by Ann Gimpel
“I heard my name and your request.” Konstantin trudged next to the pit holding the three dragons. It was slowly hollowing out a large hole in the ground. “Let me see what I can do.”
Power burned a pure bright white around him. I’d have given a lot to hear his conversation with the land because the hole sank deeper, taking the dragons with it. Within the span of a very few minutes, dirt and stones whisked in from the surrounding area until the pit was filled in.
No sign of the dragons remained.
“It is done.” Konstantin sounded weary, but vindicated. “The land didn’t require much dinosaur magic, and it has promised to hold the dragons captive forever.”
“Did it know what it was being used for?” the pterodactyl asked.
“Not until I told it,” Konstantin replied.
“What about the hatchlings?” Katya nudged her twin.
“That part is taken care of,” he told her. “When I arrived, I opened a line of communication with the land. At first, I was afraid it wouldn’t talk with me. It seemed as if it had been drugged, but I persevered and broke through.”
He blew out a fire-tinged breath. “Once I did, it helped me locate a brood farm so extensive it shocked me. It must have covered 200 hectares. I offered to annihilate it with dragonfire, but the land helped. Between us, nothing remains.”
“Good,” Katya said. “I shouldn’t admit this, but I felt sorry for some of those misshapen animals. Whoever formed them didn’t take any care at all.”
“You’re too softhearted, Sister.” Kon angled an indulgent glance her way and then turned to the dinosaurs, still arranged in a circle around where the dragons had sunk beneath the ground. “Thank you for your skill and ability. Without your aid, this day would have had a far grimmer outcome.”
“You are welcome.” A tyrannosaurus bobbed his large, ungainly head. “I had my doubts, but I can see now that you truly need us.”
“We do,” rang from many shifter mouths.
“Are you fit to travel?” Konstantin’s gaze fell on me.
“Thanks to you, I am mostly recovered.”
His jaws lolled in the dragon approximation of a grin. “I had to save you. Katya would have had my hide if I’d let you die.”
She hissed steam at her twin. He puffed more back her way.
“We will return to the sixth world and discuss what occurred here.” Konstantin projected his voice so it carried to every shifter.
I’d been in a godawful hurry to return to Earth, but even I was smart enough to know I needed food and rest to finish healing and replenish my magic.
Enchantment rose all around us, its many iterations reminding me I’d signed on not just for dragon shifterdom, but as part of a brotherhood of magic wielders. I, the lone wolf scientist, was part of something bigger than I was, and I wasn’t fighting it. Surprisingly, it felt right.
“Come on,” Katya bugled. “I’ll manage the spell.”
“I do not need you to.” I winced at my damned Dutch pride surging to the fore.
“I know.” If she’d been human, the sounds rippling from her might have been laughter. “But I want to take care of you.” Her whirling gaze bored into me. “And what dragons want, dragons get.”
I joined her laughter and let her spell spirit us away. An uphill road lay ahead, but I’d be damned if I wouldn’t savor the moment. Katya loved me. She may not have said it in so many words, but caring shone from her and wrapped me in tenderness.
“The mating flight, mating flight,” my dragon chanted from the sidelines, cock rising to curve against our scaled belly.
“I heard that.” Katya snugged her spell closer around me.
Heat spilled through me, desire sweet as thick honey. “Dragons are wise. Perhaps we should take his advice under consideration.”
“No divorce,” she reminded me.
“None needed. You are stuck with me, Madame Dragon, until the end of time.”
“Maybe we’re stuck with each other, but I can think of far worse fates.”
The sixth world took shape around us. For once my bondmate didn’t grumble when I made a bid for my human form. Katya and I shifted, and she wrapped her arms around me. Her eyes were still dragon’s eyes as she covered my mouth with her own.
Chapter 16
Driven by a heady combination of lust, love, and relief, Katya crushed her mouth over Johan’s and clasped him as close as she could. Fingers splayed across his richly muscled back, she kept reminding herself he was still here. It wasn’t productive to focus on how close she’d come to losing him.
