Chapter Twenty-Seven

Skye worried that it had been too long already. In his own timeframe, it had been the blink of an eye, but humans lived their lives much more quickly. Three weeks may have seemed like a lifetime to Melody.

The truth was, every second since he and Garen had read her letter had been another second too long away from her. As Garen flew alongside Skye, carried along by the jet stream over the Rocky Mountains, he could sense the other dragon’s urgency, a mirror to his own.

They hadn’t wasted time after leaving Kol’s office, heading straight to the roof and shifting together the second they realized Alec was alive and would likely have returned to Melody’s mother—exactly where they knew Melody to have gone already.

They’d taken off right way, with the wind off the Pacific carrying them soaring over the city for miles before they had to resort to their own power to keep them aloft. They’d flown through the night, over city lights, small towns, and pitch-dark wilderness of the country as it passed beneath them. The sun had fully risen and they needed to land before they were seen, but Skye could finally sense her energy, the faint tendrils still discernible amid all the other human impressions beneath him.

~“She is close!”~ Garen sent to him, just before diving lower to the ground, searching. They were over a rural area now and the worst he could do was spook some livestock. Skye followed.

Before he knew it, they’d found her. Her lush figure stood, face upturned to the morning sky, a straw hat in one hand in the middle of a flower garden, her golden hair streaming behind her in a breeze. The emotions that reached him were odd, however—subtly more jaded than the Melody he remembered, but happy. Maybe even too happy, considering what he and Garen had put her through. He slowed his flight, hesitating, but Garen sped up.

~“She will see us for what we are finally.”~ Garen’s elation was infectious, but didn’t dampen Skye’s worry. They shouldn’t approach her this way—not after the time they’d had apart. Yet he could sense his friend’s need to reach her after so long. In spite of Skye’s sleeker, quicker form, Garen had more stamina. After the long flight, the Guardian still possessed too much energy for him to overcome.

Melody’s blonde head glimmered in the morning light. She was surrounded by purple daisies and looked completely at home and purely content, just before they came around to hover right before her, wings still flapping to slow them down.

That was when she opened her eyes and he realized they’d both made a huge mistake.

There was no turning around now, though. Not when the woman’s blue eyes, so much like Melody’s, went wide with fear upon seeing the pair of winged monsters that had just landed outside her garden fence. Garen’s dismay hit Skye as swiftly as his own and they both shifted and clothed themselves. But the damage was done, as evidenced by the scream the woman who wasn’t Melody let out before brandishing her gardening spade at them both.

“Get the ~fuck~ out of my garden!” Her aura flashed dangerously close to panic, and in spite of the vehemence of her yell, Skye could only sense terror coming from her.

He held his hands out, palms up and let out a long exhaled breath, sending it toward her to attempt to reason with her from the inside.

“I must apologize, Julia. We didn’t intend to startle you. We came for Melody—and from the air, you looked like her.” He grimaced at the tone of his words, and the mistake—Melody’s energy was so close he could feel it reaching for him, but the threads he should have followed didn’t end in this garden. The woman before them had obviously not been mated yet, in spite of their understanding to the contrary, and was now panicking at being presented with two seemingly alien creatures landing on her property, and Skye essentially telling her, “We come in peace.”

She backed up several paces when he took a step toward her, her eyes widening. The red handle of a shovel jutted out of the earth behind her and he tried to tell her to watch her step, but she sped up, paying no heed to her direction as long as it was away from them. She kept moving back, holding the spade out in front of her. A second too late, he saw her foot falter on a clod of dirt and she lost her balance, arms flailing.

“Watch out!” he yelled, surging toward her and barely catching her as her temple grazed the corner of the shovel’s blade just below the end of the handle.

She fell limp as he caught her in his arms, her head lolling back and a thin stream of blood trickling over her cheek. He sent his breath deeper into her mind, testing, and with relief determined she wasn’t badly damaged, but she would have a headache when she woke up.

“Come heal her, quickly,” he called to Garen. His friend approached and with a gentle swipe of his hand, Garen uncovered the gash at the edge of her brow bone.

Garen gazed down at the woman in Skye’s arms. “She’s beautiful. Sweet Mother, Melody is the spitting image of her.”

“Melody’s not this fragile,” Skye observed, marveling at the light, delicate weight of the woman in his arms. He could sense every bone, and the depth of emotional stress that had left the woman so light. She was still infused with deep loss. The steady, healthy glow of her aura let him know that she was just coming back from it. Would Melody have wound up in the same state as this woman if they’d stayed away longer?

Garen bent over her, nearly pressing his lips to her skin to let out a concentrated healing breath that closed the wound. He was just pulling back when the blast of wind hit them, a flurry of wings sending them flying and claws simultaneously extracting the limp body from Skye’s grasp.

“What have you done?” the deep, resonant voice boomed.

The unrestrained power in the voice made Skye blink in confusion. He stared up into the eyes of the largest Gold dragon he’d ever met, Melody’s mother gently cradled in his grasp. The dragon shifted her body to one giant claw, caressing her still bloodied cheek delicately with one long, shining claw.

Her lids fluttered, and with a puff of air from his lungs, the Gold shifted into the form of a large, blond, and very naked man.

“Alec?” she whispered. “What happened?”

“Shh, baby. You fell and hit your head, that’s all.”

~“You haven’t mated her, have you?”~ Skye said silently.

Alec ignored him, smiling with such love down at the woman in his arms, oblivious to how naked he was.

~“Why have you waited?”~ Skye asked, standing up and following when Alec turned to walk away. Garen followed close on his heels, brushing dark dirt off his own backside.

“There was something here …” Julia said, her voice quavering. “Did I hallucinate it all?” Her head turned to look over Alec’s shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of Garen and Skye still following. She pounded on Alec’s shoulder. “Stop! It was real. They’re still here! Jesus Christ, they’re as big as you.”

Alec glanced over his shoulder, glaring at Skye. “Yes, love. They won’t hurt you. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I make sure you’re all right.” A cloud of gold smoke drifted from his nostrils and settled over Julia’s body.

She sighed when his breath took effect and rested her head against his shoulder. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes, honey?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said in an indulgent tone. His breath trailed over his own body, coalescing into a pair of worn jeans and a white t-shirt. A pair of brown work boots materialized around his feet.

Skye’s impatience finally got away from him and he called after them both. “Where is Melody?”

“I’m right here. And where the fuck have ~you~ been?”