Dragon Born 1: The Shifter's Hoard

by Dante King

  Interesting. “So why don’t they?”

  Carli snorted. “They can’t,” she said, downing her beer and going into the kitchen for another. “You ever seen a Spellscribe?”

  I hadn’t, and said so.

  “They’re enormously powerful,” Carli said, her voice echoing from inside the kitchen. “They have living magic, which gives them power over all living things.”

  Soojin took the moment of us being alone to wink at me over her tea, as if to say I want some more of what we had in the shower later. I wouldn’t have minded giving it to her, but with Carli around, I had to keep my mouth shut and stay out of trouble.

  “You’ve got to be one hell of a mage to literally write power into existence,” Soojin said, nodding toward the kitchen. “A mage could spend their entire lives trying to attain that kind of power and fall short of the goal.”

  Just then, Carli came out of the kitchen. Along with another pair of beers for her and me, she’d fixed a sandwich. This she handed to a surprised Soojin, bidding her eat while we continued our conversation. “You’re going to need your strength,” the shifter said, and from the look on her face, I knew Soojin was well aware of how right that statement was.

  I wondered what kind of rituals Soojin would be doing for my mother that night. Whatever they were, I felt glad to have her safeguarding Mom’s life.

  As the three of us settled down on the couch, I asked, “So why do mages and shifters hate each other so much, anyway? And why do both of them want my mother so badly?”

  Soojin and Carli shared a look.

  “That’s… a long story,” Carli admitted, taking a sip of her beer.

  “With shifters and mages, it’s the usual reasons people have made war on each other since the beginning of history.” Soojin nibbled at the sandwich between sentences, making appreciative noises to Carli for fixing the chow. “Money, power, territory—and differences of opinion. All the classic reasons for two groups of people to want to kill each other.”

  “Soojin is overestimating it,” Carli said. Spots of color stood out on the cat shifter’s cheeks, telling me she was feeling the alcohol a little. Was she a lightweight, or had she been sneaking sips of something stronger in the kitchen? “Mages and shifters have been at peace way more than they’ve been at war. The last Council of Wand & Claw happened before I was even born!”

  “The Council of what?” I asked.

  “A group that promotes peace between mages and shifters,” Soojin explained. “Think of them as a kind of supernatural UN.”

  “Except that in the last few years,” Carli said, punctuating her words with a hiccup, “everything’s been going haywire. The amount of shifter representation in the Council’s been doing nothing but increasing for the last couple of decades, while mage attendance remains stagnant. There’s always been a rivalry between our peoples, even at the best of times—but this is boiling over into a cold war.”

  I vaguely remembered the real Cold War from my history classes. Mentally mapping the US and the Soviet Union on either side of the conflict, I said, “So the shifters and the mages won’t attack each other directly. Instead, they hit proxies, to try and weaken the other side. Like America in Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan.”

  “Something like that,” Soojin said with a frown. “There are certain powerful shifters who view Raya as one of those proxies. Back in the day, she was an extremely high-ranking mage—and one with quite a few skeletons in her closet. With the shifters close to having an unbeatable majority in the Council, there’s a few members of the old-guard sharpening their knives at the thought of revenge.”

  The thought chilled me. Whatever my mother had done couldn’t have been that bad, right? It sounded like she was some kind of secret agent, performing mage operations in shifter territory, but somehow I knew the real truth was liable to be darker.

  “Is that why they went after me?” I asked. “I thought these sorts of people didn’t attack family members, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “Only in that you were leverage on Raya,” Soojin said seriously. “I doubt anyone on either side of this conflict thought you had the potential to become a Dragon Shifter. And if anyone had suspected you could be a shifter and a mage—well. Both sides would have been trying to recruit you from a very young age.”

  My mind swam with the idea. What would it have been like to know about these powers my entire life? To consider them second nature? I wouldn’t have been a normie then, that’s for sure.

  Yet the more I thought about it, the more glad I felt that I had an ordinary upbringing. This new world held the promise of adventure, but it wouldn’t have felt nearly as special if I’d grown up in it the way others had. Sure, I could have been mad at Mom for keeping all this a secret, and I did feel a slight amount of frustration, but she no doubt had her reasons for keeping me in the dark about the supernatural world.

  “The other primary method of peacekeeping between shifters and mages is the Hunter’s Guild,” Soojin said, nodding at Carli. “They work together to keep supernatural creatures off the streets and out of the headlines, keeping the ‘normie’ world clean of anything that would blow ordinary people’s minds. It’s supposed to be the one place without any prejudices, one way or the other.”

  After a long moment, Soojin sipped her tea. “I should have noticed long ago, but recent events were too good for business. There’s been more conflict, and so many more monsters.”

  “The number of interlopers out on the streets over the last six months are off the charts,” Carli added. “There’s a rumor going around that the higher-ups in the Council have been releasing creatures to keep mage and shifter Hunters busy and off each other’s territory—but given what we know now, I’m wondering if that was all a ruse to begin with. Either way, even bystanders like you are getting pulled into it.”

  I met her gaze, my face going serious. “I’m not a bystander any more.”

