For the Love of Her Dragon (3 page)

She’d
tried everything she could think of to get him to speak to her but had
failed…totally…miserably, and then completely lost her nerve when she crashed
right into his chest. To make matters worse…he had
growled
…really
growled at her when her hand had landed just above his waist.
What the hell!
He was six-foot ten and she was five-foot two; her hands only reached so far
and she was about to fall on her ass. It had been one of the most embarrassing
moments of her life
, and
she knew Devon had witnessed it all.
Thankfully, he’d had the decency to never mention it.

Dammit
,
she was no wimp! Kyra St. Croix had never cowered from anything in her life.
She was the daughter and heiress of Grand Priestess
Calysta
St. Croix, the leader of the oldest and most powerful coven of Earth witches in
the world. She’d made it through every test that could have been thrown at her
when her right of succession had been questioned, completely based on her
‘mixed race’. Was it her fault her father was a human? That her mom had a thing
for mortals? She had only laid eyes on the man three times in her entire life;
that was the way of their coven. Not one she really agreed with, but who was
she to buck thousands of years of a tradition she really didn’t care about? He
seemed nice enough, but three times in seventy-five years did not a
daddy-daughter relationship make. He was a sperm donor in her eyes, plain and
simple. She had endured forty days and forty nights in the Forest of Darkness,
with only what she could scavenge to survive and infused with a magic-dampening
spell to prove she had what it took to lead the prestigious coven.

Not
that any of that really mattered. There was no way her mother would ever
forgive her for leaving, skulking off in the night, to avoid being paraded from
dragon clan to dragon clan to identify her mate. She was not a show pony, or
worse yet, a beauty queen on tour. Her mother had refused to listen, insisting
that they needed to locate her mate as soon as possible with no explanation
why. Only after a few months of arguing had Kyra overheard the conversation
that changed everything.

She
had been heading back to her room after one of the absolutely worst training
sessions in the history of training sessions. One that made her want to rip out
every last strand of her hair and scream to the heavens. Training had never
been something she enjoyed, whether she was doing it or receiving it, and it
had definitely never been her lifelong dream to instruct orphaned teen witches
with raging hormones. All the talk of boys, hair, and
New Kids on the Block
triggered her gag reflex, ranking right up there with talking about her
feelings and painting her toenails…shit that made her
ass twitch
. Lost
in thought, she almost ran into the wall when she heard her mother say, “Kyra
will do as she is told,” from behind the half-closed door of her mother’s
office. She slowed and leaned against the wall, pretending to review the
training schedule stuck to the clipboard in her hands.

Calysta
was talking to one of Kyra’s many aunts, detailing her contact with the leaders
of the dragon clans in the area concerning the ‘new development’. Not
surprisingly, they had all agreed that Kyra needed to be ‘united’ with her mate
as soon as possible.
WOW! Romance much?
Even though her mate had been
predetermined by Fate hundreds of years before she was even a twinkle in her
daddy’s eye, it pissed her off that her mother was trying to control it. Kyra
wasn’t looking for a fairy tale love story or anything mushy, but the chance to
meet on their own terms would have been nice.

It
was not the first time since her fiftieth birthday that she had cursed the
dragon tattoo on her right hip. Like most things her mother was involved in,
one of the coolest things to happen to Kyra had taken a swift slide down a
slippery slope. At first she had been excited, kind of giddy, even though that
was not an emotion she’d really ever experienced. The prospect of being a part
of something bigger than herself, something that had absolutely nothing to do
with her mother or her aunts or her coven, was exciting.

The
marking that spelled out a huge part of her future was beautiful and majestic;
it fit Kyra. She just knew it was meant for her and that she belonged to the
beast it represented and the man with whom he shared his soul. The blue dragon
with ever so faint touches of green was in flight and appeared to be simply
enjoying the air through his wings and on his scales. He was slightly tipped to
the side, so that one wing appeared higher than the other and in just the right
light, she could make out the depth of emotion glowing in his deep brown eyes.
He had opposing horns and a tail that was long and barbed and she knew would be
treacherous in battle but was elegant in flight. More than anything, the tattoo
was hers and what came with it was her destiny, and her alone. The other
witches gushed over it and wished for their own. She listened to the giggles
and whispers until she thought she might scream.

Kyra
was a
NOT
a girly-girl, never had been. She didn’t gush or giggle or
even gossip like the other girls had when she was younger, and as the years
passed, she’d pretty much avoided every female-centered conversation she could.
It just wasn’t her thing. But when the beautiful blue-green dragon that looked
like it was flying through a perfect sky had appeared, she’d immediately felt a
sense of purpose…
of
belonging
. In that moment, she had realized
that’s what she’d been missing and it was within her reach. Then in came momma!
Leave it to
Calysta
to insert herself smack ass in
the middle of a situation that had absolutely nothing to do with her. What the
hell was it about Kyra that made her mother incapable of letting her have any
kind of life that was her own? Goddess knew that the Grand Priestess had done
nothing
but groom her to take over the coven from her first steps. She had never been a
real
mom. There had been no tea parties, no Barbie dolls, and no make-up
tips…absolutely nothing but hour after hour of training in one form or another.

She
had been so lost in her anger that she had almost missed her aunt’s comment
about ‘The Prophecy’. If it was possible, she got even madder with each word
she heard. So mad that power began to build in her veins, making her hair lift
around her face. Her anger was spiraling out of control until a crack began to
form above her head. It had been years since she’d lost control, but just the
prospect of her mom ruining the one thing she wanted for herself was the last
straw. She had quickly ducked into the storage room beside her mom’s office.
Leaning against the wall, attempting to regain her control, a plan came to
mind. A way to show her mother and all those other bitches that she was through
with their crazy ass plans for
her life
.

