by Selena Scott
But slow them he did as he gritted his teeth in what she could only assume was terrible, blinding pain. She glanced at the ground. They were still falling too fast. If they landed now, she’d be crushed. O strained again and this time they started spinning to earth like dandelion seeds.
O beat his wings again. And again. A roar unlike any she’d ever heard exploded out of him. It shook her bones. The dragon gnashed his teeth and beat his wings again. And then, out from the cracks of his clenched teeth, flames licked at the air. O whipped his dragon head to one side. Lifted his wings high, and beat them downward. Finally, he slowed their fall.
Pumping his wings more, trying to find a safe place to land, Mel kept her eyes on her man. He was straining against the pain still but he was able to set her gently on the ground. He landed rather heavily next to her. About 500 feet away, the celery green dragon landed as well, began lumbering over to them.
O raised his dragon’s head to the sky, opened his jaws, and let loose a stream of roaring fire 30 feet long.
“Holy shit!” Mel screeched as she jumped backward.
“Man, that felt good.”
“What the hell was that?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
O instantly shifted back to his human form before he whisked her around in a circle, nuzzling his face into her neck. “I could only do that because you were in mortal danger. And because you’re my true mate.”
“What’s that mean?”
O’s father was barreling over to them at high speed. “They’re coming!” he yelled over the sound of his pounding footsteps. “They saw us! They’re coming!”
O turned to see who his father was talking about and the color left his face. “Okay. Wow. Holy guacamole. Foot soldiers for the king. They must have been standing watch over the area.” O immediately started shifting back to dragon form. “Explanations on true mate fire are gonna have to wait until later. We gotta jet.”
O extended a dragon claw and snatched her up off the ground in one smooth move. His wings were trembling with the weight of his tremendous body and for a second, Mel was worried that they weren’t going to be able to leave the ground. But then, O’s father was there, heaving a shoulder under his son and flinging him into the air.
He joined his son in the air and hoisted him again. Between the two of them, they were making steady progress toward the portal. Mel looked up, scanning the sky for the foot soldiers O had been talking about. Her heart shrank to the size of a pin when she realized there were thirty or so dragons closing in on them fast.
One in particular was faster than the others. He jetted toward them, trying to cut off their progress. But O’s father was ready for him. He let go of O and Mel felt the stomach-dropping dip toward the ground. But O steadied them in time for Mel to see O’s father rear back and kick the other dragon right out of the sky. He feathered toward the ground like a dead pigeon.
O’s father flanked them and they started lifting again. The portal was only fifty feet away now. Forty. Thirty. Mel held her breath and allowed herself to hope. She tried to ignore the pain in her skin where O’s claws bit into her. He was straining to keep them afloat. Now they were twenty feet away.
It was at that moment, though, that two more of the foot soldiers caught up to them. They were twin blue dragons, lunging forward with their claws outstretched. Mel felt her life flash before her.
“Do the mate fire thingy!” she screamed up at O. But he was already one step ahead of her, rearing his head back, opening wide, and letting loose a stream of hellfire so hot, Mel felt it singeing her clothes.
The two blue dragons immediately quailed from the heat, one of them dodging the fire, the other one ricocheting off the stream. The two of them flew a great circle and were plunging through the air for round two, but the twin fighters found absolutely nothing where their quarry had just been. There was no one in the sky but the two of them and the other soldiers in the distance.
As they looked to their left, all they saw was the fire again, this time burning the portal to a crisp.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As soon as the portal was burned up, O shifted. He sagged from the effort of maintaining dragon form in the human realm. It hadn’t been easy. But now, both he and his dad stood buck naked on a cliff in the middle of the woods while everyone panted, wide-eyed.
Ike flung himself into his mother’s arms. “Mom!”
Mel hugged her son gingerly, her face wincing in pain. “I’m okay, hotshot. I swear. O saved me.”
“Mom,” Ike said, drawing back from the hug and staring her solemnly in the eye. “O breathed fire. It was freaking awesome.”
Mel let out a watery laugh. “Yeah. It was.” She stood up and surveyed the group. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”
They made record time getting down the mountain and back to Amos and Lucy’s house. And by the grace of god, nobody saw the two naked guys in the group.
“Not exactly the way I’d envisioned meeting your father,” Mel said later that day as she toweled off her hair and slid into pajamas. She gingerly pulled a clean T-shirt over her new bandages that O had lovingly applied. He’d never felt worse about anything in his life. His dragon claws had given her those scratches. She’d told him that if he apologized one more time then she was never going to marry him. He’d seen enough flickers in their future to take her at her word and button his lip.
“Surprisingly, that didn’t go the way I thought it would either,” O said, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. “But, you know, hell of an icebreaker.”
The two of them joined the others in the living room that night. Ike had been asleep for an hour or so already. So it was just the grown-ups. O’s father, Donovan, sat in a kitchen chair, looking exactly like O would in about 30 years. Blonde hair speckled with white, green eyes and lines around his eyes.
“So why the hell did you bring me all the way to the human realm,” Donovan said, his human voice rusty, like he hadn’t used it in a while.
