by James, Jacki
“It’s bioluminescent plankton. There’s a reef in that spot and they have their own little ecosystem. Do you dive?” he asked.
“No, I never have been a diver, but if I’m staying here, I may need to learn. That’s beautiful.”
“There’s so much I want to show you,” he said. I became more comfortable now that I’d opened my eyes and saw the beautiful view from up here. I leaned to the side letting the salty air rush against my face. We turned toward the shore and headed straight for the cliffs. “Hold on,” Azaran called back, and I wrapped my arms tight around him. Just before we hit the cliff, Sindri narrowed out her body and pointed her head up. The rest of her body followed, and we shot upward, her body only feet from the rocky cliff. We jettisoned up and over the edge, and then we were rushing toward the trees. With a couple of flaps of her massive wings, we lifted up and over them, but she glided barely high enough to clear them. She made a hard right turned upward. We broke through the clouds above us, and it was like there was nothing below us. Just pillowy air.
“They look solid enough to stand on,” I said, loving how much this was like being in another world.
“I love it up here. It’s like it's just me and Sindri. The rest of the world falls away.” I started to see what it was about flying that he loved so much. The longer we stayed up here the more comfortable I became. “I want to show you Dargum’s Cove, but you need to be in front,” he said. “Hold on to Sindri for a minute.” I slid my arms down his side and placed them on her back. Dragon's scales weren’t at all what I’d imagined. I expected them to be hard, more like fingernails maybe, but her skin was more like a snake. I could feel the individual scales, but they all made one solid surface. I ran my hands along her muscular body. She was so strong and I could feel the muscles move beneath my hand controlling our movement in the sky. I had just gotten comfortable holding onto her and not holding onto Azaran when he stood up. On her back.
He laughed at the look on my face. “It’s really no different from skateboarding or surfing, I promise. We can practice in the back yard, and you’ll be standing on her back in no time, too.”
“I’ll stay seated, thank you very much.” Personally, I thought the fact that I was on a dragon at all was enough adventure for me.
“Duck for me,” he said as he laid a hand on my shoulder for balance and stepped over me. Then he turned to face forward and slid down behind me so that our positions were reversed. “We’ll come up on Dargum’s Cove here in a minute. It’s off to the right.”
I looked over and saw a faint glow in the distance, but as we got closer, I made out the town. “It’s beautiful from up here,” I said. The town was laid out in a fan centering around the actual cove.
“How about some hot chocolate?” he asked.
“That sounds wonderful.” We landed in the middle of the park, and Sindri quickly returned to her tattoo. The magic around us shimmered, and I knew she had taken her cloaking magic with her. We walked over to the coffee shop right across from the park and both got hot chocolates. “Want to walk a bit?” Azaran asked. I nodded yes and took another sip of what had to be the very best hot chocolate on the planet.
Azaran was quiet while we walked. I had noticed that he seemed bothered by something ever since they got back from this last assignment. Not like something was wrong actually, but like something had been niggling at him. “So, you want to talk about whatever it is bothering you? You don’t have to, but if you want to I’m happy to listen. You seem like something’s bugging you, so I wondered if the assignment wasn’t what you had expected.”
“Yeah, our assignment went exactly as planned. It wasn’t anything to do with the actual assignment. But the wraith riders showed up. Just a few, and not very well trained ones either. There was no reason for them to be there. This was a cut and dried mission. It had nothing to do with them at all, and yet, there they were. That’s been happening more and more lately. Usually, when we deal with them it’s because they were the ones that caused the problem in the first place, but this business with them popping up in places they don’t belong is concerning.”
“What do you think they want?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We’ve reached out to a couple of the other clusters, and none of them are having the same problem. They don’t have anything to gain by targeting us. It would be years before I could be Chieftain. Not that it matters because I don’t want the position. I’m happy here with my brothers, and no matter how badly my uncle didn’t want the position, he’s done a great job.”
“It isn’t possible for you to be Chieftain now?” I asked. I still had so much to learn about this strange world I’d be living in.
“You can be a councilman any time after you turn eighteen, but not Chieftain until you are thirty-five. The founders believed that you needed to serve your time as a rider before you could lead.”
“Your uncle didn’t want the job?”
“Goodness no. The position was supposed to go to my dad when my grandfather died, but then when my dad was killed, everyone knew it’d come to me when my grandfather died. No one expected that to happen before I was old enough to take over, but as the oldest surviving son, it fell to my uncle. His whole life he had known that my father had been raised to be the next Chieftain, and he wasn’t. He took advantage of not having those expectations on him and became quite a party boy. Then suddenly, he found himself in charge of the whole Order. Being in charge was a big change for him.”
“You’re wondering why they keep popping up.”
“Yeah, I’ve been digging around trying to find out what happened to my parents, and I think it’s related to that.”
“If wraith riders killed your parents, then it’d make sense for that person to send them after you.”
“Yeah, but there are four of us, and taking us on would be a mistake.”
“You sound sure about that, especially since you aren’t even sure who’s after you.”
