A Dragon for December (Wiccan-Were-Bear Book 11) (5 page)

They entered the kitchen, and Gen said, “Good
morning, sire and mistress.” He bowed, and Deci smiled in awe.

Tosh said, “Gen, this is December Merricks.
Sweetheart, this is Gen.”

Gen held the chair for Deci, and she sat
down. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you, mistress.”

Tosh took the seat at the head of the table
with Deci on his right, as Gen bustled around the table and lifted
domes from platters. When he’d poured coffee for both of them, he
ducked from the kitchen, but Tosh knew he hadn’t gone far. He would
want to be on hand in case he was needed.

“Do you always eat like this?” Deci
asked.

He lifted a spoonful of fluffy scrambled eggs
and put them on Deci’s plate, planning to fill hers first before he
filled his. “For holidays and during nest meetings, but when it’s
just me, I usually eat in my office.”

He filled her plate and set it down in front
of her and then filled his own plate. Gen had made a wide array of
breakfast items, including Tosh’s favorite strawberry crepes.

“Where am I supposed to get the gown for the
ceremony?” Deci asked as she cut into a thick steak.

“There’s a traditional gown. Liu is
organizing the females to help you get ready for tomorrow. I wish
that my mother was alive or that I had some female relatives to
tend to you,” Tosh said. “Would your angel friend help you?”

“I’m sure. She’s intrigued by things other
supernatural creatures do since angels don’t get married to each
other when they have their wings so they don’t have any sort of
ceremonies. I’ll call her after breakfast.”

“You can have her come here tomorrow. We’ll
both get ready here, sweetheart, but you can have the bedroom, and
I’ll use one of the guest rooms on the first floor.”

When their meal was finished, Liu brought two
females from the nest to meet Deci. They took her into the front
room to talk about her gown and take her measurements. Tosh took
the opportunity to meet with his guards about the changing
situation.

After they congratulated him on his mating,
Zixin said, “It’s wonderful you found your mate. It’s about
time.”

He chuckled. “I wish I’d met her years
ago.”

“I think that’s how it is with truemates,”
Wei said as he leaned against the wall. “I’m sure the timing was
perfect in its own way.”

Tosh leaned back in his chair and said, “I
want Deci to have her own driver and guard. Whenever she leaves the
house, if I can’t be with her, I want her to be well guarded.”

“As if we’d let the queen wander around
without guards,” Lok said with a snort.

“We’ve been training with the nest warriors.
There are many suitable males,” Wei said.

Zixin listed the names of the best warriors,
and Tosh said, “Have Zhen and Tai report to me in an hour for
assignment.”

Dai nodded. “They will serve her well.”

“Deci isn’t used to restrictions on her life.
She’s been allowed to come and go, alone, as she pleased. It will
probably take some time for her to get used to the way things will
be from now on, but I know she’ll see the wisdom of ensuring she’s
safe whenever she’s away from the nest.”

Zixin smirked. “I’m sure if she needs
convincing that you can help with that.”

Tosh smiled. He was very sure of that as
well.

Gen, always seeming to know when Tosh needed
him, stepped into the room.

Tosh said, “I need to announce my mating to
the elders. How are preparations for the ceremony going?”

“I’ll gather the elders immediately. The
preparations are going very well, and everything will be completed
on time,” he said.

Dai smiled. “Tomorrow at sunset you’ll be a
mated male and king of the nest. It’s incredible to think that a
hunting trip in our woods led you to your truemate.”

“Makes me want to go hunting right now,” Wei
said.

“It was the best decision I ever made,” Tosh
said.

* * *

Tosh headed to the meeting room with his
guards. The elders had been gathered quickly and were waiting for
him.

“I’ll get right to things,” Tosh said, as he
stood at the head of the table and looked around at the eldest
males in the nest. “Last night I found my truemate. Her name is
December Merricks, and she’s a polar bear shifter.”

He met each elder’s gaze and saw nothing but
happiness for him. Except for his uncle, whose gaze was hard and
calculating, in spite of the smile on his face. Tosh glanced at
Zixin who frowned and nodded once. Tosh knew that he would keep an
eye on his uncle.

