That was indeed the name on her tag. But, that didn’t explain why there was a solitary dragon amongst Secur IT’s ranks. What was she doing here, on her own? Was she a mole, sent by yet another family of dragons hell bent on ruining their lives? He couldn’t begin to fathom what his family could have done to upset hers.
He was almost tempted to believe it was a kind of fate that had put them in that particular room at that particular time. His face hovered millimeters over hers. All he had to do was lean forward and he could have claimed her lush mouth with his own. Her dusky rose lips looked like they were begging to be bitten.
But, a shout pierced the air and Rhys was thrust back to the present. His head snapped up. People darted frantically toward the source of the shriek. It sunk in, why the sound felt so familiar.
Rhiannon.
Rhys darted from the room and raced toward the woman he should have been protecting.
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Chapter Two
Farida watched the man surge from the room. Finally, she could let go of the tension building in her limbs. A tingling feeling touched the tips of her fingers once she managed to relax.
She understood why he acted the way he did. Wales had been in an uproar lately, the country’s dragons tearing each other apart until both were in shambles. She was grateful that she wasn’t a part of that anymore. She was grateful that she was alone.
Turning her back on the other dragon’s distress call, she returned to the computer before her. Farida understood technology much better than dragon politics. Or, perhaps, she gave it much more attention, pretending the other didn’t exist anymore.
It wasn’t her problem, the red versus white dragon war. Yet, she couldn’t explain why she’d come on board when Secur IT was commissioned to set up the new Embassy’s tech. It was something she should have shied away from, considering the life she was trying to lead. Being dragged back into dragon politics was the last thing she wanted.
She guessed it may have been the red dragon’s attempt to become part of their community once more. This new Embassy, not the one that the white dragon leader tried to instill, but one that would truly look out for human dragon interactions in Wales, gave her a tingly sensation in her chest.
Dragons were not particularly loved where she came from, either. It was nothing that they ever did to her homeland. Instead, myth and lore had twisted their image in the minds of the people until the Egyptian gold dragons were seen as a kind of bad omen. When the people caught sight of a gold dragon it was whispered about for days while they waited for the sky to fall upon their heads.
She left that behind to forge new relationships with civilization. While hiding what she was helped, she also learned that there were few places in the world where people looked upon her kind with acceptance. Wales was definitely not one of them.
Not yet.
There was hope for the country and its ever so charming red dragons. Again, her mind turned toward the dragon that had barged into the office area and accused her of being a spy. His dark, dark red hair had been a mess of waves that fell in every and any direction and his broad shoulders had tapered into a neat and lean waist that begged for her to wrap her arms around it.
Farida became aware of another presence entering the office space. Instead of turning to peek, she took a deep draw of the air around her. She nearly coughed when the smell of perfume filled her nose and throat. All she could do was hold a hand up to her mouth and swallow the urge to gag as the presence sat itself on the edge of her desk.
A young, Welsh woman with a golden crown braid had perched her small rear on Farida’s current desk and stared down at the Egyptian, gold dragon with a menacing grin. Farida didn’t rise to the obvious challenge. Despite the flurry the dragon man left her mind in, Farida had a job to do. The room’s security system was not going to activate itself and she still had a roster of names to add to the clearance levels later.
“I can’t say I know what you and the dragon were talking about,” the young, Welsh woman said. “But, if I were you I’d keep away from that one.”
“Why?” Farida asked dryly, never taking her eyes from the screen of code before her. “Is he dangerous?”
The woman laughed, a tinkling sound that rained around them with sharp edges. This made Farida look up. The human woman, because only a human would wear that much perfume, had a predator’s grace about her.
“I mean, he is dangerous. He’s a dragon after all. No, I just wanted to warn you that the dragon you just spoke to is mine. He is my mate.”
Farida leaned back away from the human woman’s venom and tried sizing up the human. She was small, but dangerous in the way that an angry cat might be. All claws and needle-sharp teeth. “Congratulations. Do have a good day.”
