On Wings: A Reverse Harem Dragon Shifter Romance (Her Secret Menagerie Book 2)

by Katelyn Beckett

  The handle rattled and Iyadre frowned down at me, confusion on his face. I didn't bother to ask him for permission to enter; I just walked past him and into the awaiting, dark building.

  Eskal sat upon a swiveling chair, one leg crossed over the other. He was a king of old compared to the others, ready and willing to listen to someone who should have served him in times long passed. I glared at him, still rebellious to the bitter end, then put the whelp down in front of him; towel and all.

  He considered it for a long, quiet moment as I sat down on the carpet, drawing my knees to my chest. Which was easier said than done, since my jeans were a little too tight for me. As time ticked on, I felt like I was in some sort of squeeze. As if he was waiting for me to ask for his help just so he could say no.

  Had Nariti already been by to tell him that I was coming? I doubted Vadriq had, since the dragon was still at his motorcycle as far as I knew. Perhaps they had some kind of telepathic network between them that let them know when someone like me was close to giving in.

  I didn't know. I didn't care. All I wanted to do was be done with the deal. Then I could go back to my miserable little life and-

  I drew up suddenly, confused. Miserable? No. I enjoyed my life. It wasn't much, but it was more than my mother had ever made of herself. I tried to clear my mind, but things were murky. I was tired. So tired. And I just wanted to hand the freshly hatched demon off to someone who knew what they were doing with him.

  "Would it be crass of me to suggest you are ready to negotiate?" Eskal asked, his voice a purr.

  My fists clenched. "Yes, it would."

  "Then perhaps I suggest that you come to me with a problem only I may solve for you. Strange, isn't it, how fate mirrors a pairing together."

  "Fuck you."

  "The whelp is easily managed by those who understand him. Though I must admit, I doubt he would be willing to take food from any of us. He seems to have imprinted on you; a common issue when whelps hatch."

  I glared up at him. "That's what Nariti said. That I'm probably stuck with the tiny jerk. If you can just tell me what to do with him, I would-" God, the next part was like chewing glass. "-appreciate what you can do for me."

  Eskal sat back in his seat, peering down at me. So far down his nose that I expected that it felt not too unlike what knights of old must have encountered when a dragon appeared in their path. Was I the damsel in distress? Or the witch who trapped her there? Either way, everything was trash. But if I was going to end up helping them anyway, they could at least relieve some of the debt that kept me in a 1-bedroom studio with two other people.

  "You want us to help you."

  "I'm kind of stuck with that, yes."

  The dragon tilted his head at me. "Help for help. You assist us in gathering our eggs, hatching them, and we find a way to add this whelp to the hatch. You're free from him. Is it a deal?"

  "No."

  He twitched as if I'd slapped him. "No?"

  "No," I repeated. "You were willing to give me money to help you hatch your nest before. I could always sell the whelp to some kind of sideshow after I break his neck and shove him in some formaldehyde for a while. I want money enough to pay off my debts and I want my powers gone. If anyone can do that, you can. And you take the whelp."

  He tented his hands over his stomach and watched me, silent still. He was a businessman through and through. I didn't know anything about business, but I recognized the motion from all those goofy cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid. Finally, he spoke. "If you maintain a good will status with our flight throughout the capture and hatching of our eggs, we will pay your debts. We will take the whelp. And we will remove your powers. But only if you keep your mouth shut about us."

  "Why would I try to convince anyone in my professional life that dragons exist?" I said, baffled.

  Those fingers tapped together one right after another, like he needed to boot up enough energy to answer my question. "If you were to find out that dragons existed with absolute fact, the scientific world would fall to your feet. You would have anything you wanted from them, with them."

  "The only dragons I care about are the ones people mistook dinosaurs for hundreds of years ago," I said. "I don't want to be anybody special. I just want to work a nice 9-to-5 in the dirt, have enough cash to take care of my mom's hospital bills and school, and retire when I'm 65. It's not a lot."

  "Your mother's hospital bills?"

  His hands dropped. I caught the whelp before it decided to make its way out of the towel again. "My mom died a few years back. She was sick as a dog before she went because she tried a bunch of bullshit spell work to try to fix herself instead of just letting the doctors work on her."

  "Did she make any deals?" Eskal asked.

  The nerve of that big son of a bitch. I bristled. "She made all kinds of deals with all sorts of shit that didn't exist. And none of it saved her in the end. She still died in the fucking hospital without any of you giving a damn about her."

  I choked back tears as the hated words came out of me. Mom had been across the country when she went downhill. I'd talked to her every night on the phone, but she'd already been unconscious when I'd gotten there. Because the fairies couldn't save someone who was real when they weren't, I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell her that I loved her one last time; even though she was wrong, even though she'd bought in to all of the witchy bullshit-

  Even as I held a dragon whelp tight in his bundle, I rejected the idea of magic. I had tripped. I'd put my hands on that egg and hatched it. I'd been the one who did that; me. And I was still denying that any of that world existed as I sat there talking to a dragon about repeating the gesture.

