  This connection he had with her felt like it was never going to fade. Like it was something bigger than either of them.

  Lisa wanted it too. He could see it in her eyes. This was something he could give her. Something that might just make up for being so useless at everything else.

  Her need for him melted the last of his resolve.

  “I don’t want you to go either,” he whispered back.

  This should feel dangerous. Like something he needed to think about more. But it didn’t.

  It felt right. Very right.

  He bent
his lips to hers.

  As soon as they touched, desire hummed through him. His whole body felt as taut as a bow string. This was a mistake. The desire would only grow if he gave in to it, but he couldn’t convince himself to back out now.

  Lisa’s fingers tightened on his knee and her breathing deepened.

  She didn’t pull back or protest. In fact, she leaned in closer.

  There were worse things than mating, weren’t there? He wouldn’t even mind being bonded to one woman for the rest of his life if he could feel like this every day.

  “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.”

  The drawling voice snapped Verrian to attention. Adrenaline flooded his veins, sending his heart rate soaring and his temperature rising. He jerked back and his eyes flew open.

  Lisa jumped up as well, both of them turning towards the window.

  A young man stood there, his scent proclaiming him a dragon even as his silver hair and eyes marked him as a lightning dragon.

  Trima clan.

  Not Ultrima at least.

  Thank goodness for small mercies.

  Not that Verrian was too sure it would help. He’d never won a fight against any dragon before.

  But he wasn’t going to let that stop him. If he died protecting Lisa, then his death would have been worth it. “You need to run,” he hissed at her.

  Without stopping to see if she obeyed, he sprang to his feet, reaching out his hand, not even trying to stop his fingernails elongating into claws and his pupils slitting into dragon eyes.

  The only other people here to see his display already knew exactly who he was.

  Lisa, of course, didn’t run. Her eyes widened and she put out a hand. Whether she intended to try to stop him or not, Verrian’s wasn’t sure. And he didn’t wait to find out. He shook off her hand before it could take hold, and strode towards the window.

  “If you think you can just barge in here and comment on what I’m up to, you have another thing coming,” he snarled. “Where’s your ‘prince’? He doesn’t have time to come himself?”

  The Trima dragon seemed unfazed. He didn’t even step backwards. “Oh, he’ll be here soon. I already told him where you were.”