Dragon Storm (7 page)

It was obvious to her that he’d been prepared to find little of value in his half-Caucasian grandchild. She’d reveled in her beast’s power when he’d demanded she shift for him and still remembered his surprise with a feeling of satisfaction. From that day forward, he had treated her with respect and began to teach her about being snowcat.

Aside from his continuing efforts to convert her to his version of Buddhism, they’d gotten along well after that. He was an austere man who was bitter about the loss of his son. Josie made up for it in a small way, he once admitted. She was a strong snowcat and would add to the clan whose numbers were dwindling. Josie had stayed with him until she was eighteen.

She would have stayed longer, but he’d tried to force her to marry. There was nothing wrong with the guy. Her inner cat had been the one to object. He was
not
her mate. She didn’t want him.

When her grandfather had tried to force the issue, she’d left. She had never looked back and in the years since, she hadn’t heard from her family. She’d been careful to hide her tracks so even if he wanted, her grandfather would have a tough time finding her.

She lay listening to the rain as her thoughts wandered to what had been and could have been. If she hadn’t forged her own path, she probably never would have met Darius and Connor. They
were
her mates. The cat knew them immediately. This was her destiny—lying here between them.

Buddhists believed you made your own fate. Josie believed she’d made her own decisions that had brought her to this destiny. A Western girl with Eastern ideas, she found her grandfather’s beliefs meshing more and more with her own as she grew older. She was only half Tibetan, but all snowcat and the cat dictated a lot of what she’d come to understand about the world and its people.

Josie fell back asleep, cradled between her two mates, secure in the knowledge that she’d found her destiny with them. Where it would take her, only heaven knew.

When she woke again, the twins were gone from her bed. A quick sniff told her they’d found the kitchen and were in the process of burning bacon, if she wasn’t mistaken. Josie found a robe and headed out to avert a fire. Any second now, the smoke detector would start blaring.

When she hit the main room of the cabin, she was amazed to see one of the twins kneeling before her fireplace, the handle of her iron skillet in his hands. He was cooking the bacon in the skillet, over a fire.

“You got something against stoves?” she asked, reaching for the skillet.

“Whoa there.” He moved the hot pan away from her grasp. Good thing too. She realized her mistake a second later. The handle was hotter than she could safely handle. She would’ve burned herself badly if he hadn’t pulled away.

“How can you hold that?”

Darius grinned at her. “I’m half dragon, sweetheart. Even in my human form, some things carry over.”

“Wow. That must be handy.” She looked around the small cabin. There was no sign of the other twin. “Where’s Connor?”

“Outside, gathering wood to replace what I used. We didn’t want to deplete your supply.”

“That’s sweet, but not necessary. Why didn’t you use the stove?”

Darius looked confused. “I didn’t see a stove.”

“Bring that skillet and follow me.” Josie stood from her crouching position next to him and headed for the small kitchen. She flipped the switch on the gas burner, and the flame ignited. Darius took a step back, his eyes wide. “You’ve never seen a gas stove before?”

“No. We don’t have anything that looks like this where we come from. What fuel is used?”

“Natural gas. Did you see that big metal tank outside the house? The gas man comes every few months and refills it for me. I also have a few solar panels on the roof to help capture the heat from the sun.”

“Ingenious. Con, you’ve got to see this.”

The other twin had reentered the cabin without Josie hearing him. One thing was certain, these dragons moved like the wind. Even her sharp snowcat senses couldn’t detect their movements.

She spent a few minutes explaining how the stove worked. Then a few more, picking up where Darius had left off with the bacon. She grabbed a half dozen eggs from her small refrigerator and put slices of bread in the toaster. Each time she used a new appliance, she was obligated to explain its workings to the men. They were full of questions and made comments she found hard to understand.

It didn’t sound like they were from another country. It sounded like they were from another planet.

Or maybe another time. Medieval times, to be precise.

