She took a step back, but he moved closer to her again.
Her stomach roiled.
“Move back,” she warned him.
“Last chance to do this the easy way,” he said, his lips curling back in a snarl. Icy vapor blew from his nostrils. “Let’s say my men and I have to drag you back by force right now. Assuming you even have dragonlings in you, who knows what would happen to them if I’m forced to get rough? They’re so fragile these days. Whereas if you come with me right now, and agree to be a willing and enthusiastic partner in my bed, I will ensure that you receive the best medical care, and once you deliver the dragonlings, if they are fire dragons, we’ll even return them to the Garrison clan.”
Never. “I mean it. Move back.” Cadence took a gulp of air.
“Hey, you heard her!” Darlene glared at him. “Lady with a baby. Leave her alone!”
“I’ve called Orion,” Gretel said, waving her cell phone at Humphrey. “He’s on his way, and he’s pissed.”
He ignored her. “If you are carrying ice dragons, we’ll keep them in my clan and you’ll be allowed to visit them. Of course, you’ll need to let me impregnate you again immediately, as soon as you’ve delivered.”
“I said get back!” Cadence yelled, and then it was too late. She leaned forward and emptied out her breakfast, vomiting all over his shoes. It splattered on his pants and suit.
“She said get back,” Gretel agreed as he leaped away from her, roaring with rage.
“You did that on purpose!” he shouted as the female dragons crowded around her protectively.
“No, you just genuinely made me puke.”
“See? It’s obvious she’s pregnant!” Laetitia snarled. “You’d better back off before I fry your face.”
“She’s an ice dragon!” he snapped at her, shaking with rage and disgust. “What do you care?”
Laetitia drew herself up to her full height. “She is carrying dragonlings. I will burn you to death if you attempt to take her with you.”
All the other dragons around her snarled their agreement.
Chapter Thirteen
The clinic was located on a mountaintop and built like a fortress. There were both fire and ice dragons guarding it, in equal numbers. When it came to protecting dragonlings, the dragons didn’t mess around. They couldn’t afford to. The future of dragonkind quite possibly lay within the clinic.
Cadence had spent the last five days lying low until she was far enough along to get an accurate test. She hadn’t left Orion’s castle the whole time.
She also hadn’t shared his bed. She’d told him that she was under too much stress to be with him until she at least knew whether she was expecting or not, but that wasn’t the truth. She was falling for him in a big way, craving him when she wasn’t with him – and she didn’t want to fall any harder. She might have to flee with her dragonlings and never see him again – and she wouldn’t even know for months.
She needed to distance herself now. If only she could. If only she didn’t crave Orion every minute that she was away from him.
She sighed and squirmed on the bed, and her paper gown rustled. Dr. Kowalski and the owner of the clinic, a research scientist named Dr. Andrew Hamill, were talking with each other in hushed tones as the ultrasound tech squirted jelly on her stomach, which definitely had a rounded swell to it now. Dr. Kowalski was short and had shiny black hair shot through with gray, pulled back in a bun. Dr. Hamill, a human, was tall and lean and had a goatee. Both wore white lab coats and gloves.
“The paper gown looks good on you,” Orion said solemnly. “I’ll have a dozen made for you when we get back to the castle.”
“You just like the easy access aspect of it.” Cadence managed a smile.
“No argument there.”
Dr. Kowalski walked over, grabbed the ultrasound wand with her gloved hands, and began moving it over Cadence’s stomach.
“The moment of truth,” Cadence said, and fear filled her. Orion squeezed her hand.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
She blinked and looked away. “I’ve missed you too.”
Then she looked at Dr. Kowalski anxiously. “Why are you staring like that? You look surprised. Good surprise? Bad surprise? Tell me!”
“You are one fertile myrtle,” Dr. Kowalski said, nodding at the screen.
“So…she has a dragonling?” Orion demanded eagerly.
