Guarded by the Dragon

by Sofia Stone

  Then he turned to face her and—shimmered.

  It was like the air above asphalt on a hot summer’s day, obscuring and shifting before her eyes.

  When it faded, there was . . . well . . . no way around it.

  There was a dragon there.

  Amelia tried to absorb what she was seeing: silver scales, yes; a reptilian snout, definitely; a set of wicked-looking claws and horns; and—it couldn’t be denied—a pair of extraordinary wings folded into its sides.

  That was a dragon, all right.

  It’s our fated mate, said the voice in her head with unmistakable pride.

  Gabriel was gone, she thought, and then frowned. No, that wasn’t right. Instinctively, she knew that Gabriel was right here.

  The enormous head swiveled toward her and suddenly she was faced with an eye almost the size of her head.

  A gray eye, with familiar swirling depths.

  “Gabriel,” she breathed, and reached out to touch him. “Oh!” she exclaimed, drawing her hand back a little before reaching out again. “You’re so warm.” When she rubbed her hand along one of his scales, the dragon gave a satisfied purr, just like a giant, overgrown cat. She jumped when she heard the sound, then laughed.

  “Okay, point made. You are, literally, a dragon,” Amelia said.

  The enormous head nodded, slow and ponderous. It was almost as though she could see Gabriel in there, looking amused.

  “Well, you did tell me,” she mused. “I just wasn’t listening. In my defense, it is pretty unbelievable.”

  In response, the dragon gave what was unmistakably a shrug. Who knew dragons shrugged? Amelia couldn’t control the grin that stole over her face.

  On instinct, she scratched over one enormous eyelid, which drooped in pleasure at her ministrations, before she remembered.

  "And . . . me?" Amelia's voice hitched. "I’m a dragon? I can do this, too?"

  It—he—nodded again.

  Then the air shimmered again, and his form changed, and Gabriel was standing in front of her once more, looking very much human.

  Amelia smiled uncertainly. “How do you do that?”

  "It's something all shifters learn when they're young," he explained, taking her hand between his. "You can do it to. Did you never transform as a child?"

  "I don't know. I don't have any memories of that, I think. But sometimes . . ." She hesitated, and he squeezed her hand in encouragement. "Sometimes I dream about it. Transforming, flying."

  He cocked his head to the side. "And do you talk to your dragon?"

  She was bewildered. “Do I talk to it?”

  “The voice inside your head. The animal. The dragon. She must be in there somewhere.”

  Oh. Oh.

  Told you, said the voice smugly.

  The voice of her dragon.

  “She’s there,” Amelia said, her voice pitching up uncontrollably. “I don’t really talk to her, no. She’s . . . I thought she was . . . well, I thought I was crazy. I just tried to ignore her. Oh my god, she’s real. When I was I kid I thought she was my imaginary friend, but she’s really, really real.”

  The hand not in Gabriel’s grip rose to clutch her own hair. The reality of it all was crashing down on her.

  “Speak to her,” Gabriel encouraged. “Let her out. When I’m out of the way,” he amended, backing up several strides.

  Amelia gave a nervous laugh. "So I just . . ." She closed her eyes, tilting her head to the side.

  Hello? she asked mentally, feeling like an idiot.

  Hello, replied the voice of her dragon. It sounded familiar, and yet it was brand new at the same time. Amelia had been listening to it her whole life, just thinking she had an overactive imagination.

  I’m Amelia, she thought.

  I know, her dragon replied, sounding unimpressed by this disclosure. Amelia had the impression of a tail flicking irritably.

  Oh. Well, it’s still nice to meet you, I guess?

  The dragon gave a discontented rumble. I’ve been here the whole time. It’s very lonely, you know.

  I’m sorry. Amelia paused. Do you want to come out?

  Yes! She sensed the dragon’s excitement; then came a wave of confusion. How?

  I don’t know, Amelia thought.

  “Amelia?” Gabriel’s voice broke into their conversation.

  Her eyes popped open. “We don’t know how,” she confessed. “How do you do it?”

