To Match A Dragon’s Fire (Sulfur & Spice #1)

22

Kieran

Rodeo Posters

I’d been busy making plans all morning, intending to sweep Ember off her feet before carrying her and her friends to safety. We’d have to keep moving and I’d only be buying them time, but I’d do whatever it took to extend her life.

I’ll burn down the world before I let anything happen to my mate. Already, the thought of losing Ember was driving my baser instincts insane.

Let’s not tempt fate, I tried to soothe my beast.

It’d be difficult, but I could manage to travel between my flock and wherever I took Ember as Earth settled on her next design.

But in all my plans, I’d forgotten one thing.

It shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did to see the resilience of humans. Over the centuries, I’d watched empires grow and wane, but humans always found a way to survive.

What these women had accomplished in a couple of weeks was nothing short of magic.

“It’s different in here,” I said, taking the offered seat at the table. For the past decade, this cabin had been nothing more than a dusty storage shed .

Now it was a home again.

“We still have a few cobwebs to clean out, but we’re restoring her bit by bit.” Ember smiled and my breath caught in my chest.

She was beautiful, even with dirt streaked on her face. And I loved her bashful little glances. It was empowering to know the mating bond was affecting her the same as it was me.

It’s time to complete it.

I frowned, looking to the table to avoid Ember’s direct gaze. She might not understand.

“Are you all right?” Ember whispered, grasping my hand under the table. “I know this can be a lot.”

I nodded, feeling her strength in the squeeze of her soft fingers, and was suddenly overcome with the need to learn everything I could about my mate.

Some part of me knew I was stalling, using my skills of study to delay the inevitable. I’d have to tell her about me soon, and what it meant to bond with a dragon.

“You lived here as a child?” I blurted out, feeling my beast chuff angrily within. I’d almost torn the cabin down.

The thought of that made me ill.

“Born and raised,” Ember said proudly as she released my hand, pouring water from the filtered pitcher into a plastic cup with flowers on the side. “That’s why this land is mine.”

She winked as she set the cup in front of me.

Something tightened in my chest.

I studied the simple glass of water, poured for me by my mate who didn’t know she was my mate.

How would she act when she did know?

She cares for us. Nothing will change .

Humans are surprising.

“I told Riley and Willow this, but I never formally told you,” I said, trying to stop ruminating on my worries. “You’re welcome to the greenhouse and Agatha will give you anything from our kitchen. If you need supplies, they’re yours.”

“Thanks.” Ember laughed as she rested her elbow on the table. “I think we’ll be okay on our own. I don’t want to put you out.”

I take care of my mate. My beast puffed out his chest, hurt by her refusal to let us provide.

She doesn’t know that yet, I tried to soothe him.

Ember must’ve felt it though. There was a pull between us that couldn’t be explained by chemistry. We fit together, sitting side by side, and an invisible force demanded us closer.

She fought against her instincts out of principle. But I could tell she was affected too by the way she flushed with desire when our legs accidentally brushed and the quickening of her heart when she looked at me.

Hurry up and tell her, he grumbled.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ember was watching me intently. How great it felt to be the object of her attention.

I was in over my head.

“Perfect.” I sipped the lukewarm water.

It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

“Where are you from, originally?” Riley asked, drawing me out of Ember’s hazel eyes flecked with gold and back to the room.

“I’ve spent most of my life traveling around the different entry points to the Pacific Ring, but the majority of my clan’s roots are nomadic European,” I explained, hoping I wasn’t boring them.

Most humans I’d met didn’t have a long attention span when it came to history.

To my surprise, every female in the room was hanging on my every word.

But I didn’t want to speak about me. “Where have you traveled?” I turned back to Ember.

“A few places.” She shrugged, looking nervous, and I remembered that I had an extensive list of all the addresses she’d lived since leaving here.

“Ember’s been all around this area,” Willow said, breezing over to the table with a tray of sandwiches in her hand. “She used to barrel race. Didn’t you go to nationals in Montana one time? I always wanted to visit Yellowstone.”

“But she moved down to San Diego after graduation. That was right before the Pacific and North American fault crash where LA shifted north to San Francisco,” Riley said, passing around a stack of thin multi-colored ceramic plates.

I recalled that time a few years ago.

Malachy hadn’t taken it well.

And I remembered the addresses on the notices I sent to all the random locations, some where she and different males were the only registered tenants of the place.

Ember let out a mortified groan as she put her face in her hands. “I was finding myself, okay? Can we leave my travels in the past?”

Her embarrassment made my beast smile, soothing his jolt of protective jealousy. She’d lived an entire life before we’d met. So had I .

“You ride horses?” I asked, thinking of the old rodeo posters hanging on the wall in the back bedroom. That room was a child’s room and I struggled to place her in it now.

