“The vote might yet go against you, Ro,” Ivan pointed out.
“I am the obvious choice,” Roland said flatly. “I have no fear that the Grand Council will elect Blaize or Symon. I will return to New Zealand once the ceremonies are completed. My mate and my son will be safe enough on Ngaire until I have time to return.”
“If you say so, Ro. For me the big question now is: Where or what are the Severn Isles?”
Roland shook his head dubiously. “I don’t know. The Severn River is in England. But if it has islands, I’ve never heard of them.”
“Lord Lindorm’s youngest brother is named Severn,” Ivan said thoughtfully. “Where does he live?”
“Between Sweden and Finland, in the Gulf of Bothnia,” Roland said. “At least that is where the islands of the dragons are to be found. As you know, Dreki — my ancestral home island — lies within the Gulf. And Lind Island also.”
“Do you think that’s what Te Kanewa meant?” Ivan asked eagerly.
“I don’t know what he meant. But he seemed convinced your mate was out there. If you haven’t wasted your virility servicing unworthy women.” Roland laughed mockingly.
“My virility is just fine, coz. You look to your own love life.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ngaire Island, present day...
The late January evening was still sultry, but the breeze off the ocean was cooling the humid air. The Tasman Sea was never really warm. Not even here in sheltered Seal Bay in midsummer, after a full day of blazing sun, was the shallow water reliably warm. But it was warm enough for a vigorous, and determined swimmer.
The two men sitting high in the pohutukawas were unsurprised when tall, curvaceous Dr. Cooper emerged from her beachfront cottage in her ancient, saggy, black tank and headed for the beach in front of her home. The moonlight reflected off her long golden limbs, her black curls had been gathered into a serviceable ponytail at the back of her head and she carried a towel in one strong hand.
Neither Tane Te Mahuta nor his cousin Rongo Te Paka betrayed their presence to Kayla. Their duty was to guard her night and day, but she and her small son were to live unaware that they had many bodyguards here on the New Zealand island where she had lived and worked for the past four years. Tane and Rongo and their brothers and cousins had been assigned the task of protecting the Beloved of the Lord of Tarakona, and tedious as this assignment was, they were vigilant tonight and every night.
Kayla dropped her towel on the sand and waded into the gentle waves. The sea was calm and peaceful tonight. The full moon reflected off the barely rippling water and the only sound that disturbed her solitude was the soothing murmur of the sea and the call of the hunting morepork owl. The islanders and her research assistants were all asleep.
The water retained much of the warmth of the summer day and no violent winds had sent colder water in to mix with it. It lapped softly and tepidly as Kayla waded in. Its sparkling purity welcomed her into its depths.
She had spent a long, frustrating day in the lab and she was weary with sitting indoors. As soon as the water reached the middle of her thighs, Kayla dove into the waves and began to swim parallel to the shore. Out towards the reef the currents were powerful and dangerous, but here in the protected shallows, it was safe enough. The only thing you had to fear were sharks hunting sea lions, but those aquatic mammals had lately moved to the other side of the island in search of the octopuses that they ate. And they preferred deeper water in any case.
The exercise cleared Kayla’s mind. She put the day’s contradictory and confusing data out of her mind for the moment. Let her subconscious deal with constructing a hypothesis that would account for it. She was going to take a half hour for herself. Between her research and her son, she had so little personal time.
When she had done fifty laps back and forth between the rocky outcrop and the dead tree, she crouched low in the water and knelt on the sandy bottom. She pulled the straps off her suit and peeled it down over her full breasts and swelling hips and anchored it by slipping the straps over a half-buried piece of driftwood. Naked, she dove completely under the waves and did not reemerge until she was many hundred yards out to sea.
In the Christmas tree, Tane and Rongo exchanged glances and nodded at each other. They altered their positions slightly to keep her in view. Dr. Cooper had never gotten into trouble on her midnight swims. But their duty to Lord Voros precluded complacency.
