by Maia Starr
“Arvid,” I began. “You said you saw a pack gathering at the border. Did it look like they had collected any resources to cross the water to reach our shores yet? And were they standing as men or had they shifted as wolves?”
“They paced, Kellan. They paced as wolves, prepared for attack. I didn’t see a boat yet, but some were stepping in and out of the water looking like they were tempted to start swimming, mostly the big one in front with black fur. The distance is too far for them to be able to make it the whole way without getting killed the instant they reach the shore, but I could tell it wouldn’t be long before they solved the problem.”
I marched around the room in a circle, working out a strategy in my head. It was definitely the wolf that raped Amelia. He wouldn’t give up. Of all the women in the world he was trying to use to populate his pack, he had to pick her. I had to take him out, and all those that supported him. We needed to get to them before they got to us, but with such a large group we were going to need every dragon we could spare, and we needed to attack right away.
“Kellan, you know whatever group Arvid saw earlier will surely have grown in size already,” said Kailis. He had lived on the island longer than any of us, but he had spent his isolation studying the habits of the wolf shifter packs on the mainland. Every news report, every article, every scientific study that he could find he added to his knowledge. Where the rest of us had the strength, he had the strategic advantage. Even his hut was the most secure and strategically placed. “We don’t have long for strategy now. It’s time to act before the island is overrun and those still on the mainland find out why they are crossing the water.” I nodded in agreement.
“Why can’t we make it simple and return the woman to the mainland? There are other women—” I roared so loud that the windows rattled. Vernier, the one who suggested it, scooted his chair further back from the circle, bowing his head in submission.
“She will not leave this island. She is to be my mate.” A hush fell over the room. Some looked at each other; most just stared at me. “Her heart beats within my head; I’m connected to her. I know it. And yes, I know she is with child from another,” a small growl couldn’t help but escape the back of my throat. “But that wasn’t by her choice, and she shouldn’t be punished for the sins of the wolf that violated her. She deserves our protection. I can feel her heart, and I feel that it’s meant for something bigger. She has a purpose to fulfill, and I plan to be part of that purpose. I’ll stand in between her and any other male on this earth to protect her.” I felt my shoulders push back and my chin tilt up, a challenge for anyone in the room to try to contest my declaration. It didn’t happen right away, but as each man realized what I was saying, they tilted their head forward and closed their eyes in acceptance. The first was Arvid, albeit with hurt in his eyes. It was obvious that he had become smitten with her just as easily as I had. The last to close his eyes was Vernier. I could see I was going to have to keep my eyes on him.
“We will need to take flight and attack right away. I know it’s daylight, but we’ll have to make sure that none of the pack escapes to tell the tale. It’s not going to be easy, and we will most likely be outnumbered, but not less strong. We’ll fly in a pincer ambush maneuver, spreading wide and hiding above the clouds. We will create a U-shaped formation, and when they advance, we will attack from the sides and prevent the rear of the pack from retreating.” I glanced out the window to confirm what I saw in the morning was holding true still. “It looks like we have a cloud front rolling in that will give us cover in about an hour. If we don’t take advantage of it, we will be out in the open and vulnerable before we can even attack.”
“We need to be careful, Kellan,” Kailis warned, standing up and putting his hand on my shoulder. “If she’s this important to you, you can’t just go diving into a battle unguarded. You need to think before you act from now on. The wolves are getting smarter, recruiting humans with false promises of power and wealth. If they have had any time to strategize, they may have recruited a human with firepower that will tear through our wings before we can be close enough to incinerate them.” I knew Kailis was wise, but until now I hadn’t realized the value of his understanding of family. With his wife to be concerned about, he would make sure that we approached this attack with intelligence as well as force.
“Wise words, Kailis. Thank you for the warning. We will need to use your research, as well as Arvid’s technology, to ensure our attack is timed perfectly with the currents and meteorology.” We nodded to each other.
“This attack will just be the start of it, Kailis. What do you think will happen if the child is born as one of them? Breeding wolves on our island. How can we protect our island from within the borders?”