“Four dragonlings,” Dr. Kowalski marveled. “All healthy and appropriately sized for this stage of development.”
Orion gripped Cadence’s hand tightly, and she blinked back hot tears of relief.
Then she hesitated. The equipment was very high tech; the screen was in color.
“Can you tell if they’re fire or ice yet?” she asked. Orion’s grip tightened. The answer meant everything.
Dr. Kowalski shook her head. “Odd thing. I see both red and blue scales on each of the eggs right now, and I have no idea what that means. I’ve never seen it before, but then all of my other couples are of the same type of dragon.”
“So…”
“We won’t know until they hatch,” she said. “You’re a very unusual lady.”
“Now, now,” Dr. Hamill quickly chided the doctor. “No need to be rude.”
“Sorry.” She looked chastened. “Anyway, we can safely remove them in about a month and place them in the incubator, which will greatly increase their chances of survival.”
Cadence and Orion exchanged nervous glances.
“And you are completely sure that they will be safe here,” Cadence said.
“We have an entire squadron of guards here, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We have state of the art video monitoring and security systems.”
“I would need my own men stationed here as well,” Orion said firmly. When Dr. Hamill started to protest, he said, “That’s not negotiable. We are paying you the equivalent of a gold mine for this, and you will do it my way. What’s more, once my hatchlings are safely delivered, I will be willing to contribute to your research – quite generously, in fact. I am willing to pay so that this technology becomes affordable to everyone.”
Dr. Hamill nodded eagerly. “I would be happy to discuss your investment,” he said.
“By the way, my own hatchlings are here waiting to mature,” Dr. Kowalski said. “Three of them.” She bit her lip. “I came here from Poland to help develop this technology. I lost four clutches of eggs, and I couldn’t bear to try again without knowing that they’d have a chance of survival.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Cadence said, putting her hand on the doctor’s. Dr. Kowalski pulled away quickly and avoided her gaze.
“At least we know it will never happen again,” she said.
She turned to go, then glanced back at them. “I will be sending my tech in to take some more blood from you,” she said to Cadence.
“She’s already donated so much,” Orion protested
“It’s completely safe, and it will help us to keep your dragonlings safe.” She turned and left the room abruptly.
“Weird bedside manner,” Cadence observed. “I’m nervous about this.”
“I am too, but I’m more nervous about the odds of our hatchlings’ survival without this. Phoebe is the last successful hatchling that my family has had; it’s been ten years. There’s nothing else like this clinic.”
“All right,” she said, worry twisting at her gut. The clinic’s success rates spoke for themselves, though, and the thought of losing her hatchlings was terrifying.
“Then he leaned over her to look right into her eyes. “Cadence, come back to my bed tonight. I know why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Do you?”
“I know what you’re planning.” He ran his thumb over her cheek. “You’ll run rather than let your children be taken from you. You’d fight to the death for them. So would I, and so would my family. If you give birth to a clutch of ice dragonlings, we will fight side by side to ensure that they stay w
ith us. Dragonlings are sacred to us – you must know that.”
“But…you’d all be homeless. You’d lose everything.”
“I have all my lawyers working on this. I’m also an attorney. This is all months away anyway. And if it comes to that, what good is all my gold and my riches if I don’t have my children? And in the meantime, I need you with me, Cadence. In the short time that you’ve been with me, you have come to mean everything to me. I need you by my side. In my bed. In my arms. I’m stronger when you’re with me.”
Tears flooded her eyes, and the gnawing loneliness that had eaten at her for the past few days finally abated. “You? You’re the strongest dragon I’ve ever seen.”
He leaned down, holding her hand, and kissed her tears away. Then he kissed her lips, firmly yet tenderly. “That’s a different kind of strength,” he murmured.
She reached up and hugged him to her. “I’ve missed you too. So much,” she whispered in his ear.
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nikolai asked, glancing over the edge of the cliff.
“It’s necessary,” Cynthia said firmly, shooting her son an annoyed glance.
