The Panther's Rival

by Emilia Hartley

  Even after all that she’d enjoyed, the nagging voice in the back of her mind told her that it would come to bite her in the ass. She tried to shake off the feeling of being watched. It was only years of being told not to walk down alleys, she told herself. This was a college campus. She was safe.

  She pressed on until a figure stepped out in front of her. She startled, stepping back. Another college student stood before her, his beautiful face irritatingly familiar. His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. He stepped forward, his nose flaring. What was with people today, she wondered? Was he smelling her?

  “Excuse me,” she said before trying to duck around him.

  An arm snaked out and grabbed her by her waist before she could get past him. He jerked her close to his body and she heard him take another deep breath through his nose. She knew the feel of his muscles around her, the immovable strength that they carried. Though, she had never felt the promise of violence in a dragon’s grip before.

  Her heart thundered. She finally recognized where she’d seen him before. He was the student from the introductory seminar that had caught her eye. She had drawn his face in her journal during the seminar, his attention on her and her roommate.

  “Let me go,” she growled. She kicked at his knees with the heels of her feet.

  “Why do you smell like red dragon filth?” he growled into her ear. She felt the cold spike of fear push through her.

  There had been times that she’d been in danger before. Her body had nearly been violated outside the pub from the other night, but this was a whole new fear. She knew from the rumble in his voice that if she didn’t get away from him, her life was at stake.

  “Could you be the young brat’s mate?” he asked, laughter on his lips as he held her tight. “This ought to be fun, then. As you should understand, I have to report you to the Guardians. You’ve been in contact with a dragon. It’s the right thing to do.”

  The word mate fumbled through her panicked mind. Could she really be Wes’s mate? It seemed impossible. They’d only just met. As the new dragon moved his grip from her waist to her arm, she thought back to how she felt in Wes’s presence. She’d been safe and happy. He had fed her stories and made sure that she came first, in everything that they had done.

  Mate.

  The dragon dragged her to the Guardian’s office on campus. He armed the door open before shoving her toward the man with the unusually thick moustache. Her feet tangled beneath her, but she caught herself on the nearby desk and righted herself. A small voice in her head told her to run as she looked up at the moustache man.

  “Why are you bothering me, Raph?” the man grumbled.

  “I have a little something that should help you in our mission, Wilson.” The way he addressed the man with the moustache felt demeaning, dripping with mockery. “This here is the mate of one of the younger dragons. You can deport,” Raph put air quotes around the word, “the girl and cause quite the stir in the red dragon territory. Her mate should be so enraged that he slips up and breaks every law set in place. When he does, you can take hostile measures. They won’t react kindly to her or her mate’s death, giving you the chance to do away with them all once and for all.”

  Wilson grinned, his teeth showing beneath the caterpillar that lived over his lip. Dakota chewed on the inside of her cheek. She glanced around, feeling true fear. She didn’t know what the dragon named Raph meant by deport. It surely didn’t mean the true sense of the word.

  “My degree,” Dakota realized. The words escaped her. “My future…”

  The man with the moustache looked to her. “I wouldn’t worry about that anymore, child. Yours will be the death that helps spur the extermination of dragons in Wales.”

  Death? She shot to her feet and darted to the door behind Raph. He was faster than she was. He caught her by her waist again and swung her around. Wilson nodded to a secretary and she stood, pulling the blinds down on all the office’s windows. Dakota growled, a sound that she’d never made before.

  She had dreams that she’d worked too hard to give up on. She had a man who could possibly love her without holding her back. Her elbow flew back into the dragon’s face. She felt his nose crunch beneath the point of her elbow. Reflexively, he dropped her.

  Her feet touched the floor and she wasted no time to wonder how she’d been able to break a dragon’s nose. She launched herself toward the door.

  “I would calm down if I were you,” Wilson said.

  Dakota paused with her hand on the door handle. She looked over her shoulder. He held something black in his hand, a gun. It was aimed at her.

  “If you leave the room, I will shoot. I can easily tell the rest of the faculty that you are a dragon terrorist. You came here to attack the Guardians in defense of your precious dragon lover. When we caught you trying to plant a bomb, you attacked us and we took self-defense measures. Either way, your new mate gets his panties in a bunch.

  “It’s your choice if you want to die here or die later.”

  She whimpered, letting herself fall to the floor. Swallowing the weak sound, she pressed her head to the cold floor and let it clear her mind. It was better that she choose to live for a little while longer. It would give her time to escape. It would give her time to a chance to, at the very least, put a wrench in their plans.

  Slowly, she forced herself into a sitting position. Raph stomped over to where she sat. Blood trickled down his face and over his chin. Angrily, he grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. She knew that her arm would bruise, but it was worth it for what she had done to his face.

  “You’re a dragon yourself,” she hissed, hoping to oust him to the guardians.

  She glanced to the man in the moustache to see his reaction, but nothing happened. He went about his business, barking orders to his employees now that Dakota had given up. Raph grabbed her face, his fingers pressing into her jaw, and turned her to look at him. His fingers burned with cold.

