The Snow Leopard's Christmas Surprise

by Emilia Hartley

  Gareth felt such relief that he couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward, capturing her face between his hands, and locked lips with her. She tasted of meat and it made him laugh.

  “Now, eat you fool.” She shoved food into his lips.

  He eagerly nibbled the offering of meat and cheese.

  Chapter Ten

  When they returned to his home, tired and bearing more than a few twigs and leaves on their person, they were confused to find several dragons and some of their mates waiting for them. Drystan stood beside Maggie by the front door. A few paces away, Wesley hugged Dakota close to his chest. A dark look haunted the young human’s eyes. Liana, a young female dragon more closely related to Maggie, leaned against his house with one booted foot against the siding and her arms crossed over her chest. Despite her defensiveness, she had a look on her face that seemed tired and defeated. Her brother, Rhys, was nowhere to be found.

  “What is it?” Gareth asked. His heart was in his throat, nearly blocking all of the words in him.

  Drystan swallowed hard as though he had the same feeling. “The building that GOE used to frame Rhiannon was destroyed today. It was made to look like a dragon attack after all. The government is deciding on what course of action to pursue next.”

  “I should be there,” Maggie growled beside him. Her arms were crossed over her chest. It was mind boggling to know that she’d been born into an era that belittled women, that treated them like property. She was fierce and a sharp cutting activist for her family.

  Drystan shook his head. “I’m not willing to take that chance, my love. There is a full blown witch hunt going on.”

  “It was only a building,” Rhiannon said, stepping forward. She was right, but Gareth had a feeling that there was more to this story.

  “No,” Dakota hissed. “It wasn’t. There were five human casualties.”

  Gareth reached out and set a soft hand on his mate’s trembling shoulder. Wilson and her old partner had finished what they planned on doing a week ago and it worked. With human deaths blamed squarely on the dragons in Snowdonia, a war would begin. The war that Wilson and the white dragon so badly wanted.

  He could see, now, that Wesley’s arms were holding his trembling mate upright. She was not scared. It was anger that he saw on her face. And, it was pointed directly at his mate. He tried to put his body between the two women.

  “This is not the fault of anyone here on the Territory. We should not be looking at each other with hatred right now. We should be looking outward to figure out how to stop this.”

  Drystan nodded. Gareth watched Dakota squeeze her eyes shut and suck in a haggard breath. He understood her hatred. Rhiannon had been the one to shoot Dakota, after all. But, a lot had changed since then. Truth had come to light, revealing who each of them really are.

  Mates. They are both family.

  Gareth pulled his mate closer to him, but Rhiannon ducked his grip. She paced back and forth, chewing her thumbnail. Her eyes never left the ground.

  “You’re thinking,” Maggie realized.

  Rhiannon’s head shot up, their eyes meeting. “I won’t let this happen. It’s my fault for being such an idiot in the first place. I should have known that I was different when I was stronger than some of the men in my training class. I should have known that Wilson would betray me because I wasn’t human. This war is my fault and I’m going to find a way to stop it.”

  His mate bushed past everyone standing outside his home and disappeared past the door. Before he could follow, Drystan turned his cold eyes upon him. Gareth stood, rooted to the spot while he waited for his leader to warn him of her possible duplicity.

  Instead, Drystan’s words surprised him. “She is a fine dragon and a strong mate. Don’t hold that one too close you or she’ll revolt.”

  He watched Drystan’s eyes fall on his own mate. Maggie raised one eyebrow even though her lips pressed into a hidden smile.

  “Your home is now the site of our impromptu council. Cameron and Rhys are on their way with food so that no one is likely to kill each other while we discuss what we plan on doing. It will be a necessity when Owain arrives.”

  Gareth nodded. He would do whatever his leader told him. They would follow Drystan into hell. It was evident in the eyes of everyone present.

  The dragons entered his home. Drystan and his son went directly toward his kitchen table. Wesley sank into a wooden chair. Gareth could hear the chair groan beneath his cousin’s heavy weight. Gareth’s mother had been Drystan’s sister, a fierce dragon the color of pale ash until she died in the Occurrence. It was her death that drove Drystan to put Elgar on house arrest. It was Drystan that stopped Gareth from hunting down the old dragon and ripping him limb from limb.

  Gareth pulled out a chair beside his cousin and spun it around to sit on the edge of the seat. His eyes followed Wesley’s mate as she meandered around his home. Every now and then, her eyes would return to Rhiannon. He was worried that Dakota was finally fed up with GOE and would take it out on his mate. He didn’t know what kind of gifts Dakota had been given by her mate bond.

  His eyes flicked over to his own mate. She sat on the edge of the couch, her head in her hands. It broke his heart to see her this way. She was bearing the full weight of guilt for something that another person did.

  Gareth was about to stand and move to Rhiannon’s side when his door burst open. Another wide shouldered dragon entered the house, bearing heavy canvas bags on his shoulders and arms. A wide pan of something that smelled of tomato sauce was cradled between his hands. The dragon behind him was loaded with bottles of soda and bags that smelled heavily of tea and coffee.

  “It’s been a while, Cameron,” Wesley said to his food-bearing cousin.

