Freedom's Fall (2 page)

The present

Tansy wandered around her bedroom, tweaking pictures that
were already ruler-straight and plumping wrinkle-less cushions. It was a lovely
room, soft and warm, furnished in colors of forest green and earth red.

In the past two months this room, and the den for that
matter, had become a safe haven for her. Dev and Rye had taken her into their
home and offered her their company and protection, which had allowed her to
move steadily forward in her recovery. What gave Tansy the most comfort,
however, was the presence of the two battle dragons who made their home in the
lair next door.

The blacks were fierce and territorial. Each the size of a
small plane, they were all teeth and claws, with scales as hard as armor and
tails that could smash down walls. Fellescend and Zenbaylan had claimed Tansy
as their pet and she was very happy to have so much power in her corner.

Of course she still had a way to go. The pain of missing her
home and her family was an ache that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t go back to
Earth because the Brightstar Corporation—the bastards who had kidnapped her in
the first place—was the only means of off-world travel in Gemarra. And even if
Tansy could smuggle herself away from Gemarra somehow, she had no idea how to
get home, no coordinates or star map to give to a ship’s captain.

As difficult as it was, Tansy had resigned herself to the
fact that she was never going home. So she focused on the present. She put her
energy into making a new life for herself in the den and learning all she could
about her new home. She attended counseling sessions, worked hard on her mental
recovery and spent time with her friends. Tansy thought she was doing pretty
well, all things considered.

As long as she ignored the fact that she was virtually
housebound.

In the weeks she’d been living in the Sapphire Den, she’d
managed to constrict her world to a couple of levels above and below the one
she shared with Dev and Rye. The Enforcers were doubling up so she could have a
room to herself, and they’d been careful not to crowd her. So far nobody had
noticed her special brand of agoraphobia, but Tansy knew she couldn’t keep her
secret forever. Not when the only way in and out of the den was on the back of
a dragon.

“Tansy.” Dev’s deep voice carried from the dining room. “Breakfast
is ready.”

Smoothing her tightly disciplined ponytail, she wandered out
into the lounge room in bare feet. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in a
glorious amount of sunshine and gave a spectacular, elevated view of the lush
green forest and a sparkling blue lake. Farther into the valley she could just
make out the elegant columns and arches that defined the architecture of
Sapphire township. She liked the view, but she made it a point not to get close
to those expansive windows.

She crossed the lounge room, enjoying the smooth texture of
the gray marble floor as it gave way to a thick, velvety rug. The room was
large, as you would expect from a living space designed for men who topped six and
a half feet. The walls and ceilings were paneled in the same pale gray marble
as the floor, but it was saved from austerity by the colorful furnishings.
Sturdy wooden tables and dressers supported an array of objects—some practical
and some displayed purely for their beauty. Cushions and soft throws adorned
plump couches and chairs, making the room feel welcoming and comfortable. It
was soldier-neat, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a much-loved
home.

On the far side of the lounge room were a dining table and a
small alcove that served as a kitchenette. All the meals arrived via
dumbwaiter, and Rye was just setting the last dishes on the table when she
walked over to lean against the ladder-back chair.

She’d been living in close quarters with the Enforcers for
months, but in the last few weeks she’d come to realize that she liked them as
more than friends. A revelation she wasn’t sure she should act upon. Her
awakening libido proved her recovery was progressing, and she didn’t want to
jeopardize that by acting too soon. Unfortunately it wasn’t in Tansy’s nature
to dither, and she was fast approaching the point when waiting any longer
seemed stupid.

Still leaning against the chair, she allowed her eyes to
roam over the masculine objects of her quandary. They were tall, heavily
muscled, with slanted cheekbones and tip-tilted eyes. Both men’s silky hair was
long and looked more like a mane than regular hair. Rye currently wore his
loose, the autumn-gold color shining in the morning light. Dev’s hair was dark
purple and fell to his waist. It was gorgeous but he almost always wore it in a
neat ponytail—much to Tansy’s disappointment.

