by Ann Gimpel
Surprise ratcheted through me. I hadn’t expected her to acknowledge the almost-complete mating ritual. I bowed before her and took care to puff steam. “Such is my hope as well.” I sounded horribly formal, but tucked away where no one could see it, my cock swelled and curved against my scaled belly.
To divert my attention away from jumping skyward and dragging Erin’s dragon with me—a forbidden act since our humans had yet to formalize their troth—I let a purifying blast of fire escape my jaws. Unbonded dragons could have all the sex they wished, but once we joined our lives with a dragon shifter, that aspect of our free will dissolved.
“I would tell you of my bondmate, Konstantin,” I began. “His link to the land is poorly understood, so I will start there. All worlds hold untold power within their core. Many of them began as flaming balls of heat that turned to primal ice as they cooled. Over eons the ice ceded to a rich diversity of living creatures. From time to time, ice returned. It is a world’s way of cleansing itself of taint.”
I blew out more fire. “Konstantin can merge his mind with the land’s deep knowledge. Watching him work his land-linked magic is fascinating—and humbling. He has infinite patience. Many a time, we have sat for months waiting for a stubborn world to notice us. Mu was like that. It did not reveal its secrets easily, nor did it trust Kon’s intent. Probably because he did not truly believe he possessed land-linked power.”
“He doubted himself,” Katya’s dragon concurred. “It was us—me and my bondmate—who convinced him to keep trying.”
I scowled, but she spoke true. Dragons could lie, but it wasn’t easy. “A needed boost,” I murmured. “And one we are forever grateful for.”
“Pfft.” Katya’s dragon puffed smoke and ash and fire. “Dragons are rarely grateful. It’s not part of who we are.”
I kept my mouth shut. It might not be part of who we claimed to be, or the image we projected, but I’d experienced my share of gratitude. Like when Erin hadn’t died on the borderworld where she met her dragon.
“Konstantin should be establishing a link with Earth,” I went on. “By the time we return, it may well be intact. It is one element that could work in our favor—”
“We need you back here now!” Kon’s voice blasted into my mind.
The other dragons’ heads snapped up. Clearly, they’d heard the summons too.
“Did we accomplish enough?” Katya’s dragon asked me.
“I believe so,” I replied and shaped magic to return us to the grotto deep beneath the ice sheet covering the southern end of Earth. As I worked, I thought about humans. And dragons. We’re good for one another. Dragons encourage their humans to reach for the stars. Humans are good for selecting which stars are most likely to yield fruit.
On that whimsical note, I shall cede my centerstage spot to Konstantin. If I can finagle my way back to talk with you again, I shall. Dragons do like to have the last word. And now, I have battles to plan, enemies to slay, and a world to conquer.
Draping the edges of my spell around the other dragons, I headed all of us toward our bondmates. I can’t speak for my companions but merging with Konstantin fills me with joy. Every single time. No matter how bad a mood he’s in or how out of sorts. I love him. He is mine, and I am his.
It’s the miracle of the shifter mate bond.
Konstantin
“Stop protecting me!” Erin Ryan screeched. Luxuriant blonde hair fluffed around her tall, thin frame, and her blue eyes with their thick golden rims, bled fury. Dragon shifter eyes were usually pure gold, but hers had retained some blue since her transition hadn’t occurred until she was well into her adult years.
“What would you have me do?” Konstantin took a step back from where he’d indeed been sheltering Erin from blasts of magic. They were in a workshop dedicated to honing fighting skills. Built by a dragon who’d long since departed, it held holographic simulacrums of various battle scenarios. A cunning magical vortex fired the holograph’s light field.
Erin shot an annoyed glance his way. “Let me figure this out on my own. How else will I learn? When I was a surgical resident, I made mistakes. Lots of them. Luckily, the human body is quite resilient. It’s possible a few people died sooner than they would have anyway, but those patients taught me a lot.” Breath steamed through her clenched teeth. Her dragon must still be gone—along with his and the others. If it were present, she’d have showered him with smoke and ash.
“As you wish.” He should take a few more steps away, but his feet weren’t in a cooperative mood.
“How about if we move outside?” Katya, his twin sister, suggested. “We can leave Erin and Johan here to work on shaping magic into strong defensive maneuvers.” Katya’s copper hair was caught up into two thick braids that fell down her back to waist level. Like him, she had the golden eyes with deep green centers typical of dragon shifters while in their human bodies.
Protectiveness surged. He was not about to leave Erin, his almost-mate, to fend for herself, but then he rethought things. He was acting as if he didn’t have any faith in her, which wasn’t true.
Well, maybe it was a little bit true. He had plenty of faith in her as a human and a healer, her previous vocation. But magic and being a dragon shifter were brand new. It was hard to watch her make mistakes when he could shield her from them.
“She’ll do better if you’re not breathing down her back,” Katya said in their private mind speech. Hooking a hand beneath his arm, his twin smiled brightly at Johan, her brand-new mate, and Erin. “We’ll be outside by the lake.”
Konstantin cleared his throat. He’d been out maneuvered, but he’d be damned if he’d slink away. “I’ll round up the other shifters, and we’ll determine preliminary assignments.”