“If anything goes wrong…” Nikolai’s brow creased in worry.
“It won’t. You’re my backup plan.”
“No pressure there,” Nikolai muttered.
Cadence was pacing around in front of the stony hut on top of the mountain, clenching and unclenching her hands. Her eggs had been removed a week earlier, and she was still a nervous wreck. The operation had been a complete success. There was a video feed at the hatchery, with a camera pointed right at the incubation chamber, and she had access to it via her laptop. She and Orion kept checking it again and again throughout the day. She’d gone to several festival planning meetings over the last couple of days, but taken the laptop with her. She was always accompanied by guards these days when she left the Garrison lands, at Orion’s insistence; he didn’t know what Humphrey might try next.
Finally, as soon as Orion left for a mine inspection, Cynthia had made her move. She’d sent Nikolai to tell her that Cynthia wanted to see her and had urgent business to discuss. Still, Cadence had refused to leave until he’d told her that it involved her eggs – a lie that had made him unhappy, but Cynthia had insisted that he get Cadence on top of that mountain, and his mother was a hard woman to say no to.
As Nikolai shifted and flew off, Cadence walked over to Cynthia. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“I hear that you’re running into a wall with your training.”
“I’m getting better,” Cadence said. “But I still can’t completely change form when I want to. What does this have to do with my hatchlings?”
“If you’re going to be the mother of my grandlings, you need to do better. You need to be able to fight to the death to defend your children.”
“You think I wouldn’t do that?” Cadence said indignantly.
“I think you’d be willing to die for them, but not necessarily able to defend them,” Cynthia said. “You need to get to the point where you can change quickly and on command, like the rest of us. Otherwise, you are weak, and that is a danger not just to you, but to Orion, to your children, to our entire clan.”
“Cynthia.” Cadence looked at her with exasperation. “I’ve had my relatives whack me with hard sticks. I’ve meditated, I’ve visualized, I’ve jumped off hillsides, sprained my ankles, limped back to my room covered in scrapes and bruises. There’s only so much I can do. I mean, it’s not like I’ve made no progress at all. I’ve gotten to the point where I can create a blizzard that covers a hundred square feet, and my icicle spears are pretty damn impressive, if I do say so myself.”
Cynthia arched one delicate eyebrow and looked down her nose at Cadence. “Icicle spears will work – against humans. They’ll bounce right off a dragon’s scales. They’re not going to cause harm unless you’re lucky enough to get one in the eyeball, or if its mouth is open but not blasting out flame.”
Cadence rolled her eyes. “I assume you had me flown up here for a reason. What else are you suggesting I can do?” she demanded.
“This.”
Cynthia crouched down, seized Cadence, and lifted her high. Then she hurled her off the cliff edge.
Within seconds, she shifted and dove after her.
Cadence was falling, falling, not shifting… Still in human form… She appeared to be completely limp…
Damnation.
Time for the backup plan
Nikolai was crouched on a crag below the cliff, and he shot out, his red scaly body twisting, his mighty wings beating as he raced to catch Cadence.
Then there was another flash of brilliant red as a female dragon shot out of the cliffside, and Cynthia’s heart stuttered in her mighty plated chest.
It was Viola. Viola, who’d been banished to the far side of the Garrison property, who’d been bitterly complaining about how poorly Orion had treated her.
She’d been hiding out in one of the mountainside’s many craggy folds. How long had she been waiting there? Possibly days, or weeks. Waiting because she knew that Orion loved to take Cadence up to the mountaintop.
Viola sent out a fire blast at Nikolai, and he disappeared in a ball of flame. Of course, flame couldn’t hurt him, but it disoriented him, and he slammed into the mountainside so hard that the mountain shuddered. Cynthia thought she heard a crack – had one of his wings broken? Yes. He started to plummet to the ground, madly flapping his one good wing. They were hundreds of feet in the air. A fall from this height could kill him.
