House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1)

by Samantha Snow

  “We’ve explained that you being the Keane heir means that a lot of dragon families will bear gifts, give you things, and all that,” Elijah explained.

  “And I told you that our family—and others—are not doing as well as we used to,” Alistair continued.

  “The Elders are likely to insist on the broadest interpretation of the prophecy,” Nicholas said. “Which would mean they’d have to let other people court you, unless you were already bonded to one of us already.”

  “Oh,” Cami said. “So, the real issue is that you’re worried I’m going to be off in my Keane castle, entertaining the Egans and whoever else, all of them wanting to get my sweet, sweet womb.”

  Dylan snickered. “And the Egans would probably be in one of the better bargaining positions,” Dylan said. “They’ve got more money, more connections; whatever you might want to do, they’d be able to make it happen.”

  “And you’re worried I’m going to be practical and go with the suitor or suitors with the best hand,” Cami concluded. Nicholas nodded, and Dylan shrugged.

  “I mean, wouldn’t you?” he pointed out. “I would, if I was in your position.”

  “I get the feeling that you’d agree to rent your womb out to the five highest bidders, in sequential order, if you were in my position,” Cami said.

  Dylan grinned. “I’d go with top two,” he said. “I don’t want five kids.”

  “In any case,” Nicholas said, once more raising his voice just slightly to get everyone’s attention, “you understand now what our concern is.”

  “I do,” Cami said. “You want to make sure that I’m in a position to pick and choose, and preferably to pick and choose one of you.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” Alistair said.

  “So, the top choice to make that happen is for me to attempt to ‘bond’ to one of you?” Cami asked, looking around the table. “What’s involved in that?”

  “Sex,” Dylan replied.

  “It isn’t just sex,” Nicholas said, directing a warning glance in his direction. “It involves certain rituals during the sex, and at the end of it, you’d be marked, as would the person you bond to.”

  “Marked how?” Cami looked skeptical.

  “Biting,” Dylan replied. “Biting is involved. Not anything super aggressive, but you’d have a mark on you, indicating that you were bound, to people who know what to look for.”

  “And I’d leave a bite mark on whoever I’m bound too, as well?” Cami asked. “How hard do you have to bite someone for it to be that lasting?”

  “Pretty hard,” Dylan replied.

  “Part of the ritual of bonding helps the process,” Nicholas said. “But in order for it to take, you have to be sufficiently activated, and you have to actuallybond with the person.”

  “So, it’s not just an ‘I do’ situation?” Cami asked. Dylan shrugged.

  “You have to actually allow the bonding to happen,” Alistair said. “Mentally, physically, all of the ways.”

  “That doesn’t really make sense,” Cami pointed out.

  “It’s the best chance we’ve got,” Nicholas told her, and Cami glanced in Dylan’s direction. He nodded slightly, showing his agreement.

  “If it falls flat, we can still get you onto your father’s estate, onto his property, and plant you there,” Alistair reminded her. “And you’ll have at least some control over who you see there.”

  “And if I don’t?” Cami asked. “If I didn’t go to my father’s family place, what would the Elders do? I mean, I have an apartment, so if you can’t keep me here, I’m not exactly homeless.”

  “If you aren’t on the property, the Elders might decide to take you into custody themselves,” Alistair replied. “Since you’re too important and have already advanced so far in becoming one of us, they might decide to keep you where they can watch over you.” Dylan saw the surprise on Cami’s face, watched her absorb that information.

  “You really should have opened with that,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Because that is definitely a good enough reason to try whatever it takes to remain as independent as possible.”

  Dylan considered that, and he had to admit, it would have probably been easier to be completely up-front about the issue. But the Elders were a topic that even the most powerful dragons wanted to avoid talking about as much as possible. What the Elders could, might do—it was best to avoid even thinking about it, if you could.

  Before they could debate the issue further, the doorbell rang. Dylan looked at Nicholas. A thousand dollars says it’s the courier we’re expecting.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cami

  Cami heard Dylan’s voice in her mind, and when Alistair rose to his feet to answer the door, curiosity demanded that she follow him. Nicholas put out a hand to stop her, but all Cami had to do was raise an eyebrow, and his hand fell away.

  “Why are you following me?” Alistair asked, once they’d both left the kitchen.

  “I want to see what happens next,” Cami replied. By the attitude that the four Overton cousins had toward the Elders and anyone who represented them, they were a powerful group; she wanted at least the start of an idea of who she might find herself up against. If I’m going to be in this mess, we’re going to put a stop to this whole ‘keep things from Cami’ business, she thought.

  “Just don’t react,” Alistair told her. “That’s the important thing.”

  Cami shrugged. “I can manage that,” she said.

  The doorbell rang again, and Alistair hurried to answer it, Cami following in his wake. He opened the door to reveal a man that Cami initially thought was probably in his 50s, dressed in a black, tailored suit with little flashes of color—a tiny insignia not unlike the tattoo she’d seen on Nicholas and Dylan in her dream, but with different designs, in threads that shimmered green, red, silver, and gold—stitched onto different areas of the suit. But as the man glanced in her direction, her first impression changed, and he looked—somehow—both unspeakably old and impossibly young at the same time, standing in the same suit. The man raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, that settles the issue on one front,” the man said, turning his attention back to Alistair. “The Elders require the Overton heirs to attend a tribunal three days from today. You will bring this woman with you.”

