Dragon Hunted

by Haley Ryan

  “We’ll have to,” the mutterer announced matter-of-factly. “She’s tiny! I didn’t even know dragons came in snack size!”

  I honestly thought about biting him.

  “She is right here,” I snapped, and had the extreme satisfaction of seeing all of them flinch. More with surprise than anything. Most dragons, I’d discovered, were not only a great deal larger than me, they communicated using telepathy while in their dragon forms. Something about their dragon vocal apparatus being unable to handle the mechanics of human speech.

  I could, and did.

  “If you’re going to discuss how big of a problem I’m likely to be, the least you could do is either let me leave first or include me in the conversation.”

  Lady Tairen took a step towards me. Then another. I backed up until my butt hit the wall. When she was close enough, she reached out a hand towards me, slowly and carefully, her heart in her eyes. “You are not a problem, dear one,” she whispered hoarsely. “Never that. You are beautiful. No matter what size you are.”

  I didn’t move, somehow mesmerized by the emotion in her voice. Her hand came closer, and as she pressed her palm ever so gently against my forehead, she closed her eyes and spoke mind-to-mind.

  Kirasha, my love, I am so sorry.

  And so help me, I believed her.

  I couldn’t seem to do otherwise. Not because she compelled me, but because… the dragon knew she told the truth. We knew.

  I leaned forward, pressing my forehead tightly against her trembling hand.

  Was this real? Or was I only imagining the feeling that I’d found something I’d been missing for my entire life?

  Are you really my mother? I couldn’t help asking—I wanted it to be true. Wanted to find out that I wasn’t really alone.

  I am. And these are truly your brothers.

  Even if she told the truth, how could I trust someone who’d given me up once already?

  How can I hear you like this? I thought we could only speak this way in dragon form.

  I am a gold dragon, and that is one of our gifts. As leaders of our people, we can communicate mind to mind in either form.

  And how do I know you’re telling the truth? How can I trust you not to kill me?

  Flames filled my mind. Blind rage. Deadly resolve.

  Our family bonds are sacred. I would rather burn in my own fire than betray my child, and your brothers would die to protect you.

  True. Again, I knew it as surely as I knew the shape of my own hand. Could all dragons sense truth in this form? I’d never really tried before.

  So if I decide to believe you… what now?

  She removed her hand and knelt in front of me, facing me eye to eye. “We will return home,” she said aloud. “You will take your place at my side, and I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

  “My place at your side?”

  My “brothers” exchanged glances.

  “As princess,” my mother explained impatiently, as though I should have figured it out already. “You are my daughter, and as such, you will rule after me.”

  Wait, what?

  Faris spoke up on my behalf. “Lady Tairen, you will need to take things slowly. She’s been kept almost completely ignorant about Idrian life, particularly history and politics, so this will all be completely new to her.”

  I threw him a glare. Did he have to make me sound quite that pathetic?

  “Dragons are matriarchal,” one of my brothers said helpfully. “You’re our only sister, which means you’ll be the next queen.” A worried frown crossed his face. “Although I’m not sure…”

  “We will deal with that later,” my mother said, rising to her feet with a warning look. “It is enough for now that we’ve found her. That she’s safe. That she can return to Riverhaven with us.”

  “Riverhaven?”

  “The dragon enclave. You’ll be safest there.” She said it as though my agreement were a foregone conclusion.

  Well, mother or not, she was in for a bit of surprise, because I wasn’t about to go anywhere.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as politely as I could manage, “but I am going to have to decline your invitation.”

  “Invitation?” Lady Tairen looked rather puzzled.

  “Yes. You know, that thing polite people do when they’re asking someone to visit.”

  She blinked. Most likely, she didn’t “invite” people very often.

  “You ask nicely if I’d like to visit your enclave, and then I say no. That’s how this works.”

  And that’s when the youngest of my three brothers started to laugh. “You know, Mother, I had my doubts at first, but this proves she is definitely one of us.”

  The Queen of the Dragons rolled her eyes and fixed her son with a quelling glare. “You’re not exactly helping, Declan.”

  “Oh, but I think I am.” He came around the table and approached me, without any of the hesitancy that I might have expected. “Think about it. She just met us. She’s apparently lived in terror of us her whole life, and now you want to take her away from everything she knows without asking how she feels about it. I know you want to make up for lost time—we all do—but you can’t expect her to adjust to this idea overnight. It’s going to be complicated. She needs time to get to know us before she’s going to feel comfortable placing her life in our hands.”

  I gaped at him. He’d just said exactly what I would have wanted the queen to hear. Almost like he’d read my mind. Except I probably would have been a great deal less diplomatic about it.

  “How did you know?” I burst out.

  He offered me a shrug and a wink. “I’m silver,” he said, as if that should explain it.

  Thankfully, dragons didn’t blush. At least not when they were wearing scales. “I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. One of the nearly infinite number of things I didn’t know about my kin. Draven had told me that there were different colors of dragons, each with their own unique gifts, but I had no idea what most of them were.

  “I apologize,” Declan said gracefully. “Silver dragons are given to gifts of the mind. We’re usually either empaths or seers. I’m an empath, which means I can sense your feelings if I try.”