“Oh, I’m sure. I’m well trained and can be lethal when I need to be. And to be honest, believe it or not, all three of my brothers are more dangerous than I am, they just don’t realize it yet.”
“You’ve trained them well,” I said, and he smiled at me.
“Ready to go home?”
“I guess. I could get used to this whole dragon riding thing you know.”
Chapter Seventeen
Azaran
On Friday we drove the rental car to Seattle, just a reminder how much better flying was than driving. The trip did give us time to talk and get to know each other better, though. Before we left, Toby had given Eeli a list of things to get at the grocery store so he could start fixing us more nutritious meals. I teased him about momming us, and he just grumbled at me that someone had to. But honestly, it was nice to have someone care what we ate.
I didn’t really expect to have anything in common with him. We came from such different backgrounds, but to my surprise we had a lot of things in common. We both loved strategy games and word puzzles. My mother had always done crossword puzzles, and I used to help her. Toby used to do them with his grandmother. I loved history and so did he, and come to find out, we had both watched a lot of the same documentaries.
The plan had been to drop off the rental car and go shop for something else for him to drive, but then I had another idea. “Why don’t we just go to Maine? We could take care of all your stuff, sell your car, and you could clean out your office.”
“That’s an eight hour flight,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, but you forget, we won’t be flying on a plane.”
“That is a great idea. Let’s call the guys and tell them we’ll be gone a few days. You can meet my friends and that will give me a chance to get all my stuff straightened out there. I’ll keep the moving company I hired, though. I don’t want to stay long enough to pack and everything.”
We got to his condo right before dark. He seemed to hesitate a second, and then sighed. “Okay, I guess we need to g
o in.” I wasn’t sure what his hesitation was about. We were greeted by a doorman as we walked in.
“Good evening, Dr. Wells,” he said.
“Good evening,” Toby said as we walked by. The building was nothing like what I expected his home to be like. It was cold and modern. We took the elevator up to his floor, and he led us down a hallway. “This is,” he paused, “this condo is not a home. It’s a showpiece. Evidence of my life as a successful physician. I think that is part of why it was so easy for me to feel at home with you and the guys. Because you’ve created a home for them there. A real home. It feels nice and warm and lived in. My place doesn’t feel like anything at all. It’s just a place to sleep with a fancy address.”
I turned him to face me. “Toby, I’ve met you. The real you. The man who cares about helping people and using his education in a way that has nothing to do with the trappings of wealth and everything to do with saving people. The man who likes to spend his spare time down at the tidepools trying to save the starfish—yeah, I noticed. That is the man that fate chose for me as a mate. All of this here belongs to Dr. Tobias Wells, MD. and not Toby Wells, my mate. That Toby doesn’t live in this fancy condo, that Toby lives right here,” I said, touching my fist to my heart. “And he is mine.”
He smiled at me and stepped closer, pulling me down for a kiss. “You’re pretty obsessed with this whole mine thing. You realize that don’t you?”
“Yep. Now let’s go inside.”
The condo was exactly as he had described and nothing like the man I was coming to love. Instead, it was pristine. Decorated in a modern style that didn’t suit him at all. The kind of place that made you think you probably should’ve taken your shoes off at the door, and that sitting on the couch would be a faux pas of some kind. But the view was amazing, and I said so.
“Yeah, that’s actually why I bought the place. You have the same view from the master bedroom as well, come see.” We went into the master, and he was right, the view was enough to make you want to buy the place. I flopped down on the bed, and it was like lying on a cloud.
“Oh, man, Toby, we need this bed in our room at home. I thought I did a good job picking out a bed, but this thing is amazing.”
“Oh, I have something for Sindri. Can she come out for a bit?”
I felt her start to squirm on my arm and knew she was more than on board with the idea, but when Toby walked over to the bookshelf near the window and turned back around with a small prism-like statue, I knew I was done for. She hopped off my arm, jumped off the bed, and giving her wings a couple of flaps, sailed across the room and landed in his arms. He caught her, laughing. “You didn’t have to come over here. I would’ve brought it to you. He handed it to her, and she examined it closely. It looked like some kind of award. It had a large, flat cut diamond shape with a crystal pedestal that was attached to a wooden base. She chirped and looked at it, obviously pleased. Then she used her claws and ripped the diamond shape off the stand, handing the rest back to him.
Toby laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t figure you wanted the rest of it.” She stuck the prism in her pouch and set out to explore the rest of the house.
He crawled up in the bed with me and laid his head on my chest. “It’s kind of weird, actually. To think that this was so important to me for so long: making money; being awarded by my peers; making a statement about how well I was doing. When the truth is, none of this is what I want, what I ever wanted. It was just so easy to get caught up in that. But all of this,” he motioned around us, “this was all my father’s dream, not mine.”
“So what is your dream, then? How do you see your life?” I asked.
