Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  The plan for the ceremony went out the window. Dhara handed her flowers over to Moira, then ran to her soon-to-be-husband, throwing her arms around him as he met her halfway and picked her up off the ground. He kissed her soundly, and Natasha couldn’t help but applaud as the couple spun around, too caught up in their own joy to care what the agenda for the day was. The others joined her in her applause, and there was laughing and crying and confusion before the ceremony even began.

  But eventually, the two did stand before Ronan, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, and Natasha held her breath as she listened to the vow that Ronan gave them to make to each other.

  He spoke to Dhara first, giving her the same vow that Natasha, herself, would soon take.

  “Today,” Ronan said to Dhara, “You are taking on the mantle of the Dragon Clan. You are now a member of us, and we are a member of you. It is not just Kean you are marrying, but the clan. You are a mother of the clan, and you will mate with Kean and only Kean for the whole of your life. You will bear his child …or children. And they will be part of our clan as well. You are taking Kean as your mate. Your partner. Your lover. Your husband. And he is taking you as the same. You are his mate. His partner. His lover. His wife. Do you make this promise and take this responsibility?”

  “I do,” Dhara whispered, and Natasha felt a surge of emotion and power within her own body. The change in the air was tangible, and though nothing visible happened, she knew that Dhara was forever changed. It made her long to do the same—to become part of what she loved so much now.

  “And Kean,” Ronan said, turning to his friend and brother. “Do you make this same promise and take this same responsibility?”

  “I do,” Kean said, and the crack in his voice made Natasha’s heart flip over in her chest. “I do.”

  “Then you may speak to each other now, freely,” Ronan said.

  Natasha felt the tears stream down her face as Dhara and Kean exchanged their own personal words of love. Words that spoke to the journey they had both taken and the road they were now on together. They cried as they spoke, and never looked away from each other, and Natasha couldn’t help but stare at Ronan as he stared back at her.

  Soon it would be them saying these words, and she had never been more ready for anything in her life. Ronan was her perfect match. Her soulmate. Her truest love. And the way he loved her back made her heart feel protected and cherished every day.

  I love you, Ronan mouthed, emotion evident all over his expression.

  She pressed her hand to her heart, feeling the most incredible ache there. I love you, she mouthed back to him. Always.

  Still looking at her, Ronan pronounced Dhara a member of the Dragon Clan and Kean and Dhara mates for life, and then Kean was kissing Dhara and Natasha was running into Ronan’s arms as he swept her up and held her close, beaming with the joy she shared. “You and me,” he whispered to her. “You and me, baby. We’re next.”

  “I can’t wait,” she said, hugging him around the neck, her forehead pressed to his. “I can’t wait for forever with you.”

  Epilogue

  Ronan

  “There are too many pregnant women in here!” Ronan said, walking through Siobhan and Julian’s front room, carrying one of the two dishes that he and Natasha had prepared to bring to the Christmas potluck. “And watch out—there’s about to be another one.”

  “Hey,” Natasha said, laughing as she walked in behind him, carrying the second dish. “Is that all I am to you now? A pregnant woman.”

  “Well, it does stand out,” Ronan teased, taking the dish from her and carrying it on into the kitchen so she could take a seat on the couch. His beautiful wife—he still loved calling her that even though it had been almost a year—was eight months pregnant, and he liked to keep her off her feet as much as possible. He also loved to tease her, but only because she made it so fun with her own sense of humor.

  Siobhan looked up as Ronan walked in to set down the dishes, grinning at him as she rested a hand on her own swollen stomach. She, herself, was six months pregnant, and glowing just like Natasha. “Hey there. Late again. I’ve noticed that you’re often late since you’ve been married …I wonder why.”

  He chuckled, rolling his eyes at her as he set the dishes down then dropped a kiss on her head. “Hey, I get distracted by my beautiful wife. I think Julian can relate.”

  “He’d better be able to,” Siobhan laughed, opening the oven and reaching inside to bring out the enormous turkey she must have been cooking all day. “He’s in the front room with everyone else. Go hang out with them. I’m almost done in here.”

  “You don’t need any help?”

  “Go, go,” Siobhan said, ushering him out. “You’ll only get in my way.”

  Ronan laughed and held his hands up in surrender as he walked back into the living room and perched on the arm of his wife’s chair, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Everyone was already talking, which gave him the perfect opportunity to survey the people who were his fellow shifters, family members, and closest friends. Dhara sat in the rocking chair, her little boy nestled against her breast, fast asleep. She had gotten pregnant within weeks of her wedding to Kean, and they had welcomed the first baby into the clan. Little Bryan was doted upon by all, and Moira and Grady, who had married next, had little Sophia, who was just a few weeks old now. Moira was standing by the window, bouncing her baby lightly and gazing down into her face with such love that it made Ronan’s heart happy.

