She knew how it felt now, to think you might lose the person who meant the most to you. She knew how her father felt, having lost that person. Did he see her mother in every plant he passed? In the earth beneath his feet, red and dusty in the desert?
“Screw this,” a dragon snapped. “I’m not leaving with Winnifred alone.”
Morgan hid her bark of a laugh behind her hand. Instead, she looked to Winnifred. The female dragon looked outraged. She looked lost.
“You know,” Morgan began. “There’s room for you here, too.”
Winnifred’s eyes jerked to meet Morgan’s. She could see the contempt in them, words falling from a human’s mouth. Morgan couldn’t say she understood, but she had an idea. Perhaps Winnifred hated humanity for what the GOE organization had done to her and her kind. That was fair in some ways, but not in all ways. Morgan had been complicit only in the fact that she’d turned a blind eye to what was going on. She’d been happy to believe the best of GOE.
Sure, be angry about that, but Morgan never physically hurt the dragons. She’d never locked them up or cut them open.
“Let’s face it, lady,” Morgan said, her voice blatant and not sparing the dragon woman before her. “We won’t be friends. We don’t have to be friends. There’s plenty of space here for us to never have to see one another again. Isn’t that fair? You can have the protection of the biggest dragon family in the country while living in the middle of nowhere if you wanted. You can have your little witch hut all to yourself.”
“Morgan,” Kenji warned. His grip on her tightened.
Winnifred didn’t look any happier, but she seemed to process Morgan’s words. After what felt like forever, the old dragon woman nodded. Morgan felt something akin to her head exploding. She never thought her words would work on the old dragon woman. It left an uplifting feeling in her head.
“Fine. This place isn’t all that bad. As long as I don’t have to look at you every day.”
“Winnifred,” Kenji warned. Morgan could hear the tired tone creeping into his voice. He didn’t have to play referee between them all day.
Crisis averted, Morgan thought. They had a date at the leader’s cabin, anyway. She twisted in his arms to look up at her mate and reminded him. His brows shot up and he nodded after a muffled curse. He’d forgotten. With everything going on, she couldn’t blame him.
The results of the retrial would be coming in today. The jury, a group of truly indifferent peoples, ones GOE hadn’t paid off, were deliberating. The decision would be in soon.
***
A group of dragons and dragon mates filled the cabin. There were people milling around the counter, Anya’s growing belly and the news of her pregnancy making people carefully dance around her as she colored in coloring books with Miri. The Avila twins picked at a whole pumpkin pie, passing it between themselves while Luc’s eyes bore down on his pregnant mate.
Morgan rolled her eyes and warned Kenji she would punch him in the groin if he was ever so overbearing. He promptly informed her if she did such a thing, they may never have a child. That wasn’t something Morgan was ready to process so she claimed a seat at the kitchen counter and dunked her fork into the twin’s pumpkin pie.
They moved to pull it out of her reach, but only half-heartedly. Each of them waited with churning anxiety for Liana and Dane to return. They did their best to keep their moods up and the tone light. It was a possibility that their trial failed once more.
The minutes ticked by, everyone glancing at the clock on their phones or their watches. So few people wore watches anymore, Morgan thought, to keep her mind off the situation.
The new trial seemingly went well. The construction of the all without clearing proper local government channels had played a big part as well as the video that went viral in the days after the wall’s arrival. They were all things that helped build the hold GOE had dug for themselves because the video worked as Anya promised. The international organizations had pulled their support from the American branch.
The other branches claimed to be horrendously surprised at what the GOE facilities in the states were up to. Morgan didn’t believe that for a second. If the U.S. branch benefitted from the experiments, so did the other branches. The organization would need a bit of a rebranding, no matter the outcome of the trial, just to get humanity to trust them again.
Morgan was lost in thought, fork on the tip of her tongue, when the front doors blew open. Miri screeched and raced from her perch on the stool and crashed into the couple’s legs. Liana bent to retrieve the girl, hiding her face in the process. Dane, on the other hand, looked exasperated. The man looked tired, his age catching up to him,
He slowly approached the crowd of dragons in his home and blew out a long breath. Everyone waited with baited breath until the man’s lips slowly curled into a wide smile.
“It’s over. We won this time.”
The whole room erupted in a cheer. If anyone had asked Morgan, even months ago, if she thought she’d be applauding the downfall of GOE in America, she would have looked at them like they were crazy. Yet, here she was.
Kenji closed the space between them, grasping her face between her hands, and planted a long kiss on her lips. When they pulled back, gasping for breath, there was a bright look in his eyes. The facilities had a grip on him that he hadn’t realized and Morgan found herself truly smiling.
