Cade (Alexander Shifter Brothers Book 2)

by Selina Coffey

  They all knew that Ron still felt insecure fairly often and often felt like he was intruding on their relationship, even though they kept reassuring him that he wasn’t. It didn’t matter how often they told him that he was adding to the relationship, not taking away from it, Ron still had doubts at times. David and Julie wanted to do something for him to reassure him further, and after going hunting by himself five months after he had moved in with them, Ron found them sitting on the couch, the living room lit by candles and rose petals everywhere. He hung his coat up by the door before walking further into the room and seeing that in the middle of the living room where the coffee table had been there was now a circle of larger candles and rose petals. David was holding a box of sorts, and they were both looking at him with expectation on their faces as if trying to determine what his mood and reaction would be.

  “What is going on?” he asked as he looked around in confusion. He had no idea they had even been planning anything, and while he had been surprised when David hadn’t given him a time limit on his hunting like he usually did to ensure he was safe, he had thought David had simply been too busy with work. Now he knew that they had been waiting for him to leave so they could plan this and he had been completely oblivious to all of it.

  “We want to do something to confirm our relationship and promise ourselves to one another. We obviously can’t do this legally, but we want each of us to have that confirmation of our love each time we look at the rings,” David replied.

  “What rings?”

  Julie opened a box which held three identical rings. They were white gold with light blue diamonds imbedded in them. They weren’t large, but they were both manly and feminine at the same time and Ron couldn’t deny he loved them. They were beautiful and while he normally wouldn’t have chosen a diamond ring, especially not a blue diamond, he couldn’t help but think it was perfect for all of them. There were three diamonds in each ring, which fit their relationship perfectly and Ron was stunned for a minute.

  “Ron?” David asked.

  “They are beautiful. You want to do a commitment ceremony of sorts?”

  “Yes, we do. We always knew something was missing, but with you in our lives we have felt complete. What was missing was you and we never knew it. Be honest, what are you thinking now?”

  “Confused, overwhelmed. Happy and terrified.”

  David and Julie both smiled at him, and when he looked at them he knew that they were serious. He wasn’t interfering with their relationship, he was adding to it and it was as if he suddenly saw it. “I accept,” Ron said with a smile, his mind made up.

  “We have the wording right here, but maybe you want to look at it and see if you want to change anything? We would be saying it in unison while sliding the ring on the finger of the person to our right.”

  Ron grabbed the piece of paper and read it, deciding there wasn’t anything he really wanted to add. “This is fine the way it is.”

  As they stood in the middle of a circle of candles Ron knew they had put a lot of time into this. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing and it made him feel loved that they had wanted to surprise him with it. As he took Julie’s hand with her to his right, he held his left hand for David to take. Looking at each other they each took a ring and slid it over the other person’s finger before starting to talk in unison.

  “We have come here today to confirm our bond. To confirm our love for each other. To confirm that in this relationship of three, we are all equal. To give each other a token of that love and that bond. This ring represents a love without doubts, without jealousy and without fear. May it remind us when we forget, and might it remind us of it when we are alone. I love you.”

  They now had a ring on their fingers and as Ron looked at Julie’s hand he felt a hand slide to his butt while Julie kissed him. “I want you to take me tonight,” Julie whispered. Ron’s eyes flew open as he looked at her before looking at David, who nodded. Until that day Ron had never done more with Julie than touching, and they had waited for David to be alright with it. As he looked at the ring on his finger he knew the moment was there and he took Julie and David’s hand and led them up the stairs.

  Once there he started undressing Julie, who was undressing him in return. He heard a zipper behind him and knew David was getting undressed as well while he started kissing Julie while slowly walking her back towards the bed. He could feel that she was already wet and the thought of sex with Julie alone had him hard. As he kneeled in between her legs, stroking her clit and letting his fingers slide in, he felt a hand on his behind. When he looked back he saw David right behind him, stroking himself.

