by G. A. Aiken
Anyway, the bottom line was she couldn’t sleep. So she’d left her warm bed—and her even warmer mate—and headed out. She carefully and quietly closed the door behind her and went to the room next door. She stepped in and smiled at the babe already awake and standing tall in her crib.
“How’s my little Rhianwen this morning?” Annwyl asked her niece. She reached into the crib and picked the babe up. “You can’t sleep either, little one? Unlike your cousins?” Annwyl glanced over at her snoring twins. They slept in separate beds these days out of necessity. Too many times Annwyl had walked in to full-on fist fights between the pair when they’d shared a crib. And the last time she’d tried to separate them, her son had ducked and her daughter had nailed Annwyl with a right cross that left bells ringing in her head. After that, the little nightmares were separated for good.
They’d also tried to put Rhianwen in her own room, but all three of the babes had screamed and cried until she was returned. Since then none of the adults had bothered to separate them.
A tiny hand reached up and stroked Annwyl’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” Annwyl told that concerned little face that broke her heart on the best of days. “I’ll be fine. You needn’t worry so.” But she knew Talaith and Briec’s little girl did worry. There was something about her that practically screamed, “I worry for everyone!”
“We have to teach you to smile, little one,” Annwyl said before placing her back in her crib. “Your father is getting impossible about it.” She pulled the blanket around the babe and leaned in, kissing her head. “Get some more sleep.”
Annwyl faced her own children. Her son, smirking even while he slept, and her daughter, who looked so much like Fearghus it made Annwyl’s heart ache. She knew most mothers would make sure to be there when their children woke up. They’d make sure that they fed them each and every morning and helped them learn all sorts of new things. That’s what most mothers would do.
But, instead, Annwyl kissed both their sleeping heads and, with her two swords tied to her back, stepped away from their beds. Because instead of doing all those wonderful things for her children, she’d train. She’d train until her muscles ached and her body felt drained. She’d train until she bled from accidental wounds and her head throbbed from accidental blows. She’d train until she knew that no matter what horrors came for her children, she could take them all on. That she could fight until nothing was left standing but her and her babes.
Fighting her urge to feel guilty, Annwyl faced the door but immediately stopped.
“Morfyd? What are you doing in here?”
Morfyd yawned and stretched her arms over her head. “Just watching them. It’s nothing.”
“Where’s the new nanny?”
“Annwyl—”
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Does it matter?”
“The fact that we can’t keep a bloody nanny in this place makes it matter.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Fearghus doesn’t want any dragons but blood. He doesn’t trust the others,” Annwyl reminded her.
“I know.”
“And the females of your line aren’t exactly nanny material.”
“I have sent messages out to a few of my younger cousins who have no designs to be warriors and—”
“If they’re too young, Fearghus is not going to like that either.”
“I’ll handle Fearghus.” Morfyd motioned to the door. “Go. Get in some training.”
Seeing no point in arguing with her, Annwyl walked out the door and quietly closed it. Then she stomped away from the room. Before she reached the stairs, another bedroom door opened and Dagmar stepped out. She caught Annwyl’s arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“We lost another nanny, didn’t we?” Annwyl looked past Dagmar at the naked male stretched out, face down, on the bed in the room behind her, long golden hair reaching to the floor. “How do you listen to that noise?”
Dagmar closed the door, but it only toned down some of the snoring. “It’s amazing what one tolerates for love.”
“I don’t think I could tolerate that for anything.”
“Probably not. But what I will ask you to do is leave the nanny situation to me and Morfyd.”
“She’s trying to get one of her younger cousins to do it. Fearghus is not going to—”
“What part of ‘we’ll handle it’ are you not grasping, my lady?”
“Don’t get huffy with me, barbarian. It’s my little nightmares that are scaring off the townsfolk.”
“They are lively, fun-loving children who merely need a good, solid, and loyal nanny to help raise them.”
“You mean as opposed to demons sent from the underworld who need a good solid exorcism?”
“Must you be this way?”
“I don’t know how else to be.”
“Annwyl, just trust me, would—” A door opened behind Annwyl, and Dagmar’s eyes grew wide behind the little round pieces of glass she wore.
One hand reaching for her sword, Annwyl spun to face whatever was behind her. But her hand fell away, and her mouth fell open.
The purple-haired dragon stood in Keita’s bedroom doorway, his shirt thrown over his shoulder, his hand on the door handle, his gaze fixed on Dagmar’s.
“Ragnar?” Dagmar whispered. Annwyl would assume so, but she couldn’t tell one purple-haired bastard from another. They all looked alike to her. Just one more head begging to be lopped off.
“Uh…Lady Dagmar.”
The poor thing looked caught, ready to spring back into the room. But Keita yanked the door open wide. She wore only a fur around her body, her normally smooth and flowing dark red hair a mass of uncombed curls and knots.
“You forgot this.” Keita put a travel bag in the dragon’s hands and went up on her toes, kissing his cheek. “I’ll see you later,” she murmured. “Now go.”
“Keita…”
“What?”
