The Panther's Rival

by Emilia Hartley

  But, she sat there with her eyes closed for several long moments. Daringly, she cracked an eye open. Everett’s hand shook and tears brimmed his eyes.

  “Really?” she sneered. It was a familiar jeer that the two shared. “No bollocks, eh?”

  The weapon fell to his side. He released a breath. “Apparently not. You’re giving me an existential crisis, you know.”

  Rhiannon laughed, relief a cold rush through her system. “You have no idea.”

  Everett banged his fist against the metal partition between the driver and the van cab. The van slowed to a halt, Rhiannon rocking forward at the sudden stop. The doors flew open after a moment. Everett took the time to holster his weapon as though he never pointed it at her.

  Outside, four PD cars sat with their lights blazing. An officer approached, his weapon trained on Everett. Another appeared beside her, a phone in his hand. She raised her bound wrists to grab the offered cell phone.

  “Here,” Everett said as he attempted to stand.

  “Freeze,” the officer with the weapon demanded.

  “I’m not here to hurt her. I just want to unbind her so that she can hold the phone properly.”

  Rhiannon studied Everett’s face, wondering if she was ready to let him near the tender veins in her wrist with a sharp object. There was nothing but honesty presented to her. She nodded and the weapon fell to point toward the pavement so that Everett could lean forward and snap the rope and silver zip tie that bound her.

  Like a rush, her beast surged forward. It took her breath away, making her chest tight. She was forced to take a moment to close her eyes and assure the beast that they were safe now. The beast didn’t want to lie down and die for all of the enemies surrounding them. It took a while to convince the beast that there were no more enemies. Rhiannon had made sure of that with her words.

  Eventually, she reached for the phone without opening her eyes for fear of showing the gold in them. She put the phone up to her ear and managed to squeak a hello into it.

  “Fuck me,” Gareth breathed on the other end. She was nearly sure she knew what he was feeling in that moment. It was the cold wave of relief she heard in his voice.

  “You’re telling me,” she said in return. “I’m alive and in one piece. Not even a scratch on me.”

  She sat there for a while, just listening to Gareth breathe on the other end of the call. She was sure that he was doing the same, relieved that she was still alive. Eventually, a police officer directed her out of the van and into their custody. Everett and his driver were cuffed and pushed toward a police cruiser. Rhiannon couldn’t help herself. She broke away from the officer and ran toward Everett.

  “Promise me,” she began. “Promise me that you will testify against Wilson and Raphael. Show the city that they aren’t in any danger from the dragons on the Territory.”

  Everett didn’t speak for a long moment. She was afraid that she’d lost him when the cuffs were placed on his wrists. Then he nodded. Her heart fluttered inside her chest.

  “I won’t let either of them get away with ruining more lives,” Everett said. “He’s already fucked our lives up enough.”

  Rhiannon laughed with her former partner as they directed him into the caged seat of the cruiser. Another officer appeared by her side and directed her toward the ambulance waiting to serve her. She refused aid, because she, truthfully, didn’t need it. Once the silver was removed from her wrists, her beast sped up her healing. The bruises from Everett’s attack were already gone.

  A familiar face broke through the crowd, shouting her authority for all who stood in her way. Maggie rushed toward Rhiannon once she spotted her through the thick crowd of uniformed bodies.

  “You get to come with me,” Maggie informed her. “Drystan is evacuating the Territory until this blows over. If it ever blows over.”

  “What do you mean? Evacuating?” Rhiannon hissed.

  Maggie held a finger to her lips, pointedly looking at the people around them. “We cannot afford to stay where we are. Drystan has ordered a retreat to a place that we know will be safe.”

  “Even after we have Raph and Everett in custody? Everett agreed to testify against Wilson and Raphael.”

  Maggie shrugged. “Tensions will be high for a while to come. We can afford to wait out the testimony.”

  Rhiannon looked back at the commotion that she had caused. Police cruisers had silenced their sirens, but their lights still flashed into the sky. All of this just to save her, a dragon they’d only known for a short while.

  Another face appeared in the mingling bodies that made Rhiannon’s heart flip. She turned back to Maggie and shook her head. “I’m not going to hide. I’m staying right here and I’m going to show the city that I am not a threat.”

  She pulled away from the woman who was trying to suppress her smile of pride. Rhiannon slipped between the commotion to find her way to Gareth. He waited, leaning against his beat up pick-up truck.

  “Take me home,” she said, running a hand through her knotted hair.

  He pushed forward, ready to explain that there was no more home. She shook her head before he could speak.

  “Let’s go back to my place. I’m staying here in the city to show them that I will not be a threat. If that doesn’t work, all attention will be on us instead of the missing red dragons.”

  Gareth made a face of appreciation. “Sounds like a good idea. Am I still sleeping on the deck?”

  Rhiannon laughed and felt joy rising in her chest. “Not anymore big man.” The joy faded as she realized that she would have to tell him the truth of her body sooner or later. It might as well be sooner. But, before she could speak, he closed the distance between them and captured her mouth in a hungry kiss.