  Obviously, he could sense my alarm because he quickly reassured me.

  “No, I don’t go around reading emotions all the time, or using them to my own advantage. But in situations where diplomacy is needed, I can read surface emotions well enough to smooth things over.” He grinned at me, and I felt a strange rush of liking and amusement. “Mother might be a gold dragon, but she still needs all the help she can get when it comes to diplomacy.”

  I’d just met her, but the truth in that was clearly evident.

  “Then what do you propose?” Lady Tairen demanded, clearly unused to being thwarted. “Now that we’ve found her, I won’t lose her again, and I refuse to leave her unguarded. Especially now that we know she’s a bronze.” She shuddered. “If word were to get out, protecting her here would be nearly impossible without burning the city to the ground.”

  “Nobody is going to tell anyone,” I told her. “There are only a few people who know the truth, and they won’t betray me.”

  Callum—the oldest—fixed me with a stern, glowing gaze. “Who knows? What are their connections? And how can you assure their silence?”

  Yeah, this wasn’t going to go well at all.

  I bared my teeth at him. “With that kind of attitude, brother dear, do you really think there’s even the smallest chance I’m going to tell you?” Considering that they believed it was fae assassins who originally tried to kill me, they weren’t going to be thrilled to discover that two out of the four who had seen my dragon form were closely connected to the Fae Court.

  “As I am responsible for the security of our enclave,” Callum growled back, “I believe it is your responsibility to share that information, yes.”

  Oops. Guess I found the brother without a sense of humor.

  “I would say I’m sorr
y to disappoint you, but…” I tilted my head defiantly. “That would be a lie.”

  We glared at each other across the room.

  “Fighting already.” The third brother—the muttering one—began to chuckle under his breath. “Seems about right for a dragon sibling reunion. Welcome to the family, Kira.”

  “And that,” I said firmly, “is my cue to leave. I really do appreciate that you all are feeling protective, but I can’t handle this all at once. I’ve never really had a family, and now you’re telling me I’m not only a daughter and a sister, but my mother is a queen! It’s overwhelming and scary and weird, and I really need to find someplace normal to think about it. You’re going to have to let me go home.”

  I was looking directly at Lady Tairen when I said this, and I could see when she finally softened just a little.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t appreciate her reluctance—my dragon believed her when she said I was her daughter. I also believed that she genuinely meant me no harm, and if both of those things were true, I could understand why she wouldn’t want to let me out of her sight.

  But I wasn’t ready for a suffocating tribe of oversized babysitters. I’d finally learned to stand on my own, thanks to Draven—the irritating half-gryphon shifter who hadn’t bothered to let me know whether he was okay, the jerk—and it would be hard to take what would feel like a step backward. Back to being isolated for my own protection, with or without my permission.

  No, I needed time to think. Time to make my own decision. And though I really didn’t expect any of them to understand that, I did expect them to respect my wishes.

  “Is your home secure?” Callum asked. “Are the exits fully warded? Does the perimeter have sufficient surveillance? Do you have a way to prevent unauthorized visitors from gaining entrance?”

  I couldn’t help laughing a little as I considered my house-turned-bookstore. It had been built in the twenties, and hadn’t had all that many updates—there were three doors, a crap-ton of ancient windows, and a scary basement that was usually full of spiders. I frequently used my bedroom window to sneak out onto the roof, and deadbolts on the doors were my main concession to security.

  Plus, it wasn’t just my home, it was a business, so there were strangers wandering in and out almost every day of the week. Not to mention the gargoyle living with me had until recently been employed by the fae…

  “Perfectly secure,” I lied with a straight face. I might have gotten away with it too, except for Faris, the traitor.

  “Your place is a cracker-box, and you know it,” he rumbled. “A toddler with a toy tool set could break in and set the whole place on fire.”

  I hissed at him, but the damage was done.

  “Then it is out of the question,” Lady Tairen announced.

  “I think you’re forgetting that I’m an adult, and it’s actually my decision.”

  Her nostrils flared as she swiveled to face me fully. “You do not simply overrule your queen, Kirasha, let alone your mother.”

  The tension in the room shot through the roof as my dragon seemed to decide we were being threatened. Mother or not, I’d come too far to meekly hand over responsibility for my life.

  My eyes glowed hot, and smoke began to emerge from between my bared teeth. “And what do you propose to do? Are you going to shift in here and force me to comply? Shatter this building and potentially crush any humans nearby? If not, then you should know that I’m not about to meekly surrender my freedom, and I’m happy to demonstrate how far I’m willing to go to keep it!”

  “Please!” Declan stepped between us, his lips pale, sweat beading on his forehead. He appeared to be in genuine, physical pain. “Please stop. Neither of you really wants to hurt the other, can’t you see that?”

  Lady Tairen sighed, and her shoulders slumped, while Callum and my third brother moved around the table to Declan.

  He seemed to be almost struggling to breathe. They moved to either side of him, and each placed a hand on his shoulder, offering him some silent form of support until his eyes seemed to clear, and he could breathe normally.