Currently both Enforcers wore nothing but loose black pants,
and the expanse of copper-toned skin on display made her dizzy. Rye turned back
to the dumbwaiter, giving her a semi-impeded view of the tattoo on his back.
The design was intricate and so lifelike it seemed almost 3D. Two dragons
circled each other nose to tail. The dragon at the top was Zenbaylan—Rye’s
scaled partner—and the dragon at the bottom was Fellescend, partner to Dev.

Dev had the same tattoo on his back, only in reverse order.
All the Enforcers wore the image of their dragon and their dragon’s mate on
their backs, and it was as much a part of who they were as their weird hair and
outlandish coloring.

Rye turned back to the table and looked her up and down,
noting the silk pants and tunic she wore. Her whole body went on alert under
the weight of his assessing gaze and she prayed her nipples weren’t showing
through her tunic.

“Staying at home today?” he asked, his lavender-colored eyes
drifting down to her breasts.

Tansy pulled out the chair and sat down, casually crossing
her arms over her chest. “Yes, the other girls are coming over later on this
morning, if that’s all right with you.”

The “other girls” included her fellow former captives Sara,
Kate, Mackenzie and Sorcha. The group also included the most important person
in Tansy’s new world, her best friend and sister of the heart, Chelsea. They’d
grown up together, an integral part of each other’s families and inseparable
except for the six years Tansy had served in the Australian army. They’d been
out at the movies the night they were kidnapped, and when they’d awoken on the
alien ship they’d assumed they’d stick together. But during the transfer to
Gemarra, Tansy had been taken to Allsgate while her best friend had been freed
by the Enforcers.

When the last plate was on the table, Rye took a seat next
to Dev, placing both males on the opposite side of the table to her. “We like
having you in our home,” Rye said. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you
wish, and your friends are welcome too. You have no need to ask.”

“Thank you.”

Lowering her head, she picked up her utensils and began to
eat, concentrating on her food and not the two extraordinary men whose table
she shared. As usual they were polite, courteous, considerate…and difficult to
read.

Since her libido had come back online, she hadn’t been able
to stop herself from sneaking glances at them, from straining to hear their
voices or imagining what they looked like naked. After the physical and
emotional torture she’d endured at the hands of Councilor Willersby
Lockmehdyhn, it was a miracle she was attracted to any man. The fact that she was
actively fantasizing made her want to jump for joy—and squirm with uncertainty.
She was happy her body was getting back to normal, and Rye and Dev were
warriors to the bone—big, scary and competent—which made them just her type. It
was deciding what to do about it that was making her itch.

She’d been doing a lot of thinking this past week,
especially at night while she lay in bed alone while Dev and Rye bunked
together. Tansy had spent two months in a living hell, being tortured and raped
both physically and emotionally. She needed time to heal, she knew that, but
Dev and Rye felt safe to her in a way no one else ever had. And they were
alien-looking enough, and big enough, not to remind her of that bastard
Willersby Lockmehdyhn in any way. Her tormenter had been a paunchy, pompus,
callous bastard whom she could have flattened in a fair fight. But men like
Willersby didn’t get what they wanted by being fair or honorable. Which made
him the polar opposite of her Enforcers.

Dev and Rye were warriors in the truest sense, right down to
marrow of their bones. Tansy came from a military family, so she understood Dev
and Rye on a level that was built into her DNA. Her dad had served in the first
Gulf War, her brothers were both career military, and of course there was her
own service.

Despite the fact that they weren’t human, Dev and Rye were
the kind of males she understood. And trusted. Or at least her body trusted
them, even if her emotions were still confused. To cloud the issue even further,
she sometimes caught them looking at her with heat in their eyes.
Unfortunately, the moment they realized they had her attention, they changed
their expression to one of benign friendship.

