by Viola Grace
“It was fantastic. I left as many marks on him as he did on me. We started in the main hall and worked our way to the bedroom.” A dreamy smile crept across her face and her eyes fluttered shut at the remembrances.
“How long did you say it was going to take him to find you?” Hex’s eyes grew distant.
“At least a week, why?” George sat up and began to look worried.
“There is a dragon coming in for a landing in my backyard as we speak. That’s why.” Hex got up and walked to the patio door. She breathed a sigh of relief. The silvery green dragon was extremely familiar.
“It’s your mom.” Hex flipped the lock, swinging the door open in welcome. A minute later George’s naked mother was walking quickly across the grass and into the house.
“Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back with some clothing.” Hex shot up the stairs as quickly as she could. The look in Arabel’s eyes was pure murder.
“Graylin Treel. What the hell do you think you are doing?” Her mother grabbed her by the arm.
Playing innocent was worth a shot. “Whatever do you mean, Mom?”
“The entire dragon clan has been alerted to your presence. Rikard himself just sent out an alert to locate you.”
“Wow, that was fast. How did he know who I was? I didn’t give him my real name.”
“He talked to the council at dawn this morning. He wanted to know who could possibly have had an unrecorded female birth in the last one hundred years.”
“So, no one knows about me. Do they?”
Arabel’s cheeks pinked, “Apparently Mathias had some idea. He immediately mentioned me, had me summoned to the council chambers and they Questioned me.”
“Ouch. Are you alright?” Questioning hurt. It forced all information that was requested to be revealed. There was no way to couch an answer when you were put to the Question.
“I am fine. The result of your little interlude however, is not.” Arabel sighed and sat on the couch next to her daughter. They really did look more like sisters than was proper.
“Arabel,” Hex was returning, “When do you think the council will find her?”
“In the next twenty four hours.” Arabel took the pullover dress that was handed to her. “You are not safe either, Izzy. You came up in Questioning.”
Isobel almost fainted. “How?”
“I was still under the Question when Rikard felt Graylin call you. He asked me if I knew anyone who could retrieve her from his house. Your name came up. I think that they alerted the Warlock council. They may come for you at any time.”
“Well then, you had best take your daughter and get the hell out of here. Go. Both of you, out!” Hex shooed them out of her house and into her back yard. She stood quietly as they removed the borrowed clothes and transformed into great flying beasts.
Chapter Four
Across the psychic plane Graylin was being chewed out by her mother.
“What did you think you were doing?” She snorted, fire shot out nearly singeing a nearby tree. “I mean, aside from screwing your brains out.”
“The glamour was coming down, Mom. As of yesterday afternoon I was lit up on the mortal plane like a Christmas tree.”
“Oh, honey. I am sorry. I didn’t know.” Arabel had always been careful to shield her daughter. It had been a habit that she had been glad to break when the glamour came into effect.
“It’s alright, Mom. We all have to make our way in the world, right?” She banked left, enjoying the wind around her wings. It felt so good to fly through the mortal skies. She had never yet been to Realm, it had always been too dangerous with her status as an unregistered full-blood female. Some male would have claimed her and that would have been that. No other male would have come near her and she would have been stuck with the guy who got their first.
“I got to choose him and I don’t regret it. At least it gave me some control over my future.” Her wings propelled her higher and higher and as she levelled out, she noticed what appeared to be a fighter plane in the distance.
Her flight was lazy, the joy she felt in the sky unmatched in any part of her life. Well, last night had come pretty close.
“Uh, honey?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Run.”
That was no fighter jet, it was Rikard, and he was bearing on her with arrow-like intensity. “Hells.”
She turned tail and ran, well, flew. She only had about a kilometre between herself and Rikard when she was given a reprieve. Arabel had come up behind him and landed on his back. She bore him toward the ground with astonishing suddenness as her daughter headed for the mountain range.
This was her one chance to make a break for it. So, she did. Zeroing in on a lake in a valley between the rocks ahead of her she folded her wings, transformed into her half human form and dove into the water.
A hastily muttered water breathing spell kept her from having to surface and she swam more deeply into the water, rolling periodically to check for her pursuer. Underwater was a whole new sky to fly in.
A dark shadow cruised low over the surface of the lake, then circled. Keeping still she tried to think like a fish. She let the currents move her and when she felt them moving her to the surface, she turned and swam for the depths of the lake with all of her strength.
A maelstrom formed around her and she knew then that he was indeed one of the Northern Ocean dragons. They had a talent for water, and whirlpools were their specialty.
The flickering thought of this sucks went through her head just as she managed to reach a rocky outcropping to dig her talons into. She hung on for dear life as he aimed the vortex at her. Her wings fluttered in the violence of the water and her fingers began to slip.
There was no way out except one. She let go, and as she rocketed to the surface in the grip of the swirling cone, she transformed into her dragon form the instant that she broke the surface.
