The Snow Leopard's Christmas Surprise

by Emilia Hartley

  “Finally, when it happened every night and the king could no longer stand it, he asked a wise man for advice. There was a rumor that the sacrifice of a young man would finally end the dragon’s battle. So, he went about finding one such young man. Oh boy, what a young man did they find. Turns out that the boy they dragged to the cursed keep turned out to be a young Merlin. You can probably guess that Merlin set those fools right.

  “’Let those idiots out of your castle and they’ll stop breaking it’ Merlin told the king. At first, the king thought that the kid was trying to get out of being a sacrifice. I would, too, if they tried to sacrifice me. But, turns out that Merlin was right. They let the castle fall over night and the next night the dragons emerged from the rubble. The king stood on the sideline while he watched them fight. After a long night, the red dragon finally struck down the white dragon.

  “That was when the king of Wales decided to adopt the red dragon as his symbol.”

  Dakota didn’t say anything, but a glance out of the corner of his eye said that he had captured her attention. He smiled, feeling joy swirl inside of him for the first time since he was a child, and continued.

  “Me thinks that the fight was generations of dragons such as myself at war with one another. They were probably both men in the king’s service and when they crossed one another, their fight would end in the castle’s wreck. It makes you wonder what clued Merlin in on it.”

  “That’s…” he watched Dakota search for the right words for a moment. “That’s insane. Is that the story of Dinas Emrys?”

  Wes nodded. “That very same castle is somewhere in the Snowdonia territory. Well, the ruin of it is anyway.” The memory of the old story his grandfather had once told him made him wonder, for the first time, if his own tower was part of the castle in the tale.

  “I read that story on the internet, but I think I like the way that you tell it a lot better.” She sat back in her seat, more relaxed than she had been in the past half hour. “What other stories do you know?”

  He mulled over the tales in his head, but settled on something more recent. “I have an uncle. He’s a great uncle, I do believe. It’s hard to tell with dragons. He is a bit of an eccentric old man at this point. When his… well, let’s just say that over time he developed an odd quirk.

  “Have you ever heard of the dragon hoard myth?”

  Dakota nodded, one brow raised in question. He smiled at the sight of that thin brow and how inquisitive it made her look. He pushed back the urge to kiss her forehead and returned to his story.

  “It’s true. We are hoarders by nature. Not that you’d ever see it on one of those trashy television shows. At least, I hope no one ever does. You see, Uncle Elgar has taken it upon himself to collect every chalice he has ever laid eyes on. I took it upon myself to craft him a few and leave them around my dad’s house just to drive him mad. He would never steal from the Clan’s leader and knowing that there are chalices just out of his reach makes his eye twitch every so often.”

  Wesley saw the moment that his status dawned on her face. Her eyes grew wide and her spine straightened with surprise. He was no prince by any means. He would only take his father’s position if the rest of the clan saw him as honorable. It was a long-winded thing to explain to a woman that might run from his life in the very next breath so he kept it to himself for the time being.

  Dakota finally regained her composure after releasing a small breath. “That’s downright evil of you.”

  “Oh, Uncle Elgar deserves it. He’s a cantankerous old bastard with no regard for others. As long as it does not tarnish his Honor, Elgar does as he wishes. Imagine the old man that pops your ball just because it landed in his yard is a dragon. That’s Elgar.

  “He seems to think that if he can collect every chalice in existence that he’ll come across the Holy Grail itself at some point. You should see the room in his house. It’s straight out of a children’s story book. As a child, I seriously thought that I would accidentally hit the wrong shelf and drown under a wave of the metal chalices.”

  “Why does he want the Holy Grail? Don’t dragons live a long time as it is?”

  Wes’s lips pressed together. He nodded. He could lie to Dakota, but he didn’t want to start their relationship that way. “His mate passed away a long time ago. Losing her broke his heart. Finding the Holy Grail gives him something to go on for. He thinks that if he can ever find it then he can have his mate back.”

  “That’s… sad.” Dakota’s gaze moved out the window to the passing scenery. “He didn’t try to find another mate?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Wes said, his voice feeling breathy. His heart beat a little unsteadily inside of his chest as he himself faced the truth of what he was about to say. “We are given one soul mate in this life. That’s it.”

  A long moment of silence permeated the truck. Only the sound of the rumbling engine kept Wes’s thoughts company. He was going to become like Uncle Elgar someday, he worried. Dakota was going to go on with her human life and he was going to be left alone. He wondered what he would collect in her stead. Maybe old artefacts, ancient art that would make her come hunting for them.

  “I take it that you haven’t found your mate yet. How do the younger dragons even do that if they’re restricted to the territory after the Occurrence?”

  He didn’t answer her first statement. It was better left alone. “We are allowed one night a month to go into the towns around the territory. In human form, of course. The government has rather begrudgingly agreed upon it as long as we bind ourselves to the human form. It’s a show of good faith, rather than a way to contain us. A simple band of silver helps push the beast inside of us back while we spend a night lying with human women.”

  “Last night was that night?”

  He shook his head. “No. I shouldn’t have been out of the territory last night.”

