Konochur, like other werewolves, couldn’t really grasp the human concept of modesty, but he knew he had even less reason to be modest than most. With that thought he turned so that Lestriv could look her fill and see what he had to offer, as a male. Not a handyman or caretaker. As a lover.
Lessie thought the right thing to do was to look away, but she couldn’t find the will. When he’d made eye contact with her and realized she was watching, she’d thought she’d seen his eyes fire with heat, but it was probably her imagination or the momentary reflection of firelight when he turned.
She had no doubt that Konochur was the most desirable male on Lunark or anywhere so far as she knew. The combination of his beauty, confidence, and sexy smiles had her constantly wondering why he wanted her. After a couple of minutes, he grinned at Lessie then changed into a wolf so quickly it took her breath away.
Konochur was as beautiful as a wolf as he was as a man. The fur along his head and back was the same blue-black color as his hair in human form, while his chest and belly were silver. He stalked toward Lessie and, when he reached the bed, bumped her with his nose.
“What?” she asked. When he did it again, she couldn’t suppress a smile and moved over.
Conn placed his front paws on the bed and boosted the rest of his body up with a little rear end hop. He collapsed with a masculine huff, lay his head near hers and gave up a mighty sigh of contentment. Lessie’s fingers itched to reach out and touch the fur that was just inches from her hand. After a while her resistance gave way to her overriding desire to know what it felt like. She ran her hand along his back. The top layer of fur was a little coarse, but there was another layer just underneath, that was silky to the touch.
Konochur turned his head so that he could give her wrist a little lick of approval with a warm tongue. She grinned in the dim light and said, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 7
The battle plan was simple. Plan A. Take the top of the mountain off, hopefully killing all the dragon shifters at once, in the nest. Plan B. If some of them survived, chase them through the air with camera-fitted drones. Plan C. If any survived Plan A and Plan B, assume they would take to the air. That meant wait for them to show themselves, then shoot point-blank rapid-fire rocket blasters at them until nothing remains.
It hadn’t taken the volunteer knights long to identify which werewolves had the most aptitude for technological warfare. A few simple tests rendered more than enough candidates for drone controller. The werewolves were not only highly intelligent, but had much quicker reaction times than humans.
Likewise, it wasn’t hard to separate candidates for hunting with rocket blasters. As Glendennon Catch put it, “You pick the biggest sons-of-bitches available and hope they can aim in the general direction of the target.” Liulf was put into that group. He didn’t know whether to be proud of being big and strong or insulted that the knights referred to the blaster unit as The Meatheads.
Meteorological equipment wasn’t one of the technologies they imported from Loti. So they had to rely on methods of weather prediction that were older, but just as reliable. They needed a day so perfectly clear that hiding in clouds wouldn’t be an option for dragons in flight.
The knights, who had signed on for training, decided unanimously that they would stay long enough to be sure the Lunark werewolves were rid of dragon shifters. Command Central had been set up in the dense forest of the valley beneath the mountain the dragons had defaced. In some ways the tall trees were better protection than buildings.
All the wolves who had roles to play had said goodbye to their families at dusk the night before and traveled during the night to reach the gathering point. A few had come with a clothing pack tied or strapped to their wolf form, but most hadn’t bothered. At first the bodies of naked werewolves, male and female, threw the Black Swan knights off balance, but even they were surprised by how fast they adjusted.
Conn had made light of his part because he didn’t want to upset Lestriv or have her needlessly worry, but truthfully, he’d been assigned one of the most dangerous jobs. He was part of the crew that would climb the mountain to assess the success or failure of Plan A.
Most of the dragons were killed by the first drone strike. Had they been in dragon form, some might have survived with injuries, but they made a habit of spending their nights drinking themselves into a stupor and sleeping wherever they passed out, in infinitely more fragile, human form. Between the fact that they had built themselves a mountaintop fortress and the fact that they were unquestionably the top of the food chain on Lunark, they believed themselves invulnerable to attack.
They had deliberately sought out a world without technology-driven weaponry and had further insured the safety of their nest by showing the locals how easy it was for dragons to extinguish their insignificant lives. The inhabitants of Lunark didn’t even present enough of a danger to post a lookout.
Grenhelde had been in the top of the highest tower nursing hurt feelings and a skin of blood wine. She’d been rejected by Tharenvolf for the fourth time in three centuries and each time was worse than the time before. That night the rejection had been punctuated with a backhand that sent her stumbling into a table of food. Her humiliation was made complete by a response of raucous laughter from the witnesses. She would have sought adoption by another nest if it wasn’t for the fact that her brother and two cousins, her only remaining family, were part of that nest. After seeing them join in laughing at her humiliation, she was reevaluating the value of those relationships. Alone with drink to help dull the pain.
The first explosion separated the top of the tower from the rest of the structure. Since the lower part of the fortress had been targeted, it was more or less pulverized, but oddly, the section of tower, where Grenhelde had been drinking alone, remained intact. It tumbled down the opposite side of the mountain, crumbling along the way. As soon as enough of the stones had broken away, she shifted to her dragon form which was capable of taking a lot of abuse. She was able to break up the rest of the stones in transformation and fly free of the tumbling ruin, but not without injury. Before shifting she’d sustained cuts, slashes, bruises, and a sprained elbow, which hurt enough to make her whimper with each beat of her wings.