“We’ve already marked each other.
Preparations are underway for the ceremony to be performed at
sunset tomorrow night, in accordance with our laws. Quon and Bao,
you’ll be handling the ceremonies.”

The males both nodded reverently.

Tosh dismissed them, but he wasn’t surprised
when his uncle remained seated at the table, with the same
inscrutable smile on his face.

“Uncle?”

He looked at Tosh slowly and said nothing for
a long moment. “Congratulations, nephew.”

“Thank you. Is there something you need?”

Yuon stood, the chair scraping on the
hardwood floor as he pushed away from the table. “Will your mate’s
family be joining us?”

“They’re not able to travel at this time of
year. Why?”

He spoke deliberately, as if he were
carefully choosing each word. “I would like to offer to be her
escort.”

“I appreciate the offer, but Deci and I have
agreed that Gen will escort her.”

If he was disappointed, it didn’t show on his
face. He bowed just slightly and said, “As you wish. If you’ll
excuse me, I have things to attend to.”

He disappeared from the room swiftly, and
Tosh stared at the empty doorway, his brows drawn together in
thought. He decided to be extra vigilant where his uncle was
concerned. He hadn’t pressed Tosh for the honor of escorting the
nest’s future queen during the ceremony, which on its own was
troubling enough, and then he’d so easily switched gears to be
accepting of a non-dragon as queen. Out of all the elders, his
uncle should have been vocal about having a bear shifter take a
prominent role in the nest, but he’d said nothing.

Shaking his head, he left the room and went
to find his mate. She was sitting on the floor in the center of a
ring of fabric swatches with three nest females – Liu, Meiling, and
Jun. Jun was Dai’s sister and enjoyed studying the laws of their
people.

Deci looked up and smiled brightly. “How did
your meeting go?”

“Well. How are things going in here?”

“The ladies are taking great care of me. Did
you know that Jun can recite the entire coronation and mating
ceremony from memory? The vows for both are so beautiful.”

“It will be even more beautiful when we’re
saying them to each other,” Tosh said.

Deci’s eyes darkened. “Careful. Those kinds
of statements will only get you naked.”

He chuckled as the females blushed and tried
to appear as if they hadn’t heard Deci. “I’m going to my office. Do
you need anything, sweetheart?”

“Just you.”

“I’m yours when you’re done.”

She blew him a kiss, and he turned to go. As
he walked away, Jun said with a loud whisper, “That was so
romantic.”

“I’m very lucky,” Deci said.

So am I
, he thought.

Chapter 7

Deci lifted two different swatches of green
silk fabric. “How is it possible to make a gown by tomorrow at
sunset?”

“Many of the nest females will be working on
it,” Jun said.

Deci liked the young dragon a lot. Jun had a
habit of ducking her head in a way that made her hair fall over a
part of her face that had been scarred, and she didn’t seem to
spend much time looking anyone in the eye. Deci couldn’t imagine
how difficult it would be to have gone through life with a horrible
scar on the side of her face. She wondered how it had happened, but
decided to ask Tosh about it later instead of drawing more
attention to Jun’s injury.

“That’s pretty cool,” Deci said. She rubbed
the swatches between her thumbs and fingers, weighing the two
different colors in her mind. One was dark green like pine needles,
and the other was a more true green like spring grass. Deci
happened to really love the color green; it was just her good
fortune that her mate was a green dragon.

“Are there any odd colored dragons?” she
asked.

Meiling’s head snapped up. “What do you mean
by odd?”

“I mean like pink or purple, or maybe
metallic like silver or bronze?”

Meiling smiled. “Baby dragons are
pale-colored versions of their adult colors. A red dragon would be
pink as a young one. There are metallic scales, from muted silver
to shiny gold.”

“So no pink adult dragons? That would be
neat.”

“Sorry, mistress,” Meiling said, shaking her
head with a smile. “Did you pick a color?”

“I think the dark green.” Deci held it next
to her mating tattoo; the fabric’s color was nearly a perfect match
for the green of the tattoo.

“It’s lovely,” Liu said. “The gown will be
spectacular.”

