His Woodland Maiden

by Michelle M. Pillow

  It was this sentiment that had caused his parents to take in so many off-worlders when they’d known it would strain their resources. Scientists had been convinced the blue radiation from one of Qurilixen’s three suns had the healing properties the Cysgodians needed to recover. Besides, at the time, there was nowhere else for the residents to go.

  But then, the city grew, too fast to be natural. They discovered others were being brought to the sanctuary—first three more; then twelve; then a shipful dropped off during the one night a year when darkness covered the planet, and the dragons had been occupied with their sacred mating ceremonies. That is how Shelter City now held more than the original Cysgodians, though they still used the term to describe the people there. Cysgod meant shelter in the Draig language, so it made sense.

  By the time they made the discovery, it was too late. The people had dispersed into Shelter City and to round them up would have meant full-on attacks. None of the shifters wanted a war. What they wanted was the Federation gone as it was their fault this was happening. They had taken advantage of the elders’ good-hearted natures and the Cysgodians’ desperation.

  Grier was not as soft-hearted as the elders. He couldn’t be. He knew in order for his people to survive, he would have to make hard choices, ones he did not want to make.

  Looking at his hands, he traced an old scar he’d received in battle training as a youth.

  “Battles are not meant to be easy. They are meant to be won,” had been the lesson his uncle Zoran, commander of the Draig army, wanted them to learn. Zoran was still a hard taskmaster to this day. Grier had received the scar from Zoran’s daughter, Grace.

  Fights did not scare him. Losing his people did. For better or worse, the Cysgodians were now his people, and they needed freed from the Federation’s rule. Only then could the shifters start truly absorbing them into Qurilixen society if that is what the aliens wanted. As it was, crime and discontentment were escalating.

  Above the city of metal and stone were structures of a different nature. They were evenly spaced buildings along the ridge of a mountain, identical and just as they had been since the Federation put them up thirty years earlier.

  A large stone building towered over it all, across the valley from his watchtower perch but low enough that he could see the roof. The rectangular structure stretched along the length of the city. Metal arches slashed over the top. That is where the city officials stayed. It was where his parents and ambassador cousin were now, discussing the many issues that arose from this ever-growing nest of malcontents.

  Suddenly, a wave of heat hit his back, propelling his body down the side of the roof. A roar of flames filled the sky over his head. He dug his heels against the surface even as his hands flailed to grab something solid. The slats of the roof clattered under his boots as he tried to stop his fall. It didn’t work. As he flew over the side of the tower, he managed to grab hold of the edge with one hand. He swung violently so that his back struck the stone side. Another roar of fire filled the air.

  He took a deep breath, ignoring the pounding of his heart as he gained control of his body. Kicking the side of the building, he propelled himself around, gripping the roof’s edge even as he released his anchored hand long enough to change his hold so that his wrist wouldn’t break.

  Grier did not hang long. He used his toe to launch from the side and his arm strength to lift his head over the edge of the rooftop to look at his attacker.

  Grace peeked at him from the other side of his resting spot, hiding her naked body. Her light brown eyes shone with mischief. His cousin was pretty and would have appeared as regal as any queen if not for the fact she’d just tried to firebomb him off the side of the tower. Her brown hair flew around her head. She grinned down at him. “Let me borrow your shirt.”

  Grier dropped his weight, kicked off the side of the building a second time and flung his body upward. With much effort, he climbed onto the roof and made his way toward the top. Sitting with his back to his cousin, he took off his shirt and held it behind him. The cooler air hit his naked chest, and he breathed deeply. “Do I even want to ask where you left your clothes?”

  He felt Grace take the shirt. Seconds later she was sitting next to him, wearing it. Her bare feet tapped on the roof slats as she propped her arms on her knees. Grier was glad she was his cousin. In any form, she was dangerous. As a fighter, she was fierce. As a dragon, she was terrifying. As a woman, she was stunningly beautiful. As a cousin, she liked to fly up behind him and fireball him off the side of a tower for fun.

