Page 2 of Licking Fire

Who knew?

All he knew for certain was, some of his relatives were not so easy to pull into modern times. A few were fine, and had fully embraced all of what the human world had to offer. Some were making strides and living among humans. Some were also living in small groups. Some were getting their feet wet with the idea of joining society, and others simply refused to even try.

He laughed softly to himself, remembering his attempt to explain the finer points of television to one of his uncles when the technology had been new. His uncle was convinced the humans had shrunk themselves magically to fit within the “small box,” and also taken the color out of themselves. His uncle thought humans quite mad for agreeing to be bleached out to shades of gray for the sake of entertainment.

No amount of talking would convince his uncle otherwise. Rayer shuddered to think what his uncle would do the next time he surfaced and learned of the information superhighway.

Rayer didn’t mind technology. Change had served him well enough in his long life. It was how he had accumulated a good deal of his fortune. He adapted with varying trends and times, doing what he must to reinvent himself every so many decades to avoid raising suspicions. It wasn’t very difficult, especially not with the wealth he’d managed to amass in his lifetime. He had bought shares in the railroad when it was new; he’d invested in automobiles when they’d surfaced; likewise with radio, television, and the internet. He liked to put his hand into the mix when possible. It paid well.

He was so rich even he wasn’t sure of his net worth. His clan might disown him should they learn he didn’t sit around and count his riches all day. He laughed at the idea.

Dragon lore was steeped in some truth—such as dragons liking gold, jewels, and money. Hoarding riches even. Rayer was guilty of this to an extent. Not as much as some though. Another of his uncles had yet to leave his cave and treasure. Rayer wondered if gold coins had permanently fused to his uncle’s scales—as the man stayed in shifted form to guard his loot. He’d heard several clansmen had once attempted to bathe the man. From Rayer’s understanding, that had been an epic failure. Somewhere, tucked away in an Eastern Europe cave, was a stinky but rich dragon.

The soft sound of holiday music filtered up from the street below, and Rayer looked in the direction it was coming from, taking another sip of his wine, noticing a small cluster of humans dressed in period clothing. He was adjusted enough with the times to recognize their actions as caroling, their attire period, their song choice considered a classic holiday tune.

Dragon shifters did not normally celebrate human holidays, though the invitation in his hand said otherwise. As a rule, dragon shifters had their own holidays and celebrations: Burning Day, where all gathered to see who could breathe fire the longest and farthest. Wingspan Day, where, as the name suggested, they compared wing size. Boiled down to its baser elements, it was much like the measuring of their cocks. Whoever had the biggest wingspan was deemed the manliest. Golden Feast Day, where they brought something prized from their collected treasures and the men competed in events to see who was the strongest, the fastest, the bravest, to the winner going the collected treasures.

They had no holidays for simply giving. No holidays to enjoy being around one another. It was always about who was the strongest, fastest, oldest, wealthiest. He snorted, sipping his wine once more. “We are a race of cock measurers.”

The carolers drew nearer, and even from his high location he could see them clearly, his dragon eyes far superior to those of a human. Rayer tipped his head back and forth to the rhythm of the song, finding some solace in it. He made a mental note to attempt roasting a chestnut once while he breathed fire to see if the smell held the same value the song seemed to place upon it.

The act would be a solitary one. As was most of what he did.

He had begun to feel the ache of loneliness recently, and strongly suspected it was the time of year. He had heard humans suffered from the holiday blues as well. Though he kept mostly to himself, he had a few human acquaintances, and they spoke more and more of their families this time of year. As dysfunctional as his clan was, they were family, and they saw each other so infrequently anymore. He hadn’t spoken to his brothers in decades and lacked the urge to reach out to them. The internet had made the world smaller, but not to his people. It had changed very little among them. Though advances in technology did mean his kind often had to pull on more of their natural-born magik to remain hidden.

Shifting into a giant dragon without the use of additional cloaking magiks could get you shot out of the sky by a group of jet fighters. His cousin Zarek had had a near miss once around twenty-five or so years ago. Rayer himself had had a close call in the past. And no one knew for certain, but his family had its suspicions that their cousin Klaus had met such a fate at the hands of the Russian government during the ’80s when the Cold War was still happening.

No one had admitted to shooting a dragon out of the sky; then again, not many would admit to such a thing. The rumor mill still talked of it, and Rayer had gotten his hands on reports from the United States on the incident. The code name for it had been Fever Rising. He had been close to Klaus and his twin brother Ladon when they were hatchlings. They’d felt much like brothers to him.

Ladon had entered the human world around the same time as Rayer, and they stayed in contact somewhat. Mostly through business dealings. If there was money to be made, they were both there.

Yes. A selfish race indeed.

Though humans were selfish too. They could be just as cruel as any dragon shifter. Sometimes even more so. There had been a time when their fear of his kind had left the dragons hunted to near extinction. The rebuilding of their race had been slow and secretive. No longer did they allow the truth of their kind to be known by all humans.

He hid what he was from humans, as was demanded of him, for humans and their tiny minds could not fathom a being such as he in his shifted form. They believed dragons to be nothing more than creatures from ancient myths. That was for the best. While the dragon numbers were better now, they were hardly thriving. A coming-out party would simply never do. They could not stand and fight against the humans, who would see them as foe rather than friend.

“There would be a bloodbath.”

Besides, his kind tended to have trouble living in close proximity to one another if unmated. It could be done, but it took care and ease. Also, a large area for fights to be settled, far from the sight and hearing range of humans. An overabundance of testosterone caused much in the way of fighting and posturing. Only the mated lucky few seemed to avoid suffering the dreaded temper tantrums his kind endured.

He was guilty of having a temper himself.

He sighed, the ache of loneliness biting at him once more. He did not like this weakness. It was one that had begun to creep up upon him within the last century, and it was one he could not seem to shake. As the sounds of the holiday caroling began to fade off into the distance, the loneliness set in deeper.

Closing his hand around the invitation to attend a holiday gathering hosted by his cousin and his cousin’s mate, Rayer shut his eyes, losing himself in a moment of happiness for his cousin—Zarek. It had been nearly a decade since Zarek had found his slice of heaven. His cousin was now mated; he had found the one—the woman created for him.

His perfect pairing.

His mate.

Had Zarek not met her in time, he would have been rendered impotent. The very idea of such a lasting punishment made Rayer shudder and nearly cup his ball sac. His cock was sacred to him, and in this, he doubted that he varied from other males, dragon shifters or not.

“You are not permitted to stop working,” he said, glancing downward, as if his cock had the ability to understand his words. He polished off the last of his wine.

Six hundred years was a long time to many, but to the men of the Dracodomus clan, it was but a blink of an eye. A flash before the end was near. The dreaded curse of his clan. Find the one before the night of your six-hundredth birthday or forever impotent.

Zarek had made it in under the wire. Rayer held little hope he would as well. His fate was sealed. He had a couple of months left, and then the nothingness would envelop him as well. Already he felt the stirrings. Felt it sneaking up on him with each passing day. He would stop feeling desire, and he would not be able to enjoy any type of sex or sexual stimulation. What a bleak world it would be for him.

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