Her Dragon Everlasting, page 31
“Eos! Eos!” they cried when their brother landed with a heavy thunk outside the east-facing kitchen wall, which was not so much a wall, as a collection of floor-to-ceiling plantation windows.
The island was located in a truly tropical region, and only had a few supporting walls that didn’t open to the great outside. They frequently left the plantation windows open. Not only to cool the house but to give Xenon peace of mind. He liked to see in all directions, which meant if his cousin, the King of Drakkon ever found them, Xenon would see him coming.
Xenon watched his daughters run to hug their brother, who according to Fated Mate, now looked like he should be “starting high school” in human form. Not quite like a five-year-old. But not nearly like a wolf.
Something else, Xenon thought as he watched Golden Son shift back to human in the loose basketball shorts he wore in lieu of the smart hose that Xenon had lost the means to replicate. His family, his children—they were something nebulous and undefined. And he could only wonder what the King would do with the information Xenon knew he must have by now: that there was at least one she-wolf strong enough to mate with a drakkon, and that two mostly drakkon girls had been born upon a planet without any drakki.
Dwell on the time you have left with them, not upon what might happen, he reminded himself before calling out to Golden Son, “You have arrived at a good moment. We were just about to go up to Great Wolf Mother’s room with her birthday breakfast!”
But then Xenon stopped when he saw the color of Golden Son’s chest flame.
“Oh hell, here they come,” Knud said to his brothers, as the two winged beasts, one large and dark, one golden and only slightly smaller flew towards them. “Told you the kid was doing a security sweep when we saw him earlier.
“Fuck, they’re big,” yelled Nago from behind the wheel of the speedboat. “Keep waving that flag, Rafes. Hopefully, they know what it means or else we’re about to get burnt to a crisp. Seriously, lift it higher, bro!”
Rafes did as instructed, but glared at Knud as he did so. “We wouldn’t have to risk our lives like this if you hadn’t helped them hide where no one could find or get to them.”
“Hey, it was my father-in-law, not me. And they wouldn’t have had to hide if you hadn’t—”
“You know what, I’m going to stop,” Nago said, efficiently cutting off another Knud/Rafes argument as he had done ever since they were kids living in the Viking era. “Maybe if we act like sitting ducks, they won’t roast us first and ask questions later.”
“Maybe,” Rafes and Knud grumbled, proving Ola and Fensa weren’t the only ones capable of talking in stereo.
Speaking of talking…
The two dragons descended and stopped just a few feet from the boat. They both pulled their tails down and hovered, flapping their gigantic wings as they let out a series of caws that Nago was sure could be translated as, “What the hell are you doing here?” Or maybe, “Give us one reason why we shouldn’t set all three of you on fire for coming here uninvited!”
“Oh, shit, we’re going to die. Today’s the day,” Knud said with an ironic shake of his head.
Rafes didn’t look much more optimistic.
“Hey, how’s it going, guys!” Nago called up, struggling to keep his voice casual. “Great to finally meet you, too. Sorry I couldn’t before. Look, we know you value your privacy. I mean, or you wouldn’t be living out here in the island boonies. We never would have tracked you down if it wasn’t important.”
Neither dragon morphed back into humans, but they didn’t caw anymore, either. Which Nago decided to take to mean, “Go on, we’re listening…”
So Nago lowered his hands to say, “It’s Ola. She’s been taken. We’re pretty sure it was Damianos Drákon, and we need your help to get her back.”
Oh, my gosh, guys!
I only consider myself a vessel for these stories, so I was completely unprepared when Fensa announced she not only had a story of her own but that it would be the origin story for her family. (Though I wasn’t nearly as unprepared as she was for Xenon’s naughty bits! Hee-hee!)
I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please do us the further favor of leaving a review so others might find this one-of-a-kind dragon tale.
The Alpha Kings Saga is now complete, so check out the full list of books below, and keep on swiping for a very special preview of NAGO: HER FOREVER WOLF.
So much love,
Theodora Taylor
The Complete World of HER VIKING WOLF
ALPHA KINGS
Her Viking Wolf
(Chloe and Fenris, FJ’s and Olafr’s parents)
Wolf and Punishment (Janelle and Mag)
Wolf and Prejudice (Alisha and Rafe)
Wolf and Soul (Tu and Grady)
Her Viking Wolves (Tiara, FJ, and Olafr)
ALPHA FUTURE
Her Dragon Everlasting (Fensa and Xenon)
NAGO: Her Forever Wolf (Halle and Nago)
KNUD: Her Big Bad Wolf (Layla and Knud)
RAFES: Her Fated Wolf (Myrna and Rafes)
Her Dragon Captor
Her Dragon King
(Ola and Damianos)
NAGO: HER FOREVER WOLF PREVIEW
1
NAGO
It took everything in Nago to control the wolf. Every. Single. Fucking. Thing.
Watching Halle on that stage. Looking so vulnerable in a white shift. It was probably supposed to come off as innocent, but someone had shone a spotlight directly on her, and every male could see the outline of what her father had put on display as he took bids for the first spot in tomorrow morning’s Chivaree.
