He almost hoped that one of the servants had done something horrible, blundering in one way or another. He could use the opportunity to concentrate on something other than his current problem – finding a wife where there was no wife to be found.
“Yes,” he called, spinning around to face the door.
“Sir,” the servant said, a lizard shifter whose family had been in the service of the Bluewings for generations. “There is someone here to see you.”
Who the hell would come see me now?
“It’s a woman, sir. A human.”
Well that got his attention.
Still, that didn’t give Devon much to do or help solve his single greatest problem – how to find a wife when the last thing he wanted to do was to settle down with anyone?
I need another drink, he concluded, stalking out of the study to retrieve the bottle he had left much too far.
CHAPTER TWO
Gemma
Gemma’s eyes narrowed as she trudged up the stone path that led to the dark, foreboding castle of a mansion. As it was suspect to happen when she was planning something that required extensive hiking, the weather was gloomy and shadowed by clouds, the sky muddled and cast with the deep, ruby red color of the setting sun. Poetic really that the only time they had shitty weather was when she had to go talk to a Bluewing. The walk up from Gold Valley was quite the trek and one she had been putting off for far too long now, but it was a trip she had to make.
Enough was enough. Things were getting far beyond ridiculous and close to unbearable, and it was obvious that no one but Gemma was willing to do a damn thing about it. She huffed under her breath, feeling the pebbles and earth crunch under her hiking boots as she continued her trek with long, determined strides. She wasn’t going to turn around and go back. Not this time.
A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and Gemma looked up, brushing her blonde locks from her face. It wasn’t even really past dinner yet, but the sun was disappearing awfully fast tonight, and the sky was foreboding, threatening with a storm. It was all very cliché, she though, but a little bit of drama went well with the nonsense she had to discuss with Devon Bluewing, the last of the Bluewings to live in the area.
Just keep walking, she reminded herself, putting one foot in front of the other. Its fine. He’s just a dragon. Nothing unusual about that. I’m sure he can be reasoned with, Gemma told herself, trying to suppress the grin that wanted to come to her lips at the thought of that. Sure, nothing odd about dragons or expecting a Bluewing to listen to reason. She realized how ridiculous that would sound to just about anyone else. But the inhabitants of the secluded Colorado town of Gold Valley hadn’t thought anything weird about dragons for as many centuries as they had been there.
After all, one learns to appreciate the creatures that bring them their wealth. However, she was fairly certain that not a single person, who had gone to a Bluewing dragon before, trying to get them to lessen the financial burden they set on Gold Valley, had lived to tell the tale.
I’ll just be the first, then. This is the 21st century for god’s sake, the dragons can’t just push ancient traditions on us like that and expect us to do whatever they want, she thought confidently.
Just as she had calmed herself down enough to ignore the knotting in her stomach, a deafening roar sounded from up ahead. It shook the very foundation of the mountains, and Gemma stopped, frozen in place for a second. Instinctively, her eyes went up to the mansion, scanning it for the familiar form of the mythical blue-black beasts that sometimes cast a shadow over the entire village.
She looked for the familiar dark blue glint of scales and the blaze of golden eyes, but found herself staring at a dragon just as similar to what she expected as it was different. Its scales were red and its wings narrower than the Bluewings she was used to seeing, and it swooped down from the flat roof of the mansion with another one of those roars that seemed to curdle her blood. Her mouth agape, she stared at the slender, elegant beast, though it was hard to refer to something as elegant when it was the size of a modest skyscraper.
Her eyes went wide with surprise as she saw it change course and head straight for her. She caught sight of its ruby red eyes, slanted and brimming with what she could only define as menace. Blood curdled in her veins. For a frantic moment, she was sure it would open its powerful jaws and breathe fire on her, leaving her as little more than a scorched pile of dust on the stone pathway.
Gemma ducked with a yelp, her hands covering her head, and she could feel the rush of wind sweeping past her as the dragon flew over her, only a few feet higher than where she had just been standing.
“Fucking bottoms of hell,” she murmured softly, looking behind her to see the dragon disappear into the clouds above the town, heading southward. “What the hell was that?” she asked no one in particular, gasping for breath. When she turned her attention back to the mansion, it was just in time to see another dragon take flight, and then another.