  “I think of being a dragon—of flying, hoarding treasure, having wings and a tail, breathing fire . . . he’s a part of me, but he always wants to come out, too. In fact, he gets antsy and cooped up if it’s been more than a week or so.” He sounded puzzled by her dragon’s reluctance.

  Amelia closed her eyes again.

  A week! Try twenty-five years, sniffed her inner dragon.

  But even as Amelia thought about what her mate suggested, her form stayed stubbornly human-shaped. She opened her eyes and twisted her fingers together fretfully.

  “How am I supposed to transform at the confirmation ball if I don’t know how?” she asked.

  “We have all week to figure it out,” he soothed, closing the distance between them and taking her hand in his. “We will. I promise.”

  Chapter Eight: Gabriel

  G abriel squeezed Amelia’s elbow, trying to transmit the thought Everything’s going to be fine through his fingers. Frustrated, he wished he could do more. But since he was “on the clock” and their relationship was still a secret, that was the most comfort he could provide at the moment.

  They were meeting the King, Amelia’s uncle. He had requested the meeting before the Draconic Council would meet—right before. Gabriel checked his watch. The Council meeting was less than an hour away.

  One way or another, it would all be over tonight. No matter what happened, he thought, he and Amelia could finally make their relationship public.

  Just then, King Brandon arrived with his own bodyguard, Edric. They acknowledged each other with the barest of nods.

  Beside him, Amelia was practically vibrating with excitement and nerves. He heard her gasp softly when she laid eyes on her uncle.

  “He looks just like my father,” she said under her breath, sounding thunderstruck. “Or what I remember of him, anyway.”

  “He looks like you,” Gabriel whispered back. It was true; there was a major family resemblance. The King’s hair was a shade or two darker than Amelia’s, but otherwise they had many of the same features: the same long, slightly patrician nose, the same wide full mouth. It looked better on Amelia, Gabriel decided. He definitely wasn't biased.

  “You must be Amelia,” said the King with a smile.

  “Your Grace,” she said, dropping into a perfect curtsy.

  The King chuckled. “There’s no need to stand on formality. We’re family. I asked you here to meet you as your uncle, not your king.”

  Amelia’s smile was like a blossoming flower turning toward the sun. “It’s nice to meet you . . . Uncle Brandon.”

  “You look just like Noel—your father. It’s like looking into the past.”

  Amelia gave a slightly watery laugh. “Same here.”

  “Come, let’s have a private chat.” The King gestured for Gabriel and Edric to stay back.

  They disappeared together. When they were alone, Edric clapped him on the shoulder. There were faint circles under his eyes and he looked grim. He had disappeared almost as soon as the plane touched the ground in Zavinia, taken away by his own personal quest.

  “How did it go? Did you find anything?” Gabriel asked.

  Edric shook his head with restrained, barely visible frustration. “Nothing. Again.”

  “You’ll find something one of these days,” Gabriel tried to reassure him. “You didn’t come from nowhere.”

  His friend blew out a breath that was half-sigh, half-laugh. “I sometimes wonder about that, honestly.”

  Edric was a griffin shifter—and as far as they knew, the last of his kind. Gabriel had never
met one before or since, and it was well known that the last griffin shifter enclave in Europe had disappeared almost a hundred years before.

  That didn’t stop people from reporting sightings of griffins. Every time one came in, Edric investigated it, wanting to find evidence of his family, evidence of where he’d come from. And every time, the search turned up nothing but lions and dragons and eagles.

  Out of respect for his friend, Gabriel never voiced what he sometimes thought, which was that Edric might be the sole survivor of some catastrophic event, although he thought Edric suspected it too. But his friend never gave up in his relentless search.

  “How’s it going with Amelia?”

  “She’s doing well. We’ve had to finish everything in a hurry, but she’s as well-prepared as she’s going to be.” Except for the shifting—they hadn’t figured that out yet. And truthfully it worried Gabriel more than anything else.

  “That’s not really what I meant.”

  Gabriel’s pulse picked up. Edric’s keen eyes rarely missed a detail. “What do you mean?”