When she’d listened to her dragon, a creature steeped in overconfidence, she’d assumed they’d have no trouble chivvying one of Loran’s brothers out of the sky. Ha! It had turned into a horrible pitched battle. She never got close to pushing the dragon-traitor out of the air. Best she could do was to punt and parry with magic that barely, barely kept him from teleporting his sorry hide far away from the ninth world.
Konstantin was still busy with another of Loran’s brothers. Nikolai had noticed her plight and joined her, but even the two of them together didn’t make much progress. It was easier to keep the slimewad dragon from leaving, though. While they wrestled with the blue dragon, she kept an eye on Johan. Things weren’t going well with the red dragon he’d corralled.
At first, she thought he was managing, but she felt an unpleasant shock as the dragon beneath Johan twisted and pushed something so wicked inside him, it made her scales shudder.
Her attention, which should have been on the blue dragon, wavered dangerously. What had the other dragon done to Johan? His dragon had closed its jaws around the red’s throat. She heard bones and scales crunch, but Johan’s ability to remain airborne flagged. His wings flapped slower and slower, and still his dragon wouldn’t let the other one go.
“Our mate is hurt,” her bondmate shrieked. “We must go to him.”
“Katya! Pay attention! We’re losing,” Nikolai trumpeted.
Torn, desperate, she dithered between frantic desire to help her almost-mate and knowing if she abandoned Nikolai, the blue would escape. Dragons were never hurt. That Johan was reacting so strongly to whatever the red dragon did to him scared the hell out of her.
Konstantin rose from where he’d pushed his captive dragon into the dinosaurs’ waiting clutches. Once she understood he was headed for Johan, she focused all her power on aiding Nikolai. The blue just laughed at them. It knew they couldn’t touch it.
It also probably knew eventually they’d burn through enough magic, they’d have to release their hold on it. “I give up.” She kept her words conversational. “How’d you get so strong?”
“State secret,” the blue chortled merrily. “But you could join us. Then you’d learn how to weave serpent power in with yours.”
“Serpents? You parlay with serpents? How could you?” Her dragon’s rebuke was punctuated with fire.
“Hush!” she told her beast. “Trying to learn something here.”
“No lessons from traitors,” her bondmate said firmly amid smoky grumbling.
Meanwhile, below them, Kon had forced Johan to land. She felt an intense blast of magic when her twin extracted a black blob reeking of pure evil—a charnel pit stench of putrefaction and rot she recalled from much earlier times. Relief coursed through her. She wasn’t certain Johan would recover, but the odds had just shot up by a pretty big percentage.
Kon leapt skyward, heading right toward them. Her twin was livid, so angry the very air glowed red around his black hide. He bugled his death battle cry, and she and Nikolai moved aside.
“Go ahead,” Nikolai spoke into her mind. “Between Kon and I, we’ve got this.”
Katya halted the replay of earlier today. Tightening her hold on Johan, she willed herself to focus on now, not on the horrors of nearly losing him. He kissed her with increasing urgency. Between them, his cock swelled to fullness. Her nipples peaked, and need slicked her sex and her thighs.
She opened h
er mouth to his tongue, lashing it with her own. Little biting kisses traded turns with suckling and deep kisses that stole her breath and her wits. He ran his mouth over to her ear and trailed his lips down her neck, stringing kisses along the way. Every spot he touched ignited into mini-explosions of desire.
Her hips surged forward, thrusting rhythmically against his cock sandwiched between them. She wriggled until he was between her labia. He made a delicious male sound and moved a hand between them to cup one of her breasts. His touch as he rubbed her taut nipple made her moan with hunger.
Johan’s breath came fast as he lifted his mouth away from where he’d been kissing her neck. “Can we move somewhere more private?”
She nodded. Shifters had no body modesty. Not after spending much of their lives naked, but they didn’t engage in public displays of sex.
