The Lost Barinov Dragon (Brothers of Ash and Fire Book 4)

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Excerpt from Barrow’s Journal – My Year with Dragons

Like many creatures in the animal kingdom, dragons mate for life. There are possible true mates, which provide dragons with a bond so deep that the dragons can hear each other’s thoughts, sense each other’s feelings, and sometimes see what their mate can as though viewing it from their eyes. But this bond has its dangers. If one of the dragons in a true-mated pair dies, the other suffers from mate grief, an emotional response so strong that the remaining dragon dies shortly after its mate. It is the curse of dragonkind to have such a weakness.

Madelyn leaned against the banister at the top of the stairs in her palatial home in the wilds of Russia.

“Grigori, come put Jackson to bed!”

After four years, she was still getting used to living in such a massive house, with crown molding on the ceilings, gilded furniture, and priceless works of art hanging on the walls. It felt like a museum at times, but a comfortable one that she could live in.

“Grigori!” she shouted again. “Your son. Bed. Now!” She knew he could hear her. She’d used her “mom” voice, with a bit of her own thunderbird voice thrown in, something she had learned could travel very, very far.

The door opened at the end of the hall, and Grigori stepped out. She had not realized he was so close.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were downstairs with Rurik and Mikhail.” She had last seen her husband and his two younger brothers having a drink in his study. It made her heart swell to see all three of them talking together. The last few years, they’d been separated across the globe: Mikhail in England, Rurik in Michigan, and Grigori here in Russia. This was the first time in the past year that all three brothers, their wives, and now their drakelings were under one roof. It was wonderful.

Madelyn smiled as her husband sauntered up to her in his sexy way. He still wore a three-piece gray suit because he’d had virtual meetings with his offices in Moscow most of the day. It reminded her of the first time she’d met him. He’d almost stalked her like a dragon hunting its prey, and she loved being the focus of his intense interest, like she was right now.

“Jackson needs tucking in, does he?” Grigori’s hands went to her hips, holding her still as he leaned in to kiss her. He inhaled her scent and groaned softly. “I never tire of your delicious smell, wife.” He nuzzled her throat, and Madelyn responded with weak-kneed desire. “It makes me want to devour you over and over.”

That brought back wonderfully erotic memories of when he’d threatened to eat her because she had been a virgin . . . and the way he’d eaten her out. She’d nearly died from pleasure.

“Keep doing that and Jackson will have a sibling,” she warned.

Her husband chuckled and gently bit the lobe of her ear. “Perhaps that is exactly what I want. Another little drakeling to run about the house.” He squeezed her bottom, and she melted into his arms to deliver a much deeper kiss.

“Hmm . . . I’m not opposed to that either,” Madelyn whispered. “Let’s go tuck our son in, and then we can find a quiet room with a bed and work on giving him a sister.”

Grigori growled in approval, his dragon rising to the surface and causing his eyes to swirl with gold.

A little boy’s voice piped up from down the hall. “Eww . . .”

Madelyn and Grigori stiffened and turned to see their son standing in the doorway to his bedroom.

“Jackson.” They sighed and tried not to laugh.

“Dad, will you tell me a story?” the boy asked.

Grigori scooped him up and carried him toward the child-size four-poster bed. It was a grand piece of furniture, but the grandeur was slightly offset by the brightly colored superhero sheets. Jackson adored all things superhero. Grigori grumbled all the time about how the boy should have dragon sheets since he was a dragon shifter.

Madelyn reminded Grigori that Jackson might also be a thunderbird. He’d sneezed last week and knocked his father and two uncles flat on the front lawn. If Jackson turned out to be a thunderbird like her, he would be a natural enemy of dragons (at least those who meant his family harm), and if he was able to transform, he could flap his wings and create a sonic boom that would knock any nearby dragons unconscious.

Madelyn, being the last of her kind, secretly hoped for Jackson to at least be partly thunderbird. She still had plenty of years to have drakelings; she just wanted one child to be like her. It wasn’t easy knowing she was the only one of her kind left because dragons like Grigori’s father had hunted her people down.

Grigori plopped Jackson into the bed and tucked him in, then sat down on the edge. Madelyn took the other side of the bed and brushed a hand over Jackson’s blond hair.

“What story do you want me to read? We have . . .” Grigori reached for the top book on the stack on the nightstand. “Harry Potter? You love him.” Grigori flipped through the pages, searching for a bookmarked spot to pick up where they’d last left off.

There was nothing more attractive to her than seeing her fierce, dangerous, sexy husband paging through a book about a boy wizard and gazing fondly at their son. Maybe it was time to work on another drakeling.

Jackson was four in human years, yet he had aged quicker mentally. His verbal communication skills were more like those of an eight-year-old.

“Not tonight. Tell me about the lost Barinov dragon.”

Grigori laughed. “But I thought you wanted to finish The Half-Blood Prince?”

“I know.” Jackson glanced down sheepishly, his tiny fingers playing with the bedsheets. “But the lost Barinov is my favorite story.”