  Gareth often forgot that Cameron wasn’t an essential part of the other dragons’ lives. The younger dragon came and went so frequently in his life that he stopped locking his front door. The young dragon found ways into his home whether he liked it or not. He couldn’t be mad at his younger brother. Not for long, at least.

  Gareth kicked his chair away and went over to relieve his brother of the bags that weighed him down. Not that it hindered the young dragon. It was probably nothing compared to the limits of their strength. It was just bulky.

  Cameron’s eyes immediately fell on Rhiannon. “Hey, I know you.”

  Her head shot up, eyes completely gold. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl.

  “Well, can’t say I saw that coming,” Cameron commented before laying the sheet pan on the table. “Last I remember you worked for the shitty Guardian sect here in Wales.”

  Drystan was the one to speak next. “Do you happen to remember Jacob and Annie?”

  Cameron’s attention was pulled from Rhiannon, lifting a weight from Gareth’s chest. The urge to stand between his brother and his mate was overwhelming.

  “Barely,” Cameron confessed. “Brainy fellow, right?”

  Drystan laughed, but he nodded. “Yes, that would be Jacob. I have reasons to believe that their daughter didn’t die like GOE tried to tell us.”

  Liana narrowed her eyes at Rhiannon. “I don’t remember her.”

  “You weren’t even born yet,” Rhys reminded his younger sibling.

  “No shit,” Cameron breathed. He tossed another glance back at Rhiannon. She was leaning back on the couch, eyes closed as she tried to regain control of herself. “That’s Regina?”

  He watched Rhiannon scowl, not bothering to open her eyes. “That’s my given name?”

  Gareth laughed. “Yes. You were their little queen. Bossy little thing you were, too. Drystan was convinced that you were going to knock him off his seat of power someday.”

  Her eyes cracked open and fell upon Drystan. “No need to worry about that anymore. I can barely control myself let alone a family of dragons.”

  Drystan leaned forward, putting his hands flat on the table. “Let’s stop talking about the past and start talking about how we are going to put a stop to th
e immediate future.”

  ***

  Rhiannon leaned back into the plush couch. Inside of her, she felt the rage of her beast. It was consuming. The smell of burnt fabric tickled her nose. If they put an end to all of this, she would replace Gareth’s burnt couch with her own couch. If she lived through this.

  She could barely believe what Wilson had done. He made Everett kill five humans, even if it was an accident. The lives of those people now stained her old friend’s soul. She didn’t think she would ever get Everett back, but she mourned for him and the sin he now carried.

  Ten feet away from her, a table of dragons and Maggie argued about what their next move should be. Maggie was convinced that if she could just talk to them she could fix the entire situation. Drystan was not so convinced of his mate’s convictions and Rhiannon tended to agree with him. There was little to do now that could be done to save their face.

  That was until another face rolled through Rhiannon’s mind. Raphael had been present when Everett tried to frame her for the explosion. No doubt, he’d been there when Everett laid the explosives on the building once more. The white dragon had been whispering venomous crap into Wilson’s ear for some time now. He was a part of a lot of the dirty doings Wilson was taking part in.

  Rhiannon pushed herself up from the couch. Her beast still paced inside her mind, walking dizzying circles in her head. She swayed on her feet for a short moment before pressing forward. She managed to make it to the impromptu war table. Silence fell over the room as everyone looked up at her.

  “What we need to do is make a show of protecting this city,” she said.

  A man with a thick, white beard looked up at her with hard eyes. “And, just how do you think we could do that? The city is already convinced that we are the villains in this case.”

  “We name a new villain and move the blame off of the Snowdonia and the red dragons. As you already know, there is a white dragon working with my old boss. He’s slimy shit and everything that has happened is probably his doing. If we can show the people of the city that it isn’t their own dragons that are hurting them, then we can act as their defenders. It will change their view of us.”

  Drystan sighed heavily. “I really don’t want to make other dragons out to be the bad guy. We should be acting to preserve all of our kind.”

  “Fuck that,” a new voice proclaimed. Dakota appeared beside Rhiannon. “Raph is hell bent on destroying us so he can have Snowdonia for himself. He thinks that the red dragons stole his homeland from the white dragons. If that little shit wants to be the villain, then he and his get treated like the villain.”

  “Language,” Wesley hissed, his eyes motioning toward the white bearded dragon beside him.

  “Pshaw,” the old, white bearded dragon said. “The human is right. We cannot be concerned with the survival of the entire species if we’re all dead. Let the white dragons reap what they’re trying to sow.”

  Rhiannon’s knees shook beneath her, whether from the sex she’d had earlier or from the realization that her new world was falling apart again, she didn’t know. What she knew was that Gareth was there. He leaned forward and pulled her to him so that she sat on his knee. One, thick arm was wrapped around her middle to keep her from sliding to the floor.

  She pulled in a breath, afraid of the words that were about to fall from her own lips. Gareth’s grip on her tightened as though he knew what she was about to say.

  “I’m willing to play bait,” she blurted out.