  “You bet your American ass that I am,” he growled into her face. “And I will see that all of the red dragons are pushed from the home they took from my family. It was never theirs.”

  He threw her forward. The man in the moustache motioned for her to walk. They led her out a back door to a black van with a Guardians logo on the side of it. They looked official. If anyone bothered to look at them, it would seem like a student was being sent home after having a run in with a dragon. It was only part of the truth.

  She wasn’t going home, though.

  It made her heart thump heavily inside of her chest. She placed a hand over her heart and willed it to calm itself. She climbed into the back of the van and promised herself that she would get out of this alive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I smelled you on a student today,” his mother growled when he answered the door. The human woman with thin gray streaks in her hair pushed past him into his territory, trailing the scent of books and old dust with her.

  Wesley could do nothing as the small female fumed. He couldn’t be angry that she’d invaded his home like he would have if she were anyone else. He was bound to honor this woman, his mother and the mate of the head of the Welsh Dragons. She squared blazing eyes at him and stepped closer. Her finger pressed into his chest and he could do nothing. He had to endure her anger.

  “Why did I smell you on a student in my class when the rutting night is still two weeks away? When my son has chosen not to partake in a rutting night in years?”

  In her mate bond, not only had she benefited from the extended life of a dragon, but she had picked up their sense of smell, too. Wes was a little surprised that she hadn’t formed a beast of her own. He imagined that she would be a coal black monstrosity that flew over Snowdonia to terrify away those that might hurt her clan, as fierce as this small human woman was.

  It made him wonder, if only for a moment, what kind of beast his Dakota would have been if she were one of their kind.

  “So? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
>
  He was jerked back to the present by the woman’s fisted hand in his shirt that yanked him forward as though he were a small child again. Wesley’s voice cracked. “She’s my mate, ma.”

  Her face lit up. All the burning anger that she once held was chased away by pure joy. She threw her hands into the air in celebration.

  “It’s about damn time,” she cried. “Do you know how long I’ve been dragging students to the eastern ruins just because I knew that my own son couldn’t stay bound to the earth like his father demanded?”

  Realization hit Wes like a ton of bricks. Though, he suspected the idiom would be lost on him if he were to be hit with a literal ton of bricks. It wouldn’t hold a candle to the way he felt as he stood in front of his mother.

  “You’re telling me that you orchestrated that?” he snapped. “You are a meddling Halfling.”

  “Your father certainly has called me worse. Halfling? Really? I’m fairly certain Tolkien did not envision a rare beauty such as myself when he envisioned his Hobbits. Anyway, I have to look out for you, don’t I? I am your mother and it was about time that you found yourself a mate.”

  “Oh, yes. Great idea, mother. You found me a woman that won’t even talk to me. She went back to her life and forgot about me while I’m still trapped here.” A vase on the hearth mantle cracked. Ceramic pieces shot across the room. He thought about Dakota day and night. There was no amount of work that could fill his time - that could chase the memory of her straddling him from his mind.

  The iron bed that he’d begun work on the day that he met her was shoved to the back of the workroom once he realized that she would never come back to him. It became a pointless dream. She had a life outside of Snowdonia that meant more to her than he did. It was reasonable, he told himself. They knew each other for only the span of a night.

  Instead, he forced himself to remain busy by forging tools and weapons that they would sell to markets. People had a large fascination with the days of old and the things used in them. Mostly weapons, Wesley thought. Men loved to buy swords that their ancestors could have used, when most of their ancestors probably had lived their lives as farmers and never touched a sword.

  “You should go to her. I will speak to your father about you leaving the territory. You aren’t the face of the Welsh dragons the way that he is. No one will recognize you aside from her. Go and win her over so that you aren’t forced to spend your life in loneliness.”

  Wesley shook his head. “No. She made a decision and I will honor that. She walked away and hasn’t called since. What do I have if I force her into a life she does not want?”

  His mother slapped his cheek, lightly, but with enough force to bring him back to the present. “You are her happiness. There aren’t many women in the world with a soul mate. Do you think she would live a happy life if she gave that up? Sure, dragons can be hot headed and controlling. They can be needy man children and they can be kings. But, at the end of the day, they have a soul just like anyone else.”

  As they were talking, Wes felt his stomach hit the floor like a sack of stones. He fell onto the nearby couch, dumbstruck. It was a feeling that he’d never felt before in his life. It was inexplicable, yet his mother took one glance at the stupid look on his face and her own face went grim.

  “Something is wrong with your mate,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Your father had that look when I cut my thigh open.”

  He turned to his mother. “What is wrong with her?”

  The older woman shook her head, lips pressed together. “All I know is that she needs you. Your father is going to have kittens.”

  “He can have all the cats that he wants,” Wes said before shooting up from the couch.

  He was at the truck when his mother appeared beside him. Her time with his father had left her with a lot of inhuman abilities.

