Draven smelled like fire, like a whiff of burnt ozone, and I discovered I loved it, the scent of him coiling through me.
At the touch of our lips, the fire inside me exploded, the magic wrapping itself in and around and through the two of us at every point of contact, slamming out of me and into him, then back again. My head swam with it as we cried out into each other’s mouths, the sound echoing between the two of us alone.
When it was over, we leaned our foreheads together, panting.
After a long moment, Draven reached up and ran his hands over his beautiful, bald head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I think so.” His voice was shaking, and his hands trembled, but he held my gaze steadily. “Let’s go take back your throne.”
“I agree. Let’s do it.”
But first, I had one more guardsman to kiss.
That didn’t happen until the next morning, though. We were all busy pretending that everything was perfectly normal when Lanzo came up behind me in the field to adjust the hand motions I was making for a spell I couldn’t yet cast.
Realizing the other two had left already, I found myself leaning back into him.
He nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck. “You have a thing about only kissing inside?” he asked.
I shook my head “Not at all.”
“I think we’re all pretty sure you’re not going to cast this spell before you and I get together.” He put his hands on my hips and leaned his face into my neck. “So I say we drop this whole practicing farce.”
Lanzo’s words, spoken directly against my skin, made me want to race to his room. I loved it that all my guardsmen were so direct.
I breathed deeply as I curled into him, my forehead against his chest, my head tucked under his chin.
He smelled like sunshine, like a hot summer day.
Maybe all dragon shifters carried a scent of heat with them. My three certainly did.
My three.
I couldn’t stand the thought that one day I would have to choose among my three guardsmen—just like my mother had chosen before me, and her mother before her.
I would have to walk away from two of the men I was currently binding to me.
“Are you ready?” I asked. “The magic will make sure that you’re not just a guardsman, but that you’re my guardsman.”
I half-expected my comment to cool the heat between us, but even the slight frisson of anxiety I felt when he put his fingers under my chin and tilted my face toward his only served to heighten the anticipation that shuddered up my spine.
“I think,” he whispered, his lips bare centimeters from mine, “that I might be discovering I’m a masochist.”
I grinned, and I felt my words flutter against his skin. “I don’t think it’ll hurt.”
“Let’s find out.”
With a last shiver, I captured his mouth with my own, pulling him tight against me. He moaned deep in his throat and opened his lips to me. Our tongues tangled, tiny sparks of electricity flying between us, and I was right—it didn’t hurt.
It felt glorious.
As I stretched up to wrap my arms around his neck, I murmured against his lips, “Oh, gods. You are so warm.”
My hands fluttered up and down his chest as I dove into his mouth, this kiss as different from the ones I’d shared with Rayce and Draven as it was possible to be.
Still, as with those kisses, power flowed between us, rolling through our bodies, back and forth, reaching into all the spaces I would have thought already filled.
I didn’t understand how every time, this energy exchange was like nothing I had ever experienced before, even though it was similar to what had happened with the other two men.
And gods, I wanted more.
After the magic had filled me, I pulled away to gaze at him. His eyes burned into me. The force of the connection between us smoldered in that gaze. And when he ran his fingers up my arms, the fire of his touch threatened to steam away every bit of me. But then the blaze steadied, the power sliding back and forth, finding a balance.
“I don’t want to wait any longer,” I whispered.
“Then don’t,” he rasped.
I shook my head. “We have to. For now.” And then I kissed him again.
Magic coursed through both our bodies, running through me like blood in my veins, and also connecting me to Lanzo.
Someday, I might have to give him up. But for now, he was entirely mine.
The thought frightened me.
But it also made me feel strong.
“So,” said the third dragon shifter to whom I had tied myself when he finally pulled away from our kiss. “You ready to go take down a dragonkin king?” He paused. “After we get something to eat.”
Instead, though, we went straight to practicing magic.
I was disappointed that nothing magical happened—at least not out in the field. But that afternoon, I finally—finally—completed a partial shift.
That meant I had my wings and could fly, even if I couldn’t yet completely shift into my full dragon form or use dragonfire.
But it was a start. And at this point, I was willing to take any wins I could.
Chapter Ten
The next morning, trying not to make any noise, I slipped out onto the front porch of the farmhouse.
I loved having the early mornings to myself. And I planned to use them to continue practicing my shifting.
After I’d shown the guardsmen what I could do, Rayce had made me promise not to fly beyond the confines of the field. In fact, he’d set a whole slew of parameters to try to keep me safe.
That was fine with me. I was absolutely willing to stay safe while I practiced. Sometimes I wondered if I would have been quite so compliant if my guardsmen had found me when I was younger.
Or if anyone but Rayce had been the alpha.
It really was lucky for all of us that they’d found me when they had.
