Dragon's Joy Read online

  The music fell away as we stepped from the field into the thicker darkness of the woods. I didn’t need any more direction than my attendant had given me to find the woman we were looking for. A faint glow glimmered amid the trees up ahead.

  The fae monarch gave the two of us a measured look as we approached. She stayed where she was in her formal silvery gown, a shimmer of light rising from the fabric and her pale skin and hair. Her crown of vines was nestled on the top of her head, the leaves a crisp golden brown they’d stay until the trees’ first buds opened in spring.

  “Monarch,” I said, with a moderate bow that Alice echoed.

  “Alpha of the avian kin,” the monarch returned with a bob of her own. “Are you ready?”

  “You’ve brought the crystal?”

  She motioned to the thick folds of her dress. “Yes. You provided a temporary resting place?”

  “Everything is set up,” I said. “Will you join us, then?”

  She stepped forward to walk with us back toward the field. When we reached the first ring of lights, she paused, her dark eyes widening with reflected sparkles. I shifted my weight uneasily at her stare, taking in the huge gathering of my people in revelry, but the expression that crossed her face after a moment looked only like awe.

  Did the fae even have celebrations, or at least any that came close to this? There was still a lot I didn’t know about our nearest neighbors. As the tension in my chest ebbed, I made a note to myself to rectify those gaps.

  The more we knew, the more we wrote down for future generations to learn from, the less chance there was that we’d end up at each other’s throats all over again.

  Some of the dancers nearby glanced over, and their eyes widened in turn. They eased to the side to part a way for us through the crowd. As the path opened up and we walked along it, I spotted Serenity swaying with Nate by the center of the field.

  The attendants I’d given advance warning to must have gotten word. The music turned off. My mate lifted her head in confusion and went still when she saw me and our guest approaching.

  “Monarch,” Serenity said, easing away from Nate. She bowed, only a little, as one head of their kind to another. Her gaze slid to me, and I gave her a reassuring smile.

  “Dragon shifter,” the fae woman said with equal respect. “I hope I can contribute to your celebration here. Your alpha made a suggestion that struck me as wise, given the strides our two peoples have made toward a long-term alliance.”

  She reached into the folds of her dress and drew out a crystal so large and clear it was my turn to stare in awe. The carved stone, which filled her entire hand, caught the lights overhead and bounced them back in every color of the rainbow.

  I kept enough wherewithal to motion toward the low column set in the middle of the field. The slight indent on its top held the crystal perfectly when the monarch set it down. Serenity looked from it to me and back to the fae woman.

  “Your presence is welcome,” she said, not forgetting her role even in her confusion. “I’m pleased to take part in any activity that would strengthen the bond between our peoples.”

  The monarch gave her a thin smile that held about as much warmth as I ever saw any fae offer.

  “It’s to replace the one you smashed in the mountains,” I said quietly. “Just in case, if there’s ever a need in the future…”

  Understanding dawned on the dragon shifter’s face. When she spoke to the monarch again, her voice trembled, but her eyes had lit up. “We can do that? Recreate the magic that was in the other crystal, that will give another dragon shifter the flames of truth?”

  “We can,” the fae monarch said. “I believe the first crystal was put there for good reason—I believe you’ve proven that our ancestors were right to provide that option for times of need. If you would join with me in creating the power it will contain?”

  “Of course. You’ll just need to tell me what to do.” Serenity’s mouth formed a crooked grin. “I’ve never imbued anything with magic before.”

  The fae monarch motioned for Serenity to join her on the opposite side of the podium. All around us, my kin had fallen silent. Several breaths drew in around me with a quiver of anticipation. My heart was thumping fast, but it was all enthusiasm now. Yes, I’d made a good choice, arranging this ritual for tonight.

  “The magic will come from me,” the monarch said to Serenity. “You will contribute your flames. Let your usual dragon fire flow into the crystal, and I will shape it into the power to be claimed.”