“Rode. As in past tense.” She lifted her face from her hands and offered a sheepish smile. “I started barrel racing in middle school and took home a few belt buckles from local competitions, but I was never pro.”

“She’s lying.” Riley took her seat across the table. “Don’t let her downplay her accomplishments.”

“It’s not good to lie,” Harper scolded as she climbed onto the chair to my left.

“She’s not actually lying.” Willow set down a bowl of cut fruit. I was pleased to see it was from my greenhouse and wondered if Ember knew. I wouldn’t say anything if they hadn’t told her though.

I didn’t need to stroke my ego.

“But Ember doesn’t give herself enough credit,” Willow continued as she draped a napkin across her lap. “Did you know she was rodeo queen two years in a row?”

“Did you wear a big dress?” Harper gasped.

“Please let this be poison,” Ember mumbled as she took a sandwich from the plate.

“Mom, I don’t want poison.”

“It’s not poison.” Willow sighed. “It’s just sourdough bread. Now eat, please.”

My cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.

“It’s not funny.” Laughter danced in Ember’s eyes as she passed me a sandwich too.

“I didn’t say it was.” I tried to keep a serious face as I took a bite, chewing the homemade bread and sliced cheese. Once I swallowed, I asked my burning question, “Why did you decide to leave this place?”

Ember shrugged with one shoulder as she took her time chewing, and then played with the edge of her napkin as silence descended around the table.

“It’s what you do,” she slowly started, not looking at me. “You leave the small town to see the big world. Go to college. Do something different with your life. My dad didn’t ask me to stay, but he always said I’d come back. If I’d known how close he was to the end, maybe I wouldn’t have left.”

“None of us know when the end of anything is.” Willow rested her hand affectionately on Ember’s arm as Riley nodded from across the table.

I swallowed past the lump of dry bread stuck in my throat, reaching for the water.

They wore their sadness so openly and gave comfort just as easily. I felt like a stranger to their world—though I’d been alive much longer than they had.

“Anyway,” Ember sighed, and just like that, the dark cloud lifted. “I moved to college, carrying my high-school-sweetheart-turned-newlywed-husband as baggage, and lived the American dream for about a semester until he busted his knee in his first college football game. He lost his scholarship and ended up on the couch for over a year while racking up debt in my name. And I’m really glad that dream didn’t work out.”

“Here, here.” Willow raised her plastic cup. The women responded in kind, with Harper standing on her chair to clink their cups in salute.

It was over in a brief moment. The laughter faded to a joyous calm. I felt like an outsider—a privileged spectator—allowed a glimpse of something special.

It warmed my normally cold blood.

“I have a question.” Harper shot her hand in the air. The women all looked to each other, but the girl was staring at me.

“Yes,” her mother said.

“This is for Kieran.”

I smiled encouragingly. “Ask me anything.”

Harper cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “Where is your whore?”

The silence was instant, and a coldness swept through the room. Ember tensed beside me, focusing on her plate.

“Harper, that’s not…” Willow took a breath, thinking. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“You know.” Harper rolled her eyes. “All dragons have a whore of treasure or gemstones.”

“Hoard,” Willow stressed the word as Ember and Riley burst into laughter. “And that’s a stereotype. You’re not supposed to expect everyone to do the same thing you see on TV.”

“What’s the stereotype?” Riley was still laughing. “That dragons are hoarders or that they’re all promiscuous?”

“Stop,” Ember cried, still trying to get ahold of her giggles. Her hand found mine under the table again and I had to chuckle. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this warm.

“It’s okay. Really,” I reassured her mother before turning to the girl. “Dragons do have hoards. It’s not common knowledge, but most of them don’t hoard gold. And as for Riley’s question, it’s also true that dragons have varied tastes. ”

“So what do you hor-de?” Harper asked, causing a few errant giggles around the table.

I glanced at my lap, seeing Ember’s hand intertwined with mine in the most perfect way. It was hard to explain my life to those looking in, but for her, I’d try.

“’Knowledge,” I said, raising my eyes. “It’s my special interest, to put it in human terms, to protect and preserve the knowledge that would otherwise be lost to our species through record keeping, language, and stories passed down by oral word.”

“You’re a lit nerd like Ember.” Willow nodded like she approved. “Now it makes more sense.”

“What makes sense?” Ember pressed.

I had questions too. But mostly I wanted to know more about this side of my mate that I hadn’t gotten to explore yet.

“I figured it had to be more than insta-lust.” Willow waved her hand, motioning between the two of us. “The coincidence was too strong. Him being here when we arrived and the way you two just clicked. It was meant to be.”

Fear laced through me as I glanced at Ember from the corner of my eye, wondering how she’d take that. Willow had somehow stumbled very close to the truth.

Ember just smiled with a wistful shake of her head. “Fate is for fairy tales. Not for women like me.”