  He couldn’t focus on both at the same time, and he had never gone further than just hands with David, and as he lowered himself into Julie he couldn’t help the moan that escaped his lips. Julie moaned as well, and Ron was glad she at least enjoyed it when he wasn’t nearly as big as David. Sliding gently in and out, Julie was meeting his movements easily.

  David had stopped touching him but Ron heard him right next to them and he saw Julie reaching her hand out. The thought of Julie jerking off David while he was inside her got him moving harder and faster, with Julie moving harder and faster to keep up. All three of them were panting when Julie screamed out her release, both Ron and David following soon after. This time it was Ron who was in the middle in the bed, Julie snuggled up in front of him and David behind him. David was stroking his thigh and he enjoyed the comforting feeling as he glanced down at his ring. “This is beautiful. Thank you.”

  “It was time,” David mumbled. “We are perfect for each other. Just don’t expect me to ever let you take me up the ass.”

  “Hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “You can go up my ass,” Julie mumbled. “David is a bit big for that.”

  Ron looked over his shoulder at David whose eyes had grown wide at the possibilities that provided, and Ron knew they would be just fine. The three of them had learned to not only live together but to love one another and he still had no idea how he had ever gotten so lucky. With David’s hand on his thigh, he thought it was time for him to misbehave again. It had been several weeks and he quite enjoyed the rough, fast and hard sexual experiences afterwards. He loved gentle and slow, but every once in a while he wanted it rough. Last time those big hands had held him down as Julie had sucked him to completion, stopping and starting frequently to draw it out, and as David had tied his feet to the bed he had been unable to move. Completely at their mercy he had been forced to focus on what was being done to him and he had loved it. Each time David came up with something new, Ron was excited to go along for the ride and it was time for David to be challenged for something new once again. With that in his mind, Ron finally dozed off to sleep, thinking of everything that would be coming his way in the years to come.

  Thinking back on that night five years later, he knew that walking up to that doorstep to rent a room had been the right choice. He had never paid a dime in rent, and in return he had two people he loved dearly. They did everything together and as he looked at Julie while she was asleep on the couch, her head in David’s lap, he couldn’t help but think he had hit the jackpot. He shared a smile with David before turning back to the movie they had been watching, his hand on the slightly rounded belly Julie was sporting. The baby was Ron’s, which they had found out after a DNA test, and they were about to find out if the baby would be a vampire-dragon. It hadn’t been planned, but the baby was going to be welcomed with open arms and would grow up loved beyond belief. And whether the baby was a vampire, a dragon, or a vampire-dragon, it wouldn’t matter. Their family was growing and if it was up to Ron, this would not be the only child they had. That thought alone made him smile again and as David’s hand covered his on Julie’s belly he knew that this was happiness. This was what life was supposed to be like

  The End

  Part II

  Married to the Dragon

  Shifter Romance

  Chapter One

>   “Oh, Ellieth…” Her sister’s voice was hushed. “You look like an angel. Look—look!” Her hands guided Ellieth to turn around.

  “I do not look—oh, my.” Ellieth gasped. She had been sure that her sister was only giving customary compliments to the bride, but her appearance was indeed otherworldly.

  The wedding dress floated around her like something from a dream, layers of white seeming to drift in a breeze that touched no one else; Elven magic, her mother said with a sniff. The bodice glittered with diamonds so small that Ellieth could have sworn she was dressed in fresh-fallen snow— and so convincing was the illusion that she shivered.

  Her white-blond hair fell free over her shoulders, its waves adorned with pearls and blue gems that caught the light of the magical light globes, and her eyes seemed almost to glow. Ellieth was accustomed to dressing in dark blue, to accentuate her color, but she now regretted that she did not dress in white more often. She looked luminous, a creature of snow, as magical as the Elven palace that surrounded her, with eyes that spoke of old magic.

  “Well,” her mother said at last, sounding pleased, “they won’t have seen something like this before.”

