Lilly: Dragon Clan

by Skye Jones

  Rhyndor and Callum climbed into the front, and Callum turned the key in the ignition. The engine purred to life, and he pulled smoothly out of his slot and down the driveway.

  “Where to, Princess? Home?”

  No way. She didn’t want to have to look at her father’s lying, cheating face after tonight. She sighed. “Can you take me to a hotel please?”

  “Why not your house?” Rhyndor turned around.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Come to our place.” Callum said it as if it were oh-so-simple. Thing was, despite everything going on in her life, she still wanted them. There, in the car with them, their big forms taking up so much space and their gorgeous scents wrapping around her, she wanted them more than ever.

  Her core throbbed with desire, and she bit her lip and looked out of the window. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Why?” Callum asked.

  “Because…things are weird between us. Complicated.” Her whole bloody life seemed complicated these days. The ground had moved beneath her, and she didn’t know her safe place anymore. She shivered and not from the cold. She also wanted to do things for herself. Not get involved with these two straight after splitting up with Zach.

  Rhyndor turned around and watched her a moment. She could grow to love his face. The thought slapped into her and scared her some more.

  “You’re scared.” Rhyndor didn’t ask; he said it as a statement.

  “Yes. Everything is changing. I don’t understand who I am. What I am. Or where I belong.”

  “I get it’s scary. I do. But you have many options open to you. You can choose to stay here in this life. Just, please, not with Zach. He’s a major douche. If you decide on this course of action, we will leave you alone.”

  “Like you left me alone to come home,” she shot back.

  “We worried about your safety.”

  “Why?”

  “The witch who enchanted me may be aware of some of the things going on for all of us right now. But if you don’t want us in your life, Nathan says he’ll get you protection while it is needed. We’ll leave you alone.” His eyes clouded. “It will hurt us both deeply, but we’ll leave you alone, and you can live your life as a human. Or, you can return and live with either of your sisters, which would be a safer option than the protection detail. Maybe at some point, you’ll meet some other dragon males. Although, I doubt they’ll match you as well as we do, but you might be readier then to accept this. You can learn our magic. Yours is strong. You could become a Warder of the clans. A powerful position. Most Warders don’t get mated, although some, such as Rhiannon, do. There are options and choices. You aren’t trapped, and you aren’t alone.”

  His words soothed her and helped ease the panic some.

  “If you want to come back with us tonight, we’ll take your lead. You want us to leave you alone, we will.”

  “Of course, if you want us to give you so many orgasms you can’t walk straight, we can be of service there, too,” Callum added.

  Her lips twitched in what felt like her first smile in ages. “Take me back to yours, please.”

  Callum nodded, and she sank back into the seat and contemplated the wreck of her life. Maybe Rhyndor was right. From this, she might find her way to a new life, a better one. She’d never fit in with her adoptive family. The way of life they and their set enjoyed wasn’t for her. Zach used to represent her haven because after losing her birth mother, her first adoptive mother, and then ending up in what she now understood had been a cold and dysfunctional family, she’d clung on to the first person to show her kindness.

  And he had been kind, at first. But as he’d grown, he’d changed, and she’d tried to ignore it. To pretend it wasn’t happening or a mere blip. Because the alternative would be facing the fact that yet another person had left her.

  But her sisters wouldn’t leave. They’d said so, and they were close to one another. She’d have family by her side if she joined one of the clans. And something told her these guys wouldn’t leave her either, if she joined them. Finding it easier to talk with Callum driving and not looking at her, she began to speak.

  “I didn’t think you were all that into me, Callum.”

  She plucked up her courage to go on. “I thought you only wanted me around to help bring Rhyndor back to you. To… I don’t know… You…talked about how dragon men need to protect their female mate, and I thought you wanted me to make Rhyndor stand up and fight again.”

  A long beat of silence passed, and then Callum spoke. “You weren’t wrong, Princess, about Rhyn. But I always wanted you, too. Always. I must admit, though, I didn’t understand how much until you left. It gutted me.” For once, his words were serious. Solemn.

