* * *
Ben showed up the next day. I felt it through Maks’s dragon sense, a subtle pressure in my mind when the other dragon crossed into our territory—the same sense that, now that I’d learned to recognize it, told me that Ivan was still close, too.
I stayed in the house as we felt the other dragon approaching the island, and even though it “felt” like Ben, I breathed a subtle sigh of relief when the day’s fading light made his red hide glow as he landed down at the beach, proving his identity.
I didn’t know the northern dragon well, but Maks had told me a bit about his history. He was older than both Maks and Dane, and still unmated. For all his power and his tendency to let his temper flare when those he cared about were threatened, Maks insisted that Ben was the gentlest of all the dragons he’d ever met.
Unlike Maks and Dane, he’d been raised knowing what he was from birth. He was the child of fated mates, and his parents had never had any reason to foster him out the way the European dragons did. When his dragon had awoken, it hadn’t been a surprise, and Anik, his dragon-shifter father, had taught him everything there was to know about his own true nature.
Ben definitely knew more about what it meant to be a dragon than Maks, or even Dane—both of whom had rejected dragonkind in their youth. Everything my mate had learned about his otherself had been through trial and error, and there were no doubt things that he had yet to discover—the effect of dragon fire obviously one of them, as we’d found out the day before.
“That man does love dragons,” Ben was saying as they walked in the house, shaking his head and laughing. “Too bad he was born human.”
“Who?” I asked, but before he answered I realized that I already knew the answer. It’s not like there were all that many humans who knew that dragons existed among us… and I only knew of one who was enthusiastic enough to inspire that comment. “Oh. Ty, right?”
“That’s right, love,” Maks said. “Dane is taking Wes and Elise up to stay with Ben’s fathers before he joins us here, to ensure their safety.”
I sucked in a breath. “Do you think Ivan would actually go after Dane’s family?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he isn’t willing to leave them unprotected.”
“What does that have to do with Ty?”
“Ty wanted Dane to take him up north, too,” Ben answered me. “He wants to be the one to protect his brother and Elise.”
“Either that, or he just wants another chance to ride a dragon,” Maks said, laughing.
“I heard that he had a pretty extreme reaction to hearing that there’s a ‘bad’ dragon,” Ben said. “I think he was under the impression that our kind was all full of noble honor or something. He’s really bent out of shape about Ivan.”
“I take it Dane didn’t take him?” I asked.
“He couldn’t get leave.”
Ty was a soldier. He really was protective of those he loved, and it was the perfect career for him. It was also a lucky coincidence that he’d been stationed at the base in Washington State near his family for as long as he had, but being in the army meant that his time wasn’t his own. If his superiors said that he couldn’t go, that was the end of it.
“Will your father be able to keep Dane’s family safe?” I asked Ben.
I’d never met Anik or his mate, Mikkel. I had the vague impression that they were really old—Ben was over five hundred, which was mind-boggling in itself—and in my mind I was picturing two white-haired, doting grandparents trying to stand against Ivan’s flaming dragon. I shuddered.
Maks saw the vision in my mind and laughed. “No, baby, Anik isn’t that old.”
“My ata?” Ben asked. “He’s not even two-thousand yet. If you met him in his human form you would think he was in his thirties.”
“How long does your kind live?” I asked, my mouth falling open.
“A lot longer than that,” he answered, smiling softly. “And you too, Devin. Your mating bond ties your life to Maks’s. My father, Mikkel, was in his twenties when my ata found him. His aging has slowed to match pace with his mate, and I expect both will be around for a long time to come. A youngling like Ivan wouldn’t be a threat to them. My ata was fighting dragons centuries before that one was born.”
“Anik fought other dragons?” Maks asked, clearly surprised. “He seems so… calm. And I didn’t realize that there had been other dragons on the continent before Dane and I arrived.”
Ben’s face hardened. “They came from Europe before I was born, so I’ve only heard the stories. They intended to claim these lands. There has always been more here than my ata needed, which is why he didn’t mind when the two of you claimed these territories as your own. But the dragons who came before… they did not want to live in harmony with the people already here, so they weren’t welcome.