Page 29 of Bearly Yours
Thank you. I’m in your debt.
Riggs: No problem. And she’s Clan, and now so are you. There is no debt between Clan members.
I saved the picture to my phone, made it my lockscreen photo, and got back to preparing my nachos, feeling lighter and more hopeful. Emrie looked relaxed in the photo and in less pain. I felt like I could finally relax. My mate was okay, surrounded by her Clan. They would keep her safe, and apparently their inept attempts to cheer her up had worked, miracle of miracles.
I finished up my baked carne asada nachos with some fresh sour cream, guacamole, and homemade salsa, my plate piled high with cheesy goodness, grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge, and settled myself in my recliner in front of my massive-screen TV, which was mounted to the wall above my fireplace. I liked to tell people who came to visit that I was mostly blind and the humongous screen helped me to see it better. Whenever I said that I loved to watch their eyes go wide in alarm at the imagery of a huge, fire breathing mostly blinddragon flying around Moonhaven.
I had a twisted sense of humor sometimes.
I didn’t figure that would change anytime soon. I used to make people pee in terror by my mere presence. I was confident—Emrie called it arrogance—that a battle between me and literally most other beings on the planet would result in my victory. People gave me a lot of physical clearance, and most of them reeked of fear around me. There’s a reason dragons are the apex of the paranormal world. We’re terrifying.
And nowadays it was frowned on by the shifter monarch and Council to eat or even gently nibble on people, so I had to get my jollies elsewhere. We dragons, we few dragons, had to change with the times. Otherwise we really would go extinct.
After watching the hockey game, I cleaned up the kitchen, and went to check on my animals.
I’d grown up poor, hungry, and freezing in the Highlands of Scotland seven hundred or so years ago. Since I’d been old enough to make my own way in the world I’d had houses with lots of land. For one, I was a dragon. I needed the space. For two, I didn’t like being close to nosy neighbors. And three—I came around the side of my rambling house and heard my rooster, Crew, greet me with a squawk—I had a million animals that took up a lot of space. Okay, considerably less than a million, but I was in the process of acquiring more.
“Crew, you’re fine. Stop being a pest.” My rooster was a little like that famous chickenthatalways thought the world was ending. But he protected his hens, so I kept him, even though he was a pain in the butt.
As soon as I opened the gate my hens flocked around me, looking for extra food and cuddles. My animals—one of my dragon hoards—were a hardy bunch. I wouldn’t keep an animal that continued to be afraid of me. Most of them were at first—I didn’t blame them. I am a fire breathing dragon after all—but if they didn’t warm up to me, and their fear didn’t go away, I re-homed them. It was cruel to keep them otherwise. They would spend their whole lives living in terror, and that was no way to live.
I picked up one of them, and she nuzzled into my chest as I checked the henhouse to make sure everything was looking okay. My hens were actually very cuddly. My rooster, not so much, but at least he wasn’t afraid of me. I topped off their water and left them to roost for the night.
In the barn, I checked on my horses, Tabitha and Dimitri. Tabitha was a white quarter horse and Dimitri was a dapple grey Arabian stallion.They were both only a few years old. I’d raised them from birth—both of their mothers had died in childbirth—so they were pretty bonded to me.
My barn was spacious and warm, even in winter, because it had central heating and air. I moved Dimitri, who rubbed his head against mine and greeted me with a nicker, to the stall next door so I could clean his stall out. When I finished, I brushed him down, and gave him a cursory check all while talking in a low, soothing voice to him.
“You’re a good boy,” I said, as I ran my hands down his withers. “And bonus, the flies are all gone because of the cold, so you don’t have to put up with them.”
He nickered again, and I chuckled. He and Tabitha were both really vocal with me. Sometimes it seemed as though they actually understood what I was saying.
I made a brief pit-stop to check on my dairy cows, then cleaned and checked Tabitha’s stall and talked to her for a bit before I tucked the horses in for the night. Then I shut off the overhead lights and closed the two large barn doors at the entrance. I tried to leave the doors open for a bit each day to air out the barn while I rotated my horses and cattle in between two different enclosed pastures so they got some fresh air and sunshine.
I stopped by the goat enclosure and checked on them. Seeing that everyone was fine, I tucked them in for the night, leaving thelight on outside their enclosure because of predators, and made my way into my house via the mudroom.
After a quick shower, I set up a six foot by four foot canvas in my hobby room, and started penciling in tables and chairs in the foreground in an open courtyard with riotous flowers blooming along the low cement wall and wooden trellis. In the background I penciled in the Amalfi Coast in Italy, with the houses set on tiered hills and the Mediterranean Sea below. The painting was going to be my wedding gift for Draven and Mia. I’d been busy, so I was a little late on it.
I worked quickly on the initial sketch. Having been a painter now for hundreds of years, I knew my craft, and my own preferred style, well. After I’d penciled everything in, I got to work on my paints. I favored oil-based paints, but I could—and did—use a little bit of everything in my artwork.
By the end of the night, I’d gotten one good layer down, ready for the next layer tomorrow after it’d dried for a good twenty-four hours. I could see the painting begin to take shape, and I felt a deep and abiding contentment.
The whole evening as I’d been caring for my animals and painting I’d been thinking of Emrie.
This was not unusual for me. I thought of Emrie frequently. Often with tinges of desperation for her to be mine, and sorrow that she wasn’t my mate.
Dragons have a unique ability called the Soul Gaze. It basically allowed us to see the character and emotions of another being, and time didn’t matter to the Soul Gaze, so we could see all the way back to the beginning of their lives if we chose to.
I’d met Emrie about three years ago, but hadn’t used my Soul Gaze on her until about two years ago. It wasn’t something I just used willy nilly, but there’d been something about her that had stuck with me, even months after seeing her at the restaurant. But the Soul Gaze had come up because she’d pulledme aside one evening to let me know that one of my waiters had been stealing from me. She’d overheard a phone conversation between him and his girlfriend as she’d gone to the restroom. Bear shifter that she was, Emrie could hear the other end of the conversation as well. She’d discreetly pointed out the waiter.
That night two things had happened. One was insignificant: I’d fired the waiter after he’d confessed everything in mortal terror, and committed to paying me back every cent that he’d stolen from me. And two, I’d fallen a little bit in love with Emrie Fairchild.
My Soul Gaze had revealed a female that I immediately admired and respected. And then, as we’d spent time with one another, my feelings for her had grown. I loved so much about her: her gentle nature, her sweetness and empathy for the suffering of others, her ability to protect herself—except for her tender feelings sometimes—her strength, both strength of character and her physical strength. I loved how funny she was. She had such a dry sense of humor that it went over a lot of people’s heads because she could say hilarious quips with a completely straight face. I knew she struggled with anxiety, and I felt such compassion for those struggles. I admired the strength it took for her to have a panic attack and then get right back up and keep pushing forward in her day and her life. She was a testament to me of the strength of the shifter spirit.
She was indomitable, in so many ways. And her magic touch with me was nothing short of miraculous. She calmed me, and brought me out of my grumpy moods faster than anyone I’d ever known before. I’d never been able to explain it. I’d just thought it was her gentle nature, but it turns out it had just been Emrie all along.
And the fact that she was my mate?
I shook my head, feeling a little lightheaded. I groped behind me, and sat gently—well, fell onto my butt—on my couch.