  Serenity nodded. The crowd had stepped back enough to leave her room to shift. She shed her coat. I caught the eye of one of my attendants and signaled her to collect another change of clothes for our dragon shifter.

  The sight of my mate taking on her animal form still filled my chest with wonder. The lovely woman rose and lengthened with a gleam of bright red scales and a fierce glint in her draconic eyes. She held her narrow head at a regal angle and looked toward the monarch. The fae woman stretched her hands toward the crystal as if to say, Be my guest.

  There were shifters in the crowd who’d never seen Serenity let loose her flames. She hadn’t had much reason to use her dragon fire since we’d fended off the vampire threat the summer before last. When she bared her curved teeth and sent forth the first burst of flame, a collective gasp ran through our audience. Everyone stayed completely still, transfixed.

  Her regular dragon fire, streaked red and orange and yellow, coursed down over the crystal with a crackle and a wash of heat I could feel from where I was standing several feet away.

  The fae monarch made a scooping gesture with her hands as if to encircle the crystal and Serenity’s fire at the same time. A fizzing glow lit up around the top of the podium. A sudden wind gusted up, tossing the fae woman’s long silver-blond waves. A thrum of energy washed over me that tickled my skin and made my ears pop.

  The glow contracted around the crystal and seemed to pull Serenity’s fire with it. She raised her head, letting the flow of flames ebb. The ones she’d brought forth danced within the sphere of magic as it closed in around the crystal and then seeped into its polished surface.

  A sharper light beamed from inside the stone. It flickered and danced like a miniature flame contained within the gem. Which I supposed it was. A flame giving the power to uncover the truth and burn away to the heart of the matter, like the gift Serenity had earned for herself all those months ago.

  The fae monarch smiled, looking pleased, and lifted the crystal. Serenity dropped back into her human form, and I hurried forward with the dress my attendant had handed me. My mate tugged it over her head with a swift practiced motion. Her gaze stayed on the fae monarch as she accepted her coat.

  “Will you bring it up into the mountain?” she asked. “Or should we find a different place?”

  “I think the place of the two peaks still serves well for this purpose,” the fae monarch said. “None go there for any other reason. It will not be discovered unless another like you comes searching, seeking it out. That will be your legacy, to decide what guidance you leave behind. I will see this token conveyed there now.”

  “Thank you,” Serenity said before the monarch could go. “This—it means a lot. I hope no dragon shifter ever needs to use it, especially for the reasons I had to, but I’m glad we can support each other enough now to ensure that power will be there if any reason arises again.”

  “I’m glad too,” the fae monarch said, her tone unusually soft. She bowed to the dragon shifter a little more deeply than the first time. Serenity dipped in return, and the fae woman blinked out of sight like a flash of light, here and then not.

  I blinked as a murmur of surprise carried through the crowd. I was never going to get used to the way the fae could travel like that when they chose to.

  My mate turned on her feet to take in the revelers. “To our past, our present, and our future, and all the strength we’ll carry with us!” she called out. “More eating, more dancing. This is a celebration
, isn’t it?”

  A cheer rang out all around us. The music started again, leaping across the light-strung field. As my kin launched back into their rejoicing, Serenity stepped closer to me. I moved to meet her, looping my arm around hers and squeezing her hand.

  “You didn’t tell me you were planning that,” she said, chiding but only lightly. Her face glowed like the crystal had.

  “Christmas is a time of surprises, isn’t it?” I said. “Consider it my first present to you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got more than that? I think that’ll be hard to top.”

  I laughed. “I think my fellow alphas might give it a try. We’ll have to wait and see.” I leaned closer. “I thought you should know you haven’t taken anything away from our people by claiming that power. You accepted the gift that was there, and now you’ve passed it on.”

  Her expression went momentarily serious. “Let’s just hope our people don’t need that gift again for a long long time, if ever.”

  “If that’s our goal, I think we’re well on our way.” The melody swept around me, and I reached for her other hand. “May I have this dance?”