After handing over the swatch to Meiling,
Deci offered to help them clean up, but the women shooed her away,
and she took the opportunity to find Tosh in his office. Closing
the door and leaning against it, she looked at her handsome mate as
he spoke on the phone while seated behind a large oak desk that had
a carving of a fierce-looking dragon on the front of it.

She moved to the desk and knelt on the floor,
touching the carving and tracing the dragon’s wings, which were
spread as if in flight.

“One of the elders carved this desk for my
father,” Tosh said after ending the call.

“It’s beautiful and so intricate.”

“Come here, my mate,” Tosh said.

She stood and moved around the desk. Tosh
pushed his chair away from the desk and pulled her into his lap.
“How did things go with the females?”

“Really well. They’re so sweet. What happened
to Jun’s face? I didn’t want to upset her by asking about the
scar.”

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and
kissed her gently. “She wouldn’t have been upset if you’d asked
about it. You’re the future queen – whatever you want to know is
yours to know, especially about your people.”

She hummed. “I wouldn’t want to take
advantage of my position in the nest by demanding people tell me
intimate details of their lives.”

“You’re going to be a wonderful queen.”

She circled her arms around his neck and
kissed his throat. “I have a great example.”

He settled back in the chair and rubbed her
back lightly. “When she was a child, Jun was playing in the kitchen
of her grandmother’s home. Her grandmother was canning vegetables
for the storehouse, and something went wrong when she took the
glasses out of the water bath. Two of them exploded, and a piece of
glass cut Jun’s face. She was lucky she didn’t lose the vision in
her eye.”

“Was her grandma hurt?”

“She was cut by the flying glass as well, but
she was old enough to shift and heal herself. Our children can
shift when they’re quite young, but their accelerated healing
abilities don’t come along until they’re older, so she wasn’t able
to heal her injuries.”

“That’s sad.”

“You shouldn’t feel sorry for her,
sweetheart. She wouldn’t want you to pity something she can’t
change about herself. Yes, it’s sad that she was hurt as a child
and bears the scars of it, but that doesn’t mean we should treat
her differently.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“She spends her time in the nest library.
She’s our historian. If there’s anything you want or need to know
about our laws or history, she’s the one to talk to.”

“I can’t ask you?” she teased.

A soft smile curved at the corner of his
mouth. “You may ask me anything you like, my sweet polar bear.”

“If our kids can shift into dragons, they’ll
be green, right? Because of your scales?”

He seemed to mull over that for a long
moment. “Probably. Our young are the pale colors of the adult
dragon’s colors. My scales were almost pastel green. I remember
thinking as a youth that they wouldn’t ever darken, and I’d be
doomed to be a color that would hardly strike fear into the hearts
of our enemies.”

She giggled. “I personally think a full-grown
dragon is fierce, no matter the color.”

“Still,” he said, brushing his thumb along
her jaw, “the dark colors are more imposing.”

“It would be weird if the coloring got
crossed – green bears and white dragons.”

“We would love them anyway,” he promised.

She looked at him, tracing the handsome
features of his face. His eyes were deep green and full of
affection; his lips curved in a smile that made her skin tingle.
She liked him a great deal already, even though they’d only known
each other a day. He was easy to like – funny and kind and sexy as
hell – but her feelings were already running deeper than
like
and heading into
love
territory.

She kissed him, slipping her tongue past his
parted lips and sliding her hands up into his hair. She fisted the
soft strands and then gripped the back of the chair, levering
herself up until she could straddle him. He kneaded her waist,
slipping his hands up her sides in a slow caress.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said as he
left her mouth and kissed down her neck.

“Oh? I thought we had the rest of our lives?”
She unbuttoned his shirt, exposing the planes of his chest to her
exploring fingers.

He chuckled in a masculine way. “We do, but
in about twenty minutes several males from the nest are coming to
speak with us.”

She hummed. “Then we’ll have to be fast.”

He snarled lightly and lifted her, laying her
down on the desk. He pushed her shirt up until her bra was exposed
and kissed the swells of her breasts, tugging on the center of the
bra until her breasts popped free. He nipped the peaks of her
breasts, kissing her nipples and sucking on them lightly before
kissing down her stomach as his hands made fast work of their
pants.