Dragos Takes A Holiday Read online

  He remembered the book and picked it up. Still rocking, Dragos opened it. He began to read, and lost himself in thoughts of ancient gold and lost treasure.

  Chapter Two

  “You sure you weren’t too clever for him?” Eva asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I know he’s bright. He’s Lord of the Wyr and all, but he is still just a man.”

  Despite Eva’s skepticism, Pia remained unfazed. “Wait and see. It isn’t a matter of ‘if’ we go on vacation. It’s a matter of ‘when.’”

  Bright morning sunlight streamed into Dragos and Pia’s bedroom, although calling it a bedroom was a bit of a misnomer. The room was massive, with the king-sized bed at one end, and a fireplace and white couches at the other end. When Pia had come to live in Cuelebre Tower, the room had been stark, but she had added bright patches of color with jewel-toned pillows and throws, a rich bedspread and rugs.

  Pia stood beside the bed where she had piled things to pack. She swung her suitcase up and opened it.

  Eva lay sprawled on the floor in front of the French doors with a thick, soft blanket spread out beside her for Liam to play on. Not that Eva was having a great deal of success keeping Liam on the blanket. He had started another new thing that morning. He was busily scooting backwards everywhere.

  “You’re so sure, you’re already packing?”

  “Yes. He needs a break, and he wants it. He just might not know it yet. He’s so tired he fell asleep in the nursery last night when he was rocking the peanut. That’s where I found them both this morning.” She looked at Eva pointedly. “Dragos fell asleep. Normally he can stay awake for days if he needs to.”

  Eva scratched the back of her head. The sunlight gleamed gold on her dark brown skin. “I just hope you aren’t counting your chickens before they’re hatched.”

  “Mark my words, you should pack too.” Pia wagged her finger at the other woman. “He’s remarkably decisive when he makes his mind up about something. We could be on the plane as soon as tomorrow, or even tonight. I’m going to suggest that we only take you and Hugh with us.”

  Eva sat up straight. “Sweet.”

  Pia paused to watch Liam scoot backwards toward her, his little diapered butt in the air, and barely managed to keep from laughing out loud. He was sharp as a whip, and he might figure out she was laughing at him. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  She told Eva, “We won’t need bodyguards, but I do want to have babysitters so Dragos and I can go out by ourselves.”

  “I’ll take it.” Eva grinned. “Do we by any chance know where Dragos will want to go on vacation?”

  Pia scowled. “No, of course not. But I wouldn’t rule out Bermuda, the Caribbean, or Cape Horn.”

  Eva cocked her head. “Am I sensing a water theme?”

  “You’re sensing a shipwreck theme.” Pia shook out a skirt and carefully folded it. “Or maybe I should say a theme about lost treasure.”

  “You’re talking about those books you got from the library the other day, aren’t you? Dayum, you’re good. Does Graydon know we’re leaving?”

  Pia blinked at her. “Know what? Nothing’s been decided yet.”

  Eva laughed and rolled to her feet. “I’ll go tell Hugh and pack.”

  As Eva left, Pia checked her toiletries bag. It was filled with miniature bottles of everything she would need. She set it in her suitcase and bent to pick up the Peanut.

  She whispered, “We have to pack for you too, you know. I’m guessing we might be going to Bermuda, since your daddy read that whole book in the middle of the night.”

  The baby looked deep into her eyes and patted her face.

  ***

  Mommy carried him into his room. He thought things were going well until she set him on the thick, soft rug in the middle of the floor.

  No, that wasn’t what he wanted. That was very much not what he wanted.

  He was tired again, and his mouth hurt, and he was hungry all the time. Hungry for what, he didn’t know. Hungry, hungry.

  So he scowled and concentrated mightily on something that he wanted.

  And the world shifted.

  He felt better. Quite a bit better, actually. His new mouth didn’t hurt at all, but he was still very hungry.

