Margaret jerked back as struck. She blinked, blinked until her eyes returned to normal again. “Where are the eggs?”
Goosebumps raced up Ashlyn’s arms. “What eggs?”
“The ones you’re hiding from me. You understand how important it is to keep the last of the dragon bloodlines protected. When a dragon breeds with another dragon, those bloodlines stay strong. Humans dilute those bloodlines. Like yourself, their offspring lose their ability to shift and shorten their lifespan. It is why the ancient ones created the laws forbidding the union between a dragon and its human rider. Tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” That cold in her belly snaked through her veins until she no longer itched.
“Emily I could overlook. I blame it on myself. A mistake I don’t intend to allow to happen again. Cassandra is smart, she’ll protect the investments I’ve entrusted with her. But you, dear Ash, I saved, and this is how you repay me?”
“I have been a good and faithful servant to you, Mistress of the Dragon Keepers. If we had eggs here, you’d know about it.” Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she feared it would burst.
“You’re a furious and loyal one, Ash, which is why I know you’ll have no problem going to Emily and bringing the golden dragon’s fiú back to me.”
“No. I can’t. I wouldn’t.” Ashlyn stared at the elder woman, aghast. Take a baby from its mother, biological or no? She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. “We are not called to protect the dragons, are we? It is all about control. It’s always been about gaining control of the dragons. You don’t control me. You have no place to call yourself a Keeper.”
“Careful, you sound like your foster mother, Laurel, and I would hate to see something happen to you as it did my sister.” Margaret advanced, her hand reached out, fingers extending to claws.
“Don’t you dare touch her.” Dr. Kovak’s voice boomed out of the tunnel behind Margaret.
Ashlyn froze. From the corner of her eye, she caught another figure stepping out of the shadows.
Sigurd.
Chapter Seventeen
Ready to shift back into his dragon form at any moment, Sigurd stepped out of the shadows behind Ash.
Margaret whirled around at the sound of Dr. Kovak’s voice. “Or what? Laurel isn’t here to protect you anymore, Istvan.”
“Nor is she here to protect you.” Dr. Kovak marched up to Margaret, he stood nose to nose with the tall woman. “You forget the secrets this place holds. You have no domain here. Leave. And leave my children at peace.”
Margaret arched a brow, her arm prickled with silver scales. “It sounds like you’re threatening me, Istvan. I wouldn’t advise it.”
Sigurd stepped up beside Ash, put his hand on her arm. She glanced at him and he tugged her back. He inhaled, not sulfur and hibiscus that he suspected now came from Margaret. No, his mate smelled of jasmine and heated earth and he rubbed his hand down her arm. Her flesh peeled away in splotches revealing her dragon skin beneath.
He covered his hand over the spot. Ashlyn frowned at her foster father and Margaret arguing.
“Careful Margie, girl, your scales are starting to show.” Dr. Kovak crossed his arms. He wore his tweed jacket with the elbow patches. “Unless you wish to display your true colors.”
“Please do. Silver, right?” Sigurd left Ash and placed himself between the sharp dragon claws and Dr. Kovak.
Margaret’s silver eyes narrowed on Sigurd. “Ah, the messenger dragon. I should have known the master of the Giresun herd would have sent someone like you. Stay out of this, ice dragon, unless you wish to deliver your own balls to your pendragon on a platter.”
Ashlyn lunged for Margaret, but Sigurd caught her. “Bitch,” he hissed at Margaret. “If I deliver anything, it’ll be you to the draconian counsel.”
Margaret grabbed Istvan, her clawed hand beneath his chin. A long sharp claw pressed against his neck. “You’d best train your dragons better, Istvan. If you’re to keep this one as family, I’d at least teach him to respect his elders.”
“Let him go.” Ashlyn tried to jerk from Sigurd’s hold. He held onto her. “Easy, baby. She’s got two other druks outside, can’t you smell them?”
Ashlyn stilled. She took a deep breath and shook her head.