  I tried to get a hold of myself, but I couldn't. A tear dripped free, then another. I bowed my head, sad and guilty and angry all at once. Maybe it was because of the lack of sleep, but my shoulders trembled as I tried to silence anything that could be misconstrued as a weakness by the monster in front of me.

  "They enjoy raw meat and something sparkly to keep their attention, when you have other things to do."

  Eskal was on the ground with me when I looked up. "What?"

  "The whelp. Raw meat, primarily red. Buy the cubed stew meat from the grocery store to begin with. He may decide to char it, but it is unlikely he will. Let him eat his fill. Give him a litter box, much like you would a cat," Eskal instructed, offering me a handkerchief. "He will break through a plastic crate, but not a metal one. If you must, you can lock him away in that while we work together."

  I swallowed and took the handkerchief, wiping my face. "The room I've got has cleaners. They'll see him."

  "Then I suppose I must insist that you accompany me home tonight. For the time being, you may use a spare room to hold him until our contract is complete."

  "How can I trust you?"

  He sighed and ran his fingers over the whelp's snout. The little jerk rubbed his head beneath the touch, clearly enjoying it. "I am bound by the conventions of guest right, as is any other supernatural entity. Should harm come to you under my roof or in my keep, I am responsible. And I am loath to allow such a smirch to taint my otherwise-perfect honor. So long as you are within this contract with my Nightflight, no one will dare to lay a finger on you."

  It sounded like the contracts I had grown up making with invisible sprites and the sorts of things I read about in the few fantasy books I'd read since. Besides; what did I have to lose? Without the Nightflight's help, I was going to have to kill the whelp or lose my job.

  At least this way I stood a chance of making my life normal again someday.

  "Fine," I said.

  The dragon's eyes shone in the dim light. "A bargain struck, then. Delightful. Meet me at my car when you finish your work for the day. Leave the whelp here. He needs nothing the first day after his hatch."

  I rose and left the office, hating every choice in my life for leading me to this moment in time. A deal with dragons. A whelp that loved me. My return to the sup
ernatural world? Rarin' to go.

  Great. Wonderful. Fucking perfect.

  Chapter 9

  Eskal

  My little witch left the office, smelling of fury and disappointment. It was a scent I cherished when I was in my usual office.

  Strangely enough, I did not enjoy smelling it on her.

  That would require some thought later on in the day, when I had time to reflect on myself and the senseless choices I sometimes made. I couldn't help how I felt, drawn toward a mortal witch that would die long before I needed to trim my talons again. My lip curled as I watched the whelp on the floor.

  It hissed at me.

  I had wanted this victory, this simple matter put to rest. Yet, it was hollow. It was a cold, dark thing that provided me none of my usual joy in conquering something new. I scuffed my foot at the whelp and watched as he scampered after his reflection in my shoes.

  "You are a tiny idiot," I told him. I glanced out the window to make of a certainty that no one was near me. Then I whispered to him, my tongue curling around each draconic syllable. "One day the world will bow before you, taken by the night in your honor. And the skies will be yours. The seas will be yours. All things of creation, now or to be, will be of your hoard or yours to take as you see fit."

  Dragons are born speaking the language, something I cannot say for the rest of my supernatural contemporaries. The werewolf puppies seem to learn relatively quickly compared to human children or unicorn foals. Yet we of scale and claw are the only ones born knowing what our mothers whisper in the night.

  It occurred to me that Olivia was his mother in all true rights. If she desired to keep him, I would have no legal way to debate it be it in my community or within her world.

  That irritated me. A dragon needed to be with his own kind. It was half the reason so many nest mates usually stayed together in this vile, threatening world. If the vast population of humanity knew we existed, they would hunt us down in moments. Bombs, nuclear warheads, or simply soldiers with armor-piercing rounds, would be more than enough to annihilate us.

  My shoe reared into the air but the whelp knew I posed no real threat. He shrieked, short and high-pitched, then tackled the leather and gnawed it with his tiny, razor-like teeth.

  I could only smile as I watched him, putting the thoughts of displeasing times behind me. My only disappointment was in that the dragon was red.

  Color, unlike in other species, had something to do with our alignment. Black dragons, such as myself, were always alphas. Blues ran the gamut, though they were typically betas. Reds? Alphas, again. The whelp would broker no deals for us other than if we offered him to Alashia, in which I had little interest. She had lost her first alpha to a bar room brawl several years ago, goading him into taking on a bet he never should have.

  It was why I had been so surprised to see my nest mate take on a phoenix. They were more than capable of wiping the floor with us, especially when motivated by something they wanted. Pride meant everything to the fire birds, though I doubted that our culture appeared to be any different to them.

  Nariti kept the humans from their office for the day at my request. I watched and toyed with the whelp, though he had no interest in the shredded meat I offered him from my sandwich. Instead, he attempted to set my tie on fire. Wonderful.