By the time she got to the ridge, Kayla’s long golden legs and arms had become the glittering, iridescent, scaly limbs of a twenty-foot reptile. Her black curls had vanished and her head was the long, broad, fearsome snout of a fully-grown, deep red dragoness. Her thick whiplike tail acted as a powerful rudder and her unfurled wings helped her to move swiftly through the undertow.
Kayla seldom felt the need to take to the air. Since she had discovered that her unwanted and terrifying transformation made her strong enough to tackle the fierce currents that protected the reef, she had spent many nocturnal hours inspecting it by moonlight. With her dragon vision she could see the delicate anemones and the graceful twisting corals that made a home for fish and crustaceans almost as well by moonlight as human eyes could by daylight.
She was careful not to permit any part of her huge body to brush against the reef, not because the stinging corals would have hurt her. Her armor plated body was protection against much worse than that. But she could inadvertently damage the fragile habitat she was enjoying.
The sleeping fish were barely fluttering their fins as they dozed in the embrace of the protective corals and kelp. Only the jellies were pulsating and vacuuming up microscopic detritus even at this hour. Observing them filled Kayla with a happiness that was unequaled except by playing with her son Aidan. Only the knowledge that she had left her child sleeping alone in the cottage spurred her to return quickly to the place where she had left her swimsuit.
The two concealed sword bearers were still waiting for her when she returned. Tane and Rongo averted their gazes slightly while Kayla squirmed into her wet swimsuit, and then watched her trot placidly out of the sea. They tracked her progress until her towel-wrapped form had slipped into her cottage. When the light in her bedroom had gone out, they climbed down and took up positions at the front and back of her little house. At dawn they were relieved by four others of their family.
* * *
“Have you seen these slides, Kayla?” Dave Foster asked her when she came into the lab.
Kayla grinned at the eagerness in Dave’s voice. He had received his doctorate last year and was now engaged in post doc work with her. Dr. Whitcomb had appointed him her deputy in management of the research base. His reef building project was going well, but at present Dave had been investigating crab larvae taken from the waters just off his newly established reef.
“You know I haven’t had a chance,” she responded good-naturedly. “Are you ready to share?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” Dave stood up and let Kayla look through his eyepiece. He swapped out the slide she was looking at for another, and then another.
“Amazing,” she said eventually. “You know that we will have to double and triple check our results. Did you get the DNA samples prepared?”
“They are still in the centrifuge. I’ll finish up with this batch, and once I get the DNA patterns to compare, I’ll collect another sample.”
“Don’t pin all your hopes on getting instant confirmation. Is it possible your original sample was contaminated?” Kayla asked.
Dave’s thin shoulders slumped and his freckled face paled. “You think we mixed up the stuff from the Auckland lab with this material?”
“No,” she reassured her friend. “I think you’re too careful. But it’s the first thing that any independent lab is going to ask. So we’ll replicate our results before we break out the champagne. Announcing a big discovery and having to retract would do neither of us any good.” Kayla grinned at her fellow researcher. “You keep going. Did you
tell Kim and Andy about this?”
Kim Shannon and Andy Delmonico were two of their assistants.
Dave shook his head. “Nope. I haven’t seen them today. They went to check the nets in tidal pool C this morning.”
“When they get back, we should all have a discussion and decide where to go from here. My advice is not to tell anyone in Auckland about this until we confirm your results. Let’s not look like idiots if we can avoid it.”
“My lips are sealed, Kay.” Dave turned back to his slides.
Kayla headed to her desk buzzed by the excitement of Dave’s potential breakthrough. Common sense, however, told her that what seemed like evidence of amazingly fast evolution was more probably better explained by operator error. But she couldn’t help but feel the tingle of discovery. But science was not about intuition, and the more unusual and unexpected the results, the more scrutiny they deserved.
Her office was just a desk and a chair hived off from the laboratory, but it had a high screened window that admitted a little daylight. She could hear the surf crashing on the rocks from here. Last night’s calm water had been replaced by waves six feet high. She spared a moment’s thought for her rambunctious toddler.
Aidan loved nothing better than to go swimming. She often though he must be part fish. But, despite her youth, his nursemaid Amiria was a sensible young woman and would not let him anywhere near the ocean when it was this rough. She would find something fun with which to distract her little charge.