  After the disaster of the year before, Moira had struggled the most. They had all had things to process in the aftermath of such much chaos, but it was Moira who had lost her father in all of it. Liam Brennan had left Boston and no one had heard from him since. He’d never apologized. Never made things right with Moira. And never truly blessed her marriage to Grady, the man who loved her beyond reason.

  Ronan held bitterness toward Liam for that more than anything that had happened with the LA clan branch. But as he looked at Moira’s face now, more than a year after the fact, he knew that she was happy and in love and had people in her life who would never betray her the way her father had. She must have felt his eyes on her, because she looked up at him and smiled.

  “Wait!” Rachel’s high-pitched voice broke through the din of general conversation, and Ronan turned to look at Eamon’s seven-year-old stepdaughter, who was struggling with her big sister, Anna, over the book she wanted to read. They all loved to come to Siobhan’s house, where there were plenty of children’s books to pore over, but Rachel was going through a stage where sharing was not her strong suit. “It’s my turn to read the Cinderella one!”

  Eamon got up instinctively, leaving Autumn in her seat on the couch, and went over to the girls, mediating the brief conflict with a loving but firm voice. The quiet, stoic man had taken to fatherhood better than Ronan could ever have imagined, and those two girls loved him like he was their biological father. In every way but the technical, he was now. Autumn had not fallen pregnant yet, but Eamon had confided to Ronan that they were purposefully waiting. They wanted to make sure that the girls didn’t feel in any way threatened or replaced by the small baby they would eventually bring into their house, and Ronan understood why. Anna and Rachel were well-loved by the entire clan, but they were not shifters, and Eamon and Autumn had a potentially treacherous road ahead as they tried to make sure that their daughters never felt slighted.

  “Honey…”

  Natasha’s voice immediately brought Ronan out of his thoughtful reverie and all his attention focused on her. “What’s wrong? A contraction? Did your water break? Are you not feeling well?”

  Natasha laughed, squeezing his hand. “Could I have some water?”

  “Oh.” He chuckled too, kissing her head. “Sorry. I’m overprotective already.”

  “And I love you for it,” she told him as he got up and strode back into the kitchen to get her a drink.

  Ronan put ice in a glass and looked over at Siobhan, six m
onths pregnant and hard at work even still. “Hey, you’re taking it easy enough, right?”

  She gave him a look, shaking her head. “Of course not. This is my way though. I hate to be still—you know that.”

  “Okay, but people could be helping you,” Ronan pointed out. “Let me just give Natasha this water, and I’ll be right back.”

  “Ronan?”

  He stopped at the sound of his friend’s voice, knowing that she had something important to say. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Siobhan said quickly. And then she crossed to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

  Shocked, Ronna put the glass of water down and hugged her tightly. “Siobhan, you’re freaking me out. What is it?”

  “Thank you,” she said earnestly. “Thank you for giving this a chance. For fighting for us. For smoothing things over with Sean and Benjamin and even Fischer. Thank you for just…being the leader that you are. We’d be lost without you.”

  Her words touched him deeply, but they also shocked him. Siobhan wasn’t one for sincere expressions of emotion, and the fact that she was clinging to him now, saying these things, put him at a loss for words. “Siobhan…”

  “Shut up,” she said, pulling away from him and swiping at her eyes. “My hormones are all over the place. I’m a wreck. Ignore me.”

  “I will not,” he said, taking her arm and making her look at him again. “I love that you said what you said, and it means a lot to me. You know that I would do anything for any of you, and I haven’t always made the right choices in life, but somehow we all ended up here. And that’s because of you and all the rest of the people out in your living room, waiting to eat Christmas dinner at your house, as much as it’s because of me.”

  She hugged him again, lighter this time. “Yeah, yeah. I’m just saying. Thanks.”

  He laughed, knowing that she was at the end of her emotional capacity for the moment. So he socked her lightly on the shoulder. “Anytime, kid.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m the boss.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He laughed and tugged her hair, then went back out to his wife, delivering her drink with a kiss along with it. She accepted both, smiling up at him, then going back to her conversation with Julian, who shared Natasha’s new love of all things food.

  Ronan continued to observe his family, and everywhere his eyes landed, he saw life, love, and happiness. They had come a long way together in the last year, and at Christmas next year there would be more presents around the tree and lots of little babies to clap their hands when the lights were strung on the tree.

  It wasn’t a perfect world. They still had cases to solve and conflicts to resolve and, as the older generation passed away, there would be grief to share.

  But it was a good world.

  No, it was a great world. And an even greater future, for all of them.