  She sounded satisfied, as proud as any mother to see her daughter be married, but Ellieth knew the woman well enough to hear the tremor of fear in her voice. Everything hung on this marriage. Everything.

  “They will treat me well, Mother.” She turned, clasping her mother’s hands in her own.

  “If they do not—”

  “They must.” Ellieth smiled her reassurance, hoping that her racing pulse did not give away her own fear. She thought, with some annoyance, that her mother should be comforting her and not the other way around, but she knew it must be difficult to see one’s child walk into the danger of a hostile court. “They need us,” Ellieth reminded her.

  It was true, although she feared that the fact made the Elves more resentful than anything else. They were a proud race. Elfhame—or whatever unpronounceable name they called it in Elvish— was guarded by warriors who wielded bows, staves, and swords with equal precision. For millennia, the Elves were the most feared fighting force on Earth. And for centuries, they existed with humans in an uneasy truce borne of mutual desperation. The Elves, if they so choose, could crush the human nations in a moment… if they had not needed their troops for the increasingly ruinous battle against the dragons.

  The war had raged between the two nations since before Ellieth’s family took the throne in the human lands. She wondered if the Elves were aware that it had been their armies who placed her family in the seat of power, however inadvertently—when King Savin IV of the Elvenkin had slain Darius, the last of the royal line. Ellieth’s great grandfather, an archduke, had been chosen as the successor.

  And now Ellieth was to marry Savin’s namesake, so that the humans could aid the Elves in a battle they now, to their shame, needed humans to help them fight. As necessary as her presence was, signaling military aid, Ellieth knew it might not be welcome. She had crept to her father’s door while he conversed with her mother, and so she had heard him repeat the slander they said against humans: weak, terrified little creatures. Too easily crushed to be worth the crown Prince’s hand in marriage.

  When Ellieth asked her mother, a bit desperately, if they should go through with the marriage, her mother had reminded her simply that with Savin’s goodwill, no one else could touch her. And so Ellieth, whose concerns the week before had been centered on grain prices and the other tedious business of learning to rule; now found herself with the task of enchanting an Elven Prince. She had spent the ride to the castle trying to forget that she did not think she could do it.

  “Do you think the Prince will be nice?” Ellieth’s younger sister asked softly, as if reading Ellieth’s mind.

  “Allina!” their mother said sharply.

  “I’m sorry.” Her sister’s eyes, a paler blue than Ellieth’s own, dropped down. Where Ellieth seemed born of extremes, pale as ice and yet with eyes like dusk, Allina was a copy of gold and aquamarine; her skin inclined to turn the color of honey in the sun, her hair as pure and glorious as liquid bronze, and her eyes shining the same clear blue as the waters around the human capital of Terrestra. Now she bit one rose-pink lip, flushing with shame.

  “Allina, don’t worry.” Ellieth reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind her sister’s ear. “Prince Savin will—”

  A distant roar went up in the great hall outside, and Ellieth broke off. Their mother picked up her skirts, hastening over to peer through one of the carved screens that separated them from the throng, Elves and humans mixing in stilted politeness. From the cheer, Ellieth knew that Savin must have taken his place at the altar.

  “Ellieth.” Her sister’s voice was low, panicked. “It’s not too late to go back.”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m scared,” Allina whispered. “The dragon—Ellieth, you were already here, but we saw it when we came to join you. It’s black as night, it blocks the sun with its wings. If it lays siege to Elfhame…”

  “The war will be over soon with our help,” Allina said, with more confidence than she felt.

  “And Savin—they say he’s a cold man. What if he…I mean, they say Elves…”

  “What do they say?” Ellieth raised an eyebrow as her sister flushed a deep red.

  “They say Elves have unnatural… appetites,” Allina whispered. Her blue eyes were wide.

  “Allina!” Ellieth put a hand over her mouth, horrified at the insinuation. Then, almost hysterical, she felt herself start to laugh. “Who have you been listening to, dock workers?”

  A giggle escaped her younger sister, and within moments, the two of them were laughing like schoolgirls, stopping only when their mother looked over at them in annoyance.

