Chapter One—Three Years Later
The scent of gas, oil, and car exhaust lingered, though the space hadn't served as a garage for over twenty years.
Even to an omega dragon, it might have housed cars yesterday.
Jules had lived in the adjoining house for almost all of his twenty-one years, and to him, the acrid tang simply smelled of home.
He’d no idea what the previous owners had kept on the walls in their time here, but now they bore padding, both as insulation for sound and for protection. Weights occupied space in one corner, treadmills another, and the center remained open for sparring.
Sweat trickled down Jules’s face and back, but he stayed on his guard, waiting for the evaluation of his latest attack.
“Good, Jules. Again.” Radomir crooked his fingers in a beckoning gesture.
Jules gripped the staff in both hands, flaunting the weapon as he’d been taught. While his opponent’s attention focused on the staff, Jules whirled, stopping his bare foot inches from Radomir’s midsection.
“You don’t have to pamper me,” Radomir scoffed. “You can make contact.”
Jules lowered his foot to the floor, demonstrating not a single tremor in his other leg. He’d perfected balance years ago. “Isn’t it you who tells me not to expend more effort than necessary?”
Radomir gave a tired smile. “Here I thought you hadn’t listened.”
Jules had listened, as he did to all of Radomir’s words. Here, he exercised caution, not out of self-preservation, but because he feared harming his mentor. Radomir wasn’t a young dragon, growing slower with each passing day. Jules would rather hurt himself than his guardian.
“Fighting is as much about misleading your foe and lulling them into a false sense of security as it is about making contact. Most look at you and see a small, easily defeatable opponent. Use their underestimation of you as another weapon in your arsenal.”
Radomir, at six feet, towered over Jules’s five-feet-nine, or he had before age stooped his shoulders.
His hair, now more gray than sandy-blond, stood up at odd angles, defying any efforts at taming.
His brows also seemed like furry, living entities on his broad face, standing guard over shrewd gray eyes, the color of a stormy day. Or so his mate, Moira, claimed.
“Had enough for today, old man?”
Radomir sighed. “I have, but you need to practice one more thing.”
This time Jules sighed, placing the staff on a nearby table and extending his hands.
The fingernails of both index fingers immediately shifted into claws, golden scales trailing to the second knuckle.
A little more concentration shifted the middle and ring fingers.
His hand shook. The more he willed the fingers to change, the more violently they shook.
“Don’t force the change. Tell your dragon what you want. Let him do the rest.”
Jules’s two little fingers sprouted claws, albeit smaller proportionately to the others. His thumbs shifted last. Scales now extended to his wrists.
“Very good!” Radomir smiled. “Very few dragons ever master a partial shift. You’re truly blessed by the Goddess.”
Jules watched his hands slowly revert to human. “You and Moira always said omegas like me aren’t meant for fighting, so why did the Goddess give me this skill and not the two of you, born beta warriors?”
This time, Radomir’s smile turned indulgent. “Ours is not to question the Goddess of Fire, but to accept her gifts, knowing she gave them for a reason. Now, go wash before dinner. I believe Moira has made one of your favorites tonight.”
Jules dashed into the house from the garage, down the hall, through his room, and into his private bath.
He dropped his loose pants and shirt to the floor and showered, letting the warm water soothe tired muscles.
Radomir had increased their training sessions as of late. Did he know something Jules didn’t?
He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, leaving his feet bare.
Carpet felt so good on the bottoms of his feet, but he also liked the cool smoothness of the kitchen tiles.
The scent of cooked meat wafted through the air the moment he opened the door, and he hurried into the dining room, beckoned by the promise of steak. She cooked steak, right?
Moira looked up from depositing plates onto the table, a smile on her weathered face.
“Ah, Jules. Just in time.” She sat on one side of the six-seater table with Radomir at the head and Jules opposite her, where she’d already placed his plate of medium-rare T-bone.
He’d argued long and hard to let Radomir sit at the end, next to her.
Positions at the table, and social ranks, were foreign concepts to someone who’d never seen them in action, only heard of them from his guardians, and couldn’t see the point.
She finally abandoned her efforts for Jules to sit at the head of the table as the highest-ranking dragon present, taking her place across from him as she and Jules handled most of the dinner table discussions.
Moira didn’t wrinkle her nose at Jules’s choice of clothing either, as she’d done when he’d first started dressing as a human his age.
She wore a loose cotton robe close enough to the casual dresses depicted in style magazines not to draw too much attention to herself in the unlikely event she set foot out of the house.
Radomir wore loose trousers and a tunic, similar to his training attire.
They’d said both were common garments for betas back in the territory of the Sandy Shoals Court in their home realm, when they weren’t in uniform.
While they didn’t particularly dislike humans, they certainly didn’t emulate them, keeping as much as possible to the old ways.
Human servants in Sandy Shoals exacted revenge when seeking their freedom.
Although Moira and Radomir hadn’t been alive then, nor had their parents, the stories lingered.
Seeing the humans here in Terra, so preoccupied with daily living, left Jules wondering about the ones who lived in Adrakus.
“Would you like a potato?” Moira asked, passing a bowl containing three baked potatoes. While she didn’t particularly embrace human customs, she’d adapted to their ways of eating out of necessity. Jules had even found her secret stash of Oreo cookies.
“Thank you.” Jules transferred a potato from the bowl to his plate.
“Radomir tells me you’re getting better control over your partial shifts.” Moira beamed like a proud mother.
