Verdant Magic: A Standalone Dragon Shifter Adventure (Dragon Mage Chronicles Book 1) Page 12

For the first time since her obedient vines had ripped him out of the sky, her dragon’s face broadcast surprise. Then wings emerged from human back, raising her companion to his feet and propelling him across the room in less time than it took for Amber to spread lips into a smile and widen eyes in welcome.

  And as he neared, a molten ball of reflected flame kindled right where that black hole of uncertainty used to reside. Amber’s skin prickled with anticipation and she reveled in the unusual sensation of requited desire.

  Zane wasn’t in any hurry to close the final foot of distance between them, though. Instead, he paused just out of reach and answered question with question. “Where would you rather I be?”

  The words danced around her head like a curious hummingbird, all beating wings and bursts of iridescent color. She could almost taste them, sweet and sour just like her shifter’s scent.

  So why not actually touch and taste?

  Rather than speaking, she took two long steps forward until the pair of them stood toe to toe. So close up, it was even more evident how badly they were mismatched. Her dragon was head and shoulders taller than she was, the fire that moved him dancing in his eyes if no longer around his squared shoulders. In comparison, Amber should have felt as solid and clay-like as the earth. But, instead, her dragon’s mere presence made her imagine taking flight.

  Perhaps that’s why the ultra-responsible Watcher did something she’d never imagined risking during her entire twenty-four years of sheltered life. Okay, so sure—she’d thought about kissing a passing trader or two. Had daydreamed guiltily about touching teasing lips with those of flirtatious strangers.

  On the other hand...Charlie was her future. And Greenwich was too small and cloistered to stomach experimentation from their strongest magic practitioner. So the Watcher had waited as patiently as the earth lay dormant during every long, cold winter, hoping for warm, spring rains that must eventually come.

  But perhaps a smart witch makes her own thunderstorms, she decided now. As the silent words echoed in her brain, Amber pulled at her companion’s willing scruff until his neck bent and his lips drifted south to meet hers. Then she lost herself in what felt like her very first kiss.

  The sensation was overwhelming. Lips softly supple yet firm explored her own while the barest hint of stubble teased overstimulated nerve endings. Zane’s hand dropped to the small of her back to cup her spine and hold her erect...which was just as well since her knees had abruptly weakened, threatening to drop her onto the metal floor.

  Years passed—or perhaps seconds—as Amber lost herself in heat and delight. Then, at long last, she gasped in a mouthful of super-heated air and realized she’d as good as forgotten how to breathe.

  Her companion’s exhale tickled against swollen lips as the two drew apart. And as her eyes fluttered open at long last, they met sky blue corneas sparkling with pleasure.

  “I’d like to get to know you better,” her dragon murmured. “I have...responsibilities to attend to over the next few days. But if you’ll stay with me until then, I’ll take you home or anywhere you wish to go.”

  “If I stay? I have a choice?”

  “We always have choices,” he answered, the words abruptly sad. Was Zane thinking about the quest Nicholas wanted to rope her into? Or about something else entirely?

  Amber opened her mouth to admit that she’d overheard his brother’s invitation. To tell him that she was willing to join in the upcoming adventure and offer any assistance an earth witch’s power could manage to provide.

  But the words that spilled forth from her gloriously chaffed lips veered down a different track entirely. “I’m engaged,” she heard herself saying before she could clamp her traitorous mouth tightly shut to prevent further disasters from sneaking out.

  ***

  Horrified, she dropped her forehead onto Zane’s chest to hide her burning cheeks. Had she really said that out loud? And was that laughter rumbling up through her dragon’s broad body in response to the incendiary words?

  Then Zane was lowering them both onto the narrow cot that filled a quarter of the room. The structure creaked but held and Amber relaxed against her companion’s warm torso and arms. Was this what it should have felt like when Charlie kissed her? Like the entire world had chosen to enclose her in a protective embrace that she hoped never to step out of again?

  “Let me guess.” His breath tickled against her ear as his hands rubbed delicious circles across her upper arms. “Charlie? A hand-carved wooden ring? ‘We’ll make great partners’ but no mention of love?”

