The Mountain Dragon's Curvy Mate

by Zoe Chant

“Is your uncle here yet?” she asked.

  “No, but he should be any minute,” he said. “But until then—”

  She walked into his arms and they shared a long, sweet kiss.

  “You made coffee,” she said, delighted. “It smells amazing.”

  “It’s not bad. You can thank Doug for that, when he comes.”

  “I have a lot to thank him for.”

  Brad’s phone vibrated. “I…think you’re going to be able to do it in person.”

  She smoothed out her clothes. “Do I look all right?”

  “You look fantastic,” he said, taking out his phone. It was Doug, as he’d guessed. “I’m going to meet him at the lower level, though. Help yourself—I think the meat’s about done, and there are some frozen waffles, and oatmeal, if you’d rather.”

  “I’ll take the waffles,” she said. “And that bacon you promised. Any syrup?”

  “I didn’t think to look,” he confessed. “But probably, if you check the fridge. I need to go down and meet Doug. And then we can find out who these guys are and why they broke in.”

  He transformed for the drop to the basement level and jumped into the tunnel, letting his wings slow his descent, but not too much. He liked the speed, for one thing.

  For another, he wanted answers, and Doug was their best hope of getting those.

  “Brad,” his uncle said, as he landed. He was in human form, wearing a business suit—Uncle Doug was the only person Brad knew who would put on a business suit to come inspect the family lair at eight in the morning—and he looked like he was in a terrible mood.

  Which was understandable. Brad had the joy of finding his mate to balance out his worries. Doug had been alone as long as Brad had known him, and had the extra responsibility of being the clan head. And having Brad take his new mate into the lair…that probably hadn’t been an easy thing to think about either. “Your mate’s upstairs?”

  “Yes,” Brad said. “She helped me look this over last night, but she needs some breakfast.”

  “She’s competent,” Doug said, matter-of-factly, and Brad felt a surge of pride. That was high praise from his uncle most days. “Stayed pretty calm.”

  “She could have died out there,” Brad said. “She’s taken all of it pretty well.”

  “It might be shock, still. Your father said your mother had a few days to really let it sink in. But still…good sign.” Doug looked again at the torn wall. “Well,” he said. “Is this load-bearing, you think?”

  “I could ask Rachel. She doesn’t know architecture, but she knows stone.”

  “Just be ready to brace it with some magic,” Doug said, and transformed.

  As he always did, Brad found himself feeling small next to his uncle. Humans stopped growing by twenty or so, but their dragon forms grew for another three or four decades. Doug was only around forty and was an ordinary, if tall, human, but he was one of the largest dragons Brad had ever met.

  Doug matter-of-factly smashed through Brad’s shoddy repair, and then reached in and extended the size of the crack as well, breaking a human-sized hole. “Well,” he said, transforming back before he spoke. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  “I should tell Rachel—”

  “I’m here,” she said, walking toward them from the stairwell. “I heard—a lot of noise, so I thought I’d better come down. Um…this must be your uncle.”

  Doug turned to her. “Nice to meet you, Rachel,” he said, pushing the formality away as quickly as possible. “I’m Doug, as you guessed.” He pursed his lips in thought for a moment. “Why don’t you and Brad go through—take a quick look, let me know what’s there. I’ll be right here if you need me. I want to see if there’s any kind of signaling on this side.”

  “Signaling?” Rachel’s confusion echoed Brad’s.

  “Sometimes with this kind of breach, the intruders will put in a signal. A warning, or an all-clear. If it’s there, it might show up when you step on their side, or as you come back through.”

  Brad put his arm around Rachel. “I don’t want to have her come face-to-face with an angry clan head.”

  “I’ve spoken with all of them,” Doug said. “They at least claim to know nothing about this. They won’t be in there.”

  “All right,” Brad said. “But we’re not going to go too far.”

  “I don’t want you to,” Doug said. “If this is too complicated, I’ll get the clan heads to come investigate properly.”

