From This Day Forward

From This Day Forward
: A Dragon Shifter Novella

A Derkesthai Mage Novella

Mackenzie Lucas

Copyright ©2014 by Mackenzie Lucas

Cover Design: Robert Lyons/Roar Desygn/RoarDesygn.com

Cover Photographs: man © 123RF/

man © 123RF/curaphotography

dragon © 123RF/ Fernando Cortes De Pablo

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tribal tattoo band © 123RF/Pavel Konovalov

dragon icons © 123RF/Fernando Cortes De Pablo

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DEDICATION

For all the men and women who sacrificially serve our country every day ...

and for the families who support them back home
.

THANK YOU!

Chapter One: Setting The Record Straight

April Easton didn't live with her head in the sand. Usually. Well, okay, maybe a little. It's just that she liked to believe people were essentially good at their core until it came back to bite her. And the Universe was trying to tell her it intended a good ass-biting, only she didn’t want to listen.

For days now, she’d been avoiding anything remotely
magickal. Mirrors. Cards. Tea leaves. Auras. Hell, she’d even avoided her grandmother like she had a virulent form of H1N1 for the past three days, calling the babysitter instead of dropping the girls off after school.

Something big was brewing. All the signs pointed to
a disaster. And April didn’t want to know.

Not today. Not ever.

She’d survive just fine without unveiling this secret.

She took another deep breath and let her thoughts slip away, not holding on to any one
wisp for long enough for it to take root. Yes, she might be the youngest oracle to ever live in Mystic Springs, but she didn’t need to wear her magick on her sleeve or entertain every prophecy that came pounding on her door.

Or did she?
The bell jangled above the front door of her tea shop as someone entered. Damn. Maybe she did.

She opened her eyes and untangled herself from the
lotus position she’d been enjoying during her morning meditation. Seated on the floor behind the counter, she’d remained just out of sight during the early morning lull of customers.

April picked up the
mosaic-tiled candleholder which sat on the hardwood floor next to her and scrambled to her feet. A puff of sandalwood and vanilla fragrance swirled around her as the candle flame danced wildly, then sighed as the wintery gust of wind snuffed it out.

A familiar tingle of magick greeted April
. Yana.

“
Girl, I know you’re not tempting fate.” Her grandmother bustled through the door, took off her hat, unwrapped her scarf, and stepped behind the counter and into the back room to hang her coat without speaking another word.

Yana’s
entrance, like everything else in her grandmother’s life, was a fast, purposeful march, direct and to the point. No beating around the bush. No subtlety. Yana said it like it was, straight from the hip and if it pierced your heart? So what. You were supposed to take it like a Conrad. Standing tall and proud.

Only she wasn’t a Conrad any more. She was an Easton now. Married for ten years, with three beautiful daughters and one AWOL husband on military duty. Hell, you’d think she’d be able to stand up to Yana a little better.

Military spouses were tough. They had to be. Out of necessity. She worried the edge of the candle dish; the rough rose-colored glass tile snagged the pad of her thumb, drawing a drop of blood. She rinsed her finger and found a Band-Aid in the cabinet.

An insistent tap on the window
caught her attention and had her peering out the huge plate-glass storefront window to see a little sparrow perched on the ledge, pecking at something in the seam. The bird stopped and cocked its head, looking straight at April.

Nonsense
.

The bird couldn’t see her inside
The Tea Cozy.

And she wouldn’t take it as a sign.

The oracle gene ran strong in her bloodline. Stronger than she wished most days. Everywhere she turned there were harbingers of the future, of things to come.

If you knew what to look for
—and April did know.

Only
some days she wished she didn’t.

Her mother’s family had practiced some form of geomancy
—the art of divining the future from physical objects—for hundreds of years, maybe since the dawn of time. Record went back as far as 1689 in the form of a handwritten journal—a family guidebook on divination nuances and fortune telling interpretations passed down from generation to generation of Conrad women since they’d settled in America.

April’s special gift was tasseography
—reading tea leaves—although most forms of divination came easily to her. So of everyone in her family, she was considered the most well-rounded, the oracle—the one who could pull the full picture together to read all the signs—even those not visible to everyone else.