“Going once. Going twice…the first Chasin’ Spot is SOLD for $12,000!” Halle’s father called out, pointing at the winner. Some dumb fuck who’d worn a hunting cap to the auction. A goddamn hunting cap.
The beast inside him reared.
And suddenly it was ten years ago, and he was back in a drone copter trying to control the thing inside him before it set down in a Tallahassee drone field…
Usually, people waited inside the little metal building on the outskirts of the field that had been commissioned by the Florida panhandle city as soon as Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia declared themselves no-drone zones. But to his surprise, Halle was waiting for him when he stepped off the copter, right outside the yellow safety line—as close as you could get without setting the proximity alarms off. She wore a rose-colored sundress and held a package of gummi bears in her hands. It was the industrial Cal-Mart size and had a red sticky bow attached to it. By the Fenrir Wolf, if she wasn’t the prettiest sight he’d ever seen.
But as surprised as he was to see her, she looked way more surprised to see him.
“Nago?” she asked when he came over to her. She sniffed the air hard, doing a nose check.
The wolf stopped growling at the sound of her voice. And it felt to Nago like it was staring at her from inside him.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he answered, struggling to keep his voice light.
But Halle shook her head. “No, it can’t be,” she answered carefully. “My Nago is about this tall,” she raised a hand just a short distance past her forehead, “and gives the best hugs because he’s really soft. But you...you’re…”
“Oh,” he said, glancing down at himself in his fatigues and t-shirt. “Blame it on a last-gasp growth spurt. Plus, they didn’t let us eat any junk food. And we had to work out every day during basic training. Then Rafes got to trash-talking Knud and me about which of us could make the most gains. So I couldn’t let him get away with that...”
He trailed off when he saw the way she was looking at him. Wary. Like he’d swallowed her boyfriend whole. Like maybe she could feel the wolf staring at her. Hard and intent.
Nago shook his head, insisting, “Most girls would be happy to see their fat boyfriend come back looking like this.”
But apparently, Halle wasn’t most girls because she tilted her head with a sad look and said, “It’s like you’re a totally different person.”
His face hardened. “Babe, it’s me. You know that.”
She continued to hesitate.
“This…new look. It doesn’t change anything. It changes nothing.”
She clamped her lips.
And suddenly he could no longer hold on to both the wolf and his temper. “Are you fucking with me, Halle? I come all the way here, and you don’t even say, ‘Hi, Nago. Did you have a good two-leg twenty-hour flight to get here?’ Instead, you come after me for growing and putting on some muscle! What the hell kind of homecoming is that?!”
Halle visibly startled. Probably because the Nago she’d known had never yelled at her. Hell, that Nago didn’t even have a temper.
He closed his eyes. Getting a grip on himself. Telling the wolf to stay the fuck back. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, no…I’m sorry,” she rushed in to say before the words were fully out of his mouth. “You’re right. I was surprised is all.”
Then she gave him the most beautiful smile and said, “Hi, Nago. Did you have a good 20-hour flight? You know, I’m still crazy in love with you—even if it feels a little weird to call you Gummi Bear now. I mean, do you even like gummi bears now?”
And then it wasn’t the wolf he was fighting. But tears. Still, he somehow choked out, “Who doesn’t like gummi bears?”
“Well, criminally insane puppy kick—”
He dropped his duffel bag and pulled her into his arms, engulfing her so tight, it felt more like he was holding on for dear life than giving a hug.
Maybe it felt the same for her, too, because she said, “You okay, Gummi Bear?”
“I am now,” he answered, nodding into her shoulder. “I am now.”
And at the time, he thought he was telling the truth.
“Going once, going twice…sold for 20,000!”
Lots of hooting and hollering all around as that Ohio prince with five brothers won the fourth spot in the auction. Nago was surprised the tool had waited this long. But he’d probably wanted to up the drama factor by not putting in a bid until the second-to-last auction round. Fucker.
And the three wolves who’d won the first auction wouldn’t be much competition for Eric. Even the guy in the hunting cap looked like he was more suited to office work than running down a female in heat. Nago wouldn’t be at all surprised if Eric’s megalomaniac father secretly funded the other three bids.
The further south you got in the States, the poorer the kingdom-towns tended to become. So the chances of a fit, young person who 1) actually wanted a marriage of convenience with a she-wolf he barely knew, and 2) had up to $20K in disposable cash lying around, and 3) was oh-so-excited about taking over a bankrupt kingdom with nothing but one falling-apart southern colonial house and a few acres with a half dozen pre-Civil War rental units on it, and Wolf Hills, a town with a population consisting of wolves who were either too poor or too old to move.
No, princes like Eric and his a-hole father didn’t come along every day. And they didn’t seem like the kind of family who was dedicated to fighting clean and fair.
Nago looked back toward the gazebo, as her father started taking bids for the fifth and last Chasin’ Spot. Watched Halle keep herself still in front of the jeering men. And though her skin wasn’t his skin, he could feel it crawling. Could feel the crack in her chest like it was his own.
“525,” one of the catcallers said. Like he was doing her a favor.”
