“Children,” Ivan repeated, his hands scrabbling at Ben’s wrist as he fought to suck in air. He managed to sound incredulous despite croaking the words out past the other dragon’s stranglehold. “There are two.”
“Obviously,” Ben hissed. “But you can’t have either one.”
“I… I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ivan said, not even struggling anymore as he tried to take it in. “Any of this. Your human, how did he survive the birth? And… twins, protected by another… dragon… who is… is… ”
“Who is my friend,” Maks said when Ivan failed to come up with an explanation for Ben’s presence. “Ben, let him down, please.”
Ben grumbled, but released Ivan without any other protest and then took a few steps back, crossing his arms and doing a damn good job of looking threatening.
“You are weak,” Ivan spat at Maks, shaking off his confusion and replacing it with the cold sneer I remembered from the first time we’d met. “You surround yourself with weakness, with attachments. You will not be able to hold onto them when you can’t even stomach holding me, your enemy.”
“You’re not my enemy, Ivan,” Maks said. “You’re my brother. You would be welcome here if you had come under different circumstances.”
Ivan’s sneer slipped for a split-second, but then he caught himself. “There is nothing I would want here, except your hatchlings. With two, I can help our sire expand our territory all the faster.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Maks told him in a steely voice. “Do you really think I’d allow you to touch them? That you could make it past both Ben and me?”
Without answering, Ivan feinted toward my mate, then pivoted toward Ben and blinded him with a spurt of flame. The fire spilled around the room, its dragon-enhanced heat instantly racing across the wooden floor and licking up the bedspread. I clutched the babies against me, backing into the corner as I instinctively retreated from the flames. Maks launched himself at his brother, but Ivan shoved Ben toward Maks and leapt past the two of them toward the far side of the burning bed. His form rippled as he landed in the middle of the flames, and he crossed the king-sized mattress in one stride, stepping down in front of me with a cold stare.
“Give them to me,” Ivan hissed, his eyes dropping to the twins. “You are not fit to raise our kind.”
Flames from the bed licked up his clothes, rippling over the cloth and Ivan’s skin as he reached for us. He snatched at Zach, grabbing onto his tiny shoulder and yanking him half out of my arms. The cry that burst out of my son made me see red, but my rage was eclipsed by a spike of fear as the dragon fire raced over the baby’s skin. The blanket he was wrapped in started to burn. I kicked at Ivan, struggling to loosen his hold on my son.
“NO!” The word burst out of me, a roar of sheer desperation. Without meaning to, I had pulled on the power of Maks’s dragon, and the air in front of me visibly quivered. Even though one dragon couldn’t control another, the sheer force of it made Ivan pause in shock. I pulled Zach out of his clutches, and before Ivan could react Maks was on him.
Maks grabbed Ivan from behind and heaved him away from us, then tackled him when he tried to scramble away. The flames had risen to engulf most of the room, and I lost sight of the two of them as soon as they moved away.
My clothes were burning now, too, but I fought down my instinctive fear and reminded myself that with Maks’s fire inside me, it couldn’t hurt me. Michael burrowed into my shoulder, but didn’t flinch away from the heat. Zach was wailing as the fire engulfed him—the sight was horrifying, but it only took a heartbeat to tell that the baby was scared, not hurt. Neither one of them seemed affected by the flames any more than I was. I wanted to get them out of the room, away from Ivan and the destruction around me, but it was hard to see through the heat.
“You are weak,” I heard Ivan say to Maks disdainfully, his voice coming out in grunts mixed with the sounds of fighting. “So concerned for a human who has already served his purpose.”
And then I heard the roar of my mate, and the crashing of glass as the french doors shattered. The flames around me roared with new life as the sea air rushed in to feed them.
29
~ Maksim ~
I flung my brother out onto the balcony, ignoring the sting from the broken glass as I dove after him. A part of me knew that his fire couldn’t hurt my family, but the rage that had filled me when he went after them made it hard to think rationally. Ivan didn’t know that Devin and been safe, and he’d put his hands on my son.