  Carli finished her drink and looked at me like she wanted to rip my clothes off. “No. No you most certainly are not…”

  Once again, Soojin’s emotional intelligence won the day. “I’d better get back to Raya,” she said, rising smoothly from her place on the couch between us. “She’ll need at least one more course of medicine to be out of the woods. She’s burnt a lot of mana, so she’s going to need lots of rest, even when she starts to get better.”

  What a brilliant woman, I thought, glancing past Soojin to Carli. She knows when I need release, and she knows when Carli needs it, too. Shit, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was happy about hooking me up with another girl…

  I’d heard that older women were less jealous than girls my own age. If Soojin was a cougar looking for a casual hookup, maybe she didn’t mind me spending a little time between the sheets with Carli on the side.

  That was one hot idea to think about.

  Wait a second—mana?

  “My mother uses mana?” I asked.

  Soojin paused, already halfway to the door.

  “I thought that was, like, video game stuff,” I added.

  Soojin flashed an indulgent smile. “Not at all,” the apothecary said. “Your mother has an affinity for Mana Magic—it’s a rare and beautiful gift. It’s basically creation magic. Those guns she created to destroy the mages with were just a taste of her true power. Back in the day, when relations were better between our peoples, I used to look up to Raya.”

  “Really? You’ll have to tell me about that sometime.”

  I wouldn’t have minded hearing about it right then, but I could sense that Soojin was in a hurry to leave—and Carli was in a hurry to be alone with me. The Raiju shifter was looking more than a little tipsy, and she’d been casually putting her hands all over me ever since that second round of drinks.

  “I will,” Soojin said, giving Carli a knowing look. “Later. Right now, I need to tend to Raya.”

  Then the apothecary left, leaving Carli and me sitting on the couch.

  “Well
, it sounds like your mom is going to be okay,” Carli said, sounding relieved. “How about another drink to celebrate?”

  Carli looked to be right at or near her limit, but sometimes appearances were deceiving.

  Either way, I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her to stop.

  “Sure,” I said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything stronger, by chance?”

  Carli’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d say something like that,” she purred, sounding more like a cat than usual. “Hang on, Derek. I’ve got something that’s going to knock your socks off.”

  Chapter 12

  As I sat on the couch, eagerly waiting for Carli to return, I reflected on how crazy my life had just become.

  There were people who could transform into animals. And other people who could eat paper in order to learn magic spells, and then cast them like the wizards from Harry Potter. Shifters and mages: an entire civilization of supernatural beings lurking just under the fringes of polite society, where ‘normies’ like me couldn’t see them operate.

  No matter how many times I ran it over in my head, it just kept on blowing my mind. I doubted it would ever stop blowing my mind, to tell you the truth. My skull felt like a wind tunnel pretty much 24/7, thanks to Soojin and Carli.

  Soojin.

  Despite the attention she’d lavished on me in the shower, my cock pulsed in my boxers at the thought of her and Carli together. What would that even look like? Being so much older (more ‘mature’, I mentally amended, as she’d probably prefer to be called), Soojin would undoubtedly take the more dominant role. She’d treat Carli like a student or a stepdaughter, guiding the shifter through our lovemaking. The thought of it made me dizzy.

  I was still thinking about it when Carli came back from the kitchen, her tail swishing between her legs as she shook her ass from side to side with each step.

  “This is the good shit,” she said, practically pouncing on the couch. “Been saving it for a special occasion. And it doesn’t get much more special than this…”

  The bottle was small and dark, with a silhouette of a mischievous looking pixie on the front. Carli popped the stopper, and the liquid inside smelled like sunshine and sex.

  “This is genuine one hundred percent fairy mead,” Carli explained with gusto. “Don’t worry, it’s not the kind of stuff that binds you to some Fae or anything like that. This is the mead they produce to sell, not to entrap mortals.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, taking the bottle. “How wasted is this going to get me?”

  “Exactly as wasted as you want to be,” Carli purred. Now she was practically in my lap, her tail tugging gently at my belt like she wanted to tear it off with her teeth. “But there is a price you have to pay for tasting my mead, Derek.”

  “Name it,” I said, giving her the most confident smirk in my arsenal.

  Carli leaned over and put her lips against my ear. The touch made me tingle.

  “I want,” she whispered, “to see you do some magic.”

  My hand strayed to her ass. With her back arched like that, it was like she was begging me to squeeze it. Slap it. Mount her from behind and pound her like a bad kitty…

  As my fingers touched her rear, Carli giggled and twisted away.

  “Not just yet,” she said, plopping down beside me in a giggly heap. “Pay the toll first, normie boy. Then maybe I’ll let you jingle my keys.”

  “I’ll do more than jingle,” I assured her. “Okay, what—do you want me to move something without touching it?”

  To my surprise, Carli shook her head.

  “What then?” I asked.

  She hiccuped. “You know that mage I mentioned earlier? I’ve got a spell scroll she had me snatch for her. She won’t be using it anytime soon, so I figured… well, do you want it?”

  I wanted to ask her if it would hurt me—but caution wasn’t what Carli longed for this night. The Raiju shifter wanted a little adventure—a little danger, sure, but safe danger. After the chaos of combat, she wanted to come down a little bit—but not too much. I understood her better than I think she knew.