My dragon wanted to soar across the sky.

She didn’t deny it.

She just didn’t think she deserved it.

I was going to—

“The others who live with you,” Riley interrupted my train of thought, “the elders. I assumed you were running a retirement home. Are they a part of your knowledge hoard?”

“They are.” I nodded.

“Gross.” Harper scrunched her little nose. “You collect old people?”

I laughed louder than I had since I was a hatchling, causing the women to join in.

“I can’t take you guys anywhere,” Ember groaned as she put her forehead on the table.

“You love us.” Willow patted the top of her head. “Anyway, what’s your story, Kieran? Why did you move to this spot?”

“The runes are here,” I started to explain once I caught my breath, sobering as I wondered how much to divulge. It would take time for them to trust me—to agree to my plan.

Time we didn’t have.

“Wait?” Ember turned her head, peeking up at me as her cheek rested on the table. “Runes? What runes?”

“You’ve gone and done it now.” Riley sighed as she reached for another sandwich. “This is Ember’s fantasy.”

“Fantasy?” I arched a brow.

Ember sat straight up. “I majored in English with a minor in linguistics and an emphasis on lost languages.”

I…

I was shocked silent.

Not because I didn’t believe her, but because the fire in her eyes was so much like my own that I cursed myself for not noticing before .

“My ex-husband, Tony, he told me it was a stupid degree,” Ember began to speak faster. I noticed she did that when she was nervous.

A protective growl rumbled in my chest.

She placed her hand on my shoulder, soothing my beast without even realizing it as she continued, “Technically, he was right. I haven’t been able to use my degree since I graduated. And even if I could’ve, I couldn’t afford to take low-paying positions while trying to pay off the debt I got saddled with in the divorce. Waitressing and bartending had better tips so I chased the money instead.”

My face fell as I felt the weight on her shoulders she shouldn’t have had to carry.

And he stole from her, even after that? It made the taste of his blood that much sweeter.

“There’s something I want to show you,” I said. It wouldn’t make up for what he’d done, but I hoped she’d feel some justice in it.

“Is it the runes?” Her eyes were so bright, I could get lost in them. This was what I’d been missing for years. The spark of discovery. Fire that burned in awe of studying something new.

And I remembered why I’d lost it.

“If you want to see them, I’ll show you,” I said. “But I have to warn you that it’s the prophecy for the end of the world.”

“Mommy, what does he—”

“Nothing!” all three women cried as one.

Riley clamped her hands over Harper’s ears. “There are children in here.”

“My apologies.” I hadn’t been scolded in centuries, so the burn felt like a lashing .

“Let’s get the cookies.” Willow jumped to her feet.

“I can help with that.” Harper climbed down from her chair, prophecy forgotten in favor of sugar.

But Riley and Ember hadn’t lost interest.

“Does the government know about these runes?” Riley asked in a hurried whisper.

“He works for the government,” Ember explained, frowning as she turned to me. “Wait, you do, right? I just assumed…”

“I don’t,” I said. “But my species has a long-standing relationship with most human governments, especially the US government’s conservation department. We’ve managed seismic activity and acted as a liaison of sorts for Earth, and, in turn, they referred to us on environmental concerns.”

“Why don’t we know about this?” Ember asked.

“You wouldn’t—”

“Mass hysteria,” Riley answered, leaning back in her chair. “The bastard was right. Drew always said they were hiding something. I just didn’t know it was this. But if the general public were to find out, there would be chaos.”

I didn’t know who Drew was, but I already didn’t like him from the way Ember tensed when Riley spoke his name.

“Not necessarily,” I explained. “There’s more to it. Dragons prefer not to expose themselves. As do many other paranormal creatures. The government and our kind had an agreement. We were supposed to protect them and then they’d protect us.”

Ember must’ve seen the pain in my expression because her eyes softened with sympathy. “You’re speaking in past tense. What happened? ”

I chuckled bitterly as I looked to the floor, wishing I could give her better news. “Earth has decided She no longer requires our assistance. We don’t have much use anymore.”

“Is that why…” Ember looked around, making sure Harper and Willow were still in the kitchen. “The earthquakes and everything else?”

I nodded. The guilt of not being able to protect Ember, or anyone, from this truth sat heavy in my gut. “Without the guardian’s strength absorbing Her excess energy, Earth is too turbulent. She’ll rearrange Herself in a new way, and I assume She’ll find a new steward when all this settles down.”

“And the runes foretell this?” Lines creased Ember’s forehead as she stared at me.

“From what we’ve studied, yes.”

“Can I see them now?” Ember pushed back her chair, moving to her feet before I could give a response.

“Of course.” Not that I’d deny her anything at this point. “But first, there’s something else I want to show you. Don’t worry. It’s on the way.”