Grenhelde’s brother had been one of those killed in the first bomb volley. There were four dragons, other than Grenhelde that survived only because they had passed out on the rock “courtyard” outside the fortress, mostly because of drunkenness, but partly because the cool night air made their reptile cores sluggish. The explosions woke them up quickly, but not fast enough to flee unscathed. Each one of the four had taken shrapnel wounds of various degrees of severity.
When Grenhelde reached the site that had been their new home, she had planned to fly high enough to get an overview of the situation, but the sounds of pops and whistles made her change course and land behind the rubble that had been a fortress. Peeking over the rocks she watched as each of the four dragons bore down on the location from which the werewolves were launching the modern equivalent of grenade rockets.
The dragons roared furious protests, but each in turn met humility when he was blasted and plummeted from the sky. Pop. Whistle. Thud. Pop. Whistle. Thud.
From her secret perch, Grenhelde continued to watch the werewolves confirm the dragon shifter deaths with keen eyes that could focus from a great distance. When some of the werewolves began to climb the mountain, with apparent intent to make sure there were no survivors, she turned and flew to the far side of a great rock that rose from the sandy expanse on the back side of the mountain range. And there she began to nurse her wounds and contemplate what it meant to be the last. The last dragon.
CHAPTER 8
After a three-night-long joint celebration of the werewolves’ victory, the Black Swan knights said their goodbyes and left. The Council members agreed that they would divide the weapons among them, seal them against damage from the elements, and bury them in places only known to the alphas and their seconds
.
Lunark quickly returned to normal. Children ran and played outside in the sun, while adults soaked in the joyful sounds. Likewise, sheep and bison could graze during the daytime and hunters could hunt wherever, whenever there was need.
The New Elk Mountain tribe turned their attention to building to accommodate the expansion that reunited the tribe and made them whole again.
Konochur continued to court Lestriv according to the model of patience his uncle insisted would bear fruit. Eventually.
Enjoying the sight of Lily running free in the fields, he had turned to Lessie with the sexy grin she had come to look forward to. She allowed the corners of her mouth to twitch because she knew that what would come out of his mouth next would be something completely inappropriate and blush-worthy, but just as sexy as his grin.
While the two adults were busy flirting, Lily was chasing a fuchsia colored butterfly from one wild flower to another. Conn searched Lessie’s face for confirmation that her feelings matched his, when he saw her eyes shift to something behind him. In less than a second her face froze into a mask of fright and she shrieked Lily’s name.
All werewolves were quick, but Konochur was quicker than most. Just before he changed into his werewolf form, he screamed for Lily to lie down flat. She turned toward him and looked stunned, but thankfully, for once, did as he said without question. He knew that the dragon would have a harder time grabbing her if she was prone flat on the ground.
As Conn sprinted toward Lily he was trying to estimate his chances of reaching her before the dragon did and didn’t like the result of his calculations. As he pushed with all his might, he begged his body to give him more, to stretch his limbs further, stretch his nostrils wider, make his muscles crave speed and eat up the distance that separated him from Lestriv’s child.
During the two weeks since the attack, Grenhelde had not shifted back to two-legged form. That had enabled her body to heal faster, but her brain as a dragon wasn’t nearly as adept at complex thinking. The dragon brain fixated on the fact that werewolves had destroyed her home and killed everyone in her nest. Except her. Though she had been ready to leave them before the attack, she was sore with the indignation and insult of massacre.
As she descended into something akin to depression, her only hope was that she could visit some of her misery on the creatures who had caused her suffering. Every day she climbed to the ruins of the fortress and looked over. Even in the darkness of her madness, she knew that, if she bided her time, there would be an opportunity to give the wolves a taste of cold vengeance.
Her elbow had gotten strong enough so that she could shift and fly without too much pain. The pains that remained weren’t of the body, but the mind.
Conn’s clothes shredded around him as he ran with ears laid back against his head signaling that he would burst his own heart to protect the little girl he loved like his own child.
The dragon saw him rushing toward her prey, but didn’t worry. She could easily swat him away with her mighty tail. She could tell by the intensity of his speed, that the prey meant something to him. And she was glad. That moment of elation caused her to flap her wings again, gauging the downdraft so that she could coast on the breeze, talons at the ready, to snatch the tiny thing and carry her away screaming while the wolf pack wailed and regretted the day they had thought to challenge dragons.
Lessie had begun screaming for help as soon as Conn started running for Lily. Several of the New Elk Mountain wolves were close enough to respond, including Stalkson Grey. All those who were close enough to see watched in horror as the dragon dipped to grab Lily. But just as Conn had guessed, it was harder for the dragon to grab her from the ground.
Grenhelde hesitated for just the extra second that Konochur needed to reach Lily. When the dragon came close to the ground, he sprang into the air with a mighty leap born of desperation and locked his powerful jaws onto her throat. With werewolf ears, Conn heard Lily’s little girl sobs and it tore at his heart. He knew that her mother would reach her and comfort her and that gave him the peace he needed to keep his attention single-mindedly focused on the purpose at hand.
