Title - Open Gates
Author - D.T. Dyllin
Series - P.J. Stone Gates Trilogy #3
Genres - Paranormal Romance, Young Adult
Publication date - September 28th 2015
Synopsis
P.J. Stone gets the answers to all her questions, but will she be able to handle the truth?
Bryn is gone, Jenna isn’t herself, and the world has been taken over by the alien Riders. The only constant in P.J.’s life is Khol, but even he might not be able to help pick up the shattered pieces of her existence. Will P.J. be strong enough to face her destiny when the time comes? Or will she lose everything, herself included?
Excerpt
1) “I’m not Bryn,” Khol added, causing white-hot anger to race through my veins.
“I know that!” I screamed, pulling away from him. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean? As if I could forget and confuse the two of you?”
Khol’s illuminated eyes met mine steadily. “Because he left you. I won’t.” He continued to stare into my eyes. “I’ll never leave you, no matter what I say. Bryn left you even though he said he never would.”
“Shut up!” I screeched. “You have no right to say such things!”
“You mean the truth? I’ve never spoken anything but the truth to you, regardless of whether or not you choose to believe it.”
My fire magic erupted from my hands, coursing up my arms. “Stay back!” I yelled instinctively.
Khol pulled me into his arms without fear, my flames causing no more harm to him than they did to me. “You can’t burn me. And even if you could, I would walk through the flames of hell just to hold you.”
His words doused my flames and the anger that caused them. “I hate you,” I said without any real emotion, sagging into him.
“And even if that were true, I still wouldn’t leave you, my little queen.”
The rollercoaster ride of my emotions, combined with the burst of fire magic left me feeling drained and dizzy. My eyes slid shut against their will. Khol lifted me up, placing me back on my bed, and covered me with my comforter. His heated lips skimmed my forehead briefly just as sleep pulled me under.
2) I bit the inside of my cheek, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that I didn’t have to look Khol in the face for this conversation. Somehow it made it easier for me. “So you’re okay with not claiming me?”
His chest heaved under my head as he sighed deeply. “No. I don’t think okay is the right word for it but…I’ll survive.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I don’t wanna hurt you—I’ve never meant to hurt you and yet I keep doing it over and over again—hurting you.” Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
“If you were anyone but you I would never have fallen in love with you. And of course you hurt me…that’s what you do because you’re young, and impulsive, and you’re always following your heart.” Khol paused as if to gather his thoughts. “I just keep hoping one day your heart will lead you to me. Just like mine led me to you.”
My heart always broke a little for him when he was like this…so open and vulnerable. It was when he was demanding and possessive that made it easy for me to pull away from him. But when he was like this, I could almost see my heart leading me to him one day, despite the pain I still felt over Bryn’s loss. “Khol—” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“I know now is not the right time—of course it never seems to be the right time but—” He pulled me away from his chest so he could gaze into my eyes. His face appeared so young in that moment—young, and hopeful, and absolutely beautiful. “I love you. And I need to tell you not just so I’m sure you understand, but to unburden the weight those words put on my heart.” He stroked the back of his knuckles down the side of my face. “I love you,” he repeated, his gaze locked with mine.
The tears that had been pooling in my eyes finally spilled, leaking down my cheeks. “I love you too—just not the way you want. Bryn was the love of my life, and whether you wanna hear this or not, he took a part of me with him when he died. I’ll never be able to be what you want me to be to you.”
“For now,” Khol whispered softly.
3) I became fully aware of my actual surroundings again. “Damn,” I muttered to myself. “I really need to learn how to control my powers, or be more careful when I ask questions.”
“I wish you hadn’t been shown that,” Khol grated. “There are some things that are not meant for you to know, and things I don’t wish to revisit.”
“So that’s why you hate black dragons so much, because one of them raped your mother?” It all made complete sense now. Of course Khol would hold some kind of small resentment from his childhood. And obviously Khol didn’t have a loving relationship with his brother as his father had wished. Khol said they didn’t get along, which led me to wonder, why?
“Stop trying to analyze me,” Khol demanded harshly. “I won’t speak of such things. That is all in a part of my past I don’t wish to revisit.”
“But I wanna know you Khol, all of you.” As soon as I said the words, I realized they were true. There was still so much about Khol that was a mystery to me. Sure I knew the most important part, that he was trustworthy, but what about all the rest?