Farida shouldn’t have cared. On the outside, she didn’t. She showed nothing, no hint of disappointment. But, on the inside, her beast wailed and thrashed so strongly it was hard to remain in her seat.
The human woman studied Farida for a long moment, silence falling like a weight on Farida’s shoulders. Eventually, the human woman seemed pleased with Farida’s feigned disinterest, because she hopped from her perch on the desk and sauntered out of the room with a cute sashay of her hips.
Farida tried to imagine the tiny, human woman laying with the dragon man that had just visited her. It was hard to see them together, but she guessed, opposites attract. Where he was tall and broad and protective, the human woman was small, dainty, and fiercely possessive.
She had never lain with a dragon and she found her mind wandering toward the possibility, despite the human woman’s claim on the dragon that drove Farida wild. While her fingers danced across the keyboard, her mind was imagining his square jaw in her hand and the smooth planes of his elegant nose hovering over her face.
Not that Farida would know what to do with him once they were alone. Sex was something to be saved for marriage, a way to get with child and further their family. It was not meant for the urges that danced through her, for the urges the quiet beast inside of her craved.
The beast would know what to do. It sent her images, two bodies entangled as one, and she felt her core grow warm and the space between her legs grow damp. Her cheeks warmed as her own scent rose to her nose.
He might be worthy of us, the beast hissed. He might burn brightly with us.
Or, Farida countered, he might burn us. He is, after all, already mated.
Pshaw, you fear too much. We could make him ours.
***
Rhys let the larger man tower over him, but didn’t back down. Gareth had always been a brute force, punching and growling his way through the world only because he could. On any normal day, Rhys would have let him vent his rage, but today, he was not having it.
“She could have been hurt!” Gareth growled into his cousin’s face. The larger man’s breath was hot, bearing a hint of his flame, as it washed over Rhys’s face.
In truth, Rhiannon hadn’t been attacked at all. Well, in a way she had been, but the attack had come from inside of her. The active child had kicked her in the ribs so hard that it managed to fracture the bone. Rhys still feared what kind of offspring they might produce.
Now, the witch was tending to a snarling Rhiannon as she leaned back on a couch and attempted to breathe. Their family had grown exponentially over the past months. It started with Wesley’s mate, the American girl, and had ended with the Witch of Caernarfon. The three women were all incredibly strong in their own way.
But, all Rhys could think about was his sister. A dragon that confined herself to her own bed. She refused to give in to her beast and change shapes so that they could see the condition of her dragon. She refused to do much more than linger around the house as an expressionless ghost.
And it drove him mad to be so useless while she appeared to be fading.
Rhys said nothing. He only stepped into Gareth’s space the same way the lumbering giant had only momen
ts ago.
“Your mate’s pain is your own damned fault,” Rhys said between clenched teeth.
He was prepared for Gareth’s fist when it came flying toward his face. He had enough time to dodge and take it to the shoulder, but not enough time to dart away from the man altogether. Gareth flung himself at Rhys. The two fell to the floor together, a tangle of growls and fists.
Gareth snarled, using his larger body to pin Rhys to the floor. Somewhere, Rhiannon shouted. She used her GOE voice, but neither dragon listened to her. Rhys aimed quick jabs at Gareth’s kidneys. The larger man winced, but rebounded with a blow to the cheek.
Rhys welcomed the pain. It was something. It was anything.
His body would heal. His soul was having a much harder time.
Heat filled his hands. It was his rage, his fear, his desperation concentrated to the wavering air surrounding his fists. Each blow sizzled through the air until Gareth landed one hard blow to Rhys’s head. The larger man used his knees to pin Rhys’s arms to the floor. The wood crackled and groaned beneath the heat.
“Enough!” a male voice shouted.
The two, grappling men froze. They didn’t separate, but their flurry of rage had ceased for the moment. Drystan stood over them, eyes practically glowering.