  Brad went through the opening first, just in case, using the flashlight on his cell phone. As Rachel came in, he shone the beam around.

  They were in a small opening in the rock, smaller than Brad’s lair. A tunnel just wide enough for a broad-shouldered man led out of the artificial cave.

  Rachel immediately crossed the space and stuck her head into the tunnel. “This isn’t like yours,” she said. “It almost looks like it was machine-drilled, not—dragon-drilled, I guess. It looks like it goes straight up and out the mountain—if you squint, you can see sunlight.”

  “Take a look around here, and let me know what you see,” he said, handing her the flashlight.

  “Well, there’s this,” she said, using the light to illuminate the drill rig just to the right of the tunnel. The dragons had covered it with a tarp, but that must have been just to keep the dust off—there was no mistaking the shape or size. “I guess they’re not as good at magic, either.”

  Well, that answered where the damage and shaking and noise had come from. “I’d better check the tunnel to the surface, too. They might have more equipment.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry. This is the easy part.” He transformed; the shaft wasn’t big enough for him to spread his wings, but he’d still be safer making the climb in dragon form.

  Rachel turned out to be right. There was only one way into the space, and that was through a long tunnel to the surface. The tunnel opened into a small indentation in the side of the mountain, half-hidden by snow even if it hadn’t been covered by dragon magic.

  The good news was whoever had been tunneling hadn’t tried to destroy the mountain or make their own lair here.

  The bad news was whoever had been tunneling had gone straight into the lair.

  Rachel was crouched down by a dark corner of the cave. “They’ve been camping here,” she said. “But no fire that I can see—you can’t really safely vent. They’ve got some MREs and canned beans, stuff you can eat cold.”

  “We need to talk with them,” he said. “That’s going to be the only way to solve this.”

  Rachel stood up. “But you still won’t know, really, will you? I mean—they could just lie to you.”

  That was another thing Rachel didn’t know yet. “They can lie to me,” he said. “But they’d have to be very, very powerful to lie to a clan head. If I can beat them up, they don’t qualify.”

  “So…he can force them?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “It’s…not really ‘forcing’, it’s more like if he asks in the right way you’ll want to tell him everything.” It was one reason the clan heads were rarely in a straight hereditary line; when you couldn’t lie to Dad about where you’d been with the car, your teenage years got a lot more challenging. “And you’ll feel really good about it, like you just lost a weight off your shoulders.” He gave her his hand, to help her through the rubble. “There’s an agreement between the clans, that none of the heads will use their power without permission from the other clans. But my bet is that they’ve given permission. Doug said that the other heads say they don’t know anything about this.”

  He helped her through the broken stone.

  “Just a campsite, basically,” he said to Doug as they came out. “Don’t think there’s room for more than two people.”

  “So if we’re lucky,” Doug said, giving a hand to Rachel and helping her down, “it’s just these two idiots up to no good.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Brad agreed.

>   “You should eat breakfast,” Doug said, “and I’ll deal with them. They’re at the end of the hall?”

  Brad nodded.

  Doug turned his back and transformed in a beating of wings. Brad and Rachel took the stairs up. Halfway to the kitchen, Rachel started giggling.

  “What?” Brad said.

  “I just knew your uncle was the type to wear a bow tie.”

  He laughed, too. “Let’s have some breakfast, and I’ll take you somewhere better for lunch.” He popped a pair of waffles into the toaster. “You said you wanted a waffle, right?”

  “Please,” she said, taking the same seat at the counter she’d been at last night. “Along with that bacon. And a kiss, if you’ve got one handy.”

  He filled her plate, then walked over with it and gave her a kiss, feeling his body thrill all over again as he drew her close.

  “I…I want to see them,” she said. “After your uncle’s talked to them. I want to…I want to hear from them what they were doing. Why they did it. I want—an explanation, I guess.”

  “You deserve that,” he said. “I’ll go see how Doug’s doing, all right?”

  She nodded.

