Dancer Dragon: Bodyguard Shifters #6

by Chant, Zoe

  Dancer Dragon

  Bodyguard Shifters #6

  Zoe Chant

  Dancer Dragon

  Copyright Zoe Chant 2019

  All Rights Reserved

  Author’s Note

  All books in this series contain a standalone romance with an HEA, but this one is slightly less standalone than most. Previous books in this series (particularly Pet Rescue Panther and Day Care Dragon) provide more backstory on these characters. This book can be read and enjoyed without having read the other books, but you’ll learn more about the main characters in those books.

  Here is the complete series in order:

  1. Bearista (Derek and Gaby’s book)

  2. Pet Rescue Panther (Ben and Tessa’s book)

  3. Bear in a Bookshop (Gunnar and Melody’s book)

  4. Day Care Dragon (Darius and Loretta’s book)

  5. Bull in a Tea Shop (Maddox and Verity’s book)

  You may also enjoy Bodyguard Shifters Collection 1, collecting books 1-4.

  Contents

  Prologue: Twenty Years Ago

  1. Esme

  2. Heikon

  3. Esme

  4. Heikon

  5. Esme

  6. Heikon

  7. Esme

  8. Heikon

  9. Esme

  10. Heikon

  11. Esme

  12. Esme

  13. Esme

  14. Heikon

  15. Esme

  16. Heikon

  17. Heikon

  18. Esme

  19. Heikon

  20. Esme

  Epilogue

  A note from Zoe Chant

  Also by Zoe Chant

  Prologue: Twenty Years Ago

  The moon was bright, and Esmerelda Lavigna couldn't sleep.

  She pushed back the sumptuous, gold-chased bedspread and winced a little as her bare feet touched the cold stone floor, until she managed to grope around with her toes and found the soft, embroidered slippers by the bed. A heavy sweater lay across the back of the chair beside the bed. She pulled it over her silk nightgown.

  The room's tall windows painted the room in silver moonlight. Esme padded over to look out. Below her, the mountain fell away in stepped terraces of gardens and farms and pastures, some of them glittering with fairy lights, others dark beneath the moon. Here and there, a small glow dotted the hillside where someone in the extended Corcoran clan might still be awake.

  She unlatched the window and opened it. A cool breeze blew into her room, filled with the bracing scents of the night and the perfume of night-blooming flowers. Inside her chest, Esme's dragon uncoiled and spread its wings. Are we going to fly? it asked.

  Esme leaned out and smiled when she discovered that the windows were tall and wide enough that she could easily step out, with nothing beneath her but a sheer drop down the mountainside. This place was called the Aerie, and it had been built by and for dragons, with their needs in mind.

  But right now, she didn't want to fly as much as she wanted to find someone specific.

  Later, dear, she promised her dragon, and latched the window.

  She crossed the floor and stepped out into the hall. It was long and dim, lit only by similarly tall windows at the far end. Esme paused at the door next to hers and listened quietly, then tested the knob. Finding it unlocked, she opened it carefully and peeked inside.

  In a big four-post bed like the one she'd just gotten out of, a tangle of dark hair was visible on a white pillow. Esme's teenage daughter Melody was deeply asleep, one fist tucked up under her cheek like a much younger child.

  Esme smiled to herself. Her little girl would be safe here, protected within a fortress that no enemy could penetrate, while Esme herself wandered the mountain. She closed the door with a soft click and went down the hall, her steps quickening until the long white skirt of her nightgown swirled out behind her. By the time she reached the stairs at the end of the hall, she was humming to herself in a rapture of delight. Music filled her heart and soul, a wordless song of love. She couldn't wait to see him again.

  Who would have believed that being with any man could feel like this? She was a mature dragon, hundreds of years old. She had taken other lovers throughout her long life. But this romance made her feel like a teenager in the first flush of young love.

  That was the magic of the mate bond.

  Eagerness gave wings to her slippered feet as she all but flew up the stairs. She didn't even have to wonder where he was. All she had to do was follow her dragon's silent yearning.

  And she found him a few levels above the guest suites, standing on a balcony, silhouetted in the moonlight.

  "Heikon," Esme called softly.

  He turned, the moonlight casting his handsome face and high brow in stark relief. He seemed pensive, even troubled, but the expression evaporated as soon as he saw her. "My love," he murmured, and hearing those words in his deep voice lifted Esme's soul. Her feet, it seemed, barely touched the floor as she crossed the room, and Heikon Corcoran took her hands in his, and then took her in his arms.

  "You're chilly," he murmured, stroking her tumbling mass of unbound hair.

  "I couldn't wait until tomorrow to see you." It was foolish. She was foolish. She was no girl, to be swept off her feet; she was a grown woman with a teenage daughter sleeping downstairs.

  But Heikon only laughed. "Fly with me?"

  "I thought you'd never ask."

  They stepped off the balcony together and shifted in midair. His dragon was gunmetal blue, gleaming cobalt and silver in the moonlight; hers was deep emerald green, with her scales patterned in gold like the glint of sunlight through leaves.

