Prologue
Mori’s Journal
Moonscale London
Philip was annoyed with me that it took him three trips here to convince me to hand over THE book. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. I did – mostly. It was that the timing wasn’t right. When Clarence and Medwin’s memoir was almost finished – was way too soon. Then he brought me my copy of the memoir, and I needed to read it before I gave the book up. Then he came back again with the most outlandish request. He wanted me to go back with him for Pras Lavender’s leaving ceremony. Nope. No way. You’d think he’d have gotten it through his head by now that I’m not stepping foot in the GGB unless I’m the only caster who can help them and their little ceremony has plenty of people to help out. I almost kept the book just to piss him off. It’s so easy to forget that no one quite knows the reason I’ve become a hermit in Moonscale London.
But now the book is back in the GGB after I extracted a promise from Philip that he wouldn’t make any pit stops. Something feels off with the universe today. Maybe that’s because I’ve read Clarence and Medwin’s memoir three times now. Philip brought me the copy with all the nitty-gritty stuff in it. I can’t get over the fact that Ferrick didn’t know he could get another omega pregnant. I keep wondering what would’vehappened differently if he had been educated. Thank the old bears for Omega Studies.
Things haven’t changed that much here since I last opened my journal to write except the book is gone and I know now what it took to have Moonscale London as peaceful as it is now. It’s strange to think that if all those things hadn’t happened, I might not live here now. Sure, I wouldn’t have to put up with my neighbor randomly howling like his best friend has died, but still.
As for the neighbor, I fear I’m becoming a bad neighbor. I don’t remember the old wolf’s name and haven’t gone over to knock on the door and check on him. If he wanted help, he’d ask, right? If someone he knows died, I really don’t want to get involved. I don’t want the spirit of whoever it is to realize I’m here just on the other side of his wall. I’ve enjoyed my hermitage with Snowy.
Besides feeling like a giant, furry asshat for ignoring the neighbor, I scroll social media – a lot. Maybe too much. I look at *his* social media. He’s really enjoying his job at the Cuddle Club. He’s taken up volunteering to guard Flight School during his free time. He’s on rotation with Philip and a few other bear shifters. Flight School is a playroom for winged children run by a winged lion in the GGB. Apparently, some jackasses are up in arms that a play center exists for children who fly and to do so safely only admits children with wings. It has everyone a little on edge and the one thing the GGB has never put up with is messing with their young.
The guy who runs it – Jade – is the grandson of Brom Valen. He was a jackass who made people breed together and killed a bunch of people who didn’t do what he wanted. Hisother grandparents were killed in the Wildlands. Sometimes Jade randomly crosses my mind, and I wonder if he thinks about his inherited generational trauma too. I’m sure his parents were/are great but is it in his cells too?
My therapist says that it’s not polite to wonder about other people’s cells, but if we’re all made of the same stardust maybe we all share something that hasn’t been named yet. My alpha follows Jade on social media and I can’t help but to wonder if they’re friends now. I hope my guy has made tons of friends in the GGB. I hope that---
The neighbor is howling again. I can’t write under these conditions. So much for a peaceful life.
Chapter 1
Beryl Moonscale
An Undisclosed Island in the Tropics
I stretched out on the seashell patterned blue beach towel and rested my head on Sermon’s thigh. His muscles tensed for a second and then relaxed as he looked away from his Aben Radcliffe novel. His long fingers played absent-mindedly through my hair. I let my eyes drift closed and enjoyed the small moment of intimacy as he scritched my scalp. Growing up, jet setting around the globe didn’t provide me with many opportunities to form friendships close enough for touch. Sure, a lot of furry shifters ran around touching each other all over, and don’t even get me started on kissing lions, or how rodentswill instinctively touch another rodent shifter. Most dragon shifters are different. Touch is reserved for special people. I’ve never understood how furry shifters put up with it. Since my penultimate year of high school, Sermon has been my best friend.
“You finally woke up,” he yawned.
I woke up when Sermon and his mate snuck out of the Scale B&B rental but had laid around scrolling on my phone for a while. Then had coffee and breakfast before working up the motivation to walk down the path and onto the sandy private beach. I had a nagging suspicion in my gut that things were about to change forever.