My mind turned again to the fact that I would eventually have to give two of my guardsmen up. I thought about that fact more often than I liked, wishing I didn’t have to accept it.
Wishing we could simply keep living as we were—the four of us together.
They hadn’t shown any signs of the kind of jealousy I would have expected from human males. They were a unit, and they shared a common goal: protecting me.
And we were all focused on helping me become worthy of being a dragonsrealm queen.
I had no idea how I would choose among them when the time came.
In fact, the mere thought of it worried me so much that I hadn’t even been able to begin opening my heart to any of them.
I cared about them, sure. And I was certain I could love them—any of them. All of them. And that made my heart ache in anticipation of losing all but one of them.
But…
I stopped in the middle of the practice field, hit by a thought.
Why choose?
Why should we have to change a relationship that was working for us? Why should I be required to give any of my guardsmen up?
The tradition required the queen to choose one of her guardsmen—or someone, anyway—as her consort. And then she was supposed to be with only that consort.
So what?
Right?
Or was that even the correct question at all?
Was this practice somehow encoded into dragonsrealm law? Or was it merely a tradition?
I thought back to the conversations I’d had about it.
Tradition was the word that Rayce had used. And he was generally precise in his choice of language. So much so that I’d gotten tired of him being persnickety about words when he was teaching me dragonsrealm protocol.
And although traditions were powerful—perhaps even more so among dragon shifters than among most humans—they were not immutable law.
Traditions can be changed.
Doing so didn’t even require any kind of royal proclamation. Not technically.
A s
low smile spread across my face. I would have to discuss with Rayce what the reasoning was behind the tradition was. He always seemed to know that stuff.
But I didn’t want to know so I could decide whether or not to change the tradition. I was determined to change it. I wanted to know so we could come up with reasonable explanations for flouting the conventions.
The easiest explanation will be that I didn’t grow up in the dragonsrealm, so I do things a little differently from the queens who came before me.
I headed back toward the house, moving slowly so I could gather my thoughts before I approached my guardsmen with my new plan.
Of course, anyone who had spent any time among humans would know that growing up among them would have made me even less likely than your average dragon shifter to accept a relationship involving four men and one woman.
Still, there had to be a way around it.
I wasn’t going to give up my connections to my Queen’s Guard.
I wasn’t going to choose just one of them.
I was going to choose all of them.
I was dashing toward the house, laughing aloud, when the sky above me split open with a crack like thunder, and two giant, silver dragons burst into being right in front of me.
Chapter Eleven
I was already running toward the house, so I put on another burst of speed.
My instincts told me to shift, to take off into the air, but both the dragons in front of me were in their full dragon form. I had no idea how to do that—and even less idea how to combat it when they did it.
So instead, I screamed, calling out for my guardsmen.
They burst from the farmhouse door already half shifted, leaping into the air and completing their changes.
They’d been so busy trying to help me figure out how to access my dragon form that this was the first time I’d seen their dragon shapes.
They were glorious.
As dragons from the same clan, as Smoaks, they shared clan markings—a circle surrounding a flame with a single curlicue rising up from it, imprinted on their wings as infants—a little like tattoos. But more than that, they shared the same family coloring.
No matter how different their human forms were from one another, in their dragon shapes, there was no denying that these three were related.
At first glance, their scales were a shimmery black, like velvet—but when they caught the rays of the rising sun, those scales turned blue and purple and silver.
And even in their dragon forms, I would never mistake one of them for anyone else. Their relative sizes were the same—Draven the largest, Rayce the smallest—as were their attitudes. Rayce was clearly the leader, taking point as the three of them arrowed toward the attacking dragons.
There was something wrong, though.
Something about the two dragons attacking my Queen’s Guard.
Two.
Oh, hell.
Dragon squadrons always included at least three dragons.
At the same moment I realized it, I saw Rayce twist around to fly on his back, scanning the sky for the third dragon.
Of course. Rayce knows what he’s doing. That’s why he’s the leader.
I had barely enough time to register a sigh of relief when the third dragon burst out of the dragonsrealm, virtually on top of Rayce.
The new dragon was enormous, at least as big as Draven, and horrific scars crisscrossed his wings, remnants of battles long past.
The dragon inhaled an enormous breath and used his wings to stall his flight. He hovered in the air for just a second, long enough to blow an enormous plume of fire toward Rayce.
My heart practically stopped, but the instant Rayce saw the dragon, he began moving into a twist and a dive, managing to escape the bulk of the flames being shot his direction.
But not all of them.
One single flame lashed out farther than the rest, striking the very center of Rayce’s left wing.
When the fire hit Rayce, I felt it.
It was as if the fire had lanced through my own skin. When Rayce screamed, so did I.
As he tumbled toward the ground, I reached the porch and stumbled, falling to my knees.