  Around and around, they flew together in the nighttime sky, their great winged bodies twining together. It was a dragon's mating dance, and when finally they touched down in the gardens, they were both breathless as they shifted back.

  Heikon caught her in mid-step with a gentle hand on her elbow, and stood looking down at her, eyes dark with desire. Above him the fairy lights twinkled. Like tiny captive stars, strings of white-gold lights were twined in every trellis and tree, turning the garden to a wonderland beneath the moon.

  She had never seen anything more beautiful than Heikon's garden ... except Heikon himself. She still couldn't believe it had only been a week since she'd accepted an invitation from Heikon to visit the Aerie. The invitation was aimed mainly at her daughter (he was seeking mates for his clan scions, she knew)—and as soon as her eyes had met his, she'd known, they'd both known. And they'd laughed about it, because in all their long lives, through all the dealings between the Lavigna and Corcoran clans, they had never met face to face before.

  "Turn around," Heikon said to her now, and she did. Around them, the fairy lights glimmered under the moon. The wind changed direction, and a wave rolled across her of the same rich perfume smell she'd noticed from her window, along with a shower of tumbling petals.

  She reached up and laughed, brushing petals out of her hair. "What are these? They smell wonderful."

  "Cherry blossoms. Sakura trees, imported from Japan. You and your daughter are just in time for them. Another couple of weeks and you'd have missed them completely."

  "I didn't know cherry trees grew this far north, or this high in the mountains." She and Melody had flown over snow on their way here.

  "This valley is sheltered, and warmer than the surrounding hills."

  She hadn't even noticed that they weren't in the same gardens she had explored by daylight. This was a different part of Heikon's mountain, with walls of stone towering above them, enclosing them in a small south-facing canyon.

  "My cherry trees grow all over this mountain," Heikon
said. "There are some blooming in other parts of the garden. But this is my garden's sheltered heart."

  He said it with hushed reverence. Esme wondered if he could possibly mean ... but no, she thought; she was reading too much into a simple sentence. Someone as old and guarded as Heikon could not possibly move that fast, even with the mate bond supporting and nurturing their relationship. Anyway, she had heard rumors about the Heart of Heikon's hoard, and it wasn't a grove of trees. Heikon's clan were one of the ones who employed human Heart-keepers. Esme had always found it a rather strange custom, but she was determined not to judge, considering what her own hoard's Heart was.

  Unfortunately, her brain was determined not to cooperate. Trying not to think about the many differences between their clans only made her think of all the other things she was trying not to think about.

  "What is it?" Heikon asked, brushing her lip with his thumb. "You were radiant a moment ago. Do cherry trees make you sad?"

  "No, it's not the trees. I was only thinking of all the time we've lost. I wish that I had met you long ago, before so much else came between us. Before Darius ..." She spoke the name of her former lover with some embarrassment. Things had been over with Darius for years, but she wished now that she hadn't given him those years of her life, years that she could have spent with Heikon, had she but known.

  "Shhh," Heikon whispered, and his lips touched her cheek, her neck. "There will always be a past for those who live as long as we do. I have long-grown children myself, with children of their own. But no other lover can compare ..." He brushed a red ringlet away from her cheek. "... to the one whose soul fits yours like the other half of a puzzle piece."

  "The one voice that is perfect harmony for yours," she said, and playfully tweaked his jacket. "If I could only get you to sing with me. Or dance."

  "I was dancing with you only a moment ago."

  "I mean on land."

  He smiled fondly down at her. "Give me time. You can't teach an old dragon new tricks in one night. We have a whole long lifetime to teach each other new things."

  True, she thought, and her heart fluttered all over again. "In the morning, perhaps," she offered, stroking her hand across his lightly stubbled cheek.

  He caught her hand, pressed it against his skin. "Ah, love. In the morning I hope you'll accept my offer of an escort back to your home in the city."

  "What?" she said, pulling her hand away in surprise. "What happened to 'all the time in the world'? What happened to 'I can't get enough of you, Esmerelda'?"

  His smile was wistful. "It's true. We do have all the time in the world, and I can't get enough of your skin and never will. But for now, just for now, I think you and your daughter would best be elsewhere. I will come join you as soon as I can."

  "What are you talking about?" She looked up at him, searching his moon-shadowed face and his dark eyes, and seeing, now, the pensive concern she'd noticed earlier. "Is something happening? What's wrong?"

  "Only a little internal trouble within the clan. It's nothing to worry about, but I'd feel better about it if you'd take your daughter elsewhere for a time. You were talking earlier about how much you wanted to visit Greece before the weather turns hot. This might be a nice time of year for it."

  "What—you want me to leave the country? What is this trouble, Heikon?"

  "Nothing much, I hope. I just want to be sure you're well out of it, while I take care of it. Then I can come join you and your daughter in Greece." He stroked a hand down the side of her face. "I'd love to see you in a bikini on the beach. Not that you aren't lovely in any attire."