  His arms wrapped around her middle, protective and possessive. After the afternoon she’d had, she didn’t argue. She felt safe for the first time in a long while. A sharp pain of regret spiked through her heart at the thought of what she was about to do.

  She put her hands against Gareth’s chest to push him back, but didn’t look up. She couldn’t bear looking him in the eye as she did this.

  “What’s wrong?” His fingers gently brushed her hair back from her face.

  “I have a confession to make,” she whispered. His body stilled for a moment. “When I was a teenager a doctor told me that… He told me I would never be able to conceive children. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I really should have. This isn’t a small thing. I know that.”

  She babbled on, but before she went too far, Gareth pulled her into his body. His lips fell on hers. His hand moved to cup the side of her face, his thumb wiping away a tear she hadn’t realized fell. When he pulled back, she was breathless.

  “It doesn’t matter to me that you can’t bear children,” he whispered to her as though she were the only person in the universe. “All that matters is that you survived this day. All that matters is that I get to sleep by your side tonight and for the rest of our lives.”

  She felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Her head fell back so that she could look into the endless blue of his eyes. She could see the soft sadness in his gentle smile. Her news had impacted him, but he was determined to let nothing come between them. She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rhiannon spent the next few weeks trying to make her presence in the city known while, also, trying to seem harmless. It was a careful mix of action, most of which placing her at the hearings that Wilson and Everett were facing. Agents and officials that worked for GOE cast wary looks in her direction. They were people that she worked with and knew most of her life. Now, they treated her as though she might attack at any moment.

  She refused to live up to their expectations. The dragon shifters were not animals.

  This city needed to see that. She hoped that, eventually, the world would see that, too.

  Wilson cast dagger like glares in her direction, effectively erasing the years of toug
h love that he’d shared with her. Everett, on the other hand, was more welcoming to her presence. That earned him Wilson’s cold hatred, too.

  She and Everett were in this fight together. He was following through on his promise. He told the truth about Wilson’s dealings with Raphael, the white dragon. He confessed that they knew Raph was a white dragon the entire time and had done his bidding more than a few times.

  Raph and two of his dragon friends were being held by GOE, bound with silver ties that effectively made them near human. She knew what that must feel like. She knew the helplessness that Raph must be going through behind those bars. Or, what he should have been going through.

  When they brought him to the hearings to speak, he sat silent. He refused to speak. He refused to look defeated in the least. He showed no signs that he understood the predicament he was in. It made Rhiannon wonder what was left up his sleeve. Certainly, no one would look in the face of the enemy and sit so confidently if they didn’t have a plan B.

  Rhiannon thought about it while she sat on the edge of her tub. A line of tests sat around her bathroom sink. She stared at them while she wondered what Raphael still had planned. It seemed that the future was unpredictable because the impossible happened several times over in the past two months for her. First, she learned that there was a beast curled up inside of her. One that was currently looking in the same direction, pleased and content.

  Gareth paused as he passed the bathroom door. He back tracked and turned to face her. She could hear his heart pounding with fear.

  “What’s wrong?” Fear was palpable in his voice. That was understandable. Last time he’d seen her like this she’d bled all over the small room.

  “I’m…” she paused. How did she tell him this? How did she tell him the unthinkable happened?

  Gareth closed the space between them, his hands instinctively searching her for wounds. With a small smile on her lips, she gently pushed him back so that she could look up at him. His brows knit together at the sight of her soft smile.

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. Her face warmed, embarrassed by her own clumsy communication.

  He very carefully stilled around her. She could see the mirth in his eyes, but he was still wary. She didn’t understand his mixed emotions. It made her stomach do anxious flips.

  “Is this what you want?” he whispered to her.

  She pressed her lips together. A million thoughts rolled through her mind, tumbling one over the other so fast that it was hard to keep up with all of them. Instead of thinking, she turned to how she felt. She inspected the overall emotion that filled her. There was a warm feeling that filled her, crackling at the edges with nervous excitement.

  “I can’t tell you how this could have happened. I was told that I was barren. Yet… I think I’m okay with this,” she confessed. “I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would become a mother, but a lot has happened that I didn’t see coming. I’m living a whole new life.”

  “We should see a proper doctor to confirm this,” Gareth said as his eyes roved over the pregnancy tests that ringed the sink. “I know what the doctors told you before, but what if that was caused by the silver in your body? What if your body refused to reproduce because it wasn’t completely functioning?”

  Rhiannon weighed his words. They made sense. For humans, it was hard to become pregnant if there was stress or sickness in the body. The silver could have very well had the same effect on her body, inhibiting its functions. But it brought about a whole new set of unknowns.

  There was still so much to come. GOE might have come to their senses, but the white dragon clan were still out there. They wanted Snowdonia for themselves at any cost. If they couldn’t push the red dragons out, then they might very well attack. Rhiannon’s hand hovered over her stomach. Could she bring a child into that?

  Gareth’s hand rose to cover her own. His eyes met hers, burning with a fierce fire. He could see the hesitation on her face, could read the reason behind it. Her eyes travelled to the photo Drystan gave her, now framed and hung on the wall. Two smiling people hovered protectively over a small, serious child.