  I could only watch as they demonstrated the sort of closeness and understanding I longed for but could only dream of—they instinctively knew what Declan needed and moved to provide it. And with each passing moment, I felt more and more of an outsider. A threat they’d needed to protect him from.

  A new sort of pain tore at me, and with it came an ever-intensifying need to be elsewhere.

  “Faris,” I said quietly, “can you please find me some clothes?” My own had been ruined when I shifted.

  He hesitated.

  “You owe me for this.”

  He finally nodded, grudgingly. “I did it because I thought it was the right thing,” he said in a low voice. “Not to hurt you.”

  “Right now, I don’t really care,” I answered honestly. “I just need to get out of here. I can’t take this anymore.”

  With one final look at my family, Faris left the room, closing the door quietly behind him as he left me alone with these complete strangers who apparently shared my blood.

  Lady Tairen took a deep breath. “I apologize,” she said, which seemed to surprise more than just me. “I allowed my protectiveness to get the better of my compassion. An emotion I struggle to find on the best of days, I admit.”

  My brothers exchanged a look, but it seemed to be more amused than anything.

  “Kirasha”—she no longer sounded confrontational, only tired and sad—“I swear to you, I have no desire to be your enemy. I have lost too many years, and I will do anything to keep from driving you away.” She knelt in front of me again, a little closer than I was comfortable with, but there was no room for me to back up. No place to run from the depth of emotion she was deliberately allowing me to see. “Please, let us try to come to some sort of compromise. I can no more leave you unguarded than I could deliberately cause you harm, but I can see that I’ve overstepped. In my mind, you are still the tiny thing I last saw in Morghaine’s arms—as infinitely precious as you were fragile. I know you are no longer that child, but it will take time for me to come to grips with everything I’ve lost.”

  Her sadness cut through my stubbornness as nothing else could have, probably because it so nearly mirrored my own feelings. Everything she’d lost—we’d both lost years we could never get back. Maybe I could find a way to compromise that would give me the space I needed without causing her any more anxiety. She’d suffered enough of that over the past nineteen years.

  “What—” My voice cracked, so I coughed a few times before trying again. “What do you suggest?”

  “May I?” the muttering brother interrupted.

  Lady Tairen looked up at him. “May you what, Ryker?”

  He grinned. “Make a suggestion.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Only if it’s a serious one.”

  “You want her to be safe, and she wants to not be surrounded by hordes of smothering dragons. I suggest we split our numbers. You and Callum return home to keep the enclave running, while Declan and I remain here. Declan will be more than able to determine whether her visitors mean her any harm, and between us, we can no doubt keep her safe should any threatening situation arise. And with only two of us, she can hardly complain about being smothered.”

  He turned to me, a lopsided smile pulling at his lips. “Or would you find even our puny selves too intimidating?”

  The rat. He was manipulating both of us, and he’d left me no room to negotiate without sounding unreasonable, ungrateful, or both.

  Could I handle two giant dragon babysitters? Who would probably spend their every waking moment trying to convince me to see things their way?

  “You would have to promise not to push me,” I warned. “It doesn’t count as giving me time to think if you’re constantly in my space, trying to manipulate me or wear me down. I don’t care for manipulation any more than I do for threats.”

  “I think we all gathered that much,” he said, chuckling in a c
ompletely annoying way.

  It was settled—I was going to punch Ryker before the day was over. Perhaps I should accept this constant irritation as confirmation of our relationship—who could possibly be this annoying besides a brother?

  “Fine.” It was my turn to mutter. “You can stay. But I’m not feeding you.”

  With that, Declan began to smile, and that smile was so beautiful and warm, I almost had to blink back tears.

  “Thank you,” he said, and it would have taken a total jerk to ignore his genuine joy and relief, “for giving us a chance. We might be a bit tough to get used to, but never doubt that we’re your family.”

  I didn’t. Not really. In my heart, I knew they were telling the truth. I had a mother. Brothers. An entire enclave full of dragons who had once known my name.

  And while a part of me was ready to cry for joy at having found someone to belong to, the larger part of me was still afraid.

  Strangely, I wasn’t really afraid they would betray me. No, this was worse—I was afraid of disappointing them. Afraid that my strange, broken dragon would never measure up. Afraid that I would never fit in, never quite figure out how to be a part of this beautiful, tight-knit family.

  And that, I knew, had the potential to hurt me far more than if I’d never known they existed.

  Three

  It was one of the strangest experiences of my life, returning to my home with my newfound brothers in tow. There was no way to know how they might react, and I think part of me expected them to handle the realities of normal human life similarly to Rath—enthusiastic, but somewhat clueless.

  Fortunately, Both Declan and Ryker seemed perfectly capable of handling themselves, beginning with our mode of transportation.

  “You have a car?” Ryker asked, as soon as they’d followed me through the back door of the club.

  For the first few moments, I was too busy trying to deal with my weirdly fitting clothes to answer him. Faris had borrowed the shirt from a naiad named Marilee who worked in his kitchen, and the pants from someone quite a bit larger than either Marilee or me. But it wasn’t like I could be choosy—not when I’d shredded my own clothes while shifting to my dragon shape—and I couldn’t exactly ride the streetcar home while wrapped up in a towel.