“I see it with you. Well, you and the boys. I want to keep practicing medicine, but on a smaller scale. Mostly I want to make apple pie using my grandmother’s recipe, go to the diner for breakfast and chat with Elsie, and then go home and watch you guys train; maybe go for a little dragon ride. I want what we’ve had the last couple weeks, but I don’t want it to be a vacation, I want it to be forever.”
“Toby,” I said, emotion heavy in my voice.
“What?”
“Will you complete the mating bond with me? I wanted to wait until you had time to get used to the idea, but that life you just described, that’s what I want, and I want it with you.”
He sat there for a second looking at me like he was trying to figure out what to say. I started to take it back and tell him we didn’t have to do anything he wasn’t ready to do when a smile spread across his face lighting up his eyes.
“You mean like right now?”
“Yes, right now. There’s a whole mumbo jumbo ceremony that is just for show, but the part we need to do doesn’t require any of that. That part just requires that we be willing to make that commitment. Once it’s done, its forever, Toby. No take backs.”
“No take backs? Really? What are we, twelve?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.” I chuckled. “You know what I mean.”
He reached up and gently cupped my face. “Yes, Az, I know what you mean. And I think we should do it.
“Okay, now then?”
“This was your idea, if you aren’t sure we don’t have to,” he said, looking at me like I had lost my mind.
“No, I want to. I’m sure. I just didn’t expect you to be. Let’s do this.” I sat and slid up so that I was leaning on the headboard. “Come here,” I said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into my lap. “I’ve only ever seen one other bonding, but I think it’ll be best if you’re sitting here where I can hold you for this. The more contact the better.”
Sindri come here, I thought and she came rushing into the room and hopped up on the bed.
Is it time?
It is time.
She climbed up on Toby’s lap and snuggled up against him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my knife. “So when you were a kid, did you ever do the blood brother thing with your friends?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, eyeing my knife wearily.
“Well, this is basically the same. You ready?” I asked, handing him the knife.
“Can’t you do it?” he asked.
“No, it’s part of it, you have to show your willingness to bond with me by making your own cut.” He nodded and reached out taking the knife. He opened it, and with a wince, sliced the fatty part of his palm. “Fuck, that stings,” he hissed as he handed me back my knife.
I took it from him and sliced my own hand, watching as the blood rose to the surface. I took his hand, lined up our cuts, and pressed them together. “Betdeo batuma bawe partido,” I chanted. The red swirls of energy that normally appeared as Sindri took her warrior form surrounded us. I felt our blood mix, the essence of who he was joining with who I was. As his blood seeped into my body through our joined cuts, a current swept through my body combining my DNA with his and forming a new lifeforce, until I wasn’t solely me nor was he solely himself, but instead, together, we were something new.
I pulled our hands apart and held mine out to Sindri, indicating that he should do the same. He did and she licked at both cuts, tasting our blood and making our bond hers. “Betdeo, batuma bawe partido,” I repeated for Sindri this time, and as the bond between the three of us snapped into place, the red swirls of energy began to tighten, but instead of being pulled back into my tattoo, they focused on Toby’s arm. We watched as they slowly sunk into his skin forming the outline of a dragon on his arm that looked exactly like mine, making a home for Sindri on his body, showing that she now belonged to him just as she belonged to me.
“Wow that was intense,” he said, staring at the tattoo on his arm. “It was like I could feel you moving through my veins and becoming a part of me. There is no medical explanation for that. None.”
I cocked my head to the side and looked at him. “Did you have a medical explanation for how Sindri lived on my arm some days and is the size of a dinosaur others?”
“Well no, but that was you and this is me. I didn’t expect magickal things
to happen to me,” he said, like that made perfect sense.
“I thought what happened between us last night was pretty damn magickal,” I said in his mind, just to surprise him and to make him blush.
“Holy shit! Did you just talk to me without talking? Like you do with Sindri?” he asked.
“I did, and with just a little bit of practice, you’ll be able to do it, too. It isn’t like mind reading. You’ll have to project your thoughts for me to hear you, but we’ll work on blocking because sometimes, if you get upset, it’s easy to accidentally project. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to talk to Sindri as well.”
He yawned. “This is pretty amazing, but I feel like I just ran a marathon. I guess it takes a lot of energy for your body to restructure your DNA,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s take a nap.”
Chapter Eighteen
Toby
We didn’t just take a nap; we slept the entire night. I guess maybe I understated it when I said it took a lot of energy to restructure your DNA. And I had no doubt that was exactly what had happened. When Azaran pressed our hands together, and his blood mixed with mine, I felt every cell in my body morph. It was like some dormant part of me came to life. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and I didn’t regret a minute of it.
Arms snaked around me from behind and pulled me close. “Good,” he said sleepily. “I don’t regret it, but I’m glad you don’t, either.” He nuzzled the back of my neck.
“I didn’t say that out loud,” I said with a sigh.
“Well, you thought it awfully loud. Don’t worry, we’ll work on your blocking and shielding.”
“Okay, we can do that when we get home. Speaking of getting home, we should get up and take care of what we need to this morning so we can go home. I really think we need to get back.”
