The Fire of the Dragon's Heart: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Fantasy Romance (Harem of Fire Book 4)

by Willa Hart

  For the rest of the ride, I couldn’t rid myself of the image of them having the world’s most gorgeous children. Thankfully, we’d already reached the other side of the village and pulled up to a tiny moss-covered cottage a few minutes later.

  The house was straight out of a fairy tale. It sat on the outskirts of Turdzi, at the end of a rough back road. Moss covered the slabs of shale that made up the structure of the cottage itself and a thickly thatched roof pointed steeply into the sky. The place looked absolutely ancient.

  Laundry fluttered on a line in the yard and a pen of chickens clucked happily in the shade of a huge tree. A thin wisp of smoke trickled from the chimney, bringing the smell of something delicious to us on a zephyr. The entire scene felt comfortable, almost familiar. Like a fairy tale my mother had read to me as a child and I’d all but forgotten.

  Tamar led us up a path to a heavily built wooden door. She called out something in Romanian, then knocked hard, and even then the solid wood door absorbed so much sound it sounded like a soft rap. A thin voice replied from within, then Tamar shot us a brilliant smile and opened the door.

  The inside consisted of a large main room with a hearth doubling as a stove. Bundles of herbs hung from the bare, dark rafters holding up the thatch roof and a basket of eggs sat prettily on an old wooden table. A heavy quilt covered a doorway to the left, which I assumed led to one decent-sized bedroom or, as I suspected, two small ones. The only hint this wasn’t just some ancient peasant’s hovel — hell, our abandoned hidey hole in the mountains boasted more modern conveniences! — was a gorgeous colorful woven rug. No peasant could have afforded such luxury, but the more I looked at it, the more I came to believe it was older than the house itself.

  A tiny, frail old woman sat in a rocker in front of the fire, peering up from a book in her lap as we tromped inside. She looked about as old as the rug. Wrinkled skin that looked like leather but was probably as delicate as a baby’s. Cloudy eyes, ringed white. A smile that would make a dentist giddy, with more gaps than there were teeth.

  Tamar’s grandmother appeared to be old enough to be Max’s mother, easily in her nineties, by human standards. Which meant she was a really, really old dragon, considering Max looked about sixty but was actually somewhere around a thousand years old.

  Tamar hurried over and bent low to hug the old woman. They said a few words in Romanian, then she helped her grandmother stand to greet us.

  “Welcome to my home,” the woman said, her voice crackling with age. “Would any of you like chicken and walnut sauce?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Kellum said, bowing a little to her. “It does smell delicious. And I’d like to say your English is impeccable.”

  “I believe it is every dragon’s duty to become fluent in all languages,” she sniffed, shooting a dark look at Mariam, who had the grace to blush. “We have the time, after all.”

  Tamar stepped forward and beamed with pride. “This is Tamar, my grandmother. And before you ask, yes, I was named after her.”

  “Does that make you Tamar Jr.?” Ryen asked with a twinkle in his eye.

  The old woman grinned at him and patted his cheek. Her final pat was a little harder than the rest, surprising him, but not hurting him. I had a hard time holding back a laugh.

  “Call me Bunica. Everyone does. Consider it your Romanian lesson for the day.”

  Tamar leaned in. “It means grandmother.”

  Ryen chuckled as he rubbed his stinging cheek. “I’ve heard of the Dragon Mother but not the Dragon Grandmother. She sure packs quite a wallop.”

  Before Kellum could push past his brother and properly greet our host, Bunica shot Tamar a grave look. “Dragon Mother? Tamar, who did you bring into my house to speak of such things?”

  Ryen’s face flushed red. “I didn’t mean anything by that, Bunica. It was just a dumb joke.”

  Bunica walked right up to him and craned her neck to meet his gaze. She stood about chest high, and I could see Ryen’s uncertainty on whether he should stand still or crouch down to make it easier on her. In the end, I think he was too unnerved by her unwavering attention to move a muscle. To think, a tiny old woman had frozen him in his tracks like a deer in headlights.

