Page 19 of Mistletoe Wishes and Dragon Kisses

Bending at the waist and taking Glo with him, he used his body as a shield to keep all the falling debris from harming a single hair on his Mate's head. But the Brown Witch of Peace, Protection, and Eternal Love was having none of it.

Letting go faster than he could react, she let herself drop to the ground. Scooting out from under him, she spun on her butt, jumped to her feet, threw her head back, and yelled so loud that what was left of the shed literally shook. "Damn you all to hell, Twiggy Girdler! I'mma gonna kick your exoskeleton-covered ass all the way back to whatever rock you crawled out of! You'regonna wish you'd stayed wherever you were, eatin' shit and layin' eggs!"

"Awww, did I interrupt?" The sarcastic, loud, booming, nasally voice cackled. "Lookie there, Little Gloria finally got kissed."

Looking up, he took in the gigantic monstrosity of a shadow that literally blocked out the midday sun and tried to make sense of what he saw. Blinking past the dancing black dots, he shook his head, blinked his eyes, and tried to process the massive, fourteen-foot-tall insect that his Mate knew and, sadly, who knew Glo.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Chris knew he should’ve been paying attention to what his Mate was doing when she was rifling through the shed, but he simply could not make sense of what he saw. It wasn't that he hadn't seen some seriously crazy shit in all his years on the Isle of Skye and everywhere else as he protected the world as one of the renowned Dragon Guardsmen–but he really, truly, honestly had never laid eyes on a fourteen-foot bug.

Long, thin, stringy, wiggling, squirming antennae poked out of the top of her head and slithered into the roofless shed with grotesque purpose. Then his eyes landed on the barbed tips with a mind of their own that reached even further into the structure, and he instantly knew what they were in search of–Gloria!

Her memories flooded into his mind. He saw the night the tall, beautiful woman with long dark hair appeared at Glo’s house. He watched the conversation unfold between them. Saw the moment that his Mate realized the woman she’d thought of as a sister was no longer even a friend.

His heart broke watching Gloria try to explain again and again, and over and over to the Twig Beetle Shifter that there was nothing she could do to stop her Shifts. That giving over to her alter ego was part and parcel of being a Child of Tithonusand by extension, the goddess Selene. Over and over, Glo explained that using her Magic to do anything against the will of the Universe, Mother Nature, The Powers That Be, or any god or goddess was a mortal sin against the Great Goddess and was punishable by death.

He was instantly furious when Twiggy jumped to her feet, screamed and yelled at his Mate, and called her horrible names no one should ever be called. Ríoghnán roared when the Beetle Shifter spat, ‘Why is your life more important than mine, Gloria? You’re just a stupid little Witch who watches over a stupid little plant. I am Twiggy Girdler, Super Model of the World!’

Then he felt, sensed, and literally smelled it as if he’d gone back in time. The acrid scent of sulfur, the burning stench of brimstone, the stifling reek of ash, then the unmistakable sting of Black Magic. He watched Twiggy contort and expand into a grotesque representation of the Insect she was meant to be.

Lunging at Gloria, the nasty Bug nearly touched his Mate’s beautiful face with her gnarled claws. Thankfully, Gloria was quicker and jumped back just in time.

For the briefest of moment, it looked like Twiggy was having second thoughts, but it couldn’t have been farther from the truth. For in the next second, she suddenly burst into flames and ran out of Glo’s living room into the night–never to be seen again.

It wasn’t surprising that Gloria spent the next ten years looking for whatever remained of her best friend. Her Aunties and Cousins helped too, but there was never a sign that the Twig Beetle Shifter had survived. His poor Mate spent the next decade grieving the loss of the one she’d thought of as a sister, and it broke his heart that he hadn’t been there for her.

But times had changed. He was there now and no one and nothing, not even a fourteen–foot bug was going to fuck with his Witch!

Reaching for her, Chris wrapped his arm around Glo’s waist from behind and lifted her feet off the ground. Ignoring his Mate as she yelled at him to put her down and she tried everything possible to unhook his fingers from the belt of her strange space suit, he just kept going.

“Chris! You have to…!”

“Nope!”He countered directly into her mind."We're finally together, and there is no way…"

"Hold it right there!" The Beetle snarled less than a second before her top set of pinchers reached down, grabbed two of the outside walls of what was left of Gloria's shed, and pulled them right out of the ground with a crazy strength he could only guess was powered by all the evil Sorcery racing through her veins. Tossing them over her shoulder like they weighed nothing, it was then that Chris saw the beastly bug was wearing the biggest, brightest pink stilettos he'd ever seen on what he thought of as her feet but knew from all his years in school were really another set of big–ass pinchers.

“Are those…?”

"Yep," Glo snapped. "Those are pink stilettos size fifty-two. They’d make Dragon Queens all over the world drool, and that idiot has them. UGH! And yes, that's Twiggy Girdler, my ex-best friend, former model, and Twig Beetle Shifter puffed up on enough Black Magic to burn down the entire Eastern half of the world." Looking over her shoulder, those flames back in her eyes, she growled through gritted teeth, “A lot happened while you were gone.”

“Yeah, I saw that shit in your memories! Sorry I wasn’t here.”

“No worries. You’re here now.”

“How about we kick her ass?”

“That was my plan before you scooped me off the ground. Remember that, Hot Stuff?”

“I damned sure do, and I’d do it…”

“Enough!” The massive Arthropod Shifter bellowed. “You’ll have plenty of time to get reacquainted in…”

“Oh, put a fucking sock in it, Twiggy. Your nasally twang is giving me a headache. You must seriously just love the sound of your own craptastic voice, because there is no one else on planet Earth who could endure the torture for longer than five seconds. Well, nobody other than my Aunt Nettie who refuses to wear her hearing aides.”

“Why I never…”

“Yes, you did! And you will again!” Glo yelled, squirming with such strength that Chris had to put her down before she fell from his arms.

Stomping forward and slamming her hands onto her hips, his Mate just kept going. All her pent-up anger, frustration, and more than a little hurt came pouring out like a broken fire hydrant on the corner of a city block on a hot summer day.

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