Tristan: The Manning Dragons ― Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “That police officer that was in the hospital, he said that the guns were mine and that I’d helped the man do that horrific thing.” He asked her if she’d gotten a gun residue test. “Yes, and it came back negative. He told me that I’d worn gloves. I swear to you, Tristan, I never did that—I didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “I know, honey. I know.” She cried a bit more and he continued to hold her. Reaching for his brother, Hudson, he asked him how he was doing on the case. That he’d had a firsthand look at what went down that day.

  Better than I thought this would be going. She’s so innocent of any of this; I can’t believe that anyone would have thought that she had any part of this. He asked if they’d found the man. No, not that I could find when I had computer time and looked for him. I think, from the notes that I’m getting from the courthouse, they were going to use that as a bargaining chip to reduce her sentence to only life without parole instead of the death penalty. No one even looked for him so far as I can tell. She was fucked over, Tristan. I mean, royally.

  She helped a great many people. Did anyone mention that? He said that it wasn’t in the notes that anyone else had been called by the police as a witness. Figures. How many were killed and wounded that day? Any that were found alive and hiding in the stores were pulled there by her. Also, I want you to look for a couple of people. The card store closed their doors and refused to call the police. The security guard, he actually called his wife instead of the police. Then he took pictures of the entire incident.

  I have that information here about the names of the shop owners and the guards. I’ll take care of those two, and look into others while I’m at it. Also, the dead, she’s being blamed for eight. There were forty-six people killed, and another hundred or so that were injured. This is a fucking mess, Tristan. Tristan said he was just beginning to figure that out. I’m going to get this cleared up for her. Even if she wasn’t your mate, I’d need to do this. Are you coming back in?

  If I can, I’m going to see if I can talk her into seeing our house. She needs something to take her mind off of what she just did for me. Hudson asked about the dragons. I forgot about them. I don’t have any idea. Tell them that we’re going to our house and they can meet us there, I guess. We have a great deal to think about.

  Yes, we all do.

  Telling his brother thanks, he moved to walk beside Wynter. She wasn’t saying anything, but he could tell that she was stressed out. Her steps were firm; the leaves beneath her feet were crunching hard.

  “Our home is just over there.” She turned in the direction that he pointed, but didn’t say anything. “I told my brother to have the dragons meet us at the house.”

  She turned to him so quickly that even his dragon was startled. “I want to change.” He said that would be fine with him, but asked her to wait until they were at their home to do that. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. In case you need clothing. Or if you need to work on flying or whatever. I have no idea.” She started walking again. “Are you mad at me?”

  “I don’t think so.” Well, that wasn’t really an answer. “I’m not even sure if I’m pissed off or not. I just feel something I’ve never felt before.”

  “Could it be the loss of your dragon?” She hunched her shoulders at him. “Honey, I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what it is you’re dealing with.”

  “I know that.” Her shout at him echoed through the silent forest. Birds that must have been roosting flew off with her anger. Wynter took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know that. I don’t know what to think about any of this, to be honest. A few days ago I was going to be spending the rest of my life in prison or put in the chair, and now I’m a mate to a dragon that happens to have made my dragon come from my body. You tell me you have a huge house. I’m healed of all the wounds, in addition to not having any scars from when I was shot at the mall. I’m a little bit stressed out right now.”

  “I’m sorry.” She nodded but didn’t say anything more. “If it helps, I’m in love with you. Very much so.”

  “No, not at all. That does not help me.” She started walking again. “I have nothing—you know that, don’t you? I mean, Mom told me this morning that the house that we were living in is on the market. The people that we were renting from told her that they didn’t want a killer living in their house. Talk about guilty until proven otherwise. I lost my only job. Good thing that Mom makes quilts and other things to sell, or we’d not be able to afford to even get her medications, much less a place to live.”

  “The house, it’s big enough for the three of us. Hell, we can have as many people as you’d like come live with us.” She thanked him. “Wynter, are you even listening to me?”

  “Yes, you said that you have a big house. That does not negate the fact that I have nothing, you know. I don’t even have a nice warm coat for the winter. The people that we were renting from, they wouldn’t even let my mom go back to the house to collect our things.”

  “I’ll have one of my brothers look into that for you.” She looked out over the field they were in. His house was there, just over the rock fence that was as old as the house. “If it’s going to overwhelm you more to go there, we can skip it this time.”

  “You live there.” He said that they did if she wanted. She asked him what would happen if she didn’t like the house—would he sell it? “Yes. Or rent it out. I don’t care. I love the house. I hope you will as well. But if you don’t, then that’s fine too. I’m trying my best not to overwhelm you. Is it working?”

  “No. Not so much.” She walked toward the house and he followed her. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea, but I would like to see the house. I hate to admit this, but it looks from here just like the house that I wanted to have for my mom and myself. It’s a grand old house, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. The place has been updated over the last several months. The kitchen had been gutted already, but it still needed to be reworked. Do you cook?” Wynter told him that she could, but not a great many things. “I’ve hired a cook to come and live with me. I don’t have to eat a great deal, but when I do, it’s nice to have something hearty.”

