The Mating Destiny: Werewolves of Montana Book 7 Read online

  And then she felt a tickling down her spine that warned danger approached. Anna pushed at his chest and tore her mouth away from his.

  Michael instantly became alert. “Your father approaches.”

  Barely had the words fled his mouth when the breeze overhead shifted. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her father winging through the sky, invisible to Skins, but very much visible to her. Barlow appeared at the edge of the clearing of sea grape trees and shifted back to skin and conjured clothing.

  Anna’s heart fell to her stomach. He could see…everything.

  “You bastard! Get off her!” her father roared.

  Michael slid off her body and stood.

  “This is war. Prepare to fight,” her father snarled.

  Michael shifted into dragon, his enormous body now half in the Gulf of Mexico. Anna trembled, thankful once again that dragons were invisible to Skins.

  With a wingspan the size of a Boeing 747, Michael was impressive even by dragon standards. Though her father was smaller, Barlow held more power, and he knew how to wield it. Barlow shifted into dragonskin and grinned, showing rows of pointed teeth.

  Her father was older, and wise to the ways of battle. Michael had purpose and drive, but lacked the battle strategy Barlow had honed over the years. Anna cried out for them to stop, wishing she could shift as well.

  Then she raised her hands to the sky and called upon Xavier for help. Surely Michael’s master could intervene.

  The Crystal Wizard instantly appeared, saw what was happening as Barlow opened his mouth to breathe fire upon Michael.

  “Michael, shift back now,” Xavier roared.

  Michael snarled, but suddenly he stood on the wet sand as Skin, clad in shorts and a T-shirt. He fisted his hands as he glared at Barlow.

  Barlow immediately shifted back. Fighting as dragon against a dragon who chose Skin was strictly forbidden, and those who violated the rule had the scales flayed from their body.

  Xavier put a steady hand on Michael’s shoulder. “He is my apprentice. You have no jurisdiction over him and no right to harm him.”

  “The hell I don’t. He tried to compromise my daughter and steal her innocence. I’ll fry his ass.” Her father’s gaze softened as he looked at her. “Anna, you’re my eldest. You come from a long line of notable red dragons, and your mate will be one who will make our line even more powerful. I have great plans for your future. You deserve more than a lowlife land-sucking black dragon like Michael Vincent.”

  The Crystal Wizard frowned, his gray-blue gaze turning stormy. “What the hell is wrong with you dragons? You possess incredible magick, magick that can aid Others. And yet you won’t stop fighting for a minute to see you are all the same.”

  “The same as that bastard whelp? He has no family, no name. He is lizard bait,” her father roared.

  Anna winced at the insult. He was an orphan dragon, one reason Xavier and the Brehon took him under their wing as an apprentice.

  Xavier turned toward Michael. His gaze widened as he saw the magick wand in the sand. He gave Michael a stern look, and her friend shrugged. “You have dozens.”

  The Crystal Wizard flicked the wand at Michael’s bottom, and he jumped with a yelp. “Ouch!”

  “That’s for taking it without permission.” Xavier waved a hand and the wand vanished. “Let’s straighten this matter between you and Anna in a reasonable manner.” He aimed a hard look at Barlow. “It’s called communication, a tactic your clan could use in future negotiations with Clan Fury.”

  “The hell with that. There is nothing to discuss,” Barlow growled. “He tried to rape my little girl.”

  “Papa, I was the one who seduced him,” she snapped.

  But Barlow was beyond listening. As her father drew back his arm to toss dragonfire at Michael, her friend stood straight and tall and unafraid.

  “Toss that dragonfire and I’ll turn you into an iguana, Barlow,” Xavier warned.

  With a snarl, her father forced the dragonfire to recede. “You little puny whelp, Vincent. You dared to touch my daughter? She will never be yours.”

  “You can’t deny what Anna and I share, sir. We are destined to be together.” He spoke with quiet authority and his dark gaze gleamed with purpose. Suddenly he seemed to grow in size and stature, his deep voice ringing over the sands. “She is mine.”

  “I’ll show you your destiny,” her father jeered.