“Pity.” Margaret pouted at her. “I suppose it comes from the cross breeding. I had such high hopes for you. At least there is one thing you won’t fail me in, is there? Now, take your dragon there and go fetch my egg. In the meantime, Istvan can take me for a tour of the hatchery. You have until midnight. If you don’t return, I’ll introduce my brother-in-law to my dragons outside. They do get so impatient at times.”
Sigurd balled his hands into fists. His nostrils flared, and he gritted his teeth to hold back the dragon side of him pressing to shift and rip the dragoness’s throat out. He locked his arms, Ashlyn’s chest heaving, he felt the heat of her building up against his chest. Her eyes transformed to emerald orbs, he could sense her calculating thoughts.
“No.” Ashlyn elbowed her way out of his arms.
“Ashlyn.” Dr. Kovak’s eyes grew wide.
“No?” Margaret pressed her claw closer against his throat.
“Ash, baby…” Sigurd tried to warn her.
Her face flushed red and her eyes grew bright.
“No. You heard my father. You have no control here. This is a protected preserve for dragons and other endangered species. You want an egg, go lay one of your own.”
Sigurd’s chest burned as his lungs refused to take in air. He let the cold freeze inside them, prepared to shift and protect his mate.
“I never did have any patience of my own. Noon then. Shall we scramble some eggs from inside the hatchery? The kakapo or maybe the Philippine Eagle?”
Ashlyn’s head jerked back, her spine stiffened. She worked her jaw, but no words came out. Her eyes widened, and violent tremors seized her body. Sigurd moved away as quickly as he could before Ashlyn shifted from the curvy red headed woman he’d come to love and into a poisonous copper dragon. She screeched, an ear-piercing sound that bounced through the cavern and deafened human ears.
She stretched her hooked tip wings, testing their length, more stunned than any of them with her transformation. She snorted, peeved, and showed those sharp white teeth in a snarl.
Sigurd leaped toward Margaret as the silver haired woman shifted into a gleaming silver dragon with white haired mane and ivory antlers between her gray pointed ears. Her clawed hands curled around Dr. Kovak. He cried out as Margaret’s claws sank into his side.
Sigurd landed with Dr. Kovak atop him. He pressed his hands to the blood staining the older man’s shirt inside his jacket. “Help Ashlyn, she doesn’t know. She’s never shifted.”
“I think she’s got this.” Sigurd looked up in time to see Ashlyn ram into Margaret.
Head to head the two female dragons pushed each other. Ashlyn’s spikes jutted from the back of her cheek bones, down the back of her neck and at the end of her tail. Mate or no mate, seeing her like this, spooked his own dragon side. He saw it, fear, glazed in Margaret’s eyes. He continued to put pressure on the older man’s side to hold back the bleeding. “Shake your arse, baby. Use that beautiful spiked tail.”
Margaret hissed, anticipated Ashlyn’s swing, but her tail betrayed her and swung toward Sigurd. He rolled Dr. Kovak out of reach before the spikes struck the dirt where he had laid. Ashlyn winced. Margaret laughed shoving Ashlyn back.
His red spiked dragon gripped her claws into the cavern floor, but the silver proved stronger. Longer, with more muscle power behind her, Margaret shoved his red dragon mate back. Ashlyn swung her head to the side and Margaret jumped. Swinging her head back and forth, Ashlyn forced the silver dragon through the cavern, and into the tunnel entrance in which she’d entered. “You heard Father, leave and don’t come back.”
Margaret lowered her head, her eyes locked on Ashlyn. “How dare you.” She breathed in, her sides e
xpanding, her slick scales raising.
“Ash! No!” Sigurd jumped from Dr. Kovak’s side. He shifted, plowing into Ashlyn. Her head turned, her spiked jaw slashed into his shoulder as he shoved her out of the way. He released his breath, showered the tunnel entrance with a cold mist as Margaret spewed her blue tinged acid toward him. It froze. Sealed the tunnel entrance between them and Margaret screamed from behind the ice blockade.
“No one messes with my mate,” Sigurd roared.
On the other side of the ice, the silver dragon snarled, snapped, then backed down the tunnel entrance out of sight.