  Walking down the hallway seemed like a long, lonely journey when it was walking away from Rachel. Dad had said there was a honeymoon period, but Brad hadn’t realized how intense it would feel, how much he wanted to spent every waking moment with her. But keeping her safe was more important still.

  Doug had left the door open behind him. The shifters were still in dragon form, but they didn’t seem distressed. Brad had never seen anyone under a full enchantment before. Their eyes were wide open, and glued to Doug.

  Doug snapped his fingers, like a hypnotist, and their eyes shut in unison. He sighed.

  “You’re…done? Already?”

  “I’m done,” he said. “What a pair of idiots.” He shook his head. “Come back to the kitchen with me, your mate should hear this too.”

  “Her name’s Rachel.”

  “Right,” Doug said, and Brad wondered if his uncle would ever bother to learn her name.

  “Rachel?” he called when they’d reached the kitchen. “Are there any waffles left?”

  “Couple,” she said, still sitting where Brad had left her. “And there was syrup in the fridge.”

  “Good.” Doug opened the refrigerator and took out the syrup. “Do you want some warm syrup, Brad?”

  “Um, no, I’m fine.”

  “So I spoke with our…friends,” Doug said. “They’re unaffiliated, or at least they believe they are.” He cast a skeptical eye around the broken countertop and smashed cupboards. “You weren’t kidding about the fight.”

  “What’s that mean?” Rachel said, popping another square of waffle into her mouth. “That they believe they are?”

  “Neither of them are entirely clear on how they got to New York, much less how they found our hoard.” Doug carefully poured syrup into a ceramic decanter, then put the decanter in the microwave. “Something fogged their memories. Or someone.” He looked over at Rachel. “If we spend too long in dragon form, sometimes we have difficulty remembering…ourselves. That’s also a possibility.”

  “So what…you, like, get amnesia?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Doug got out a waffle and popped it in the toaster.

  “Put one in for me too?” Brad asked.

  “Oh, I ate yours,” Rachel confessed. “Sorry.”

  “It would’ve been cold anyway, it’s fine—”

  Doug cleared his throat. “As I said, it’s a bit more complicated. Your human side remains intact, as does your dragon self. It’s communication between the two that becomes more difficult. It’s as if you’ve split your self—it becomes harder to remember things, harder to articulate what it is you do remember. Whether they were persuaded to do so, or it was just an unfortunate choice, or someone put some kind of enchantment on them…that’s something we’ll have to sort out between the clans. There’s a group who will work with them, older dragons from a few different clans that look into situations like these. They’ll try to get to the truth.” He looked Rachel directly in the eyes. “But none of that explains or apologizes for what they did to you. An attack on an innocent who means no harm—much less someone who can’t shift—it’s a violation of our most profound principles.” He took a slow, deliberate breath. “We will find out how this happened. And we will ensure it won’t happen again.”

  “But…you won’t kill anyone,” she said, her face shadowed with concern.

  He reached across the counter and took her free hand, the one not busy with her remaining waffle. “You have my word. We will take no life. We may have to take away freedom, but we will not take either of those men’s lives.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Can I speak to them?”

  “You can,” he said, “but I’m not sure how helpful it will be.”

  “I want to see their faces,” she said. “I want to be sure—I’ll just feel better, I guess.”

  Doug nodded. “That’s fine. There are two more clan heads on their way—it won’t take more than a few hours. When we’re together, you can untie them, and we’ll speak with them in human form. It might help us learn a few things, too.”

  “Good,” she said. Brad was proud of her, of the determination written on her face.

  “You’ve been very brave,” Doug said, “and very capable. I’m glad Brad found you. Not…not everyone is so lucky.”

  “Thank you,” she said, softly. “I’m pretty glad he found me too.”

  They finished breakfast together in near-silence. Brad pulled up a stool next to Rachel, and Doug ate standing up. Fussy enough to heat up his maple syrup, not too good to eat leaning over the counter…that was Doug, all right.

  “You’ll need to tell your parents about Rachel,” Doug said, as he put his dirty plate in the sink. “They were getting worried about you.”