  Mommy kept talking as she moved around his room. She pulled diapers out of drawers, set them on the changing table and turned to the closet. “…I want to take you to the beach and play in the sand with you, except I don’t know that we should. Are you too young to play in sand, or to go into salt water? Peanut, you are such a statistical outlier, half the time I have no idea what we should do with you.”

  She turned away from the closet, her arms full of clothes. When she looked at him, she shrieked and dropped everything.

  It startled him so badly he felt a burst of anxiety. He turned around to scoot backward toward her as fast as he could, but something flopped along his back, and his arms and legs weren’t quite working the way they should. He stopped, confused, and stared down at himself.

  Slender white forelegs stretched to the floor. He raised a front paw, staring at the strange talons. His back felt odd too, and he looked over his shoulder, flexing sleek, graceful wings. A tail trailed the floor behind him. He reached for it with one forepaw, tugged the end and his butt wagged. The tail was attached to him.

  Mommy knelt in front of him and cupped his face. He looked up into her eyes. She had grown teary, and yet she was smiling. “You are the cleverest baby ever. You’re so beautiful, and exactly how I first dreamed of you.”

  Pleasure washed over him, and he smiled at her.

  Her eyes went very round. She beamed at him. “That’s quite a mouthful of toofers you’ve got there, too.”

  She gathered him up in her arms. He tucked his snout into the crook of her neck, and it was so good, almost everything he wanted, except…

  He was so hungry.

  He fussed and whined, and she sat on the floor and rocked him, while she dug her cell phone out of her pocket and moved her thumb rapidly over the keypad. “Dragos, you have to come home right now.”

  Daddy’s sharp voice came over the phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong exactly, but Liam has changed and he’s upset.”

  “What do you mean, he’s changed?”

  The pace of Mommy’s rocking picked up, but she spoke softly. “I mean he’s in his dragon form, and I can’t tell you how beautiful he is. He’s also upset for some reason. Maybe it scared him? And you’re missing all of it. You need to come see this.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Mommy set the phone aside as Liam whined and plucked at her shirt. “Are you hungry?” she asked gently. He nodded. “I can’t nurse you when you’re like this, sweetheart, not with all of those razor-sharp teeth.”

  That was the saddest thing he had ever heard in his whole life. He lifted his head and looked at her, grief stricken.

  “Oh, Peanut, I’m so sorry. Please don’t look at me that way.” They considered each other desperately. Mommy’s expression turned firm. He folded his wings back and clung to her as she rolled to her feet and carried him to the kitchen.

  She opened the fridge door and pulled out a pan that had the something he was craving. It smelled oh so good. His stomach rumbled and he arched toward it, reaching with both front paws.

  “Hold on—let me get the plastic wrap off first.”

  As she slid to the floor, he struggled to get to the appetizing smell. She snatched off the plastic wrap, set the pan on the kitchen tile, and he fell on the leftover sirloin roast. Eyes closed, his whole body tense, he focused on gorging on the meat.

  Running footsteps sounded in the background, but it was only Daddy, so he ignored it. A moment later, Daddy said in a quiet voice, “Well, damn. Look at that. Hello, little man.”

  A large, gentle hand came down on Liam’s back, between his wings, and contentment filled him.

  “I didn’t know what else to do.” She gestured to the pan. “He acted like
he was starving, and he has all those teeth. Then I remembered what you said about how he was going to need a lot of meat.”

  “He gave you clues about what he needed, and you followed your instincts,” said Daddy. “You did exactly what you should have done.”

  Liam finished off the roast. The hungriness had gone away, and his belly felt comfortably stretched and full. Sleepiness descended. Eyes drooping, he looked over his shoulder. Daddy and Mommy knelt on either side of him, both smiling.

  He scooted backward toward Mommy. When she gathered him up, he turned to climb up her body until he lay draped along her shoulders.

  “I’m telling you, this is just like my dreams.” Mommy reached up to stroke his leg. He stopped listening to their conversation, tucked his snout in the neckline of her shirt and fell fast asleep.

