by Liv Rider
“Griffith, stop, you need to get out of here.” He could hear Noah’s terror.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Noah’s voice shook. “I don’t think I can keep it from killing you.”
Griffith didn’t care. He took another step and felt the heat from Noah’s dragon sear across his skin, hotter than anything he’d ever felt before, and he’d grown up in a family of dragons.
He remembered the way Noah had felt last night, the welcoming heat of him as their flames merged, and let his dragon surge to the surface, meeting Noah’s white fire with orange.
Noah was only another step away.
“Griffith,” Noah said, fear shredding his voice. “You can’t—”
Then Griffith’s arms were around him. Mingled orange and white flames licked over his skin. It could burn them both to a crisp, and Griffith steeled himself for them both to die here.
Then Griffith felt the searing heat turn to warmth as Noah’s dragon enveloped him.
“You can control it, Noah. I’m with you.”
Noah was so still in his arms. Griffith could hear the rapid beating of his heart. Time suspended. There was nothing else but the two of them surrounded by orange-white flame.
Noah took a steadying breath, then another. The fire of the sun dragon began to fade and die.
Noah’s arms rose to Griffith’s waist, clutching him like he was a lifeline.
“Hey,” Griffith said.
“Hey, back,” Noah said shakily.
Griffith saw Zach and Tse on the perimeter of what had been the white dome. They looked shocked, confused, stunned. Griffith felt all of those things, as well as an overpowering relief. Noah was safe, and it was over.
He drew back a little, and gazed down dispassionately at Madoc’s body. A small bullet hole pierced the center of his forehead. Now that it was done, it seemed like such a small thing. Once, he’d thought he wanted that more than anything in the world.
“You two all right?” Zach sounded shaken, so different from his usual flippancy that Griffith’s world upended again.
Tse knelt down next to Madoc’s body and pulled out his phone. Griffith heard him calling it in to the shifter authorities. They’d have to clean this up before human ones intervened.
Luckily Zach regained his composure quickly, and started redirecting what few curious eyes had stopped to stare, pulling out a fake badge to reassure them. Apparently Madoc had been right and the dome had been invisible, while shielding what happened from the outside.
“I thought I was going to kill you.” Noah’s voice was thick with emotion.
“I didn’t,” Griffith said, though he hadn’t been nearly so sure.
Tse rose from Madoc’s body and approached them. “We’ve got this, Griffith, if you want to take Noah home.”
Griffith looked at Noah. “Where to?”
“The cabin,” Noah said. “Home.”
***
When they got back to the cabin, Griffith took Noah to bed.
“I hate to say this, but I feel like I could sleep for a week.” Noah undressed slowly, hand shaking on the button of his jeans. Griffith took over, helping Noah to step out of them, then shed his own clothes down to his boxers.
“Sleep as long as you want,” Griffith said, settling in behind Noah on the bed and wrapping his arms around him. He didn’t think he could bear to be out of contact with Noah for more than a few minutes. The car ride back had been agonizing. “I’ll be here.”
They lay in silence so long that Griffith thought Noah had fallen asleep. He was startled when Noah’s voice sounded out in the darkened room.
“You shot him. Madoc.”
Griffith didn’t want to talk about Madoc. He kissed the back of Noah’s neck. “Yes.”
“Did you do it so I wouldn’t be the one to kill him?”
Noah, per usual, was far too perceptive. “It doesn’t matter.”
He would do it again in a heartbeat. There would be questions, and an investigation, but he had Zach and Tse to back him up, and he felt no regret over that kill.
Noah turned so that they were facing one another. Griffith ached to see that expression on his face. “I told you my birth parents were killed in a car crash.”
That wasn’t at all what Griffith had expected Noah to say.
“I was in the car with them. In a car seat in the back seat. I don’t remember anything, of course, but my adoptive mother was the surgeon on call at the hospital. There was nothing she could do for either of them; they were dead before the ambulance arrived. She said the hospital called me the miracle baby, because even with all the safety protections of the car seat, there was no way I should have survived that car crash.”
“Lucky kid.”
“That’s what I always used to think. My adoptive mother said the hospital spent months trying to track down my parents’ relations. They couldn’t even find anyone who knew them as friends. They’d spent their lives on their own, living reclusively in a place they’d rented, no other assets to their name. Nothing to tie them to anything.”
“And you think…?”
“I don’t know. If shifter selves are hereditary, they must have been sun dragons too. Maybe they knew they were dangerous. That they didn’t even belong in the shifter world.”
Easy to follow where he was going with that. “You don’t think you do, either?”
“I almost killed someone. I could have killed you.”
Griffith sighed. “Any of us can be dangerous in the right circumstances. Look at Madoc. Just because you don’t understand what you are yet or know how to control it doesn’t mean you never will.”
“But what if I end up hurting someone for real next time?”
Griffith could only speak from his heart. “You said there was no way you should have survived the crash, right? If your parents were as powerful as what I just saw from you, then maybe they found a way to save you. I think the son of parents like that would do everything in his power not to hurt someone else.” He pulled Noah close. “Besides, I know you. I know you would never deliberately hurt anyone. And I’m pretty sure you could learn to do anything you set your mind to, including controlling your dragon.”