  She finally pulled her gaze from the scenery to look at him. Her serious eyes studied his face. He tried to keep it under control. She didn’t need to see the fire that he felt for her. The fear that gripped him when he thought about a life without her.

  “You illegally left your territory? What made you risk something like that?”

  “A man’s foolish hormones,” he said in response. What else could he tell her? Under her gaze, he wondered if maybe she could see a bit of the truth. “I don’t normally partake in the excursions. I always thought that it would be difficult to find a mate in a single night and I didn’t want to torture myself with the hopes that it would magically happen.”

  “When I imagine my future, I see myself as the stereotypical woman with a bunch of cats. I don’t ever see a man in my future.”

  Wes looked to her, feeling sadness overtake him. He studied the profile of her face, from the curve of her lips to the strong line of her nose. The woman beside him expected a life of loneliness? He reminded himself that he had expected much the same for himself. If he could not win her love, it was the very future they were both doomed to.

  “What if you were to fall in love?” Wes asked, carefully keeping his eyes trained on the road. He didn’t want her to see the hurt and the bevy of other emotions that were probably swirling through his eyes. “What would your future be like then?”

  Dakota pulled her gaze away from him. She looked down at her hands in her lap. He could smell his scent mingling with hers, reminding him of how they had made love earlier. It had been easy to fall into one another. She lit his skin on fire with her touch. He hoped that he had done much the same with hers. From the way that they’d burned together, he guessed that he very much had done so.

  “It won’t happen,” Dakota said through a tight throat. “I doubt I have the emotional capability to maintain a relationship.”

  They didn’t say anything else until they pulled up to the restaurant, Dakota squirming in her seat once she realized they were on the opposite side of the road than she was used to being. The restaurant in question was in the city proper,
but in a neighborhood that Wes knew to be on the opposite end of the city from the campus. He was playing it safe as he did not want to further damage her reputation. She reached for the door handle and cracked the door open, but Wes didn’t move.

  He sat in his seat for a long moment, running his fingers along the cracks in his steering wheel, wondering if he should tell her the truth. The kind of truth that might weigh too heavily on her shoulders. She had a life of her own, dreams. The truth of what they were could sway her decision toward something that would, eventually, make her very unhappy.

  His mate was going to leave him after this. He was going to have to stand and watch her leave. The knowledge of that made him want to grab her and run right back to the tower in his territory. He wanted to lock her up and throw her back down on his bed. He wanted to make sure that she knew she was his and his alone.

  The rush of possessiveness that consumed him was new and he didn’t know how to handle it. He didn’t know how to keep from doing those things, the things he knew would ruin his relationship in the long run. His mate would be no prisoner. That would become poisonous very quickly

  She would leave. That was all there was to it, he told himself. Dakota would go on to live the life she thought would make her happy. He could do his best to try to win her over, but he could not force her into anything she did not want.

  ***

  They sat at a table in the front window of the restaurant. Dakota leaned forward, putting her head in her hands, and watched the people pass outside. None of them had any idea that there was a dragon shifter sitting on the other side of the glass. Now that she knew, stealing a glance at him while she thought, it seemed all too obvious.

  Wesley was beautiful in the way that no ordinary man could be. The planes of his face were neat and smooth, his fingers long and nimble. He looked up from his menu and she felt her cheeks warm.

  “Got caught staring,” Wesley teased. “Don’t deny it.”

  She shrugged, a small smile on her lips. What could she say in response? Could she say she was amazed no one had found him out yet? Or, could she say that she felt bland sitting beside him? Both were certainly true. Instead, her eyes fell on the silver band around his arm. She vaguely remembered it from the night before, but he hadn’t worn it this morning.

  “What is that? I mean, does it have any special meaning, or do you just like shiny things?”

  He grimaced and she felt awful for her words. “The band is part of an agreement. Just between you and me, I’m not supposed to be outside of my territory right now. The silver in the band blocks the magic that is my beast. With this on, I’m unable to change forms.”

  “Couldn’t you just take it off? That seems really silly.”

  Wesley smiled, showing even, white teeth and a dimple on the left side of his face. The sight of it warmed Dakota in places that made her uncomfortable while she sat in a public place. Had she seen that dimple earlier? If she had, why hadn’t she kissed it?

  “Think of it as a sign of good faith more than anything else. The governments asked us to wear them, not quite willing to ask us to do anything more permanent than that. I’ve heard that some dragon shifters will get silver implants just so that they can be part of everyday society.”

  “That seems drastic,” Dakota noted.

  Wesley nodded. “Imagine living for two hundred years with only four walls and some trees to keep you company. Not everyone is cut out to be a hermit. Many of our kind can’t stand to be around one another without killing each other, so taking part in society alleviates that loneliness. I cannot say that I would ever take part in an implant, but I do see why they chose that route.”

  Loneliness was something that Dakota knew well. “Growing up, we were poor. My parents either worked two jobs or worked a lot of over time. It meant that they were never there. In school, I didn’t have a lot of friends because I devoted my time to my studies. The summer months were the worst. I would wake up to an empty house with no friends to visit. I spent a lot of time reading as a kid.”