In that moment, time seemed to slow down. For the first time, I truly understood the bonds between a Dragon Queen and her Queen’s Guard.
And I was not about to let these interlopers win, these guardsmen of the usurper who had stolen everything from me, including my parents, my childhood protector, my very future.
“No!” I shouted, forcing myself to stand again. When I righted myself, so did Rayce.
I checked on my other two guardsmen. Draven and Lanzo were locked in battle with the other two dragons but were not otherwise in any immediate danger.
It was as if my body knew what to do. Even though I’d never done it before. Even though I’d never even considered what I was about to do.
As I inhaled, I pulled in all the power of my Queen’s Guard. Rayce’s calm deliberation, Draven’s enormous grace and strength, Lanzo’s magic and cunning.
Raising my arms above my head, I let my wings unfurl behind me. Taking all the power I had gained from my guardsmen, I rolled it up into a single, swirling ball in my chest and then expelled it from me in one giant exhale.
But what came out of me wasn’t dragonfire.
It was air.
Air that I’d laced with more magic than any one dragon should have been able to contain.
Instead of burning their skin with fire, this blast burned the dragons’ souls with magic.
With what sounded like a single cry that echoed across at least two realms, the attacking dragons fell to the ground, then shrank into their human forms, left writhing on the ground.
I wasn’t done. I wanted them to disintegrate, to melt into the ground. To disappear forever. I strode toward them as they cowered from me.
“You should fear me,” I announced, my voice deep and heavy with the magic I controlled. “You—and all like you—will bow before me.”
I circled my hand above my head, gathering my magic to me to strike at them again, only to be stopped by someone grabbing my arm.
I spun around, prepared to incinerate whoever dared touch me—until I realized it was Rayce in his human form, with his burned arm held in tightly against his side.
He’d grabbed me with his other hand but doing so was clearly causing him pain. As was looking at me. He blinked, turning his face from what I suddenly realized was a bright white light emanating from me.
I reached out one hand and cupped his cheek with it, letting the magic within me flow into him, healing his arm and soothing his pain.
As I did so, the light I was emitting dimmed, and I came back to myself.
“You okay now?” Rayce asked.
I nodded. “You?”
“Much better.”
But I was still angry when I turned back to face our attackers.
Luckily, my response had made enough of an impression on them that they didn’t attempt any moves against any of us. I didn’t know if I could replicate what I’d just done, but I was glad I wasn’t going to have to.
The three men cowering on the ground stared at me with enormous eyes.
“You have two choices,” I announced. “You can either swear your fealty to me as your rightful queen, or I can send your head back to Nico as a warning that I am coming back to retake my kingdom.”
I paused, raising my hand above my head.
“Which will it be?”
Chapter Twelve
“You’re a Dragon of Air,” Lanzo said in tones of disbelief. “I thought those were a myth.”
“That explains why we weren’t able to teach you to use your dragonfire,” Rayce said. “You don’t have any.”
“And edged weapons will never be your forte,” Draven added. “In your human form, you’ll do better with bows and arrows. Any kind of ranged weapons, really.”
“Your magic skills are going to be off the charts, though.” Lanzo gazed
at me proudly.
“Guys,” I said. “I’m still me. Nothing’s really changed.”
From where he stood on the porch behind us, Carsten said, “That’s not true. Everything has changed.” He was the latest addition to my unit of guardsmen, the one dragon sent to attack us who had chosen to join us. In the end, the other two had decided not to swear loyalty to me.
I wished that I had made different threats when I was in the throes of the air magic.
But one of the things that Fenwick had impressed upon me over and over again was that a queen had to follow through whenever she made a promise or threat.
I had sworn to send their heads to Nico as a warning.
So that was what had done—behead them.
I wouldn’t let any of my guardsmen do it for me, either.
I didn’t have any scruples about using my magic to complete the grisly task, though.
Rayce brought the men to kneel before me. I called the magic to me and forged a blade of air, cold and sharp and biting. And then I gritted my teeth and struck the two dragons as quickly as I could.
It was a fast death, at least.
Rayce had reached out to some potential allies, and they had agreed to deliver the gruesome message for us.
“We’re definitely at war now,” he observed mildly as we stood on the porch and watched his contacts disappear from the human realm into dragonsrealm.
I looped my arm through his and rested my head on his shoulder. “Then we will simply have to find a way to win.”
My other two guardsmen stepped up behind us. Carsten watched us warily—eventually, I’d have to see if I could bind him to me, too.
We would have to move soon to take the dragonsrealm from Nico.
But for now, I simply breathed in everything my three guardsmen offered—their devotion, their loyalty, their strength.
Even something that might eventually become love.
For all of us.
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About the Author
USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)
Falling for Shifters: A Limited Edition Autumn Shifters Collection Page 13