The Dragon's Mate

by Emilia Hartley

  She glanced back, catching glimpses of the cottage through the trees. The cottage was still full of dragons. She didn’t want to go back there, where others would hear them. No, that wouldn’t do.

  She leaned in to kiss Luc again, her teeth tugging at his lower lip. “Take me here,” she whispered into his mouth.

  Luc’s hands gripped her hips and rocked her center against his groin. Anya’s head fell back. It was like nothing she’d experienced before. She’d had casual sex. She’s made love with long term boyfriends. None of that compared to the fireworks going off inside her at that moment. Luc wasn’t even inside of her yet. She didn’t know if she could handle the sensations of sex if this was what being with a dragon was like.

  Luc gripped the back of her head and brought her mouth back to his. This time, his tongue explored her mouth the way his cock would soon explore her. It delved deep, with long, luxurious strokes.

  Anya could barely handle it anymore. Her arm slipped between them while his kisses reached lower and lower, down her neck and across her chest. She fumbled with the button of his jeans in the water until they popped free and she could reach past the waistband. His need was hard and ready. It sprang free in the water.

  His tip pressed against her opening, rubbing and teasing. Anya laughed, a release of need more than one of humor. She prayed that no one in the cottage could see them as his tip slid past her opening. She let out a small cry and shuddered against him. Luc held the small of her back and waited for her to adjust.

  Luc filled her in a way she’d never known before. It seemed as if he took up every inch of available space inside her until the two of them mingled as one. Slowly, she started rocking her hips. Each tiny thrust sent a small shudder through her body. Her head fell back and her eyes drifted closed as sensation overcame her.

  Luc growled against the skin of her breasts when his head dipped over her. His teeth grazed her flesh and her lips parted. Shockwaves erupted from the tiny bites, the feeling echoed in her core.

  This was what life was meant to be. It was the perfect union of body and soul, she thought. It was everything life should have promised, everything her life had led up to. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she gripped him, as she rode him.

  His hand dipped between their bodies and his fingertips found the space between her legs. His touch began with slow, lazy circles in time with her thrusts, guiding her pace until it became frenzied with need. The pressure was building inside of her. It became heavy and unbearable. She stood on the brink of explosion.

  Luc’s nose grazed the skin of her neck, leaving a trail of sensation up to her ear where he could whisper to her. “I will follow you no matter where you lead me.”

  Anya felt the dam of pleasure burst. She smothered her cry into Luc’s chest while her opening spasmed around him. His growls only made her own orgasm stronger. The sensation sent bolts of white, hot light through her body. Her legs tightened around him as if she could linger in the sensation forever if she refused to move.

  Eventually, Luc started pumping into her again. His thrusts were slow and easy at first, then it became evident that he was losing control. His thrusts became harder, filled with need. His fingers kneaded the soft flesh of her ass while her nails dug into the skin of his shoulders.

  Each thrust sent an aftershock through her until she could no longer think straight. She felt the heavy dam starting to fill again. That had never happened before. She bit her lip, trying to hold on to the coming of the second orgasm. She clenched around Luc’s cock and earned a small groan from him.

  His hand rose to claim her face. He pulled her in for a crashing kiss just as his orgasm overtook him. His spasmed inside of her and broke the second dam. Anya couldn’t hold back her cry this time. She let it out as the water around them wavered and birds burst from the trees.

  It ended with a small, embarrassed laugh. Never before had a lover brought her more than once during sex. Heck, she was often lucky if she was able to orgasm once. Here was a dragon man who not only gave her one earth shattering orgasm, but two.

  Slowly, she slid off his cock and bounced on her own two feet in the water. Her legs were jelly and the water kept her from completely falling over. It seemed Luc couldn’t bear to have her out of his arms as he reached for her again. Anya danced away from his fingertips with a laugh.