  Rachel raised an eyebrow, amused. “Worried?”

  Brad hadn’t been looking forward to this part. “There’s a legend—”

  “Fact,” his uncle corrected.

  “If you don’t find your mate before your twenty-fifth birthday…you’ll never have a mate.”

  “That’s kind of dark,” she said.

  “Well…my birthday’s less than a week away. So…they were getting worried.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was disturbed or amused. “Were you getting worried?”

  Brad suddenly wished his uncle wasn’t listening in. As if in response, Doug said, “I’m going to call the clan heads, see how close they are,” and walked down the hall toward their prisoners. “Brad,” he called back. “Can you heat our guests some oatmeal?”

  Doug must have decided they didn’t deserve sausage or waffles. “Um, sure.” He got up and walked over to the counter.

  “So…were you?”

  “I didn’t forget you’d asked,” Brad said. “I just want to say this right.”

  She waited. He thought.

  Finally, as the water was heating for the oatmeal, he said, “I was worried, because I wanted someone to spend the rest of my life with. I want—I want a family, like my own. That’s important to me. But I wasn’t—” He looked over at her. “I wouldn’t have settled for just anyone. It was you. You’re who I’d been waiting for.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense. But—that doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t find the right person before then, you just—suffer?” She frowned. “That’s so unfair. Why—how does that happen?”

  Doug had returned, with his phone still in his hand. He stood at the entrance to the hallway and listened as Brad continued.

  “Believe it or not, it’s the family curse. We don’t know exactly how it started—it’s gone on for generations, and the legends aren’t all consistent. But as far as we can tell it was back in the old country with a woman my great—” Brad couldn’t begin to remember. “My ancestor, at any rate, promised to marry. He gave her all kinds of
promises, gifts, but insisted on keeping their love affair a secret. Some people say she was a dragon shifter, and other people say she was a witch—maybe both, who knows? The story goes that she died in childbirth, cursing his name and his cowardice. He took their son in and gave him the Banik family name, but it was too late. From then on, if you weren’t with your mate before twenty-five…you were alone.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “She cursed her own son, too?”

  “That’s how the legend goes, anyway.”

  “That’s not how my mom told it,” Doug interrupted. “I heard she was jealous of a rival who stole her mate away. And when I’ve been researching the family I heard another story, about a stolen cow that was supposed to be a dowry, which seems pretty harsh, but maybe it was hard times. Cow was worth a lot, back then.”

  “I guess none of us know the truth,” Brad said. “At least not the whole truth.” He frowned at his uncle. “A cow, really?”

  Doug just shrugged his shoulders. His phone played something classical, and he disappeared down the hallway again, talking as he walked.

  “Anyway,” Brad continued. “The Baniks who’ve made it to twenty-five alone—some have gotten married, but not many, and I don’t think there were a lot of happy endings.”

  “That’s so cruel,” she said.

  “We’ve tried to reverse the curse a few times, but—I don’t know. Probably there’s a prophecy or something that has to be fulfilled, and everyone forgot what it was…I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve met…kind of a lot of women in the past few years. Everyone in the family wanted me to beat the curse. It’ll be the same for my brothers as they get older—would be for my sister, too, if she could shift.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. That…it must be hard on everyone.”

  “It didn’t seem that real until I started getting closer to twenty-five, honestly,” he said. “Dad and Mom met in college, so they don’t have much trouble. Doug—well, he’s been alone his whole life. He doesn’t talk about it, but I guess I wouldn’t either.”

  “No,” she said, softly.

  “I don’t want you to think…we thought for generations it meant you had to get married, but then, in, um, 1864, I think? There was a delay in the wedding, and everyone was still okay. It was just having your mate, and maybe you had to tell everyone. But..” He smiled a little. “I want to tell everyone anyway. I can’t imagine keeping this to myself. But what about you? I mean, I know you weren’t waiting for your mate. But were you planning on getting married, having kids?”