So the three of them danced around one another, being polite
and careful. As a consequence Tansy suffered random emotional swings, from self-pity
to numbness to anger, past the dangerous detour of arousal and back to self-pity
again. She heaved a pathetic sigh and didn’t realize how deeply she’d slumped
into her chair until she felt a large, hot hand on her back.

“Tansy, are you all right?”

She took a breath, forced some steel into her spine and
lifted her eyes to Dev’s ice-blue gaze. “Yes, mostly. I’m just jumbled up
inside.”

“Of course you are.” That searing hand slowly circled over her
upper back and Tansy resisted the urge to lean in to him. “It takes time to
recover from any trauma, and you’ve had to deal with events no woman should
ever endure.” His voice dropped to a low rumble, and she shivered as it brushed
over her skin. “You’ve been so brave. We’re both so proud of you.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“We’re here to help you. Whatever you need.”

She nodded. She hoped that offer was genuine, because she
had a feeling she was on her way to asking them for something they might not be
ready to give.

* * * * *

An hour later Dev walked down two flights of stairs with Rye
at his shoulder. The den housed over three hundred battle dragons and their
riders, and they trained almost every day. Sometimes they broke into their flights—small
groups of ten to fifteen—and at others the entire den participated in a mock
battle. On other days, like today, training involved the mind not the body. Dev
was looking forward to the upcoming strategy session.

He and Rye strode along several corridors before coming to a
halt at the lift doors. Dev reached out and pulled a lever and then they both
stood back to wait.

The lifts in the den relied on a complicated system of
pulleys and counterweights that only an engineer could understand. The technology
so prevalent in the northern hemisphere was almost useless on Ivasta because of
the ion storms that occurred more days than not. Even a small storm could shut
down an electrical current, so something as simple as using a hover became a
life-or-death proposition.

Ivasta’s four major settlements were sparsely populated, but
the people who did live on the southern continent knew how to adapt. Dev had
been to the other side of their planet, he’d visited the hi-tech city of
Allsgate and he’d seen firsthand the uses those people had for their gadgets
and machines. He stepped into the pulley-driven lift with a smirk, silently
acknowledging that the Ivastan alchemists and engineers had invented some
pretty good gadgets of their own.

Rye stepped in beside him, but instead of waiting quietly
for the lift to descend, he moved restlessly from foot to foot. Dev took one
look at his denmate’s expression and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came
next.

Rye’s eyes were a little wild when he turned to speak. “We
need to do something about Tansy.”

No surprise there. Rye was a male who preferred action over
any other strategy and he’d never met a problem he didn’t want to beat to a
pulp.

Dev turned to lean his shoulder against the lift wall. “Like
what?”

“I don’t know.” Rye turned to mirror his position, standing
close. “But I can’t keep pretending I don’t feel her pain, and I can’t keep
treating her like nothing more than a temporary houseguest.”

“But that’s what she is.”

“No—”

The lift stopped and the door was pulled open to reveal four
Enforcers waiting to go down. Dev shook his head as he closed the doors. “Get
the next one.”

The other dragon riders weren’t happy, but Dev was one of
only four captains in the den and very few riders had the balls to challenge
him. The lift continued to rattle downward and Dev resumed his leaning position
and the conversation.

“Tansy needs somewhere safe to stay and we can provide that
for her. And we need to find out who tried to kill Sorcha.”

Their den commander and his denmate had taken Sorcha for
their own, and it was her kidnapping that had led the Enforcers to Tansy and
the other women they’d saved. The man who took Sorcha had been killed during
the rescue, so a third party had come after Sorcha and tried to poison her. The
trouble was, the Enforcers didn’t know whether the attempt on Sorcha’s life had
been personal or whether it had been aimed at the Earth females as a group.

Dev folded his arms across his chest. “Once we’re sure
nobody’s coming after the other women we rescued, Tansy will go back to town
and try to build a life.”

“With what?” Rye asked, rubbing a frustrated hand over his
face. “All her friends are here. She has no family to support her. If we don’t
take care of her, who will?”