Synergy (See #3)(91)

She reached the room a few seconds before me. I found her pacing the floor, rubbing her hand nervously over her wrist.

“Are you good?” I asked gently.

“Am I good?” she said as a sarcastic smile spread across her face and her determination to build a wall around her heart surfaced in her eyes. “We did it: they’re awake. Monroe is in a safe place. Draven is balanced. Let’s go home. They don’t need us. We don’t need them.”

“You know that’s not true. This has just begun. We have to help Monroe. We’re all she has.”

“Fine. Fine, we’ll take her home then. She was fine there. We were fine there.”

“No, Madison,” I said, stepping closer to her. “You can go home. I understand. I really do. I’ll finish this, help Monroe. You gave enough, but...I know you’re strong enough not to run. To face this. Him.”

She’d stopped her pacing, and just as she went to argue with me, her eyes soared past me. I turned to see Drake standing in the threshold.

His black shirt was missing all of the buttons from where they’d ripped it open in an effort to save him before they found us. His firm chest made him look even more powerful than his energy felt as it spilled into the room. His eyes were so dark, so mesmerizing. He didn’t even seem to notice me; he was holding Madison’s gaze. “May we have a moment?” he said in a tone that was laced in royalty.

Madison reached for my wrist, refusing to let me leave her side. Drake noticed the obvious “No” in her gesture. He walked slowly toward us, and with each step he took I felt his power intensify. His presence was literally intoxicating. It was going to take every ounce of willpower Madison had to stand in this room with him, to have his undivided attention.

When he reached us, his eyes slowly moved over every part of Madison, then they rose to meet hers. “I owe you my life,” he murmured.

Madison didn’t respond. I tried to pull my wrist away from her to give them a moment alone, but she dug her nails into my skin, making it clear that if I left her alone there would be hell to pay.

I felt a sharp edge in the clutch of her hand and glanced down, noticing the ring I’d put there, the one that shielded raging emotions from completely surfacing. If she was struggling with her emotions with this ring in place then there was no telling what was going inside of her. I was terrified and excited all at once for her.

I moved my hands around the ring. I’m sure she thought I was agreeing to stay at her side, but I was plotting to pull the ring from her skin. To do what she forced me to do every day: face the emotions; use them as a weapon, not a weakness.

“I don’t break my promises,” Madison said emotionlessly.

Drake’s eyes softened, and I could swear I saw him recognize something in her words.

“I’m not her,” Madison said quickly. At first I thought she was standing by her argument that she would never be anyone’s second choice, a substitute for another girl, but from the way Drake tilted his head, the way he smiled faintly with his angelic lips, led me to believe that Madison’s words were a dead giveaway of a private moment. One that must have occurred in her dreams, a place she’d shielded from all of us.

“A year ago,” Drake said after a numbing moment of silence, “I was in my darkest hour. I was ready to become what my mentor needed me to be - then I had dream...”

Madison took in a jagged breath; it was clear she didn’t want him to say another word.

Drake’s eyes echoed pain as they moved slowly from her lips to her eyes. “I knew deep in my soul that it was wrong, evil - but I was hungry for power. That dream, that breathtaking green-eyed girl turned my life around. She gave me hope. Balance. She showed me I wasn’t evil, that I had a purpose that was meant for good, not darkness. I woke from that dream with a new sense of purpose, and I reached out to my father for the first time, listened to him tell me about how divine soul mates were. How powerful love was. Because of that dream, I finally knew my father, my purpose for the first time.”

Drake’s eyes fell to her lips. “It was her touch. Her soft lips. How they embraced mine. The love I felt. The passion I felt...that moment, that dream gives me reason to wake every single morning.”

“I’m not her,” Madison said again, sounding even less believable.

“I’ve kissed her, kissed Willow...I didn’t feel that.” He sighed slightly. “I thought it was because her heart was divided, that Landen had reached her first, that because of that her touch was altered.”

His eyes fell to her lips again, then rose to her eyes. “You’ve caused me to question everything, and I can’t afford to do that. Not at this point in my life.”

“I’m not kissing you,” Madison said weakly.

Drake glanced at me, then back to her. At that moment, I pulled the ring from her skin and stepped away as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to let her shut him out before he had a chance to defend however she assumed he’d wronged her. I knew that without that ring, every emotion would soar to the surface, and if I weren’t standing next to her she would kiss him and he would know once and for all what girl was in his dream. What girl had changed his life. And she would know that no one can chose who or when they fall in love.

“Maybe not today, or even in this lifetime...but,” he said as he reached to let his thumb trace the bottom of her eye, “one day I will know if you’ve danced in my dreams...I will know if my heart has been truly fooled.”