  She let his words sit with her as the car glided through the dark streets. Soon the view gave way to country roads, and they began to climb. They finally reached a spot by a lake, and she gasped at the moonlight reflecting off the water. A large house stood to one side of the lakeshore. There were boathouses down by the lapping water’s edge, two of them, lit up from inside, and she saw what looked like a small motor boat and then a speedboat.

  The car crunched up the gravel path to the front of the house. The bottom part of the building looked like stone, but the upper part, where the main living area seemed to be situated, came constructed in warm-toned wood. A large wooden deck ran around the building, and huge windows on the first floor were lit up with a warm golden glow from inside.

  “Looks like Greta has lit the fire,” Callum said.

  “Who is Greta?” She hated the irrational stab of jealousy.

  “Our housekeeper. She’s human,” Rhyndor said. “Doesn’t know what we are, and we’ll let her go before she notices the distinct lack of aging.”

  “You have a live-in housekeeper?”

  He gave a casual nod and opened the door, climbing out and getting her door for her. She liked his manners. Zach never did such a thing, despite his supposed breeding. She looked up at the house and already felt welcomed by it. Despite its size, it looked warm and cozy.

  Callum locked the car with a beep of his key fob and led the way up the stairs to the side of the decking. He entered through a side door into a spacious, warm hallway. The evening air had turned distinctly cold, and she shivered in her wet clothes.

  “Come on. Let me show you upstairs, and you can take a shower and get warmed up.” Rhyndor indicated for her to go upstairs, and he followed behind her.

  When they reached the top, he turned left. “This is one of the spare rooms.” He pushed a door open, and she peered in to see a large, comfortable-looking room with a huge bed and a chaise longue, with a low window overlooking the dark, glassy lake.

  Rhyndor walked fully into the room and gestured for her to follow him. “I’ll try to find you some clothes. Maybe Greta has something you can borrow. She’s not the same size as you, but she’ll be a much closer fit than Callum or me.” He crossed the room and went through a door at the far end where he hit a light switch.

  Following him, she gave a small cry of delight. A stunning bathroom stood before her. A huge claw-foot bath dominated the center of the room, and there were double sinks, then to one side a massive shower with two bench seats in it and double shower heads, both as wide as a large dinner plate. The whole room had been tiled in warm tiles with stone accents. Glass bottles full of all sorts of different colored liquids sat on a shelf near the bath.

  She’d always wanted an old-fashioned claw-foot bath. Her bathroom at home was opulent, but it was modern and bland. This looked both old and new. She approached it and trailed a finger along its curled edge. Yep, cast iron. Maybe an original? But the bright purple color of the side suggested not. She cast Rhyndor an inquisitive glance. “Is this original?”

  Grinning, he nodded. “Yeah. The woman who owns this place has good taste.”

  She frowned then, and he raised his brows. “What?”

  “It’s too weird, you renting this place to be
near me. It’s so intense…a bit stalkery, really. Don’t you think?”

  He sighed. “It is intense. If you were brought up Dragonea, you’d accept it is the way of our kind, but you’ve been raised human. One thing, though, Lilly. I keep saying it, and you’re not listening. You tell us you don’t want this, and we will leave you alone. You want to take it slow, we can do that too.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, no more following me. If I don’t stay with you, you have to trust me to take care of myself. You dragon men need a manual for how to date human women.”

  “You’re not human.” Her impatience must have shown because he changed track. “When we scented you, we were shocked as shit to find a dragon female living amongst humans. We were concerned and unsure what to do. Of course, if I hadn’t been in hiding myself, then I’d have gotten a clan involved, but it wasn’t possible. So, we moved near to you once we’d found out where you were, and hired a human PI to keep tabs on you and make sure you were safe, while we decided what to do.”

