Dating A Dragon (The Mating Game Book 2) (10 page)

“That was a beautiful ceremony,” Daisy sniffled, holding her son Jasper in her arms. He was human at the moment, rosy cheeked and curly haired, like a little angel. Looking at him made Cadence ache. Two more months. She couldn’t wait to cradle her dragonlings in her arms.

Cadence, rustling in her white dress, leaned in and sniffed at his head. “Ah, that new baby smell,” she said. “He smells like heaven.”

“He is the most precious thing ever,” Daisy agreed. Jasper looked up at her, smiled a toothless smile, and spit up onto his yellow bib.

“Aww, look, even his barf is cute,” Daisy said, dabbing at his mouth with a cloth that she plucked from her diaper bag.

“Good lord. Cute barf?” Cadence took a step back and looked askance at her friend. “Baby is cute. Barf is not. You’ve gone mad. Am I going to be that crazy?”

“With four babies, you will be four times as crazy,” Daisy promised her. “But, so worth it.”

They were standing in front of the stage where Cadence and Orion had just held their wedding – at the Fire and Ice Festival. It had turned out to be an enormous draw; the first such wedding in five hundred years. Friends, family and clan members took up all the seats close to the stage, but reporters and festival attendees were allowed to sit in the back.

“I told you so,” Daisy added to Wynona. “I told you it was a great mating.”

“Yes, you did,” Wynona agreed. “I believe that was the eleventh time?”

“Only the tenth,” Ryker Harrison, Daisy’s husband, said cheerfully. Ryker, a burly wolf shifter, had his arm slung around his wife’s shoulders. They’d all flown from North Carolina for the wedding.

“Ah, she’s being a model of restraint.” Wynona nodded.

Cadence knew that Wynona had been skeptical about the whole mating in the first place, but she could see how happy Orion and Cadence were now. In fact, she and Daisy had served as bridesmaids, along with Maude and Aurelia.

Jasper spit up some more. “That is some highly robust baby barf,” Orion observed with approval.

“Isn’t it, though?” Ryker beamed down at his son. “That’s my little man!”

“Is that normal?” Cadence wondered, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the baby. She was pretty sure he stuck his tongue out at her, on purpose. Spirited little punk. She liked him already.

“Pretty normal,” Daisy said. “I mean, let’s be real here, he’s descended from Ryker and me. He could only ever be so normal.”

“Ah, yes, very true. Well, normal’s over-rated. And boring. Your weirdness is definitely one of my favorite things about you.”

“Hold that thought. I’m going to go change him,” Daisy said, and she and Ryker strolled off to find a changing table.

“So, Humphrey never showed,” Maude observed. “I was afraid he might try to crash the wedding and ruin it for you.”

Humphrey had tried to stop the marriage a week earlier; he had filed a formal protest with the Elders. They had rejected it. Overall, he seemed to be backing off to an extent. Had he realized that Cadence wasn’t the kind of woman who’d allow herself to be forced into a mating? She could only hope.

Orion had sent word to Humphrey that whether the dragonlings were ice or fire, he was their father, and he would kill Humphrey rather than let them be taken from him.

Everyone knew that of the two, Orion was the stronger dragon, and would easily kill Humphrey in a fight. And no dragon Dominus was allowed to turn down a sky challenge. Therefore, if Humphrey tried to claim the dragonlings in order to get Cadence, he’d die. Sure, his clan would legally be able to claim all of Orion’s riches, but Humphrey wouldn’t be alive to enjoy it, which had to make him rethink his plans. Humphrey wasn’t known as the self-sacrificing sort. He’d made his fortune by being monstrously selfish and unmerciful towards his enemies.

Thousands of people were streaming from the field where the wedding had taken place now, heading back to the booths and stages. The festival had been a huge success.

Cadence rubbed her arm and sighed. Her dress had lace sleeves to hide the marks on her arm where she’d been having blood drawn every day. Apparently maintaining a fresh coating over the eggs was vital to the process that would increase their chances of survival.