The night before, I’d read Clarence and Medwin Moonscale’s memoir. I hadn’t expected to think much of it because we’d always been a bit removed from our family. It was mostly me, Mum, and those she called family for whatever reason. We didn’t even use our real last name but took the flight name as all members of the flight were entitled to do. Only, now my brain was full in the worst way. Mum wanted me to wait until after they ensured Ferrick Moonscale was gone for good, but it felt dishonorable to miss Pras Lavender’s leaving ceremony. The dude was only a few generations back from me and had given up so much to ensure we were here. Before reading the memoir, I thought Mum had lost her mind wanting to be on any sort of council that Clarence Moonscale put together. Now, I understood why she was going to do it.
“Answer him. Stop being a space cadet,”my dragon chimed into my thoughts while Sermon still scritched at my scalp.
“Eh, gotta sleep while I can. Mum wants me to fly out to the GGB soon. That place never sleeps,” I shrugged, looking upat him. Sermon had dark hair that had always sort of stuck up no matter how much he brushed it or how much product he used. He had dark brown eyes and a skin tone that hinted of his draconic ancestors that originated somewhere in the Mediterranean.
“Excited for the wedding? To meet your new mummy?” he arched a brow.
Sermon was good at picking up on when someone was in a mood, but he’d never been the best at puzzling out what had put them in the bad mood in the first place. My mood wasn’t so much a bad one as it was one that left me at odds with the world I knew. Just like Clarence Moonscale, Roster’s blood ran through my veins. Had I been a good enough person to counter some of what he had done in his lifetime? Was it my job?
“I dare you to call her that when you meet her,” I laughed, smiling for Sermon, because I wasn’t in the mood to explain all the storm clouds rolling through my dragon’s inner sanctum. “She’ll probably eat you. From what I’ve seen of Bree, her underwater form is giant. Like she’s giving krakens a run for their money.”
“Who are we talking about?” Gaia asked, walking up, dragging her green painted toes through the sand. She’d just come from the water and only had her green bikini bottom on. Like most people on the island, she’s embraced the clothing optional culture. Not that I cared one way or another. I grew up surrounded by women – much older than me. While I did enjoy a boob here and there sometimes as a pansexual, most boobs were just boobs existing in the world as hers were this morning.
Gaia grew up in a pretty conservative draconic community where omegas were expected to cover up. She left them andwent no contact with her family decades before she true-mate responded to Sermon. Still, as a general rule, we’ll both knock anyone who makes her feel less than comfortable down a few notches. She can take care of herself like any dragoness can, but what’s the use of being a giant alpha dragon if you don’t throw your weight around in helpful directions?
“Bree, Beryl’s new mummy,” Sermon told her as if she hasn’t already heard about Bree. That was the thing about couples. If you told one, you told both. That was particularly awkward when they met because I knew them both before they were an item. Sermon, I knew from school but years and years ago I’d hooked up with Gaia on a different beach. It’d been a full moon bonfire party and we’d both hit the joint that was passed continuously around enough times that everything felt good. We never saw each other again until she showed up on Sermon’s arm. He knew because neither Gaia nor I was the sort to keep secrets, but that night meant nothing more than a couple of stoned twenty somethings getting their rocks off.
“Quit calling her that! It’s weird,” Gaia said, reaching over to tweak her mate’s nipple.
“Ouch! Sorry! I won’t call any other woman mummy, Mummy!” he mock cried and she playfully slapped his pec, a smile pulling at the corners of her glossy lips.
“Don’t call me mummy!” she laughed but twisted his nipple hard enough to make his face scrunch as he laughed. His hand moved to her thigh and she leaned against him. It was all rough housing with them.
I’d lost track of how long they’d been together now. Long enough to raise two batches of hatchlings and be grandparents. At first, it felt as if I was a perpetual third wheel. It wasn’t like Ididn’t have other friends, because I did, but those friends always wanted to do things, and I’d already done enough things to last me a lifetime. After a while, I figured out I was the only one worried about the arrangement and neither one of them wanted me gone full-time. It probably helped that I came and went because like my mother my wings never wanted to stay in one place too long and that I was always willing to help out with the kids whether it was money, time, or emotional bandwidth.