  She must have looked increasingly livid because he held up a placating hand. “We weren’t being stalkers. I get that it looks fucking bad, but we needed to know you weren’t in danger or trouble. We only got a basic report once a week. We didn’t ask him to tell us any details of your life, like where you’d been that day or who you saw. All we asked to be told was that you were safe. Of course, we were told about Zach.” His mouth tightened. “And then when you were taken to the Scottish clan, we knew we needed to act because we’d heard about Nathan’s beauty parade of eligible males. But before then, we watched from afar and only to ensure your safety. Our plan was to come and introduce ourselves to you and tell you what and who you were. We were convinced you needed to be told, but we weren’t sure how the hell to go about it. We aren’t great at putting things into words. This is the most I’ve said in months.”

  He smiled, but uncertainty shone in his eyes.

  She didn’t know what to think about it all. Their actions hardly seemed moral or ethical. And Rhyndor might try to sugarcoat it, but to her, it seemed stalkery as fuck. But she also understood why they wanted to know she was okay. If she’d used her magic or harmed someone or gotten sick, she might have been found out by the human society she lived in, and then God alone knew what would happen to her. And she also understood why they couldn’t easily involve other dragon clans in approaching her, not with Rhyndor’s past.

  “The thing is, we had no solid details of your heritage, but we guessed you were maybe Havsa, which made us worry for your safety all the more. The history between your clan and the British clans is a bloody one. You could have been killed. Look what happened to your sister Claire when she was kidnapped and tortured.” Lilly shuddered at the memory of Claire telling her how she’d been taken by a female from the Welsh clan and beaten and tortured.

  “Christ, Lilly. We went back and forth, arguing over what to do.” Rhyndor paced a short circuit, looking at the floor before glancing back to her. “Callum wanted to approach you way before you went with Nathan and Claire, but I was worried Celine might be tracking me and I’d lead her to you. I suppose we wasted months worrying about how to actually introduce ourselves to you, and then Nathan took you from under our noses.”

  She nodded. Claire had explained their birth mother’s past and how some dragons hated them still.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “We had no clue Nathan had found Ice…Claire…or about Mia, until the PI we’d hired told us you’d gone to the Scottish clan. Once we’d considered everything and learned it all, we came to find you and tell you the truth.”

  She still found it weird they’d been following her over the last few months of her life, and she’d known nothing about them.

  “I think you should have simply introduced yourselves to me.” she said.

  He laughed. “Right. Hey, hello, Lilly, we’re dragon shifters and you’re one of us. I can see it working. Not.”

  His use of the modern expression made her laugh.

  “We showed great patience in waiting for you, Lilly.” Callum joined them in the room, but his words pissed her off.

  “No, you didn’t. Don’t act as if you’re all holier than thou. You paid someone to follow me! And write reports to you. I don’t give a shit if he only wrote one line saying, ‘She’s fine,’ or he gave you a breakdown of what I ate every day. It’s wrong. What you did is wrong. And a bit creepy. In fact, it’s a lot creepy.”

  He hitched up one shoulder. “We’re dragons, Princess. You’re ours. Made for us, as we are for you.”

  “Holy fucking caveman. You need to stop with the Neanderthal shit. Right now.”

  She put her hands on her hips and faced Callum. “Made for you. Yours. You make me sound like a trinket.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “You’re way more trouble than any trinket, darling.”

  Oh, the insufferable…

  Rhyndor shot Callum an impatient glance and tilted her chin, making her look at him. His blue eyes were open, honest. “You are made for us. Biologically speaking, at least. And we are made for you. We are yours as much as you are ours. There’s no caveman shit or whatever in this fact. There’s no difference between how much you are ours, or we are yours. The three of us match perfectly. It’s a rare and precious thing, and it is an absolute fact. That being said, if you don’t want us, you can walk away at any time. If Nathan hadn’t taken you to Scotland, once we’d gotten to know you, we’d have told you your heritage and shown you your magic. Made sure you understood it. We’d always said we’d show you how to be dragon so you could then choose. A dragon life or a human life.”