“Why don’t you tell me, Dad?” O cocked his head to one side. “Why don’t you tell me about Idris?”
Donovan sat up straight. Folded his hands. Sagged back down and plunked his forehead into his hand. “What do you want to know about him?”
“Is he my brother?” O asked and Mel’s head snapped around to stare him in the face. Amos and Lucy glanced at each other and reached out to hold hands.
Donovan nodded his head stiffly. “He’s your brother. My firstborn son.”
O pulled Mel even closer to him. She was practically sitting in his lap at this point. Placing a hand over the warm skin of his neck she tried to send calming feelings his way, the way he often did for her. His eyes fluttered closed for a second as he leaned into the touch.
“Why did he grow up in the human realm?”
Donovan looked out the window. “You know, you grew up in the human realm for a few years, too.”
O blinked. “I did?”
Donovan nodded. “The four of us lived here. Where we were all safe from Dalyer. Until you were about four years old. At that point we realized that you were…”
“An oracle,” Mel supplied and Donovan nodded again.
“A four-year-old oracle who was slowly going crazy in the human realm,” Donovan went on. “In the dragon realm, oracles are respected. Their gifts are useful.” Donovan scratched at his stubble. “I don’t think any oracle’s life is easy. No matter where you live. But we knew you’d have power in the dragon realm. Choices. We thought you’d have work, people who respected you. We always dreamed you’d meet a pretty girl someday. And all the rest that comes with it.” He waved his hand toward the two of them. “We knew that wasn’t going to happen in the human realm. In the human realm people who claim to be oracles are imprisoned. Tortured. Killed. And your gift was already so potent. We knew there was no hiding it from people. You had to be raised in the dragon realm. So your mother, a human, stayed in the human realm to raise Idris. And I returned to t
he dragon realm to raise you.”
“So why didn’t the whole family come back to the dragon realm?”
Donovan sighed heavily and looked around at the circle of people as if he were weighing the worth of each one. Eventually he just shrugged. “O, your last name isn’t Stillwell. That was your Uncle’s first name. I took it for the two of us in honor of him.”
“So what’s our real last name?”
Donovan stared his son in the eye. “Prodigo.”
All the dragons in the room gasped and covered their mouths in shock. Amos actually stood up and paced around for a second. Mel and Lucy just blinked at the group, completely nonplussed. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Amos said, “that they are part of the original royal line. The one that Dalyer’s family stole the throne from.”
“It means,” O continued the thread, “that as the firstborn, Idris is the rightful, true, fated heir to the throne of the dragon realm.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mel decided to give O and Donovan some privacy for a while, so when O slipped into their bed a few hours later, her eyes fluttered awake. She automatically moved into the crook of his neck. She pressed her face into his skin. Felt his feelings for her flow over her like water in brook.
“Are you alright?” she asked O.
“I will be,” he replied, picking up one of her hands and studying her fingers. “We have a long journey ahead of us. My family. The Prodigos.” He turned to her. “That’s your family now, too. Yours and Ike’s.”
O took a deep breath. “That is, if you want it to be your family.”
Mel grinned sleepily up at O. “Is that your way of asking me to marry you?”
“Nah,” O smiled and traced a knuckle over her nose. “We’re better than married now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’re true mates now.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mel tried to shake the sleep from her brain. She could tell this was going to be important. “Explain that to me?”
“It’s pretty simple. True, fated mates are rare, but powerful. They protect each other to the death. They can spit fire in moments when their mate is in danger.”
“And in this case ‘mate’ just means, like, romantic partner?”
“No,” O said, tracing a line across the small of her back. “When you’re true mates, you’re mates in a very real sense of the word. It means we’ve mated successfully.”
“Successfully mated? Hold on.” Mel sat up, her hair in a haystack on top of her head. “What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that we’re having a baby.”
“Baby,” Mel repeated back to O, her face a complete blank.
“Baby.”
“Like.” Mel cradled an imaginary baby in her arms. “Baby. A real baby.”
“A real baby.”
“A dragon shifter baby?” Her eyes were bright with emotion. Her feelings were so palpable, as usual.
“A dragon shifter baby. And if you want me to tell you the sex, birthdate, personality type, hair color, I will. I can even have conversations with our baby before they’re born.”
Mel held up a hand to stop him. For a second she looked like she might be a little sick. Throwing back the covers, she was halfway across the room before O caught her.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to tell Ike!” she insisted, nearly bouncing on her toes as a smile bloomed across her face.
“It’s two in the morning. Maybe wait until he’s had some cornflakes?” O suggested.
Mel let herself get pulled back into bed, her mind spinning. A baby. A baby with O. She smiled as he started to kiss his way up her neck. Her thoughts became much more singular as one of his hands traced the line of her underwear, dipping inside to test her wetness. She spread her legs for him. And his fingers found her core.
O groaned into her neck, giving her a little nip as he tangled fingers in her hair. “Always so wet,” he murmured.