  The shadow of a smirk appeared on his friend’s face. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Very quietly, Gabriel said, “She’s my mate.”

  There was a silent beat. “Wow,” Edric said finally. “I’m happy for you.” His words were sincere, but he didn’t look quite happy. It wasn’t his own fault. Edric had confessed to him once that he thought he would never find his own mate since he was the last of his kind.

  “How’s that going to work, though?” Edric asked. “With you two.”

  Gabriel took a deep breath. “If we can just get through the next few weeks . . . we’ll find out.”

  Edric whistled. “Well, good luck.”

  Gabriel was about to say something else about Amelia, but Willas was approaching them. He was another member of the team, a wyvern shifter Gabriel had found in America and recruited after his daughter Trees, also a wyvern shifter, accidentally poisoned a classmate. His black hair and vivid green eyes stood out starkly against his pale skin, an intimation of his deadly, venomous wyvern form. Willas had been part of the team for almost five years years, but the fewer people knew about Amelia, especially he and Amelia being mates, the better.

  “Lise and Trees told me about your trouble back home,” Willas began. He wasn’t really a man of many pleasantries; serious, sharp, and a little surly, he always got straight to the point. “If I’d known where they were going and that they were in danger, I might not have allowed them to go.”

  “They’re both adults,” Gabriel pointed out mildly, though the implied criticism rankled. “It wasn’t really your choice. They knew what they were doing.”

  Willas snorted. “Just wait until you have kids. You’ll figure out a thing or two. Did you figure anything out? What happened?”

  “No,” Gabriel admitted reluctantly. “We didn’t figure out for sure who the assassin was working for, and we still don’t know how they found out where we were.”

  “Do you think there could have been a leak?” Willas’s emerald eyes studied him closely.

  “We don’t know. I’d like to think everyone who was in on it is loyal.”

  “I kept my ears open, and so far as anyone here knew, she was in the countryside taking a break the whole time. Including me. While my daughters were both in potentially life-threatening danger half a world away. You should have told me.”

  Gabriel ignored that last part. “Then again, it’s not easy to pack up a queen and her entourage, swear them to secrecy, and leave the country without anyone noticing. It could just be as simple as that.”

  “True,” Edric said, and Willas lifted his eyebrows skeptically but didn’t say anything, which was as good as a surrender coming from him.

  “I have a question,” Gabriel said. He had had to think through how to put it so that he wouldn’t give anything away, so that it seemed like a random thought that had popped into his head. But he was also acutely aware of time running out. “Have either of you ever known of a shifter who couldn’t shift?”

  “Why?” asked Willas first.

  Gabriel shrugged as casually as he could. “No real reason. I’ve heard of it before, and you’ve both traveled far and wide . . . you’ve probably seen everything.”

  Willas smirked a little, as if he wasn’t deceived by this flattery. “Well, you know about Lise’s situation, although I don’t know if it’s exactly like what you’re talking about. It’s not that she can’t transform—it’s just dangerous for her to do so. Can’t think of anything else, though.”

  Gabriel nodded, as if that was the kind of answer he was looking for. Then he turned to Edric. “What about you? You didn’t grow up with any of your kind. How did you even learn to shift in the first place?” Before Amelia, it had never occurred to him that it might be a problem.

  Edric looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, so I assume it wasn’t ever a problem. And even though I didn’t grow up with griffins, I still grew up knowing shifters. It’s just innate, I guess.”

  Gabriel pretended that the answer didn’t really matter, but he was disappointed nonetheless. If the council accepted Amelia as heir, she would have to shift in front of the whole country—one week from now. Any information or ideas would have been helpful.

  We still have time, Gabriel told himself.

  Unlike himself, his dragon was curiously nonchalant about the matter. She is a true dragon, he reminded Gabriel, sounding almost scolding. She will come out when she is ready. And it will be a magnificent sight when she finally does . . .

  Willas nodded at them. “I have some things to take care of. I’ll see you both later.”