  As the day drew to a close, Olivia hung back from the other humans; I could see her through the window. When my eyes hadn't been on the whelp, they had been drawn to her. And as the sun fell lower toward the horizon, I watched as each individual left in their vehicle. When the last was gone and Olivia emerged from her own, I bundled the whelp into my arms and carried him down the steps.

  My flight surrounded me; their eyes wide. Iyadre held his arms out and I placed the whelp in them. He drew him close, his face filled with yearning. Slowly, the whelp was passed from one of my wingmates to another. Iyadre nuzzled him. Vadriq petted him as one might stroke a kitten. But it was Nariti who didn't want to let him go when I reached toward him.

  "He doesn't need to go back with her," he whispered.

  I touched the tip of my nose to his, trying to quiet his nerves. "He isn't. He's coming home with us. So is she. We reached a deal. I'll tell you about it when we get in. Let me have him."

  His eyes slid shut, his brows pinching together as he worked through the overwhelming emotion of holding a whelp. It was... a lot to handle, I admitted to myself. Few draconic omegas would allow their whelps, especially ones as young as the red in Nariti's arms, free range. That meant we'd only met a few hatchlings throughout the years; most of them our siblings.

  After a moment, he released the child into my arms. I cradled him against my chest, listening to his keens and hisses, and carried him off to my car. Olivia stood there, frowning at me. "Can I have the whelp back so he can eat?"

  "You found raw meat while here on the site?" I asked, opening the doors.

  She slid inside and pulled a zipping storage bag from her pocket, shaking it at the whelp. "The snack lady had some shredded sandwich meat that she wasn't going to be able to use. I asked her if she'd give it to me for a stray dog I found. She was happy to do it."

  "The woman must be a fan of the feed factory," I muttered, following her in.

  I plopped the bundle in her lap and started the car as she offered him a slice of the cheapest beef I had ever had the displeasure of seeing in my life. My lunch had been a shaved lamb sandwich with gouda. This looked as if it'd come from the slaughterhouse floor, or perhaps some of the trash Hudson put in his dog food. I had to look away as we merged into traffic, but I was glad for it.

  If nothing else, the boy would find better food in our home. He would learn to speak properly, to work intelligently. I was half to planning for his upper education when my driveway suddenly appeared in front of me. I went straight past it and cursed under my breath. Thankfully, my neighborhood was a quiet sort of place. No one bothered to think twice about my doing a three-point turn in the center of the street and zipping back into the drive.

  I pushed open my door and went toward the house, but paused when I didn't hear the other door open. I looked back to see Olivia frozen in the passenger seat, staring at the home in front of her with her jaw wide open. I looked at the house, then at her.

  Sometimes, one forgets to be impressed by the majesty of what they truly have.

  "If you continue to allow your mouth to fall open that way, you will catch flies like a frog," I told her.

  She slowly looked over at me. "Okay. You're a loaded dragon who wants me to play egg mother for him and it's all actually real. Like, sure, the whole egg hatching thing last night wasn't what convinced me. The big house is what convinces me. Great. That's just... that's just great."

  Olivia shook her head and pulled herself out of the car without another word. She followed me inside, clutching the whelp a bit more closely than she had in the car. However much he had eaten, it had been enough. His head rested against her arm; his eyes shut for the moment. When I had been that small...

  ...It had been so long ago. Most of my young life had been running with my nest mates, eating the bugs and lizards we could find, then terrorizing the other nesting omegas. I couldn't remember when or how much I had eaten, but surely it had been more than a tiny snack bag. Was the hatchling sick? I wanted to draw him from her arms and check him over, make certain that he was maintaining a proper body temperature to digest.

  My alpha instincts were kicking in and I shook them off like skin shed. I had to keep my cool while the whelp slept, else I would likely snatch him and coil him the moment he woke up, threatening anyone who dared try to touch my son.

  Fathering instincts are strong in male alphas, but I hadn't realized they would be as strong as this.

  God, I just wanted to eat him all up and kiss his little nose until he squeaked at me. I wanted to teach him to fly, to show him to hunt, to find him the perfect school-

  "Welcome to the house," Iyadre said, as if he owned it.

  He slid an
arm around Olivia's shoulders and showed her inside. I glowered behind him, then turned to head into the kitchen and get a beer from the fridge. If I was going to share the little witch with the others, I had best be tipsy enough to do it. I picked up the entire 6-pack case and carried it off toward the living room. "Bring her back in one piece. We need discussion over supper."

  Either he didn't hear me or he didn't care; odds were even it could be either when it came to him. I settled down on the couch and put my feet on my coffee table; who was going to stop me? Then I allowed one finger to become a claw, slid it beneath the bottle cap of the first bottle, and flicked the cap to the floor. You didn't need a bottle opener when you could become one.

  Halfway through my second beer, Iyadre returned. He was followed by Nariti, Vadriq, and an Olivia without her precious bundle. I stood immediately, lightning shooting up my spine. "Where is the whelp?"