  My mate’s smile came back. “Please do.”

  Chapter 3

  Ren

  Looking at the table only half covered with platters, I couldn’t restrain a groan. Nate ambled over with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “It looks strange. Maybe this was a bad idea.” I turned to take in the rest of the disparate alpha’s estate house dining hall: the polished wood tables dotted with tall candles, the exposed brick walls hung with evergreen boughs to add that Christmas-y smell to the air, the silky red and green streamers that crisscrossed the high ceiling. The dry breeze that traveled through the open windows was warm, because it was never going to feel like my kind of Christmas here in southern California, but I’d tried to recreate some of the atmosphere I loved.

  “Are you sure they didn’t think the request was weird?” I asked Nate.

  He set his brawny hands on my shoulders. “It’s fine, Ren. Everyone I talked to loved the idea. It’s not as if you put them out. We gave them a stipend to cover ingredients or just buying something outright—and everyone who joined in volunteered. We didn’t put them in any hardship.”

  “I just… I’m still figuring out the best way to relate to your kin.” In some ways, Nate’s people were the trickiest, because they were all the shifters who didn’t fit into the neat little boxes of avian, feline, or canine. They’d come together not out of what they had in common with each other but what they didn’t have in common with any of the other kin groups. That wasn’t the best recipe for cohesion.

  “I want to make sure I’m recognizing them for themselves,” I added.

  “And I think, like I thought when you first talked to me about it, that this was a perfect approach,” the bear shifter said. He dipped his head and nuzzled my cheek with a brief kiss. “You’re doing a lot this week, Ren. You’ve done a lot all year. None of our kin expects that the five of us will never make the slightest slip. Not that I can see any you need to worry about.”

  “Okay,” I said, closing my eyes for a second and trying to convince my nerves to settle. “Do you have the list? I want to put out labels for each dish so they know where to put them—and so everyone else knows who to thank.”

  I’d just finished arranging—and rearranging, and re-rearranging—the labels when the first of the disparate kin Nate had reached out to arrived. A petite couple I recognized as rabbits from their scent set a sweet carrot-beet salad in the place I’d designated and gave me a shy bow. “Thank you!” I said. “It looks delicious.”

  Next came minks and then voles, grizzlies and then boars. All in all, thirty families representing thirty different shifter animals had volunteered to contribute to our sort-of potluck meal. From the way they all deferred to me, you’d have thought I was doing them a favor by letting them help feed the party, not the other way around.

  More than one glance dropped to my belly. I’d been resting my hand on it again, just out of habit. My daughter kicked lightly against my fingers. Could she feel my touch already? The thought made me a little giddy.

  “Best wishes and safe arrival,” more than one of the kin murmured, as much to her as to me. A couple of the women were growing round themselves and shot me an extra knowing smile.

  More and more of Nate’s kin poured into the room. He must have told them they weren’t supposed to eat yet, although I saw a few shooting longing glances toward the platters and serving bowls. I shifted anxiously on my feet.

  To distract myself, I mingled, welcoming all of our guests and accepting their good wishes with a grin, making my way slowly to the table at the front of the room with just five place settings, reserved for my alphas and me. Aaron, Marco, and West were already waiting there, the eagle shifter and the jaguar shifter chatting about something that had Aaron looking amused and Marco sly, the wolf shifter standing a little stiffly at the other end. Nate turned up just as I reached them, with a nod to me. That was my cue.

  I came around the table and picked up my glass to tap my spoon against it. Nate loomed beside me with a meaningfully cleared throat. The shifters milling around the tables closest to us picked seats and quieted, and then the ones just beyond them followed suit, until the whole room had fallen into a hush. Hundreds of eyes fixed on me.

  “Disparate kin,” I said in the queenly voice I’d had lots of chances in the last year and a half to practice. “It’s wonderful to have you all here today as we celebrate the Christmas season and our first full year of peace since the long-ago tragedy that claimed my family.”

