by Laura Wylde
Mated to Dragons
Laura Wylde
Contents
A Note from Laura
1. Macy
2. David
3. Kazan
4. Kazan
5. Macy
6. David
7. Kauris
8. Kazan
9. Macy
10. Reuben
11. David
12. Macy
Also by Laura Wylde
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A Note from Laura
Mated to Dragons is a standalone story and is the second book of the collection.
If you hadn’t had a chance to read the first book of this series it’s not too late:
Dragons Seduced
Please note that it is NOT necessary to read the first book in sequence.
1
Macy
The brown cliffs shot straight down into the water, leaving only a narrow strip of beach. Sharp rocks pointed their heads out of the water, discouraging swimmers, divers, and boaters. The same violent stones erupted over the slender beach, making it uninteresting for anyone except a few nude sun-bathers who climbed the largest boulders to soak up the sunlight.
It was interesting for me. The recent storms had coughed up all kinds of treasures from the ocean floor, strewing it across the southeastern point of Santorini. The beach was littered with the broken bodies of shellfish that had been battered against the rocks, small sea animals flitting across the sand in confusion and long trails of tangled seaweed.
The seaweed is what captures the most interesting things during a storm. It rolls up everything from seashells to baby seals and floats in with the tide, depositing its load along the shore. I managed to untangle three starfish from one bloated chunk of seaweed. One of the starfishes was still alive and I eased it gently back in the water.
I continued down the coast, poking among the recent debris, finding tiny creatures to rescue. The terrain widened slowly as I walked until I found a small, tucked-away cove. It was so secluded I doubt many people beyond the locals knew it existed. The trees folded in all the way around it, shading a crystal-clear pool. The pool had flooded during the storm, but the water was receding now. Along the banks were a few dripping tokens from the ocean’s floor.
It was an incredible find. There were conch shells as big around as a snare drum. There was flawless mother-of-pearl. There were brightly colored hermit crabs that retreated under their shells and scooted behind the tufts of grass still clinging to the bank. I began writing in my notebook because I was sure I was viewing several species of small animal life that had not been recorded previously. I brushed away at a sandy mound, believing from the size, I would uncover a porpoise or a seal.
It was neither.
Instead of fur or skin, I touched something hard and spiny. Puzzled, I dug away the last of the clinging sand and sat back, dazed. If I had not been looking at it with my own two eyes, I would not have believed it. I had just unearthed a seahorse that must be close to four feet long.
I fumbled with my cellphone, so excited I could barely think. “Hello,” I stammered, then tried out a little of my terrible Greek.
“I speak English,” said the girl calmly at the other end.
“Oh, good. Right.” I scratched my head and took a deep breath. “I need to speak to Councilman Christopoulos? I’m with Green Life Solutions. We were hired by the city to do a series of studies on the debris that washed up from the storms.”
I waited a few minutes, as I was transferred, then listened to someone talk to me in English I was sure wasn’t much better than my Greek. “I’m sorry, sir,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what caused the storms. They were very unusual. I agree, but I’m not a climatologist. I’m a biologist. I’m studying the marine life that washed up from the ocean floor.”
He crackled something that was half in English, half in Greek. I began drawing circles in the sand while waiting for him to finish talking. “No. Biologists don’t study cyclones. We study life. Yes, even dead life. It’s what I am calling about, Councilman. I found a seahorse – a very large seahorse. Maybe three meters in size.”
His poor English suddenly disappeared. He breathed heavily into the phone. “You stay there. Don’t tell anyone, don’t photo-share with anyone. I’m sending a team to assist you. You talk with them and them only. Give me your co-ordinates.” I gave them. “Where are you staying?” I told him. “Now, you stay with them. You don’t work for Green Life Solutions. Not right now. You work for the Government of Greece. Do you understand?”
All this over a four-foot seahorse. I stammered a few words about being from a foreign country. He swept the argument aside. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll change the contract. We’ll pay you more but now, you work for us. Do you understand?”
I think I did. It was either work for the Greek Government or never work in marine studies again. It was better than being kicked off the island where I had made my extraordinary discovery, so I consented.
I hung up, a little freaked at the strange reaction but relieved I still had a job cataloguing the debris from the storm. I squatted by my puzzling find and I finished smoothing away the earth, wondering how deep it must have been in the silent ocean before the storm had ripped it out of its home. It made me wonder what else was out there. Greece was full of stories about giant squid, terrible sea monsters and enticing mer people. It’s what attracted me – the mysticism of its oceans, marine life that has only been rumored about but never proven.
While I waited for my new team members, I continued exploring the cove that had absorbed so much of the refuse. It was odd. Some of the objects seemed to have been deliberately carved instead of rounded and polished by the ocean. Some were so exquisite, it made me wonder if they were the artifacts of a town, long submerged by water now, that had carved delicate items from shells and corals.