Orion leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Should we skip the reception and go straight back to the castle for our own private celebration?”

Cadence snorted. “I do like the way you think, but we can’t do that to our guests, I’m afraid.”

“But we could just sneak behind the stage, strip out of our wedding clothes, fly off, and then come right back. We wouldn’t miss much.” His hot breath on her ear made her shudder with desire.

“They’d notice,” she protested.

“Do you think I care?”

She glanced at the crowd, then shook her head. “Nope. And neither do I,” she declared, and they headed behind the stage.

* * * * *

Cadence struggled to quell her nerves as she and Orion walked into the clinic, accompanied by twenty of his clan members.

The hatchlings were due to be removed in two days.

For some reason, she’d been feeling overwhelmingly anxious for the last few days, though, until she’d finally told Orion that she couldn’t wait. They needed to go to the clinic now. She’d offered to go alone so that she wouldn’t have to pull him away from family business, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’d gathered up the clan members and off they’d flown.

The guards had looked startled when they’d walked up, and they’d called someone on their radios before allowing them all inside. That made sense, Cadence told herself. Even though they recognized the Garrisons, they still needed to maintain security.

Something is wrong.

She glanced at the guards. Half of them in the white uniforms of the ice dragons, the other half in red uniforms. Something felt off about them, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. She recognized most of them from the last time she’d been here, so what was the problem?

She saw Orion follow her gaze, and he frowned slightly, too. Was he just picking up on her mood? Surely he’d tell her if something was wrong?

She strode forward to stare directly up at the video camera by the front door.

“Hello, this is Cadence Garrison, of the Garrison clan. I am here to see my dragonlings. I insist that you let me in at once!” she said loudly.

“Just one moment,” the crackly voice over the speaker answered her. “I need to call Dr. Kowalski.”

She glanced back and saw Orion and Nikolai murmuring to each other.

Everything must be all right
, she told herself.

Orion had half a dozen men stationed in the incubator room, watching over her dragonlings at all times. She’d asked him not to call and tell them that they were on the way. She couldn’t say why she’d done that, but Orion had gone along with it. He had been perfectly patient and reasonable about all of her crazy requests.

The receptionist frowned as they walked in. Dr. Kowalski was standing next to her by the reception desk, and Dr. Hamill strode through the door. There were several security guards in the room with them.

“Mrs. Garrison,” Dr. Kowalski said. “How lovely to see you. We weren’t expecting you for two days yet, though. We run strictly on schedule here. We’re really not ready for you, I’m afraid.”

“I need to see my dragonlings,” Cadence said firmly. “And I am going to stay here with them until they hatch.”

Dr. Kowalski shook her head. “I’m sorry. You can certainly observe them on the video monitor all you like, but—”

As Orion let out a low growl and Cadence sucked in an angry breath, Dr. Hamill held up his hands. “Now, doctor, these people are paying a lot of money for our services. It will be fine.” He beamed at Cadence. Then he glanced at Orion. “I’m afraid that we can only allow the mother back into the incubation room, but your men are there right now, so she’ll be in good hands.”

“I need to walk back with her as far as the room, and then I need to see my men,” Orion said.

A flicker of a frown crossed Dr. Hamill’s face. “Well, that will be all right, but I can’t have all these men come with you. I’m sorry, but we haven’t run a background check on them yet, and we have strict security protocols to adhere to.”

“That will be fine,” Orion said

“I don’t like it.” Nikolai scowled at him, shaking his head.

“I’ll be right out, as soon as I talk to our men in the incubation room,” Orion assured him.

The receptionist did something behind the desk, and then the big double doors opened, and Orion and Cadence followed Dr. Hamill and Dr. Kowalski down the hallway, along with one of the fire dragon security guards. The doors slammed shut behind them with a clang.

They followed the doctors down a long hallway and reached a big metal door with a security pad next to it. Dr. Hamill stepped in front of the pad and it scanned his retina, and then the door slid open. Dr. Hamill, Cadence and Dr. Kowalski walked through. Suddenly, the security guard shoved Orion back, and the door slammed shut behind him. She heard one startled shout of rage from Orion right before the door shut, and then silence.

