His dragon shook his body as if to remind him that he wasn’t completely alone. The beast lived beside him, ever a part of him. It had been there since he was a babe.
You don’t count. We’re one in the same.
The beast wasn’t pleased with his response, his tail whipped through the air.
So, he did the only thing he could do. He visited the towns surrounding the territory from a broad distance. No one could say that he was a threat as he never dipped low enough and never let smoke trail through the sky from his muzzle like his cousin Gareth was prone to do. That was one dragon who always had some kind of fire burning beneath his skin. It made him wonder what kind of monster lurked inside of his cousin.
Wesley swooped back towards the Snowdonia Territory, knowing that his jaunt for the day was nearly over. There was work that he should be getting back to, work to busy his always moving hands. He tucked in his wings and dove toward the ground. His wings snapped back out and caught the wind once more, his body suspended in the air.
That was when his keen hearing caught the sound of a gasp. He should have kept flying on home. The sound of a gasp such as he heard surely meant a tourist and those could rarely be trusted. Still, he found himself turning toward the source of the sound. He knew better.
He really did.
The beast had other ideas as his wings shifted direction and his body began to swoop towards the sound of the gasp like someone pulled the strings of a kite, Wesley being the kite.
A woman sat on a fallen log, her head tilted back and her lips parted as she watched his aerial acrobatics. A surge of pleasure zapped through him. He tucked in his wings and spun through the air, his tail guiding him. When his wings snapped back out and he shot upward, he could hear a faint squeak. A rumble of laughter reverberated through his body.
Gareth would have called him a show off. His father, Drystan, would have tanned his red hide if he knew that Wesley was entertaining a tourist on the edge of the territory. But, his family wasn’t there. They weren’t alone like he was. Gareth had his younger brother. His father had his mother, the human woman that was his mate.
***
Dakota watched the massive body of the red scaled dragon touch the earth in front of her. The sun rippled off the dragon’s scales, reflecting shades of yellow, orange, and intense red. Her eyes fell on the pale blue scales that ringed his taloned hands, like the blue seed of a flame. Her heart hammered in her ears, so loud she could barely hear his movement before her. His long body was lean and his wings blacked out the sun until he tucked them against his massive rib cage. His head cocked to the side before he pounced, planting his clawed feet apart and lowing his head to the ground.
Fear should have shot through her, but for a moment she thought that he looked much like a puppy trying to play. She had to swallow the smile that threatened to turn up the corners of her mouth as she looked at him. Keep a straight face, she reminded herself. The sooner he left, the happier she would be. If anyone were to figure out what was happening right then, she would lose everything she’d worked so hard to get.
What was a dragon even doing here? The Guardian and the Dean had promised that the Welsh dragons never left their territory. Did the deranged Makenna Llewellyn really take a field trip to the Snowdonia territory? Why would she do such a thing?
Dakota could think of one reason. The dragons hadn’t been seen in years because the professor was bringing students for the dragons to kidnap. That was all she could think of. Professor Llewellyn brought sacrifices to keep her campus safe.
And one had found her.
When the dragon the size of a bus didn’t get the response from her that he wanted, he began to inch back from her. She shook her head and tried to turn back to the journal on her lap. She prayed that he would go away if she ignored him. If he couldn’t fascinate her, maybe he would lose interest in her and move on.
Her pencil stopped moving. She gripped it tight in her hand and closed her eyes. There was not a dragon in front of her. There was no dragon at all.
As if lying to herself would make it true.
She heard a huff of air right before it blew back her dark tresses. Feeling her brow knit together, she cracked open an eye to peer ahead. She could have sworn the dragon smiled before wiggling its hind quarters much like a cat. Massive legs pushed off and the dragon left the ground. Its lean body formed an arc before coming back to the earth beside her. It did it over and over, pouncing in circles around her.
It made no move to grab her or otherwise threaten her. Instead, it felt like he was trying to make her laugh. She knew that she should ignore the beast, but she let her hair fall over her face and watched it pounce around her from the corner of her eye. It was beautiful in a frightening way. One misstep and the beast’s massive form would crush her frail, human body.
But, she wasn’t afraid as the beast’s tail swung from side to side. She hid her smile while pretending to ignore the dragon until panic touched the edges of her thought. If anyone caught this happening she was done for. She glanced up and looked around the clearing. There was no one else in sight.
Her shoulders relaxed and her pencil went back to work. Eventually, the dragon settled down nearby and laid his giant head on his taloned hands and watched her draw. After a long while, she checked her phone screen and realized that the bus would be leaving soon. She cast a glance at the nearby dragon. It was fast asleep, or at least pretending to be.
If she stood, would it jump and grab her? Or, would it let her leave of her own accord? Carefully, she tucked her journal under her arm and pushed herself up from her seat. When the dragon didn’t move, she forced herself to walk, not run, back to the bus.
***
Dakota closed the space between her and the professor.
“Did you take us into the dragon territory?” her voice growled as she raised a finger toward the older woman.
Her eyes widened ever so slightly. “I would never do something so stupid. If I were to do a thing like that, I could very well lose my job.”