Sigurd looked over at Ashlyn. “You, all right?”
“Yes, but my father isn’t.”
Chapter Eighteen
Long after they’d seen Dr. Kovak treated at the clinic in Balan, Ashlyn returned to the haven to check on the eggs. Sigurd had taken flight to ensure Margaret nor any other dragons remained close by.
She hated leaving her foster father, but Sigurd had called Blake and he and Emily would arrive in a few hours. She promised to check on the eggs, update Quintin so he could explain Dr. Kovak’s absence. She’d tell him there had been an accident and her father’s ribs were broken. She wouldn’t go into the details or the true extent of his injuries. While those in their employ knew of the haven for dragons and swore to the code of the Keepers, Ashlyn didn’t know who she could trust anymore.
Call it her new heightened dragon senses, she could feel the unease in the Aviary, in the hatchery, and the haven. They would have to add security. Margaret had to have known about the eggs. Had Sigurd been followed?
How long before she came back? They would have to find another place. A place Margaret could never go.
And now she knew the Keeper mistress’s secret.
Satisfied the eggs remained safe and nestled in the hidden nest inside the volcanic mountain, Ashlyn retraced her steps from earlier in the day. She no longer itched. She left her hair flow around her face, soft wisps tickled her cheek. Inside the cavern, her eyes adjusted to the dim. She caught the glimmer of something blue, bent down and retrieved the fallen scale amongst the tattered shreds of her dress.
She couldn’t help smiling, holding onto her mate’s heart scale. She glanced at the tattoo on her wrist. Dark and bold, the dragon symbols a permanent part of her. Just like her dragon side. Just like her mate.
“All is well and good?” Sigurd sauntered into the cavern, naked as the day he’d been born. He grinned, and her cheeks warmed. She couldn’t help admiring him. Those hard-chiseled abs. No flab on her man. No, not an ounce. Those cool blue eyes assessed her, gave her a tingle.
He’d talked her through the shifting, helped her transition back to her human form. His voice like a balm on her burning soul. He calmed her, reassured her, and they’d made the shift together before he’d taken Dr. Kovak to get help.
The haven remained safe, tucked away from the outside world’s knowledge. She intended to keep it that way. “For now. But I can’t help feeling this is all my doing.”
“How so?”
She walked with him outside of the cavern, too many scents, too hard to differentiate one from the other. “If I had answered her text she wouldn’t have come.”
Sigurd stood, planted his hands on those lean hips while she explained. Since the day she’d come to stay with the Kovaks she did her duty and sent reports to Margaret on what went on at the hatchery.
Sigurd shook his head and swore. “She’s had you spying. She had no right to ask that of you. Not a child. Not anyone. You owe that silver back vermin nothing.”
“She’s determined to take Emily’s egg. When she sent Emily and Jacques to retrieve it, she told Emily it would pay our families debt forever.”
“Forever? What did she do? Make a deal with the gods?” Sigurd’s brow furrowed.
“Is that even possible?” Ashlyn’s heart sank. Weren’t dragon’s gifts from the gods to protect human kind? They abused the gifts, or had it been the dragons who took advantage of their position? Either way, she didn’t want to be a dragon. She never did. Especially, the one she’d turned out to be.
“I don’t know.” He touched her face, leaned in—forehead to forehead. “Silver dragons are amongst the eldest of our kind. If any dragon could converse with the gods, it would be them.”
“Are there many silver dragons? I thought, like the gold scaled Oroyalis, they are few.”
“I know of only one silver in my lifetime, baby, and I iced her a few hours ago.”
“She’ll be upset.”
“Pissed, I reckon.” Sigurd twisted a piece of her hair in his fingers.
“Do you think this is where she’s been hiding? Or did she follow you from the states?” She rubbed noses with him, tilting her face up to search his eyes, waiting for an answer.
“Both,” he said, after he’d had a few moments of thought on it.
“Then she’ll come back? Not for the eggs, but for me. She’ll have a score to settle like she had with Jacques, like she has with Emily.”