I was so absorbed in studying my finds, I didn’t notice when they arrived until I had the crunch of boots behind me a polite cough. I raised my head slowly, reluctant to let go of my daydreams. The one who had coughed, coughed again. “You are Macy Latimar?”
I snipped loose a piece of fishing line from around a small turtle’s leg and set it free. “Last I heard,” I said, standing up and brushing the sand off my hands. I offered them each a shake.
The coughing one shook it first, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. “David Gowen. I coordinate our operations.”
Maybe it was the language barrier. “Operations?” I asked, raising my brows. “You’re not biologists?”
His eyes darted to the side and back. “Field tests. My English gets a little mixed at times.” He feigned an accent he didn’t have previously.
“So, what do you do in the field?” I asked. If these were my new mates, I wanted to get to know them. It’s not that I doubted their credentials. They seemed quite comfortable in their environment, but they all seemed to be covering something. I reminded myself, they were government workers. Anyone working for the government was bound to have a few cards up their sleeves.
The big, gnarly one standing next to blonde hunk trying to appear a major authority. “Rueben Hathaway, navigator.” This didn’t surprise me. He looked a little like Pop Eye. He even had a squint, and large, powerful arms. “We’ve got a rig. We take her out for a bit of diving. She’s not very big but she’s sea-worthy.” He nearly crushed my hand when he shook it.
“You do underwater expeditions?”
He nodded his head enthusiastically and popped a cigar in his mouth. “All the time.”
A smile was creeping over my face despite myself. They were so cute; they didn’t even know their charms. They were trying to be biologists, which made me sure they weren’t. The smallest one grabbed m
y hand eagerly, the green spikes on his head flapping. Of all of them, he was the one I believed the easiest. There was something quick and eager about him. He scrambled around on the rocks, his shirt open behind him, reminding me of an ocean bird. “Kazan Papatonis,” he told me. Papatonis meant “bad ass” or something like that. Really cute.
The fourth one didn’t take my hand right away. He studied me with his snapping black eyes as though guessing the potential of a racehorse. “Kauris Moralis,” he said finally. He squatted next to my giant seahorse. “It was just a youngster.”
“Youngster?” I asked incredulously. “Do you see the size of that thing?”
“Sexual organs haven’t fully matured. This species has a crown that develops purple tips as it grows older. It doesn’t even have a full crown yet.”
“You know this species?”
David was still trying thinly, to come across as a marine specialist. “We’ve seen it. They live in very deep water. The storm must have been severe to disturb it.”
“Either that or it got separated from the main herd,” suggested Reuben. “Either way, ye probably won’t be seeing one again. Might as well wrap this up and move on.”
He opened a kit and brought out a plastic sheet for the dead seahorse. “That’s it?” I grasped his wrists and made him look at me, squint and all. “If these are so common, why doesn’t the public know? Why haven’t I read any scientific articles covering their existence.”
“Well, lady,” he said, (saying lydee instead of lady.) “If it be known, deep sea divers would be crawling all over the place. We can’t have landlubbers jumping into the sea, not knowing what they are doing. It would scare everything away.”
David squatted to verify Kauris’ findings. “You are a marine biologist, Miss Latimar. You know how it is. People learn about something like this and they ruin the entire eco-system trying to catch sight of it. The Greece Department of Natural History has known about giant seahorses for a long time but have not made their records public in the interest of protecting them. You should be able to understand that.”
David had a mild, persuasive voice, like a businessman. When you combine the voice to the blonde, aristocratic features, you’ve got a knock-out salesperson who could persuade millions to bathe in chemical dyes for glowing skin. If he was worried about ego-systems, I was genuinely glad to have him on my side, although I still felt obliged to protest. “Couldn’t you at least share your discoveries with science? The academics have the right to know the truth.”
“They share their information too freely.” David made a gesture that showed who was really in charge, and the four men sealed up the seahorse as neatly as putting samples in an evidence bag. “We’ll take this to the lab and determine the cause of death. We’ll test the stomach contents, collect its DNA. Is there anything else you would like covered, Miss Latimar?”
They actually looked ready to leave! I shook my head, dumbfounded. “A lot! There is a lot to cover. Look at what the storm washed up! Some of these objects look like they were made from human hands. Look at this!” I held up a necklace made from coral and pearls. “This isn’t an artifact from an ancient city. The string is still intact.”
David took the necklace from my hand and examined it. “There may have been a shipwreck. We’ll notify the National Navy.”
“Blue coral? I have never seen blue coral.”
“It was probably dyed,” David answered quickly.
“Huh.” I left them to return to the water’s edge, gazing at the secrets it had accidentally brought to the beach. “I’m staying. There is too much here to ignore. Look at the fishes in the pool. They were driven in with the tide. I don’t recognize at least a half-dozen species. Another week or two, they’ll be gone. They will find their way back to where they came from and I’ll lose my chance to study them.”