The downside of heading up this project was the endless paperwork and the submission of grant requests as regularly as clockwork. Kayla would have much preferred to spend the day helping Dave to check his slides and dealing with the painstaking preparation of the DNA, or out doing field work with Kim and Andy, but she had to get the grant applications roughed out for Whitcomb to review next week. No money meant no job.
Kayla was aware of how lucky she was to be in charge of even so minor a project as this one. She was still astonished at her good fortune in being selected to study the spider crabs of Ngaire when her doctorate was still freshly minted. Ngaire was the ass end of New Zealand, and there wasn’t much competition to live in this remote spot, but it was the culmination of all her ambitions.
She loved the wild beauty of the volcanic island. The animals and plants were at once similar to those on the mainland, and utterly different even though there was barely fifty miles between the South Island and Ngaire. As far as Kayla was concerned, she could happily spend her life studying her crabs.
It still seemed a miracle that Whitcomb had found her the money to continue her research here. All the more so because she had turned out to be pregnant with that bastard Voros’ child. The asshole hadn’t even bothered to protect her against pregnancy. So she was doubly fortunate to have a position where having a toddler in tow was no liability at all.
Her morning passed in a flurry of back and forth emails from Auckland to get the numbers she needed up to date for the grant applications. By the time she heard Aidan’s voice calling her at the lab door, she was ready for a break. The three of them ate lunch under the palm canopy that Amiria’s cousin Rongo had made for them. Aidan was full of his morning’s adventures climbing trees.
Her son was growing so fast. He seemed unnaturally tall to her, and his doctor said he was in the ninety-ninth percentile for height. Well, since her transformation she had added an inch and a half to her already tall frame, and she was now most of six foot herself, so she supposed Aidan’s height was normal. But his fair skin and blond hair were nothing like hers. Of course, she had no idea what her birth parents had looked like. But she loved her son, even if he did look like his father. At least his cheerful naughtiness was all his own.
“Mama,” Aidan asked coaxingly, “Can I climb the big tree?”
Kayla smiled at him, but she turned to Amiria. “What tree?” she asked.
The Maori woman laughed merrily. “He wants to go into the forest with Hehu and Ruru to see the oldest beech tree. But he can’t climb it — no one can unaided. Its lowest branches are thirty feet off the ground and it is twenty feet around!”
“I know that old one. I don’t mind if your cousins take him to see the beeches,” Kayla said, “But not today. Look at the sky.”
The horizon was black with approaching storm clouds. Amiria shook her head at Aidan and gently said, “We will play inside today. I have a game to teach you.”
Aidan made a face and set his three-year-old brain to teasing her to change her mind.
Kayla pulled out her cell and ordered Kim and Andy back to the lab and the shelter of the cottages. Even the most sheltered tidal pools would be dangerous when the storm reached Ngaire. In the blink of an eye a rogue wave could snatch a person off the rocks and carry them far out to sea. Her grad students were her responsibility and didn’t want either of them to drown on her watch.
* * *
It was ten p.m. and the storm had blown itself out and the sun had set. Kayla walked down the narrow hall of her tiny cottage to her son’s small whitewashed bedroom. He was lying sprawled on his back, covered only with a sheet. She smiled. Asleep, he looked so young and sweet and peaceful. She crossed to his cot and pulled the sheet over his shoulders. His pink lips parted but he did not wake.
Once she had seen that Aidan was fast asleep, Kayla headed for her own bedroom. She flicked on the light as she entered the room and the ceiling fixture cast a pale glow over her twin bed and unpainted dresser. Between the welter of paper, and her clunky desktop computer and keyboard, the top of her old brown Formica desk could not be seen.
Kayla slipped into the old office chair that like the battered desk had come with the cottage. It was lopsided from too many years of use but she barely registered its discomfort. She grabbed up her dog-eared notebook and rifled through the day’s notes. Before long she was completely engrossed in the minutiae of her observations. She began the painstaking transcription of her handwritten notes to her digital archives.