  “Anything interesting happening in the village of discontent?” she asked, sounding restless.

  He ignored her question and instead asked one of his own. “Does Uncle Zoran know you are flying around the forbidden valley?”

  Grier already knew the answer.

  “My father still thinks of me as I was at twenty years old and wants me to sit where he can see me at all times. He doesn’t like me to come here. He thinks it isn’t safe.” Grace adjusted her position a little. “I don’t know what he thinks will happen.”

  Grier had only known two female dragons in his life—his grandmother and Grace. And his grandmother had died years ago.

  Anyone who didn’t know the warrior prince would have seen Zoran’s treatment of his daughter as contradictory. Perhaps it was because dragons rarely had female children. On the one hand, Grace was a dragon who should be trained for battle like a dragon. And yet, she was also female and dragon males tended to treat females like they were delicate and to be protected—which was funny on many levels. Since Zoran’s mother, their grandmother, had also been a rare female dragon he should have known better. And, Zoran’s wife, Princess Pia was one tough human.

  “Cysgodians could shoot you from the sky. The Federation could capture you and smuggle you off the planet in the dead of night to do experiments on you,” Grier listed, mostly to be annoying. “Var marsh farmer could try to mate you and set you up as queen of the stills. The Var prince—”

  “Stop agreeing with my father.” Grace’s eyes flashed gold with warning.

  Rare dragon birth, a dragon grandmother, a mother who could kickass with the best of them, four younger brothers, countless male cousins, and a commander father? Yeah, it stood to reason Grace would be a little wild.

  “He loves you,” Grier said. “His actions all come down to that.”

  Perhaps Zoran’s reactions were something Grier would only understand when he too was a father. And, perhaps still, maybe his uncle’s protectiveness had something to do with how his daughter was always rebelling.

  “He also doesn’t like it when we call Shelter City the forbidden valley.” Grace gave a small laugh, clearly wanting to change the subject. “Though, he wouldn’t want me saying the village of discontent either.”

  Grier patted her shoulder. “So, you rebel and fly up here where he can’t reach you? Careful, or he’ll have you chained to the ground again.”

  Grace smiled, not worried. She’d been escaping her father’s numerous guards since they were children. “He left my idiot brothers to keep me company. Slipping away from the palace was not difficult.”

  Grier laughed as he realized what was going on. “The Var princes are coming by the palace today, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Grace grumbled.

  Grier arched a brow and teased, “I would think you’d be excited to spend time with your future—”

  “I will throw you off this tower,” she warned. “Prince Korbin is not my future anything.”

  “Careful, little one, that is war talk.” Grier wasn’t concerned. Grace had been privately ranting about her betrothal to the future cat-shifting king since she could talk. Though, she said nothing publicly. Pia had wanted nothing to do with that part of the shifter peace treaty, and he once overheard his aunt telling Grace that time would dissolve that nonsense. It had not.

  “Careful, bloated one,” she mocked his nickname for her, “or I’ll t
ell Queen Rigan next time I see her that you’re planning on hiding from the mating festival again this year. You know the people would feel better if the future king settled and began the next generation. Such security in the future would go a long way toward keeping the peace our parents fought so hard to secure. There are factions on both sides keen on restarting the old wars to decide once and for all who is the superior shifter race—cats or dragons.”

  Grier took a deep breath. She was not wrong. Add to that the political unrest surrounding the intruders below, and it wouldn’t take much to incite some battle over this or that.

  “I don’t know why you resist,” Grace teased. “You would have such cute little dragon babies.”

  Grier picked at the crystal sewn into the thick leather bracelet on his arm. When he met his mate, the stone was supposed to glow and let him know that fate had arrived. It kept the guesswork out of marrying, and for that he was grateful. Who had time to test out relationships? Frankly, the alien method of dating multiple people sounded tiring.