“It doesn’t matter what the child is born as!” I shouted, storming over to Vernier and grabbing him by the throat. “Stop trying to make trouble, Vernier! You’re just projecting your frustration onto me! I know your time is running out, but if we allow the wolves to continue their war on the mainland forever, what are your chances of finding a mate then? Tell me!” His eyes flared, but with his head pinned against the back of the chair, he was prevented from breathing fire while I held him. I paused long enough for my words to sink in. Vernier was never very good at looking to the future. He was impulsive and dangerous, but he was still part of the island, and our society survived as long as we supported each other, which he was well aware of.
“What matters is how the child is raised. Don’t you understand? Whether shifter or human, every child becomes what it is taught to become. If we use this opportunity correctly, we can change the future through this child. Don’t we all overcome our instincts for the sake of a peaceful society at some point? Why would you think I would raise the child to be any different? Just because it is not my child does not make it incapable of being raised to have an open mind. As long as it lives on this island, it won’t become one of them. It will understand how to live in harmony with dragons, as we all do. And in time could possibly be an advocate for both species. Wouldn’t that be ideal?” The flare in his eyed began to die down, and I released him. I tried to regain my composure, and I waved at Arvid to take over the conversation.
“Arvid, tell us about the weather today. What have your instruments told you and when can we begin the pincer ambush?” I paced a circle outside of the group while Arvid discussed details and measurements. By his calculations, we had an hour until cover, and that meant an hour more that the wolves could find resources. I listened, but in the back of my head, I knew I would have to secure Amelia and tell her everything. She would be at risk without knowing all the facts. My heart fell into my stomach at the thought of how she might react. She had already been put through the wringer with one type of shifter. Would she be able to handle watching me shift in front of her? I couldn’t even imagine how fried her nerves were already. Could she accept me without feeling threatened or scared? I hoped I would be able to tell her without her trying to run away. What if I flew away for battle and when I returned, she was gone? I stepped out the side door of the hut and looked at the clouds rolling towards us in the sky.
Amelia
I couldn’t believe what was before my eyes. I was standing in the shadow of a spiral staircase staring at a giant cave full of piles of treasures. Not just one pile. Piles. it wasn’t only one single room. No, it was an entire cave. An honest to God cavern of treasures, like something out of the movies. There were high ceilings and stone walls and the whole nine yards, really. I couldn’t be sure of how extensive it all was because of the lack of lighting. If it weren’t for the luminescence of some of the rocks, I wouldn’t have realized it was a cave instead of a room. Stunned, I blinked and stared at the endless darkness lost in my thoughts and suddenly a feeling of fear seized my chest. Yeah, this was scary, and I didn’t really appreciate it. I had found the secret door just next to the stairway of his master bedroom, and it was almost better hidden than the door to my secret room. I knew instantly tha
t this wasn’t something I was supposed to find. If he came home and found the door to this cave still open, then who knew how he would react. He could get angry. Would he be violent? I had no way of knowing for sure. In my panic, I nearly tripped backing up the stairs and finally turned around to run up them. Back into the main living space. Back to safety!
I closed the secret door and went back to the kitchen. I had to calm down, and feeling my face flushed, I moved over to the sink and splashed cold water on my face. I found a towel and began to pat off my face and leaned against the counter, staring around at the hut. It was the weirdest combination. Simple hut, multi-level, but full of extremely old valuables. There was a freaking a cave full of treasure! And that wasn’t all: mysterious weapons that sort of resembled wands, and a closet full of clothes that looked like they had been saved for a partner for decades. Which was truly strange to me. I knew it was difficult to find a woman in this world, but it seemed like he had been waiting for ages for just the right one or like one had once owned that closet herself. How was I to know that I was that woman? And how old was he really if he had all of these old things? Who did he get them from? And why would he hoard treasure in a cave like a…
No. I shook my head. None of it made sense. It was all nonsense. The stuff of fairy tales and children’s stories. Logic said that there was a reasonable explanation for this. But logic didn’t matter when you lived in a world full of wolf shifters that were taking over the world and using women to breed a new race. I slid down the cabinet and sat on the floor as my world spun, the world that seemed to throw a new surprise at me every day. The world that loved to weigh down on me from every angle. At this point, new surprises were the only thing I could count on anymore. Life was just a series of changes, right?
