Pressing my shoulders into the rough bark of a tree, I close my eyes and remember. Play through the way her hands stroked and teased and drew phantom scales on my flesh while she called me her dragon. In my memory, I hear her gasp at my first clumsy attempt to sheathe myself in her tight, wet heat. Then her groans as I got better, found my rhythm, and stroked her clit.
With my eyes closed, I bring up the uncertainty, then determination in her eyes when I asked her to shift. To show me all of her. Esme’s body stayed the same shape, but golden wings stretched from her back, and her flesh transformed. My fists clench on empty air as I recall the brush of feathers on skin as I spilled inside my beautiful harpy.
I won’t let anyone ruin this night for me.
And so I imagine the night is over. That this is a new night, the next one, and all that happens now is separated by a buffer of hours from when I held Esme as she whispered and laughed and panted my name.
Soon, I won’t have to make buffers. Soon, I’ll leave and make a home for myself and for Esme when she’s ready to join me.
I press off the tree and stalk toward the grand house my parents constructed on the shore of Lake Galen. Their palace in the small town of Folk Haven. The soundtrack of gentle waves slapping against the protective riprap on the shore accompanies me as I enter the back door into the kitchen.
If I thought the rear entrance would save me from discovery, I was wrong.
My parents wait by the large wooden island, where staff prepare our meals throughout the day before carrying them into the main dining area. My mother sits on a stool with hershoulders bowed inward as my father paces, halting with flared nostrils when I enter the room.
“What have you done?”
I flinch back at the menace in his voice. Since my last growth spurt, he no longer towers over me, but the older dragon exudes the power of decades as he stalks toward me.
“N-nothing.” I hate the way I stammer. The way I feel the need to describe what just happened between Esme and me as nothing.
This night was everything. The start to my future with the woman I love.
In my soul, I know she is more than my first infatuation or even my first love, though she is certainly both those things.
Esme is my mate.
The reminder has me standing steady in the face of my father’s rage.
“You were with that girl. The harpy.” He sneers the name of her mythic designation as if she were beneath him. “I can smell her on you.”
“I love her.” Crossing my arms, I stare him down. “She is my mate.”
My mother lets out a sound that mixes a gasp, screech, and sob, as if partnering myself with a smart, kind, beautiful woman were some horrendous crime.
“She is not,” my father bellows in my face, the heat of his internal forge scalding footprints on the kitchen tiles. “You’re a foolish child. Even a human would be better. You will not sully yourself with anything so crude. You will not blight the Blaythorn line with monsters.”
Of course that’s all he cares about. Our legacy. Not my happiness.
Mythics must only breed with their own kind or humans to maintain the purity of the gods’ creations.
But how can that be what the gods want when I felt the approval of The Winged One when I held Esme in my arms tonight? When I slid inside her body, I felt phantom wings on my back, lifted with a wind of purpose.
She is joy and love and meaning.
Esme is my mate. And even if the gods did disapprove, it would not matter.
And neither do my parents’ prejudices.
“If you can’t accept us, then that’s your problem. I’ll leave.” At eighteen, I’m an adult by human standards, and I can work and live on my own.
“No, dearest, please.” My mother appears then, standing between my father and me, facing him, as if in my defense.
Hope takes flight in my chest. I am not alone.
“Please, do not leave. Sleep here tonight. Let us speak again in the morning. When tempers are not as hot.”
As I mull over her words, my father’s eyes drop to her face, and they share a silent communication. A skill I’ve begun to develop with Esme. Not true mind talk, like some of the strongest dragons can manage in their beast forms, but the simple ability to interpret the meaning of the minuscule muscle twitches on the face of the one you love.
