Chapter 20 #3
"The dragonfire lives in her blood." His voice was like the rustle of leaves. "It recognizes her. She is the dragon's mate. Claimed . Bound. " A pause. His silver eyes narrowed. "And the goddess has given her a piece of herself. Direct. Unmediated. And there is — "
He stopped.
He inclined his head — slowly, deeply, the way an elf inclined his head only to a being he considered his equal or his superior.
"There is new life in her. New life carrying both fires."
The elves behind him went very still.
A second elf stepped forward. She was taller. Older. She held a silver cup in her hands.
"My lord Draquonir ." Her voice was reverent. "The line is restored. The forest is healed. The dance turns. Your sister is freed. And your mate carries — "
"Yes." Alsander's arm tightened around Poppy. His voice had gone quietly possessive. "She carries. We know."
"King Ryker will wish to know. As will our elders. There has not been such a child in generations."
"Ryker is still king?"
"Aye." The first elf's silver eyes glinted. "And he has a human mate of his own. He will be — most interested — to learn that his lost cousin has been found, and found bonded , and found a father ."
A small wry smile touched Alsander's lips.
"Ryker is my cousin," he murmured to Poppy. "I will take you to meet him. When I am ready to share you with the rest of the world."
"When will that be?" Poppy whispered.
He pulled her flush against his chest. His arms wrapped around her like a shield. He lowered his head, his forehead resting against hers, his emerald eyes staring deep into her gold-and-green-and-blue ones.
"It might take a hundred years."
"Alsander."
"I have been alone much longer. I am not in a hurry to share a single moment of this." He paused. His gaze softened with an emotion so raw and vulnerable it made her heart ache. "I love you, Poppy. More than my own life. More than the air I breathe. You are mine now. "
"And you are mine."
"Yours."
" Mine. "
"I love you, mo chroí . I love you, I love you, I love you ."
He sealed it with a kiss. Slow. Deep. Full of a promise that would last for centuries.
When at last he lifted his head, Niamh had moved. She was standing in front of the tall older elf with the silver cup. She had drawn herself up to her full small height. Her stick was planted in the moss in front of her like a queen's staff.
She spoke.
The words were not English. They were not Irish. They were flowing , curving, interlacing — a script written in air, a song the language of the high tongue had been built from at the beginning of the world.
The elves' silver eyes went wide.
Then wider.
The tall older elf inclined her head — deeply this time, the way she had inclined it to Alsander.
"Lady Niamh."
"My friends." Niamh's voice in English was the same dry voice she had used to scold Alsander about looming. "It has been an age."
"Sixty-four years, my lady."
"Has it. Goodness. Time slips."
"You will come with us," the tall elf said. It wasn’t a question.
"For a little while," Niamh agreed. Her sharp blue eyes turned to Poppy. "If my niece can spare me. There are things I have been waiting six decades to discuss with these people, and I find I am not as young as I was last time we spoke. I do not want to put it off."
Poppy's mouth opened. Poppy's mouth closed.
"Auntie."
"Hush, child. I will be back. Probably. Eventually. I am eighty-three. I do not promise things in days anymore. I promise things in seasons ."
"You don’t just read it, you speak — High Elvish — "
"My line passed it down, dear. The way yours passed down the pendant.
We have had different keepings to keep. Someday I will tell you about it.
Today I am going with my friends, who have been very patient, and you are going home with your dragon and your child, and we will all sit down at my kitchen table some evening this autumn and have a long talk about it. "
She turned to Alsander.
"You. Listen to me."
"Yes, Lady Niamh."
"Take her home . Feed her. Make her sleep. She has just died and come back and she is carrying your child and she is going to need a great deal of attention for the next nine months. Are we clear."
"We are clear."
"And you are going to come and meet me at the door with a cup of tea the next time I visit. In trousers . Not in a postman's uniform."
A laugh tore out of Alsander. Real. Unguarded.
"Yes, Lady Niamh."
She kissed Poppy on the forehead.
She tapped her stick once on the moss.
She walked into the wood between the tall silver-eyed elves, her gray cardigan luminous in the morning, her stick steady in her hand. The wood took them. The light took them. The trees parted and closed and the Aos Sí and Lady Niamh of the keeper-line were gone.
