Shifter's Baby(14)
Raild looked like he didn’t believe him. “She touched you?”
“Actually she hugged my neck and kissed my cheek. I am telling you, she is ‘the one’.”
“I have heard that before. It will be as it always is. The council will find us a suitable mate from woman that are raised to be.”
“I don’t want suitable Raild, I want her.”
“Well you cannot have her, so you will have to think of something else.”
Bradey nodded, though they both knew he would not. Bradey would not let go of this. “Besides Brad, she is long gone by now. You will never even see her again.”
***
That night when the two studied the surrounding, looking for ground shifters that were causing the ruckus, Raild noticed a small tent in the same place that his brother had said he had found the woman. It had been a couple of days and he had started to wonder if she even existed. He found a vantage point on the other side of the canyon and waited around for hours for her to come out. He had to know what his brother saw, that made him change everything he had ever said about mating.
Raild waited until the sun was almost up before he was rewarded with her rousing in her tent. His eyes squinted to see more of her and he found himself leaning over so much that he almost fell from the top of the canyon. The noise made her look his way and even in the dimmed light, their eyes met for a moment. His heart raced and unlike Bradey, Raild took off before he could go to her. She had spotted him and he wasn’t sure what to do but leave. Her face upturned as she watched him fly away.
It took Raild some time to go back to the nest and then to their shared home with other dragon shifters. He looked around for Bradey and when he found him, he blurted out the words. “Okay, she is it. So what do we have to do?”
Bradey looked at him strangely. “You seen her?”
“At the canyon rim, right where you said you found her. Why do you think she came back? Do you really believe in fate?”
Bradey couldn’t believe the man’s words, but more than that, he could not believe that she was back where they started. He had spent most of his night looking for her, going the way that he had taken her, but she was nowhere to be found. He had gone a hundred miles in the direction and still could not pick her up. When he had gotten home that morning, he was feeling lower than he ever had before.
“So let’s go to her, like this Raild and win her over.”
The dark-haired man shook his head. “No I want to know that she can handle the real us first. If not, then we haven’t broken the worst rule of all. Only when we are certain can we reveal ourselves.”
“How can we know if we don’t communicate?”
“We just will.”
Chapter 6
The two men agreed that they would go to her that night. Bradey was afraid that she would be gone, but he knew that fate would have its way, one way or another and if she was truly the one, she would be there waiting for them and she was.
***
Tenia stayed around the canyon and she even moved her tent to the bottom of the dried-up riverbed. It was amazing to her how normal it all looked, like it had never happened. There was a small sense of fear and danger, but after a different dragon left her that morning, she was hoping that her savior would come back. It made no sense what she was doing, but her heart told her that she needed to be right there. Maybe it was what was in the dragon’s eyes, but she had to see it again. To see that there was more than one, made her question her sanity a little less.
She waited anxiously as the day wore on, keeping herself busy with a hike and some reading. Tenia had picked up a couple books on dragons and any information she could find at the local library. They just had to come back and she waited until the sun was dying on her side of the world. Then she saw a shadow go across her campsite, the dying light extending the size. When she looked up, there were two in the air that circled around her like a buzzard would a rotting corpse. Tenia had a moment of indecision and she feared what would become of her. Waiting around for a dragon to return, suddenly did not seem as brilliant of a plan as when she had first thought of it.
The blonde woman stood her ground, her eyes on the movement above her. The dragons were getting closer and then like before when she was riding one, they barreled towards the earth below them straight for her. She felt like she was being tested and instead of cowering like her body’s first idea was, she stood there assured that they would not hurt her. The control displayed by them left her breathless and they both stood tall over her, their eyes dark.
Tenia immediately recognized the one that had saved her and her hand went to touch him softly. She realized then that she considered it a him, adding to the humanity in his eyes. The creature shimmied his soft scales to her touch and then made a sound. The other dragon was a slightly different color, but just as beautiful. She touched the other one as it moved closer to her. If she was dreaming, Tenia never wanted to wake up again. It was all too perfect and then everything changed.