“Just for you,” she said breathily, spreading her legs even further as her hands went on a quest of their own, skimming over his body.
“Wanna see if I can get you pregnant twice?” he asked her, and silenced her laughing mouth in a kiss so passionate, that Mel could see her future roll out in front of her. And she couldn’t wait for it.
EPILOGUE
So, the giant man with all the tattoos was not as friendly as he looked. Idris learned that one the hard way as he got smacked to the ground with a vicious backhand. And then another.
“Stay down!” some dipshit yelled from the crowd.
They all wanted him to stay down. Get the shit beat out of him. Lose this fight. But they didn’t know that Idris Prodigo didn’t lose fights. He ruled fights. Like a king on a throne.
Idris chose his moment, waited for his strong, but clunky, opponent to shuffle closer. He struck like lighting from the ground, one of his boots snapping his opponent’s leg at the knee.
The tattooed giant crumbled like a redwood faced with a lumberjack. The huge man clutched his knee and groaned, but Idris didn’t show any mercy. Standing over the giant man, Idris rose and struck again.
He watched in a sick fascination as his opponent’s eye rolled back in unconscious sleep.
“And the winner is… Dragon!” screeched a balding, wiry man into a microphone. He attempted to shuffle over, lift Idris’s hand into the air like a champion, but Idris shook away from him easily.
He wasn’t interested in the pageantry. He didn’t care about the trappings that came with winning these underground fights. He didn’t care about the bragging rights or the women or even the pride.
All he cared about was the winnings.
Idris strode over to the bookie in the corner, tugging a T-shirt over his sweaty body as he went, covering up the tattoo on his back of a mighty, outstretched dragon.
“Pretty fat count tonight, Dragon.” The bookie handed over a thick wad of bills. Idris thumbed through it, making sure the count was right. He nodded but didn’t say anything to the man.
“You been winning a lot recently,” the bookie said, grinning with his yellow teeth.
Great, now people were starting to notice. Take count of how much money he was putting away. That was a perfect way for a guy to get jacked. Or for a guy’s mom to get jacked. Idris shoved down the shiver that crept up his spine as he thought about his mother, alone in her little apartment in town. Turning back toward the bookie, Idris bared his teeth. A little color left the man’s face and he quickly turned away.
Good. He needed to use his clout to scare people away from him here and there. Tucking the roll of money in his pocket, Idris quickly made his way out of the dirty basement. He hated it there. Hated what he had to do just to make an extra buck. He couldn’t wait to take huge gulps of the crisp night air. Best part about living in the Rocky Mountains.
“Where you goin’, Dragon?” A high pitched voice called out to him from the shadows of the parking lot.
Idris swallowed back his temper. He was not in the mood for this tonight. For her. But he knew Nicole wouldn’t leave him alone until he responded to her. It had been that way for years.
“Work,” he snapped at her, barely letting his eyes flicker over her skin-tight clothes, her bleached blonde hair.
“At midnight? What kind of job you working?” A thin stream of smoke blew out of her mouth and Idris moved quickly around her. She got in his way again.
“You know, I wouldn’t think a man who wins as often as you would have to work so hard for the money.” She looked up at him with what she obviously thought were seductive eyes. “I would think you had money to burn.”
Idris placed his hands on her shoulders and he watched her eyes flare with a moment of excitement. But he only used his hands to move her firmly away from his car and her eyes dulled.
“Good night, Nicole.” Idris got in his car and pulled away before she could say anything else. He really was going to be late for wor
k. And if he was late it didn’t just mean docked pay. It could mean somebody would get hurt. It could mean that she would get hurt. Idris put the pedal to the metal, racing across town.
He just had to make sure she was safe. That nobody was messing with her. He pulled into the parking lot at work and yanked off his sweaty T-shirt. He quickly replaced it with a crisp black one that accentuated the size of his muscles, the breadth of his chest. It was something that made his job a lot easier. If he looked scary.
Idris breezed through the side door and was relieved to see he still had five minutes to spare before he had to take his post. He cut through the club and made a quick stop at the bar. He reached across and greeted his friend, Carter, the bartender.
“You win?” Carter asked, opening bottles for some patrons and sliding them down the bar.
Idris nodded, letting a small smile cross his face.
“My man,” Carter grinned. “You want something?”
“Just water.” Idris never drank on the job. He had to be sharp. Clear. On the lookout for danger.
Carter grabbed a bottle of water for him and Idris unscrewed the cap, put his back to the bar, and surveyed the clientele tonight. He let the cool water soothe his throat as he looked out at all the men. Some of them were rowdy and drunk, here to celebrate something. Some of them were just lonely and horny, never taking their eyes off the stage.
He followed their eyes to the stage and there she was. The one who pulled at him. Tugged at him. Made him crazy. She wore a pink thong bikini under a splash of golden light. She slowly gyrated to the throbbing base of the music.
Men called out to her but she didn’t lose her concentration. Stretching her strong arms up over her head, she slid seductively down the pole.
Idris swallowed hard and turned his eyes away. He slapped the water back on the counter as he glanced at the clock on the wall.