Poppy stood in the silence after.
She felt Alsander's chest rise and fall behind her. She felt his heart beat against her shoulder blade. She felt — under her own hand, where she hadn’t let it leave her belly since she had understood what was there — the small new fire of her daughter answering her own with a slow contented warmth.
She turned in his arms.
She looked up at her dragon — her three-hundred-year-old, lair-dwelling, brooding, defaced-his-sister's-shrine-with-his-grief, postman-uniform-wearing, mate-of-her-soul, husband-already-in-everything-but-name dragon — and she smiled.
"Take me home, Alsander."
"Yes, a chuisle ."
" Our home."
" Our home."
He swept her up into his arms.
The forest above them was bright and green and alive .
The sky beyond the canopy was clear. Somewhere out beyond the trees, the sea broke against the cliffs of Cuanfirth, and a small green car called Margery waited at the head of the path, and in the kitchen of the cottage where her grandmother had planted lavender the year Poppy was born, the air was waiting to be warmed by them again.
He shifted into his dragon and they flew to the cottage. And her precious garden. Home.
Thank you for reading Dragon Cursed. Did you miss the first book in the Secret Kingdoms series? Read Dragon Chains , co-authored by Becca Brayden USA Today Best Selling author Grace Goodwin!
Dangerous. Tortured. Desperate.
King Ryker of the Draquonir will make one last sacrifice to save his people and his kingdom before he loses control of the raging beast inside him. Dragon kind are dwindling, no longer able to hunt for their true mates in this contemporary, high-tech world.
Ryker must do something no dragon has ever done before; have a child with a human woman he has no desire to touch, a woman his dragon refuses to take as a mate.
Arrangements have been made. A queen chosen.
A loveless, chaste marriage of convenience.
No passion. No dragonfire. Nothing but contracts and medical procedures to sire an heir.
This is the only way his race will survive.
Katy Toure is tired of cleaning up her identical twin’s messes, but when her sister calls in a panic, unable to get to an important business meeting worth millions of dollars, Katy just can’t say no.
All Katy has to do is walk out of her dead-end job, grab her sister’s passport, fly to Italy, pretend to be her sister for a few days, sign some contracts and take the vacation she’s always dreamed about.
No one will know she’s an imposter. No one ever knows.
But Katy has never tried to fool a dragon who scents his mate...
Chapter 1
KATY
Emily: i need to talk to you
Katy : i’m working
Emily: it’s an emergency
Katy: always is
“Collins and Rowe, this is Katy speaking. How may I help you?” Katy Toure answered the phone with her most professional voice.
She literally cringed every time she had to answer the telephone.
Especially right after her boss ran an expensive radio campaign promising free consultations.
For each rational human being who called, there were ten crazies and they all thought they had the perfect ‘sue them and get rich’ case.
Katy had more than enough crazy in her life already.
She dreaded talking to them and, to be honest, disliked everything about her job.
“Katy! Don’t hang up! It’s me. Emily.”
Katy grinned. Her sister was so dramatic. They may be identical in looks, but that was where the similarities ended. Still, she loved her twin to distraction.
“I’m working,” Katy whispered into the phone as she glanced nervously toward the closed door connecting her tiny cubicle to the opulent office currently occupied by her micro-managing boss. “You know I’m not supposed to take personal calls, even when I’m on break. What happened? Is Mom okay?”
“She is feeling better, actually. The nurse said the new lung treatment is starting to work.”
“Thank God.” Katy felt some of the tension in her shoulders melt.
Her mom and her sister were all she had left in the world.
Literally. After their house burned to the ground a few weeks ago, she had learned to be grateful they’d all survived.
Their stubborn mother had gone back in after their cat, Thorin Oakenshield, Thor for short, and came out with a singed cat, a few minor burns, a broken ankle, and lung damage from the smoke.
Everyone thought their mother had named the fluffy orange tabby after the Avengers character, but her mom was a diehard Lord of The Rings fan. The corner of her mouth twitched up with a quick mental ‘thanks’ that she and Emily were not Eowyn and Arwen.