  ***

  Relief had turned her leg muscles into noodles, so Pia shifted to sit on the floor, and Dragos joined her. He leaned back against the fridge while she sat forward with her spine straight. She didn’t want to disturb Liam while he was resting on her.

  She angled her head and looked at Dragos. “What are we going to do if he doesn’t change back into his human form, and he keeps growing at this rate?”

  He stretched his legs out, loosened his tie and scratched his jaw. Even though it was just midday, a new growth of beard shadowed his lean cheeks. He kept his inky-black hair cut uncompromisingly short, and the formality of his dark suit highlighted the richness of his copper skin and intelligent, gold eyes.

  In the last year, Pia had gone from living at the edge of Wyr society to being catapulted directly to the top. She had met any number of Powerful creatures in the different Elder Races from all over the world, but none of them, to her mind, had Dragos’s sheer physicality. Standing just under seven feet tall and weighing close to three hundred pounds, he towered over the largest of his sentinels, and his dragon form was the size of a Cessna jet.

  His handsomeness had a brutality that never failed to cause her breath to catch at the back of her throat. Not even tiredness could dim the Power and energy that boiled from him. He was as strong as the earth, and whenever she laid eyes on him she felt her soul winging out of her body, arrowing straight toward him.

  He sighed. “I should be able to coax him back into his human form, but I don’t think he’ll be able to stay that way. His human form has no capacity to eat meat. If he follows the pattern of other Wyr children with large animal forms, he’ll need to shift back periodically to his dragon form in order to feed.”

  “We’re going to need a bigger skyscraper.” She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Part of me can’t believe I just said that.”

  Dragos’s cell phone buzzed. His gold gaze flashed with irritation. Without glancing at the screen, he thumbed the phone on and said into it, “No.” After he hung up, he looked at her, his expression turning rueful. “I think it’s time we talk again about moving up north.”

  Resigned, she nodded. Dragos owned a country estate just outside of Carthage, in northern New York. Well technically, since they were married now and nobody had breathed a word to her about a prenup, she supposed she was part owner, too. The mansion had fifty rooms, a separate house for an estate manager, and it was surrounded by two hundred and fifty acres of rolling, forested hills.

  They had gone to the estate for their honeymoon and had stayed in the estate manager’s house, which had four bedrooms, four bathrooms and a family room with a fireplace that overlooked a lake. She loved that house. She had given birth to Liam in that house. She didn’t feel any affinity whatsoever for the palatial mansion.

  Still, she knew she wasn’t being entirely rational. Just the sheer size of the place had intimidated her when she first saw it, but she might like it more if she spent some time there. After all, she had once felt funny about Cuelebre Tower and the penthouse, and familiarity had gone a long way to making her comfortable here.

  She sighed. “He’s going to need the space, isn’t he? Especially when he learns to fly.”

  “Yes, he will. The place up north is more private, with lots of greenery and open space.” He paused thoughtfully. “We can make it more secure too.”

  “Two hundred and fifty acres would be a hell of a backyard for him to play in,” she murmured.

  Pia had always followed her mother’s advice and stayed in the city, which was densely populated and easier to hide in. She had never seriously considered moving to the country, but now as she poked at the idea, she realized that two hundred and fifty acres would be a hell of a backyard for her to play in too, and her Wyr form approved. It approved most strenuously.

  “We can get to the city in a couple of hours if we fly in.” Dragos angled his head, considering it. “That’s not so bad. When you’re stuck in traffic here, it can take a couple of hours just to get across town. I could have a complete office complex built on the property.”

  She put a hand on his leg. His hand sewn Armani suit was made of lightweight woven wool that stretched taut over the thick, powerful muscle of his thigh. “We would need more than just the office complex. There will need to be living space for security and staff, and for the sentinels, because they’ll be flying back and forth. As spacious as that mansion is, it’s no Cuelebre Tower. We can’t all live there, nor would I want to try.”

