by Aidy Award
The fire struck the dark one down and it landed at the feet of the red light. The light did not like that the dark one had sacrificed itself and she exploded, sending the soulless one deep into the abyss. With the Goddess of the Underworld and her minion the soulless one both gone, the light cheered. Others joined in the celebration.
Dax's darkness wasn't quite ready to retreat. It liked the taste of blood in the air and wanted more. He let the darkness bubble back up and spread through him until he was almost fully dark once more. He could destroy all the evil in this place. It would be easy. The wolves hiding at the edge of the cave were not pure of heart. They would be the first to go. The town up by the water was filled with humans and their sins. If he didn't destroy them, the plague of demons would taint them and turn them against the dragons.
"Dax? Look at me."
The golden light, a human, bright as the sun, appeared before him. He liked her light. He wanted it for himself. Her light, his darkness, together would be unstoppable.
Come to me, light bringer. We will destroy all the evil around us together.
The light inside of her grew and she pushed it toward his chest. It was warm and he liked the feel of it. He moved closer, wanting more of her. She didn't back away as the light had before. A tingle sparked in his chest, one that he decided was caused by her.
Her light poured into him and yet did not lessen her own. "Mm, maybe later. Right now, I'd like you to stop setting the roots of the dragon tree on fire and shift back to your human form too. Can you do that for me?"
Why would I take that weak form when I have all the power we need to destroy our enemies flowing through me now? Perhaps this bright human wasn't what she appeared. He wouldn't believe that. She was something special. Special to him.
She was his.
"Because I'd really like to kiss you," the light said.
Darkness didn't kiss. He was more than darkness though. He was a warrior, a dragon. Dragons didn't kiss. They took, they conquered, they claimed.
Mark. Claim. Mate.
This woman was his mate. The light from inside of her shone through in a mark on her neck and shoulder. She bore his mark. She was his.
And he was hers.
The darkness inside of Dax shrunk until it was nothing more than a small mark on his soul once again. He looked down into the worried face of his mate. Jules. The light of his soul.
He shifted back to his human form and pulled her to him, squeezing her tight. Her body fit to his so perfectly and he bent her back and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her some more. He only broke the kiss so he could fly them both out of there and to the seclusion of her sunny little bedroom with the fireplace. “You saved me, lass. I’ve had enough darkness for one day. Let me take you home now and--”
He whispered all the dirty things he wanted to do with her into her ear.
"Wait, Dax. Put me down, we can't leave yet. Your boss is hurt." Jules scent of ripe peaches and love washed over him, but it was tinged with a smoky sadness. She pointed to a circle of people standing around the hulking form of Match in his dragon form.
They rushed over and pushed their way through the mass of dragon warriors, wolves, succubae, and witches. Match's breathing was labored and black scorch marks marred blistered skin where his scales should be. Jakob, Steele, and Fleur were all treating him with their healing Dragon's Breath. But it didn't seem to help. Fallyn sat on the ground holding his great head, horns and all in her lap, petting his snout.
"Not yet, you big stupid dragon. Not yet." Fallyn reached beneath her leather armor and yanked at the collar and sleeve, tearing it away. There on her neck and shoulder was the red tattooed mark of a dragon's mate. The crowd around her gasped. She touched two fingers to the mark and cried out. "Mother, help him."
A shining star descended down into the dark pit and landed next to Match. "Are you sure this is what you want, Dragon's Daughter?"
"Yes. Please help him." Tears streamed down her face and onto Match's scales.
"As you wish, but this means he will now be able to find you. You can't run anymore." The star pulled a red light from Fallyn’s chest and sent it flowing across to Match.
The dragon sucked in a deep breath and his skin knit back together, the scorches healed, and he shifted back into a man before everyone's eyes.
Fallyn bent over him, kissed him on the forehead and whispere, "Not yet."
She reached down to her belt and pulled the mirror and sword from it, held the mirror facing out, and swung the sword over her head.