  Michael snarled and started toward her father as Anna bit her lip. Her worst fears manifested; her beloved father and friend at each other’s throats.

  But the Crystal Wizard didn’t stand by and watch.

  Xavier held Michael back, his arms wrapped firmly about his midsection. “Be gone!” the wizard roared at her father. His eyes turned snow white, and power radiated from him. Anna stepped back, very afraid for herself and her sire, for Xavier could turn them into dust with a flick of his finger.

  “Papa, please,” she begged, tugging on his shirtsleeve. “He’s my true mate!”

  Barlow blinked in an apparent shock. For a moment she held the wild hope that her father would see reason, understand that she must be with Michael.

  “I will never accept him as your mate, Anna. True mates or not. He is your clan’s enemy.”

  Finally her father stepped back, but not without glaring at Michael.

  Knowing she must push him away from her lest her father crush him, Anna stared at Michael, her heart heavy, though her gaze remained hard. “Go Michael. I never want to see you again. Get out of my sight.”

  Stricken with grief, she managed to speak without her voice cracking. But the wounded look in her true mate’s eyes shattered her.

  As Michael walked away, her father yelled after him.

  “You are forever cursed by my kin, Michael Vincent! From this moment on, you are a blood enemy. If I ever see you near my daughter again…”

  Her powerful father pointed a finger and spewed a line of fire on the shoreline, turning it black as coal. “I’ll fucking kill you and every single dragon in your clan.”

  Chapter 1

  Five Years Later

  Tir Na-nog, Land of Eternal Youth and Beauty

  Love sucked. Work, on the other hand, was pure solace.

  It helped him to try to forget about Anna, and all they had shared.

  Michael Vincent arranged the seashells filled with potion on the crystal counter of his master’s lab. The lab smelled of the beach and sunshine, mixed in with the char-grilled steak he’d consumed for lunch. The ogres who assisted Xavier were busy outside, tending to the plants Xavier grew in his vast garden.

  The Crystal Wizard was fond of his garden and experimenting. In a rare moment of sharing confidences over a bottle of witch’s beer, Xavier once told Michael he had been apprenticed himself to a wizard. It was hundreds of years ago, and he’d worked in a lab in Europe with magick, before he died and became the Crystal Wizard.

  Michael took a vial of lizard ashes and read the instructions in Xavier’s cramped script and then added various amounts to each shell.

  Taking a clipboard, he timed and duly noted the results, jotting them down on a pad.

  The lab inside the Crystal Wizard’s crystal palace was spacious, with everything neatly labeled. Jars and bottles on crystal shelving held various liquids and dry measures. Most of them he seldom bothered with, for his study was botany and various magick plants.

  Maybe there was a plant that would help him erase Anna from his mind. He’d looked for one, but failed to find anything sufficient.

  Michael sat on a leather-padded stool before the counter and spun around slowly. Anna had recently celebrated her birthday. She was two years past her first shift into dragon.

  He wondered if she had mated with another in her clan yet. He felt a sickening lurch in his stomach at the thought. Anna was his true mate.

  She is mine.

  How could one forget a true destined mate? He might as well forget about being a dragon.

  Footsteps
sounded in the corridor. Michael turned to see the Crystal Wizard enter the lab. Dressed in a somber black suit, with a powder-blue shirt open at the throat, the wizard seemed lost in thought as he picked up a vial of dragon’s blood and studied it.

  Ever since returning from a stint at the beach, where he had tutored a nymph, Xavier had changed. Even his colorful wardrobe had been abandoned in favor of business suits. When Michael gently pressed him about it, Xavier curtly told him to focus on his work.

  It made him wonder about the nymph named Ciara, and what exactly X had taught her. Maybe X had even dared to fall in love. If that were so, he felt sorry for the wizard.

  Love sucked.

  Xavier came over to examine the results of Michael’s experiment. He showed him the pad and the wizard nodded. The wizard took the shell containing the potion with the largest amount of ash. He mixed it into the vial of dragon’s blood and poured the blood into a canister the size of a whiskey shaker, except this canister had a spray nozzle. Xavier shook the canister, and then summoned his magick. An eerie blue glow pulsed from the canister.