Dakota narrowed her eyes. This professor’s lying could make Dakota lose everything she’d fought for. All the money she’d spent on the airline tickets, the work she’d put into getting the grant, would be wasted because this woman wanted to lie to her. Or, worse, the woman had no idea just how close she’d taken her students to the dragon territory.
“Why?” the professor asked. “Did you see a dragon, Miss Brennan?”
Dakota felt the blood rush from her face. “No. Not at all.”
Like that, her anger was gone. In its place was cold fear. She had almost ruined everything for herself with her angry words. Professor Llewellyn would be forced to report her to the Dean if she knew that Dakota had not only seen a dragon, but nearly interacted with one.
“Don’t be so afraid.” The professor laid a warm hand on Dakota’s arm.
Chapter Three
Wesley flew back to his home, his thoughts filled with the woman that refused to look at him. The stone tower that he’d worked to rebuild over his years rose from the tree studded territory. As his form glided down toward the roof, he let magic wrap around him and shrink his form. Human feet slapped the stone roof.
The structure shuddered beneath him as if it had the full weight of a dragon dropped upon it. Wes paused and prayed that his home would hold. When nothing fell, he straightened himself. He’d found the castle in disrepair right after the Occurrence had trapped him on the territory. It had captured his attention for years as he rebuilt it stone by stone and turned it into a home for himself, but it was nearly finished and he was growing bored.
The rooms seemed empty. The halls were filled with only the sound of the wind around him. The rooms only held the crackle of fire in the hearths. His kind were solitary creatures, unable to stand one another’s presence for much longer than a night before scales started to get ruffled. Some dragons liked the peace and quiet. He knew that his grandfather had come to live with it.
Other
dragons, like Elgar, started to hear things in the silence. Even that was a kind of company.
Wes shook his head. He was thinking depressing thoughts, he reminded himself. It would do no good for him to dwell on such things. He could do nothing about it besides busy himself. He could add a new tower to the castle or start to build a new bed for his master bedroom. Either one would take a sufficient amount of his time, and would keep his human hands busy.
He reached for the set of clothes that he kept on the roof, a pair of sweat pants worn thin over time and a t-shirt that stretched over his broad shoulders. Soon, he would have to ask his mother to make a trip to the city to grab him more clothing. No one knew that she was the mate of an old dragon and it helped her to still get around. It also helped Wes and his father from time to time. He could recall times that his mother had to go to the city to replace electronics that his father had destroyed by accident.
Welsh dragons were far too prone to melting things, mostly modern plastics.
Properly dressed, Wes descended the stairs while deciding what would best put his hands to use. The beast in his head had other ideas. Images of the dark-haired vixen crossed his mind once more. The way that she had glared at them made his dragon hot with anger.
Not everyone has to love you.
Wesley felt his beast narrow his eyes and blow a huff of steam. It burned him from the inside out.
We are honor bound to stay within the territory. Forget the woman. We are already pushing our limits too much as it is.
Even as Wes told his beast to forget her, he knew that he could barely push her from his own mind. The smell of her had been unusual and clung to his senses. Irises. That was what he’d smelled on her. So different from the other women that drowned themselves in vanilla or musk to attract men. She smelled of simple gardens.
No. He shook his head. Forget her. Clearly, she hadn’t been interested. She’d snubbed him and his attempt to draw even a single smile out of her.
Wes went out to the forge that he’d built for himself and started the fire in the bellows with a bellyful of fire. He would put himself to work. He would drown his mind in complicated designs so that his beast could barely find a voice. He’d been meaning to get to work on a bed for his master bedroom. He wanted something grand and beautiful that he could spread out on. In his mind, he had visions of wrought iron branches and vines that wrapped themselves into complicated knots.
It would be nothing for him to bend the heated metal beneath his hands. The effort would tire the beast inside of him and, maybe, he would sleep peacefully without the thoughts of a dark-haired woman entering his mind.
***
Dakota chewed her lip while she held onto her journal with white knuckles on the trip back to campus. The professor would turn in her seat every so often and cast curious glances in Dakota’s direction. All she wanted was for the professor to forget about her accusation, but she didn’t think she would be that lucky any time soon.
She couldn’t let anyone see what she’d drawn in the journal. She didn’t even know why she’d done it. She’d drawn the red dragon that had played like a curious cat around her.
In the seat ahead of her, Clary turned and smiled at her new friend. “Did you see anything exciting? I found a rock formation that had a vein of crystals growing through it that I want to see if I can replicate with acrylic marbling.” Clary was already digging through her phone for the photos that she’d taken.
Dakota tucked her moleskin journal beneath her thigh before her friend looked up. “I found the remains of what was probably an old cottage. There wasn’t much else to look at.”
Clary looked towards the front of the vehicle. Dakota followed her gaze and found a gray streaked head. Clary turned back and motioned for Dakota to lean closer.
“Simon’s GPS on his phone said that we were only a couple miles from the Snowdonia Territory. I can’t believe a professor, a woman at that, would take us so close to that place. I think we’re all really lucky that we didn’t run into any of the dragon men.”