And the bird perched on her window tapping for attention was a neon sign.
News on the way. A package, a letter, a verbal message of news.
Only she didn’t want to hear it.

Yana came back into the shop to stand beside April at the counter. She laid her
arthritic hands on the glossy granite top and peered at the window, head angled in consideration as she studied the little brown sparrow. “The news will come whether you want it to or not.”

April turned her back on her grandmother and the infernal bird. She busied herself with making a pot of fresh tea for Yana. A scoop of
her special mix of Lavender Earl Grey loose leaf tea should do the trick. “Mmmm hmmm.”

She poured hot water over the fragrant leaves and took a deep cleansing breath before she clicked the ceramic lid into place on the teapot
and let it steep on the counter. She faced her grandmother.

Yana gripped April’s hands.
“Listen to me, child. I taught you better than this. You can’t ignore the signs. Ignoring them won’t change a thing. Not knowing can be disastrous.”

April puffed out her cheeks then blew a
hot stream of air. “I know. I know. But just once I’d like to not see what’s coming.”

“
Careful what you wish for.” Yana patted April’s cheek. “If we know, we can fix it. If we don’t, well . . . what we don’t know
can
hurt us. As we’re well aware.”

“
We’re blindsided. I get it. I’ve heard it all my life.” Frustration and an achy agitation she couldn’t explain swirled inside her. It’d been at least a year since she’d experienced a nor’easter of this magnitude brewing inside her. Then, Cate Cooper, a woman who had since become her best friend, was attacked by a psychopath. April had read the signs before it happened. Neither of them had taken the reading seriously, or as serious as they needed. Even though April should have known better. Only a few times in her life had she felt this electric-charged gale rising inside.

Experience
—bad experience—told her she needed to listen.

Pay attention.

This message was different. She could tell. Because it was specifically directed at her. Not for those around her, not for someone in the small community of Mystic Springs she’d grown to love. No. This was personal. And any reading was a double-edged sword—it carried both hope and healing, no matter what future event it portended. Light and shadows. You couldn’t have one without the other. Where one existed, the other lived, too.

Shadows meant darkness and
pain.

And she
’d never been a big fan of emotional pain. For her or for someone else. When possible, she buried it deep. Pretended it wasn’t there until it faded away and disappeared. It’s how she coped. A neat magick trick she’d learned from her dad.

Two days before he vanished, she’d had the same kind of
foreboding feeling. That uncomfortable electrical jag building inside her body. The signs had been too big to ignore. She should have known that something bad hovered on the horizon, a living seething mass.

And it had
.

Only she’d been too young to understand the signs.
Her dad leaving had changed her life forever. Ripped her heart in two. It had taken almost ten years to
heal
. . . for the pain to fade away so that, eventually, at her college graduation she didn’t burst into tears because the father who she’d believed had painted the Milky Way just for her didn’t stand next to her on that special day.

A lone tear tumbled onto her cheek and seared a path straight to her heart.
Not for what she’d lost, but for what she’d lose again.

“
You’ve been given a gift, girl. A rare gift and the integrity to use it well. Do not let your past obscure the future.”

“
I can’t— I won’t—” April’s breath stuttered in her lungs, almost as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

“
What other option do you have? Stop living? Or maybe stay inside your house because you’re afraid to go out, afraid what calamity might strike next. No. You’re a Conrad. You’ll stand strong. No matter what storm comes.”

April gritted her teeth until her jaw ached.
“I’m an Easton.”

“
You will always be a Conrad.” Yana raised her chin. Her pale blue eyes blazed with pride. “No Conrad woman stands alone. Ever. But you must choose to stand first, not hide.”

April closed her eyes and hung her head, not sure she could hold the standard Yana demanded. Not sure if she wanted to. Pain was a powerful motivator and the fear of it even more so. Two more tears
slipped from behind her eyelids and she pinched her nose at the tear ducts to keep the flood at bay.

“
I will try.” Her voice came out soft and thready.

“
That’s all you can do. Open yourself to the truth. There is freedom there. Not shackles.”

“
I hope you’re right.” She didn’t want to think what could be taken from her this time . . . she was no longer ten and she had so much more to lose.