  “I am not like my parents,” Grier said when she continued to look at him expectantly. “I do not wish to marry. It is too much of a distraction, and I need my mind focused elsewhere.”

  It wasn’t the complete truth. He didn’t go to the mating ceremonies because he didn’t want the gods to bless him yet. Of course, he wanted to marry. Who didn’t want to find the other half of their soul? But if a battle were to come, in any of its many threatening forms, a wife would be a weakness he couldn’t afford. There were stories of how some of his aunts had been kidnapped by the previous Var king to be used as leverage, but that was decades ago.

  “On that we can agree,” Grace said. She did not wear her crystal. They never spoke of it, but he assumed it was because her fate had been sealed since she was born, and to know anything else would have been too much for her heart to bear. “We are definitely not our parents.”

  “Besides, if anything happens to me, I have plenty of cousins who can take the throne.” He nudged her arm.

  “Don’t trust your brothers to do the job?”

  Grier laughed. “Do you want Creed ruling this planet?”

  “Fair point,” Grace said of Grier’s youngest brother. “Though Altair might—”

  “Order all dragons from the sky to live like the old ways?” he inserted.

  “Right, never mind.” Grace held up her hands. “It’s settled. You have to marry and have many children.”

  “Or you could take the job. What do you say? Queen Grace and King Korbin could unite the shifter people once and for all. You have Grandmother Mede’s fierce dragon heart. You will be the first to rule both dragons and cat-shifters.”

  “Not on your life.” She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the two yellow suns. The blue sun wasn’t high in the sky at the moment. She gave a wistful sigh. “Do you remember our parents’ faces when they realized all their dragon babies could fly and spout flames? I think our grandmother was the only excited one.”

  Before their generation, only the rare female dragons flew and breathed flames, and only under extreme duress.

  “That’s because Queen Mede was the only dragon who had ever flown or breathed fire in Qurilixen’s history before we came along.” Grier smiled as he remembered their shared past. It had been what felt like a hundred years ago, but the memory was a fond one. “Rune panicked and became stuck in that tree, and you tried to help him but ended up setting the tree on fire, which lit up the barracks and took out the palace guards’ housing. Half of them bunked in the palace dining hall and the other half slept on the practice field.”

  Grace laughed. “Then they caught us trying to set dried solarflowers on fire.”

  “You and Kane were trying to set fire to them,” he corrected. “The rest of us were wrongfully blamed.”

  “Don’t complain. Grandfather pretended to punish us, but really let us camp out in the royal offices all night as he told us scary stories about the portal travels our ancestors took to leave the evil persecutors.” Grace closed her eyes and smiled. “He stole those biscuit things from our grandmother, and a tray of chocolate. We ate so much we had upset stomachs for two days.”

  “Great-grandmother’s sugar biscuit recipe that she brought with her from the Florencian moons. I haven’t had those for years.” The wind whipped through Grier’s hair, tousling it around his head.

  “I miss them,” Grace admitted. King Llyr and Queen Mede were not only missed by their grandchildren, but by their people. “No matter what happened, they always defended us. Grandmother was the only one who could understand what is inside me.”

  Silence came over them, and he followed her gaze upward to the sky. The wide open space called to something deep inside him. It stirred his blood with excitement and tempted him with the freedom it offered.

  “Do you remember when Jaxx convinced us we could fly into space if we went high enough?” he asked.

  Grace again laughed. “We thought we were so tough. Maxen passed out and free fell to the ground. It was a miracle Lantos caught him. Then Aunt Nadja grounded us all to the castle while she tried to figure out how our shifting abilities had mutated so differently from our parents’. I think they wanted to temper them back to keep us safe.”

  “You can’t hold back evolution,” Grier said. “We are what nature and the blue sun intended us to be.”

  “What do you think the radiation will do to their genetics?” Grace nodded down to the city.