Revelations
Jules blinked, trying to clear the haze from her eyes. The world around her was cool and quiet, like an early spring morning on the weekend before anyone else was awake. Even though the air held a chill, she was warm inside and out. Dax was beside her, holding her hand.
Either she was waking up from a really strange dream, or she'd been abducted by aliens. No. Neither of those was right. They had been fighting a battle. They'd won. Jules blinked again and found herself standing in the clearing, near the Dragon Tree where the wolves had their mating ceremony. A light fog swirled and circled through the trees and around her feet. She glanced around and found groups of other dragon warriors, the Troikas, and a whole coven of succubae including Portia, standing in the clearing with them. A young man and a young woman stood in the middle of them all, holding hands.
She wore a pendant that glowed gold and blue. He wore a talisman with an eerie gray light that encircled them both.
"Ellie, is that you?" Galyna stepped toward the couple, tentatively. Maxsim touched her shoulder and they moved forward together.
"Mom?" The girl dropped the you man's hand and ran toward Galyna.
Cage and Azy ran into the circle. "Apollo. Are you okay?"
The young man's face collapsed into agony and he shook his head. He walked into the waiting arms of his parents who surrounded him in their embraces, hugging him tight.
Jules squeezed Dax's hand. "Weren't we just in a battle? How did we get here?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, lass. The last thing I remember is Match on the verge of death. But he's standing over by that tree looking like his usual cranky-ass self, so I guess whoever saved him, sent us all back up here."
"Fallyn." Jules looked around the gathering of people who milled about together, but didn't see the strange Red Witch anywhere. "But I think she had help from someone else. It's all very fuzzy in my mind."
A very pretty and curvy blonde woman who stood near them walked over. "I agree. This weird lapse in all our memories reeks of the White Witch's doing. She's sneaky like that. I've had all kinds of lost time since I first met her, and I'm still not even sure what she looks like. Yvaine is the only one who's met her and remembers it all. Also, hi. I'm Ciara, the unofficial mates club welcome committee."
Jules took Ciara's hand and shook it. Any residual worry and anxiety she had melted away like snow on a warm day. "Hi. I'm Jules."
Ciara winked at her. "I know. You've met Azy, that's Fleur, Jada is over there talking to her sister Portia, and Yvaine's off galloping through the woods somewhere, I'm sure. So, when's the wedding?"
"Miláček." A man in a deep green shirt and a twinkle in his eye placed a hand on the back of her neck in a very intimate gesture. "They've only been mated for a day, give them a little time before you have their nuptials all planned."
She fake frowned and handed Jules a shiny white card. "Call me. I've got the best cake and flower people."
The man dragged Ciara away, but she shouted over her shoulder, "Welcome to the family. We've all been waiting for Dax to find his redhead."
Jules reached up and tugged on a strand of hair. "I forgot it turned red."
"I didn't. You look flaming hot, my love. Now can we go home? Before we get accosted by any other Wyvern's mates?" Dax went wide-eyed at something behind him. "Too late."
"What the hell did you do to my babies?" Azy stomped over, towing the boy from the clearing and another pretty
brown-skinned girl with matching golden eyes behind her. "They were children a few hours ago, and look at them now. Apollo is a handsome young man and my Izzy is not a little girl anymore."
"Oh, you're Izzy?" Jules looked to the pretty young lady. She lifted her chin and nodded. "I have something for you."
Jules reached into the bodice of her dress and found the other package Fallyn had given her. She flipped it open and slid the necklace out into her hand. The charm at the end of the chain swirled in a constantly changing shape inside its golden orb. Jules hung the necklace over Izzy's head and as it settled on her skin, a flash of gold light whooshed across the ground shaking the plants and leaves around them.
On the other side of the clearing, from the center of the gathering of Troikas a wolf howled and then tore out across the forest.
Ellie shouted after him. "Tristan, wait." Then she too shifted, much more gracefully, without the tearing and rending of muscle, bone and clothes usually associated with wolf shifts. Her small blue-grey wolf ran after Tristan's along the same path.