  He looked up at Michael. “Want to watch? You’ve worked hard enough on this with your studies of the Lumen seeds.”

  Curious, he nodded. Xavier waved a hand and suddenly they materialized on earth, on a patch of desert inside a walled compound.

  “This is where I conduct the most repulsive, but necessary, of my experiments. The ogres in service to me keep the compound guarded from human and Other interference,” the wizard said, his expression grim.

  His nose wrinkled at the stench of decay, something that he’d never smelled before in the afterworld. Michael shuddered. This was no garden, but scorched earth, and about a dozen dead bodies were stacked against the far wall.

  “Holy dragonfire,” he muttered. “Who are they?”

  “The lowest of the low, human men who were rapists and serial killers, the types who are most apt to turn into zombies. There may be a former Congressman in the assortment as well. I give the ogres preservatives to seal the dead bodies for transportation.”

  Xavier waved a hand and conjured a jelly jar. He winked. “Welch’s works best.”

  Michael laughed as the wizard snapped his fingers and disposed of the jar, glad his master had resumed his odd sense of humor.

  An ogre was selecting a dead body from the pile near the wall. He hoisted it over one brawny shoulder and then dumped it on the ground.

  Michael grimaced, glad he was not tasked with this unpleasant part of X’s experiments. The ogres seemed only too happy to gather the corpses from earth and transport them here.

  “Stand back,” Xavier warned. “This is coldfire, and it may not yet be stable enough.”

  Then the wizard pressed a button on the canister and lit the tip of the spray nozzle. A delicate blue flame shot from the nozzle. The wizard pointed it at the corpse.

  The flame consumed the corpse instantly, leaving nothing behind, not even a single ash.

  Michael whistled. “Damn, X! I never knew coldfire could do that.”

  Xavier looked pleased as he blew out the flame. “Coldfire made by myself or the other wizards of the Brehon can do it, but we’ve never been able to manufacture it. Still, it’s far too unstable. And too dangerous.”

  Xavier set down the canister and Michael noticed his hand shook slightly.

  “I hate this shit,” Xavier muttered.

  “Coldfire?”

  “My former master killed me with it when I was mortal.” The Crystal Wizard stared at the pile of corpses. “I loathe the magick fire, and yet I must use it for the greater good.”

  New respect for the Crystal Wizard filled him. “I never knew that.”

  Xavier’s gaze grew grim. “I seldom share such confidences, but I trust you, Michael. You’re a good dragon, even if you are hot-headed at times. You work hard and your loyalty is absolute.”

  “It is for another ninety-two years.” He started to grin and stopped. By then Anna would be mated, with little dragons of her own.

  And he’d still be alone, so very alone.

  When they returned to the lab, the wizard hunted through the shelves as Michael resumed his seat. “We’re short on supplies,” Xavier murmured.

  “I’ll make a list.”

  Xavier stroked the bristles of his short beard and nodded. “No need. I require only one item. The timing is right. I have a new assignment for you, Michael. You’ll have to go back to earth again.”

  He swiveled around on the stool.

  “I need two dozen more Lumen seeds. From the White Mountain compound of Clan Tyrith in New England.” Xavier’s gaze narrowed. “You know what this means.”

  Michael turned away. “Send one of your ogres.”

  “They can’t get inside the compound and they are not the right candidates for gathering the seeds. Only a dragon will suffice. A black dragon, who flies the night skies.”

  “How convenient. And you happen to have one here at your disposal,” he shot back.

  Xavier gave him an inscrutable look and dusted off his hands. “She’s still there. And unmated. Anna has not yet selected a mate from within her clan.”

  He snorted. “Like I care.”

  Even though he did.

  “You must not, since you ran away from her. Your true mate.”

  Anger bubbled inside him. Michael slammed a fist on the crystal counter, making bottles and vials rattle. “I did not run away. I am indentured to you for one hundred years. She told me she never wanted to see me again. And her bastard father threatened to kill my clan. You know he could do it. That’s not what I want!”