  “Our child will not have to go through what you did. I promise to protect the both of you until my last breath.”

  She reached up and touched the stubble on his cheek. This was not the life she ever thought she would have, but she couldn’t be happier.

  “And I will protect you.”

  Seduced by the Dragon

  Emilia Hartley

  Chapter One

  The light streamed in through the gauzy curtain over her window. It cast a pale-yellow light, touched with pink around the ceiling from the brilliant sunset outside. Gwen stood at the polished wood table in her tiny kitchen. Her hand hovered over a card, its edges worn and frayed over the past century.

  Change was coming. Moments ago, her fingers had flipped The Tower; an image of a woman falling from incredible heights looked back at her. Gwen stood still, scowling at the card before moving on. She tried hard to keep her head down, to live a quiet kind of life. It had worked.

  So far, at least.

  Clenching her hand into a tight fist for a brief moment, Gwen forced herself to flip the last card. The Lovers appeared, two bodies intertwined and wrapped in earthy vines. A face entered her mind. Her stomach flipped. It settled into an uneasy sway. He didn’t know where she was, Gwen reminded herself.

  Still, she looked around her small living space. Herbs hung over the sink, drying. Crystals absorbed cleansing light in the windowsill. Hand sewn pillows sat in the seats of her kitchen chairs, simple and cozy. Gwen had made a home for herself. Yet, the cards told her that her time here was over.

  She swore under her breath. There was one more card waiting to be flipped. She tapped her finger on the green and gold design of the card back. Did she really want to see what else the universe had in store for her? She could easily swipe her hands over the mess and pack them all back into their box, never bothering to flip the last card. But, that wasn’t what allowed her to survive this long.

  Her nails slipped beneath the last card. She hesitated, feeling her stomach sway from side to side. Closing her eyes, Gwen drew in a breath. She had to do this. She had to know.

  The card depicted a shadowy monster with sharp teeth and an indefinite shape. Death looked back at her with its red eyes. Bile rose, sharp and burning, in her throat. She lurched from her seat, oblivious as her chair crashed to the floor.

  Gwen made it to the bathroom just in time for her tea to come back up. She dry heaved into the toilet. Fear pulsed through her. She thought that she was above that. She thought that she’d gotten over the torment that he put her through.

  It seemed that she was not as strong as she would have liked to think.

  Chapter Two

  Cameron didn’t like having to leave his home. None of the dragons liked it. The system of mountain caves had been home to dragons long before Cameron ever saw the light of day, but he could barely imagine living in the damp compartments. Sure, it was now furnished like a modern abode, but that didn’t change what it was. A cave.

  As he looked around, he could see many of them were taking it harder than he had. Owain grumbled and fussed about everything. Cameron could see that Owain’s voice was grating on his son’s patience so, Cameron placed himself between Owain and Drystan.

  He was patient. He could block out Owain’s grumpy nature while Drystan tried to collect his thoughts. Their retreat to the secret homes was a tactical move, but Cameron knew they couldn’t live in secret for the rest of their days. The white dragons were in the city doing who knows what. It was only a matter of time before the white dragons moved in on Snowdonia and claimed it as their own. Drystan couldn’t let that happen. They fought for the land centuries ago for a reason.

  “I don’t know how Elgar dealt with this for the last hundred years,” Owain grumbled as he watched the ceiling drip tiny droplets of water onto the stone floor.

  “He did
because he had to,” Cameron commented.

  Owain nodded. “Poor bastard.”

  Cameron’s jaw tightened. It was because of Elgar that they were limited to the Territory to begin with. It was because Owain couldn’t be bothered to stop his brother from setting the nearby city on fire that they were treated like monsters. Cameron closed his eyes and pushed the resentment back. He locked it in a box and chucked it towards the darkest part of his mind.

  Feelings like resentment and hatred weren’t going to help them fix this situation. They weren’t going to make the human population suddenly see them in a new light. It was best that Cameron keep playing the role he’d been dealt. He was the mediator, the diffuser. It was his burden.

  “Dad,” Drystan began. “Why don’t you go see if Wesley needs any help. He’s trying to open some old doors so we can spread out a little more. I’m sure you don’t want everyone living under your feet.”

  Drystan watched the gray bearded dragon regard him for a long moment. Then, Owain nodded, and he set about finding his grandson with no argument. Once the old dragon left the room, Cameron could see Drystan’s shoulders visibly lift.

  Once upon a time, Owain had been the leader of the red dragons. When Elgar committed his sin and Owain did nothing to stop him, Drystan shoved his father off the throne and took control. It was a smart move, benefitting the dragons as a whole, but Cameron wondered if Owain didn’t resent his son just a little. Drystan must know that he did as they could barely be in the same room without trying to kill one another.

  “Cameron,” Drystan said, shaking Owain from his thoughts.

  “What is it?”

  “I have a mission for you. It requires your skill set.”

  Before the Occurrence, Cameron worked in the city as a private detective. It involved a lot of tracking. Tracking lost shipments, lost wives, lost kids. It was a job that he’d enjoyed until he was forced to retreat to the Territory. Cameron never thought he’d be able to use those skill again for more than hunting deer.