At least the hot and cold running water didn’t seem to faze them, although they were impressed that she had that kind of magic in such a small home. She didn’t even begin to know what questions to ask to make their world become clearer in her mind. She supposed given time, they’d come to an understanding.

One thing that couldn’t wait much longer was their beast halves. She wasn’t sure she bought their claims about being dragons, although Darius’s imperviousness to the burning heat of the cast-iron skillet was hard to explain any other way.

They ate breakfast, and the men impressed her with how much food they managed to eat between the two of them. She knew shifters ate a lot, but she was only half shifter and wasn’t quite up to their weight.

“Do you feel up to a run this morning?” she asked as she finished her last slice of toast.

“Run?” Connor seemed surprised by the question.

“My snowcat likes to run every other day or so. Living here makes it easy to blend in and as long as there are no hunters in the area, it’s relatively safe. Are you up for it?”

“Dragons aren’t much for running,” Connor replied with a serious mien. “But we’d be glad to fly anywhere you would like to go.”

Josie sat back and thought about it. Even if their dragon forms were only as big as their human size, they’d be bigger than any bird. If someone should see them—especially some weekend warrior with a camera
¾
well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

“Do you have to fly every few days, or can you go longer without shifting?”

Connor looked at Darius, and they both seemed surprised by her question.

“We don’t really know,” Darius finally answered with a bit of puzzled dismay.

“What he means to say is, we’ve never really had an issue with it. We can be in either of our forms for however long is necessary.”

“Really?” Josie was intrigued. “Out of necessity, shifters spend most of their time in human form. To stay too long in our beast forms invites the beast half to take over completely. While it can be a means of getting away from the troubles of our human selves, staying in animal form too long isn’t encouraged. At the same time, we need to let the predator run, to ensure the happiness of our inner beast. At least, that’s what my grandfather taught me.”

“Well, if your cat must run, it must run.” Darius pushed his plate away and stood. Connor followed suit.

She hadn’t meant to run at that very moment, but she was curious about their beast form. She wanted to see it. Seeing, as they said, was believing. It would be hard for her to buy the dragon thing fully until she got a good look at them in that form.

Of course, they also said curiosity killed the cat. She didn’t want to dwell on that little pearl of wisdom. These men were her mates, amazing as that seemed. She needed to know what manner of creature shared their souls, and there was no time like the present to embark on that particular voyage of discovery.

“All right. We can leave the dishes ’til later.” She stood and headed for the door, the men following close behind.

Josie paused in the clearing in front of her small house. Normally, she would head into the woods before shifting form, just in case anyone was in the area and might happen to see her. Today, however, she wanted ample room to see what form her new mates would take when they shifted.

“Why don’t you guys go first? I’ve never seen a dragon shifter before.”

The twins looked at each other, sharing a sort of shrugging, raised-eyebrow expression that she couldn’t quite decipher. She imagined they were curious about her cat. She was doubly so about their claim of being dragons.

A part of her seriously doubted they’d be able to pull it off. Some dark part of her psyche fully expected their lie to be exposed.

And how wrong that part was.

A black fog-like shimmer surrounded first Darius, then Connor and a split second later, two gigantic black dragons stood where the men had been. The only thing differentiating them was an intricate plate of armor that covered Darius’s breast and gleamed in the morning sun.

“Sweet Mother Goddess,” she breathed, shocked to motionlessness. “You really are dragons.”

“You were expecting something else?”
The voice came in her mind, unexpected and subtly amused. One of the twins was speaking telepathically to her. She thought it was Darius from the teasing tone, but she wasn’t sure.

“All this and you’re telepaths too?” Josie’s knees went weak as the two huge dragons advanced on her position. She was frozen in place, unable to move.

One reached out its long, sinuous neck, its massive head hovering in front of her face. One peridot green eye winked at her with amusement. The same peridot shade the twins shared.

“Guys, you can’t fly around like that. If somebody sees you…” It didn’t bear thinking about. She began to shake.

