Dragon's Oath

EPILOGUE

Present-day Oklahoma

“No!” Though tears tracked down his face, Dragon Lankford’s voice was like stone as he stared into Jack’s funeral pyre. “I can never forget or forgive. That thing I allowed to escape—it was the spirit of a Raven Mocker, the creature who, given a body, murdered you. Had I destroyed it all those years ago, my own, my love, we might have avoided this fate, this future.” He shook his head and repeated, “No, I can never forget.”

Then, with cold, perfectly controlled movements, Dragon fisted his hand around Anastasia’s locket and pressed it over his heart, bowing his head and saying, “I no longer have a priestess. I no longer am bound to my oath. Without you, Anastasia, I am only the dragon, and a dragon does not temper strength with mercy.” He opened his fist and held the locket up before him, kissed it, and then threw it into the burning pyre.

Green flames blazed from the pyre and reality divided and opened, curtain-like, to reveal a ghostly vision of Anastasia. She was sobbing and her voice, echoing eerily, came to him.

“You have cut my heart with your sword,

Bryan Dragon Lankford.”

He fell to his knees in despair, reaching toward the flames as if he could pull her spirit to him, and cried:

“Your death has broken me;

the dragon is all I have left to be.”

The apparition was fading, but her voice drifted over the crackle of the fire:

“If you are not my mate, kind and true,

how will I ever again find you?”

As his hungry eyes stared at her, Anastasia, still weeping, turned from the rent in reality and stepped into the arms of Nyx. The Goddess pressed a palm to her forehead and light cascaded into the priestess’s soul.

“Nyx!” Dragon cried. “Let her remain with me!”

The Goddess’s gaze was infinitely sad.

“You must be brave

to find the peace that you crave.”

The curtain to the Otherworld shivered and closed, cutting off Dragon’s vision of his mate and the Goddess.

“Brave!” he shouted. “That is your only answer for me before you steal away my mate? How can you be so cruel? I deny you, Nyx! I found Anastasia once on my own. I’ll do so again, but only after I have exacted revenge for her untimely death. Thus I do swear on my sword—my oath as Dragon Lankford!”

Dragon stalked away into the darkness, and the sickly white flanks of an enormous bull caught the reflection of the moon as the beast, pleased, turned away to pursue other pleasures.

In the Otherworld, Nyx gazed down at Anastasia’s fallen Warrior and wept.