  “You need to think this over,” she said. Her hand fell on his arm, her grip tight in warning. “Dragons aren’t allowed off their territories more than one night a month. I’m willing to keep the other night a secret, but if you go running after her right now you could get the whole family in trouble. Wait for your father to open the right channels for you.”

  “What if I don’t have the time? She’s in trouble and I can’t go help her.”

  “She could have just hurt herself. She’s on campus. There are a lot of people to help her if she’s hurt. She could be perfectly fine.”

  Wes sucked in a breath through his nose. He was trying to control himself, despite the growing fear that chilled his bones. Dakota was in trouble and he couldn’t go to her rescue. The heavy feeling rolled around his stomach. He had a feeling that it was much worse than a simple cut or a broken bone.

  He pushed himself up from the couch, unable to keep still anymore. He paced back and forth in his living area. Magic rippled out from him, unable to keep himself under control. The walls shook as his beast thrashed back and forth. His mate was in trouble and he was trapped on the territory.

  He threw his head back and roared. The sound made his mother leave the tower altogether. He followed her outside where there was more room to move. The walls felt constricting and he would tear down each carefully set stone in his frenzy.

  His mother was on her cell phone. When she saw him approach, she held up one finger and shot him a stern look. His beast growled, but backed down from the fiery look in the woman’s eyes. Instead, they turned to the work shed.

  Do something. He had to do something. He had to keep his mind busy. He couldn’t keep worrying about Dakota. He couldn’t bear to think that she was unsafe. She was in trouble. She needed him.

  Wes gripped a piece of metal that had been set aside for a blade and bent it in his hands. He felt his fire warm his hands. He was going to implode if he didn’t do something.

  Soon.

  His beast was going mad. It thrashed inside of his mind, demanding to be let free. Their mate was in trouble and they had to do something about it. They would not fail that woman. They could not.

  ***

  Dakota sat quietly in her seat. She looked around the van at the people escorting her to her own funeral. Beside her sat the secretary that had pulled the blinds down at the moustache man’s request. Her dark red hair was drawn back into a tight bun. Her eyes looked out the window, but her body was still. It said that she was ready to move if Dakota tried anything.

  In the driver’s seat was the man with the ridiculous moustache. Beside him sat another, younger man from the Guardians’ office. The dragon they had been calling Raph, possibly short for Raphael, had been left behind. That gave her some hope. She didn’t forget about the gun the moustache man had pulled on her earlier, though.

  “What made you sign on to the guardians?” Dakota asked the woman beside her.

  The woman turned wide eyes toward her. They quickly narrowed with suspicion. There was no ally to be had in this woman, but she could be distracting if she had to.

  “Why are you fighting against the dragons?”

  “It’s in my blood,” the woman replied. “My family has always protected humanity from things that can level entire towns with their breath. If you weren’t so stupid, you would be afraid of them, too.”

  Dakota laughed, thinking of how tender Wes had been with her. Sure, maybe she was his mate, but neither of them had known that. He hadn’t known it when he saved her from being raped by a human. He hadn’t known it when he insisted that he feed her rumbling belly. Wes was no more a monster than she was. Looking around the van, Dakota knew who the real monsters were.

  “I’m okay with being stupid,” Dakota confessed. “I mean, at least I’m not blind. I’m not letting another dragon order me around when I hate their kind. Doesn’t that seem a little counter intuitive?”

  Dakota watched the woman’s eyes flick to the back of the moustache man’s head for just a second. Her eyes returned to hold Dakota’s stare. Dakota tried to look as innocent as possible, like she was truly as stupid at the woman thought her to be
.

  “He is nothing more than an informant. He sniffed you out for us, did he not?”

  Dakota frowned at the memory. “What does he get from that? Do you pay him? Or, does he get a free pass to walk among humanity, where he can really hurt people?”

  Maybe she couldn’t play stupid after all. It didn’t really suit her anyway. The woman’s eyes darkened. Dakota knew that this woman didn’t like Raph’s presence any more than she did. She had hit the nail on the head. But, she wasn’t going to get an ally out of her as the mate of a dragon. The best she could do was create dissent among them.

  Then what could she do? The woman would be angry with her male counter parts. Dakota could see to that. But, what purpose did it serve? If she could get them to argue after the van stopped, then maybe she could make a break for it. There was the minor problem of the man’s gun. If he had one, did the rest of them have a weapon, too?

  Would they shoot her wherever they were taking her? That was a stupid question, she told herself. She had watched a few too many police procedurals with her mother. She knew that they meant to kill her anyway. Would they make her death look like a dragon had killed her to rile up not only Wes, but the human community of Bangor?

  She rubbed her hands over her face, trying to organize her thoughts. Her mind felt like a mess. She couldn’t think straight enough to formulate a plan. To be fair this wasn’t a situation she ever thought she would be in. The pamphlet had simply stated that students that fraternized with the dragons were to be sent home. It didn’t say that she might become the mate of one of them. It didn’t say that the Guardians might use you to start a Dragon Human war.

  The school really needed to update its pamphlet, she thought.