Johan cut the flow of magic he’d been coaxing into submission and ran lightly to Katya, giving her a hug. “So long as those assignments ensure we fight side by side, I will not contest them.”
Konstantin bit back a spate of harsh words. He was the commander of this endeavor. Not Johan. They had enough trouble facing them; he did not need to deal with shifters who complained about how their skills had been delegated.
Katya hugged her mate back before letting go. “You can express opinions,” she reminded him.
He made a sour face. “Damn. I am doing it again.” He trotted to Konstantin and extended a hand. “Sorry, man.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, not really, but his tone said more than the words themselves. He shelved the lecture about hierarchies and allegiance and respect and teleported one floor up to where the great room and library spread around him.
Katya shimmered into being next to him. “He means well,” she murmured.
“I can’t have him second-guessing me in the middle of a battle.”
“He’ll be too busy then.” She loped into the library and tidied up stacks of books and scrolls Erin and Johan had been using to learn about magic and magical lore.
“Maybe so. Should you be rearranging those? What if our mates had them open to a particular spot?”
Katya tilted her head to one side. “These source materials respond to magic. All Johan and Erin need to do is open their minds to the knowledge they seek.”
“Do they know how?” He was certain he hadn’t taught them that particular skill.
“No, but one of us can make certain they possess that piece of information. Speaking of coaching, I’d like to take a brief peek into my glass and see if my previous interrogation about the future repeats itself on a second look.”
Sensing more lay behind her request, he asked, “Would you like me there?”
“I would. No water to rear back and slap me this time, but the way my last spell imploded was disquieting.”
“Of course. Where do you wish to work?”
Katya pursed her mouth into a thoughtful line. “Not my sleeping chamber. I’ve had so many failures there, it seems like it’s cursed. If we go outside, the other shifters will want to craft battle strategy. It’s
our nature.”
He thought about all the empty structures he and his dragon kin had built deep beneath Antarctica. He’d offered many of them to their shifter allies, but some remained unoccupied.
“How about the primary house on Level C?”
She nodded. “It would be perfect. Let me grab a couple of mirrors, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Sure you don’t want to use water again? Another lake is near that building.”
A muffled snort was followed by, “No.”
“See you soon, Sister.” He visualized the deserted house, constructed similarly to this one in that much of it was sunk into the earth. The walls of its great room formed around him, and he ran up one flight to the kitchen where he tapped into rich ore veins in the dirt walls to provide light. Once the room brightened, he was sorry he hadn’t left it dark. A thick layer of dust covered everything. He blew the top layer off and used his bare arms to do a somewhat better job.
As usual, he was naked. It was his fallback garb when human. He had garments, and he’d even dressed a time or two because Johan and Erin weren’t used to running about unclothed. Thanks to the gods, they’d mostly gotten over their false modesty. He and Katya had taught them to draw heat from the earth to warm themselves.
How was Erin doing? Would his absence truly enable her to learn faster? The thought bothered him, and he gave himself a brisk mental shake. For one thing, they weren’t yet mated.
Not because of him.
The reason they hadn’t consummated their mating bond was because she wasn’t 100 percent certain. If he was too heavy-handed, too much of a possessive bastard, she probably never would say yes. The commitment was permanent, a daunting concept to someone who’d spent her entire life in a culture steeped in walking away when the going got tough.
Humans didn’t use to be like that. Something about the longer, easier lives they lived had made them less willing to work through hard times. A hundred years earlier, no one expected sunshine and roses and perpetual happiness.
He snorted and cut the flow of his mental meanderings. What he thought about modern humans didn’t matter a whit. He and Katya had argued about revealing themselves to Johan and Erin. He’d prevailed, and they’d broken a cardinal rule.
For a host of excellent reasons, magic was to remain hidden from humans. That was true even when mortals still believed in occult phenomena.
The path he’d insisted they tread hadn’t been without significant problems, but two new dragon shifters were the result. If they still thought more like humans than dragons, it was understandable.
Erin flashed through his mind. She was never far from the surface, but she had to understand who he was, how he operated. If he soft-pedaled aspects of himself to lure her into saying yes to mating with him, that wasn’t right, either. Hell, she wasn’t perfect—not by a long shot. But he accepted all of her.
Or did he?
When he jumped in, prevented her from figuring out magic on her own, he was scarcely accepting her. No. He was trying to shape her into someone different. In this instance, he wanted her to be more competent magically.
Yeah. So she doesn’t end up kidnapped by a sea-serpent. His inner voice held a caustic edge.
A blast of familiar magic presaged Katya’s arrival. “Here I am.” She glanced around the kitchen that looked a lot like theirs. “Dusty in here.”
“You should have seen it before I cleaned up. Inside or out?”
She creased her forehead in thought and moved a sizeable oblong mirror in a golden frame to her other hand. “Maybe down one level to the great room? It will give us space to work.”
“Us?” He angled a sharp look at his twin.
“Yes. I thought about this and want to include you in my casting.”
He motioned her through the door and followed her down a flight of stairs. “Are you going to tell me why?”
Katya was silent until she’d placed her palms across ore veins running through the walls. Much as he’d done upstairs, she coaxed light from the minerals until the cavernous space glowed a soft bluish-white.