Ragnar motioned to Annwyl and Dagmar, and Keita glanced over. Instead of grinning, as she had done a few years back when Annwyl had caught Danelin, Brastias’s second in command, trying to sneak out of Keita’s room, the She-dragon’s eyes grew wide. She looked almost panicked. Strange, since Annwyl couldn’t remember a time Keita had panicked over anything.
“Uh…Annwyl. Dagmar. Good morn to you both.” Her smile was forced, brittle. She nudged Ragnar, and, reluctantly, he walked off.
Once he was gone, Keita whispered, “You won’t tell anyone…about that…will you?”
Now Annwyl was truly confused because Keita usually suggested, “Make sure to give all the details to my sister. Let me know if you need drawings!”
Was she really hiding this? And if she was…why?
“We won’t tell,” Annwyl said, since she had her own secrets.
“Thank you.” Then Keita slipped back into her room and closed the door.
“Is no one safe from that female?” Dagmar asked.
Annwyl shrugged since she had no answer and left Dagmar staring at Keita’s closed doorway. She headed down to the Great Hall where she found food already out and the other two Northland dragons eating at the table.
She walked over and dropped into a chair across from them. She said nothing until she’d filled her own plate and begun to eat. Then she asked, “Did you both sleep well?”
They nodded while they kept eating. A few years ago she might have been insulted by that. But after the Northland battle in which she’d fought beside the mighty Reinholdt and his sons, she knew this to be the way of things when Northland warriors ate.
“And how’s your leg, uh…”
“Meinhard, my lady,” one of them answered while still managing to chew his food. If she was going to remember their names, she’d have to find something distinctive about them, especially since the other one’s hair would eventually grow back.
“Call me Annwyl.”
“As
you like.”
“And your leg?” she prompted.
“Better. Healed up nice during the night.”
“That’s perfect.” She loved how dragons could heal quickly with a little help from a witch or mage. “I was going to get some training in—you both can train with me.”
They paused in their feeding and lifted their heads. Just like two oxen at a watering hole that had sniffed out a predator nearby.
What could Annwyl say? They weren’t too far off.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Queen Annwyl,” the one with short hair answered, and Annwyl had to laugh. She loathed when people used that stupid title, but she knew he was doing it for one simple reason: to point out that perhaps fighting with a queen who’d already tried to take his head might not be the smartest decision. Normally he’d be right, but they were under Éibhear’s protection and their brother was—secretly at least—fucking Keita. So unless Annwyl heard otherwise, she wouldn’t bother killing them.
“We’ll use the training ring right around the corner of this building. And I promise I’ll not hold anything that happens in the ring against either of you, your brother, or your people.”
“Why us?” the other ox asked. He bore a scar from his hairline to below his eye. It had faded with time, but it was clear enough to remind her that “eye scar” was Meinhard, meaning the other was…uh…shit. What’s his bloody name again?
Rather than ask him that—she’d tried to take his head, but she couldn’t be bothered to remember his name…tacky—she admitted, “No one else will train with me these days. Even the Southland dragons. Unless, of course, Northland dragons are too afraid of me to take the risk as well…”
Meinhard sneered around his food while the other’s purple brows peaked.
Knowing how to close this deal, she added, “Besides, wouldn’t you like a chance to get even over your hair?”
When she saw fang, she knew she had them both.
Keita skipped down the stairs to the Great Hall and hopped off the last step. So far only Gwenvael, Dagmar, Morfyd, and Talaith had made it down to breakfast. Keita, making sure her smile was exceedingly happy and bright, threw her arms wide, and said with no small amount of cheer, “Good morn, my lovely family!”
“You’re fucking Ragnar the Cunning?” Gwenvael barked at her.
Keita dropped her arms to her sides and glared at Dagmar, hoping to look appropriately betrayed. “You promised me you wouldn’t say anything.”
Gwenvael refocused his scowl onto his mate. “You knew?”
“I know lots of things.”
“You knew?”
“Don’t yell at me, Defiler.”
Keita was surprised the warlord’s daughter hadn’t said anything. But this was good. The rumor was spreading even faster than she’d thought it would, and Dagmar apparently could be trusted. Excellent.
“Is it beyond you”—Morfyd pushed her chair back and stood, stalking around the table—“to keep your legs closed, sister?”
“Beyond me? No. But why would I? He’s gorgeous.”
“He’s a Lightning,” Gwenvael reminded her. And Keita had to admit she was a little shocked. Of those she’d thought would be upset about this, she’d never imagined it would be Gwenvael. Who she fucked was not something her golden brother had ever cared much about unless a problem arose.
“Yes. He is. And so were those slags you fucked during the war that got you the name Defiler.”
“It’s Ruiner! And I never tried to hide what I’d done. Why are you?”
“I don’t have time for this.” Keita headed toward the Great Hall doors, which stood open, giving her a glimpse of early-morning freedom. But just as she stepped outside, Gwenvael caught her arm and swung her around.