Cadence froze as fear and anger shot through her. She was in an enormous room filled with banks of machinery that she didn’t fully understand, but she knew which incubator held her dragonlings.

To her confusion, she saw that the door to the incubator was already open, and there was a nest sitting on a cart…with dragonlings. Four beautiful little dragonlings. Two white, two red.

Where were they trying to take them?

She glanced around wildly. This room was too small for her to shift in, and she was outnumbered, but she could at least blast them with ice.

But everyone who could help her was on the other side of a thick metal door.

“He can’t blast through it in time,” Dr. Hamill said coolly. “My guards will have him subdued shortly anyway.”

“Where are Orion’s men?” Cadence asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.

“Detained. We thought that would help to ensure Orion’s cooperation.”

“Then you don’t know Orion,” Cadence said, looking him in the eye. “But you’re going to.”

Then she hurried towards the nest of her babies. Her heart plummeted to her shoes when she saw who was standing next to it. Humphrey was there, along with a bodyguard and a woman she didn’t recognize. The woman carried a briefcase and wore a tailored pantsuit. She looked like a very sexy accountant, and her eyes briefly went blue and reptilian when she looked at Cadence.

Humphrey’s eyes lit up with a look of gloating triumph when he saw Cadence standing between the two doctors.

“Excellent,” he said. “A little early, but that’s no problem. This is the woman who will be raising your dragonlings.”

Like hell.

The woman smirked at Cadence and flipped her shiny blonde hair with one slender finger.

“She’s my mistress. She’s not at all fertile, so she’s basically useless, but she’ll do fine as a nanny,” Humphrey added dismissively. The woman’s smirk vanished and she scowled at the floor.

“Why would you have her raise them?” Cadence needed to stall for time. Orion would save her. She knew it. She just needed time.

Humphrey snorted at her stupidity. “You’ll be much easier to control if you’re only allowed to visit your dragonlings under guard,” he said. “You step out of line, and they’ll pay for it.”

Cadence imagined him consumed in a giant ball of flame. He would suffer. He would die for this.

“We should get them out of here quickly,” Dr. Kowalski said to Humphrey. “The Garrison clan may be calling in reinforcements.”

“True, but Cadence has a document she needs to sign first,” Humphrey said, and then nodded at the woman. She opened up her briefcase and unrolled a scroll.

Cadence raked Dr. Kowalski with a look of pure hatred. “You bitch. I will end you.”

The doctor couldn’t meet her gaze; she hung her head. “They have my dragonlings,” she whispered. “They forced me.”

“Oh, please, why bother dragging out the lie?” Humphrey sneered. He smiled at Cadence. “She doesn’t even like children; she sent hers off to be raised by the father’s clan the second they hatched. She only had them so she could test out her treatments. You want to know why her all of her clutches died? She was experimenting on them – illegal experiments, might I add – and her early experiments failed. That’s why she had to come here from Poland.”

Dr. Kowalski shot him a sullen look of resentment but didn’t say anything. Dr. Hamill shrugged. “What can I say? She’s a lousy mother but a very good scientist,” he said to Cadence.

“So why did you agree to betray me?” Cadence demanded.

Humphrey answered for her. “I blackmailed her. I found out that the clinic had been using your blood as a very successful fertility treatment for female dragons. She took far more from you than was necessary, because it turned out that your blood has some kind of fertility magic, which will turn out to be very useful. You’re going to birth a lot of my dragonlings. I’m thinking thirty or forty at least. As soon as we remove one clutch, I’ll put another one in you.”

Cadence slowly moved closer to her nest. The tiny dragons stirred. They seemed agitated, as if they sensed the tension in the air. One of them let out a tiny flame, no bigger than that from a lighter.