  She pushed out into the water, swimming away from him with a smile. She couldn’t wipe it off her face. While other women were struggling through the dating scene, wondering if the man smiling across the bar was a potential boyfriend or a predator, Anya had found a mate. Luc was bound to her in the way she was bound to him. They were made for each other, the bright light to shine in the other’s darkness.

  Anya floated on her back over the lake water. Luc ducked beneath the water’s surface and disappeared completely. Anya took notice, one eyebrow raised, right before he emerged beside her. His arms wrapped around her middle as the water of his splash rained down around them.

  Life didn’t have to be as hard as she was making it. Anya liked to argue and debating, holding firm to what she believed. But, sometimes, she had to let go of what she thought was right in order to see things the way they actually were. The universe had put her and Luc together for a reason.

  They were meant to be.

  Chapter Ten

  Luc held on tight to Anya’s hand. Perhaps a bit too tight. He forced himself to loosen his grip on her human hand. They might have consummated the bond, but that didn’t mean she was invulnerable. He still couldn’t believe she’d accepted him. It was a turn he hadn’t seen coming. Something had happened behind the GOE facility doors that changed her mind. She didn’t tell him what, but whatever happened he was grateful.

  In turn, Anya bumped her shoulder against his to show that she was there for him. Isaac had finished decrypting the files Anya had stolen from the facility. The documents were still redacted, pieces of information missing since Isaac could do nothing about a marked-up photocopy.

  The screen in front of them displayed a number of open files, the images and documents displayed one over the other like little steps. Anya scanned the screen, her lips and the tip of her nose twisted to the side. Finally, she used the trackpad to pull up the file she’d told him about the night before.

  Marc stood behind him, his anxiety rising like smoke from his still skin. While Luc paced when he was nervous, his twin would grow still. His twin would turn into a statue while his beast and his conscience screamed. This was one of those times.

  The face that looked back at them, no matter how unhappy, how disheveled, was a familiar one. Luc’s grip on Anya’s hand tightened. He couldn’t help it, but she didn’t say anything.

  “That’s Mama,” Marc whispered.

  “It is,” Luc said through the lump in his throat.

  It was an ancient picture, the edges of the photo yellowed with age. She held a letter card in her hand, displaying the initials of her name beside a number tag. Luc didn’t know if he wanted to see any more of the pictures. They weren’t nice, from what Anya said. He didn’t want to see his mother that way. He couldn’t handle it.

  Instead, Luc leaned forward and pulled up a different set of documents and photos. He would spare his brother from having to see their mother in any distress. At least, that’s what he told himself was the reason behind leaving her file. He did it for himself, too. If they didn’t look, it wouldn’t haunt them while they slept.

  The next file held the photo of a young, female Asian dragon. She looked a lot like the grumpy Chinese dragon that lived across the way from the three men. Noelle, a fire dragon that came into the family a decade ago, had a little sister that she’d been looking for when she entered the family. It was what little bit of information the brothers had been able to squeeze out of her during her time in the family.

  Had they found the sister Noelle spent twenty years searching for? Luc swallowed and clicked on the next photo in the round. He turned away from what they were doing to
the young dragon girl in the photo. Luc dreaded having to tell Noelle what happened to her sister.

  “I’ll tell Noelle,” Marc said behind him. “Maybe not today, but eventually.”

  Luc twisted in his seat. The look on his brother’s face was unlike any he’d seen before. Marc’s jaw was tight, the muscle twitching at the corner. His eyes burned as he kept them on the screen. Marc didn’t look away. If anything, it looked like he was committing every detail to memory. He was fueling the fire burning inside him.

  Anya wasn’t paying attention to what was happening between the twins. She pulled the laptop toward her, one hand on the mouse and her other thumbnail between her teeth. Luc’s hand gravitated toward her and rested on her lower back. The connection settled the uneasy feeling in his stomach. He glanced back, worry gnawing at the edge of his mind.

