Tears gathered in Damos's eyes as he looked at him. "I am so sorry for what I did to you."
Sebastian was stunned. So, Damos did know what an apology was.
"The Katagaria told me what happened that day, how they tricked you." Damos placed his hand against the scar on Sebastian's neck that Sebastian had received while trying to save Antiphone's life. "I can't believe you survived them. And I can't believe you did this for me."
"Not like I had anything better to do."
Damos hissed and placed his hand to his eyes. "Those damned feelers. They're trying to find me."
Sebastian went cold. Without his powers, he couldn't sense the feelers, but if they were sending them out for Damos, then they would find...
Channon!
His heart pounding, he ran for the hall.
Channon wished she had her notepad to take notes on everything she saw. This was just incredible!
Enchanted, she walked idly past the stalls and huts, looking inside to see families eating and spending the evening together.
"You look lost."
She turned at the voice behind her. There were three men there, handsome all and quite tall. "Not lost," she offered. "Just out for a bit of fresh air."
The blond man appeared to be the leader of the small group. "You know, that can be quite dangerous for a woman alone."
Channon frowned as a wave of panic washed over her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Tell me, Acmenes." The blonde spoke to the tall brunette beside him. "Why do you think an Arcadian would bring a human woman through time?"
Panic gone, sheer terror set in, especially since the man was speaking in modern English.
She tried to head back to Sebastian, but of the third man caught her. He grabbed her right hand and showed it to his friends. "Because she's his mate."
The one called Acmenes laughed. "How precious is this? An Arcadian with a human dragonswan."
"No," the brunette said, "it's better. A lone Sentinel with a human mate."
They laughed cruelly.
Channon glared. She might look harmless, but she'd been on her own for quite some time, and as a woman alone, she'd learned a few things.
Tae Kwon Do was one of them. She caught the man holding her with her elbow and twisted out of his grasp. Before the others could reach her, she ran for the hall.
Unfortunately, the Katagaria moved a lot faster than she did and they grabbed her before she could reach it.
"Let her go." Sebastian's voice rolled across the yard like dangerous thunder as he unsheathed his sword.
"Oh no," Acmenes said sarcastically. "This is the best of all. A Sentinel who has lost his powers."
Channon's heart clenched at their words.
Sebastian's smile was taunting, wicked. "I don't need my powers to defeat you."
Before she could blink, the Katagaria attacked Sebastian.
"Run, Channon," Sebastian said as he delivered a staggering blow to the first one who reached him.
Channon didn't go far. She couldn't leave him to fight the men alone. Not that he appeared to need any help. She watched as they attacked him at once and he deftly knocked them back.
"Um, Acmenes," the youngest Katagari said as he picked himself up from the ground and panted. "He's kicking our butts."
Acmenes laughed. "Only in human form."
In a brilliant flash, Acmenes transformed into a dragon. The crowd that had gathered at the start of the fight shrieked and ran chaotically for shelter.
Channon stumbled back.
Standing at least twenty feet high, Acmenes was a terrifying sight. His green and orange scales shimmered in the fading daylight while his blue wings flapped. He slung his spiked tail around, but Sebastian flipped out of the way.
The other two flashed into dragon form.
Sebastian held his sword tightly in his hands as he faced them. Even if he still held his powers unsevered, he wouldn't have been able to transform. Not while in the middle of a human village. It was forbidden.
Damn you, Fates.
"What's the matter, Kattalakis?" Acmenes asked. "Won't you breech your oath to protect your humans?"
Bracis laughed. "He can't, brother, his powers are too fragmented. He's powerless to stop us."
Acmenes shook his large, scaled head and sighed. "This is so anticlimactic. All these years you've chased us, and now..." He tsked. "To comfort you as you die, Sebastian, know that your dragonswan will be as well used by all of us as your sister was."
Raw agony ripped through Sebastian.
Over and over, he saw his sister's face and felt her blood on his skin as he held her lifeless body in his arms and wept.
"Kill him," Acmenes said. Then he turned toward Channon.
The dragon beast inside Sebastian roared with needful vengeance. He'd been unable to save Antiphone, but he would never let Channon die. Not like that.
Ceding his humanity, he let loose his shields. His change came so swiftly that he didn't even feel it. All he felt was the love in his heart for his mate, the animal desperation to keep her safe regardless of law or sense.
Channon froze at the sight of Sebastian's dragon form. The same height as Acmenes, his scales were bloodred and black. He looked like some fierce, terrifying menace, and she searched for something to remind her of the man he'd been two seconds ago.
She found none of him.
What she did see terrified her.
Acmenes swung about to face Sebastian as he savagely attacked the other two dragons. Fire shot through the village as they fought like the primeval beasts they were.
Then, to her horror, she saw Sebastian kill the dragon on his left with one sharp bite. The one on his right stumbled away from him in wounded pain, then took to the skies.
Acmenes reached for her, but Sebastian tackled him. The force of them hitting the ground shook it. They fought like men, slugging at each other, and yet like dragons, as their tails coiled and moved trying to sting one another.
She cringed as both dragons were wounded countless times by their fighting, but neither would pull back. She'd never seen anything like it. They were locked in the throes of a blood feud.
Acmenes hefted his body and threw Sebastian over his head, then rolled to his monstrous feet. He stumbled as he tried to reach the sky, but before he could leap, Sebastian caught him through the heart with his tail.