I found an inviting, flat rock to settle on and dangled my feet in the water while I scribbled in my notebook. Behind me, I could hear the men muttering and moving about. Kazan found his own rock where he could perch. His unbuttoned shirt fluttered in the breeze, revealing a nicely bronzed chest with a small spout of hair between his pectorals. With his Peter Pan face, his muscular development seemed odd. The way he dressed seemed odd. He should be one of those wasted young men who hung out at bars and nightclubs until their lungs collapsed. Instead, he behaved more like a biologist than anyone in the group. “Those little red and pink fish you’re so interested in,” he said. “We can take you deep sea diving. You can study them in their element.”
I scraped together a soil sample, freshly regurgitated from the ocean floor, and placed it in a zip lock bag. “That would be good. I’ve had diver’s training.”
“And experience? We would be going deep.”
“Three years. I’ve done two Arctic dives.”
“I don’t like the cold,” he muttered, then flashed me his boyish smile. “That’s why I stay here. We know every inch of this ocean – the entire Mediterranean. You don’t have to wade around in a mud puddle.”
“You’ll show me giant seahorses?”
“They aren’t easy to find but we’ll try. What do you say? The guys are ready to pack it up for the day.” He wheedled. “They picked up some of your trinkets. We can go back to our apartments and study them in detail.”
The sun was getting low and a cool breeze was moving in. I saw no reason to protest any longer. The team had been cooperative, even if they did insist on suppressing the evidence. I couldn’t blame them. They were under orders of the government, just as I was. I picked up my kit and followed them to their big-ass RV. They must be well-connected. It was a pimped-out ride.
2
David
We received the interception call on the AMP emergency signal. Non-threatening security breach of classified information. We were to contain without arousing suspicion. Generally, this was easy. Most people who stumbled across clues to the deepest parts of our ocean don’t know what they are looking at. It’s easy to come up with a story that will make them forget what they saw. We’ve used every gimmick, from the remnants of ancient civilizations still leaving behind traces, to radioactivity causing strange mutations. That look of official authority helps. It intimidates the casual beach comber. It doesn’t intimidate marine biologists.
Even with her back turned to us, I knew we were in deep shit. She wasn’t at all afraid of the tiny creatures scurrying away from her hands and picked through the rotting seaweed and kelp as though she had discovered a jackpot. I coughed to get her attention. I coughed again when she turned around. She had one of those heart-shaped faces with a flurry of ginger-colored corkscrew curls framing it that makes the stoniest dragon heart melt. For the first time in a hundred years, I was thrown off balance.
She smiled and extended her hand. The blood rushed into my head a mile a minute. My brain got so scrambled I chose all the wrong words! I used the military term, “operation” instead of field testing, causing that invisible female radar to go up all over the place. Kauris bailed me out. I’ll never really know what runs through his blood – it’s like black, liquid fire–but he handled that seahorse like a forensics expert. His cool judgment allowed my temperature to go down several degrees, almost hitting the normal range.
Even Reuben did a better job of distracting her interests than I did, although he shouldn’t have mentioned a boat. Once again, she zeroed in with her radar. She would love to go deep sea diving! At least we would be able to steer her to a place where she could dive safely.
The longer we stayed, the more she noticed irregularities in the waste that had drifted to shore. I was relieved when she finally agreed to pack it up and come with us to her new quarters. The apartments AMP had arranged were comfortable for any biologist, with plenty of laboratory equipment, a large, immaculate workspace, a sterile scrub-down room, and an area set off for bedroom, dining, and relaxation. What Macy didn’t have in her quarters was access to our advanced DNA processing and our full inventory of mytholo
gical creatures. She could analyze her samples all she wanted. She wouldn’t find any matches.
She liked our RV. Odd to think about it now. It looks like an armored SWAT van. I don’t even know why it has so much iron grid work and rollers on it. It’s something Kazan likes. He does solder in his spare time and the van takes the brunt of his experiments. On the inside though, it’s just as Macy exclaimed, pimped out. She laughed about it. The van has all bucket seats that swivel so you could sit in a round table if you wanted. There are automatic drive settings on the dash, so it doesn’t even need to be steered manually unless you wanted to drive. We like flying best, so none of us are much into driving.
The seats are covered with fake leopard-skin and each has a small, digital screen propped on one arm. There is also a curved bar built into the side panels, so she’s right. The van is pimped out. It’s the way we like to roll.
Our apartments were a short distance from the beach, on a bluff overlooking the ocean. After settling in and taking a shower, I saw her walk out to the edge of the bluff and stand at the guardrail. The sun was flattening out over the horizon, its rich orange beams reflecting a bright silhouette. She was wearing a simple summer dress and wrapped in a long, fringed shawl. She looked like a Nordic goddess. I wanted to wrap her up in a kiss that would cause thunderbolts to appear. Instead, I strolled quietly up until I was standing next to her, breathing in her freshly bathed scent. “Do you find everything to your satisfaction?” I asked, trying to sound neutral.
