Page 1 of Licking Fire

Chapter One

Rayer Drackosof the Dracodomus clan stepped onto one of the penthouse balconies of his high-rise and surveyed the city night as he held an envelope—and the invitation that had been within—in one hand, and a glass of wine in the other. He sipped the red wine, snow falling gently upon him as he clutched the envelope as if it were a lifeline of some sort.

Perhaps it was.

With each passing day, he felt himself becoming more and more like so many of his older clansmen—detached. Removed from it all despite having made a point to move to one of the biggest cities in the world.

Lost in a crowd.

The way I used to prefer it.

Once, he’d strongly disliked city living, enduring it only because it beat staying tucked away forever, hiding in outlying areas that mankind had not bothered with in centuries, places mankind could often not even reach with any sort of ease. He had a large number of relatives who still resided in those remote reaches.

A solitary life was not a wise choice. Not with the length of time in which his kind lived. Immortals who did not bother with human interaction tended to become the monsters from which stories were born—the big bad uglies that laid siege to entire towns before burning them to the ground.

Dragon shifters were notorious for such actions, documented through legends and fairy tales of burning many a man and town. Despite knowing how quickly their kind could lose control after a life of solitude, it was all too easy to become a recluse.

Rayer had seen others of his kind do as much—tuck themselves away from the world and from human interactions. Several of his own clan had not ventured anywhere near a human since before the advent of the locomotive. To them, this was but a blink of the eye.

The Dracodomus Dragon Clan was not always big on change. Perhaps that was why a curse was upon them. The details on the curse and how it came to be were fuzzy. He had never been able to get anything close to a straight answer out of his elders about the curse’s origin, and he’d been alive nearly six hundred years.

Some said it wasn’t a curse, but a blessing that had been laid upon their clan. Of course, those who said that were each happily mated to their chosen one—a special person the Fates preordained long ago would be with them.

He’d never heard any of the males who were older than six hundred and not mated refer to the affliction their clan suffered from as anything more than a curse.

Rayer grunted, having once bought into all of the stories of finding the one. He was no longer a fledging who believed all he was told and who clung to fairy tales. No. He was an immortal who had seen and done far too much in his long life to be anything but jaded.

Something he excelled at.

He trusted very few people outside of his own family. He had men who worked for him who were loyal, and who knew the truth of what he was, but they were supernaturals themselves.

Not human.

He had befriended a human decades ago, sharing with him secrets of the dragon shifters. Samuel had loved knowledge, and had a great deal of respect and trust for his kind, only wanting to unravel life’s mysteries for himself. Not to share with the world. And when several of Samuel’s journals had become public without his consent, he’d taken one for the team, letting the world of academia think him mad rather than try to convince his peers that men could shift into dragons.

It had cost the man dearly, but he’d never faltered.

Rayer thought more on Samuel, realizing it had been just over fifty years since he’d last spoken with the man. While that was nothing to Rayer, he did understand how fragile and short human lifespans were. Sadness came over him, and he made a mental note to have his assistant search for Samuel soon. With the holidays upon them, it would be nice to visit with his old friend again.

Samuel would be in his mid-seventies now. And if he knew his old friend, the man was probably digging around in a tomb in Egypt, hoping to discover long-buried secrets from history. As the thought of humans’ frailty settled over him, he found concern moving through him.

Was Samuel well?

Was he even still alive?

Samuel’s letters had stopped coming so long ago that he might not be around anymore. He may have perished, and Rayer hadn’t noticed. He was so used to long periods of time going between speaking to his own kind that it was all too easy to forget what short lifespans humans had.

Humans are far too frail.

Never before had Rayer needed to worry about time and an end drawing near. Though, with his six-hundredth birthday looming, he had been giving the passage of time a great deal of consideration.

He thought back to one of his uncles telling him of their clan’s curse—if any male of their kind did not find his mate by the dawn of his six-hundredth year, he would lose his ability to have sex. He would never sire sons. He would never do anything sexually again. His will for sex would die.

His uncle had explained it all as one would to a child, and then told him that without the one, the clan would cease to exist. That without matings, there would be no more dragon shifters to speak of, and the curse was there to be sure their species survived.

He leaned against the railing, looking out at the night sky, thinking harder upon it all. The need to find his chosen one had weighed heavy upon him in recent years, as he neared his six-hundredth year—the year his cock would stop working if he wasn’t mated. The year he would lose any ability to father children. Children he didn’t use to think he’d even want. He’d been perfectly happy to go through life without settling down. And he would have been happy to do it for another six hundred years, but that wasn’t to be. Now, he wished he’d spent time looking for his chosen mate. That he’d bothered to hunt for her at all.

Maybe the stories of old had it wrong. Maybe his mated uncle had been right. Maybe it wasn’t a curse after all, but a means to be sure their clan didn’t end.

---