Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Rosemary reached for her daughter’s hand, pressing it hard. “Then it’s serious with Ronan.”

  “Yes,” Natasha admitted. “It is. But even if it wasn’t, I think it’s just time, Mom. It’s time that I stop hiding here in this house with all of my family, pretending that I can still be that little girl who’s protected because her mommy and daddy are nearby. I need to get a place of my own and an office to work from and a little bit of my life back. It’s time.”

  “Yo!”

  Their serious conversation was interrupted by the dark head of one of her twin brothers poking his head through the doorframe on the way to his own room.

  “Heard you went to Ireland, sis. That’s mega.”

  Natasha rolled her eyes. Her brothers were only four years younger than her, but they still acted like they were in college and their mutual gaming hobby did nothing to alleviate that. “Thanks, Jeff. It was very mega.”

  “Yeah, I heard you went with a guy,” Jeff said, leaning up against the door. “Anyone I need to know about?”

  “A very nice man,” Natasha said. “You would like him. But until I have something I can blackmail him with, I’m not introducing him to you and Jordan, because I don’t want him to be able to just walk away and leave me.”

  Jeff chuckled. “Yeah, right on. Hey, Mom—”

  “Jeff, your sister and I are having a conversation,” Rosemary said, demonstrating a rare moment of authority and foresight. “Can this wait?”

  “Oh yeah, sure,” Jeff said, pushing away from the doorframe. “Girl talk. Got it.”

  Her brother walked away, and Natasha looked at her mother gratefully. “Thanks.”

  “Sweetie,” Rosemary said, patting the back of Natasha’s hand. “This is your house. If you’re ready to be on your own again and start fresh, then you should. But it’s your father and brothers and I who will leave. Not you. You bought this house with the money from your own business, and we’re proud of you for it.”

  Natasha felt a surge of affection for her mother and hugged her close, a rarity between them given that they were such different people. “Mom, I love that you just said that. But I want you guys to keep the house.” She sat back to look at her mother’s pretty face. “Money isn’t an issue for me. People pay me a good rate to do what I do, and I’m happy to keep this house here for you guys to live in so that you can all still be together and close to me. I’m just …going to get an apartment. And I think you should know that.”

  “You’re not going to move in with Ronan?”

  The truth was, she and Ronan hadn’t talked about such things. She did want to leave open the possibility of living with Ronan once everything had settled, but she also felt like she needed to take this step for herself first and live alone—even if just for a little while. “Ronan can move in with me if he wants to, when we get to that place,” Natasha said, although she knew that she and Ronan would have to discuss that. “But I have to do this first. You’re not hurt, right?”

  Rosemary smiled and patted Natasha’s cheek. “Not at all, my little love. Not at all. But I am concerned about you doing this at the same time that you deliver divorce papers to that no-good, pond scum, deadbeat, woman-beating, devil’s spawn you married. If he tries to come after you and you’re alone—”

  “Then I’ll handle him,” Natasha said quietly. “Like I should have done a long time ago.”

  “You’re stronger suddenly,” Rosemary observed, scanning Natasha’s face with knowing eyes. “There’s a piece of you that has settled into place. It’s him, isn’t it? The naked man from the backyard. He’s very cute.”

  Natasha couldn’t help but laugh, remembering her parents staring at Ronan as he lay naked in the grass of their backyard. “He’s very cute,” she agreed. Then, more seriously, “And yes, it’s him. It’s him because he gives me confidence and strength I didn’t know I had. And he gives me something to work for. He and I have already been through a lot together, Mom. I know it’s fast, but it’s not rash.”

  “I do like him,” Rosemary said, getting up off the bed. “Listen, you get some rest, okay? I will make the calls to find you a lawyer, and then I’ll go with you to meet with her. All right?”