  “Why do I have to go anywhere?” Cami asked. The man glanced at her, and she saw his lips twitch with the start of a smile.

  “You are under their jurisdiction now,” the man said, and Cami caught an undertone in his voice, a kind of rumble. As she looked at him, she felt something like a tingle work through her; it wasn’t fear or apprehension, but instead a sense like her body was reacting to him, like the feeling she’d gotten in a lab on the senses when someone had pressed the end of a tuning fork to her forehead to demonstrate conductive hearing. All at once, she knew why he looked the way he did, without being able to name how she knew it: his secondary ability was an extension of the magic that all the dragons possessed; he was able to change his appearance, to shapeshift beyond just between the two usual forms. Okay, so clearly, I’m ‘active’ enough to start picking up on some of the things my secondary ability does, she thought.

  “I am?” Cami mirrored his raised eyebrow.

  “We’ll discuss the summons privately,” Alistair said.

  “You should inform your friend about dragon courtesies,” the courier said, turning his attention back onto Alistair. “And teach her that the Elders are not to be talked back to.”

  “I didn’t talk back to the Elders,” Cami pointed out. “I asked you a few questions.”

  “I represent them,” the man said. “A little respect toward the Elders’ agents would go a long way for you.”

  Cami held his gaze and didn’t flinch as his changeable skin seemed to move once more, shifting between old and young, his eye color changing for moments so brief she almost thought she must have imagined it until it happened again.

  “As I said,” Alista
ir told the man, drawing his attention away from Cami once more. “We’ll discuss the summons in private.” The courier looked at Alistair, and Cami could see the amusement lingering in the man’s face as he handed over an envelope that looked like something out of an overwrought period piece: it had three different wax seals on it, and she was fairly certain it was made from actual vellum.

  “As you will,” the man said, and Cami wasn’t sure if she saw him shrug or saw yet another flicker of his shifting, changing body. He glanced at her one more time before turning to walk away from the door, and she thought—for a second—that he might have more to say to her, but then his back was turned, and that was all there was to the conversation.

  “So, his ability is shapeshifting?” Cami asked when Alistair closed the door.

  He turned to face her, his eyes slightly widening. “How did you know?”

  Cami crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, the way he was flickering between different forms gave me a clue,” she said dryly.

  Alistair frowned. “Okay,” he said. “So apparently, you’re even further along than we thought.”

  Cami smiled slightly. “Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s the conclusion I came to as well.”

  Alistair led her back into the kitchen with the envelope in hand, and Cami took her seat, wondering if Alistair was going to tell his cousins or wait for her to reveal the news herself. He handed the envelope to Nicholas, who got to work on breaking the seals with a knife that Cami was fairly certain was made of silver.

  “Tribunal in three days,” Alistair said.

  Cami checked her coffee cup to make sure there was still something in it, and sipped the lukewarm remains, watching as the four Overton men reacted to the news.

  “That gives us some breathing room,” Elijah pointed out.

  “If they’re giving us that much time, the prospects aren’t good,” Dylan countered.

  “The courier recognized that Cami is one of us,” Alistair told the rest.

  Nicholas got the letter open and started reading it. “We’re accused of holding a dragon heir hostage,” Nicholas said. “The accusing party is—surprise, surprise—the Egan clan.”

  “If you’re supposed to be holding me hostage, why the hell would they give you three days?” Cami asked. “I mean, I would think something like that would merit immediate action.”

  “It means there are some Elders who either don’t think whoever the Egans told them about is an heir, or that we’re not holding you hostage,” Alistair said.

  “Still,” Cami said. Nicholas shrugged.

  “It’s a politeness thing,” Elijah said. “There are a lot of traditions and formalities, and”

  “Bullshit,” Dylan finished for him. “There’s a lot of bullshit.”

  “Basically, it’s their way of giving us an out, before the tribunal,” Alistair explained. “They give us the time to activate you, more or less, get rid of you—whatever we need to do to be able to answer the charges without things coming to blows. Especially now that the courier knows you’re a dragon heir.”

  “He really knew?” Elijah looked from Alistair to Cami.

  “Yeah, and apparently, I wasn’t appropriately respectful when I asked why I would have to come to the tribunal,” Cami said tartly.

  Dylan let out a low whistle. “They don’t like me either,” Dylan told her with a grin. “But I took most of my teen years to make them hate me.”

  “They don’t hate her,” Alistair countered. “The courier was pulling rank.”

  “Once they find out who she is, that might become a thing of the past,” Nicholas mused.

  “The couriers are all a bunch of assholes,” Elijah told her. “They cling to the power that being connected to the Elders gives them. But given what your secondary ability should be”

  “They don’t know who exactly she is just yet,” Dylan pointed out. “That could work in our favor all around.” Cami looked at Nicholas; he didn’t seem all that convinced.