  “I don’t usually eat all that much. I don’t know if it’s because there wasn’t that much to eat or I was just naturally un-hungry. Anyway, I know that’s not a word, but you understand.” He laughed and said that he did. “A cook would be great, I suppose. Mom eats, but not a lot either.”

  “You’ll eat more now, I’m betting. Not a great deal, as before. But when you do eat, as a dragon, you’ll want to have something that sticks to your ribs. And if you use your flame, you—” She put up her hand and he stopped. “We can go in now or you can shift if you’d like. Do you still want to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  The two dragons landed on the lawn beside them. He watched as Wynter put her hand on the head of the one closest to her. Tristan could hear the dragon purr, like an enormous cat. When Wynter closed her eyes, she became a dragon, as if she’d been doing it for as long as he had.

  “You’re beautiful, Wynter.” She was large too; he’d bet as large as his own dragon. The male dragon moved around her larger head and then landed on her shoulder. Tristan decided to join her in the sky if she’d like to fly too. After he let his dragon take him, he watched as Wynter walked around, getting used to her larger self.

  She is a beautiful mate, my lord. It took him several seconds to realize that he could hear his dragon speaking. The other dragon, the female, landed on his shoulder as her counterpart had Wynter. She is going to be all right, I think.

  I hope so. How is it you can speak to me? You’ve never done that before. He said that he’d been waiting on Wynter. I’m assuming you mean our mate. Not the season.

  Yes. She is my mate as well. And when she is in this form, we can breed children. Tristan asked about the smaller dragons. They are for your children, my lord. One will go to each of your first children, those that you will save and take to your he
arts. One of us dragons for each of the two children. They will be all powerful, for they will have them to guide them. You will be the keeper of the dragons’ stories. The next book to be written to be passed down from generation to generation is your job now. There will be many mates coming to you that will be human or some form of shifter. They will need help too, and you and my lady will keep records of who has come, what they are, and what they have brought to the other dragons as a family.

  I like that. The dragon thanked him. Do you have a name? I mean, I can’t call you Tristan, can I?

  Nay. I have a name that is older than you. I have picked the name Valcourt the Dragon. It’s the name of the first record keeper’s dragon from long ago. She was the human friend of the dragon that wrote the first book of our kind. Tristan asked him if it was the book that Cooper had. Nay. It is with my lady’s mother. She has it with her.

  Is she keeping it from us? He said that he thought she might have forgotten about it. I’ll ask her when we get back. Does Wynter’s dragon speak to her?

  I know not, my lord. Tristan moved closer to Wynter and rubbed his neck over hers. You are a good man and a better dragon, my lord. She is in a great need of comfort. I can feel her needs as if they were our own.

  I’m going to fly to the top of the mountain. Are you ready for that? He said that he was forever ready to do his bidding. Good, let’s take our mate on the trip of her lifetime.

  Chapter 3

  “I’m sure of it, sir. When you told me that she lives, I went directly to the hospital where you said she was and she wasn’t there. There has been no child born at the hospital in two days. I even checked the charts. There is no mention of anyone being released today. Not even a walk out.”

  Eric wasn’t sure what was going on now. He’d been waiting around for another attempt for the mate of the record keeper to be born. For generations he’d been there when she’d been born, and was able to destroy the connection before it had been made. Not only had he just been informed that the child had been born, but that it wasn’t an egg but a dragon hidden in the form of a human. Just as the Mannings had been made.

  “Well, we’ll have to get to the cameras and see what we can figure out. I know that her dragon is out there. I felt it as surely as I am sitting here.” Eric looked over the chart that he’d been keeping since he’d been given this job. “She can ruin everything for us, for the world as we know it. This child, it can breed with another dragon, a Manning dragon, and have pure blooded dragons. We cannot allow that to happen. The world cannot handle having dragons about.”

  Allen asked him if he knew the reason that it was so important that there weren’t any pure blood dragons. Really, it had been so long since he’d been told what he was to do and the ways to do it, he could no longer remember the reasons behind it. But he’d never let Allen know that.

  “Can’t you imagine a large dragon walking down the main street of any town? Why, it would be abysmal. Not to mention how they would eat all the meat that is needed for the humans.” He had used this before, when someone else had asked him why it was important to kill this child. “Also, they’d be taking over the world as we know it, and we’d be their slaves.”

  “Really?” Eric nodded. “Okay, I guess. But this one child being born—you think that it’s going to cause that much damage? I mean, doesn’t it have to grow up? Then find someone to have sex with it? I’m sure that someone would notice that a dragon was out calling for her mate to come along. How many babies are you talking about? I mean, how many can they have?”

  “I don’t know, but if they breed more like them, then they’d have little dragons and so on and so forth.” Allen just shook his head. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds like a lame assed reason to kill a kid.” Eric thought so too, now that he’d had someone question his answer. “Anyway, no babies born at the hospital, and I’ll see about the cameras in a bit. I’ll get back with you.”