“I’m getting there.” Jules couldn’t help the warmth blooming in his chest at her praise. He worked hard to make Moira and Radomir proud.
Moira’s bright smile fell. “Just remember, you can’t let anyone but us see. They’d know you’re a dragon. I maintain the spell that hides us from others of our kind, but they’d notice a human suddenly sprouting claws.”
“I know, Moira.” Jules should. She’d lectured him often enough.
“Now, tell me about your day out with the humans.” Moira had gotten better at hiding her reservations when discussing Jules’s newfound life outside of this house.
Stroking her ego helped. “I had a math test today. My professor said whoever homeschooled me did an excellent job.”
Moira beamed. “Sakaris granted me knowledge of human studies when we came here since you were too young at the time, so I can’t take full credit.”
“Yes, but who wouldn’t let me leave the table until I’d finished my lessons?”
Moira gave another of her indulgent smiles. “True.”
At least he’d distracted her from her worries about him going out among humans, and possibly other dragons, in his pursuit of a normal Terran life.
“I still don’t understand why you feel the need for more specialized schooling.” Ah, so she wasn’t about to let the topic drop after all.
“You taught me the basics. Now I’m learning more, hoping for a career someday.”
Moira set her fork down on her plate a bit more noisily than necessary. “You don’t need a career. I’ve told you, one day your brother will send for you, and we’ll all return to Adrakus. You’ll have no need of human skills. In the meantime, your parents’ hoard keeps us nicely provided for.”
This again. Adrakus, Adrakus. A place Jules didn’t remember and might never see again.
“Moira, we’ve been here over twenty years.
I’ve known nothing but this house and our occasional visits to the mountains.
To me, my mysterious brother could be a fledgling tale.
” Donovan, alpha leader of Sandy Shoals Court, was a legend rather than a real person as far as Jules could prove, while speculation about the parents he’d never know brought fresh sorrow.
Moira’s tone grew stern. “Don’t disrespect your brother. He sent you here to protect you when the wars started. One day he’ll bring you home.”
Jules snorted. “As a sacrifice to another alpha.” He’d heard the stories often enough, how a pure-as-the-driven snow omega became an alpha’s plaything for the greater good. They couldn’t possibly be happy with such an arrangement. What about what they wanted?
Screw the greater good.
“Jules!” Moira’s face turned red.
Jules took a bite of steak, preferring food to the coming tirade. Moira and Radomir had abandoned their lives to come here and care for him. Again, based on what they said. He’d no one else to ask.
“It’s common practice among our people to enter arranged matings for the good of the court, Jules.” Moira lifted her fork and kept her voice even, as she’d spoken to a younger version of him. “Your mating with the alpha of another court will ensure allies to strengthen us.”
“Mating,” sounded so dirty, impersonal. Why couldn’t they just say “marriage” as humans did? “Yes, I’m being raised as a sheep for the slaughter. Does what I want matter to anyone?” He spoke bitterly, but without anger.
Radomir broke in before the fight escalated. “Of course it does. You may not know your brother, but I do. Even though we left Adrakus before he became king, I know he’s a good ruler who wouldn’t force you into a relationship with an abusive alpha.”
“That’s not setting the bar very high, is it, when all that’s required is a mate who won’t slap me around? I don’t even know if I’m being sold off to a male or female.”
“Jules!” Moira sprang to her feet, horror on her face. “You’re not being sold!”
“Aren’t I?” Oh no. Jules might have just gone too far. He backed down, as he always did. “I’m sorry, Moira. I’m just tired of waiting for this life that someone else has planned for me. What’s taking so long? Didn’t my brother say he’d be back for me in a few years? It’s been more than a few.”
Moira smoothed her hands over her robe and returned to her chair. “I’m sure he’ll send for you whenever he can.”
“Do you know if he’s even alive?”
“If it weren’t necessary to hide from enemies, Moira could lift the spell,” Radomir said. “Dragons can sense their close kin. You’d be able to feel him even though he’s not around.”
Why had they never mentioned this before? “Then why don’t you lift the spell, Moira, and let me check?”
“It’s too dangerous,” Moira and Radomir blurted as one.
Moira added, “There are dragons in the human world. None from our own court that I’m aware of, but many from courts we can’t trust who have reasons to prevent your brother from making alliances.”
“If I can’t feel him, he can’t feel me either, can he?” Maybe Donovan thought Jules was dead, or maybe he’d forgotten having a brother since they couldn’t feel each other.
“That’s correct. He can’t. But Sakaris knows where we are. He won’t leave us here.”
Sakaris, the mysterious dragon mage, was as much a legend to Jules as Donovan himself.
Jules stared down at his half-eaten steak, appetite gone.
But Moira had made his favorite tonight.
She always did what she could to make him happy, even relented and let him attend the local university.
A small taste of freedom before being tied to a stranger.
Jules ate the rest of his meal in silence and retired to his room.
Nestled in his lonely bed, he dreamed of flying, as he often did, riding the winds far above the city.
He laughed, a sound most humans might fear, interpreting it as a roar, banking to the left to ride a thermal draft.
Down below, another shadow joined his. What?
He’d never dreamed of flying with another dragon before.
The new dragon didn’t challenge him, merely matching its movements to Jules’s. Jules and his dragon both relaxed, reveling in the company on their flight.
His light-gold coloring made a stark contrast to the mottled brown dragon’s as they spiraled higher together into the moonlit sky. Another dragon.
An alpha.