by R. E. Butler
He opened the bedroom door, and they walked out together. Tosh could think of nothing that pleased him more than walking out of the bedroom with his mate by his side. He felt like he’d been alone for such a long time, and now he had Deci. Yesterday he’d taken flight from his balcony as a single male, and this morning he had his mate’s hand twined with his. He’d found happiness with the sexiest polar bear around.
They entered the kitchen, and Gen said, “Good morning, sire and mistress.” He bowed, and Deci smiled in awe.
Tosh said, “Gen, this is December Merricks. Sweetheart, this is Gen.”
Gen held the chair for Deci, and she sat down. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, mistress.”
Tosh took the seat at the head of the table with Deci on his right, as Gen bustled around the table and lifted domes from platters. When he’d poured coffee for both of them, he ducked from the kitchen, but Tosh knew he hadn’t gone far. He would want to be on hand in case he was needed.
“Do you always eat like this?” Deci asked.
He lifted a spoonful of fluffy scrambled eggs and put them on Deci’s plate, planning to fill hers first before he filled his. “For holidays and during nest meetings, but when it’s just me, I usually eat in my office.”
He filled her plate and set it down in front of her and then filled his own plate. Gen had made a wide array of breakfast items, including Tosh’s favorite strawberry crepes.
“Where am I supposed to get the gown for the ceremony?” Deci asked as she cut into a thick steak.
“There’s a traditional gown. Liu is organizing the females to help you get ready for tomorrow. I wish that my mother was alive or that I had some female relatives to tend to you,” Tosh said. “Would your angel friend help you?”
“I’m sure. She’s intrigued by things other supernatural creatures do since angels don’t get married to each other when they have their wings so they don’t have any sort of ceremonies. I’ll call her after breakfast.”
“You can have her come here tomorrow. We’ll both get ready here, sweetheart, but you can have the bedroom, and I’ll use one of the guest rooms on the first floor.”
When their meal was finished, Liu brought two females from the nest to meet Deci. They took her into the front room to talk about her gown and take her measurements. Tosh took the opportunity to meet with his guards about the changing situation.
After they congratulated him on his mating, Zixin said, “It’s wonderful you found your mate. It’s about time.”
He chuckled. “I wish I’d met her years ago.”
“I think that’s how it is with truemates,” Wei said as he leaned against the wall. “I’m sure the timing was perfect in its own way.”
Tosh leaned back in his chair and said, “I want Deci to have her own driver and guard. Whenever she leaves the house, if I can’t be with her, I want her to be well guarded.”
“As if we’d let the queen wander around without guards,” Lok said with a snort.
“We’ve been training with the nest warriors. There are many suitable males,” Wei said.
Zixin listed the names of the best warriors, and Tosh said, “Have Zhen and Tai report to me in an hour for assignment.”
Dai nodded. “They will serve her well.”
“Deci isn’t used to restrictions on her life. She’s been allowed to come and go, alone, as she pleased. It will probably take some time for her to get used to the way things will be from now on, but I know she’ll see the wisdom of ensuring she’s safe whenever she’s away from the nest.”
Zixin smirked. “I’m sure if she needs convincing that you can help with that.”
Tosh smiled. He was very sure of that as well.
Gen, always seeming to know when Tosh needed him, stepped into the room.
Tosh said, “I need to announce my mating to the elders. How are preparations for the ceremony going?”
“I’ll gather the elders immediately. The preparations are going very well, and everything will be completed on time,” he said.
Dai smiled. “Tomorrow at sunset you’ll be a mated male and king of the nest. It’s incredible to think that a hunting trip in our woods led you to your truemate.”
“Makes me want to go hunting right now,” Wei said.
“It was the best decision I ever made,” Tosh said.
* * *
Tosh headed to the meeting room with his guards. The elders had been gathered quickly and were waiting for him.
“I’ll get right to things,” Tosh said, as he stood at the head of the table and looked around at the eldest males in the nest. “Last night I found my truemate. Her name is December Merricks, and she’s a polar bear shifter.”
He met each elder’s gaze and saw nothing but happiness for him. Except for his uncle, whose gaze was hard and calculating, in spite of the smile on his face. Tosh glanced at Zixin who frowned and nodded once. Tosh knew that he would keep an eye on his uncle.
“We’ve already marked each other. Preparations are underway for the ceremony to be performed at sunset tomorrow night, in accordance with our laws. Quon and Bao, you’ll be handling the ceremonies.”
The males both nodded reverently.
Tosh dismissed them, but he wasn’t surprised when his uncle remained seated at the table, with the same inscrutable smile on his face.
“Uncle?”
He looked at Tosh slowly and said nothing for a long moment. “Congratulations, nephew.”
“Thank you. Is there something you need?”
Yuon stood, the chair scraping on the hardwood floor as he pushed away from the table. “Will your mate’s family be joining us?”
“They’re not able to travel at this time of year. Why?”
He spoke deliberately, as if he were carefully choosing each word. “I would like to offer to be her escort.”
“I appreciate the offer, but Deci and I have agreed that Gen will escort her.”