  The blue sun gave the shifters strength and a long life; it also had made the odds of having a female baby extremely rare. It had taken generations before the dragon gene had mutated into what they were now.

  “What do you think their grandchildren will become?” she continued to muse.

  “Space explorers?” Grier hoped. “Then they could fly off this planet for good and finally be free of the Federation Military.”

  “Perhaps.” Grace laughed. Then, gesturing toward the rectangular buildings, she said, “What do you think they do all day in there? I want to freeze time and walk around those buildings to see all their horrible secrets.”

  “Nothing useful.” Unable to stop himself, he grinned at her and again patted her shoulder. “Kind of like you.”

  He slid his hand from her shoulder down to the small of her back and launched her from the tower with one push. She screamed in surprise, flailing her arms as her body sailed over the edge of the roof before dropping. The sound of her voice became smaller as she fell down the side of the cliff.

  Grier settled into his original spot, overlooking the city. It was almost a shame to lose the shirt. He liked the fit of that one.

  A whoosh of air sounded from below and then another, the rhythm steadily growing louder before his cousin’s dragon form appeared. She was a slender creature in shifted form, smaller than her male counterparts, but what she lacked in brute strength she made up for in gracefulness. Her wings flapped slowly, holding her body suspended in air.

  Grace roared fire into the sky in a show of mock anger before turning her mouth toward him. He braced himself for the flames, ready to shift if he had to protect his fragile human skin. She inhaled a deep breath, but instead of flames, a playful ring of smoke came from her mouth to drift around him. Part of the circle broke apart as it hit the tower.

  She propelled herself backward, circling in the air before diving away from him. He could tell by the way she flew that she had only come here to waste the hours until the Var princes returned home. The royal family couldn’t expect her to entertain if she was nowhere to be found.

  Shouts sounded from below. Grier narrowed his gaze to focus his vision as his eyes shifted to make out the details. A mob of people flowed through the central street of the city, clashing with a second mob. The people converged like two swollen streams, spilling over into the side streets.

  He sighed heavily. The fighting was not unusual.

  Grier resisted the urge to swoop down and drag them apart with his talons.
Instead, he went to the side of the roof, grabbed a knob that had been placed at the edge, and then dropped over the side. He swung around into an opening at the top of the tower and landed on the stone floor. There, he pulled off his boots and pants. Once naked, he went to the window and dove from the tower. His body fell for a few seconds before he let the shift have him. The transformation was painful, but it was an old pain that he had long ago learned to disregard.

  Grier’s bones cracked as his body extended, and his skin hardened with protective brown armor. Wings ripped out of his back, lifting him before he hit the ground. The transformation finished as he was suspended in the air. A long tail grew from the bottom of his spine only to have a spade sharpen the end. Deadly talons replaced his nails. His beard disappeared, and his jaw popped, making room for sharp teeth.

  The wind caressed the full length of his form. For a moment, the feeling of freedom rushed through him, the animal instinct desperate to take over his reason. The beast was as much a part of him as the man. He pushed the feeling down, concentrating on what needed to be done.

  Grier dove toward the fight in the street, roaring before sending a burst of flames into the sky. He was careful not to hit any of the structures, but it was enough to get the people’s attention. He swooped over the epicenter of the hostility. Screams pierced the air as people ran away from him to take cover.

  Grier roared once in warning before lifting himself higher and flying away. Then, because the freedom of flight felt so damned good, he circled the entire city a few times before heading back to the tower. He wanted to keep soaring but forced himself to land on the roof.

  His body contracted as he shifted halfway back to his human form to stand as a dragon-man. It was in this half shift that he looked like his father’s dragon. The tail disappeared as did the talons on his feet. The talons on his fingers shortened, still sharp and deadly but more like fingernails. In this form, the dragon impulses were easier to control. He used his dragon vision to look down at the valley below. The fighting had dispersed, and the streets cleared of both mobs. The fray was over.