“Attention!” Kon’s command cut through the lusty haze that filled her brain.
She groaned in earnest, but couldn’t bring herself to move her body away from where it was plastered across Johan’s. His cock twitched, and he pushed his hips into her belly, rotating his shaft from side to side. Its heat seared her swollen lips, and she pressed her clit harder against him.
“Take him,” her bondmate urged, oblivious to everything except cementing the mate bond. Once that was done, the mating flight she longed for was sure to follow.
Johan’s hands had travelled to her ass where he gripped her tight against him. “I do not suppose we can ignore your brother,” he murmured but made no move to let go of her.
“Probably not.” She licked the hollow between his neck and collarbones. When she glanced about, they weren’t exactly by themselves, but everyone had given them as much space as possible. Johan’s close brush with death had probably rattled everyone, and no one would begrudge them time in each other’s arms.
“Take half an hour,” Kon was saying. “Eat. Rest. Come back ready to strategize. The mixture of serpent and dragon magic is troubling. We can’t simply target dragon power because it will impact us too.”
Katya’s brain edged back into partial awareness. She shouldn’t have allowed her bondmate to sidetrack her when she was trying to dredge information out of the blue dragon, but that opportunity was lost.
If it had ever existed in the first place.
Konstantin had said half an hour. They could retreat somewhere private and make love, but then they wouldn’t have time to eat or regroup. Johan, especially, needed to recharge his magic. Dark power had come unnervingly close to killing him.
Her brain stuttered over the idea. Dragons were immortal. Up until now, nothing could kill them. Except Y Ddraigh Goch, and even the god was loathe to destroy dragonkind. He preferred exile as a punishment.
“What is it, Liebchen?” Johan let go of her ass and cradled the side of her face.
“You need sustenance,” she began.
“You are my sustenance.” He smiled, and his tenderness melted her heart.
“Magic doesn’t work that way. It can’t survive on sunshine and rainbows.” Reluctantly, she untangled her arms from around his body. “Besides, what I have in mind for us will take far more than the half hour my twin has allotted.”
“I bet we can manage a little of everything.” Johan winked and took off running for a nearby stand of scrubby trees.
Katya hustled after him. When she ducked into the grove, he’d piled prairie grass into a soft oblong. Drawing her onto it, he picked up where he’d left off, except this time he ran his mouth lower, kissing breasts and ribs and stomach on the way to her aching, distended nub.
Twisting beneath his embrace, she captured the hard, hot length of him in a hand and fastened her mouth over the velvety head. She started with little licks and gentle strokes until he began sucking on her clit. He ran his tongue around her nub, across it and then sucked again. Fingers slid inside her body, and he worked her between his mouth and hand.
There was nothing elegant about the climax that pulsed through her. Hot and heady it kindled every nerve ending. She urged him to join her, pressing against the sensitive spot at the base of his balls and adding a shot of magic to the mix as she stroked his shaft, laving it with her tongue every stroke.
A second orgasm washed through her as semen pumped into her mouth. The bitter-salt taste of him made her hot all over again, but twice was enough—for now.
They lay, gasping and panting, before he rolled until his face was level with hers. When he kissed her, she tasted her arousal on his tongue. What they’d done wasn’t enough, but she suspected no matter how often they made love, it would never be enough for her. Not with this man.
“You did not complete the mating ritual.” Her dragon sounded unhappy.
“We will,” she reassured her bondmate before it could launch into another lecture about its disappointment—and its fears Katya would remain forever unattached. Betrothed wasn’t the same as mated.
“There! Did not take so long as all that.” Johan flowed to a sit, drew her to her knees beside him, and patted his still erect cock. “At least now I can think again. Of something other than loving you.”
“Are you sure about that?” She batted her lashes his way, miming a coquette.
“No, but I can try.”
“Good enough for me. Let’s find something to eat, and then we’ll join the strategy session.” She scrambled upright and waited for him to join her. Together they walked toward the rich smells of roasting meat.