Dakota nodded with too much emphasis. She had to look a little crazy, she thought. “I think she’s one of those women who wait their whole life to get abducted by a dragon. Maybe she thinks that she’ll get grabbed each time she takes a group of students out to see the castles.”
Clary clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress the laugh that bubbled up from her. “That would be the life, right? I’ve heard some crazy things about the dragons and their lovers.”
Dakota gave her a look that said she didn’t believe her. Clary lit up at the chance to talk about it, her cheeks turning pink.
“No, hear me out. I’ve heard that they can go all night long just to make sure their mate has multiple orgasms. Can’t say that about any human male, can you? I read once that they can share their long life with humans after the mating bond snaps into place. Who doesn’t want to add a few years and a handful of orgasms to their life span?”
“But they’re beasts,” Dakota said, even as her mind brought her back to the dragon she’d met earlier. That hadn’t looked like a beast, despite his size. He looked more like a playful puppy.
Clary scoffed at Dakota’s words. “A beast in the bedroom from the sounds of it.”
Dakota couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her roommate. “Is that all you think about? Your major should have been the Studies of Seduction.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The girls shared a laugh. Ahead of them, the man that Dakota had sketched during the seminar turned to look at them. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Her laugh died in her throat as an unusual feeling rolled through her stomach. She studied the feeling as she met the man’s eyes and realized that it was unease.
Eventually, he turned back in his seat, readjusting himself. Dakota turned to her roommate. She hadn’t seen Clary bring him back to their room yet. Now, she had a notion that it was probably a very bad idea. Something about the hard look in his eyes told her that he saw himself as more of an authority than a fellow student.
“I think we should go out tonight,” Clary interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to the present. “We should get to know the city a little bit. I don’t know much about the city’s nightlife, but it has to have one. Right?”
Dakota shrugged. “I didn’t pack for nights out on the town.”
Clary waved her off. “I have you covered. So, will you? Hang out with me tonight, I mean?”
“Do I have a choice?” Dakota couldn’t help the small smile that slipped across her lips. It was just what she needed to get the puppy faced dragon off her mind. No one knew that she had seen him. As long as it stayed that way then she had nothing to worry about. Her future, her dream, was safe.
“That sounds like fun, actually.”
Chapter Four
Wesley bent and twisted hot iron in his grip so that the ends broke off into branches. Pressing small bits of hot iron between his thumb and his forefinger, he shaped small leaves that he could attach to the branches. His project was coming together, but it was almost mindless work.
That left his thoughts with the ability to wander in any direction they wished. The beast inside of him guided those thoughts back to the woman he met earlier. He thought of the wall of dark hair that had covered her face. Only when she had looked up to scowl at his presence had the veil fallen to reveal an elegant nose and perfect lips that begged for his attention. The lower lip had been ripe and full, holding the Cupid’s bow upper lip that he wanted to trace with his thumb.
Wes shook his head, trying to dispel his beast’s thoughts. He was grateful that he’d remained in his dragon form while in the woman’s presence or else he didn’t know what he would have done. If she’d let him, maybe he would have taken her right then and there. His mind might have been clear of her, but tourists could hardly be trusted.
He’d seen how some women had taken the news of the dragons, daringly trekking into the Snowdonia territories to beg a dragon to take her as his
mate. It didn’t work that way, no matter how much they pleaded. Those kinds of women, the fan girls, were never dragon mates. They weren’t cut from the right cloth.
No matter how attractive she was, the tourist woman wasn’t mate material. Not if she was one of the fan girls.
Unable to control his thoughts, Wesley set aside his project. The sun had dipped below the horizon and it was clear that he still had far more energy humming through his body than this project could consume. He had to find something else.
He put out the fire in the bellows and put away his tools. The posts of the bed laid on the floor of the forge, just pieces of something that Wes wasn’t even sure that he needed. As long as he was alone in his home, sleeping on the couch was just fine. Sure, he had his own room and a mattress that he clothed in sheets just to appease his human mother’s sensibilities, but the emptiness of the room often echoed too loudly for him in there. More often than not, he would simply stagger inside and throw himself down onto a couch, immediately falling into sleep.
The bed frame, once constructed, would be a massive thing. The branches would rise and curl toward the raised ceiling of the highest room in the tower. During the summer months, he imagined his future mate hanging flowers from the branches or draping gauzy fabric over them so it felt like their own private world while he took her.
The only problem was as the images arose in his mind, the woman in each of them was the scornful creature that he’d come across earlier. The scowl was gone, replaced by a soft smile that she shared just for him as she laid back on the bed he’d made for her.
He cursed loudly. It had been a long time since he’d gone into the city and laid with a woman. That had to be the reason his mind was filled with the thoughts of the woman. It had been the first time that he’d laid eyes on a woman that wasn’t a dragon’s mate in what felt like years. Of course, his hormones had pushed him to claim her as his own if only to fulfil urges that should have been met a long while ago.
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