Her heart clenched. She needed to hold them in her arms. She took another step forward, and the woman moved to block her. “Ah, ah, ah,” she chided, waving her finger in Cadence’s face. “Mine.”

Rage shot through Cadence, and she shoved the woman to one side. The woman pressed back against the nest and blasted ice at Cadence, and Cadence didn’t dare fire back at her, because she was standing right in front of her dragonlings.

“Want some more?” the woman sneered.

“Enjoy breathing while you still can,” Cadence said furiously.

Then she directed a glare at Humphrey. “How could you possibly think that you would get away with this?” she demanded. “The Elders will have you killed.”

“Not if I control dragon fertility,” Humphrey said calmly. “Dr. Hamill and I are working together on this. I will get to say whose clutch lives. I will get to say which infertile dragons may finally get to conceive. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to tell them about this. You’re going to sign a document that states that you agree to be my mate, and that you nullify your marriage to Orion, and you are going to leave here with me today and never see him again, or your dragonlings will die.”

“Orion would never agree to letting you take me or his children. He already told you that.”

“If he wants his dragonlings to survive, he’ll have no choice. I can legally claim the ice dragonlings, at least, and I assure you, things won’t go well for them if I don’t get my way. You know, there are Elders who want to have grandlings. I can promise them successful hatchings. They’re not going to investigate too thoroughly.”

There was a loud thumping sound on the door.

The security guard hurried over and stood in front of it as the doctors glanced at each other uneasily. Humphrey’s man joined him.

Humphrey grabbed the scroll and shoved it at Cadence.

“Sign it,” Humphrey said quickly.

The thud sounded louder.

“What’s that noise?” Cadence demanded. She glanced at the door; it was starting to glow.

Humphrey let out a scream of rage.

“I am going to kill one of your dragonlings now!” he shouted. “And another one every five seconds until you sign!”

“Wait!” the blonde woman cried out. “You didn’t say anything about murder. I can’t let you do that. I could go to jail for it – I’d be an accessory.”

“Not if you’re dead,” Humphrey snarled. He let out a blast of ice at the woman, who didn’t have a chance to shift and protect herself; her entire body froze solid in an instant. Her mouth was frozen open in a silent scream, and she slowly tipped over and shattered on the hard floor.

As she fell, Cadence took advantage of the distraction to hurl herself between Humphrey and her nest.

“Move, you bitch!” Humphrey grabbed her by the arm. As he did, one of the dragonlings let out a surprisingly strong blast of flame, burning his arm. He screamed in pain and jerked back. The door melted into a pool of glowing slag, and Orion and his men rushed through.

Cadence frantically pushed the dragonlings to the back of the room, and shielded them with her body. They squeaked furiously behind her – dragonling attempts at roars, as their fledgling instincts told them to fight the man threatening their mother and their clan. Her heart swelled with protective love for them, and icy scales crackled up her arms and steely blue claws curved from her fingertips. She knew her eyes were a fierce ice blue.

Orion and his men had dragonfire in their eyes. They stormed across the room, stopping when they came face-to-face with Humphrey and his goon. The two doctors stood a couple of paces back, but they held their ground – Orion would have to go through them to get to Cadence and his dragonlings. And he would. He would have blasted mountains to the ground for them.

But they couldn’t go dragon here. The room was lined with incubators, and inside them fragile, precious dragon eggs. As much as he wanted to watch Humphrey scream as he was consumed by fire, he and his men couldn’t risk shifting.

Humphrey narrowed his eyes, wondering why Orion was hesitating – then he barked a laugh as he understood. “Weak,” he sneered.

But it was doctor Hamill who made the first move. He barged forward, meaning to shoulder his opponent to the ground. For a human facing down a group of dragons he was brave – or foolhardy. Maybe it was arrogance that made him think he could possibly win. Certainly it was a misjudgment to choose to attack Alcott. His obvious age and his twisted leg said he was an easy target. The stream of fire he spat at the doctor, so hot it left glowing after-images on Cadence’s retinas, said otherwise.