Two more bigger wolves tore through the men's bodies and clothes as they became beasts and took off after the younger ones. Niko shook his head and glanced over at her. "Fucking dragons." He too shifted, his clothes splitting off of him into tatters on the ground and his body reshaped itself into the largest of all the wolves. He ran out into the forest and his howl ripped through the air.
"Guess I'll go get the in-case-of-emergency-shifting kits from the truck. I'll have to stock up on clothes in Ellie’s and Tristan's new adult sizes. Although Ellie didn't seem to lose hers when she took on her wolf form. Weird." Heli shook her head and trotted toward the reserve's parking area where her truck must be stowed.
Dax tugged on Jules's hand. "This looks like the right break in the action to leave. Let's go home. You're wearing entirely too many clothes."
Jules yanked Dax back before he got more than a step away. She kissed him with the promise of more soon. "Not yet. I think there's more than needs to be figured out before we can go. Just keep your pants on."
"That's easier said than done, lass." He nipped at her ear and for a brief moment Jules considered leaving everyone to their own devices. A new instinct inside of her told her to wait. Something important was about to happen.
Zara, Serena, and Gal headed in the same direction as Heli. Serena looked at her and waggled her brows. "They grow up so fast."
Azy didn't seem to agree and had missed the other implications of Serena's words. She stamped her foot in the leaves and the ground underneath her turned into a mud puddle. "No, they don't. I'll admit my kidlets were growing at an extraordinary rate, but yesterday, they were toddlers. Cage said yours were babies, Galyna. What in the hell happened?"
Izzy and Apollo exchanged glances and then nodded at each other. Izzy took her mother's hand. "Jules and Fallyn didn't do anything but help us. The transition would have been a lot harder for all four of us if they hadn't been using their powers to guard and protect. We were lucky they could use their psychic abilities to see what was going on. Fallyn beat off the Galla demons more than once during one of our training sessions so that we could learn battle skills from the First Dragon and magic from the White Witch."
The puddle around Azy's feet got even squashier. "Galla demons? The First Dragon? The god-damned White Witch? I'm going to murder them all."
Apollo wiped his hand over his face. "The White Witch and the First Dragon have been preparing us to fight against the Black Dragon. The final uprising from hell is coming and it is our fate to be either sacrifice or savior."
A fountain of water geysered up beneath Azy and as it lifted her above all their heads her legs transformed into a shining golden mermaid tail. "No, you are not. You two are grounded for the rest of your lives, and I forbid you to hang out with those troublemakers ever again."
Water spewed from every which direction and swirled around the twins, encasing them in bubbles of air inside giant pods of water. Izzy folded her arms and rolled her eyes, but she also smiled with obvious affection for her mother and her antics. She mouthed something from inside the bubble that they couldn't hear, but that looked like "Silly mermaid."
"Don't you call me silly, young lady. I am your mother and what I say goes." Azy wagged her finger at the wavery images of her twins through the water. "Apollo, what do you think you're doing? Stop that. Stop that right now."
Gray light shimmered over the young man and great big gold wings burst out either side of the water bubble. He wobbled slightly in the air until Cage shifted too and helped his son up with a gust of wind. The two of them soared into the sky and the water from Apollo's body rained down on them all.
The rest of the Gold Dragon Warriors who had been rescued from hell shifted too and joined Cage and Apollo in the sky. All but two. It looked like they were refereeing a fight between the black-haired woman Ciara had pointed out as Jada and her sister, the succubus from hell, Portia.
Dax stepped right into Jules's view of the argument. "Lass, you're giving me entirely too much time to think up a lot of scintillating tortures for you for making me wait to get you back into bed. This doesn't concern us. Let's go."
"Sweetheart, sugar, honey, sweetie. I promise to do all manner of naughty things to you soon. But in a few minutes. I promise you're going to want to wait for this."
"Wait for what? You naked in front of the roaring fireplace sharing my fire?" Dax licked his lips and his eyes twinkled.
