Page 4 of Devoted to the Dragon

My best friend wraps her arm around my back, her bangles tinkling as she rests her head on my shoulder and squeezes me tightly. “I know you’ve got that whole ‘jaded because I’ve stared down eternity’ thing going, but I’m not ready to give up yet. My wolves aren’t dying. Those who find their mates through my calling spell can bond, and Frenzy helps wolves without mates through their ruts safely. We’ll find a way to bring back the runes and the omegas. I found you, didn’t I?”

I lace my hand with hers, hugging her back. “You’re a squatter,” I say, tone dry. “You walked into my valley and never left.”

Two decades ago, the first thing out of bright-eyed Vandera’s eighteen-year-old mouth was, “Your magic is very loud. It keeps screaming at me for help.” That was followed by a trunk full of suitcases. Vandera doesn’t know the word no.

“You’re welcome,” she says smugly.

She’s absolutely right, even if she isn’t humble. When she came, I’d barely gotten the concept for Frenzy off the ground, and we were struggling to manage the ruts as wolves were beginning to turn feral. Her magic, her friendship—they turned it all around. With our combined magic—my scales and her spells—we were able to not only train humans to attend a rut but to mimic omegas’ pheromones and send the wolves into rut safely.

I thought it would give us time to find a solution to the problems, but we’re no closer than we were when we started. It feels as though everything we’ve built is set to crumble.

I will survive it. And that is the problem.

I always survive.

Each time, I claw my way back from the brink, let myself get close to people and build a new world—and time eats away at it until it all crumbles.

Lovers. Friends. They grow old. They die.

Over and over, they die.

And I watch.

They say dragons are made of fire, but I think at this point, I’m made of ice. Each new lifetime I live creates another layer of permafrost around my heart that settles over the last.

I thought this time it might be different.

“I really am grateful you’re here,” I tell her. The night has made me sentimental, pushed to the surface what I work so hard to keep buried. “I’m just feeling off.”

Vandera’s soothing herbal scent isn’t enough to dampen the smokey air, nor to ease my restlessness.

“You’re entitled to it. Five wolves aren’t something to forget, no matter how often the deaths are coming.” Her usually sunshine-soaked voice is as somber as I feel.

“My dragon needs some air. Why don’t you find your guys and go home? I’ll keep the vigil,” I suggest.

Vandera was the first to benefit from her calling spell, and her two wolves, Alden and Brooks, claimed her within days of her casting. Now, she boasts a record of ten sets of matched mates, Delia included. Finding a fated mate is the only real way to save a wolf from eventually turning feral without an omega. But the spell only calls to mates. They have to answer.

Vandera nudges my side and pulls away to study me. She is a natural beauty with golden-brown skin, long straight brown hair, and chestnut eyes flaked with warm honey. All this is wrapped in colorful fabrics and jangling tokens made of silver. “I need to go back anyway to check on Mattie and see how he’s holding up.”

“I think the situation triggered the mate bond with Colton and Austin,” I muse, mentally ticking up her match count to eleven.

It wasn’t a calm first night for the new human rut companion, but he seemed to be doing more than okay when I checked in with the closing staff. The two wolf guards for the club seemed overly protective and out of sorts, hovering over the man and refusing to leave his side.

Vandera wipes her brow with one finger and makes a smug sound. “Called it last week when Mattie arrived. Those two were tripping all over themselves to make him comfortable.”

There goes our newest rut companion. But at least another two wolves will be saved, even if shifter pairings with humans have yet to produce any omega pups.

Brooks, one of Vandera’s mates, calls to her from the circle of gathered wolves.

She pats my cheek as if she’s the one who is lifetimes old. “Have faith, Di. The others will come.”

I shove away her belief and harden myself against that hope, shooing at her to get going. I don’t have the heart for getting into it with her tonight.

The crowd disperses, but I don’t go with them. Instead, I watch the blazing light drifting on the lake's surface. I don’t know how long I stand there, the dawn rising, before Fennik’s warm scent reaches me. I turn to see him watching from the tree line.

He levels me with his intense silver eyes, prowling toward me. For a moment, I forget all about feral wolves and dying shifters. I see only how the dark slashes of his eyebrows furrow in concern. It’s past late, and his meticulous daily shave has been replaced by salt and pepper.

His angular face is a study of contrasts. The dark eyebrows and goatee are stark against the white scruff on his angular jaw.

---