  Heads lowered respectfully at the mention of the attack that had left my alpha fathers and my two sisters dead, and my mother and me on the run. My alphas and I had taken down the leaders of the rogue group that had orchestrated that attack, and in the months since then, a steady trickle of their followers had come to rejoin the kin groups. Any others who still refused to live under an alpha’s authority hadn’t stirred up further trouble, which I’d take as a blessing.

  “It’s also to celebrate you and the way you show right here how different types of people can come together and create a beautiful harmony,” I went on. “I wanted to honor all the many traditions that make up your kin group. So your alpha and I asked representatives from various families to bring a dish they feel showcases their unique sensibilities to add to our feast. You can find those dishes interspersed with the ones from the estate kitchens all around the room.

  The guests craned their necks to peer at the serving tables with renewed interest before their gazes came back to me.

  “We shifters have always come together despite our different animal natures,” I went on, “and I think it’s those differences that make us so strong together.”

  A shout of agreement carried through the crowd, followed by a few whoops. I had to grin. The anxious twitch in my gut finally settled.

  “Now I’d like to give the families who contributed to our meal a chance to stand up and share with everyone the thoughts that went into their chosen dish. Only if you’re not feeling too shy, of course. Who’d like to speak?”

  A family of skunk shifters stood up and spoke for a minute about the history of their raspberry-glazed chicken. The brother and sister grizzlies followed, talking about the excitement of fishing their salmon out of the river near their home. Several more said their piece, until no one new stood up. My daughter squirmed, and my stomach rumbled.

  “Thank you again, everyone, for making this feast even more memorable,” I said. “Now let’s eat!”

  The kin held back as the alphas and I grabbed our plates and made our way to the serving tables along the edges of the room, but as soon as we’d started scooping up food, they streamed over to join us. The sight of so many different dishes, the mingling of all those delicious smells in the air, left me wishing that my daughter didn’t seem to be lying on my stomach right now, squeezing it to half its u
sual size.

  “Eat up, mother-to-be!” Nate said with a wink, nudging me toward a roast pig. I stuck out my tongue at him, but I kept heaping food into my plate. Our little one might move in ten minutes and then I’d be starving twice as much.

  “Well,” Marco said, cocking his head as he poked at a dish of shiny noodles mixed with seaweed and pumpkin seeds. “This experiment has certainly given us a wide variety of flavors, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m pretty sure there’s enough food here that you can find something that suits you,” I said.

  “Or maybe you could experiment a little and open up that refined palate of yours,” Aaron teased.

  “I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly capable of experimenting,” Marco said loftily. His nose twitched as he caught a scent. “But not when there are seared tuna steaks to be had. If you’ll excuse me…”

  “He’s really never going to get over himself, is he?” West said with what looked like a barely contained eye roll.

  “You should be used to him by now,” I said, bumping him along with my hip. “And, I mean, considering the patience we give you and your grouchy moods…”

  West glowered at me, but the heat in his eyes was far from irritation. “I don’t recall any recent complaints.”

  “Oh, I think you got in at least ten years’ worth of grumbling just in the first month I knew you,” I said, with an affectionate quirk of my lips. “It’s going to take a while to off-set that.”

  The wolf shifter made a faint growling sound in his throat, and then he was kissing me, quick but hard. He lowered his voice. “And every day I’m thankful for your patience then, believe me.”

  Marco had circled back around. “More eating dinner, less eating our princess?” he suggested in a wry tone as he brushed past us. West muttered something inaudible but clearly scathing under his breath, but he moved on.

  When we returned to our table at the front, I sampled everything I’d managed to squeeze onto my plate and then dug back into my favorites. I’d heaped the plate high enough that I only made it through about half of the food before I had to sit back with my hand lower down on my belly, where my stomach was achingly full. My daughter wiggled as if eager to come out and enjoy the offerings firsthand.