To not let go.
To never let go.
Three of the wolves had shifted while running and were now trying to follow the path of the dragon’s flight from the ground. Normally, that would have been hopeless, but Grenhelde was quickly weakening from the loss of blood pouring from her neck and running down her body. She left a trail of falling red liquid in the air.
Conn tried not to swallow the dragon blood, but it was impossible. It trickled down his throat and ate at his insides all the way to his stomach, burning like acid. The smell stung his eyes so badly that he was nearly blinded. He never questioned that he was going to die. He knew it. But he was determined that the dragon would die with him.
All he had to do was hang on.
At one point he thought to himself what an odd sensation it was to be hanging from his teeth high above the earth, all four paws dangling in the air.
The dragon flew closer and closer to the earth as she gradually lost both blood and the will to live. Eventually she was forced to land, dragging in ragged breaths through the wound caused by the werewolf’s teeth.
Still, Konochur held onto her throat.
She fell to her side and collapsed into human form.
Still, Konochur held onto her throat.
By the time the werewolves who had been following reached them, Grenhelde was dead, but still, Konochur held onto her throat.
Stalkson Grey took human form and tried to pry Conn’s jaws away from the corpse, but Conn growled a warning that couldn’t be ignored and refused to let go. Grey sent the other two wolves back to the settlement with a message to have Luna prepare a sedative for Conn. One was to bring the potion as fast as possible. The other was to prepare a bison cart with a mattress and bring it to take him home.
While he waited, Grey talked to Conn in soothing tones, assuring him that the dragon was dead, that Lestriv and Lily were both safe, but whenever he moved toward Conn’s jaws, he got a growl and raised hackles for his trouble.
“Not ready to give up yet? Very well. We can wait a bit longer then.”
Half an hour later a wolf came charging toward them with a jar tied around his neck. Grey took the jar and waited for the wolf to shift.
“She says to open the lid and hold it under his nose until he goes to sleep.”
Grey lost no time in doing exactly that.
Conn growled, but was caught in a dilemma. He would have to let go of the dragon shifter’s neck to stop Grey from putting him to sleep. And he wasn’t going to do that. So he growled and threatened as best he could while refusing to let go of the dragon. He snarled his protest and shook the female back and forth, which snapped the neck of Grenhelde’s lifeless body. Without enough energy left to remain standing, he fell over, his big chest heaving from exhaustion and strain.
After another minute of holding Luna’s jar under Conn’s nose his growls became softer and his eyelids were barely staying open. In another minute after that, he was out completely, jaws gone slack.
Grey and the two other wolves hoisted Konochur’s sleeping weight onto the pallet in the back of the wagon.
The alpha shifted and trotted along behind the wagon so that he could watch his nephew all the way home. Luna was standing outside her clinic waiting with a very worried-looking Lestriv by her side. As soon as Grey shifted, he turned to the cart driver.
“Send people out there to burn the body. No ceremony,” he ordered.
The cart driver nodded and hurried away.
In fact, Grenhelde had not been the last dragon. But she had been the last dragon on Lunark. The Black Swan Department of Endangered Species had been alerted that there could be a problem if the dragon shifters were not contained someplace where they would be prevented from causing harm to humans and other shifters. Perhaps they would find a solution before the next critical incident. Perhaps not.
&
nbsp; Conn was unharmed except for the fact that he’d swallowed so much of the dragon blood and the fact that dragon blood was poisonous and highly damaging to internal organs.
Luna looked up at Lessie. “There’s really nothing else to be done. The poison has to work its way through his system and he needs to heal internally. I’d say it’s a blessing that he’s sleeping because being awake would be painful.”
“Well, he shouldn’t stay here.” Lessie looked around at the clinic as if it was completely unsuitable.
“Where do you think he should stay?” Luna asked softly.
Lestriv didn’t hesitate. Konochur was a male who had performed a feat so heroic it would be legendary for generations of werewolves to come. She was sure there would come a time in the distant future when descendants would say it was a myth, that no werewolf could bring down a dragon alone. But Conn had done exactly that to save the life of Lessie’s little girl, at great, almost surely fatal, risk to himself.
Then there was also the fact that she loved him.
“He can stay at my cottage. You can treat him there. Whatever you say he needs, that’s what will be done.”
Luna simply nodded. “Of course, Lestriv. That’s a fine solution and one that will certainly please Konochur when he wakes.”
Lessie’s attention jerked to Luna. “So you’re sure he will wake.”
Luna bit her bottom lip and hesitated. “I wish I could promise, but the best I can do is to say that I have firsthand experience that when Conn wants something, he lets nothing stand in his way. And I’m certain he wants to live.”
CHAPTER 9
When Conn’s eyes flew open, he tried to sort through the haze. Where was he and how did he get there? He began to see flashes of a dragon in flight, heading for Lily. He felt adrenaline prick at the nerve endings in his body as he relived a smidgeon of the terror he’d felt.
Romancing the Paranormal Page 26