  “I definitely think that any couriers or representatives would think twice about pulling rank on her,” Nicholas said. “At least, once you develop your full abilities—once you’ve fully activated and transitioned. But the Elders are another issue.”

  “The Elders are going to be relieved that we found her,” Elijah said. “Probably not all that pleased about how we went about activating her, but the magic dragon heir will be in the mix and getting ready to save our species. That’s a win.”

  “So,” Cami said, pushing her empty mug aside. “How does having three days affect how we’re going to strategize for this?”

  She looked at each of the Overton men in turn and realized that just as she had been able to sense the resonant feeling coming from the courier, she could feel it coming from them too, along with a kind of shimmer, subliminal but no less present, that Cami instinctively knew represented some kind of reading of their abilities. If nothing else, she had gained the ability to detect dragons and to know what their secondary ability was.

  “I think our plan should move forward the way we talked about,” Nicholas said. “We try to bond you to one of us, and we try to get you into your father’s house as a contingency.”

  “I can get someone to let us in at the house,” Alistair said. “Probably tomorrow.”

  “We don’t want to cut it too close,” Dylan agreed.

  “Any ideas about who you want to try to bond with?” Elijah asked her, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

  His dark eyes almost seemed to glow. The other three Overton men turned their attention wholly onto her, and Cami could feel the warmth seeping through her body, even as her heart beat faster at the prospect of having sex with one of the four men.

  “I would like to point out that I was informed I didn’t have to choose,” Cami said, keeping her voice as light as possible.

  “Did that dream give you a hankering for some experimentation?” Dylan asked playfully.

  Cami’s cheeks burned as the blood began rushing into her face. “Just for that, you’re not on the list,” Cami said. “I do want to try experimenting, but since my dream-sex was with Dylan and Nicholas, I’d like to try and see what I can accomplish trying to bond with Alistair and Elijah.” She looked at Nicholas steadily, wondering how the dream-walking Overton cousin would take that.

  “It’s harder to bond with two instead of just one,” he pointed out. “But if it doesn’t work, that does still leave you with two other candidates.”

  “I can start setting things up to go for it while Alistair is looking into getting you access to the house,” Elijah suggested. Cami saw the way he looked at her, and even though she somehow knew that he wasn’t actively trying to manipulate or influence her emotions, she could also sense his radiating out of him in waves. Feeling the way Elijah wanted her, the interest he felt toward her, made her even more certain of her right choice.

  “I’m going to need to know more about what’s involved in this ritual,” Cami told him. She glanced at Alistair; she couldn’t sense his emotions, but the look in his crystal-blue eyes was impossible to misinterpret. In fact, as Cami glanced around the table, she could tell all four men would gladly rip her clothes off and have her as a second breakfast if she asked for it. She cleared her throat. “But apart from that, it sounds good.” Elijah got up from the table, presumably to begin setting up whatever he needed for the bonding ritual; Alistair checked his phone.

  “I’ve got a message from one of my contacts,” he told them. “I’ll let them know what I need, and as soon as Elijah has everything set up, we can try.” He stood and left the table, and Cami found herself alone with the two men she’d just semi-rejected.

  “If it doesn’t work out with those two,” Dylan said, still looking faintly amused, “I’d be happy to try.”

  “One on one or together,” Nicholas said. He glanced at his cousin, then at Cami once more. “The dream gave me some ideas too.”

  Cami rolled her eyes and grabbed her cof
fee cup, rising to her feet. She had no idea what she was in for, but she was certain that whatever happened next, she would want more coffee to face it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Elijah

  Elijah stepped back from the gazebo in the backyard of the Overton home and inspected the results of his work. He knew he’d gone a little overboard; the ritual to bond Cami to himself and Alistair didn’t require a lot. But for the sake of doing everything he could to ensure success, he had wanted to make the setting as beautiful and relaxing as humanly possible. He’d raided the gardens around the property for flowers and ordered some from a local florist as well, just to increase the ambiance. There were candles safely set all around the gazebo, ready to be lit when the time came, and the center of the structure held a pile of three mattresses, blankets, pillows—all in all, a nest of such comfort that Elijah thought it might even be nice to just sleep there some night, if the weather was good. He’d also brought towels and robes, since next to the gazebo was a large in-ground hot tub, modeled on a grotto, that he thought would be a good place to start things off.

  Get her nice and comfortable, start heating things up, and carry her up to the gazebo and let the romantic vibe take care of everything else, Elijah thought, turning to look at the house. While he’d been at work, Nicholas had been—he hoped—explaining what all the bonding ritual would take. None of the Overton men had even been tempted to bond with a woman before meeting Cami; they’d all known about the prophecy from childhood, all knew that when the time came, they would need to be available for the Keane heiress to choose one of them. The fact that she seemed possibly inclined to choose all of them at least had made it a worthwhile wait.

  “Looking good,” Dylan called from the back patio, and Elijah grinned.

  “I’m guessing you’re going to be spying on the whole thing?” he asked his cousin.

  Dylan shrugged. “I mean, it’s more convenient free porn than searching online,” Dylan pointed out.