  He really hoped that Marc wasn’t mated with the crazy Chinese dragon woman. Holiday dinners were about to get messy if he was. For years now, Noelle has been openly aiming herself toward Dane. The woman wanted to be in that position of power, wanted Dane to herself. When Liana, his lowborn Welsh mate came along, Noelle had been furious. Liana had to earn the respect of the firebrand by defeating a dragon man threatening the borders of their Territory.

  Adding Anya and Noelle to the mix was asking for trouble.

  “I’m wondering if there is an address anywhere in these files.” Anya continued to scroll through the files while she chewed her nail. Luc found it adorable, but he knew that it meant she was nervous. “These… experiments had to have happened somewhere. If we can find out where, we can maybe visit and learn more.”

  “You mean we can visit and shut it down,” Dane growled as he passed the floor.

  Anya looked up, her eyebrows high. She hadn’t been expecting that, Luc guessed. She hadn’t considered that this might mean war between GOE and the dragons if the facility where these experiments took place was still functioning. Dane and his family would stop at nothing to see their brothers and sisters were safe, even if that meant going against the international organization.

  Anya lurched to her feet, trying to make a brave stand against Dane as her eyebrows settled into a stubborn stance. “You can’t expect to win if you make a frontal assault.”

  Dane paused. Slowly, his gaze moved toward her. It pinned her to where she stood and made a growl rise through Luc. Normally laid back, his beast rose with a whirlwind of fury. The echo of his dragon form filled the room while Dane stared his mate down. The walls shook with the magic around him.

  “Are you telling me not to attack your people?”

  Anya didn’t back down. She had the dumbest streaks of bravery that Luc had ever seen in anyone, dragon or human. She could stand up to the leader of the American Territory, but cowered in the face of a weasel-like human.

  “No,” Anya said as she shook her head. “I’m saying you have to be smarter than that. Don’t attack and let the media know you’re violent. Create a distraction and rescue your people while eyes are elsewhere. Then… destroy the facility if you have to.”

  “What about your people? What would you have me do with them?”

  “Stop talking like you’re separate from them. Stop talking like you don’t share the same world, the same country. You want your position to get better? Then you need to show the country you’re part of the same world.”

  Tendrils of smoke drifted from Dane’s nostrils. The thin, violet wisps of smoke drifted toward the ceiling, a power that Dane tried never to show unless he had to. Unless he was angry enough. Dane was angry at humanity, angry at this country for what they’d done to his people.

  That was no reason to aim his ire at Luc’s mate. Luc rose in one, smooth motion and stepped over the coffee table so that he could stand nose to nose with his leader. Luc’s wind brushed away the wisps of gas that Dane had lost control of.

  “Anya did not hurt anyone.” Luc’s gaze held Dane’s at point blank. “You’re angry. We all are. Don’t aim it at my mate, or else there will be problems.”

  “Luc!” Isaac admonished his friend with a shout.

  Isaac and Marc appeared on either side of Luc, poised to drag him away if necessary. Luc didn’t move. He didn’t raise a fist or let go of his beast. He simply remained as a wall between his angry leader and his innocent mate.

  After a long moment, Dane gathered himself. The leader of the American Territory drew in a long breath, held it while the room was frozen in time, and then released it. The room sighed in unison, tension disappearing.

  The evidence they were fighting over was from the sixties, an era that had long passed. There was no more information on these experiments after that. The chances of these dragons still being alive was slim to none.

  Despite Dane’s anger, there would be no frontal assault. There wouldn’t even be a rescue mission. That chance was long gone. Noelle’s sister was long gone. Their parents were long gone.

  A heavy feeling dragged Luc back down to the floor.

  ***

  Most of the dragons had left long ago, the sun fallen below the horizon. All that was left were Luc and Anya. The cleaned fridge was full of Styrofoam containers that the dragons had brought with them and left behind. Anya sat on the couch, the computer still showing the garish images of dragons in various stages of distress.