  There were so many days when Rosemary’s wild ways and total lack of boundaries got on Natasha’s last nerve, but there were also so many moments like this when her mother was exactly the person she needed in her life to keep her grounded and to help her when she was nervous. Natasha knew that she could find a lawyer herself, but her mother had been to hell and back with her because of Matthew, and she was glad that they were going to take this next step together.

  “Thank you, Mom,” Natasha said, getting up and hugging her mother close.

  “I love you, sweetie,” Rosemary said. “I’ll kill that boy if I have to. Either one of them. Anyone who tries to hurt you. Because I don’t care what you say—you can feel pain. We all can.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ronan

  “We found him,” Ronan said, looking up from his computer, his hand smacking against the desk. “I’ve got Josiah Webb. Venice Beach address, just outside of LA. Age matches up. Photo isn’t good quality, but it’s him. I’ve got him, and he’s right in the area of the LA branch. Yes!”

  Standing up, Ronan pounded his fist on the table in celebration. The pain of the contact shot up through his arm, his body still weaker and more sensitive than he wanted to admit. After he had made love to Natasha the second time, he had become far sicker than any time before, and she’d had to devote far too much energy and time to healing him. He still wasn’t himself, but he was functional. And he was focused and determined. Ireland had rejuvenated him, and there was nothing that was going to stop him from getting what he wanted now that he had Natasha to inspire him.

  “That’s more energy than I’ve seen from you in a while,” Eamon observed from his spot at the conference table, looking up from his own computer screen. They were all gathered in the large room together, each of them working on some component of the mission they now all shared—to track down Josiah Webb, remove the threat from Ronan and potentially Abigail, and figure out how to do what Gabrielle Connolly had said about making their desire to breed with humans their intention and then their reality.

  It felt good, Ronan realized, that they were all working together, and he regretted his decision to try to keep his friends, who were really his family, out of the loop on something that was so important. He hadn’t been protecting them, even if that had been his intention. They were a team, and a good leader never left his team in the dark.

  “You realize that he’s probably watching us,” Moira said, glancing around the room. “This Josiah guy. If he’s dead and he’s enjoying the curse that he’s put on you, Ronan, that means that he’s keeping tabs on you from the other side. So he knows what we’re doing.”

  “Let him know,” Ronan said, shrugging a shoulder. He looked upward. “Hey, Josiah, fuck you! You might make me feel like shit, but you’re not going to stop me. Be a real man and come tell me what your problem is with me, huh?”

  They all were silent for a moment, then glanced at each other. Ronan was the first to smile, acknowledging the ridiculousness of his tactic.

  “Guess he’s not a real man,” Siobhan said. “Could have told you that one. Back to what we were doing—someone tell me, again, why we needed to find him. He’s dead. He’s not going to be in Venice Beach. He’s in his personal version of hell, wherever that is and whatever that looks like.”

  “Because we needed to confirm that there was a Josiah Webb in that area,” Ronan told her. “Because of what I saw in my dream—him talking to Abigail. And because I’m sure we can find people he was linked to who might just be able to tell us who this guy really is, because more and more—I’m thinking he’s not a medium. I think he’s a warlock of some kind. One who is now on the other side but has somehow taken measures to make sure that he can still interact with this side in some ways.”

  Ke
an leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the table as he pushed his laptop out of the way. “So, right now, our best conception of this is that he’s Abigail’s stooge? Is that what we’re thinking? It’s actually the LA branch of the Dragon Clan who is behind this whole thing? Because that’s a big deal, you guys. There’s never been a clash like that between branches—ever.”

  “We don’t know yet,” Ronan said, holding up his hands. “We don’t know for sure what Abigail was saying to Josiah. And even if she was giving him instructions, she might not have been doing it with the support of her branch of the clan. We just don’t know. All we do know is that I contacted Josiah for help in speaking with our ancestors, and that I told him why I wanted to speak to them. He crossed me, I went after him, and he put a curse on me right before he died. And we know that he knew Abigail. Everything else is conjecture right now.”