There was little left but the smell of burning flesh and a mess of swirling ash that settled thickly on the spotless floor.

Then it was dragon on dragon.

Humphrey and Orion met in a blur of limbs, their eyes gone dragon, their skin rippling with scales. Orion landed a solid punch to the older man’s face, and he shook his head, droplets of bright blood splattering from his nose. Where it touched the floor, it crystallized into red-white ice.

They backed off and circled each other. Then Orion let out a massive burst of flame that rolled toward Humphrey, a blossoming plume of orange and black. Humphrey countered with a frigid cloud that flashed into steam as it met the fire.

Nikolai was grappling with Humphrey’s hired muscle, his fingers wrapped tightly around the man’s wrists. Where his fingers indented the thug’s skin, it blistered and reddened. Nikolai’s cheek was marked with an unwholesome-looking bloom of grayish frostbite. The man attempted to throw Nikolai, leading with his hip – some kind of martial arts move – but Nikolai wrapped his arm around the man’s throat as he turned. He braced his neck from behind as he twisted his head sharply. There was a sickening crack, and the thug slumped to the ground, his neck broken.

Dr. Kowalski cowered in the corner. Alcott stood over her, smoke wisping gently from his nostrils as if to remind her that should he wish to, he could vaporize her, leaving her as nothing more than a settling cloud of soot. Her face was a ghastly parchment color and she looked as if she might vomit. The whites of her still-human eyes were visible as she gazed up into Alcott’s contemptuous, implacable face. Not just a monstrous excuse for a mother, but a coward as well, his expression said. And when his eyes briefly flickered to Cadence, crackling with frost and fury as she guarded her dragonlings, his eyes briefly softened with approval.

Her attention was snatched back to Orion as he seized Humphrey bodily and slammed him to the floor. Humphrey’s breath left his body on a feeble icy grunt that would have shamed a dragonling. He held up his hands as though trying to shield himself from the inferno he knew was coming.

Orion flamed him, the center of his fire as blue-white as a welding torch, as intense as his rage. Waves of orange and red washed over the defeated ice dragon, and his scream was, mercifully, brief.

Orion didn’t stop until a beeping alarm on one of the incubators indicated that the temperature of the whole room had risen by several degrees – he wouldn’t risk harming the eggs. And besides, there was nothing left of Humphrey but a charcoal shell that glittered here and there with the frosty white and iridescent blue of an ice dragon’s scales.

Cadence briefly closed her eyes, and allowed her claws to retract and her scales to melt back into her skin. She turned to the nest, reaching down to soothe her brand new dragonlings.

“Are you all right?” Orion husked, rushing to her side.

“I’m fine now that my babies are safe. How did you get away from the guards?” Cadence asked, cradling a tiny ice dragonling in her arms. The dragon snuggled up against her and made a purring sound as Cadence stroked its soft scales. Orion had his arm protectively slung around her; she was still shaking.

“I knew there was trouble as soon as we saw the guards outside,” Orion said. “They were all ice dragons – I recognized a few of them from our previous visits, but some of the ice dragons were wearing fire dragon uniforms.”

Orion picked up a fire dragonling and stroked its head, and it blinked up at him happily and burped out a tiny spurt of fire.

“That’s what was bothering me about them. I couldn’t put my finger on it,” Cadence said.

“I told Nikolai, and as soon as that door shut behind us, he and the other men subdued the guards and then we just all joined in and melted the doors down.”

Dr. Kowalski rushed up to them. “You will protect me,” she said desperately. “I can help you have more babies. I can ensure that your hatchlings survive every time.”

Cadence let out a carefully directed blast of ice, enough to freeze Dr. Kowalski’s hair, and coat her face with frost, but not enough to kill her. Dr. Kowalski staggered back.

“The Dragon Elders will take over the clinic, and use the technology for the good of all dragons,” Orion said to her. “As for you, you’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”

Then he hugged Cadence to him. “And now, I’m going to take my family home,” he said, and planted a tender kiss on his dragonling’s scaly head.