“One hundred thousand,” another voice said, shocking the crowd into silence.
As it turned out, that voice was his.
That made her look up.
But Halle’s eyes didn’t light up like they used to. Her face didn’t relax into that familiar smile.
And he knew she didn’t have any gummi bears waiting for him this time. But he could smell them in the air as he moved forward without will or intention. Like a magnet drawn through the crowd.
She watched him approach with wide eyes, just as she’d watched him that day when he’d stepped out of the drone copter. How had she described him?
A totally different person.
She blinked down at him from the gazebo stage as if he were a hallucination.
“Ah…thank you for your generous bid, King of Alaska,” her father’s voice said in the distance. “One hundred thousand. Going once…going twice.”
“One million,” Nago said. Outbidding himself just so he could keep staring at the woman in the linen shift. The gown looked both old and new. A style no one wore anymore, but lightweight and damn near disposable like the clothes of this century.
“Hi, Nago,” he wanted her to say. “How was your flight? You know, Gummi Bear, I’m still crazy in love with you.”
But that was not what she said upon seeing him for the first time in ten years.
“Going once…going twice…” her father was saying in the distance.
And suddenly she animated, yelling out, “No! No! Not him! No!”
Nago never took his eyes off the she-wolf he used to call his. But he heard her father say, “Against the rules. Can’t stop anybody from buying a Chasing Spot. That’s the whole point of a Chivaree.”
And then she was coming toward him, her hands balled into fists. Her brown eyes locked on his. She was yelling something over and over again.
“Why?!? Why are you doing this to me?!” he realized she was saying…right before she punched him square in the face with one of those balled-up fists.
2
HALLE
Ten years. Ten years she’d been trying to get over him. Ten years of trying to forget. Ten years of putting herself out there again and again for relationships that never worked out until she finally found a mateship that was all but guaranteed. And now he was back?!
“Why?! Why did you do that?” Halle screamed, running toward him.
She punched him. The first time she’d seen Nago in ten years, and she punched him like a crazed animal. “Why did you do that!?”
He didn’t answer. Only stared at her like she was the ghost and not him.
“Take it back! Not you! Not you!” She shoved him, pushing with all her might. But he was bigger now. Wider with muscles packed on top of muscles. Like he lived in the gym. He didn’t budge.
He just continued to stare. His face hard. His eyes kind.
This was the Nago she last recalled seeing. But he wasn’t the one she’d fallen in love with.
Why was he here? Why had he done this to her? After all this time?
“Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. Shoving him. Slapping him. Kicking him.
Not seeing. Not caring about all the witnesses to her behavior. A few who were probably recording her outburst this very moment to post on WolfNet.
Halle hated him. More than she hated her mother. More than she hated racism and rats in drainage lines and numbers that didn’t add up and pretty much any other shitty thing she could think of. She hated him more than all that combined. And despite that, he was here.
Bidding for her.
Upping his bid to a million fucking dollars, so it wouldn’t and couldn’t be matched by anyone in the crowd, including Eric.
What the hell?! Why did he do that? Why?!?!!
She hit and hit him. But it was like wailing on a wall. He stood there. Taking it. Without response.
Nago. Who used to compete with her to see who could get the last sleepy word in as they drifted off on late-night bio calls. Nago, who could go on for hours about his aunt’s latest video game, but who also listened to her like he really gave a fuck when she told him stories about all the old things around town she’d taught herself to fix.
Halle punched at him. And he stood there like a wall. While distant voices called her name and told her to stop, get ahold of herself.
She swiped a hand across his face, drawing blood. And even then, he only watched her with his kind brown gaze. His trickster eyes wide with what looked so much like sorrow, it made her want to scratch them out of his goddamn lying face.
She lifted clawed fingers, prepared to do just that. But suddenly a pair of large hands clamped around her wrists, and a dark voice growled, “I tried. I tried to leave you alone. But if you are going to give yourself away, Halle, then I will be the one to make your claim.”
The voice was loud, but his lips hadn’t moved. And for a moment she struggled to comprehend what was happening until she remembered…the mate bond. It allowed for a kind of telepathy. And though they’d only mated once, ten years ago, without a new mate bond to replace it, theirs had remained intact. Halle’s mind bonded to his. Her emotions bonded to his. Like they were one and the same.
“Just calm down, Halle,” said a different male voice directly behind her.
It was Bill, her father’s long-time beta, dragging her away from the wolf inside her head. Oh God, he was in her head!!!
Technically, it was all her fault.
That’s what Halle told herself afterward. When she was looking for someone to blame. When she was still so heartsick that blaming herself felt better than blaming the boy she loved. The boy she thought had loved her…
It was just like she’d learned in the accounting classes she’d been taking her first year of community college. Wrong numbers, wrong calculations.
People never truly got how important the numbers were. In finance, but also in life. People died when someone got the numbers wrong. Rocket ships blew up and pension plans imploded. Lives could be ended and destroyed by numbers.
And her numbers had been wrong from the start. Later when she audited their relationship, when she stopped mooning around and did the math, she could see Nago for what he was: a cruel, rich boy who’d liked having a hick princess as an admirer.