  “Dragon Mothers are no joking matter, child,” she said in perfect, barely accented English. “My own parents hadn’t even been born yet when the last one walked this earth.”

  “Because there have been so many,” Ash said, heavy on the sarcasm.

  Bunica turned her keen gaze on him and shut him up like she’d slapped him. “Not many, boy. They are only born during times of great strife in dragondom.”

  We “children” shifted awkwardly and exchanged concerned glances with Tamar. I recalled that the children’s book Ash had read to his cousin’s small daughter had been about someone called the Dragon Mother. If Bunica thought fairy tales were real, maybe she wasn’t as sharp as she appeared.

  “Bunica,” Tamar said, stepping in quickly, “we came to talk to you about the jadokari and the melots. They attacked us a couple of days ago and—”

  The old woman caught sight of me and ignored her granddaughter completely. Her appraisal left me feeling naked and utterly exposed, wondering what she saw that I didn’t. When her gaze rested on the tiny bump on my tummy where the Dragon’s Heart thrummed maniacally, her eyes narrowed, then jumped up to meet mine.

  “Come here, girl.”

  Oh shit. I felt as though I was back in school and was being called before the principal. Powerless to refuse, I shuffled the few steps to stand in front of her. Tower over her, more like it. Thankfully, she didn’t get all up in my personal space as she’d done to Ryen.

  She studied me for a few seconds before her face softened and warmth filled her features. “You’re a very powerful dragon keeper.”

  I shot a look at Kellum over my shoulder, wondering what the hell I was supposed to say. If I’d had the time, I would have tried one of my patented mind-melds with him, but Bunica was staring at me expectantly.

  “I, uh…”

  How the hell was I supposed to tell some sweet old lady that I currently didn’t have a dragon to keep, but I did have five super schmexy dragons to sleep with? The poor dear probably didn’t even remember what sex was, and if I tried to explain our complicated arrangement, she might just throw a clot. In the end, I held my tongue, hoping she’d move on to some other demented topic of conversation, like where she’d put her keys.

  “And your powers are growing stronger,” she continued, taking one of my hands in her frail ones. Her skin felt paper thin and I didn’t dare move for fear of breaking her. She must have seen something in my face that told her she was right, because she lit up like the L.A. skyline.

  “That sometimes happens when a keeper’s dragon is in danger.”

  Her gaze flicked across the face of each of my guys. I opened my mouth to finally tell her none of them could possibly be my dragon, but she jumped in before I could.

  “Do they seem to grow stronger when your emotions run high?”

  I gawked at her, my mouth opening and closing like a trout lying on a riverbank. I finally snapped it shut and thought about her question. I didn’t have to be emotional to fall into my vision state anymore, but most — if not all — of the advances in my powers had occurred when I was under intense stress or loaded down with emotions. I’d never put it together before, but those times had felt different than when I was practicing. Stronger, more powerful.

  What the hell!

  I searched her face for an answer before choking out my own. “Yes,” I squeaked, barely able to manage that much.

  She broke out her gap-toothed grin. “Use that. Free your emotions. They are a river. A dam that is locked up produces no power. Use your emotions. Only then will you find your friend.”

  I stood frozen like a statue as she shuffled away from us. We all stared after her, every last one of us, in total shock.

  No one had said a word about Zoe.

  Chapt
er 9

  My chest heaved and my lungs felt like they were on fire as I glared at Danic. Sweat — and maybe a little blood — dribbled down my hairline and soaked into the collar of my stained and torn t-shirt. I spread my legs and lowered my center of gravity, bringing my fists up to defend myself. A deadly smile played at his lips as he launched himself at me.

  It all happened so fast — one second I was preparing myself for his attack, the next I was flat on my back with him straddling me. A sadistic grin cracked his face in two as he lowered it within an inch of mine, his blazing eyes sparking with victory.

  “Gotcha,” he said as he dropped his lips to mine for a quick peck.

  He helped me up as I cursed a blue streak, then brushed the grass and moss from my back, paying extra attention to my butt.