If he was disappointed, it didn’t show on his face. He bowed just slightly and said, “As you wish. If you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to.”
He disappeared from the room swiftly, and Tosh stared at the empty doorway, his brows drawn together in thought. He decided to be extra vigilant where his uncle was concerned. He hadn’t pressed Tosh for the honor of escorting the nest’s future queen during the ceremony, which on its own was troubling enough, and then he’d so easily switched gears to be accepting of a non-dragon as queen. Out of all the elders, his uncle should have been vocal about having a bear shifter take a prominent role in the nest, but he’d said nothing.
Shaking his head, he left the room and went to find his mate. She was sitting on the floor in the center of a ring of fabric swatches with three nest females – Liu, Meiling, and Jun. Jun was Dai’s sister and enjoyed studying the laws of their people.
Deci looked up and smiled brightly. “How did your meeting go?”
“Well. How are things going in here?”
“The ladies are taking great care of me. Did you know that Jun can recite the entire coronation and mating ceremony from memory? The vows for both are so beautiful.”
“It will be even more beautiful when we’re saying them to each other,” Tosh said.
Deci’s eyes darkened. “Careful. Those kinds of statements will only get you naked.”
He chuckled as the females blushed and tried to appear as if they hadn’t heard Deci. “I’m going to my office. Do you need anything, sweetheart?”
“Just you.”
“I’m yours when you’re done.”
She blew him a kiss, and he turned to go. As he walked away, Jun said with a loud whisper, “That was so romantic.”
“I’m very lucky,” Deci said.
So am I, he thought.
Chapter 7
Deci lifted two different swatches of green silk fabric. “How is it possible to make a gown by tomorrow at sunset?”
“Many of the nest females will be working on it,
” Jun said.
Deci liked the young dragon a lot. Jun had a habit of ducking her head in a way that made her hair fall over a part of her face that had been scarred, and she didn’t seem to spend much time looking anyone in the eye. Deci couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to have gone through life with a horrible scar on the side of her face. She wondered how it had happened, but decided to ask Tosh about it later instead of drawing more attention to Jun’s injury.
“That’s pretty cool,” Deci said. She rubbed the swatches between her thumbs and fingers, weighing the two different colors in her mind. One was dark green like pine needles, and the other was a more true green like spring grass. Deci happened to really love the color green; it was just her good fortune that her mate was a green dragon.
“Are there any odd colored dragons?” she asked.
Meiling’s head snapped up. “What do you mean by odd?”
“I mean like pink or purple, or maybe metallic like silver or bronze?”
Meiling smiled. “Baby dragons are pale-colored versions of their adult colors. A red dragon would be pink as a young one. There are metallic scales, from muted silver to shiny gold.”
“So no pink adult dragons? That would be neat.”
“Sorry, mistress,” Meiling said, shaking her head with a smile. “Did you pick a color?”
“I think the dark green.” Deci held it next to her mating tattoo; the fabric’s color was nearly a perfect match for the green of the tattoo.
“It’s lovely,” Liu said. “The gown will be spectacular.”
After handing over the swatch to Meiling, Deci offered to help them clean up, but the women shooed her away, and she took the opportunity to find Tosh in his office. Closing the door and leaning against it, she looked at her handsome mate as he spoke on the phone while seated behind a large oak desk that had a carving of a fierce-looking dragon on the front of it.
She moved to the desk and knelt on the floor, touching the carving and tracing the dragon’s wings, which were spread as if in flight.
“One of the elders carved this desk for my father,” Tosh said after ending the call.
“It’s beautiful and so intricate.”
“Come here, my mate,” Tosh said.
She stood and moved around the desk. Tosh pushed his chair away from the desk and pulled her into his lap. “How did things go with the females?”
“Really well. They’re so sweet. What happened to Jun’s face? I didn’t want to upset her by asking about the scar.”
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kissed her gently. “She wouldn’t have been upset if you’d asked about it. You’re the future queen – whatever you want to know is yours to know, especially about your people.”
She hummed. “I wouldn’t want to take advantage of my position in the nest by demanding people tell me intimate details of their lives.”
“You’re going to be a wonderful queen.”
She circled her arms around his neck and kissed his throat. “I have a great example.”
He settled back in the chair and rubbed her back lightly. “When she was a child, Jun was playing in the kitchen of her grandmother’s home. Her grandmother was canning vegetables for the storehouse, and something went wrong when she took the glasses out of the water bath. Two of them exploded, and a piece of glass cut Jun’s face. She was lucky she didn’t lose the vision in her eye.”
“Was her grandma hurt?”
“She was cut by the flying glass as well, but she was old enough to shift and heal herself. Our children can shift when they’re quite young, but their accelerated healing abilities don’t come along until they’re older, so she wasn’t able to heal her injuries.”
“That’s sad.”
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for her, sweetheart. She wouldn’t want you to pity something she can’t change about herself. Yes, it’s sad that she was hurt as a child and bears the scars of it, but that doesn’t mean we should treat her differently.”
“I promise I won’t.”