  She was trying to decipher what was going on. All of the documents had been redacted, important information blacked out with marker before being scanned and uploaded to the digital image. Huge spans of information were lost forever beneath that black ink and it was driving Anya insane. She was attempting to put together what little she could from what was left.

  “What’s the damn point of redacting these documents when you left the horrid images with them?” She growled the words as she flipped through the documents.

  Little by little, she was forming a story. It was neither an explanation nor an excuse. What it was an infringement on civil rights, on the kind of right that every living being should have.

  GOE, as an international organization, took advantage of the loose structure of dragon culture in America as the shifters were not bound by any particular family or ties. The agents kidnapped dragons here and there and brought them back to their facility with almost no one the wiser. With dragon families being so small and separated, almost no one noticed what was happening.

  The kidnapped dragons were brought back to the facility for rounds of testing. Some dragons without the dangerous breath weapons were used for weapon testing. Anya couldn’t help but think of the Taser that her father often had at his waist. That electrical weapon was part of their arsenal because of these tests.

  Other dragons were systematically taken apart to see where their power, their magic, came from. Anya’s stomach rolled, but she forced herself to keep looking. There were no addresses she could lift, not even partials, but Anya wasn’t deterred. She was going to find something, anything the dragons could go on.

  This was her family, too, now. Her father’s words had knocked some sense into her one-track mind. This was a bond that the universe had carved for her. Who was Anya to deny that kind of cosmic influence? Not even her father questioned it.

  As she was flipping through the photos, something made her pause. There was a photo that stood out from the others. It wasn’t a kind of mugshot or a dreary doctor’s office. Instead, this photo had been taken outside. These were the faces not shown in the stomach-turning photos, Anya thought.

  Four men were lined up outside a chain link fence. They stood at varying heights, some short with thinning hair and others tall with tufts of gray hair standing at attention. A shorter man with a bald crown smiled up at the camera, his spine perfectly straight with pride. Anya’s lip curled back from her teeth. Beside this man was another whose hands were clasped in front of him. The expression on the taller man’s face was somber. It was one of duty. He thought what they were doing was necessary, even if it was ugly.

  It wasn’t the faces that made Anya paus
e. She tore her eyes away from the men staring back at her to look at the building behind the chain link fence. The shape of the building behind them was so familiar that it clawed at the edges of her brain until it hit her.

  The building was a perfect replica of the GOE facility outside the Territory, the one where Anya had stolen these very files from. But, it wasn’t the same building. Not even in fifty years could the world around it change so much. This building was surrounded by dense foliage, as if it were stationed away from prying eyes while the doctors did their evil deeds. The hum of Déjà vu still vibrated in Anya’s mind.

  Where had she seen this building before?

  It couldn’t be the general architecture of the facility that was haunting her. No, Anya was convinced she’d seen this building before.

  She shot up from her seat, the computer mouse crashing to the floor. She had seen it before. This wasn’t the facility where her father worked, but the one that had been shut down. It was a little north of the Territory, left empty and abandoned while GOE focused on other things.

  Anya leapt over the table and shook Luc awake. He startled, leaping to his feet while an arm wrapped around Anya and lifted her so that his body shielded her. Her heart hammered for a moment. She gently tapped her mate on the shoulder. Luc’s wide eyes scanned the room before turning to her.

  “Sorry for waking you,” she said with an apologetic smile.

  His shoulders slumped and her toes touched the floor. He set her the rest of the way down and ran a hand through his hair. She didn’t blame him for being on edge. Protecting her the way he had was actually quite nice. Anya wrapped her arms around his middle and laid her head against his chest.

  This was her life.

  This was her dragon man.

  Her fingers dug into him. No one would take him away from her.

  His hand touched the back of her head, smoothing down her hair in a sweet gesture. “What’s wrong?”

  Anya pulled her head back to look up at him. “I figured out where the missing dragons were. They aren’t there anymore. The facility was shut down twenty years ago.”