Two pairs of eyes looked up at him, one with confusion and the other with laughter. Nothing was broken. Even the air seemed calm and reserved. Gareth sank back down beside his mate, putting a protective hand around her shoulder. She shot him a look of annoyance, but he couldn’t help himself.
Rhiannon leaned away from him and it took all of his control not to yank her back into the shelter of his body. A second later she leaned back into his form and presented a plate of food. His heart warmed even though he was fairly certain that she did not put together the sandwich on the plate. It wasn’t something he’d ever felt before.
“Drystan said you would need to eat.” Her voice was flat, but he saw the concern flicker through her eyes. He didn’t know what she’d gone through while he was healing. It made him angry to think that Drystan had forced the situation. He was a ferocious leader that was forced to keep a handful of young dragons in line, but he hadn’t bothered to wait for questions to be answered this time.
His leader was teetering on the edge of balance. With GOE directed not only at his Territory, but his family, the leader’s beast must be in an uproar all the time. Gareth tried his hardest to understand where his leader was coming from. Sometimes force got things done, but not all of the time. Gareth couldn’t help himself when he lifted dark eyes toward Drystan.
Drystan held his hands up, palms facing out. “I did not harm your…” his eyes fell on Rhiannon and Gareth could see the snap decision being made. “I did not harm your friend.”
Gareth was grateful that Drystan chose to leave the word mate unsaid. Rhiannon’s life was upside down at the moment, with the discovery of the beast inside of her and the betrayal of her co-workers. She didn’t need the word mate thrust upon her like a binding. She was too wild for that. Gareth wanted to win her over, to earn her trust and love so that their bond meant something.
“I would like to see photos of the people you speak of,” Rhiannon said.
Gareth looked between her and his leader, not following the conversation. What had he missed while he was healing? Apparently, food had been prepared, but that wasn’t all that happened.
Drystan nodded. “I’m sure that with some time I could dig up something. At the very least, Maggie could do it. She’s the one that knows where everything is in the house.”
“Thank you,” Rhiannon said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Gareth turned to search her face for answers. Perhaps she would tell him later what happened. If not, he would leave the subject alone. It was her decision. He only wished, at that moment, that he could lean in and nuzzle her cheek or bury his face in her neck to breathe in her scent. She was his mate and she was here with him.
“Until then,” Drystan added. “I would advise teaching your friend here a bit more about being a dragon. Given what has happened to her, she is woefully unprepared for the times to come.”
“Times to come?” Gareth asked, finally turning his attention away from Rhiannon and toward his leader.
Drystan turned toward Gareth, eyes narrowed. He could see the tic in Drystan’s jaw. “Because of the events that passed last night, GOE has convinced the local government to launch an attack on the Territory. The government’s goal is to shut down the Territory, but everyone in this room knows that GOE’s goal is to see us eradicated.”
“Fucking Elgar,” Gareth muttered. It was that ancient ass’s fault that any of this was happening. If his mate hadn’t been an attention whore she might have lived. If Elgar had loved her better, she wouldn’t have been killed.
The events of the Occurrence had nearly been repeated last month. Gareth doubted that his cousin would have gone off the deep end the same way that Elgar had, but no one knew how someone would react until the worst actually happened.
“What’s done is done,” Drystan announced. “We cannot go back and undo the past. Elgar is paying for his wrong doings the only way that he can. That leaves us to deal with what is happening now.”
Elgar’s penance was that he was slowly going mad. Little by little, chalice by chalice, the geezer of a dragon had convinced himself that he could find the holy grail to revive his lost mate. The two of them barely had a month together. It was long enough for Elgar to have a taste of happiness before GOE destroyed it.
Gareth looked toward his mate again. She was nothing like Elgar’s mate, the woman he met so long ago. Whereas Elgar’s mate was frivolous and needy, Rhiannon was a warrior that surpassed him. She would not be brought down by anyone or anything. Fear roiled inside of him, tossing and turning. There was always the chance he could lose her. He almost had last night. Gareth shoved down the fear. He had to trust that she would survive.
