“Cirue had a little secret for me this morning.” Morris grinned as he stared me down. I didn’t know who this person was, but Morris must have caught my look of confusion. “My mate. You will meet them soon enough. Perhaps in a few days.”
Brae and Aster looked at one another with unease that turned into something bright and hopeful. Morris leaned into my personal space, breath hot as he spoke, “He is gravid.”
Aster gasped and clapped his hands a single time before covering his mouth.
“One,” Morris whispered, pointing to Nula then himself. “Two.”
With a single tap of a claw, he pricked my nose and I crossed my eyes to stare at it for a second, the movement of my eyes enough to shake my focus and make me dizzy. “Three.”
“Call the whelp in.” Morris straightened up, his deep voice curled around something cavernous, his dragon hiding in the depths of his throat. “And let’s go to the springs.”
I glanced toward a nervous Brae and Aster, who didn’t say anything.
“Little one, do you hunger?” Morris ran his clawtips through my hair, his hot breath too close to me, constricting, boxing me in. I’d never had such a feeling before, the desire to claw my skin off, chew my foot from my own ankle to escape a trap. I’d always thought I’d rather die until this dragon came to me. But I was hungry, so I nodded. What I’d eaten had sated me, but I always wanted more.
“Have you eaten fire before?” Morris pulled away as he asked the question.
I shook my head as he chuckled so deeply and darkly. “Of course not.”
Morris leaned over me and opened his broad arms, wrapping them around me in a tight hug. “You hunger for fire, child. Let Marcus feed you. I wish to see you consume, to burn so bright.”
A hunger for something other than food rose within me, and I shivered. I was cold, a chill running through my core as hespoke. It made me want to kiss Marcus again, to breathe him in and taste the fire only a dragon could breathe.
“Just know, little one. What you do will spare another much pain.” Morris beckoned for me to stand, and I did so, pen and pad falling to the floor. He was an easy dragon to talk to, never asking me more than I could answer without lowering myself to pen and paper.
Chapter Nine
Marcus
“I’m surprised you didn’t realize right away,” Baba said, chuckling as he guided me through the keep.
“There was too much going on to pick up on it all! My dragon said treasure, and I did what I do with treasure—make it mine. Hoard it.” I shook my head, and another presence backed up behind me, Father, guiding me with hands on my shoulders.
“So you didn’t look at his skin. You didn’t think to ask how old he was. You saw a throwback with odd coloring and didn’t even think to ask.” Father clicked his tongue and I flinched.
“The council should have reported him.”
“A bunch of dirt-poor hillbillies only see an omega. They don’t care.” Lyphus clenched his fist and sighed. “Remember Cirue’s story? Morris found him as a throwback amid a raven murder.”
I’d heard the story. Morris found him in the alpha’s basement. He’d not even had a name, so they called him Cirue because of the plum reddish-purple hue to his hair. Very different from the all-black hair of a raven’s flock. He’d never shifted, never gone into heat—questions I should have thought to ask Whisper. Questions I couldn’t make myself ask because I was so angry at what they’d used him for. Anger that would have best been channeled into exploration, into giving him fire, to burn away everything about him that wasn’t a dragon.
“But really, those spots should have been a giveaway.” Lyphus laughed and smiled. “You’re fortunate he’s of age.”
“Wouldn’t have found him if he wasn’t.” I stumbled as Father guided me into a sublevel into one of the springs.
“Shift.” Father shoved at my back as I stumbled away from them and stared at the expanse of the baths. The darknessaround us teemed with steam, a perfect place for shifting, shedding, soaking in water, and letting out flame that could do nothing.
“Again with the shedding! I don’t need to shed.” I stripped my shirt and worked on my pants as Baba snorted.
“Your mate will need to. Their current form is flawed. You must give them fire, Marcus.” Father rumbled as he undressed, his skin a mirror of his draconic form—sleek, dark scaled, powerful, and somehow graceful. Golden eyes gleamed as he stretched free into his greater form and swung a whiplike tail around and slapped me across the back of my calves.Shift!He growled in draconic speech, the base language that all dragons were born knowing.
With a huff, I shifted, stretching out my greater form, my scales as dark as Father’s, only the scales were rougher, and perhaps more silvery in moonlight. A shadow of my great horns rose up against the wall and I cowered as Baba shifted, for as sweet and calm of a person as he was, his dragon was fearsome, face broad, thorned, and lined with razor-sharp scales. His claws left sharp, jagged slices in stone with barely any effort. Piercing eyes, golden like my father’s but in a sharper sort of way, more predatory.
Since they were much older than me, despite my maturity, they were larger, looming over me with grace and intimidation, a perfect balance that they countered in their human forms. Baba sniffed at me and nudged, making me stumble as I snarled back at him.I am shifted!
Good,Baba purred as he turned his head toward the door to the room and sniffed, waiting for something. We didn’t have to wait long, as it seemed to be a gathering of our clan, Morris and Aster guiding Whisper in with Brae at their back. Cirue wasn’t with them, but he’d been poorly of late, for a reason we all suspected. Baba had said he hoped there’d be twins, but I knewthe reason. He couldn’t bear for his potions to fail. Couldn’t bear to lose another.
So, I lowered my head to my mate… My treasure, and I nuzzled into his bare chest, his freckled arms, the marks of a young dragon. I’d lost mine around twenty, silvery scales with lighter flecks and freckles like starlight that came off in a single shed.