  “Wrong!” I said, jerking away. “You don’t get to kick my ass and grope it.”

  He smiled and dusted some dirt off my cheek. “Hey, you were the one who asked me to teach you self-defense. If you wanted to play around, maybe you should have asked Ryen.”

  We were out back of our stone home, practicing one of a thousand self-defense styles Danic was familiar with. After two hours of jiu-jitsu or karate or krav maga or whatever this one was called, I was a soggy, out-of-shape mess, while Danic had barely broken a sweat.

  “You know as well as I do it wasn’t so much to learn the techniques, but rather to get me amped up so maybe I could find Zoe, like Bunica said. You don’t need to be such a hard ass.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at me. “First of all, I don’t half-ass self-defense. You need training, practice. Honestly, I don’t have the foggiest idea how you kicked that club kid’s ass like you did.”

  A flush of anger hit me over the guy who’d drugged Zoe at a club. Just the heightened emotion Bunica said I needed!

  “Let me demonstrate,” I said, kicking at him, which he deflected easily by sidestepping me.

  I pranced a circle around him, bobbing and weaving, dipping and lunging, until I was ready. With a murderous scream, I leaped at him, all arms and legs and wild eyes.

  I didn’t even feel him grab me but he must have, because before I could blink, I was back on the ground again, gulping to draw air into my lungs. Danic loomed over me, checking to see if I was injured, as he did every time he beat me. Which was every time we sparred. I glared up at him. Satisfied I wasn’t going to die, he smiled.

  “Second of all, what better way to ‘heighten your emotions’” —he hooked his fingers in air quotes— “than to kick your ass? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re pretty pissed off at the moment, right?”

  I growled my answer, then slowly pulled myself back to my feet. The problem was that I wasn’t pissed off enough. As I stood there, irritated that I wasn’t getting any better, I knew I’d never reach Zoe. I’d tried many times before when I was even more emotional without luck, and since frustration didn’t seem to be an emotion that worked — I’d had that one in spades since Zoe had been taken — I didn’t even bother trying. Not yet. Not when I knew it would end in failure, exactly like every one of my sparring sessions.

  After our visit to Bunica, my boys and I had made a list of powerful emotions I should try tapping into. On a normal day, I was pretty even-tempered, but of course nothing in my life had been normal since meeting the guys. Still, it didn’t seem like it would be too tough to reach inside myself and extract some pure, unadulterated emotion that I could wield like a compass to point me toward Zoe.

  Five days later and I was no closer to finding her than before. I’d tried meditating to clear my mind, but that only left me feeling sleepy. Probably not exactly what Bunica had in mind.

  I switched to thinking about all the terrible things that had happened to me, which certainly dredged up emotions I would have preferred never feeling again. My poor guys spent countless hours drying my tears as I tried in vain to connect with her.

  Naturally, I carried around a metric ton of guilt, so I figured I’d try tapping into that first. I thought about how I’d failed Zoe over and over again. The jadokari had kidnapped her to get to me, and every step of the way to Romania had been an epic struggle, leaving her to rot in some cold, stinky room. The guilt was so real, so heavy that I thought it might crush me.

  When that didn’t work, I dwelled on how I’d let Max down with the whole Enoch Trinkas debacle. Not only had my foolishness led to Enoch’s death, but the destruction of Maximus Investigations and the potential threat to the weir. I wondered if that was why he deserted us, refused to take my call, so to speak. But no matter how guilty I felt, nothing worked.

  The path from guilt to sadness was but a blink of the eye. If anything would get me to the state Bunica suggested, it would be sadness. It kept me awake at night, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling as shadows passed into lightness. I started with my parents, but that pain must have been too old. I moved on to Enoch, because my gut still ached over his passing, even though I didn’t really like him as a person. And that must have been the problem, because that didn’t work either.