  Now it was Amber’s turn to laugh. “Can you read minds in addition to manipulating them?”

  “Not my knack,” Zane answered. Then his hands stilled and his voice hardened. “Did you say yes?”

  Amber took a deep breath, remembering Charlie’s recent kindness and their moments of shared understanding. Her parents’ decade-old wishes and Mr. Schumacher’s fatherly good will. She imagined how the long-expected partnership would bolster the governance of the entire community of rogue witches, how a Watcher and a Mayor in the same household would make everyone in the tunnels feel more safe.

  Now was the time to quell this burgeoning...whatever it was...if she wanted to return to her safe and easy life when this adventure was over. One little affirmative and Zane would set her down onto her bed, would rise to his feet and hightail it out that dividing door, leaving her entirely alone. He’d still keep his word—she somehow knew that much. But their interactions would cool to simple courtesy and his lips would never meet hers again if she really were engaged.

  Shivering, Amber snuggled deeper into the dragon-scented mass of him. She should be loyal to Charlie’s friendship and send Zane packing. But she couldn’t quite make herself voice the requisite lie.

  “I took his ring,” she offered instead after a long moment of consideration. “I didn’t say no.”

  That purr was back when her dragon spoke again, tickling the roof of her mouth and twitching her lips upward into a smile. “You’re not wearing any jewelry. And if you didn’t say yes, then you’re not engaged.”

  “Then I guess I’m not engaged.”

  His laughter loosened knots she didn’t even know existed within her belly. The rumble of mirth tugged at limbs until she found her legs intertwined with his, her arms hugging his belly as her ear came to rest above his pounding heart.

  When had he lain back against the pillow, kicked off his boots and stretched out across her bedspread? When had the light outside the porthole window begun to dim into evening, lowering her defenses yet further? Amber couldn’t be certain. But as broad palms continued stroking pleasure into neck and shoulders, she relaxed fully into the sensation and knew she’d made the exact right choice.

  Because sometimes a seed needed to fall far from its parent tree if it was meant to grow tall and strong. Sometimes a sapling needed to create its own forest in ground that appeared too rocky and dangerous to sustain life.

  “I have secrets too,” her dragon rumbled as her eyes drifted shut. She wasn’t falling asleep, just allowing herself to focus more fully on the blissful sensations that threatened to overwhelm her rational mind. The shifter’s heat licked at her skin like a bath so hot it nearly burned...but instead soaked old aches and injuries away to be replaced by mellow relaxation. His fingers traced gentlemanly curls across loosening muscles, their sensuous pathways taking care to remain atop her clothes but sending shivers down her spine nonetheless.

  “Mmmm?” she managed by way of reply.

  His answer would have been eye-opening...if her lids hadn’t been glued so firmly shut. Because Zane was right—he did possess secrets. As many as she had or maybe even more. He told her at length about a quest to search for a laboratory from the Before. About an attempt to turn back the Change and prevent dragons from Fading away into nothingness as one of his brothers had already done. About a life she could barely imagine where dragons ruled over conjoined skyscrapers where normal human beings lived safely i
nsulated from the Green.

  His story resembled a fairy tale dreamed up to excite an awestruck child. Except Zane wasn’t the evil dragon in this story. He was the prince...or perhaps the white knight riding to the rescue atop a gallant charger decked out in ribbons and bows.

  By the time his story drifted to a close, the sky had descended into pitch blackness. Stars would be twinkling to life already, the fingernail moon curving toward the western horizon. But the tiny window was too small to provide much of a view and Amber’s eyes had stopped opening quite a long while back.

  “I’ll help you find the laboratory,” she murmured when silence lengthened to the point where it seemed to beg a reply. “Of course, I’ll help you.”

  “That wasn’t what I was asking,” her dragon whispered into her ear. A tickle of flame licked her cartilage so gently it teased instead of burned. “I was asking if you’d allow me to court you properly, to woo you the way a woman of your caliber deserves to be wooed.”