  He walked to the window and looked out, before turning back to her. The cool moonlight streaming in from outside highlighted the planes and dips of his face, making handsome into devastating. “There’s someone we want you to meet. If you’ll come back with us to Britain. She’s your age. A latent, like you, only she’s always known she was dragon and lives with her latent mother. She was adopted as a youngling, and she and her mother live outside of dragon life. They are still friendly with those in their birth clan in Wales, but they mostly travel. Her mother is an artist, and the daughter is into travel and surfing. They live as free spirits. We want you to meet her. She’s called Gwen, and she’s cool. I think you’ll like her. Talk with her about her life, so you can see how it is for someone in a similar position to yourself who has chosen to live amongst humans. As I say, then you can choose. Human life or dragon life.”

  “Or the life we have.” Callum fixed her with his warm eyes, and she tried to stay pissed at him. “We live as dragons, but amongst humans. When we want to change form, we take a forty-minute drive into the hills at night and go for a fly. Now that things are out in the open and Steffan and Nathan are aware Rhyn is alive, we’ll visit their clans and spend some time among our own. But we’ll also spend time here in the human world because we’ve grown used to it, and we like it. I believe we can have the best of both worlds and create a happy home together. Question is, do you?”

  He leaned in close and kissed her forehead. Dry, chaste, but tender, it touched her. As did his words about them creating a home together. Her first adoptive mother made their house a home. Lilly had had warm, loving years with her until fate cruelly took her away. But her time with her new adopted family had been cool, aloof. Lonely, if she were honest. And she wanted a home. Wanted a place to belong. Why else had she clung desperately to Zach, despite his major asshole ways?

  As a child, she’d loved old TV shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. She wanted what those people had. Didn’t care about money or things or big houses; she simply wanted a loving, close family. It’s why she liked volunteering at the shelter. Dogs gave you so much love. Abandoned dogs, more so. And she had plenty to give in return.

  Something struck her then, a small nugget of self-knowledge. She didn’t only crave to feel love but to give it, too. As a child, new in her opulent home, she’d run to give her new
mommy a kiss and hug, but her mother would hold her in stiff arms, moaning about her sticky fingers. Never cruel, but never warm and loving, either. Lilly bit back a sigh and smiled at the two men.

  Callum left the room, tossing her a wink, and Rhyndor handed her a pile of fluffy towels from a closet. “Help yourself to lotions and stuff. We got Greta to buy these. They’re the best. And I’ll get her to come in and leave some clothes on the bed for you when you’re done. Do you like hot chocolate?”

  She loved the stuff. Nodding, she licked her lips at the thought of the tasty treat, and Rhyndor followed the movement with hooded eyes. He might not be as brash or as forthcoming as Callum, but she guessed deep down he might be more intense when it came right to it. Her previous experience with the two of them backed up her assertion.

  “I’ll leave you be, Lilly.” He said her name on a whisper, and it caressed her as sure as if he’d touched her.

  Half an hour later, she descended the stairs, washed, dried and dressed in a pair of comfy sweat pants and a light cotton sweater. She hesitated a moment at the bottom of the stairs but then heard voices and followed the sound.

  The two men sat in the living room, close on the sofa, talking in low murmurs and every now and again sharing quiet laughter. Rhyndor leaned in and kissed Callum on the lips, soft, gentle, and loving. Something in her sparked to life, deep in her belly and warm. She wanted them so much. Despite every single damn thing that had happened to her these last few weeks, she still wanted them.

  The light from the flickering fire cast them in a golden glow, and she reveled in their beauty. They were the most gorgeous creatures she’d ever seen, seated close and intimate together. And suddenly she imagined herself with them, sitting there too. Squeezed in between them, her head resting on Callum’s shoulder, Rhyndor’s arm around her waist. Their home was beautiful, and she’d still be able to see her friends at the shelter if she stayed here with them a while. But they also planned on spending time at the Welsh and Scottish clans they’d said, which meant she’d get to spend time with her sisters as well. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to date them? If by dating, she meant possibly live with. Casually.