He was safe, her mate. They had the future ahead of them, time to figure out who they were and what they wanted from life. With no threat from a shady organization.
“Free at last?”
Kenji paused, his arms around her waist, as his lips twisted and he thought about it. “Almost, there’s still some things I need to work on.”
“Like what?” Morgan couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice.
“Like how we don’t have an actual place to ourselves.”
They’d been living with his roommates on the Territory, the tiny home not enough for his long limbs after they’d tried to camp there for a few days. Kenji’s limbs had promptly cramped up and he’d become cranky until they left it behind.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Dane informed them.
Morgan turned to look at the dragon leader, confusion clearly written on her face. Dane smiled in return, the kind of Cheshire cat smile that said he still had some hidden surprises up his sleeve. One of the twins told him to spill it.
“There was a huge payout. Once the legal fees are all covered, I have plenty leftover to purchase some new realty.”
Someone in the room groaned.
“But the Territory only has so much space,” Marc said, voicing what they were all thinking. “Don’t tell me you’re going to start chopping down trees and ruining the landscape.”
Liana laughed. “You sound like a bloody prat.”
“I’m not putting any more houses on the Territory,” Dane said with the same grin. Everyone looked at him with impatience, urging him to get on with it. “I’m purchasing land and homes outside the Territory. During the course of the trial, we won the right to live off the Territory if we want.”
The room filled with murmurs. Marc and Noelle had been living off the Territory, but unofficially. No one knew the apartment they loved was rented by dragons since it was in a human name. Luc and Anya had been living off what people assumed was the Territory, but it was still an extension.
***
Home at last, Kenji thought. He knew he wouldn’t stray far from the Territory. Dane warned them not to, mostly because he would miss them if they scattered to the far ends of the country. Kenji couldn’t partly because of his new role as the dragon in charge of the Embassy’s task force.
It meant he was home. He had not only a mate, but a place to call his own and a job that meant something. Kenji knew he’d been missing something through his life, but the emptiness hadn’t held any echoes of what he should have felt. He’d only been empty.
Now, he was full and he could wake to the smile of his mate every day
.
He clomped down the stairs of their new home, a thank you gift from Dane and Liana that sat on the outskirts of Elshaw. Morgan was already awake. Her loose shirt hung off one shoulder, exposing her tanned skin and the electric blue strap of her bra. He couldn’t help but pass by and run his finger along the strap.
Morgan’s eyes didn’t look up from her work, but he felt the shudder pass through her.
“What are you working on?” He asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Morgan smiled, a demure look on her face as she held up the small mug in her hand. Kenji’s brow furrowed, the lines carved into the form not making sense. So, he crept around the counter to get a better look. As he approached, the lines became clear and his heart flipped.
“How did you do that?”
Wrapping around the body of the mug were the serpentine lines that created a Japanese water dragon. He felt his heart swell. Morgan looked at her creation.
“I wanted to create a set of dragon designs if they were going to be fired by dragons. I think I’m going to keep this one, though.”
Kenji plucked the form from her fingers and carefully set it aside before claiming her mouth. He couldn’t help himself. She tasted of coffee and sugar, a flavor he would never tire of first thing in the morning.
“You better keep that one,” he informed her.
She stuck her tongue out and reached to reclaim the mug and her carving tools. All along the table were forms in various stages of carving. There was a Chinese fire dragon on a bowl. A pitcher held the image of the Quetzalcoatl.
For a woman who’d been ready to turn away from the dragons, she’d found inspiration and love among them. Kenji sat down behind her, his mate leaning into him as she worked. He would have to leave eventually, check in at the Embassy and fill out some paper work on a fight he’d broken up, but he was content to linger and listen to the sounds of metal on clay for a little while.
Thank you!
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Mated to the Dragon
Emilia Hartley
Chapter One
Dakota flipped through the school’s flyer more times than she could count on the ten hour flight. There were only so many clouds she could bear to look at beyond the window. After browsing the highlights of the Art History program of Bangor’s University for the millionth time, she sighed and tossed it to the empty seat beside her. At least she’d gotten lucky in that regard.
The person beside her had gotten a free upgrade to first class. She didn’t complain. As a college student, just having the extra bit of space to spread out felt luxurious. She hadn’t been raised with much. Both of her parents worked overtime through her childhood to put clothes on her back and food on the table. College had been a distant dream for her as a child, a thing that even in youth she knew that her family could not afford.
Then, in high school, she got her very first job. Every penny she earned while serving pizza to the kids in her class went into savings. She was determined to reach her dream, to go to school, and escape the grind that her parents seemed doomed to endure. She began with community college. Then, with scholarships and loans that made her cringe when she signed, Dakota took the plunge and applied to universities.