"Dragon!"
Now armed and prepared, the men of the village came running back to do damage to the creatures who had invaded them.
At first Channon thought they came to help Sebastian, until she realized that they intended to attack him.
Without thought, she went to him. "Run, Sebastian," she said.
He didn't. He turned on her with frightening eyes, and in that moment she realized the man she knew was not in that body.
The dragon snarled at her as the crowd attacked him. Throwing his head back, he shrieked.
To her shock, he didn't attack the people.
Instead, he grabbed her in his massive claw and took flight.
Channon screamed as she watched the ground drift far away from her. She had no idea where he was taking her, but she didn't like this. Not even a little bit.
"Sebastian?"
Sebastian heard Channon's voice. But it came from a distance. He could only vaguely remember her.
Vaguely recall...
He shrieked as something flew past his head. Looking behind him, he saw Bracis coming for them.
And with the sight, his human memories came flooding back.
"Sebastian, help us. We 're trapped by the Slayers."
"I can't, Percy. I can't leave Antiphone."
"She's safe in the hills. We are in the open, unprotected. Please, Sebastian. I'm too young to die. Please don't let them kill me. I know you can beat them. Please, please help me."
And so he had heeded the mental distress call and gone to protect his young cousin and brother, never knowing Percy's cry for help had been a trick, never knowing that Percy had deliberately summoned him from the cave.
He'd found his cousin barely alive and learned too late they had forced Percy to call for him.
By the time he'd returned to the cave where he'd left his sister hiding, the Slayers were gone.
And so was his sister's life.
Devastated on a level he'd never known existed, he'd refused to speak up in his own defense when his people had banished him.
He'd offered no argument at all against Damos's insults.
He should never have left Antiphone unprotected.
Now he looked at the woman he held cradled in his palm.
Channon.
The Fates had entrusted this woman to him, just as his brother had entrusted Antiphone to him.
He would not let Bracis have her. This time, he would see her safe. No matter what it cost him, she would live.
Sebastian headed for the forest.
Channon held her breath as they landed on the ground in a small clearing.
"Hide." The word seemed to sizzle out of Sebastian's dragon mouth.
She went without question, running into the trees and underbrush, looking for someplace safe. The forest was
so thick that she quickly lost sight of the dragons. But she could hear them as they fought. She could feel the ground under her shake.
Grateful for the green dress, she found a clump of bushes and crawled into them to wait and to pray.
Sebastian circled around Bracis, enjoying the moment, en-joying the feel of the dragon blood coursing through his veins. For two hundred and fifty years he had dreamed of this moment. He had dreamed of drinking from the fount of vengeance.
Now the moment was upon him.
Bracis was the last of the Slayers left from that day. One by one, Sebastian had hunted them all down. He had hunted them through time and even space itself.
"Are you ready to die?" Sebastian asked his opponent.
Bracis attacked. Sebastian caught him with his teeth and clamped down on the Katagari's shoulder. He tasted the blood of the beast as Bracis shredded at his back with his claws.
Sebastian barely felt it. But what he did feel was the fear inside Bracis. It swelled up with a pungent odor so foul that it made Sebastian laugh.
"You may kill me," Bracis rasped. "But I'm taking you with me."
Something stung Sebastian's shoulder. Snarling, he jerked his head around to see the dagger protruding from his back. But it wasn't the steel that stung; it was the poison that coated the blade. Dragon's Bane.
Roaring from the pain of it, he turned back and finished Bracis off quickly by breaking his long, scaled neck.
He stood over the body of his enemy, staring at it blankly. After all this time, he'd wanted more out of the kill. He'd expected it to release the agony in his heart, to relieve his guilt.
It didn't.
He felt nothing except disappointed by it. Cheated.
No. In two hundred and fifty years only one thing had ever given him a moment's worth of peace.
Suddenly, a scream tore through the woods.
Channon.
Sebastian reared up to his full twenty foot height, searching for her through the trees with his dragon sight and senses.
He heard nothing more. His heart pounding, he ran for the woods where she'd vanished. With every step that closed the distance between them, all his feelings rushed through him. He relived every moment of Antiphone's death.
The guilt, the fear, the raw agony.
Under the onslaught of his human feelings, the dragon inside him receded again, leaving only the man. The man who had been crushed that day. The man who had sworn over his sister's grave to never let another person into his heart.
The same man who had looked into a pair of crystal blue eyes over dinner one night and had seen a future inside them that he wanted to live. A future with laughter and love. One spent in quiet serenity with a woman standing beside him to keep him strong and grounded.
Leaves and brambles tore at his flesh, but he paid no attention to them.
Like Antiphone, he'd left Channon alone to face an untold nightmare.
Left her to face ...
He came to a stop as he caught sight of her.
Frowning, Sebastian struggled to breathe. His vision was so blurry from the poison that he wasn't sure he could trust it.
He blinked and blinked again. And still it stayed before his eyes. Channon stood with a sword in her hand, and it was angled at Damos's throat.
"Bas, would you please tell her I'm not a Katagari."
Channon glanced over her shoulder to see Sebastian standing naked in the woods. Human once more, he was pale and covered in sweat.
"Let him go."
By the sound of Sebastian's voice, she knew the man she held hadn't been lying to her. He was one of the good guys.
The instant she saw Sebastian stumble, she dropped the sword she'd taken from this stranger.