Page 12 of Mated in the Stars

“I know, buddy. I know. Let’s go shhhhhh and watch Uncle Liatris poke a hole in the fabric of space and time, huh?” I whispered against his temple.

“Okay. We go shhhhh! No one hear us! Daddy and Papa go shhhhhhhhhhhh to me.”

“They are quiet. They just need some big old people time,” I said, doing my best not to think about what might be going on back at the ship.

I held Minter a little tighter as I walked over to join my friends.

“I don’t think Hush will care in the long run,” I added to the conversation. “I mean, everyone would love to see it happen, but I think at the end of the day as long as it happens most of them will be happy. Hush seems to go by that. If most of the dragons are happy and they’re all getting their basic rights, he seems to be a happy guy.”

“He’s your uncle by marriage, huh? Does he actually talk to you?” Selt asked.

“I go out of my way to talk to him,” I nodded. “Not so much because he’s a leader but because Sunny should be doing it more often. So, I’m gathering up a lot of information on how things work here and making notes on how they might be applied to a more diverse socio-economic ecosystem.”

“Let’s do it,” Xav shrugged and glanced at Liatris.

“Do it! Do it!” Minter said, clapping his little hands together.

“Screw it!” Liatris shrugged and turned toward the spot in the grass marked with a ring of bright, translucent, purple stones.

“Don’t say that,” I whispered in Minter’s ear. “You’ll get me in trouble.”

Selt, Liatris, and Xav stepped into the middle of the circle of stones. Liatris’s hands glowed like he dangled mini suns from hispalms. Selt’s hands paled in comparison to their purple light. I double checked Xav’s hands to find they didn’t glow at all.

Selt stepped behind his mate and wrapped his arms around him. Liatris leaned into the dragon and let out a long breath that moved his chest and stomach as if the air itself might make him too heavy to perform the spell. Xav stood nearby with his palms up and facing skyward. A lot of Grandpa Cromwell’s magic started in that pose.

“I’m not a fox,” Xav laughed as he picked up my thoughts over the flight link. “Everyone loves guessing stuff about might. I guess, I’d rather it be what sort of ‘secret shifter’ I am than everything else.”

“Are you a shifter?” I asked.

“Shush!” Selt snapped at me. “Liatris is concentrating. Don’t distract him.”

“Look who grew up and became the bossy one all of the sudden,”my dragon grumbled but I stopped his words before they reached Selt or his dragon via the flight link.

Liatris fell limp in his mate’s arms, and we all fell silent. A second later, the glowing light around his hands extended out and he reached out both of them as if to knock. His hands found something solid, but invisible. He straightened his back, Selt moving with him for support – literal or moral, I wasn’t sure. Liatris, with his eyes still shut, patted around this invisible, solid object. Slowly, the grain of the wood came into view. It was a beautiful dark wood with purple undertones and highlights. The knob when his hand finally closed around it was one of those old timey, brass ones, seen most often in old human movies on Earthside.

“You did it,” Selt whispered and kissed Liatris’s neck.

“WATCH IT!” Someone yelled on the other side of the door before it flung open knocking both of them backwards. Xav made to snatch at the man running through our new door, butthe guy ducked out of his reach. Xav’s fingers twitched but the newcomer dodged the spell too.

“WATCH IT!” The guy growled, twisting around and raising his bow and arrows.

“You watch it!” Selt said, shoving Liatris behind him.

“You can put that down,” I snapped, hating how much I sounded like my carrier in that moment. “No one’s gonna hurt you.”

“Fucking pig!” The guy nodded toward the door.

“F PIG! F PIG!” Minter cheered and I had to fight not to knock the guy for a loop.

I stepped closer figuring that it was better that I get to him before Selt did.

“Big fucking pig!” Xav said, raising his hands, fingers alight with magic.

What barreled through the open door next was a big fucking pig with tusks that decided to snort out fire. The newcomer loosed his arrow and the pig charged. The arrow bounced off its hide and I shoved Minter into the new guy’s arms as I tackled the beast. Minter laughed still shouting about the F PIG as I wrestled the damn thing that decided my arm should be a chew toy. It smelled like a forest and like a ham. The newcomer smelled familiar too but then almost all dragons shared some common ancestor in the Other World.

“Food or companion?” I growled.

“Food!”

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