When the grant to study Welsh art and architecture abroad nearly fell into her lap, she took it without a second thought. She’d worked so hard through her childhood and teen years that she wanted to do something that she desperately loved for the rest of her life and during a school field trip, Dakota realized that meant curating art for museums. She loved the almost religious air that filled museums, the wonder and awe as she moved from collection to collection. The study abroad program was a huge step in that direction for her, a new adventure that would look beautiful on her resume. She hadn’t been thinking about what else the world had to offer, what she should have been afraid of.
Her eyes fell on the book thrown atop her backpack. She frowned. Her mother bought it for her when Dakota announced that she’d been accepted for the study program in Wales. She knew what lived in the Snowdonia territories, as did the rest of the world after the Occurrence.
Dragons.
The massive beasts that resided in Wales were masters of fire. They had born more than a few legends in Welsh myth, ones that Dakota had familiarized herself with only so that she’d have a leg up in her studies. Not because she was curious about the beasts that could take the form of humans, mostly men with violence in their eyes and tension in the muscles that could easily crush her thin frame.
The day before she boarded the plane, Dakota’s mother had gifted her with the book. Dakota had felt a lump grow in her throat as she looked at it. Dragon Men and Their Urges was written across the cover. Bea, Dakota’s mother, had opened it right to the chapter on self-defense and escape should she run into one of the dragons.
“Mom.” She’d snapped the book shut. “The school has a policy to protect the students from abroad. If a student should come across a dragon at all they’re forced to pack up and are sent on next plane home so that they aren’t in any danger. Besides, I did my research. There hasn’t been a reported dragon shifter sighting in Bangor in years. You have nothing to worry about.”
Her mother hadn’t looked convinced at all, shaking her hands with worry. Dakota assured her that it was the very last thing she wanted, reminding her mother that she would likely be spending all her time sequestered in museums and crumbling castles. That had been the thing that convinced her mother to let her go. She did know her own daughter after all. Or, at least that’s what she told herself.
Dakota wasn’t going to let anyone ruin her chance to see the world. She’d dreamed about visiting castles and rolling hills all her life, etching their lines in a moleskin journal so that she could keep them close. She’d be damned if she let anyone take this chance away from her, mother or dragon man.
Now, Dakota reached out and picked up the book that her mother had purchased and flipped it open to a random page. A sloppily drawn dragon graced the page with wings spread in clumsy flight, flanked by text that described a dragon male’s urge to find a mate. It described how the dragons often used their human forms to take human mates, despite the availability of the opposite sex in their race.
Once the author started to theorize about traditions of kidnapping and Stockholm syndrome in days past, Dakota shut the book and flipped it over. The author’s face grinned back from above the synopsis. His thick mustache made her think of Tom Selleck, but the author’s eyes were dark and serious, giving him an air of commanding authority. Below the photo was the symbol of the Order of the Guardians of Existence, better known as GOE these days.
GOE was the only force that stood between humanity and the dragons. They were briefly covered during Dakota’s global history class in high school, expanded upon in college if only barely. GOE had existed since the time of knights. Back then, they were only a few, but with time they spread across the earth. In the mid 1900’s when Dragons were forced into the light, the Guardians were the ones that stepped up to defend the humans from the beasts. Since then, the UN has worked closely with
the Guardians to ensure that peace and, sometimes, justice remained between human and dragons.
A voice chimed over the communication system above Dakota’s head. Through crackling static, the voice claimed that they were preparing for descent. Dakota’s stomach lurched in excitement for the drop in altitude. The clouds parted outside her window and a foreign city appeared. She couldn’t stop the silly smile that crossed her face as she looked outside the window.
The plane lurched and jumped, finally touching ground. Soon, she would be taking her first step in another country, a whole new world. She had gone from a girl with nothing to finally being able to see her dream on the horizon.
***
After the short bus ride to Bangor University, all the study abroad students had been herded into an introductory seminar. Dakota chose a seat toward the back and flipped open her black, moleskin journal. The pencil fit between her fingers like it belonged there. She studied the profile of a guy a few rows ahead of her. His fair hair launched like a wave over his forehead and his nose sloped up to meet it at the very tip. The pencil scratched those striking lines into her journal while she waited for the seminar to begin.
She had not been expecting to see a familiar face walk across the stage. The man with the thick mustache on the book her mother had given her strode out before the assembled students. A close-lipped smile was pasted on his lips, but his eyes were still dark. His gaze swept over the crowd. Dakota thought that his gaze had lingered on her a little too long. She shook her head. There was no reason for something like that. She was simply exhausted from her flight. It was so much earlier here than it was back home.
The Dragon's Charm (Elemental Dragons Book 4) Page 14