  Amber’s eyelids fluttered open sufficiently to see the shifter’s face glowing subtly from within as he watched her from the other side of their shared pillow. The effect should have been both ghostly and ghastly. But, instead, she reached out one sleepy hand to trace the strong line of his chiseled jaw. Her dragon fit perfectly beneath the curve of her palm.

  “I’d like that,” she whispered.

  Then his arms tightened around her once again, sweetness filling her nostrils. And cuddled into the side of a dragon, she released her final hold on reality and fell soundly asleep.

  Chapter 19

  Zane would have liked nothing better than to clasp the apple-scented earth witch to his chest forever. But their recent conversation replayed over and over in his mind, preventing the shifter from relaxing into the peace and tranquility that his bed mate’s presence offered.

  “What’s the Fade?” Amber had asked half an hour earlier, her eyes opening wide for the first time in long minutes as he shocked her awake with this new revelation.

  So he’d told her. About rumors of feral dragons disappearing into bursts of ash, about refusing to believe in the hypothetical ailment until it struck down his own brother atop the Aerie they both called home.

  “Jasper was the kindest dragon I’d ever met,” he’d explained, throat tightening at the memory. “He was the glue that held us all together. The one who teased each of us back into good spirits when we fell into foul moods. The one who kept his ear tuned to the pulse of our family. He was the best of us.”

  “Was?” Amber prompted, a tear already welling up on her lower eyelid. She guessed what had happened, and Zane almost let that be enough. Almost let the story he’d told no one end as quickly as it had begun.

  But her slender fingers drifted down to find his clenched fist. Teased his digits apart so she could press palm to palm and soothe him with the softness of her touch.

  So he told her the rest. “Last winter, Jasper seemed to catch a cold. That’s unusual—shifters don’t get sick. But he was wearing sweaters, coughing, dragging. Acting like a human with a stuffed-up nose. And I teased him about it.”

  Zane paused, self-loathing rising up in his throat like bile. None of them had thought anything of Jasper’s weakness, of the shifter’s refusal to fly out onto the snowy winds of winter. None of them had put two and two together, had sought rumors that Zane later tracked like fading footprints in melting snow to decipher what was currently known about the ailment known as the Fade.

  This he now knew—it started as a coldness, a weakness. Hit without warning, the symptoms lasting days, weeks, sometimes mere hours. Ended with a dragon Fading away into nothing, leaving behind only an outline of ash to mark the spot where a shifter had once stood.

  The Fade took twinless dragons first.

  “So you’re safe because of Baine?” Amber had asked as Zane stumbled through further explanation. “Maybe that bastard is good for something after all.”

  Zane had laughed at her spirited words, had soothed her back down against his chest then run fiery fingers through unruly curls until she forgot that he hadn’t answered. That he hadn’t told her the complete truth.

  Yes, the Fade struck twinless dragons first. Unfortunately, as far as anyone could tell, the bond wasn’t one of the flesh...but one of the soul.

  As a result, a twin like Baine was worse than nothing. Or so Zane’s chilled core told him now as he listened to the aforementioned shifter’s familiar voice heading into the belly of the gondola, trailed by Nicholas’s drier tones.

  “...a pleasure to see such a well-managed ship.” The murderer’s voice was far sweeter than it had any right to be, and Zane shivered against a sudden nip in the air.

  I can’t let Baine run around the Intrepid unhindered, he thought, easing bed mate down into the warm indentation his body had left behind in her thin mattress. It was his responsibility to ensure Amber never again lost someone she loved to the malicious hands of Zane’s long-lost sibling.

  So he forced thoughts of Fading out of his mind and drew on tough leather boots. Pulled a soft blanket up over Amber’s quiet form in case the nighttime air continued to turn unusually cold.

  Urgency thrummed through his veins, but Zane paused for a moment to peer down into his companion’s moonlit face. He hated to think of her waking alone, wondering if Zane had meant the sweet words he’d so recently whispered into her hair. Would she second guess having accepted the protection of his strong arms and the lullaby of his deep voice?

