“At least you’re in good company.”
“Yeah, the Fucked-Over Club. Hooray. That makes it so much better.”
She popped him on the arm.
Shocked, he gaped at her. “You have absolutely no fear of me, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Given my track record? Yeah, you should. I live to make meals off tender morsels like you.”
Scoffing, she walked right up and smirked in his face. “Have you seen my track record, buddy? Between the two of us, you should probably be the one afraid.”
“Now you’re just trying to turn me on.”
“And that does it for you, huh?”
With a wicked grin, he glanced down at the bulge in his jeans. “Apparently.”
Medea blushed as she realized that he wasn’t joking. He really was turned on.
Even worse? She wasn’t offended by it.
Instead, it sent a wave of unexpected desire through her. And another of great curiosity. One that didn’t really bear investigating. Or thinking about, as it led her thoughts into very dangerous territory.
“So how long has it been?” he asked.
“For what?”
A teasing grin curved his lips. “That long, huh? You can’t even remember what I’m asking?”
More heat crept over her cheeks. “It’s been a while. Hard to cozy up to men you know are only one minute away from death. Especially after you’ve already lost your heart and soul—the last of the good ones.” She gave him a gimlet stare. “What about you?”
“I know exactly how long it’s been since I last slept with someone. I wasn’t asking me about me.”
She snorted irritably at his continued sarcasm. “You’re avoiding my question.”
“I know. And I would like to continue avoiding it, as I just had a nasty altercation over this very topic.”
“Meaning?”
He rubbed at his eye. “I was briefly and I do mean b-r-i-e-f-l-y involved with an Amazon dragonslayer.”
She paused to gape at him. “I beg your pardon … are you insane?”
“Yeah, well, in my defense, it worked out well for both my brothers. They’re quite happily married to dragonslayer dragonswans. In my case on the dating front, not so much. She definitely wanted to skin my hide more than climb it. But she’s the only reason I hung around Sanctuary as long as I did.”
“You were trying to work it out?”
“Not really. Even my masochism has its limits. I was getting ready to leave when you showed up.”
Medea didn’t know why, but she felt bad for him. And a little jealous. But in the end, her curiosity got the best of her as she slowed her stride. “So what went wrong?”
“As long as I was in a human body, she was fine. Sadly, I can’t stay in one. Sooner or later, I have to be what I am. And human’s not it. The moment I shifted and Tis was reminded that I’m an animal, she lost her human mind.”
Medea tried to imagine what he must look like as a dragon. It was hard to think of this insanely hot man with scales and claws. To think of him as a massive beast.
Of course, he was massively large in human form, too. Even his hands were gigantic.
Which made her even more curious.…
“So how is it you can shapeshift? I didn’t think a full-blooded drakomai could do that.”
“Most can’t.”
She arched a brow at him. “But…”
This time, he was the one who paused. He turned to look at her as if he wanted to see her expression. “I can shift for the same reason your father can.”
You’re an ass was the first thought she had, but it was quickly followed by the truth.
A truth that slapped her hard.
No …
Her stomach shrank. “You’re a demigod.”
“Technically, I’m a full god who was cursed at my birth.”
Oh yeah, now an ulcer was starting to form. Either that, or she was getting ready to give birth to a diamond, because her stomach clenched hard enough to create one in the pit of her belly. “What?”
“You know,” he said sarcastically. “Both my parents were gods. My mother made a play for the head of her pantheon, and when his wife found out, she reacted as any goddess would. Sadly, my mother’s powers weren’t what she thought them to be, and she learned the hard way how weak she was in comparison to Shyamala.”
Medea furrowed her brow as she tried to follow his explanation. “Shyamala? I don’t know a goddess with that name.”
“Yeah, you do. You just know her by her more contemporary name. Azura.”
Medea felt the blood drain from her cheeks as she made the most horrific connection ever.
If Azura was the goddess who cursed his mother for dabbling with her mate, there was only one male god who could have fathered him.
Holy fucking shit …
“You’re a son of Noir.”
The king god of all evil.
8
Falcyn let out a long, tired sigh. “No one can help who their parents are.”
“Yeah, but Noir … I didn’t know he had any children.”
“We are few and far between, as Azura can’t stand us and tends to put a hit on us from the moment we’re conceived. Most of our mothers never survive to birth us.”
Little wonder he was so paranoid. Angry.
And fierce.
No doubt he’d been looking over his shoulder his entire life.
“What happened to your mother?”
“As soon as Azura found out, my mother, Lilith, was cast from her pantheon, turned into a demon, and villainized. Of course, my mother didn’t go quietly into the good night. Her wrath was such that she over-embraced her new role as lead bitch, and began plotting revenge on them all.”
Medea had to bite back a sarcastic laugh at that. Azura and Noir were two of the most lethal and dangerous gods the universe had ever spat out. It said a lot about his mother that she’d ever think to take them on—it was something her own mother might have done in her youth.
Lilith was either extremely brave or radically stupid. Yet honestly, Medea couldn’t imagine anyone being enough of either to ever try to take on one primal power.
Never mind two …
His mother’s reputation in history was starting to make sense.
“How did she hope to defeat them?”
“She and her sisters began to breed a race of dragons to take down all the pantheons. If they were cursed to only birth monsters, they decided they were going to make the most of it and use us to battle them.”
“No wonder your childhood was bleak.”
Fire lit his eyes, turning them a vibrant orange. “You have no idea.”
Was he serious?
“No idea what it means to be cursed? To bleed for the actions of others over something I had no part in? Oh, yeah. I have no concept whatsoever of what that’s like. At all.”
Falcyn winced as he realized how stupid he must have sounded to make such a complaint to her. An Apollite. Of all the creatures, in all the worlds, she was the only one who understood him. Who knew exactly his pain. “Sorry. Forgot my audience.”
She shrugged with a nonchalance he was sure she didn’t really feel. “It’s fine. I learned long ago that no one is immune from misery. And some of us, it stalks like its favorite bitch in heat.”
He paused to cup her cheek. “I’m sorry for all you’ve lost. Innocents should never be forced to pay for the acts of others. Each drop of blood shed by them is an indictment against the entire world for its heartlessness.”
She placed her hand over his as her eyes burned him with the depth of her pain and courage. His gut tightened as she met his gaze and he saw the truth inside her. Saw the horrors she didn’t dare speak about because they hurt so much that to give voice to them only crippled you more. So the only way to survive was to bury the agony so deep that you could overlook it most days, and to pray to the gods that you never cracked open the door where they were kept.
And still her gaze burned him deep inside his soul. “You were the first dragon made, weren’t you?”
He winced at a truth he never spoke of. Many suspected, but he’d never confirmed nor denied it. Not even Max knew for certain. A tiny, tiny handful of others knew, and they never breathed a word of it.