  Another powerful emotion always lay just under the surface. Anger. Even before Danic and I started sparring, I’d been angry at myself for screwing everything up so damn royally. I was mad at Max for leaving me to clean up this wicked mess without his advice. And I was incredibly pissed off at the followers of a long-dead mage, serving a master who was no longer alive to care by tormenting me and those I loved. Yeah, I had a lot to be angry about, but even reaching deep down to access my rage hadn’t been enough to boost my signal so I could find Zoe.

  And through every weeping fit, each dark, sleepless night, my boys stayed with me, comforting me when I asked, but otherwise leaving me to feel all those terrible things on my own. Not on my own, though. What I felt, they sensed. My emotional experiments affected them too, and I never forgot that.

  “This isn’t working,” I groused, throwing my hands up in defeat and slumping to the ground in a huff. “Fuck me.”

  “I volunteer!” Ryen shouted as he trotted up to join us.

  “Ha ha, very funny,” I said, although Ryen had a way of brightening my day with his jokes, no matter what had been going on.

  He and Danic sat next to me on the lumpy ground, their shoulders pressing into mine and filling me with a sense of belonging. Ryen nudged me with his elbow.

  “Not going so well?”

  I was too irritated to cry, but it was close. “Nothing’s working. I’ve tried every powerful emotion there is, and I haven’t had even a spark of a flash from Zoe.”

  “I thought for sure my comedy night would do it,” Ryen said, referring to two nights ago when he’d performed a slightly dated stand-up sketch he’d worked up in the ’80s. “If laughter’s the best medicine, it only stands to reason it should qualify for Bunica’s emotional whatever.”

  “Maybe if the jokes had been funny,” Danic muttered, drawing a stress-relieving snicker from me.

  “Maybe if you had a sense of humor,” Ryen shot back with a goodnatured smirk.

  I held up my hands to stop the mock feud. “It’s no one’s fault but mine.”

  Danic’s arm snaked around my waist while Ryen wrapped his around my shoulders. I felt calmer, but no less useless.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Ryen said.

  Danic nodded his agreement. “You’ll get there, babe. Besides, didn’t you say she looked better the last time you saw her?”

  I snorted in frustration. “Sure, but that was through the eyes of that melot, Levan. From his perspective. Maybe he thinks she loves the congealed gray goo they serve her, so that’s what I saw. His point of view, not hers. And even if that snapshot was totally accurate, how long will it last? They could be torturing her this very minute and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”

  Ryen slapped his hands to his knees and stood, offering his hand to me. “Okay, I’m calling it. I know you’re trying to get all emotional and shit, but you need to maintain your sanity. Let’s go ins
ide, maybe have a snack of what’s left from Bunica’s chicken and walnut sauce.”

  The local dish had quickly become a favorite in our tiny home and my mouth watered at the suggestion, despite the fact some Sriracha would have made it ten times better. As we headed inside, I wondered how we could possibly have enough for six people, but when I walked inside, the house was deserted.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, dropping into a chair at the table.

  Danic headed for the bathroom, no doubt for a shower. Technically, I needed it more than him, but we’d all agreed the shower would be a first-come-first-served situation. He jumped in before me and that was my tough luck.

  “The twins are off with Lazlo, Rufe and Elder Almeric,” Ryen answered as he got busy heating up the last of Bunica’s leftovers. “Kellum went over to Luka’s to see if there’s been a response from the jadokari.”

  Kellum’s absence stung more than usual because of where he was and who he was with. He’d been spending more and more time with the rebel group, working alongside Luka, Tamar, Mariam, and their enforcers to learn more about what we were facing. Together, they’d been trying to negotiate with the jadokari for Zoe’s release, but so far, they weren’t budging on their demands. We were at a stalemate.

  That was frustrating enough, but add to it the surprising feelings of jealousy I had over the time Kellum was spending with Mariam, and I couldn’t have felt much lower. He loved me, that much I knew, but a blind man could have seen the connection between them. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see why.

  Two more beautiful, smart, and courageous dragons had probably never been born. Or hatched. I was still unclear on that. Regardless, they had chemistry and outwardly were a perfect match in every way. Even fully conscious, I knew their babies would be supermodels, movie stars, the best of the best.