Her son or the mother of her grandlings?
Cynthia had to make a split-second choice.
She dove after Cadence.
Panic seized her, and she flapped her wings frantically, but she knew she wasn’t going to make it. Cadence was falling too fast. She’d hit the ground and die; every bone in her body would shatter.
About fifty feet from the ground, Cadence’s human form vanished and there was a mighty white beast in its place, enormous leathery wings beating the air. Viola headed straight for her, and directed a stream of flame that Cadence barely dodged.
Cynthia changed course, diving after her son. She slid underneath him and supported his weight, slowing his fall. They both landed on the ground with a hard thud, and he rolled off Cynthia and staggered, disoriented and groaning.
His wing hung limply. He wouldn’t be able to fly for weeks.
He shook his mighty head and glared at Cynthia.
Cynthia hung her head and closed her eyes tightly. She’d screwed up really, really badly. She’d nearly killed her son and Cadence both.
Then she heard a whistling sound and saw Viola plummeting from the air.
Viola, covered in a thick coat of ice, her wings frozen solid, fell from hundreds of feet high and hit the ground so hard that Cynthia felt the vibration running through her feet. She lay shuddering and twitching in her death throes.
Cadence landed near Cynthia in the meadow and shifted into human form. She stalked up to Cynthia, who was also human again now. Nikolai was still in dragon form, shooting looks of pure rage at his mother.
“You idiot!” Cadence screamed, fists balled. “I fainted when you threw me off the cliff! How the hell am I going to shift if I’m unconscious?”
“Wait!” Cynthia wailed, holding up her hand. “I had a backup plan! There was me, and then there was Nikolai! So I had two backup plans.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work out so well, did it?” Cadence spat at her.
Before Cynthia could answer, Cadence hauled off and punched her in the nose. Pain exploded in Cynthia’s head as her nose shattered and blood flew everywhere.
“That is for throwing me off a damn cliff!” she yelled. “If you ever do anything like that to me again, I will freeze you into a giant corpsicle!”
Then she shifted into dragon form in mere seconds, lifted into the air, and flew back towards the castle.
�
��Worth it,” Cynthia muttered through the blood that dribbled down over her lips.
Nikolai let out a blast of flame in response that singed her hair and blackened a patch of grass.
When Orion got back that afternoon, everyone excitedly directed him to the south meadow – where he was greeted by the sight of an enormous, beautiful white dragon. The dragon had blue eyes blinking at him under white lids, and lay curled up waiting for him, tail wrapped around her body. The tip of her tail was spade-shaped, almost like a heart. She glittered like an ice sculpture in the sun.
She shifted into human form as he approached her.
“You are the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “By the way, my mother apparently broke her nose, and Nikolai is limping and his arm is in a sling. Do you happen to know anything about that?”
“Sounds like they’re pretty clumsy.” She smiled politely. “I took care of it.”
“You are an amazing, amazing woman. I’ve also addressed the issue. They’re both living next to the pigsty for a month, and will be cleaning the sty out every day. No, don’t argue, she could have killed you with that idiotic trick, and Nikolai should have called me up and warned me.”
“You could maybe just do it for a week,” Cadence said. “I’m furious too, but I can shift at will now. So there’s that.”
“You would have gotten there on your own,” Orion said, reaching out and taking her hand. “Shall we go fly together?”
Chapter Fifteen
It was thrilling to soar through the sky with Orion. Her wings sluiced the air as she hovered, beautiful silver-blue membranes like shot silk, holding her effortlessly aloft.
Orion swooped around her, his huge, horned head nuzzling against her flank, then dived and sped away in an airborne dragon version of kiss-chase.
She soared after him, enjoying the feel of the sunshine on her scales as she cut through the brisk air. The world was laid out beneath them like a map drawn on green velvet, spinning slowly and drawing closer as they circled towards the ground in broad, graceful arcs.
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