“What are you looking at?” She snapped at him.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Drystan’s surprise at seeing an expression of happiness on Gareth’s face.
“I’m looking at a baby dragon,” he informed her. “We should pack some food and head into the forest so that you can get to know your beast a little better.”
Her brows knit together. “Are you suggesting a picnic?”
He thought about her words. “I guess that I am. Sounds weird coming from a male, right?”
She nodded before pushing herself off the floor. “It certainly isn’t something I would have suggested, but I’m not against the idea of it.”
Gareth still wondered what the two of them spoke about while he was unconscious. Clearly it was not the mate bond that was still unspoken between them. He remembered that she asked for photos of people that Drystan must have been familiar with. Had they uncovered her true past? Her parentage?
Drystan pulled Gareth aside while Rhiannon gathered food for their so-called picnic. Gareth felt his jaw clench as he awaited the coming conversation. They stepped outside, putting a solid door between them and Rhiannon. Gareth didn’t like letting her out of his sight, but at least she was inside his home. If anywhere, she was safe there. He turned toward his leader, waiting to hear what he expected.
“Just because she is a dragon, does not mean that she can be trusted.”
“Be careful of what you say about my mate,” Gareth growled from between clenched teeth.
Drystan laid a heavy hand on Gareth’s shoulder, fingers sinking into muscle. “She was raised by GOE, trained to hate and kill us. She could still bear loyalty to them, no matter what she is on the inside. The trap she supposedly escaped last night could very well be a set up for us. If we trust her and let her in, then she could destroy us from the inside. You and I both know that it isn’t the first time that GOE has worked with a dragon.”
Gareth remembered the white dragon that attacked Wesley. They both knew what that was about. They knew that the time would come when the white dragon family would return to reclaim the land they lost centuries ago. Gareth had paid attention when his grandfather spoke, absorbing his stories as portents.
“She isn’t a white dragon,” Gareth reminded Drystan.
“The color of a dragon’s scales doesn’t determine who they are,” Drystan said. “It is how you act that makes you who you are. And, we have seen her on the side of GOE too often to trust her implicitly, mate or not. Perhaps you would do well to share the bond with her to win her loyalty.”
Gareth knew it wouldn’t work like that with Rhiannon. If anything she would scoff or, worse, downright deny his claim.
“You want me to take her out for training to see if she’s lying. Don’t you?”
Drystan’s eyes sparkled, but he didn’t reply. He turned away, leaving Gareth alone at his door. Gareth turned to open his front door and found Rhiannon standing in the doorway. A basket hung between her hands, making her seem innocent and young for a split second. It reminded him of a child he knew years ago.
His stomach hit the floor when he realized what Drystan and Rhiannon spoke about earlier. He’d met her before. She had only been a child then. Now, the tiny, intense child had grown into an intense woman.
Her brows fell together and her eyes narrowed. The fire inside of her burst to life. He could see the tendrils of black smoke rising from her hands. He yanked the basket from her hands before she burned through the handles, chuckling to himself.
“What are you laughing about?” She demanded to know.
He shook his head. “I’m just thinking that teaching you to fly is going to be fun. I can’t wait to watch you get stuck in the trees.”
Which, she did. Once they reached a clearing large enough for two dragons to occupy, Gareth threw down the basket and let loose his beast. The giant scaled body burst into being and turned gold eyes down to their mate. She looked up, unimpressed.
Gareth felt his beast grow angry. Smoke hissed from his nostrils before the beast threw its head back and roared into the forest. His scales were a brilliant, fiery red that ended in darkness near his talons and the tip of his tail. He was easily the largest of the dragons in Snowdonia. On second thought, he’d never seen Elgar’s dragon before.