With all of the momentum of the vortex behind her, she bowled him backward with a head butt that sent him flipping into the lake as she once again took to the skies.
With all the speed that she prided herself for, George found that she could outrun him. If she kept her mind on the flying and on her destination.
He pursued her for hours. With a sense of triumph, she felt her goal in the distance. Home. A dead zone. He would not be able to follow her, nor would she be able to change forms once she arrived there. All the magic in the area had been eradicated, so that was the ideal place for a dragon who was hiding herself to buy a house.
As they approached the border, she dropped low, skimming the surface of a field with her talons, then moved into her warrior form, the smaller wings giving her more control. When she felt the effect of the barrier, she flared her wings in a sudden stop and dropped to the ground to continue naked and on foot.
She was now on her own property. In fact, she had purchased the entire dead zone simply to keep local humans from being distressed by her tendency to forget clothing.
She didn’t look back to see if he had followed her example, but if he hadn’t the zone would spit him out the other side as if he had never passed.
For magical creatures, it either kept their magic from working, or allowed them to pass over it unharmed. Space folded as their magic kept them from having their flight interrupted. Dragons had more than enough magic to transport them past the zone.
It was part of their charm.
Chapter Five
Running naked through the woods would normally have been enjoyable, but today was not the day for fun.
She didn’t know how much time she had before he caught up with her, but in the mean time she was going to put on some clothes and drive like hell. Oh, and grab some dinner, she was starving.
Her home loomed through the trees. A nicely appointed two-storey house, with a three-car garage and a small pond for fish. Gardening was not her favourite thing, so lush grass was the extent of her yard décor.
She had a service come and mow if she was
leaving town, but as she only travelled for spell sales, it didn’t happen often.
She palmed the lock of her lovely security system and the door swung wide. It was a handy feature when she was flying naked.
There were no messages on her machine when she checked it, enough food in the fridge to make a killer sandwich, and as soon as she slithered into some clothes, she was getting herself some coffee.
The next hour was spent fortifying herself and looking out the window to see if he had found her. It was not the most restful dinner she had ever had.
When the sun began its descent, George skulked into her garage and selected her favourite. Her black convertible. It came to life with a purring roar. The comforting rumble made her smile.
She backed out of her garage, and with a deft twist of the steering wheel she headed through the woods down the sloping trail to the main highway. It took long minutes while she looked over her shoulder every few seconds and thought about her next move.
It was a bold move. One that she hoped he wouldn’t think of. And she could only pray that the council would not question her mother further about her whereabouts.
The wind in her hair swirled it into a wild tangle in a matter of minutes, but still she kept her foot on the gas and the top down. It was another type of flying and she loved it just as much.
The highway stretched in front of her, an endless black river to travel. As she exited the dead zone she carefully extended her senses to search for Rikard. He was nowhere to be found.
A sigh of relief escaped her and at the next truck stop she gassed up her car, loaded up on groceries and beverages and picked up a road map. She carefully plotted her route and waved off the help offered by a few of the clients of the stop. They meant well, but their eyes trying to stare down her shirt made her shake her head in frustration. With a few exceptions, men were all the same. Visual cues were ninety percent of their attention attractors.
She ran across the road to the department store, picked up camping equipment and then stomped back to her vehicle with calm deliberation. George had butterflies in her stomach as she cruised through the countryside with no sleep and only minimal bathroom breaks.
Two days later, with no sign of her draconic stalker she was at her destination. Rikard’s mountains.
Like most dragons, when it came to buy his house, he purchased as much land as he could, including the local foothills into the mountain. She had sensed a tunnel nearby the first time she had been there selling spells, also the time she had first begun to check him out.
The tunnel was aimed at the foothills and she surmised that his hoard was somewhere nearby.
The next time she saw Jinx, she needed to thank her for the treasure detection spell. It was now working in full swing and had led her through the hills after she hid her car, and into the caves that housed his accumulation of wealth. His hoard.
The enchantment that guarded the opening was nothing for her, she brushed passed it with hardly any effort at all. She slid through a crevice in the stone that was barely large enough for her and stumbled through the tiny passage to the main chamber. The walls of the cavern were polished and smooth; he had expended effort to make his hidden showpiece a masterpiece.
“Holy gods.” She breathed out and had to gasp air back in. His hoard was incredible.
Gold, silver, gems, some neatly stacked, some heaped in a pile were everywhere. Paintings, tapestries, statues and armour made up the other half of his collection. There were weapons of every era mounted on the wall, centuries of history laid out in front of her and all she could do was giggle.
She dropped her back pack and equipment, squealed and rolled on the pile of coins and jewellery. With the icy loot at her back, she scooped up handfuls of the gold coins and trickled them over her body, laughing the whole time.
This was the perfect place to hide. With him looking for her out near her home and her mother’s home, he would not think to check his own.
It was three days later when she found the scrolls.