  Wesley looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. His head cocked to the side as his blue and gray eyes studied her face. She looked away, unable to hold his gaze while she felt so vulnerable. He opened his mouth to say something, but the waitress chose that moment to appear beside their table. He pressed his lips together, and after a moment, turned his attention to the waitress.

  The young woman, blonde curls flowing over her shoulders despite the hair tie that held them back, smiled warmly at Wesley. Dakota felt something hot stir inside of her. Anger. Jealousy. It slammed into her like an ice pick when the young woman giggled at something Wesley said and playfully batted her lashes at him. Dakota bit the inside of her cheek to keep from drawing the woman’s attention away from Wesley. She shouldn’t act so territorial of him. He wasn’t hers.

  Wesley directed the waitress’s attention over to Dakota. Her face reddened. She’d been so caught up in hating the woman that she hadn’t chosen her order. Fumbling, she looked down and chose the first thing that she could read.

  Don’t be so stupid! Dakota was busy being angry with herself while the waitress walked away. He was buying her food. This wasn’t a date. It wasn’t anything. He was a dragon. Dragon plus school program equaled disaster for her. She had to remember that.

  No matter how good the sex was. She shuddered remembering it. Wet warmth pooled between her legs. She crossed them, trying to push back the embarrassment that followed.

  “Are you alright?” Wesley asked.

  Her head shot up. “Fine. I’m fine.”

  His nostrils flared. A predatorial smile crossed his lips. He could smell her, she thought. She watched his grip on the table tighten. And he wanted her.

  Good, she thought before shaking her head. What was wrong with her? He was just another man. She could find ones that weren’t also dragons. What was so enticing about this one? Besides his soft, gray eyes and his long fingers that she wanted to touch the top of her thigh? She was suddenly grateful that there was a table between them. It kept him out of her reach. It helped her regain a little bit of control.

  “Tell me more about yourself,” Wesley said. He reached out and covered her hand with his own, his thumb rubbing the skin of her wrist like he could barely control himself either. Just the small amount of contact, she noticed, helped his shoulders ease.

  “There isn’t much to tell.” She didn’t pull away from his touch like she told herself to. “I spent my childhood reading books. My teen years were spent wither working or with my nose in a text book. I’m a boring old maid at twenty-two.”

  “I highly doubt that.” He laughed. “When we first met, you were drawing. Am I wrong?”

  Dakota thought back to the bar and realized that wasn’t what he was talking about. Wesley was talking about their run in during her field trip, in the ruins outside the Snowdonia territory.

  “I enjoy sketching people in their natural habitat the most, but I couldn’t pass up drawing the ruins, either.” There was little evidence of the ruins in her journal. She had, in fact, drawn his dragon form that day.

  “So, you’re an artist as well?”

  Dakota shook her head. “Art doesn’t pay the bills.”

  His brows sloped together. “Is that why you’re getting the degree in…art history? To pay the bills?”

  He wouldn’t understand. He would forever have a home. If he was hungry, he could fly off the roof of his tower and eat a deer, or something. When you lived like her parents had, bills needed to be paid. Art, as pretty and consoling as it was, would never give her the comfortable life that she yearned for.

  The giggling waitress returned with two full plates of food. Wesley must have seen something on Dakota’s face, because he sent the waitress packing quite quickly and changed the subject once she left.

  “When I was a child, I visited my grandfather quite a bit. At the time, this didn’t seem so odd. It was just the way things were, but now that I’ve gone out and
seen a bit of the world, or Wales at the very least, I discovered that living inside of a mountain was not normal.”

  “Inside of a mountain?” Dakota hissed.

  Wesley nodded. He continued to regale her with his grandfather’s immense abode inside of a Snowdonia mountain. He described the carved arches that filled the halls and the polished granite floors that led from room to room. It was hard to believe that such a thing could exist inside of the earth, seeming like a grand castle from the inside out.

  Perhaps, Dakota thought, that was where Dinas Emrys laid.

  As their meal continued, Dakota stole glances at Wes while he spoke with his hands. Every so often he would become aware of how loud his voice was and glance around the room, with a look on his face as though he swallowed his tongue. Each time, it made her laugh. She wasn’t used to feeling this way, bubbly and light.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her head felt light as she walked the dorm hall. Now that she was away from Wesley, the reality of what she had done weighed on her. Had she not only had lunch with a dangerous dragon shifter, but slept with one, too? She barely knew him. All she knew was that she risked a lot.

  Dakota paused in front of her dorm room, keys in hand. Her mind danced back and forth over the subject. Fear and excitement built inside her in a flurry that made her want to let her head fall against the solid wood door. Before she could give in, the door whipped open in front of her.

  Clary stood, wide eyed for a moment. Then, she drew Dakota into her arms and buried her face in her roommate’s shoulder. Dakota fumbled back, catching her crying friend. Muffled words were spoken into the borrowed shirt.

  “I’m so happy that you’re okay,” Clary exclaimed as she pulled back. “When you stopped responding I thought the worst. It would be so easy for someone to text with your phone. I thought that the guy from last night had kidnapped you.”