  “I don’t know,” Moira said, shrugging a shoulder. “Sounds to me like Abigail got wind that she was going to get the boot and decided to put a stop to it. I mean, it has to have been her who told Josiah to go after your…manhood.” She pointed a finger at Ronan’s crotch. “Making you sick every time you have sex? That’s such a woman thing to do.”

  “Hear, hear,” Siobhan said, reaching across the table to high five Moira. “I wish I had thought of that, actually.”

  Ronan rolled his eyes at both of them, but more in amusement than frustration. “Regardless of your theories about women’s tendencies—we won’t know anything for sure until we actually make contact with the LA branch. I know Michael. I’ve talked with him before. He seems like a good guy, although I don’t know him that well. I’ll reach out to—”

  “Holy hell.” Kean interrupted Ronan, looking at his computer screen again. “Ho-ly hell. Look at this.” He spun the screen around, but Ronan was too far away to see and had to walk closer.

  He’d only taken a few steps when his blood ran cold, the headline the exact one that was always a fear in the back of every Dragon Clan member’s mind.

  Boston Citizen Reports Suspicious Sighting. Dragons in 2018 New England?

  “Fuck,” Ronan whispered, sinking down into a chair that was closer to Kean’s computer and scanning the article. It was more sensational than factual, but it reported that three women had been out for an early morning jog in the park when they looked above them and swore that they had seen large, dark shapes flying above them—shapes that looked a lot like dragons.

  There was only one picture to accompany the article, clearly taken with the phone of one of the women. It was grainy, the early morning grayness and overcast sky creating some amount of cover for the creatures high above. But Ronan knew what he was looking at. Others might have their doubts, but he knew.

  Those were dragons in the sky. In the picture. Printed in the newspaper. In his hometown, where his clan lived and worked and had their homes and families. Dragons, who did not belong to his clan, had come to town and had gotten picked up by the news immediately. The only reason for that was that they’d intended to be seen, and that, more than anything, meant war. It was worse than any curse that had been put on him, because it messed with the long-term safety and happiness of his people.

  Everyone was crowded around him, all staring at the same article in stunned silence. Ronan spoke first, his voice thick with rage.

  “I think that answers one or two of our questions. I would bet my life that those Dragons are from the LA branch, and I don’t know why they’re here, but I don’t like it. If it was for anything friendly, they would have notified me ahead of time.”

  Siobhan sat down heavily in one of the chairs, her face grim. “Shit. You think they’re actually here to try to take us on? We’ve never had a branch conflict before.”

  “Not in the past one hundred fifty years since we all left Ireland,” Ronan agreed, rubbing a hand along his jaw as he tried to figure out the best way to handle this news. There was no way to know where the LA branch would be staying. Having made their one dragon showing, they would be in their human forms, blending into Boston life as well as anyone else did. And they surely wouldn’t be using their own names. They would want to approach the Boston clan on their own terms.

  Ronan pulled out his phone and called Charlotte, whose number he had kept after she had been such a help in Ireland. Her voice was tired when she answered the phone, and he felt badly, knowing that she would still be recovering from jetlag after such a whirlwind trip. But it was the only way that he knew how to get the drop on the LA clan before they got one on him. “Charlotte, I’m sorry to wake you up. But I need to talk to my grandmother again. Can you help me?”

  “Now?” She asked, surprised. “I thought you weren’t going to be contacting the dead again for a while …”

  “Now,” he confirmed. “I know it’s inconvenient. I’ll pay you whatever makes it worth it though. We have a situation here.”

  “No …”Charlotte said, the word abbreviated by a yawn. “No, it’s okay. I can be there in an hour.”

  “Charlotte, you’re amazing.”

  “You’re Natasha’s guy. Anything for you.”

  He thanked her again and hung up, looking around the room at the expectant faces of his friends. “If Josiah can watch us from the other side, maybe Nana can too. And if she can, chances are she knows where they’re staying.”

  “And what if Josiah comes through the channel again?” Eamon asked. “Like he did when you tried to talk to the ancestors.”