I walked out of the hut and followed the trail that I had seen Kellan walk down. Arvid’s hut couldn’t be too far away. I needed to find out what was going on and confront Kellan now. I was being hunted by a pack of wolf shifters, and I didn’t have time to play games anymore. It was time to get this show started.
Kellan
Vernier walked up to me while I was standing outside. Just his presence set my throat on fire, and both he and I were already unstable enough. He had been waiting for a mate just as long as I had, and controlling our emotions was getting harder every day. There was a reason that we didn’t live close to other dragons on the island. Today was the wrong day to test my nerves. I just wanted to be left alone.
“What do you want, Vernier?” I asked, my words lined with obvious venom and annoyance with his presence. No sense in pretending to be something you’re not. He snorted at me.
“I’ll fight, Kellan. You know I’ll fight to the end. But you have to see that you’re functioning with blinders on right now. The female is going to be the beginning of the end if you can’t control yourself.”
“Control myself?” I roared. I was at the breaking point. How many times did I have to say it? If he called Amelia a female or ‘the woman’ one more time, I would tear his face off. “Vernier, we both know the risks of waiting too long to mate, but this whole situation with the border is bigger than just Amelia and us. How we handle things today is going to determine how the rest of our future plays out. Don’t pretend to know my headspace.”
“Which is exactly why we’ve got to get that female off—” That was the last straw. I couldn’t stand the disrespect one moment longer, and my anger came off like an exploding bottle cap on a shaken beer bottle. Fuming, I reached forward and barreled toward him.
“Stop calling her female! That’s not her name! She has a name; it’s Amelia!” I shouted, my voice deepening into a thunderous echo. My wings practically exploded from my back, tearing through my clothes as blue scales rippled across my skin. I morphed into my dragon so quickly that my body leaped into the air and I landed onto Vernier. My talons shot for his neck, but his dragon responded just as quickly and threw me off into the trees behind me. The sound reverberated through the wood, and I fell to the ground and instantly jumped back to a crouch. The roar that thundered from my chest was met with the fire in my throat. Vernier just barely dodged it as he shot a stream of fire back towards me. I lifted into the air and landed to the side of him. Just as I was about to leap onto him, I heard a scream behind me on the path. Both Vernier and I spun to look at Amelia, grasping a tree in shock. Kailis ran out the door and looked at the scene as she ran back towards my hut. He looked at me and had one thing to say.
“You go handle that while I handle this.” I slumped to the ground, naked once again, and I pounded the ground for my misjudgment. This wasn’t the way I wanted things to go. Making an ass out of myself seemed to be something I’d mastered. Damn my life.
Amelia
I walked around the living room, inspecting every last trinket, bobble, and treasure that was put on display. Kellan didn’t seem like a materialistic person, but he sure did have a lot of things. Many of them were decorated with jewels, precious jewels at that. Rubies, emeralds, and I wasn’t a jeweler, but it wasn’t hard to tell that many of the crystals adorning the shelves weren’t cubic zirconia. What Christmas present do you get for the man who seems to have everything? Especially when you have nothing?
I was amazed that he wasn’t more concerned with these valuables being stolen. Was it possible that everyone on the island was just as rich or had just as many precious items? It was the only reason I could think of that security wasn’t tighter. If you already had a collection of expensive things, then you were less likely to desire someone else’s.
Unless the thing you wanted was a woman instead of a trinket. I started to feel a little bit like a piece of treasure in a collection. It was certainly a confusing feeling. On the one hand, no one wanted to be treated like a thing, something to have instead of someone to share a life with. I remembered a time when the world was more balanced, and women were able to have equal rights to men. Now, we were dwindling in numbers, and it was questionable whether we had any rights at all. Forget equal rights for men and women; there were other beings and species to contend with, and there appeared to be one law now… survival of the fittest.
