Loyalty: A Dragon Shifter Menage Serial (Seeking Her Mates Book 4) (9 page)

C
onor came
to a large chamber at the tunnel’s end which looked entirely too large to have been constructed under the castle itself, its walls stretching as far as the eye could see. The ceiling was as high as that of a great cathedral, arching in vaulted sections above his head. A beautiful space filled with rich columns supporting its immense structure, ornately decorated with stone carvings which seemed to depict characters who’d lived many years ago, in poses of battle, love-making and festivities of various sorts.

The relics of a history that I was not part of,
thought Conor as his eyes explored the chamber’s limits. The structure reminded him very much of the Vaults under Edinburgh itself, the ones built specifically for enormous déors like his to traverse beneath the city unnoticed.

But ahead of him in the distance and spread around the perimeter of the room were shining silver and gold shapes; large, four-legged forms which perched in tidy rows as though on guard, protecting the neglected netherworld. They did not approach him but remained stationary, statuesque.

He made his way towards one, a sense of familiarity of a long-forgotten image filling him. In the house in London, inside the funny museum of antiquities that his family owned, something similar sat on display: an old suit of armour, alleged to have been designed and constructed for a bear. Since he’d been a child he’d found himself fascinated by it; the wonder of its shape and size, and who might have felt inclined to construct such a thing when no bear could ever possibly have worn it.

Here in the castle’s bowels, many such suits stood, each a variation of the last, each and every one more enormous than the last. The first was pure silver, bright and shining with engraved shapes of vines and flowers highlighting its seams. Its surface was buffed so that he could see himself in the enormous flank, which was large enough to cover an elephant’s ribs.

The second had accents of gold, a sigil of a roaring bear etched into its shoulder.

“They are something remarkable, are they not?”

The voice came from the far end of the chamber, echoing, deep. Conor leapt internally, something inside ready to pounce, to change into a stronger, larger shape than his human. He resisted by the skin of his teeth, remembering not to reveal his déor to humankind.

In the reflecting surface of the armour he saw a figure step forward; a man with light hair that cascaded down to his shoulders. He was broad and tall—or was his size merely a trick of the convex, mirrored surface?

“They are something,” Conor replied. “Remarkable, as you say.”

“They are the armour of your kin,” said the man. “Your long-dead ancestors. Slaughtered by the dragons, your line ended in one fell swoop.”

“What do you mean, ‘my line?’” Though the answer was already inside his mind, he needed to hear the words spoken.

“The great warrior bears, known as the Beorn in their time. Peacekeepers that they—you—were. Enemies to dragons, hunted by the lords who terrorized the lands, burning innocents and inflicting torment wherever they could.”

“I’m very friendly with a few dragons who are nothing like you describe,” protested Conor, turning to the man.

“Ah yes. Those mates of yours. Well, there are exceptions to every rule, as they say, and no doubt your Lord Graeme and Lady Lilliana are as docile as dragons can be. This, of course, is largely a result of their having been thrust into an era wherein they are not free to throw their significant weight around.”

“I hardly think that Lilliana was burning villagers in her own time…” began Conor, realizing that he couldn’t vouch for Graeme.

“Perhaps not,” said the man. “But the Ramseys were a less friendly lot, at least towards the
Beorn
. In a final effort to achieve peace and calm in the face of constant dragon attacks, an agreement was made to stop on our side the breeding. To retain human traits only, and to end Rituals and the breeding of shifters. And so the bears died off with the initiation of the truce. Many other lines fell around the same time, for the same reasons.”

“And the dragons lived on…” said Conor. The pieces, the images that had tormented him, were finally coming together and making sense.

“Yes,” said the man. “The dragons lived on. And so peace has never really come to exist, as there is no longer a creature which can take them on and keep them in check.”

“But surely dragons in
this
century remain concealed. I never heard of one, in my years as a human. So what’s the point in their ensuring that other shifters die? It’s not like they run the world.”

“Dragons are wonderful at concealment, yes. Not so wonderful at peace. They will rise up again, stronger than before. Man-made weapons can take them down, but not before they’ve ravaged cities and terrorized the people. They are a bitter lot, and I suppose they have reason to be after centuries of hostility towards their kind. They are, in the modern day, outcasts, treated like disease-ridden rats. There are none who want them; there is no love for their kind.”

Conor paused, breathless. The love that he felt for his mates was beyond anything defined by time or place; it was intense, whole. And he knew that they felt it for him as well. For all the fabricated, cruel reputation of the great scaled déors, none were so capable of love and protection as a dragon.

None.

“I see,” he continued, keeping the sentiment to himself. “And so this group—the Stranieri—is bent on taking them down.”

“Yes, though that name, which has been thrust upon us, has never been my favourite. The
Strangers,
as though a dragon-hunter is an automatic foreigner, and a dragon an automatic friend.”

“And since you seem to know so much,” said Conor, “Tell me. Who are you?”

“I am one of them, these Strangers that you label so coldly. Your mates have seen me only in my déor’s form: that of a large bird. A Roc.”

Conor’s eyes widened. “You were there, the night of the assault, when I was feverish, near death.”

“I was. Prepared to take you away from all of it, to help you to heal.”

“Help me? But your friends seemed to want us all dead.”