  Perhaps that’s why Zane pulled papers from his waistband and smoothed them carefully. Hesitating for a moment, he considered the expression that would appear on Nicholas’s perpetually gloomy face when his brother learned he’d left top-secret documents in the care of a witch. Then, brushing away fraternal disapproval without another thought, Zane tucked the dossier beneath Amber’s pillow with one edge exposed so she’d be sure to notice the gift as soon as she awoke.

  Because he’d told her everything he knew about the laboratory an hour earlier. But Amber deserved more than that. She should possess every fact and supposition at his disposal as they flew together toward possible danger.

  More importantly, she should know that Zane had been thinking of her even as he left her alone in the bed they’d so recently shared.

  For tonight, though, Zane was on the prowl. So he pressed a feather-light kiss onto his lover’s smooth forehead. Then he turned away to do his duty.

  ***

  Deep laughter and canned music met his ears as soon as Zane entered the hallway, but he still made a full loop through the rest of the ship before following the trail to the level beneath his feet. Unlike the floor above, the crew quarters were broken up into two long rooms that spanned each side of a central passage. And once bunks were flipped up into walls, plenty of space remained for off-duty frivolity...frivolity that was currently well underway.

  “Brother, join us!” Alexander called as soon as Zane stepped through the open doorway into the berthing gallery proper. It appeared that every one of the Intrepid’s sailors was present, along with all three dragons and Amber’s not-quite-fiancé. The last bit his lower lip, shook out muscular arms by way of preparation, then launched a small white ball toward a tower of plastic mugs stacked on the opposite end of the ultra-long table.

  The ball landed with a plop in amber liquid and a cheer went up from the men behind Charlie’s back. No wonder the air reeked of alcohol. Just as much of the liquid libation appeared to have been spilled as drunk.

  “Who’s the lucky dog this time?” Charlie crowed, his words slurred but far more pleasant than any he’d bothered to emit in Zane’s presence previously. In reply, the opposing team’s hearty hands slapped Nicholas’s back, pressing him to the fore. And, surprisingly, the usually dour shifter picked up the chosen mug and chugged the contents as willingly as if he were relaxing at home among trusted comrades.

  Which would have been a welcome change had Nicholas not been the primary defender standing between all of t
he ship’s inhabitants and a potential murderer.

  The crowd parted to let Zane through and he found himself working hard to squash a haze of anger at the brother he’d trusted to guard the ship in his absence. “What are you doing?” he hissed into Nicholas’s ear after an endless moment of back-slapping by beer-addled sailors. Sure, his sibling wasn’t yet privy to the sad story of Amber’s parents’ demise. But the feral dragon was an unknown quantity. A dangerous unknown quantity. Not a very good choice for a drinking partner.

  But dragons are wily, Zane reminded himself. He shouldn’t jump to conclusions, should give his brother full benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Nicholas was merely feigning drunkenness to tempt the newcomer into lowering his guard.

  Apparently not. “Beer pong! It’s a blast!” his brother answered at the top of his lungs. Then, belching loudly, he reached over to clap the dark-haired stranger on the nearest shoulder. “Our good friend Bainey here introduced it. Isn’t he a class act?”

  “A class act. Yes.” Zane’s nostrils flared despite his intention to shelter anger behind an impassive face. At least Baine was still present rather than creeping around the ship alone while his watchdogs were sidetracked by a fricking game of beer pong.

  “You can throw next!” Nicholas continued too loudly. His cheeks were bright red and his smile wide, proof that the shifter had been chosen more than once to consume pint-sized mugs of alcohol on his team’s behalf.

  “No fair!” This howl emanated from Alexander, who appeared to be at least as drunk as his twin. “No fair bringing in fresh blood halfway through the game!”

  “I’ll watch,” Zane soothed them both, attempting to extricate himself from the over-affectionate embrace Nicholas had pulled him into. For a split second, he remembered the apple-scented earth witch he had so recently left behind on the level above. He could be holding her in his arms right now, breathing in the warmth and earthiness of her lustrous hair. The mere memory made the over-powering stench around him fade just enough to give his long-suffering nose a much-needed break.