  He rubbed her back, his clever fingers following the curve and hollow of her spine. “We could build along the lake. There’s plenty of space to spread out. None of us would need to feel crowded.”

  She broached another subject hesitantly. “I would want to redecorate the main house. Maybe even do some renovations.”

  “You should,” he told her, smiling. “Hell, you can bulldoze the place if you want, and start over from scratch.”

  That thought was a little too overwhelming. “I don’t know if we need to go quite that far.”

  Dragos stroked a loose strand of hair away from her face. “But do we both believe that we need to make the move?”

  She looked down. The weight of Liam’s body lay draped along the back of her neck and shoulders, and his slender, graceful white legs and tail curled around her, just underneath her collarbones. While it seemed like it might be an awkward position, he didn’t appear to mind at all. In fact he seemed perfectly comfortable, and he was sound asleep.

  He was not a perfect white, but more of an ivory hue. His hide had the same iridescent sheen that Dragos’s did, but he had gotten his pale coloring from her. She wondered what people would think when they saw him. She put a hand lightly on one of his forelegs, and he stretched, flexing his paws, and sighed.

  “Yes, we need to move. But we won’t have time to start building or redecorating until July. First we’ve got to get through all of the inter-demesne functions surrounding the summer solstice, and Graydon needs his vacation.”

  “Agreed.” He gave her a lopsided smile that eased his harsh features and banished the tiredness from his expression. “In the meantime, is it too much upheaval if we consider taking a long weekend away?”

  She loved him so much, with all of her heart. She loved his harsh side and needed his ruthlessness, because she knew he would always provide for her and Liam, and protect them with every ounce of his considerable power. But when he smiled at her like that, everything inside of her brightened, until she felt like she floated in a sea of light, and she grew weightless and dizzy with delight.

  She peeked at him between her lashes. “I don’t know, Dragos, this is awfully sudden. Where would you want to go?”

  He tugged at a strand of her hair behind her ear, and her gaze fell to his wrist. It had been a year since she had sewn a lock of her braided hair around his wrist, and he still wore it. He had done something to protect it, and it shone with an extra sparkle of Power.

  “You said you’ve never been to Bermuda or the Caribbean.” He angled his head, watching her expression. “How would you like to go there? I think it would be fun to do some treasure hunting. We can go swimming
and soak up some sunshine, and go out to eat. I could use a break before we plunge into all of the summer solstice activities, even if it’s a short one, and I’ll bet you could too.”

  She smiled. “I would really love to get away.”

  “How soon could you be ready to go?”

  She tilted her head, and her smile turned into a grin. “Is fifteen minutes soon enough?”

  “Really. Fifteen minutes.” His gold eyes narrowed suddenly. “Those books. That conversation. You little Machiavellian, you set me up.”

  She closed one eye and held her thumb and forefinger close together. “Maybe a teensy, weensy bit. Actually, I just presented you with opportunities.”

  He laughed. “Is that what you call it? I should know by now to expect this kind of thing from the thief who stole from my hoard.”

  Her eyes rounded. “You’re never going to get over it, are you? I only stole one time, and it was just a penny!”

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am of that,” said Dragos. “Because you’re pretty lousy at it. The gods only know what kind of trouble you would have gotten yourself into, if you had kept up your life of crime.”

  Her tone of voice turned aggrieved. “That is completely untrue. I was absolutely excellent at stealing the very one time I did it. I was not quite so excellent at the getaway.”

  “You have a point,” he admitted.

  She grew serious. “While everybody else has a vacation scheduled, you need and deserve a break more than anybody. But you’re so driven, I knew you would have a hard time disconnecting from work unless you had something else to focus on, so I went to the library to do some research. When I found new books about ships that had disappeared, I thought if I could interest you in some treasure hunting, it would be a good way for you to stop and smell the roses—or, in your case, search for some shiny sparklies.”