Several
hours later she had come up with a plan that would help her get her hands on
the actual Prophecy and get the hell out of dodge. She knew that it would take
a few days, but then she would be rid of all the bullshit that came with her
mother, her aunts, and their full of shit coven. Her prayers for a less
complicated life were going to be a reality, she would see to that.

That
had been twenty-five years ago. From the moment she had stowed away in the back
of that eighteen-wheeler, after hiking almost fifteen miles to the nearest
highway in the dead of night, she’d never looked back. There had been times she
knew her mother and the coven were looking for her and had even talked to
Calysta
a few times over the years when she knew it was
safe and absolutely necessary. Thankfully, she was truly gifted in the Cloaking
Spell department thanks to her mother’s bloodline.

Her
magic had manifested at an early age, more powerful than anyone had imagined.
It quickly became second nature to her. She had gotten good at hiding who and
what she was or at least making it damn near impossible for anyone to find her
from the moment she decided to disappear. The purity of the dragon magic of her
newfound friends called to her white Earth magic, and it had been second nature
to drop her guard and let them know exactly who she was. Had the scumbag,
Andrew’s, dragon magic not been buried so far within him the first time she met
him, she would have recognized him for what he was and things would have gone
very differently; people she now cared about would not have been hurt. That was
just one of the many reasons she wanted to kick his ass until he begged for
mercy and then turn him into the snake he was.

Somewhere
along the way she had decided she should find out more about her father, but
all she had was a faded Polaroid and a rusty old pocket knife. Her mother had
claimed she’d lost touch with him after finding out she was pregnant and
running back to her coven. Every time they had ‘the discussion’, the little
hairs on the back of Kyra’s neck stood on end and she got a ringing in her ears
telling her
Calysta
was lying. They always fought.
Kyra always begged.
Calysta
always avoided until Kyra
wore her down and then it ended the same way, with the same lie. She finally
had given up ever getting the information she so desperately wanted from her
mother. Eventually, she had figured since he was human, and she was over
seventy-five, that he had passed away, just another thing in a long list of
things that her mother had taken from her.

“Shit!”
She yelled as cold drops of water splashed her face and chest, ending her trip
down memory lane.

“Wake
up, Witchy Poo,” Lance chuckled while Devon laughed and shook his head.

“You
had to throw water on the last dry shirt I have?”

“Sure
did. We’re ready to go. I called your name. You didn’t answer. So I threw water
at you.” The biggest hundred-year old kid she had ever known shrugged. She saw
the glint in his eye and knew the best was yet to come.

“Besides,
you said you wouldn’t melt,” he winked and she was once again reminded of a bad
little boy just waiting to be scolded. Goddess bless Sam for signing up to deal
with him for all time.

“No,
but I may call in the flying monkeys if you two don’t behave yourselves.”

“Hey!
I didn’t do anything,” Devon pretended to pout while Lance laughed so hard Kyra
was almost afraid he might fall off the side of the mountain.

“No
worries, Dev. I’ll direct them to the pain in the ass over there…” No sooner
were the words out of her mouth than a familiar pain hit her square in the
chest. Devon’s eyes widened and Lance stopped laughing. ‘Pain in the
ass’
was what Royce called Lance and
everyone
knew
that. Everyone also knew that the six-foot ten-inch wall of muscle with red
curly hair and deep brown eyes had snuck out before dawn the night after Jay
MacLendon’s
first birthday party and had basically been
incommunicado ever since. That had been thirteen days ago.

Thirteen
long, miserable days and nights of her lamenting over the last time she’d seen
Royce and the conversation between he and Devon that she’d overheard.
Unintentional eavesdropping had been a part of her life from a very young age.
She had always been short and then stopped growing at twelve. So at five foot
two, she went unnoticed…
A LOT…
and that allowed her to hear things that
she otherwise wouldn’t have. She had replayed the Guardsmen’s conversation over
and over and always came to the same conclusion; Royce was surprised that he
could intimidate her. It was almost as if he was scared of
her
and that
shit just didn’t make sense. What the hell could she do to a hundred plus year
old dragon shifter chock-full of his own special brand of magic, chivalry, and
goodness, with the ability to change into a thousand pound beast of war and
knock down skyscrapers like they were Legos, not to mention the whole fire
breathing thing?

At
first she thought it was because he recognized her just as she had recognized
him and just wasn’t ready for the whole ‘be together forever in this lifetime
and the next’ gig that Destiny had decided for both of them. Then she thought
it was the fact that she had unknowingly helped that little shithead, Andrew,
hurt some of the sweetest people in the world that just happened to be part of
Royce’s clan. But she knew he was there the day she had apologized and been
forgiven by each and every person, even little Sydney. Hurting people was not
something Kyra ever wanted to do in any way, shape, or form, and especially
with her magic. Not only because she had taken the Pledge to
‘do no harm’,
but also because she just wasn’t a villain,
hell
, she didn’t even have
an evil laugh.

At
the age of thirty she had pledged her magic and her life to the Goddess of the
Earth, assuring both her coven, the Universe, and the blessed Goddess that she
would only ever use her gifts in a positive manner. It was kind of like the
Hippocratic Oath that doctor’s took before they became licensed, but much more
comprehensive and punitive. In its simplest form, the Pledge meant DO NO HARM,
and since she was supernatural, if she did intentionally do harm to any living
thing she would be low-jacked and the ‘powers-that-be’ could zap her ass. It
was incredibly painful but with no long lasting effects. If, Goddess forbid,
she got a couple of zaps, the Council showed up and that was something she
never
wanted to have happen.