“She can’t touch Emily, and Jacques is far from her reach, believe me.”
“Then it’s me she’ll come for. She’ll be back. And the eggs? What of them?” Her heart nearly broke thinking of the pain she’d caused her foster father. He laid in a hospital bed in the clinic. Lucky for them all, Margaret’s claws grazed him, his cuts would heal with a few stitches here and there. His ribs would take the longest and his lungs would burn to breath a bit while they did. She trembled, cold, and he yanked her to him. Held her as the shock hit, hours later, and she clung to him for support.
“She’s too smart to come back here. We’re on to her now. Got her spooked. Soon there won’t be a place in the world she can go and hide without us finding her.”
She rested her head on his strong shoulder, breathing in scents of pine and a bit of antiseptic she figured he picked up at the clinic. She turned her head, kissed his bare shoulder, and rested her head back against him.
“Still, I find it hard to believe her a dragon, had I not seen it with my own eyes. How could I have not known? I’ve always been able to distinguish the difference.”
“She fooled a good many of us, but we’ve got her scent now. I imagine she’ll retreat a bit, need to heal for that acid she spews is a real stinger, and then she’ll come out again. She’ll face the dragon counsel and the Keepers to answer for the ploy she’s had going between our two kinds. She can’t escape forever.”
“And until then?”
Sigurd chuckled, a deep sound that vibrated from his chest. She pressed her hand, the one with the blue scale against his heart. “Practice making a few fiú of our own. With Blake and Emily here, we can go to the island. I’ll fetch Father Armand and we’ll make it official in both cultures of saying ‘I do’ and after Stonehenge, we’ll go anywhere you want for the honeymoon.”
She pulled away from him. Looked down at his scale in her hand, tried to push back the sadness filling her. “I can’t.”
“What? Why can’t you?”
She sighed. Her foster mother, Mrs. Kovak, always told her there would be choices in love. She fingered the smooth scale in her hand. “Every time, Laurel, Dr. Kovak’s wife, left for an assignment by the Keepers, it scared me. I’d lost my mum and dad, the Sullivan’s, and I was afraid I’d lose her, too. And every time she left, I promised to watch over Emily and Father until she returned.
I’m sorry, but my place is here. Father’s in the hospital and he’s going to need someone to help him until he is healed. With Emily back with Blake, one of us has to stay at the hatchery. This is my home, Sigurd. I have to protect it, protect my family, and the dragons who will one-day hatch or seek shelter in this very haven.”
“You’re my mate, Ashlyn. I’m not going anywhere. My place is alongside you.”
“And what of Stonehenge?”
“It looks as if Blake had it right. Canceled.”
“But the island?”
He silenced her with a light brushi
ng of his lips. “My home is where you are. I told you. I’m not going anywhere.”
She kissed him back, a loud smacking sound of a kiss. “Good because there is something I want to give you.”
“Oh, and what is that?” He wiggled his eyes playfully.
“Now that you’ve seen my dragon...” she walked her fingers up his chest, used his scale to cover part of her face and peered at him through lowered lashes. “Don’t you think it’s time you teach me another lesson?”
“With pleasure.” He grabbed her wristed hand with the scale, brought that piece of him over his heart and claimed her lips with his.
THE END
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in my Dragons of Giresun series, Her Intended Dragon.
About Suzanne Roslyn
Suzanne is the author of hot paranormal shifter romance, a tamer of dragons, and collector of unicorns.
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Her Intended Dragon
A cold Saturday night with nothing better to do, Bogdan set out for the night club on Davies St. It was a long line of hot women and dorks with their backs to the thrill. Traffic grumbled by, rumbling over the noise of the waiting chatter.
Bogdan Kelly didn’t wait. He passed the line and stopped long enough for the dude checking ID to notice him. He flashed his eyes at the bouncer, the lumberjack in a suit raised the corner of his mouth slight enough for a smirk. He tilted his head allowing Bogdan to pass. And that, Bogdan decided, is how you made an entrance.
Her Hidden Dragon: Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance (Dragons of Giresun Book 3) Page 7