Still, his beast raised his head above the trees and scanned the top of the forest while they waited for Rhiannon to pull forth her beast. Long moments passed and nothing happened. He looked down to find the tiny woman scowling at the forest floor.
What is wrong with her? She changed last night.
When her life was threatened, Gareth thought. Now, that was not the case. She had little connection to the beast inside of her and a heavy connection to her human form. It was probably difficult to give in to the beast’s form.
Gareth lowered his head to the ground so that he could look mockingly up at Rhiannon. She huffed and kicked him in the nose.
“This isn’t funny,” she hissed. Her face was red from the effort of forcing the change.
It wasn’t funny. She could be pretending to have a problem changing shape, Drystan’s voice whispered through his mind. Gareth shoved the thought to the back. No, she was not pretending.
He had an idea.
Gareth ambled past her. He circled the grove, his head low like a cat stalking prey. As he entered her field of vision, he knew he caught her attention. She froze. He let wisps of smoke rise from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. If her body reacted to the need to survive, he would give her something to run from.
Carefully, of course.
The ground shook as he burst into a run toward her. The trees shook. Her scream filled the clearing. His mate took off running, making a break for the tree line. He was too large to fit between the thick trunks of the trees. She was too smart for his scare tactics.
His beast huffed.
“Are you mad?” she screamed from within the woods.
The beast grumbled a response. He laid down on the grass, letting his head touch the ground. Like a cat, his attention never left her. Gold eyes followed her movement as she entered the clearing once more. She turned angry eyes up to him and he laughed.
“Don’t be a cock.” She kicked his nose. It stung just a little. She was strong and she was pissed off.
He needed her to be scared.
His clawed hand swept out and wrapped around her. Her feet left the ground, kicking beneath her. He spread his wings wide and beat them against the air. It was hard to believe a dragon his size could lift off the ground the way he did. His body lifted into the air and Rhiannon started to truly struggle in his hand.
He wanted to tell her to change, to escape his grasp. Words were hard in his dragon form. She punched his clawed hand and turned her eyes up to glare at him. Below them, the gap between them and the ground was lengthening. He wouldn’t drop her, not on his life. But, she didn’t know that.
He hated having to do this to her, but she couldn’t remain in one form forever. She needed to learn to control her shapes before she lost control of it. If she were outside the Territory again and lost control, she could cause a riot.
“Put me down right now!”
He shook his big head and looked into the distance. They could go for a trip around his part of the Territory. It wouldn’t hurt. If she didn’t change, at the very least she got to see Snowdonia from the best angle.
His wings beat the air and he surged forward. She squeaked in his hand. She squirmed this way and that, trying to break free. Where did the tiny woman think she would go once she was free? They were easily five hundred feet off the ground.
Her form burst free. Black scales unfolded into the world and a small, agile beast darted through the air. Her wings flapped, unsure of what they were supposed to do. Gareth let himself fall through the air to catch up to her. It was going to hurt when he hit the ground, he thought. It was worth it if he could keep his mate from hurting herself.
She was beautiful. The scales that flowed along her body were the deepest black he’d seen on a dragon, but they faded into a blood red at her haunches and a brilliant red on the tips of her toes and across the top of her muzzle. This was his mate. He was not bound to a human that couldn’t share in the joy of the dragon form.
Finally, his claws reached her. Tenderly, he wrapped them around her body while he snapped his own wings open. They glided through the air while she figured out how to adjust her own wings to do the same. He felt like the training wheels on a child’s bike. It made his beast smile.
She was flying with him.
After a long while, he let go of her. She wobbled in the air before finding her own balance. She threw her head back and roared with happiness. Ahead of them the clearing appeared. Gareth banked around her and turned toward the clearing. He knew he was large and that was small compared to him, but he didn’t realize how tiny she really was until she touched the ground beside him.
Rhiannon was still young, he reminded himself. Her dragon form was probably still growing in size. Her dark form was roughly half his size. He felt as though he could reach out and squash her with his foot. Or, he would if he didn’t think she’d bite it off before it reached her. She was fierce, despite her lack of size. It also meant that she was nimble where he would be bulky and clumsy.