* * *
Outside Kayla’s window, Tane Te Mahuta sat in the darkness and gazed at the house of the Beloved of Voros. He and his brother Hare were on sentry duty. But tonight, like all the nights before, was uneventful. The moon shone down on the thatched roof of the cottage. The stars reflected off the ocean washed rocks. The wind rustled through the trees and the owl known as morepork called to frighten its prey.
Tane was bored. He could see that Dr. Cooper was sitting typing at her keyboard. Before long she would rise and stretch. She would go to the window and pull the blinds. If it was an exciting evening, she would emerge from the cottage to swim alone in the moonlight. But most likely, she would put on her nightgown and brush her teeth. When she had turned her lights out, she would raise the blinds once more and go to bed. Alone.
That was something to be thankful for. He and his brothers had discussed the matter. None of them wished to have to inform Lord Voros that his Beloved had taken a lover. It might be their sworn duty as sword bearers to the Lord of Tarakona, but it was not the sort of message any dragon wanted to bring to his lord. It was better that the lovely Dr. Cooper slept alone.
But despite the monotony of their watch, Tana and his brother Hare were alert on this cloudless night. Their responsibility was to protect Kayla Cooper and her son Aidan from disturbance or attack. So Tane sat motionless, invisible to the gaze of mortals from the bushes outside the cottage. Meanwhile, Hare watched from the branches of a Christmas tree, hidden by the red blossoms and green leaves.
They saw the strangers arrive from the air, wings spread wide, skimming low over the reef and swooping down toward the beach. Hare called three times like the morepork owl. He and Tane swiftly took dragon to counter this intrusion. A hundred yards away, their cousin Rongo Te Paka and five other sword bearers ran from their cottages to the Coopers’. They all carried rifles in their big hands.
The strange dragons had not expected defenders. They were surprised to be met in the air by the huge black winged
Maoris. Tane and Hare had been well trained. They dove low and came up underneath the intruders breathing fire. Singed and unprepared for counterattack, the strangers panicked and split up. From either side more dragons, as large and black as Tane and Hare, pursued them and drove them far out to sea.
It was the sound of gunfire that stopped the Maori dragons in mid-chase. As one, they realized these two invaders were a mere diversion. The real attack was on Dr. Cooper and her son. It was true that Rongo and his squad would protect Kayla and Aidan with their lives, but it was impossible to know how many enemies threatened mother and child. The dragons turned and swiftly flew back towards the island and the sounds of warfare.
* * *
Kayla woke to the soft sound of shifting, shuffling footsteps against the wooden floors of her cottage. Her first thought was that three-year-old Aidan was up and needed her. She sat up and let the sheet fall to her waist. “Who’s there?” she called quietly, not wanting to wake her son if it was just her ears playing tricks.
There was no answer. But all around the cottage the grasses and coarse ferns that grew amongst the rocks rustled as if the wind had picked up. And then the slow, barely audible footsteps scuffed past her door to Aidan’s room. Heart pounding, Kayla sprang from her bed and didn’t bother with slippers or robe. She ran down the hall in her cotton nightgown. A big, tall man dressed entirely in black was bending over Aidan. As she watched in fear and anger, he picked up the sleeping child and turned to go.
Kayla had no thought except Aidan’s safety. The kidnapper must have heard the click of Kayla’s feet against the floor, for he turned with his captive in his arms. His eyes opened wide at the sight of a fully grown, enraged dragoness. A giant head crowned with six inch horns glittered in the little room. A mouth rimmed with ivory bayonets opened. Flames licked the man’s legs and set his pants on fire. He dropped the boy, who woke and screamed.
A large brown-skinned man somersaulted through the window screen, pointed his rifle at the would be abductor and fired point blank. The man in black fell, clutching his thigh and screaming in pain. Blood splashed the shrieking child and the enraged dragoness. Rongo Te Paka stood bare chested and bare-assed breathing hard. His tattoos rippled angrily on his broad, heaving chest, and quivered on his naked buttocks. He kept his weapon pointed at the intruder.
Dragon's Successor (BBW/Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 2) Page 12