  “Did you ever talk with Anna about what she wants? Perhaps she said those words to protect you from being turned into a dragon shish kebab by her father.”

  He didn’t want to discuss Anna, any more than Xavier wished to talk about Ciara. “Go harvest the seeds yourself. You’re a wizard. Clan Tyrith’s guardsmen won’t stop you.”

  The wizard looked thoughtful as he took the vial of dragon’s blood and spun it in the air like a child’s top. One thing the lab never needed was a centrifuge, not with Xavier’s magick.

  “I could, but if the seeds aren’t harvested by a dragon properly, under the light of the new moon, they’ll be ruined. They have to be picked at the right time.”

  “No. I can’t.” He thought of Anna, and the chance of running into her again, perhaps with a male she admired. Maybe he would be kissing her in the moonlight. His chest felt hollow.

  “I’ll send you directly to the Clan Tyrith compound. You won’t even need a bus ticket.”

  He did not laugh at the joke. Sometimes X’s sense of humor went too far. “No.”

  “Yes.” Xavier’s gray gaze flickered white, signaling the rise of his power. When that happened, Michael knew better.

  “Fine.”

  The wizard handed him a small satchel. “Put the seeds in here. They must be kept warm by dragonfire and not see daylight, and make certain to pick them by the light of the full moon, when the plant’s natural luminescence is at its zenith.”

  “And I’m supposed to waltz up to the gate, announce myself and tell the king of my rival clan that I’m here on your behalf? They won’t welcome me, even if I’m there on your authority.”

  “You can get permission if you wish. Or sneak in there undetected.”

  “I’ll take my chances doing this without announcing myself, thank you very much.”

  “Your choice.” Xavier frowned. “But you shall need proper attire to go undetected.”

  Snapping his fingers, he dressed Michael in black jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt.

  “Outside the compound,” Michael warned. “If you put me inside the compound, their guards will see me.”

  Xavier waved a hand. “Goodbye Michael, enjoy your stay.”

  He materialized on earth. Light from the nearly full moon dappled the pine and oak trees. Xavier’s timing was off, for the moon would not be full for another night.

>   Dammit.

  Looking around, he inhaled deeply and smelled the forest, mingled with clean water and freshly cut grass. And then he noticed a marking on the trunk of a nearby oak tree.

  Son of a lizard! Xavier had materialized him directly inside Clan Tyrith territory!

  “I’m screwed,” he muttered.

  Whipping his head around, he listened. His dragon senses adjusted to being on earth. It was always a challenge when X sent him back, and it took him a few minutes to acclimate himself to the somewhat smog-ridden and impure air after the beauty of Tir Na-nog.

  No time to adjust. Michael tensed his body as he heard footsteps nearby. His nostrils flared as he caught a familiar scent.

  Xavier, what the hell are you doing to me?

  He thought he heard a chuckle overhead. A wizard’s laugh.

  Michael prepared his body to shift and defend himself as he peered around the tree.

  A woman, alone.

  Silhouetted by moonlight, she stopped, leaned against the trunk of a tall oak and gazed up at the sky.

  “Michael, are you there, flying among the stars?” she whispered. “Do you still remember me? I’ve never forgotten you. I think of you all the time.”

  Stepping out from among the copse of trees, he watched her, his heart light. She remembered him after all.

  “Anna,” he breathed.

  Her scent remained the same, juniper trees, rainwater and tangy air. It had not changed, only became more intense, probably because she was full dragon.

  And then he picked out a tendril of delicate vanilla—the scent of innocence.

  She was still untouched. Not mated. Yet.

  Anna whirled, her dreamy expression turning to panic. She put a hand to her chest, and then it fell as he stepped out of shadow, into a pool of silvery moonlight.

  “Michael?”

  Joy filled her voice, which quickly turned to fear. “Why are you here, in my clan’s compound? It’s too dangerous for you.”

  He came closer. “I don’t care.” Then he added in an uncertain tone, “You said you never wanted to see me again. Was that for your father’s benefit?”