Another long silence. Griffith’s eyes drifted closed. He was exhausted and drained and elated they were alive, all at once, but the day had taken its toll.
“So what happens now?” Noah asked into the silence. Griffith knew Noah wasn’t talking about his dragon.
“I don’t know,” Griffith said carefully, wide awake now. Every word felt like a step into uncharted territory. “What do you want to happen?”
Noah pushed himself up on his elbows and stared down seriously at Griffith. “I want to claim you.”
Griffith’s heart tripped a beat. His dragon surged inside him. “You’re sure? We don’t have to rush into anything you don’t want.”
“I’m sure. But if you don’t want me to—”
Griffith didn’t even need to think about it. “I love you. I didn’t tell you that before. Of course I want you to.”
Noah shifted up to his knees, his hands moving tentatively over Griffith’s bare chest. “What do I…?”
“Just follow your instincts.”
Noah’s hands grew more sure. Skating down Griffith’s ribs, over the jagged lines of the wolf’s claw marks, his fingers traced fire on Griffith’s skin. Griffith looked down and saw white at the tips of them.
Griffith’s hands moved of their own accord, finding the spot where he’d claimed Noah just a few days ago. Again their fire merged and swirled, orange and white.
“Griffith,” Noah said, sounding just as awed as Griffith felt.
His hands settled just below Griffith’s ribs. Griffith felt a power sear through him that was like nothing he’d known before. Power and flames moved in a circle between them. He’d only ever thought about what the mate bond symbolized, not the physical fact of their bond, the way Noah’s fire began to knit into his bones and heart as if
it had always been there.
Not just Noah’s fire, but Noah himself. It didn’t feel like a joining so much as a rejoining, as if they were coming together again after a long absence. Apparently Griffith’s dragon had known better than he had, and had finally recognized his mate.
And once found, Griffith wasn’t going to ever let him go.
The Sun Dragon’s Flight
Griffith
Griffith could sense Noah’s nerves fill the Range Rover as he turned off the main road and down the dirt track leading to the fishing cabin miles from civilization. Noah had been fine when they’d stopped for lunch and groceries at the country store in the last town they’d passed, even talking about his law school applications when Griffith asked how they were going. But once they’d put the town in the Range Rover’s rearview mirror, his silence had been a third presence taking up more and more space.
“All right?” Griffith asked finally, as the car bumped down the uneven road, knowing his words could be interpreted in whatever way Noah was most comfortable with.
“Yeah,” Noah said. A moment later, he sighed. “Sorry, I know I’m freaking out over nothing. Sofia says I’m doing fine, even though I’ve never done a complete shift. But I still feel like I don’t have full control of it, you know?”
Griffith knew. He’d grown up with dragon shifters; he’d been around all kinds of shifters his entire life. In a world where humans didn’t know about them, control was paramount.
“That’s not necessarily bad,” he said, to give Noah perspective, if nothing else. “Sure, we need to be able to control our dragon side, and you’ve got more need than most. But you have to trust yourself, too. Trying to rein in every aspect of what we are leads to disaster more often than not. You have shifters too afraid to shift, repressing what they are until the shift is forced out of them. And then they really have no control over what they’re doing.”
Griffith had seen it happen far too often. Shifters without a strong social support network often tried to hide what they were to fit in, or thought their nature made them deviant. Many times, the shifters he hunted weren’t trying to harm humans or shifters at all—they were just scared and out of control, and had no one to teach them the right way to come to terms with their animal selves.
Up until a few weeks ago, Noah had thought he was human. He’d weathered the storm of being targeted by a predatory dragon shifter and finding out he was one of the most dangerous shifter types that existed. And now he was attempting the painstaking process of learning to control his sun dragon so he could shift when needed, and not shift when he didn’t want to potentially ignite everything around him.
Griffith had tried to get Sofia to tell him how Noah’s lessons were going, but the alpha wolf had told him in no uncertain terms that Griffith might be Noah’s mate, but he wasn’t his keeper. What she and Noah did was between them, and it was up to Noah how much he wanted to share with Griffith.
Which was, frustratingly, not a lot. Not that Noah was being secretive about it; he just never said much when Griffith asked how a session had gone, other than he was slowly getting better at controlling his dragon. But that didn’t explain how tired he often was when getting home, or the discouraged look Griffith sometimes caught when Noah didn’t think he was watching.
Griffith took a bend, and the cabin came into view—along with the sparkle and glint of water showing through the trees.
Noah straightened in his seat. “Is that a lake?”
“Yep,” Griffith said, pleased by Noah’s reaction. He deliberately hadn’t said anything, wanting it to be a surprise. He pulled up next to the cabin and stopped the car. A cleared space led down to the lake, which shimmered in the afternoon sun and stretched far into the horizon. The trees were just barely visible on the other side.
“But doesn’t that mean there are other people close by? This seems like an ideal vacation spot.”
“Nope,” Griffith said, barely suppressing a grin. “My family owns all of it, the house and the lake, and the land around it. The nearest neighbor is about twenty miles away.”
He felt Noah’s eyes on him. “Griffith. Your family owns a freaking lake?”