He was hard to resist.
"That too." Jules rubbed a thumb over his jaw and nuzzled against him. She wrapped his arms around hers and twisted so they could both see the result of the disagreement between the two sisters. They didn't know it yet, but their tiff was about to set them both on a path toward finding their true powers too. Not a fun path, especially for Portia, but she'd get her rewards in the end.
Portia said something to Jada that they couldn't hear, but it made Jada ball up her fists and her pearly white skin to go flush. Portia didn't get the hint and kept pushing. She got a slap across the cheek for it.
The two dragon warriors grabbed Portia and yanked her behind them. They formed a wall of muscle between the women, their dragon eyes flared, and horns sprouted out the top of their heads, their dragons preparing for another battle. The darker tattooed man, Jada's mate, jumped in front of her and blue scales shimmered across his body. "Step off, boys. Tempers are flaring and I can't allow any harm to come to my mate."
Dax whispered into Jules's ear. "This is what you wanted me to see? Zon and Gris protecting a succubus? Or was that girl on girl action. You're a dirty bird, aren't you?"
"Shush your face and pay attention, mister. I'll show you just how dirty I am later."
"First Dragon help me," Dax groaned. He held her tighter and it was a good thing she was standing in front of him or the whole group would see the prominent bulge in the front of his pants that was currently poking her in the butt.
Gris got his dragon under control first. "My apologies, Blue Wyvern, but your mate can not be allowed to strike the Succubus Queen."
Jada popped her head out from behind her mate. "Queen?"
Zon filled them all in. "Yes. When I killed , Portia became the highest-ranking succubus. She is the heir apparent, only to be initiated by their maker. You must submit to her rule."
Jada laughed and laughed and laughed. Portia turned and stomped off into the forest. The two warriors scrambled to follow her, practically falling at her feet. It would be interesting to see which, if either, was able to win her cold heart. Jules couldn't quite see that far down their path. There was too many divergences for the outcome to be clear. It would all depend on her figuring out she was worthy of their love.
Which was not an easy task for any woman, Jules included. She almost hadn't allowed herself that happiness. She'd gotten there in the end. Partly because he'd shown her the way.
"I'll admit, that was an interesting revelation. I would have been just as happy to hear that bi
t of gossip from you. Later. After I'd made you come a couple dozen times. How about we make that happen now, hmm?"
He was nothing of not persistent and she loved him for it. "Just one more thing, lover boy, and then you can take me home to orgasm to your heart’s content."
"Jules, I don't really care what happens in all the other Wyrs. The Reds never have this much drama. It's time to go home." Dax's patience had run out and he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, rear end in the air.
"Daxton Cervony." The voice of the Red Wyvern rang out.
"There it is. Kindly put me down so you don't get your due with my butt sticking out in everyone's faces."
"Kneel." Match's voice still had that grit to it that only being close to death could give it.
He probably still looked like shit, too. Not that she could see because Dax did kneel, but did not set her down. Jules kicked her feet, to no avail. Dax simply held her tighter.
"My second in command has informed me he too has found his mate and wishes to resign his position. I must choose another. You have proven yourself in battle, and your mate is unafraid to use her powers to fight against the Black Dragon and the evil he sows on our world. I'd like to promote you to the Red Wyr's second. If I fall, you will become the Wyvern in my place."
Dax didn't say anything. So Jules poked him in the ribs. "Say yes and thank you. I've already seen that you're going to be a great leader. You're going to get everyone baseball bats and teach them how to lop demon wyrms heads off with them. It'll be fun."
Dax bowed his head. "Thank you, Wyvern. I accept."
"Good. Then rise with your new mantle of responsibility on your shoulders."
Dax stood and shook hands with Match. "What's my first assignment, sir?"
Jules couldn't be sure because she was still staring at Dax's cute butt, but she thought she heard Match chuckle. "The first thing you need to do is take your mate home and bed her, son. I think you've made her wait long enough."