Hidden behind a statue of a dragon that she was guessing was a bust of either himself or a close relative, was a leather sack full of scrolls. Under the sack was a pile of books, but she took to the scrolls first thinking that they might be unknown spells. Instead, it was his genealogy and his biography.
It made for interesting reading, he could trace his lineage back to Sirius and Ki. His line descended from their son Devon and his mate Vinya. It was from Vinya that he got his water-borne talent, as she was a Northern dragon. She had also bequeathed her golden good looks to her son, Viktor who was Rikard’s father. The portrait and description of her was simply beautiful. Vinya had been a sight to behold.
That ancestry would make him close to a thousand years old. He would have seen the exodus of the werewolves and vampires, the endless series of warders coming in for assessment and matchmaking, and a thousand other moments in the history of Realm. It made for absorbing reading and she only stopped poring over the histories to eat and when she nodded off.
Day after day she filled her mind with the tales and exploits of his ancestors. It was only when she stopped to have a break and rub her eyes that she wondered how much time had passed. Her cell battery was on half charge, and she got no signal, but over a week had passed since she had taken refuge here.
She needed to take a shower, badly. She was amazed that she hadn’t passed out from her own stench, come to think of it.
George was just lucky that he wasn’t tracking her by scent, or he would have been in here days ago. Scrub brush in hand.
She knew that there was a pool of water off the main cavern. She had found it on her first tour of the place. It was now time to grab her soap and a towel and to do what needed to be done.
Chapter Six
“Ah, that’s better.” Her voice echoed in the cavern, and she smiled at the only noise she had heard all week. At first, she had been straining to hear from Rikard, but after three days, she relaxed her guard.
She had taken off her clothing, only wincing a little at the stiffness of the fabric. It was bizarre. She had never neglected personal hygiene for intellectual pursuits before, and she hoped it never happened again.
The pool was wide and still on the surface, but there was a current underneath that swept away the handful of dirt that she dropped in to test the water’s ability to clear itself. As soon as the dirt cleared the surface it was swirled away by the movement of the water. It was a relief as she planned on soaping her skin until it was raw.
Her clothes were first. The jeans and t-shirt fought the soap for a few washings and then gave in. The cloud in the water quickly dissipating and the residue of the suds swept away by the light undertow.
She was next. Her hair was a rat’s nest of tangles and greasy locks. It really didn’t like the washing, but she forced it clean.
The lather that she built on her arms and legs relaxed her, her body beginning to feel clean at last. She shook her head as she soaped and rinsed the rest of her. Wow. She was able to relax as the water pulsed gently around her.
George leaned her head back against the stone lip of the pool and let her body go limp. It was a rare moment when she could just relax outside of her home with no worries. She found it strange that while she was hiding in a predator’s lair she could be so comfortable.
Ah well, it must be a nesting instinct. Her body had acknowledged his as mate from the first moment he touched her, she just wanted to make sure that he worked for it.
She was almost asleep when she heard the slow and rhythmic applause coming from the entrance to the pool’s cavern. With an extreme effort of will she kept her eyes closed. “About time you got here. With your affinity for water, I suspected that you would show up soon.”
“Well, watching you bathe was very entertaining. Have you been here all week?” His voice was coming closer, his clothing rustled as he removed it to join her in the pool.
A slight splash and she was no longer alone.
&nb
sp; Rikard displaced the water only slightly, but his control over it was confirmed as it began to tease her from neck to toes. “Why did you run, Graylin? That is your name isn’t it? Graylin.”
She sighed and settled more deeply into the water enjoying the caresses. “Yes. But you know that. You had my mother Questioned.”
“I would say it was necessary, but I wanted to know who you were.” Based on his tone, he was next to her, leaning in the same manner she was.
“Well, my mom is pissed. The next time you meet her, you should really apologize.”
“I will. Your father was surprised to learn of your existence.”
“Matthias, right? Mom has mentioned him on occasion.”
“You mean to say that you didn’t know who your father was?”
She opened one eye a slit. “I didn’t really care. I have done enough research to know how the majority of dragons treat their women. My mom didn’t care to be one of them, and that was fine with me.”
His blue eyes were intent on her. “So, why did you come to me? You had to know what would happen. I have been attracted to you since the first day that I met you.”
“And I knew I wanted you before I met you. Since the day I first started researching dragons and found your picture.” Both her eyes were open now. She watched to see how he handled the news that he had been stalked.
“You came after me?” He looked both bemused and flattered.
“I did. You were a good match for me, both physically and mentally.”
He seemed to be at a loss. “That seems a little... cold.”
“Oh, I thought we managed to heat things up.” Her smug smile recalled their hours of enjoyment.
Lust flared in his eyes for a moment, then was pushed to the background. “So, you deliberately chose me.”
“Yup.”
“Then why did you run?”
She waited for a long moment. “Because I didn’t know what happened next. I have control over every part of my life. Handing it over isn’t going to be easy.”