The shifters who lived on this world had been busy pulling an impromptu feast together. Many of the dinosaurs were engaged in eating the plain down to dirt as they inhaled grass and sagebrush. Others had clearly gone hunting and were chewing on a variety of game animals.
“We could have hunted as dragons,” Katya told him as they closed on stacks of cooked meat, “but this will be faster.”
Every shifter they talked with told Johan how happy they were he’d escaped the red dragon’s enchantment. His pleasure that they cared shone from him, and made Katya glad.
“Come here.” Her twin beckoned from a few meters away. A respectable pile of picked-clean bones sat between him and Erin.
“Yes?” She walked near enough to talk, munching on a piece of tender sage grouse.
“Any chance you could attempt to look into the future?” Konstantin asked.
She hadn’t anticipated his question, but did a quick internal survey of her magic. Her tanks were reasonably full. “I don’t see why not,” she answered. “I don’t have a mirror, but perhaps I could find a still pool.”
“I located something I think might work.” Kon rose to his feet.
“Should I accompany you?” Johan asked. “Or is this more individual magic?”
Grateful to him for understanding enough to pose the question, she replied, “Out of all spells, this is one that only works when I’m by myself. If it works at all, it will be reasonably quick, though.”
Konstantin jerked his chin her way, and Katya fell into step next to him. It was the first time she’d had alone with him since setting foot in this borderworld system. “You’re worried,” she said.
“You bet I am.” He kept his voice pitched low, only for her. “What happened to Johan was unprecedented. I was flying blind. I knew something was very wrong, but I had no idea what it was.”
“You saved his life,” Katya murmured, shaken by her brother’s admission.
“I got lucky.” Bitterness lined his voice. “And I had nothing to lose. Johan was dying, along with his dragon. If they’d lost much more blood or magic…”
He took a ragged breath and started over. “What if I’m leading this group of shifters, men and women who are willingly offering their aid, into a massacre? What if many die? I’m not sure I want that on my conscience. It’s why I’m hoping you’ll see something in the water.”
She patted Konstantin’s arm, not quite sure what to say. They had to return to Earth and make a good faith effort to stem the tide of destruction she was certain hung ove
r it like a pall. But none of the other shifters were under any compunction to follow them. Earth wasn’t their problem. Neither were dragons or serpents.
“I’ve been trying to reach Y Ddraigh Goch,” Kon went on, “but he’s probably sick of bailing me out. Regardless, he’s not answering.”
“The dinosaurs have a way of managing the renegade dragons,” she reminded her brother. Resurrecting how closely Johan had skirted destruction was unsettling.
“Yes, but it takes a lot of them, and it wouldn’t be practical if we ran into more than the three on that last world. Even with all of us, it took a very long time to rid ourselves of them.
“That’s not the worst part,” Konstantin continued. “I’m assuming this is a two-way street.”
“What do you mean?”
“We already know dragons can absorb—and utilize—serpent magic. Since serpents appear to be the perpetrators in that unholy alliance, they’ve discovered how to avail themselves of our power as well. Their use of dragons as broodmares confirms my hypothesis. The ones we left back on Earth hadn’t yet gotten that far, but they may have by now.”
She’d already considered and discarded that possibility. “How?” she demanded. “They’d need willing dragons. Dragons who were ripe for corruption. How many of those could there be?”
“We just found four,” he reminded her and ducked through a clump of marsh grass. A clear, still pool sat on the far side. “Will this work?”
Katya nodded. “It’s perfect. What shall I ask?”
“Any clues you come up with about what we face, and our immediate future, would be a tremendous help. Take whatever time you need.”
“What about the round robin with everyone?”
“I’ll begin soliciting ideas, but we shan’t draw conclusions until you return.”
“You do realize this might not work,” she told her twin.
He offered a crooked half grin. “Then you’ll be back soon. The way I figure things, Sister, there’s nothing to lose by having you attempt to lever your scrying magic, and everything to gain.”