Griffith’s grin finally broke free. “We’re dragons, remember? Where else are we going to stretch our wings? We practically lived up here when my brother and sister and I were going through puberty. Never knew when we’d break out into dragon form. Our parents used to make us sleep in a tent outside in summer, so we wouldn’t accidentally shift and destroy the house.”
“Is that the last time you were here?”
Griffith didn’t answer right away. The last time he’d been here held memories a lot less pleasant than when he’d been a kid learning to fly for the first time. “No. I came up here after Rafe died.”
Noah said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Being up here, letting my dragon out, helped me to get through it. It can be a relief to let that part of you free. It’s not just something to control and suppress.”
“I guess,” Noah said, not sounding convinced.
Griffith opened the car door, and Noah followed suit. “Want to bring our stuff in, get settled in?”
“Let’s go down to the lake first,” Noah said, clearly trying to lighten the mood.
“Tell you what. I’ll settle us in, you go down to the lake. It’s beautiful this time of day.”
Griffith wanted to give Noah space to work through his nerves, so he was glad when Noah agreed. He took a moment to watch Noah make his way down to the shallow shore of the lake’s edge, chest tightening at the sight of his mate: Noah’s lean frame, still growing into his legs; the messy brown hair and gray eyes like rain caught in a beam of sunlight.
After one last look, he grabbed their bags and the groceries, taking them inside the cabin.
It was cold and little musty. The place wasn’t huge, but there was a serviceable kitchen and living room with large windows and a sliding glass door looking out over the lake, a master bedroom, and a loft where he and Megan and Ewan used to sleep. He put their bags and groceries down, then went out behind the cabin to start the generator so they’d at least have working lights and a fridge. He grabbed some wood from the shed—they’d been having a mild December so far, but the nights were still cold—and once back in the cabin piled the wood next to the woodstove and put the groceries away in the now-humming fridge.
Then he made up the bed in the master bedroom with linens pulled from a cedar cupboard, and opened the window a crack to air things out until the sun fell.
All of that done, Noah still hadn’t appeared. Griffith could see him through the doors of the living room, a small figure down at the lake’s edge.
There was more wrapped up in Noah learning to control his dragon than a shifter finding out he wasn’t human after all. Having witnessed the power Noah had, and its destructive potential, Griffith knew Noah was afraid of what would happen once he shifted fully. Not just for himself, but for anyone around him.
Griffith slid open the doors and went out onto the deck, then down the steps to the wide expanse of lawn leading to the lake.
Noah was lost in his thoughts, but he must have heard or sensed him approach, because he didn’t startle when Griffith wrapped his arms around him and pulled him back against his chest.
He fit so perfectly there that Griffith wondered how he’d gone through life without this essential piece of himself, and how he’d convinced himself for so long that he didn’t need a mate. He still couldn’t believe it sometimes. The slight tingling of Noah’s mate mark on him was the figurative pinch to convince him it was real. But as with so many things, it was hard to know what you were missing until suddenly you had everything you’d ever wanted.
It scared Griffith sometimes how happy he was, but then he forced himself to put the fear away. He didn’t want to live his life afraid of what might happen; he wanted to enjoy every second he had with Noah.
He pressed his cheek against Noah’s chilled
one. “It’s cold out here.”
“I know. It’s just so peaceful.”
“It will still be here in the morning.”
Noah said doubtfully, “Shouldn’t I try the shift now? Give myself plenty of time while we’re here to get it right?”
“Nope,” Griffith said firmly. “You’re tired and stressed, and it’s been a long drive. We’re going to go back up to the cabin, I’m going to make dinner, and then you’re going to get a good night’s sleep.”
“Really,” Noah teased. “Sleep?”
“Well, eventually we’ll sleep,” Griffith said, with a grin.
***
Warm from the fire burning in the woodstove, and fed from the steaks Griffith had cooked on the propane stove, they curled up on the old couch with his mother’s quilt thrown over them and watched the sun disappear over the water.
“Tell me about your first time,” Noah said.
Griffith drew back to look at him.
“First time shifting,” Noah clarified hurriedly.
“The first time I shifted,” Griffith said deliberately, feeling Noah’s toe nudge his ankle in a not-quite-kick, “I was twelve. I’m the oldest but Megan’s always been too precocious for her own good, so I was secretly afraid she’d find a way to make the shift before I did. So it was such a relief when it happened, I didn’t have a chance to feel weird about it. It was just…one moment I was me, and the next moment I was a lot bigger and had wings. At the time I was with Megan, right there,” he pointed to the general area of the clearing in front of the lake, “and she started screaming. At first I thought she was scared, but she was screaming because she was so excited. My dad came out of the house, and I could tell he was a little freaked—my dad’s human, and he’s probably only seen my mother in dragon form a few times—but he was calm as anything when he told me to shift back, it was almost time for dinner.”
“Were you able to?”
“I was surprised enough that it just happened. I was back to being a kid again. A little anti-climactic, but you learn to take these things in stride. Then the next day my mom took me flying out over the lake. Good thing water makes for a soft landing. Once I figured out not to try to fly, but just to let it happen, I did fine.”