Turning to face him, she said, “Our magic is complementary. When I returned from a skirmish with the serpents with a serious wound in my side, Johan poured some of the mildly alcoholic elixir we both make over it to clean it. He had no way of knowing it would help, but an infusion of your magic was just the thing. It chased out the taint and allowed my own power to kick in and heal me.”
Konstantin raised his eyebrows. “Lucky for you it was one of my batches. It could just as easily have been one of yours.”
“Oh, I know. Regardless, I believe my scrying spell will be stronger for including your ability.”
“It’s not one of my magics,” he reminded his twin. “This could boomerang on us. Badly.”
She nodded. “Yes. I thought about that before I asked. If things seem to be going badly, cut the flow of your power.”
He blew out a tense breath, not liking the direction this was headed. “And leave you alone?”
Katya regarded him from under hooded lids. “Stand down, Brother. I said I wished to include you, but you’re free to decline. Make a choice. You’re building arguments on both sides.”
As usual, his sister had his number. So far, he’d forwarded arguments about why it was a questionable idea, and followed them with irritation when she’d told him to withdraw his magic if the spell went awry.
“Happy to help,” he said and left it at that.
She settled cross-legged on the inlaid stone floor and patted the spot in front of her. He understood and sat across from her so their knees almost touched. She moved the mirror until she held it in both hands and began to chant softly.
He opened a channel to his magical center and felt her latch onto his power, weaving it in with her own. They’d shared magic many times, and she was correct in her belief their ability was synergistic.
Almost as if someone had planned things out while they were still sharing their mother’s womb. They’d had a few mishaps as children where they’d underestimated the reach of their combined magic and brought a few buildings tumbling down.
Their dragons had rebuked them so harshly, their mother hadn’t had to say a word.
He couldn’t see the glass part of Katya’s mirror because it was tilted away from him, but the golden frame took on a glowing aspect, turning the air around it iridescent. Katya’s voice rose and fell, and he shut his eyes, hoping to encourage whatever vision was forming behind the glass to show itself.
Her tug on his magic intensified; he gave her what she needed. The canvas behind his closed lids began to swirl. As he’d hoped, blackness ceded to a collage of colors that finally formed recognizable objects. He altered position so he had a view of the mirror.
It should match the images in his mind. So far, it did.
A ship, the Darya, bobbed in the restless Southern Ocean. It was nighttime, though far from totally dark. People hurried to and fro on the ship’s broad quarterdeck. Konstantin wanted to look within, but scrying didn’t work that way. As he understood it, visions showed themselves, and you interpreted them later.
The sea became choppier. With a sinking feeling, he switched his focus from the deck to the sea, not surprised when a dark, triangular sea-serpent head broke through between wave crests. Where there was one, there had to be more. Had the serpents targeted the Darya and somehow leveraged magic to further corrupt the men who had boarded her?
He was still turning that idea over—except he couldn’t figure out what would have been so attractive about the small research vessel—when the vision disintegrated. The one replacing it looked like a European city, but several hundred years earlier. The streets were cobblestones. Rather than cars, horses and carriages were in evidence. Gutters on both sides of the street ran sour with human waste.
A closer look convinced him the city was Heidelberg, a place he and Katya had visited a time or two. The vision shifted slightly to a spot near where a bridge spanned
the Neckar River. Konstantin blinked, certain it had to be a trick of the odd lighting in the vision, but the serpents he thought he’d seen were still swimming lazily in the river. They’d cloaked themselves in illusion so they’d look like logs or rocks, but he recognized them.
Dragons’ balls! He’d assumed the serpents’ escape from their banishment was recent, but the scene spread before him had occurred hundreds of years earlier. Before he had a chance to dissect it further, Heidelberg shattered and was replaced by the headlands above their lair beneath Antarctica.
The sun shone down on a rocky shoreline. No ice. No serpents. The last time he’d looked, ice was at least a foot thick, and the place had been crawling with sea-serpents. Was the empty headland a promise of victory? Or merely a snapshot from the past?
A thought rocked him. The land might know. He’d been working on getting Earth to talk with him through his land-linked magic, but she didn’t trust him and hadn’t responded. At least not so far. He understood her heavy silence. She’d been sorely used by mankind, raped and pillaged and sacked as thoroughly as the Visigoths had plundered early trade routes.
The headlands vanished, replaced by another desolate vista, this one populated by a group of naked men and women sitting around a roaring fire. Hair in many colors shrouded them thickly, and they were laughing and singing and drinking from animal skins. Who were they? Early humans? Or did they possess magic.
This was Katya’s spell. Did he dare shoot a thread of seeking magic into the middle of it? Would he disrupt her scrying? Worse, might he end up doing what he’d feared: forcing the spell to blow up in both their faces?
As he watched, one of the men leapt to his feet. The air around him developed a reddish hue, and he changed into a dragon. Konstantin blinked harder. What he’d just seen wasn’t possible. Dragon shifters had never sat around bonfires. No need since they tapped warmth from whatever land they stood upon. He forced back the seeking magic that wanted out and took a good hard look at the man.