“I can’t,” Khol rasped. “If you care for me at all, my little queen, you won’t ask me to revisit that painful part of my history.”
My heart clenched at the raw pain in his eyes. “Fine. I’ll let it go.” For now.
Khol eyed me warily, probably sensing that I only planned to drop the subject for the immediate future. “Please shower, eat, and whatever else you
need to do before we leave. You have an hour until I return for you.” He then shifted out of the room leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Touchy much? I guess it was okay for him to pry into every little aspect of my life, but not for me to do the same. Right. That’s about to change. I will be getting all the answers I want, whether Khol likes it or not.
4) I glanced over at Morag who was bouncing with the beat and seeming a little too comfortable with the club for someone who hadn’t been out in the real world for as long as she claimed. She leaned over and yelled in my ear, “This is amazing! Is this the kind of thing I’ve been missing?”
“This is not amazing!” I yelled back, rolling my eyes at her. Who is the ancient dragon out of the two of us anyways?
“Point one of them out to me!” she yelled in response, ignoring my obvious distain for the club.
Okay. So she brought me to the club so I could point one of the Riders out to her. Do Riders like to dance? Not really sure what her plan was, I decided to just go with it. “Yeah, hold on,” I mumbled, pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to hear me over the music. I scanned the clubbers who were writhing around on the dance floor, and hissed in a breath. Yep…apparently Riders do like to dance…a lot. Almost every single human on the dance floor had one of them inside of their bodies.
Morag’s hand touched my arm. “Well?” she yelled.
“Take your pick!” I said, motioning to the throng of enthusiastic dancers in front of us.
She quirked an eyebrow at me in surprise, then nodded in understanding. “We need to isolate one of them. Get him or her away from the crowd.” I scrunched my face at her and widened my eyes. What did she expect
me to do? She was the dragon lady with a plan. Obviously noting my snarky facial expression Morag decided to take matters into her own hands. She moved forward on the dance floor, bouncing to the music again. Before I had time to blink she was sandwiched in between too hot guys.
5) “Been waiting for me I see.” I smirked at Bryn’s father, raising my hands up to hip level while letting my dragon fire magic rise into my palms.
His eyes briefly flicked down to the means of his eminent demise before he met my gaze. “I knew you were looking for me, and I knew you would find me.”
“So you know that I’ve come to kill you then? Good to know I don’t have to explain it to you first.” I raised my hands, about to set him ablaze, when Khol stepped in behind me to whisper in my ear.
“Think about this. Please.”
“I have thought about it, and I’m done thinking, Khol.” I let my fire erupt from my palms, and it quickly engulfed its target—the man that raised Bryn as his own. He screamed as the white-hot flames hovered over his skin, kissing it gently at first, before curling its unyielding fingers into his tender flesh. It blackened quickly, and the Rider inside screamed along with its host, trapped and dying inside the prison of burning skin.
I watched with grim fascination as Bryn’s murderer burned alive. The scene was almost macabre, and yet the smell of charred flesh intermingled with the agonizing screams, instead of acting like balm to my pain, caused me to suddenly feel sick. A wave of nausea slammed into me, and sweat trickled down my spine. I forced myself to remain facing the scene until the scorched body
dropped to the ground, still smoking. He was dead, and so was the Rider inside of him. Satisfaction was fleeting as guilt settled in its place. Maybe I could have saved Bryn’s father. Collateral damage, I rationalized. He had to die.
“There’s no one else in the building,” Khol said when I finally turned away from the blackened ashes that used to hold not one, but two lives. “They must have hoped that once you killed him you would be satisfied. They clearly sent him to his death.”
“And he went like a good little soldier? Just like that? That must mean they finally realize what a threat we really are, and they gave us what we wanted, hoping to appease me.”
“Or they just don’t want to be bothered anymore.” Khol wrapped me in his arms, shifting us out of the building just as a thick black smoke began to pour from the ceiling.
AUTHOR BIO:
D.T. Dyllin is a bestselling author who writes both paranormal and contemporary romance. Anything with a love story is her kryptonite. Her obsession with affairs-of-the-heart is what first drove her to begin twisting her own tales of scorching romance.
D.T. was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Black & Gold for life, baby!) She now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband and two spoiled German Shepherds.
(Author photo credit: Stephanie Saujon of La Photographie Nashville)
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