“Haven’t we had enough of this? Why are we fighting amongst ourselves? Are you not so honorable? I expected this behavior from Gareth, but Rhys?”
Rhys gave the man atop him a sharp elbow to the jaw before extracting himself from the fight. All of a sudden, Drystan’s power filled the room. It pressed down upon their bones, a reminder of his right to rule. Rhys and Gareth slumped to the floor under its weight. There they sat while they thought about what they’d done, like children put in time out.
That was until Rhiannon’s voice cut through the moment. “Put that shit away before I get off this couch and put it away for you.”
She was not talking to the two men on the floor. Their fighting had ceased when Drystan had thrown his power over the room. No, Rhiannon was talking to Drystan himself. When he turned toward her, Rhiannon’s face was a deep shade of red and there was a fine layer of sweat on her face.
On the floor, Gareth struggled against the weight of Drystan’s power. Rhiannon held their leader’s gaze, challenging him for everything he held.
“I can barely suck in a breath of air as it is. Stop whatever it is you’re doing before I damn well suffocate.” Her voice didn’t plead. It commanded.
At the pregnant woman’s growling command, Drystan reined in his power, his presence. It fled from the room like someone had thrown open a window and all it had taken was a fine breeze to blow away his magic. Rhiannon sucked in a haggard breath, the color of her face returning to something close to normal.
She turned her glare upon Gareth, not Rhys. Everyone knew that Gareth would have hell to pay later, when they retreated to their own home. None of the other new mates were quite as fierce as young Rhiannon, although Rhys suspected that each could hold their own against their dragon men.
Cameron appeared by Rhys, clapping a hand on his shoulder. His cousin, Gareth’s brother, had a near Occurrence melt down not long ago. Rhys suspected that Cameron understood the roiling emotions inside of him.
But, it wasn’t Cameron that pulled him aside. Drystan hooked a finger and pointed toward the door. Rhys was forced to extricate himself from his cousin’s presence and follow their leader. There would be a scolding just for him, as if he were a child.
Well, he had been acting very much like a child. It was his own fault, he guessed. He would take whatever punishment Drystan meted out and get on with his pathetic life. He would go back to watching his sister suffer, go back to being Rhiannon’s body guard while she attempted to make a difference in the world.
Once they were out in the open, not quite away from prying ears, but within the semblance of privacy, Drystan set both hands on Rhy’s shoulders. He hadn’t expected the gesture. In fact, when Drystan’s hands rose, Rhys flinched. He’d expected a quick and painful punishment.
“Do you think any of that is going to help your sister?” Drystan asked, his voice soft. His eyes, once hard and immovable, were now soft as they searched Rhys’s face.
The sudden gentleness of his leader’s voice made rage boil inside of him again. Rhys wrenched himself from his leader’s touch and turned burning eyes upon him. Nothing he could do would help his sister. She refused to let him.
Drystan sighed. There was a tiredness beneath his eyes that hadn’t been there before the white dragon war. It might seem like the red dragons had won, but everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rhys never once stopped to think of what that kind of suspense might do to the man holding them all together. Drystan was doing his best, too.
“I’m thinking of sending Liana to the States with the American dragons. When they go home, she will go with them as an ambassador to help further this Embassy.”
Rhys’s stomach dropped through the rocky ground beneath him. “Are you mad? How could you send her away from her family at a time like this? She’s not even half the woman she was before the ambush.”
Drystan shook his head. “Liana is still whole, even if the young dragon refuses to believe it so. She’s young. Younger than Rhiannon, even. This was her first defeat, as brutal as it may have been. This is a chance for growth if only she would allow it.
“I suspect that a change of scenery, a change of companions, might be exactly what she needs. The American dragons are… different. They play by a different set of rules, they enjoy life. What might the American say? YOLO, I believe. Liana might need some kind of adventure like that.”