  "This is ridiculous. I can't believe we've both found our mates after centuries, and now you want me to leave."

  "For a few days," he promised. "A week at most. Then we can begin our life together properly. But I need to do a few things first, so we can do it in peace and safety."

  "A week," she sighed. Well, she'd waited a lifetime for him; what was one week more? She could go visit the Heart of her hoard in the Greek sea caves, and lounge around on the beach with her daughter. And when Heikon arrived, she could take him there, to the most private and personal thing any dragon possessed.

  It occurred to her that she very much wanted to take him there.

  She started to open her mouth to tell him, but then closed it again. She would make it a surprise, a lovely surprise.

  "One week," she said. "You promise?"

  "I promise." He bent to kiss her, and between kisses he murmured, "One week. And then we will never be apart again."

  She could feel the truth of the promise thrumming along the bond between them. With that in mind, all her earlier ardor from the mating flight came back, and she reached for his jacket, pulling it down to expose broad shoulders. He slid the sweater from her shoulders, and cupped her breast through her nightgown. She threw back her head so he could mouth at her exposed throat, and he put his arms around her and laid her down beneath the cherry trees.

  A week, she thought, with a small part of her brain as the rest of her was given over to delight.

  A week wasn't so very long. She could wait a week. As for the risk that it might take more than a week ... well, he was her mate and he wouldn't lie to her. All the betrayals of a long lifetime had taught her not to trust, but now she was determined to start over anew. She would trust him in everything. She would open up her heart as if it was fresh and new to love, and had never been burned. That was what being mates meant. Her mate would never betray her.

  He had promised. After one short week, they would never be apart again.

  Esme

  Twenty Years Later

  When she had last set foot in the Aerie, Esme had been twenty years younger, a woman in the first flush of a new love. She had spun across these stone floors in the steps to her own personal dance, with her heart buoyed by a music only she could hear.

  Now she was older, wiser, and a great deal more cynical, and there was no mate bond anymore.

  It still seemed that she could feel it, like the ache of a phantom limb. Once, the severed bond had been the source of an agony and a grief so severe that she thought she would die from it. If not for Melody, she might have. But she couldn't abandon her daughter, and so, one slow step at a time, she had dragged herself back from that terrible, ragged edge.

  And now she was back here, in a place she'd sworn she would never again set foot, and the cold place where the mate bond had once been was aching anew, like a scar that never really healed.

  Could not heal.

  But the Aerie, too, had its scars. Esme walked through the halls she vaguely remembered, and found them shockingly changed, and not just from the recent battle as Heikon's clan clashed with the ancestral enemies of the dragons, the gargoyles. The threads of this damage ran much deeper. The hallway had been remodeled; the once-huge windows were smaller now, impossible to climb out of and go flying under the moon.

  "Lady Esmerelda!" The voice was somehow familiar, but she didn't recognize it until an Asian woman in black leather armor hurried to her and clasped her hands. "Thank you for coming to help us in our time of need."

  "Hello, Anjelica." She couldn't remember exactly how the woman fit into Heikon's large and complicated family tree, but they had met briefly when she was here before, twenty years ago. Did Anjelica know that she had been Heikon's mate at the time? This raised an entire new specter of awkwardness. Most people in both their clans had not known they were mates. They had kept it private—not the romance itself, because there was no way to hide that, but the fact that it was not just a romantic tryst, but a mate-bonding. The implications were too huge, with Heikon being the Corcoran clanlord and Esme closely related to the entire Lavigna power structure. It was going to be a very big deal, a formal alliance between the Corcoran and Lavigna clans, and neither of them wanted to deal with the social and political ramifications until they'd had some time just for each other first.

  It had all made perfect sense at the time. She had been in love, and deter
mined to start her new life with Heikon as if she had no past, as fresh and innocent as if she had never been hurt before. Keeping their bond to themselves had made sense to her at the time. Now it looked like the naivety of a child, especially since she didn't know how many of Heikon's clan would look at her and see all that she had lost.

  "I'm afraid many of our guest suites have been damaged," Anjelica said, turning to escort Esme along the hallway. She looked somewhat damaged herself; there was a large bandage on her cheek, and one of her arms was in a sling. "But we'll find a place for you. Lord Heikon has instructed that you are to have nothing but the best."

  "I'm sure." Esme was too annoyed to keep the frost out of her voice. "Too busy to greet me in person, is he?"

  Anjelica looked away. "He's very busy, with everything that's happened ..."

  She knows. Esme couldn't say exactly how she knew, but something in Anjelica's guilty posture let her know that Anjelica not only remembered her from all those years ago, but also remembered what she had been then. What she was no longer.

  How did you explain it to them, Heikon? she thought, in sudden cold fury. How did you convince your closest advisors to accept you showing up with a mate, and then one day having none?

  She knew, secondhand, that Heikon's clan had been through a great many upheavals since she'd last been to the Aerie. There had been an attempted coup, a great many deaths, and now the war with the gargoyles. They'd certainly had their problems.