  “Then we’ll roll with that,” Ronan said, lifting a shoulder. “Can’t protect against all the potential situations. But if he does come through, I’ll try to use that to my advantage. The thing is, last time I talked to her, there was no sign of him. I don’t know how much he can see and know. The truth is, I don’t know how any of that works. But it’s a risk we’re going to have to take, unless anyone has two or three days’ worth of time to sit and stalk out the LA clan’s fake names at their hotels.”

  Moira raised her hand, and when Ronan looked at her, he realized that her face was shock-white—even more so than usual. She hadn’t said a word since they had seen the article, and by the look on her face, there was something horribly wrong.

  “What?” he asked her, standing up to move toward her chair. “Moira? Are you all right?”

  “Oh my God,” Moira whispered, lowering her face into her hands. “I don’t think we need your Nana, Ronan. I think the person we need to talk to if we want to find the LA branch …is my dad.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Natasha

  “So you’re saying that Moira’s dad called the LA branch of the Dragon Clan and told them what you were doing here?” Natasha asked, sitting in Ronan’s office, perched on his lap as she performed a quick healing ritual to help him maintain his strength. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because Liam hates the thought of breaking away from the arranged marriages and allowing each person to choose their own mate for love,” Ronan said, his head leaned back and his eyes closed as he talked to her in a quiet, tired voice. There was so much exhaustion in him, sapping at his strength. “He’s furious that I’m even considering it, and he wants it stopped. I didn’t think he wanted it stopped so much that he would actually go behind my back and contact them.”

  Natasha lifted her hand to his face, rubbing his temples lightly as she infused healing power through his skin. “So he thought that if he told them what you were doing, they would talk you out of it?”

  “Seems like it,” Ronan said, opening his eyes to look at her. “Liam’s own marriage was a very unhappy one. He gave up true love to follow duty and marry the person who he was supposed to be with, and because he had to make that sacrifice, he can’t accept the fact that now people might not have to.”

  “But why wouldn’t he want to spare his daughter the pain that he went through?” Natasha asked, not understanding. “It has to be awful to be part of an arranged marriage. Why would he want that?”

  “It’s not awful,”
Ronan corrected, his tone gentle. “It’s the way we’ve always done things, and most couples find that they are happy in the long run. They always have at least one thing in common—their commitment to the clan. That can take them a long way. But …you’re right. It would be better if people were able to have the choice. Liam, though, is bitter. Since he couldn’t have it, he doesn’t want anyone else to either because it would mean that they’re not holding themselves to the same rigor of dedication that he did.”

  Natasha scrunched her nose. “He sounds …nice.”

  “He always has been nice,” Ronan said. “But he’s gotten confused. And now he’s potentially caused a war between clan branches and that …that I can’t let slide.”

  “No,” she agreed. “You can’t. God, what a position that puts you in. How does Moira feel about this? Which side is she on?”

  Ronan sat up straighter, lifting her off his lap and setting her on his desk. “I’m feeling better,” he said, when she looked at him quizzically. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” Natasha told him. “You always seem to think that healing you taxes me. It doesn’t.”

  “It never does?”

  “It can,” she admitted. “When there’s something really bad to heal. Like the other night, in Ireland. That was hard on my body. But this, here, just the two of us, maintaining the effects of the curse—no. That doesn’t hurt me.” Standing up off his desk, she took a step toward him, but didn’t get too close. “Ronan, what’s wrong? You said you feel better, but you look like you don’t.”

  “It’s Moira,” he said, going to stand by his window and looking out at the drizzly day. “This thing with her father is going to crush her. She’s so loyal. So dedicated. And it’s been so hard on her that her father doesn’t approve of her choice with Grady. She tries not to let it show, but it eats away at her. They were close once, and this has really hurt their relationship. I don’t know if it will ever recover from this, but she’ll choose the clan over him. She’ll choose me and my leadership over him. I hate that I’m asking her to do that.”