“Very well, but you know I’m dying to know if Harry finds Sirius Black or not.” Grigori made a show of settling in, removing his suit coat and rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. Madelyn noted his muscled forearms and made herself a promise that later tonight she’d drag her husband to the nearest bed and enjoy all the things those arms could do.

“Once upon a time, there were two brothers. The brothers Barinov. Vasili, the elder, and Ivan, the younger. Vasili was a questing dragon, and Ivan was a hoarding dragon, the guardian who protected their treasures. The two brothers were close, like I am with your uncles. They loved each other fiercely and always protected each other. But the day came when it was time for Vasili to hunt for a dragon heart stone called the Heart of Sorrows. It was a sapphire the size of an apple, and it was said that the stone held the souls of ancient dragons.”

“Ancient dragons?” Jackson murmured in wonder, his blue eyes bright with excitement.

“Yes.” Grigori chuckled. “The most ancient. Some of them possessed powers we do not. They were said to be able to control the elements, and some could even see the future.”

“Tell me about Vasili’s mate,” Jackson prompted, keeping his father on track.

“Marina was a powerful battle dragon, the last in a line of ancient dragons who could control the elements. Much like your mother, she could make it rain or storm when she was upset, or even make the mountains rumble when she was angry. When she went to war against her enemies, she was almost unbeatable.”

“Tell me about the mountain,” Jackson said.

“She accompanied Vasili to a land far away with snowcapped mountains to find the Heart of Sorrows. They knew that if they could find the dragon heart stone, many lives would be saved. A new age of cooperation between the dragon clans might have been possible. But there were some dragons who didn’t want them to succeed. It was said that a great army was sent out to stop them, but if that is true, none of them are known to have returned. She and Vasili were never seen again.”

Madelyn heard the pain in Grigori’s voice that he could barely hide from their son. He had been close to his uncle, as had Rurik and Mikhail and losing him had hurt all three brothers deeply.

“But Vasili is not really gone,” Jackson said.

Grigori gave his son a little pat on the shoulder. “I am afraid he is. He and his mate died a long time ago.”

“But he didn’t die—he was lost,” the little boy said with solemnity.

“Yes, but—” Grigori started to say.

“But he’s not lost anymore, Dad. She found him,” Jackson said.

Grigori looked toward Madelyn helplessly. Trying to explain death to a child was not easy. Neither of them really knew what to do.

Jackson yawned. “You’ll see. She’ll bring him home.”

“Who is she?” Madelyn asked her son. “Do you mean his mate?” A breeze rippled along her skin, but none of the windows were open.

Her son nodded.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Grigori said. “She died too.”

“She did, but she came back for him,” the little boy said, as though it was so easy to understand.

“Okay, I think you have had too many of Dad’s stories tonight.” Madelyn stroked a hand through the little boy’s hair. “Now go to sleep.” She kissed him, and Grigori did the same before they turned off the lights and stepped into the hallway.

“Why was he talking about Vasili’s mate?” Madelyn asked.

“I don’t know. Children often try to change the parts of stories they do not like. I think it’s why he likes superheroes so much. They always save the day.” Grigori put an arm around Madelyn’s waist as they walked down the hall, but he paused at the top of the staircase.

“When did you first tell him about Vasili?” Grigori asked her.

“Me? I haven’t. I thought you had been telling him the tale for a while.”

Grigori shook his head. “I never told him the story until tonight.”

“Never? But he said it was his favorite. Someone had to have told him.” Madelyn pursed her lips in thought. “Could it have been Rurik or Mikhail?”

“Why don’t we ask them?”

Madelyn nodded. She’d had a strange feeling all day, like she had perceived a shift in the wind, perhaps even the earth. Something had changed, but she did not know what, and now their son was acting strangely. It could just be the fantasies of a small child, or it could be something else. They were beings of magic, after all.

She and Grigori found his brothers still in the study, talking and sipping cognac. Rurik, the powerful battle dragon, and Mikhail, the brooding hoarding dragon, were relaxed and smiling.

Mikhail saw Grigori’s and Madelyn’s worried expressions first. “Brother, what is the matter?”

“Did either of you tell Jackson the story about Vasili and the Heart of Sorrows?”

Mikhail and Rurik exchanged looks and shook their heads.

That feeling of something having changed now intensified. “Then how did he know about it?” Suddenly her stomach cramped, and she bent over to clutch at her midsection as she nearly threw up.

“Madelyn!” Grigori gently helped her to a chair. The three dragon brothers gathered protectively around her.

“Grigori . . . It’s like when we first met. It’s like I’m near dragons . . . or sensing them.”

She could not easily explain it. The first time she had been around Grigori, his being her future mate had canceled out her thunderbird’s natural instinctive response to his being her enemy. But his brother Rurik had not been her mate, and the thunderbird side of her had reacted in a similar way. But she had long since ceased to see the brothers as a threat, at least on a primal level.

Grigori knelt in front of her. “Are you feeling sick?”

“It’s like . . .” Madelyn was too afraid to say the words, because they sounded crazy. They did not quite make sense, even to her. “I sensed a dragon, a powerful one, maybe more than one, being born. Or coming into existence?” She closed her eyes as images flashed across her mind, the thunderbird inside trying to communicate with her.