  All eyes fell on her. She wriggled nervously in Gareth’s lap. His arm tightened around her, a response brought on by her own words. He wasn’t going to be happy with this plan. It might not matter in the long run. She couldn’t bear his children. If she couldn’t further the red dragon family, they might demand that Gareth marry another woman who could.

  “Raphael, the white dragon my boss was working with, is a cocky bastard. He was there the night they framed me just to push my buttons. I’m sure that if I resurface, he’ll show up. The trick from there is to get him to drop his guard and attack.”

  “That sounds like a loose plan,” Drystan commented.

  It was loose. There was no way for her to know if she’d be shot on sight after her partner framed her. GOE was looking for all of the red dragons, afraid to their very core that the dragons were a threat to humanity. She looked around the room at the people that circled the table. Maggie leaned against Drystan’s hip, looking destitute. Dakota was still trying to rid herself of the anger that flooded her by pacing behind Wesley. The old man that agreed with her earlier, most likely a grandfather of her mate, wrinkled his nose in disgust as he looked down at the table.

  “What else can we do?” she whispered.

  Finally, Drystan’s shoulders fell. “Take Maggie with you. I hate to have to say that, but if anyone can get under someone’s skin it’s her. Plus, if you’re recognized she can grant you momentary immunity so that the two of you can retreat to the Human Dragon Relations building.”

  Maggie snorted at his comment about her getting under people’s skin. She seemed like a strong woman. Rhiannon remembered a few run ins with her on campus, the professor’s stony glare was immovable and heavy every time she threw it her way. Maggie spent much of her time mocking Rhiannon’s old boss, unafraid of his position in GOE.

  “I can do that,” Rhiannon replied.

  “I don’t think I can,” Gareth whispered into her skin after he let his head fall against her shoulder. “Why would you do this when our future is still ahead of us?”

  Rhiannon swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Because there is no future if GOE attacks. They’ve been preparing for a dragon war for a very long time and with modern weaponry, I don’t think that we stand a chance. Dragons aren’t the force of destruction they once were in comparison to technology.”

  Gareth pressed his face into her skin and refused to respond. She understood. She didn’t want to do this. Leaving the Territory was an awful idea for her. She was wanted. She was the enemy now. But, if she could do this one small thing for her new family, she would. Rhiannon knew how to find Raphael.

  “Gareth,” Drystan barked. “You’re Territory bound for this.”

  “What?” her mate growled behind her. She could feel the tension in his body, his fingers as they dug into her hips. She was lucky he didn’t stand and dump her off his lap.

  “You heard me. I cannot have you jeopardizing this mission because you’re a fool. You are to stay here on the Territory and report to us if GOE makes any moves.”

  Rhiannon pulled herself from Gareth’s lap because she could feel the energy crackling beneath his skin. He was angry. He was dejected. She grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the war council and up the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs she realized how little she knew about her mate. Out of three closed doors on the landing, she had no idea which one would lead her to his bedroom. She froze, feeling out of place. She took a deep breath and reminded herself it wouldn’t matter soon.

  Gareth pushed past her, arming his door open before disappearing inside. She stood outside the door, chewing her lip. Inside, she could hear Gareth hitting something. Her ears caught the sound of drywall cracking and crumbling. She sighed and followed him inside.

  “I should be there to protect you,” he growled when she entered the room. “It is my right to protect my mate.”

  Rhiannon nodded. “It would be if this were not a time of war. Look at this from Drystan’s perspective. We are newly mated. Your reactions are heightened and acute when it comes to me and my safety. It’s a feeling I’m sure that Drystan is familiar with. What I’ve volunteered to do goes against all of your protective instincts. Doesn’t it?”

  “Of course, it does!” Gareth threw his hands up in exasperation.

  “Then it only makes sense that you would end up interfering in a moment when we need Raphael to think he has the upper hand. We need him to feel like he’s about to win so that he confesses to everything
he’s done. If I can’t get him to confess, I need him to attack. If you attack him first, then the whole plan is ruined.”

  Gareth paced in front of her. The walls shook with the force of his beast’s anger. Photos cracked and fell from the walls. Hairline fractures appeared in the drywall, snaking around the room. Rhiannon stepped forward and took her mate’s face between her hands. She forced him to look into her eyes.

  “I am willing to risk this for you and your family.” She searched his eyes while he grew calm in her grasp. “I am willing to do anything to make sure you are safe, too.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and drew her into a long kiss. Together, they fell onto her bed. He shielded her from the world with his arms and body, and she believed, just for a second, that they could stay that way forever.

  “Promise me one thing,” he whispered into her lips.

  “Promises already?” she joked, trying to ease the tension and apprehension growing inside of her.

  “Promise me that you will come back to this house in one piece.”

  “I promise,” she said into his mouth.

  They made quiet love in his room, desperate to hold each other a little longer. She might not love him yet, but she was starting to see the potential for it creeping into her heart. She put a hard clamp on the emotion, because she couldn’t deal with the pain of it later.

  Downstairs, the plan to frame Raphael had been laid out. Maggie and Rhiannon would leave the next morning. Rhiannon would lead them to Raphael, a voice recorder in her pocket. Raphael would feel superior to the two women and would, likely, divulge more than he should to them. If not, Drystan and Cameron would be nearby to lend aid.