  “I’d love another spell,” I told her, leaning back on my side of the couch. “Bring it here and I’ll wash it down with some of that fairy mead.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Carli said. She sprang forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek, purring like a happy cat. “Hang on, I’ll be right back with it.”

  While I waited for her, I tried to figure out what good deed I might have done in a previous life to be blessed with these two beautiful, sexually open women.

  I hadn’t yet figured it out when Carli came back, a slender scroll clutched in her hand. “Full disclosure, I’m not one hundred percent sure what this does,” she admitted, handing me the paper. “I just know that mage wanted it something awful. So it’s gotta be cool, right?”

  “I’m sure it’s cool as fuck,” I told her, getting into it now.

  I gestured for the bottle of mead, and Carli handed it to me with an eager expression. I balled up the rune-covered paper and chewed it, then washed it down with a big swig of the fairy mead.

  The mead tasted even better than it smelled. Instantly, I knew I’d found my new favorite liquor.

  “This is so freaking cool,” Carli whispered, watching me swallow the balled up paper with a spell written across it. “I’ve never had a mage friend before.”

  I nearly choked on what was left of the parchment. “Friend?”

  A smirk spread across Carli’s face. “You know what I mean. Well, I guess it’s not entirely true. I did have this one mage friend, but that was a long time ago.”

  “Was she a friend, or a ‘friend-friend’?”

  Carli punched me on the shoulder. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No, she was… something else. I don’t want to talk about that tonight. I want to see some magic!”

  I felt more than happy to oblige. The telltale tingle in my fingers told me new knowledge was about to bloom in my head, carrying along with it a whole new spell for me to cast. Dimly, I wondered what it would be.

  While the surge slowly worked its way through my body, Carli continued to babble. I figured she’d drunk a little more than she intended, or maybe she handled it with less dignity than she’d expected from drinking alone.

  “Never been much for shifter friends, either,” she said, glancing up at the high rock ceiling of the cave. “Except Soojin, I guess. Sometimes I wish I’d been born into a clan, but then I wouldn’t be Legendary. Just wouldn’t be as cool, you know? Clans are almost like the normies of shifters—they do things sooo by the book—”

  “I thought they were all about freedom and family,” I said, closing my eyes and concentrating.

  “Well yeah, compared to mages,” Carli said. “Have you seen those guys?”

  I had. But at the moment, the spell captured my attention. I reached out and made a fist—and within the span of a heartbeat, my hand grew so heavy I could barely lift it. What the hell had I just done?

  I opened my eyes—and beheld a living gauntlet of metal.

  Silvery steel covered every inch of my hand, coating it like a second skin. To my surprise, it moved along with my digits—I could flex my hand, and the metal shifted around my fingers, almost like a glove.

  “Woah,” Carli said, her eyes widening. “Neat!”

  Feeling bold, I rose from the couch and walked over to the unfinished rock wall. With a grunt, I dealt the stone a fierce jab, intending to do no more than maybe shake it a little bit. Instead, the fist sank right into the wall, leaving a hole like a puncture wound.

  “Better than neat!” Carli gasped, her jaw hitting the floor. “Fuck, I bet you could punch right through one of those shifters with that!”

  I felt the same way. This was one hell of a weapon.

  Carli crouched on the edge of the couch like a gargoyle, devouring the new spell with her eyes. “I wonder what would happen if y
ou cast it while you were in Dragon form,” she mused, nibbling her bottom lip like the thought of it made her hot. “Wait—can you cast spells while you’re in your dragon form? Magery and shifting don’t usually mix.”

  I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  This time, the transformation felt easier. Without the stress of battle, stoking the dragon’s fire inside of me felt more like a simple matter of concentration. It took longer than it had when I acted to save Soojin. The dragon didn’t rip from my chest like a wave of energy—there was more give and take.

  When I opened my eyes, I had claws and a dragon’s head. I felt my reptilian snout with my scaled hands, noting the way Carli looked even more turned on by my nonhuman features.

  “So fucking badass,” the catgirl whimpered. “Can you do a spell now?”

  I reached for the new knowledge the scroll had implanted in my head, and a gauntlet of iron burst into existence around my scaled claws. The reptilian fingers gleamed like the blades of knives in the dim, romantic light of Carli’s living room. Yet I was certain that, were they to be used in combat, there would be nothing romantic about them.

  I yearned to use my metallic dragon fists to smash the stone to splinters, to wreck wooden furniture until Carli’s awe took off into the stratosphere like a loosed balloon. The now-familiar rage I’d felt in Mom’s condo flared in my chest, igniting like a firecracker’s fuse. I put mental fingers over it and squeezed before it could go off, stifling the emotion.

  “Are you okay?” Carli asked. No doubt she felt the anger rolling off me like steam.

  “Never better,” I assured her.

  Carli examined my hands with an almost scientific air. Her fingers felt warm against the metal.

  “This looks extremely powerful,” she murmured, squeezing my palm with both of hers. Though she clearly put as much effort as she could into it, she couldn’t gain a single inch of leverage. “I’m curious, though. Does it have to be your hands?”