On the other hand, to be viewed as a treasure, something worth more than any material thing, to be put on a pedestal and practically worshipped and fought over, felt almost empowering. I wasn’t your stereotypical stick-thin runway model, but the curves and body that I had were something worth cuddling up to. I saw the way that Kellan traced the curves of my hips. When our eyes connected, my heart raced, and it felt as if he was looking straight into my soul. Just remembering the last encounter we had made me close my eyes and squeeze my thighs together.
I stood holding the shelf in front of me, rubbing my free hand on my thigh, trying hard not to satisfy the throbbing that was starting between my legs. The blood pumped through my body and seemed to flow just for him. I’d never felt that for anyone before. Every single circumstance that led me to this moment seemed to have been plotted out by divine intervention. I pulled my hand up my body and felt the swell of my stomach. Everything except for that, I reminded myself. I had no idea what was in my future, but I hoped that Kellan was going to be a part of all of it. If I had never met him, I would just be going through the motions, but now I couldn’t stand the thought of ever being without him. It was almost as if my life restarted the moment he came into it.
Running my fingertips along the shelf, I noted that there wasn’t any dust on anything. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign of a meticulous man or a man who had nothing else to do. I looked around and saw that the furniture showed signs of needing repair, but the shelves and treasures were maintained to museum standards. I circled the living room, making my way along the walls and taking note of anything that seemed to connect him to anything. It was such a wide variety, nothing resembling a collection or a pattern. Just very high value. It reminded me of a trophy case where all the trophies were from different sports and had different figures on each one.
I stopped
in front of his desk, then glanced around, double checking that he hadn’t snuck back into the hut without me knowing. There were eight drawers of varying sizes, one wide shallow one in the very middle, and then a variety of sizes on the sides for various storage. Starting at the top, I rummaged through what appeared to be normal desk supplies. Staplers, scissors, letter openers of various sources and sharpness… another collection. The deeper drawers held things like tape dispensers and assorted boxes with locks on them. I didn’t see any keys, but the boxes were unremarkable, so I moved on to the other drawers.
The very bottom two drawers on the right caught my attention as soon as I opened them. If the knife I had didn’t work, I could certainly rummage through these drawers and find something that suited me well. There were various knives and weaponry, not the least of which were three long sharp instruments with large jewels in the handles, almost resembling wands. They were carefully laid into a velveteen holder. I took one out and held it in my hand, running my fingertip along its edge to the tip. It wasn’t as sharp as a needle, but with any amount of force behind it, the receiver of it would certainly feel as though they had been stabbed with one. The jewel in the handle was serious. Its weight felt heavy in my palm and made it feel sturdy and sure. I looked at the coffee table where I had set down the knife that Kellan had given me and considered whether I wanted to trade it out for the ruby-adorned weapon in my hand. To do so would mean admitting that I went rummaging through his things while he was gone, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to let him know that I had crossed that line.
As I rolled it around in my hand, I noticed a small indentation in the wall next to the desk. I stepped forward and put my finger against it. I shifted my weight and pressed the spot, wondering if it was a flaw or something meaningful. Suddenly, a panel in the wall pushed in and then back out as if on a spring. I slid the panel to the side to see three tall sticks with jewels at the top mounted on large ornately carved handholds. The jewels seemed to mirror the ones in the velvet box. I set down the smaller one on the desk and then took the tall staff out of its place in the wall. It was nearly as tall as me, and the weight was balanced well, allowing me to tip it and spin it around before setting it back down onto the floor. I couldn’t tell if it was just a walking stick or a weapon. I held it up and looked along the length and noticed that it ended in a bit of cast metal at the end, tapered into a point. As I looked back up to the top, I noticed a break in the wood and I pulled at it. The handle came out and revealed a thin sharp knife hidden inside the staff.