That was putting it lightly, Rhys thought. The idea of sending his sister to another country with the rowdy family of American dragons made him highly uneasy. Would she be able to hold her own among them? Would she recover, or would the distance from her family make her retreat even further?
“I’m not willing to take that chance,” Rhys growled. He spun away from his leader, an insult that probably lowered his rank if his words hadn’t.
“That isn’t your choice to make.”
Drystan’s quiet, yet solid, voice hit him in the back of the head. He paused, but didn’t turn around. While Drystan said that he’d been thinking about this, he really meant that the decision had already been made. There was nothing Rhys could do to stop it.
He roared. He was useless. Pathetically and utterly useless. He couldn’t stop whatever storm was hiding just over the horizon. He couldn’t even stop his sister from falling apart. No, his leader had put that task on the shoulders of a foreign family. His fist struck the trunk of a nearby tree. Bark and wood exploded through the air. The tree groaned and leaned, ever so slightly.
It did nothing to appease his mood.
Punching things wouldn’t make the world right again.
Later, Rhys found himself lingering in a doorway. Ahead of him, floor to ceiling windows looked out over the beautiful Territory of Snowdonia. It was a view someone could get lost in for hours, carefully waiting for the rustle of leaves that told of tiny animals scattering through the forest.
The Witch of Caernarfon pushed herself up from the couch facing the windows and made her way toward Rhys. They both knew he was not the biggest fan of her, but she still sat by his sister’s side every day. She looked for some kind of physical crack inside of his sister, desperate to fix what she felt was her fault. Gwen was relentless, trying to atone for the mistake she’d made.
He thought it was her fault, too.
But, the Witch had been the one to scatter the white dragons to the wind. He couldn’t hate her for that fact alone. He could only wish that it hadn’t been his baby sister caught up in the madness. He wished he’d been there to protect her, as brazen as the young dragon had been. She still needed a shield, she still needed her brother.
And he hadn’t been there.
The Witch touched his shoulder, breaking him from the spiral of guilt and shame
that pulled him down. He resurfaced with a haggard gasp. The Witch turned sad eyes up to his and squeezed his shoulder before passing without a word.
She wasn’t an awful person, he reminded himself. In fact, she often left meals or treats in the kitchen after her visit.
With the Witch gone, Rhys moved to throw himself down on the couch. His head rolled to the side so that he could look at his sister. Her hair was pulled back into a frazzled braid, something the Witch must have done to keep Liana’s hair from getting too gnarled since the young dragon hadn’t even attempted to care for it herself. She was wrapped in a thick, Egyptian cotton bathrobe with her knees tucked under herself.
“What movie do you want to watch today?” Rhys asked, trying to insert some kind of jovial inflection to his voice.
Liana’s eyes rolled in his direction. There was half a smirk on her lips, a small quirk of her cheek that was a ghost of a smile. She had her good days, the days that she could put on a decent front and pretend that her soul wasn’t still crying. Then, there were the days that she stayed in the bathrobe and stared out at Snowdonia.
“How about an American classic? I have a hankering for some Ghostbusters.”
She let loose her breath in a puff of air. “That sounds fine.”
It was the best he was going to get out of her, so Rhys threw his legs off the couch and set about finding the DVD case in the mess that was their house. While Bill Murray made her laugh, Rhys wondered if Drystan had told her what he had planned. Did she know that their leader was sending her away like a broken appliance?
Rhys didn’t mention it. Instead, he let his head fall onto his sister’s shoulder and watched the movie with her.
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Chapter Three
Farida collapsed on her hotel bed. The room was paid up for the next month, a bill paid by Secur IT. They’d happily taken the hit when someone of her caliber had volunteered for this high profile assignment. She’d taken her time and worked up the ranks of the company, learning everything she could about technology in ways that she’d never thought accessible to her.
Fated Dragons Complete Series: Books 1 - 5 Page 31