Page 1 of Emerald Waves
Chapter One
Caro
I’d been cooling my heels, steering clear of the archives, doing what I could to not get tangled up too much with Emerson and the research he was embroiled in there. It wasn’t easy, nor was it fun, but I was lost when it came to knowing how to help the mate the fates had sent me. Some protector I was. I didn’t have a clue how to save him from himself and what he was becoming. Lost. Fractured, or at least, more fractured than he already was. Each time I saw him if felt like he’d unraveled a bit farther, and I feared that meeting me had contributed to this rapid downslide.
So, I kept my distance and buried myself in the work I could do to help unravel the mysteries my older brother’s mate had literally brought to our doorstep when he’d climbed through a gap in a cave wall. And right into the cavern where the precious gemstones we guarded were kept. Talk about fate staging an intervention. He’d needed one. Over the long centuries we’dbeen alone, our Ionus had become a grumpy bastard hell bent on grueling daily training sessions and keeping his nose to the grindstone when it came to work. He’d damn near worked the scales off us at times, which was why we’d all been pleased when his mate had finally made his appearance, and Ionus started getting laid on the regular.
It was a dream we all held, to find the one the fates had designed just for us. But until Alex’s appearance, that was all it had been, a dream. Which was what was making it so difficult to accept Emerson was mine. He’d been right there for years. I’d seen him and interacted with him, maybe not for long periods, since he’d been twitchy even then and had always set my senses on edge.
Damn, and there it was.
The way he’d set my senses off.
The way something about him had nagged at me until I’d had to get the hell out of that cluttered space and the confusing vibes he’d given off whenever he’d seen me. Had I really spent years ignoring the dragon meant to be mine?
That didn’t sit right with me either.
Ionus kept saying that I knew what I needed to do, but I don’t think he and I are of the same mind about what that is. So, I was out here under the cover of darkness, skimming over the ocean waves in my dragon form, seeking a rock formation only visible at low tide. Just beyond it, deep beneath the sea, was a cave entrance. Members of our kind had used it as a stronghold once, but no one had heard even a whisper about them for years. They were believed to be extinct, but recent revelations had taught us that many members of smaller tribes had opted to hide themselves away and slip into slumber, awaiting the time when the ones who’d hunted them were gone.
Only in some places, the guardians who were supposed to wake them died before a safe time came, and dragons slippedinto fairy tale and legend, becoming little more than fanciful stories. The belief in their extinction was no doubt the reason my brothers and I hadn’t encountered another dragon in decades until recently, after Alex entered the picture.
There, right there, that was the spot.
Circling, I waited for the waves to surge and recede. In the light of the full moon, I could see the formation I’d been searching for and beyond it, the trench where the cave was believed to be. Wings pressed against my sides I dove, using my tail to propel me, dragon eyes able to see as clearly beneath the water as when I was in the air. The moment it surged around me I felt my mind quiet as a muted peace settled the tumultuous swirl of my thoughts. Beneath the water’s surface, sound became a distant memory as darkness closed around me. The water, not my element to call, always welcomed me like a treasured friend. Skimming the ocean floor, I searched for it, until I spotted the wide cave mouth, only partially unobscured, jagged stone, like dragon’s teeth, extending from the ceiling like an angry maw I swam straight into.
My dragon’s huge form sent fish fleeing as even the eels retreated between the crevices in the rocks. I could breathe as easily as when I was on land, which was why I’d assigned myself this task in the first place, without the blessing or knowledge of my brothers. That and it put me hundreds of miles away from home, in the place where the blue dragons of the sea were said to hail from.
But were they still here?
Something tickled the scales on my belly, and I looked down to see one of the few creatures in the ocean who’d dare even bother trying to take a bite out of me.
A lamprey.
The long fish, with its circular mouth, like a sucker but with rows of sharp, jagged teeth, sought purchase, but couldn’t latchon through the armor of my scales and damn did it seem perplexed about that. The poor thing kept trying, I’ll give it that, keeping up with me like it was pulled along by the current I created with every swish of my tail. Maybe that’s how they kept up with the sharks until they could sink their fangs in.
The further into the cave I swam, the less I saw, but there was a presence here, one that felt old but aware.
Dragon?
I couldn’t tell what I was sensing, which was a first for me since I’d reached adulthood. I knew I should touch base with my brothers and at the very least do a check-in to let them know that I’d found the cave and swam inside. Though this wasn’t my element, nor my world to command, only one of them was able to traverse it the way I could, and I saw no need to inform him until I could ascertain what it was I’d discovered. As I reached the deepest portion of the cave, a shelf lifted out of the water, and into a deeper cavern that lay beyond.
The presence was stronger here, accompanied by a sense of amusement as I emerged and stepped up onto the ledge, sniffed and determined that left was the way to go. Wet footprints on damp rock were all I left behind as I made my way deeper, to a cavern where mammoth creatures sat appearing to be carved from stone. With dragon’s bodies and serpent’s tails, all they lacked was the wings our kind usually bore. Their size riveled my own and that of my brothers, but the power that hit me was like a fist when one stone eye cracked open. It was far more power than I’d ever been faced with in past visits.
Before I could blink, before I could reach out to my brothers, I was hit with a blast of sound so high pitched that it would have set dogs howling for miles if it reached their ears. As it was, I was left blind and disoriented, writhing on the stone floor of the cave as a bubble of sound wrapped around me, holding me in its gripuntil every moment felt like hours, and everything began going gray and black and spotty, like the shimmering scales on a fish.
Blues invaded; aqua, teal, then the first flashes of hazy emerald, blending with the blue until it was like being underwater again. Had I been shoved back in? I hadn’t felt my scales get touched, but I couldn’t feel anything as the sound around me turned from debilitating to laughter.
Were they mocking me?
No.
No, that laughter was young, high pitched, excited and punctuated with giggles. My head was so heavy I couldn’t turn it fast enough to see before the laughter drifted off for a moment, and the sound was almost lost. It resembled children playing the way I pictured my nephews and niece doing as soon as they were old enough to leave the nest.
Something leapt, twisting on the edge of my vision, and this time I did get a glimpse of what it was, but the image shocked me. There were baby dragons in the water, small, shimmering emerald ones with teal scales sprinkled among the green, one a little smaller than the other. Without worry or fear, they dove, wings flat against their sides, tail swishing as they propelled deeper, then shot up like a rocket to break the surface, seawater and laughter filling the air as they spun before diving again, like dolphins, all that was missing was a pufferfish for them to bounce around as they played.
Only there shouldn’t have been sky here, or clouds or the brilliant sun, not this deep within the cave. No sound escaped me when I opened my mouth to shout a warning, all I could do was watch them race each other around in an underwater game of tag while I stood frozen, stunned by the overwhelming urge to join them.
Yet I still couldn’t move.