“Not at all,” said the man, wandering now, admiring the armour, a finger caressing this piece and that, his mind marvelling at the craftsmanship. “But we knew that your companions wouldn’t let you go without a fight. And when I was outside of your window and could see you in my mind’s eye, that you were recovering, I knew that you too would put up a fight. That you wouldn’t understand why I would take you from Lady Lilliana and Lord Ramsey.”

“But why would you help me? Am I not your enemy? I thought…”

“You, an enemy? Certainly not. You belong here, with us. You are our greatest ally, whether you know it or not.”

Conor drew a hand through his thick hair and laughed, his other hand going to his chest as though to check and see that he was awake and alive. “All right,” he said. “You have me baffled. And I can’t read your thoughts, so I’m going to need you to be very clear with me. What are you talking about?”

“The armour around you, all of it, is yours. This place is yours.”

“That’s splendid. It’s excellent to know that I possess a castle with a large assortment of metal outfits for bears.” Conor turned and began to walk away. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Mr…Roc.”

“One second, my Lord Dunbar,” said the man, raising his voice so that once again it echoed through the large space.

“I am no lord.” Conor turned and glared. “Least of all yours.”

“Ah, but you are. It is your birthright.”

“Well, if I am somehow
your
leader then tell me this: who is the leader of the Stranieri?”

“Why
you
are, of course.”

The words hit like bullets. They were ridiculous; unfathomable. And yet all of a sudden the scenes that had worked through his mind began to fall together in a sort of interwoven tapestry; a puzzle assembling at last.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “How is that possible?”

The man approached and stood before him, Conor’s equal in height. “The Stranieri formed many centuries ago, under cover of darkness, and was made up of members of a secret society who congregated in hidden places. For a time—many years, in fact—they went quiet; many thought they had even disbanded. But in the fifteenth century they sprang back to life, inspired by the cruelty of the dragon lords. It is they who work to this day to preserve our way of life and to guard it from oppressors.”

“You still haven’t explained how I’m somehow their leader.”

“Let me show you,” said the man. “If you’ll indulge me for a moment.”

He turned to his right and Conor followed his gaze, which seemed fixed on a piece of bare wall between two of the suits of armour.

A moment later a scene began to spread across the space, another sort of film, but this time Conor knew that it wasn’t in his mind: it was being conveyed by the Roc shifter to him; the man was showing him using some trick of his own mind.

The scene depicted a great field spreading in every direction, and covering it were shifters of all sorts; cats, birds flying low, hounds and wolves. But the largest of them were the bears, clad in silver and gold armour, preparing for war.

In the foreground was the most impressively enormous of them all: A dark bear with eyes of two different colours: one aqua, the other gold flecked with brown. He wore a suit of armour made of silver so bright that it shone white in the sunlight.

All eyes were on him as he seemed to communicate silently with his army.

And then the sky erupted in a sea of flame and flying, scaled bodies of every colour: emerald green, sky blue, silver. Their leader was an enormous dragon, menacing, coated in red scales.

In seconds the dragons were attacking, and the bear leader reared up protectively, his army behind him as he took on their greatest threat.

And then what seemed like a screen went dark and the pictures ceased.

“What…what did you just show me?” asked Conor.

“I showed you your fate. And now I will show you more.”

“I…”

The man didn’t speak again. Instead, he backed away to the center of the room, where he stood, his arms spread outward, seeming to reach for the far corners of the cavernous space. In a moment a gigantic bird stood before Conor, its wings unable to spread fully despite the size of the chamber.

As he watched, it lunged at him, threatening, aggressive.

And inside Conor, his déor took over. There was no time to think; only to act.

In an instant he had changed into the creature whom he hadn’t inhabited since fighting the shape-changer and her companion in the woods, defending Lilliana out of love and loyalty.

The Roc backed away, luring Conor forward slowly until he found himself next to a particularly shiny piece of armour, bare of engraving, its side smooth, a perfect mirror.

And then the Roc shifted his own eyes towards the armour. Conor understood and looked in the same direction.

In the reflected surface he saw his déor at last: an enormous bear, dark-coated with an aqua eye and a golden one, flecked with brown.

Large enough to take down even a dragon lord.

T
easer from Book Five
, Dragon Wars (coming in June)!

L
ily’s eyes
opened to reveal that she was standing on the edge of a large field, empty, green and lush. Peaceful.

It took her a moment to recognize its rolling hills from the painting, where they’d shown bloodied bodies lying scattered, the refuse of war.

This was the battleground, the stage set for the showdown that would occur between the armies. A conflict that she must at all costs prevent.

I
f you’d
like to be informed of future releases, exclusive deals, reader contests and special offers, please sign up:

Carina Wilder's Mailing List

S
eeking Her Mates Book One
:

Torn

Book Two of
Seeking her Mates
:
Escape

A
ll of Carina’s
individual books are available FREE on Kindle Unlimited for a limited time!

B
efore Seeking
her Mates came the
Sought by the Alphas
serial, which tells the story of Lily’s mother, Gwynne and her mates:

The five-book boxed set is available here:
Sought by the Alphas Boxed Set

Individual books:

Encounters

Rituals

Trial by Fire

Kinship

Dragon Queen

T
he first four
books in the Wolf Rock Shifters Series (these are complete stories and can be read out of order):

Winning the Alpha

 
Bearing Up In Wolf Rock

The Right to a Bear's Arms

 
To Lie With Lions

T
he Billionaires and Curves Serial
:

Billionaires and Curves (Taken With You) Trilogy

Taken With You

Crazy About You

The Way to You