At least, she thought it was Gwenvael. Gwenvael, who was much taller than Keita, so that when she swung her arm at him and slapped him with her hand, she would really only hit his side and do very little damage.
Too bad, though, it wasn’t Gwenvael but Morfyd who’d grabbed her. And Morfyd’s face was right in line with Keita’s open palm.
The sound ricocheted around the courtyard, and Morfyd’s cheek turned red where Keita’s hand had collided with it.
A moment of stunned silence from both of them followed, poor Dagmar rushing up to them yelling, “No, no, no—”
But it was too late. Much too late. Screeching, they grabbed onto each other’s hair and stumbled down the steps while trying to kick the other while trying to yank every strand from the other’s head.
Dagmar tried desperately to separate them, the human guards wisely deciding not to intervene between two She-dragons who could shift at a moment’s thought and crush them in the process.
“Stop it!” Dagmar yelled, her tiny little human hands trying to pry them apart. “Stop it right now!”
It was strange, in the middle of a sister free-for-all as Gwenvael always called it, that Keita could hear anything but her own yells and Morfyd’s, but she did hear it. A familiar voice coming from across the courtyard and heading their way.
“Wait!” that voice begged. “Would you just wait? Please!”
Keita wanted to pull away from her sister to see what was going on, but Morfyd wasn’t letting go.
But then they had no choice in the matter because something incredibly strong—and, she was guessing, incredibly pissed off—yanked the pair apart with one pull and shoved them in opposite directions before walking on through.
Keita looked down at the strands of white hair she still had in her fists, then she gazed up, mouth dropping open, when she saw all the red ones in Morfyd’s.
Raging, Keita yelled, “You big-handed—”
“Izzy! Please wait!”
The plea cut off Keita’s words, and she could only stare as Keita’s young cousin Branwen shot past them while desperately pulling clothes over her human form.
“By all reason—” Dagmar began.
“—that was Izzy?” Keita finished.
“It’s been two years since we’ve last seen her,” Morfyd said, “but…”
The trio gazed at each other a moment longer before Keita and Morfyd dropped each other’s hair and charged up the stairs, Dagmar Reinholdt pushing past them both and beating them inside.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Talaith had heard all the yelling and screeching, but she’d learned not to get into the middle of a Morfyd–Keita fight long ago. Even Gwenvael—surprisingly annoyed since he didn’t seem to get annoyed by much, but especially not by anything Keita did, or who she fucked for that matter—had walked out the back door of the hall.
“Aren’t you going to help?” she’d asked him as he passed her.
“They’ll wear themselves out eventually,” he’d replied and was gone.
Perhaps they would, too. Yet unlike Dagmar, Talaith wasn’t about to abandon her breakfast to find out the truth of that. She would stop the brothers from fighting when necessary, but she wasn’t about to get between sisters. She’d grown up with women, and she above all knew exactly how mean they could be.
Talaith heard someone coming down the steps and smiled when she saw her mate. He might be able to get his sisters to stop fighting without her getting a black eye in the process. Yet he stopped midway down, his gaze locked on the entrance to the Great Hall. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and a look of shock crossed that perpetually bored dragon’s face.
Concerned his sisters had finally really harmed themselves, Talaith followed his gaze. But those angry light brown eyes glaring at her from across the hall belonged to no dragon.
“By the gods…” Talaith breathed out, slowly pushing herself to her feet. “Izzy?”
Her daughter. Iseabail. Back, alive and well, among her own after two very long years, and with all her important parts still attached. But Talaith’s Izzy had…matured. She’d developed curvy hips, and breasts that had nearly doubled in size, proving Izzy was a late bloomer like her mother. But that was only part of
what had happened to Izzy since Talaith had last seen her.
There also wasn’t an ounce of fat on Talaith’s daughter, but she was far from skinny. Instead Izzy was layered in hard-edged muscles rippling powerfully under a short-sleeve tunic and brown leggings. She was also taller—even taller than Annwyl—and her shoulders were strong, wide, and powerful, making Talaith feel puny and weak. It seemed that Izzy had taken after her birth father’s people more than Talaith would have ever thought. Now Izzy was built like the warrior women of Alsandair. Tall and broad and oh-so-very strong.
Even more dangerous, Izzy had become quite beautiful. Beautiful and, if Talaith was a gambling woman, she’d say completely oblivious to it. Izzy got that from her father, too. He’d been stunningly handsome but had no idea about it and to the day of his death always seemed shocked Talaith could love him as much as she did. He had never believed himself worthy.
“Forgot me already then?” Izzy slammed her hands flat on the table, leaned in, and with a bellow that rocked the castle walls, accused, “Because you’ve replaced me with another?”
That bellow snapped Talaith out of her shock. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t even bother telling me! Do I mean so little to this family?”
Talaith cringed when she realized why her daughter was so angry, and looked to her mate. But he’d turned around and was heading back up the stairs.
Deserting bastard!
“You never said a word,” Izzy went on, ranting and pacing, her cousin Branwen standing behind her, looking unusually distraught. “You all conspired to lie to me!”
“Izzy, you don’t understand—”