  “Calm yourself.” Her eyes flicked between the two of them. “I assure you that His Majesty will not take kindly to you two laughing while Ellieth marries his son.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Ellieth leaned forward to kiss her mother’s cheek.

  “It’s time.” Her mother’s face was pale, and she melted away into the shadows as the great double doors swung open.

  There was a moment of silence in the Banquet Hall as Ellieth stood framed by black marble, a beacon of white against the dark marble. And then, as she began to walk through the crowd, a roar of approval went up; humans delighted to see their Princess shining to her best advantage, calling blessings upon her, and the Elves murmuring congratulations, their dark eyes wide with surprise at this pale apparition. The crowd itself was a dizzying mix of the peaches and browns of humanity, and the blues and purples of the Elves. But all of them, she noted with a wave of relief, seemed to be cheering her. Relief coiled, warm, in her chest— until she noticed that there was only one man in the Hall who did not seem pleased to watch her advance across the black-and-gold floor.

  Unfortunately, that man was Prince Savin t’Lorien, Ellieth’s husband-to-be. Even more unfortunate, as she saw him with his face cold as stone, his expression unwelcoming in the extreme, she herself felt a flutter in her stomach, and her knees went weak. Savin t’Lorien, it so happened, was the most beautiful man, whether human or Elven, that Ellieth had ever seen.

  His hair was so black as to have a blue sheen to it, catching the eerie glow of the light globes that hovered above the altar. His wedding clothes; a suit of black velvet adorned with black pearls and embroidered with a black threat that seemed almost to glow, highlighted broad shoulders, strong arms, and narrow hips. And his face… Ellieth felt her lips part, and tried not to gape like a peasant girl. Even the skin, a purple-blue that made her eyes go wide, could not distract her from how beautiful this man was. High cheekbones and a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, full lips she could only imagine pressed against her own, and black eyes large and long-lashed, were deep enough to drown in.

  Eyes that were now staring at her with all the warmth of a midwinter’s night. As Ellieth reached the altar, the Prince
hesitated. Then his hand came up in a perfect gesture, palm up. Had he been a wind-up figurine made in the toyshops of Elfhame, he could not have been more mechanical. His eyes spoke duty, and the simplicity of his movements said that he would spend not a moment more on this marriage than he must.

  And yet, as she reached out, trembling, and put her hand in his, the jolt that passed between them was unmistakable. Ellieth nearly stumbled, and she saw Savin’s eyes flash, those full lips moving as if he might speak to her.

  The moment passed quickly. Something slammed down behind his eyes again— almost, she might say, dislike.

  How she got through the wedding service; Ellieth did not know. She was so light-headed that she swayed, and the pressure of the Prince’s fingers on her own was so tight that she knew, just knew; he was furious with her. When they turned to lift their clasped hands, hearing the thunderous approval of the crowd, the Prince looked so cold that Ellieth could hardly force a pretty smile onto her own lips.

  It wasn’t her fault, she thought miserably. She had hardly been prepared for the service— for any of it. The marriage had been arranged so hastily that there was hardly time for her to make the journey to Elfhame; from the speed her guards had been instructed to bring her, she had wondered a few times if her presence was even necessary. A battle was brewing; everyone knew it, and Ellieth was just a pawn to cement a business deal. A pawn whom, if the Prince’s expression were to be believed, was more of an annoyance than anything else. Did he have a lover, then? Someone he had intended to marry before Ellieth was offered?

  She pressed her lips together, feeling tears come to her eyes. This was a marriage of convenience, she told herself. It was only to aid in a single battle— a last strike. Her necessity to Savin would last only as long as the dragons still fought… and then she would remain only because her own people feared what might happen when the war was over. She had been told, in hushed whispers, that though the Elves needed her only for a very short time, humanity needed her for all her life; she was to charm the Prince, and bear a child to become his heir. She was to ensure the safety of Terrestra.