She darted around him, reminding him of a small lizard. To test just how nimble she was, he tossed his tail toward her. She dodged most of his playful strikes. One hit her in the flank and another, a few swings later hit her in the stomach.
They had been flying and play fighting for a while. She was most likely feeling sluggish from the unfamiliar effort of it all. Soon, she would have to eat.
A sharp pain shot through his flank. She pounced and bit down on him while he’d been worrying. He swung around and let out a menacing growl. She looked up at him with her teeth embedded in his flank before bouncing away and out of his reach. He looked to where her kitten sharp teeth sank into his scales.
He let go of his dragon form. It folded back, against the wishes of his beast. It wanted to play with their mate more. Gareth had to remind it that their mate needed to be fed. She might act with bravado, but he was almost certain she was feeling the drain of the unfamiliar change.
Human and half clothed, because he himself barely had the energy to deal with a shirt, he approached his mate’s dragon. Narrow, gold eyes looked down at him. The red nosed beast bent to rub her head against his face. He raised his hands to rub her cheeks and closed his eyes.
The beast knew of their bond. It knew that they were mates and it reveled in the knowledge. He doubted that Rhiannon would feel the same if he told her the truth. He held onto the moment a little longer before telling the beast to give Rhiannon back. It might not understand human words, but it understood his request. And, it didn’t want to give in.
The beast put a paw on his chest and knocked him back onto the ground. He fell with a hard thud, the form of her dragon already climbing atop him to curl into a sleeping position. He laid, nearly helpless, beneath her beast and found laughter bubbling up through him. The beast cracked an eye as if to say be quiet. He smiled and folded his hands beneath his head.
Chapter Nine
Rhiannon w
oke atop the dragon man. His eyes were trained on the clouds above them, but when she stirred they flicked to her. She felt her face warm when she realized she’d been sleeping on his chest. Her body lay along the length of him, touching from head to toe. A thick arm was thrown over her waist like a heavy blanket. It had been too comfortable and Rhiannon wasn’t sure what to think of that.
Instead of pursuing the thought, she clambered off him. He stretched, languid like a cat. A great big mountain cat, she thought.
“How long did I sleep?” she asked.
He glanced back up to the sky, pointing in one direction and then to the sun while he calculated its movement. “About three hours.”
“And you let me use you like a mattress that whole time?”
“In my defense, for the first hour it was against my will. Your beast decided I looked like a fine mattress. When she receded, I figured letting a woman sleep on me was much more favorable to letting a dragon sleep on me.”
Rhiannon felt her face warm. She turned to the basket of food a few feet away because she had to look anywhere other than Gareth at that moment. She remembered the feeling that her beast held toward him. It was warm and the happiest that she’d ever been in her life as the feeling spread from the beast to her. The beast acted as thought it had known Gareth it’s whole life.
Maybe… There was a chance the beast remembered Gareth from before GOE killed her parents. That had to be it. Her beast remembered him as an old friend. Yet, when she cast a sidelong look at him, her eyes roved over his stubble covered jaw and his bare chest. The way her body reacted to the sheer sight of him told her that something else was afoot.
Wilson had written books about dragons and their desire to take human mates, she thought as she opened the picnic basket. The book spoke about how dragons liked to capture their human mates and secret them away from the world, mainly keeping them to the bedroom. Rhiannon always thought that his book was a load of anti-dragon propaganda, but the word mate was now stuck in her mind.
The half-naked dragon man sitting beside her had quickly become her only friend in the tumultuous time of her life. She trusted him long before she had any reason to trust him. No, that was wrong. He had come to her and begged her not to take part in a mission that she, herself, hadn’t believed in. Instead of using his dragon strength to force her decision, he camped outside of her home. He made a peaceful protest for what he believed in.
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