“She spends her time in the nest library. She’s our historian. If there’s anything you want or need to know about our laws or history, she’s the one to talk to.”
“I can’t ask you?” she teased.
A soft smile curved at the corner of his mouth. “You may ask me anything you like, my sweet polar bear.”
“If our kids can shift into dragons, they’ll be green, right? Because of your scales?”
He seemed to mull over that for a long moment. “Probably. Our young are the pale colors of the adult dragon’s colors. My scales were almost pastel green. I remember thinking as a youth that they wouldn’t ever darken, and I’d be doomed to be a color that would hardly strike fear into the hearts of our enemies.”
She giggled. “I personally think a full-grown dragon is fierce, no matter the color.”
“Still,” he said, brushing his thumb along her jaw, “the dark colors are more imposing.”
“It would be weird if the coloring got crossed – green bears and white dragons.”
“We would love them anyway,” he promised.
She looked at him, tracing the handsome features of his face. His eyes were deep green and full of affection; his lips curved in a smile that made her skin tingle. She liked him a great deal already, even though they’d only known each other a day. He was easy to like – funny and kind and sexy as hell – but her feelings were already running deeper than like and heading into love territory.
She kissed him, slipping her tongue past his parted lips and sliding her hands up into his hair. She fisted the soft strands and then gripped the back of the chair, levering herself up until she could straddle him. He kneaded her waist, slipping his hands up her sides in a slow caress.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said as he left her mouth and kissed down her neck.
“Oh? I thought we had the rest of our lives?” She unbuttoned his shirt, exposing the planes of his chest to her exploring fingers.
He chuckled in a masculine way. “We do, but in about twenty minutes several males from the nest are coming to speak with us.”
She hummed. “Then we’ll have to be fast.”
He snarled lightly and lifted her, laying her down on the desk. He pushed her shirt up until her bra was exposed and kissed the swells of her breasts, tugging on the center of the bra until her breasts popped free. He nipped the peaks of her breasts, kissing her nipples and sucking on them lightly before kissing down her stomach as his hands made fast work of their pants.
He tugged her jeans only down to her knees and shoved his own down until his cock was free, and then he gripped her legs and lifted them, planting them against his chest. He held her legs against his chest with one hand and used the other to guide himself into her depths. They both groaned as he slid easily into her wetness, her body already so wet for him.
His head fell back as he pressed into her, the angle of her body making her hug his length tighter. She reached over her head and gripped the edge of the desk, tilting her hips to take him even deeper. He growled and dropped his head to gaze at her, his eyes flashing brightly with desire.
“Fuck, Tosh,” she moaned.
“Mine,” he snarled, his thumb rubbing the top of her clit lightly as he eased out of her pussy and then thrust in. He increased the speed of his thumb on her clit, timing the swift rubbing of her tight bud with his thrusts into her. She was trapped against him, unable to do anything but take him. Letting go and letting him take her swiftly and powerfully was freeing in a way she hadn’t expected. She closed her eyes and just felt what they were doing. The way his thumb worked her clit, and how it felt when his body connected to hers again and again, and the soft vibration of the growl in his chest against her legs.
She opened her eyes and met his gaze as he pounded into her. His fangs were elongated in his pleasure, and the sight of him, lips parted and fangs gleaming as he hissed her name, made everything inside her draw tight. She reached for his hand, gr
iping his wrist and moving his hand slightly to the side until his thumb hit just the right place on her clit, and the swift movements threw her into a spiral of pleasure. She threw back her head and moaned loudly as her climax swept over her.
He stroked into her as he held her throbbing clit under his thumb, growling fiercely as he came, his cock thickening as the heat of his come spilled into her. Her whole body twitched as he pulled from her and eased her legs down. She sat up, her body protesting and her bear wanting to snuggle.
“They’re coming,” he said as he pulled her from the desk until she was standing and tugged up her jeans.
“Who?” She blinked, hazy with pleasure, her bear humming happily in her mind that their mate had loved them so well.
He chuckled. “The males I want you to meet. They’ll know we were making love, but I refuse to allow anyone to see you naked except me.”
She shook her head to clear her sexually hazed thoughts. “That was fun, but too short.”
“I’ll make it up to you later,” he promised as he pulled up his pants.
She tipped her face up to his and he kissed her, wrapping his arms around her.
“You’re precious to me, Deci. I’m so glad you’re mine.”
“Me too.”
There was a knock at the door. Tosh didn’t answer until he had kissed her thoroughly and made her knees weak. Then he sat down and pulled her into his lap and said, “Enter.”
Six males walked into the office. Tosh said, “Deci, these are nest guards – Zixin, Wei, Dai, and Lok. They’re my personal guards and close friends.” He gestured to the four largest males. “This is December Merricks, my mate and your future queen.”
The males bowed their heads in reverence.
“The other two males are Tai and Zhen. They’re your personal guards.”
The two males looked up at her. They were big males, muscular and broad with military-style haircuts. Tai had hair such a deep black color it was nearly blue, and Zhen had a streak of white on the side of his head, which seemed to cover a scar. She wondered if the scar had caused the hair to change color.