The giant dragon tilted his head in question then looked at his brother. Their eyes narrowed as if troubled, and Connor shifted back to his human form. He took her in his arms, holding her close while she clutched his shoulders.

“What’s wrong, love? What has you upset?” His concern touched her heart.

“You’re so big…and there aren’t any dragons here. If someone sees you…” Hiccups interrupted her babbling as emotion threatened to overwhelm her. She didn’t know where to begin to tell them everything that was just
wrong
with being a dragon in the twenty-first century. Maybe they really were from another planet. Or another dimension.

“We don’t have to fly if you don’t want us to.” Darius came up beside her, in human form once more. She read concern on his face along with dismay. She was probably freaking these guys out with her violently swinging emotional display.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She tried to get a grip, but needed a few minutes to come to terms with this revelation. Her cat clawed at her insides, wanting to get out. She pulled away from Connor and looked at both men. “You two stay here, and please don’t fly anywhere. Don’t do your dragon thing. At least not until I get back.”

“Where are you going?” Connor asked. He looked like he wanted to prevent her from leaving, but she couldn’t take that. She needed some space.

“My cat needs to run, and I need to think. I’ll be back in about an hour, okay?”

Connor watched her go with a sinking heart. She was clearly distraught. Something they’d done had upset her. It didn’t sit well.

“Do you think we scared her?” Darius stood beside him as they watched her lope off into the dense forest. She had shimmered with a white cloud of fog—the exact opposite of their dark black shimmer—then turned into a gorgeous spotted white cat. There were legends of such creatures living in the far north of their world, but neither of the twins had ever seen one of them.

“I don’t think our lady is frightened by much.” Connor thought about her reaction. “She seemed more overwhelmed than scared.”

“Well, we are a lot bigger than she is when we shift. Heck—” Darius shook his head, “—even in human form we are much larger than she is.”

“Our mate is a tiny thing,” Connor agreed. “We must be careful with her both physically and emotionally. I think she is more fragile than she seems.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Why else would she be living out here all alone? I fear someone or something hurt her in the past. She is hiding from something.”

Darius seemed struck by the thought. His eyes narrowed as he stared after the place she had disappeared. “I’m going after her.”

“She wanted to be alone,” Connor reminded his twin.

“I’m going to watch over her from above. She’ll never know.”

“Dar, if there truly are no dragons in this world, I imagine we’re going to face some difficulties. For one thing, we’re going to have to be very careful about being seen.”

“No one will see me.” Darius was adamant, but Connor knew Dar had little control over onlookers. He could only be careful and hope for the best. At night they would have a better chance of blending into the dark forest, but the sun was strong today.

“I don’t know, Dar. She wanted to be alone.”

“You just said she is hiding. What if she is in danger?”

Connor hadn’t thought of that angle. “We’ll both go. Fly close to the treetops and watch from above.”

“It is a good strategy,” Darius agreed before shimmering into his dragon form and taking to the sky.

Connor followed in his brother’s wake. They stuck low to the trees, using the dense canopy for cover as best they could. All while searching for a furry white cat with dark spots, pointy ears and a long, lush tail.

“I see her.”
Darius was clinging to the top of a sturdy pine, high above the forest floor.

Connor latched on to a nearby tree as lightly as he could, trying not to rustle the leaves or make any other betraying sounds. The big cat prowled over the forest floor, pausing just once, its ears swiveling. Thankfully, she didn’t look up.

The cat turned to a streak of white fur as it took off at an unbelievably fast pace through the maze of tree trunks far below. Both dragons took to the air, following close behind, watching over her from above.

“She is faster than I would have thought,”
Connor commented to his twin.

“Like a streak of lightning,”
Darius agreed.
“Even flying, it is a challenge to keep up with her.”

“And she is hampered by the trees. I wonder what speeds she could attain on open land?”

“It boggles the mind.”

At length, she paused in a small clearing, climbing on a large boulder to take a look around. She wasn’t even breathing hard.