  When he was gone, Edric turned to him and murmured, “Is that guy ever going to become likable? He can’t stop looking like he just swallowed a lemon.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Oh, come on. He’s all right.” Willas wasn’t exactly the biggest people-person, but Gabriel knew firsthand how much he loved his daughters and would do anything to protect them—the look in his eye when he was with his kids was by far the most warmth he’d ever seen from the man.

  When Amelia emerged a few minutes later, she was smiling radiantly, but her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Oh, no, I’m fine,” she assured him in response to his concerned look. She wiped her eyes with the back of her knuckles, being careful not to smudge her meticulous makeup. “We talked about my dad. What he was like when he was young. Brandon says he wrote letters when he first got married to my mom . . . and some of them are about me. He wants me to have them.”

  Gabriel wanted to do more than just squeeze her shoulder, but they were in the King’s presence, and he hesitated.

  “Oh, just kiss the girl,” said the King, catching Gabriel’s eye flickering toward his royal personage warily. “She told me everything.”

  Permission granted, Gabriel tipped his mate’s chin up and kissed her lightly on the lips. It was a soft kiss, almost chaste, but he put all his love and care for his mate into it, hoping those feelings would come through loud and clear to her.

  “Wow,” she breathed when he leaned back, letting his fingers drift over her cheek. “Um, so that was a tonal shift.” She glanced around at their little motley crew, looking a little dazed. Edric and the King were both looking away politely, pretending as though they hadn’t seen anything. “What were we doing again?”

  “Making you a princess,” the King said, recalling them to their purpose. His tone was serious again, every inch the statesman.

  “Oh. Right.” Amelia grinned, then bobbed another curtsey. “Lead the way, Your Majesty.”

  * * *

  Even though they were just personal bodyguards, Gabriel and Edric were allowed into the Council’s primary chamber for the meeting—by order of the King. Normally that wasn’t the done thing, but the King spoke eloquently about recent dangers to his own life and the lives of those he loved.

  The chamber it
self was enormous and lavishly appointed, marble and silk and gold everywhere. The ceilings were higher than any cathedral’s, adding to the sense of solemnity and grandeur, and in the middle of the room was a large, circular table made of dragon-stone that stretched down the hall.

  And yet, at the same time, it felt somehow empty. Zavinia had once had many dragon families representing the country, council seats numbering in the dozens. But over the years those numbers had dwindled.

  Not every child born to dragons was a dragon themselves, and prejudices about illegitimacy meant that a seat couldn’t be taken by someone who wasn’t from a noble bloodline. The result was that lines of aristocratic nobility died out, even though there were as many dragon shifters in the world as there ever were, perhaps more.

  Gabriel needed to look no further than the council table itself to see evidence of that: where it once sat near a hundred, the current dozen or so council members occupied only one small portion of the table. His father’s seat, of course, was empty.

  The meeting was opened with all due pomp. Gabriel tuned it out, for the most part. His attention was focused on the nobles seated at the table.

  Specifically, Henri Martin. He was Gabriel’s main suspect in the attempt on Amelia’s life. A distant cousin of Amelia’s, he was stood to inherit the throne . . . if Amelia didn’t get in his way.

  Gabriel watched him closely, intent on divining everything he could with his dragon’s advanced senses about Henri’s guilt or innocence. The sunglasses Gabriel wore constantly as a bodyguard allowed him to look anywhere he wanted without anybody knowing he was doing it.

  Henri looked as smug as he ever did, with an easy smirk and the air of someone who didn’t need to take anything seriously. It was a look that always made Gabriel grind his teeth. For the first time, he noticed a little family resemblance—Henri had the same smattering of freckles across his nose that Amelia and the King did, though the similarities ended there. Henri was blond, brown-eyed, and a little weedy.

  He didn’t seem surprised by Amelia’s presence, Gabriel noted. That was a mark against him. Gabriel’s blood boiled at the idea that Henri had so casually paid an assassin to kill his mate. His fists tightened at his side as he fought back the urge to walk over to Henri and sucker punch him straight in the nose.