  After Allen left him in his office, Eric decided to see if he could find his notes from long ago. Even after he found them, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to read them. He’d not been a scholar back then. Now either, as a matter of fact. So finding the contract was going to be better than finding his doodles he’d made on his papers. At least after finding that, he could find someone to read it to him. Eric hadn’t paid that much attention in the room with the man. Which, he thought, was what he should have been doing instead of playing around.

  Eric had been a young man back then, with not much in the way of money. But then no one had a great deal of anything, much less food. He’d been orphaned by the plague, and had gotten a terrible limp from it when he nearly died. A man and his wife had taken him in when he was tossed out of the orphanage, and took him home with them.

  After he’d been nursed back to health, his captives—that’s what his new family had been to him—had tried to teach him how to read. It didn’t seem to stick with him. She’d not even been able to beat it into him.

  They were hard core dragon haters too. Eric wasn’t sure that they’d ever killed one, but they had a powerful hate for the beings. He had seen them, flying in the sky, blowing their flames at each other, he thought for fun. While he didn’t understand the Howells and their need to have them all dead, he learned to say what they wanted to hear soon enough.

  He’d been chained in the barn with the other animals when he disagreed, or even asked questions about their hatred. Eric would get no food, nor would he get anything to drink other than the rain that would come into the holes in the roof above him. He’d be chained there for weeks at a time, piss and shit all over him, because they’d not let him go.

  Then one day, a man came to their home. Eric had to be cleaned up. This meant that Mr. Howell had taken him to the nearby creek and dropped him in with a bar of lye soap to use. It had taken him too long, he supposed, to get himself cleaned up, because the mister had joined him. Christ, it was like being scrubbed with a hard bristled brush. But he was clean, by God.

  Putting on his Sunday clothes, he was sat in the living room with the adults and warned, several times over, not to open his mouth. Of course, he never heeded anything that had been told to him, and had gotten a major blistering after the man left.

  But by then, Eric had gotten the idea that he was recruiting him and the Howells for something more important than just hating the dragons. He wanted them to stop a child from being born that would be the ruination of the world, he’d told them.

  “She’ll come as a dragon. There is rumor of magic that can change her into a human—it’s been done before, I guess. She needs to be killed.” That was Eric’s first of many questions. He asked why. “She can have other dragons. As soon as they’re wiped out, then the world will be a better place. You wait and see.”

  The Howells were nodding as if the dead child were already dead and gone. But he wondered what sort of betterment of the world the man was talking about. The man leaned back on his seat and regarded him.

  “Well, dragons are powerfully big, you see, and once they get hungry, they can eat an entire field of corn and potatoes.” Eric asked him if that was all they ate. “No, they have to have meat too. Like sheep and cattle. What do you think is going to happen once all that is gone? Well, I’ll tell you. They’ll start to eat us. Humans.”

  “Why? I mean, he’d have to find a lot of us to do that, wouldn’t he?” The man, he couldn’t remember if he’d been told his name, said that was what he was talking about. He’d eat them all. “I don’t understand that part. I mean, if he eats us all, then who will plant more crops for him? How will more humans be made without sex?”

  Eric had always been sure that was what had gotten him beaten so badly—he’d said sex. Even the mention of kissing would get him slapped on his ass. He’d wanted to ask more questions, but was forbidden to do that when he’d been sent to his room. Eric had thought of questions, a great many of them. He’d just not been able to voice them.

  Then
three days after the man visited, Eric had been taken away from his home. A group of men and women had been standing over him. He did not remember being moved, and to this day, he didn’t remember any of the faces that had stood over him. What he did remember—and it scared him every time he thought of it—was the long daggers that had been pushed into his body over and over while they spoke in some odd language. Not even his screams had made them stop. No amount of begging, nothing. When he’d just simply passed out from the pain of it all, Eric had been sure that they’d killed him. Several days later, he woke up to find himself not only alive, but something more. Something magical had been given to him.

  Then the man was there again. “You will take my place when you have learned all that you can about the magic that you now have.” He asked if the Howells had sold him to him. “Nay, they didn’t much care for you, of that I am certain. But I think their next plan for you was to put you in their barn and burn it to the ground. Now, as I was saying, you’ll learn this magic to work for me.”

  “How much will it pay?” He was told what he’d get, which turned out to be the equivalent of one hundred dollars a day in today’s market—not all that much, really. It was what he still got, and nothing more. “Where will I live? What will I do until the time to kill this child comes?”

  “There will be many attempts if you are good at what I train you to do. Many.” He’d gone on to say something about the magic that would protect the child, the people named Manning, and something to do with them being the greatest beings ever created.

  His training, or what Eric thought of as stupidity, went on for several months. He could recite the words to kill the child. Also, he could conjure up magic that would feed him when he wanted it. But the rest of what he was to do went in one ear and out the other. However, the punishment for not remembering what he’d been told came with a great deal more than just him shitting and pissing himself. The man had a much darker way of dealing with him.