From This Day Forward (3 page)

Ready
, yet waiting for the right moment to act, Noah nudged the dragon. He didn’t need to look because he could feel the dragon rise from its slumber. He’d watched it plenty over the years since he’d first shifted at the age of twelve. The change happened the same way each and every time. No variation.

First the
dragon tat woke. Then the dragon shifted.

His bicep tingled
and itched as the silver dragon woke and shrugged off the enforced slumber. Pain, and even blood, would sometimes follow, depending on how sadistic the dragon decided he felt upon release.

The dragon
fanned his neck frill from head to tail, then shook in a violent motion, which caused a ripple effect that moved scale and skin in a slow wave from head to toe, much like a dog chuffing off rain after coming in from a storm. The beast dipped his head in a low, regal bow—holding the pose for a three count to show respect for Noah’s humanity—his two long, smooth black-tipped horns jutted back, away from his eyes, as he pawed at Noah’s flesh.

There was the pain, a faithful friend to remind
Noah who controlled whom in times of danger and intrigue.

Then the inked
dragon opened his mouth wide in a silent bellow, blowing a flash of white-hot flame that emitted an icy vapor that instantly chilled the warm air around them and dropped the muggy Dubai night air to subzero before anyone could blink.

Sammy’s teeth began to chatter.
The gun wobbled, then dropped to the kid’s side, forgotten. “Wh-What are you doing? What the fuck? Where did your dragon go? It disappeared!” The kid wrenched Noah’s arm left, then right as he looked for the inked dragon within the banded tribal marks.

Nothing. He wouldn’t find the dragon there. The beast was on the move and had already flown its magickal confines
in order to initiate the shift of power.

Noah’s own blood cooled
in his veins. The hairs on his nape tingled and sent a ripple of sensation down his spine. He shook his head, an icy fog taking over. He’d never get used to the numbing chill that crept over him when the dragon took control.

“
Stop. Now.” The woman in front of him stepped back, a slow, measured retreat as she studied Noah’s face then darted a glance at his bicep. She raised her palm and her eyes glazed over as she turned inward. He recognized the signs. Reaching for magick? Too late.

He was no more able to stop this than he could stop breathing. It was a life force. Bigger than him. And way deadlier.
Besides, dragon magick trumped all other types. In the magickal hierarchy, dragons were king. Only dragon could overcome dragon, based on age, strength, ability, and hoard stone.

Noah pulled on his hoard, gathering all he loved and valued around him as he tapped into dragon magick. He
lowered his head, his chin almost touching his chest and held the position for the count of three, bowing to the strength and wisdom of the silver dragon. Then, he raised his head and bellowed. The bestial sound rumbled and ricocheted in the narrow alley. Glass shattered in windows high above. Cobblestones crumbled beneath him as he grew in the confined space.

H
is vision tunneled and sharpened as his other senses became more acute. He smelled the sharp, acrid scent of magick. Not his own. The woman’s.

Spell caster
magick.

He blew a plume of white fire.
Smoke filtered from his nostrils and formed a ring around the kid and the woman, pulling tight like a lassoed rope.

“Holy shit!” Sam fell backwards and scuttled in a harried crab-walk until his back bumped the wall. “A fucking dragon. Real. Fire breathing. Dragon.”

Save the kid
. The firm command bumped around in Noah’s brain, his sole focus. Although he didn’t want to harm the woman either, he wanted to take her hostage, find out what The Fox wanted from him, what she knew, and what she’d planned in this ambush.

Noah pulled the strands of magick
tight. The vapor snaked around and through Sam. The kid sagged against the wall, unconscious. He turned to the woman.

Too late.

A blast of pain hit him, slamming against his head, his chest, and his thighs. A full-frontal impact explosion lifted him off his taloned feet and sent him flying through the air and crashing into the opposite wall. His tail whipped around and smashed him in the snout.

He felt his consciousness begin to slip.

Noah scrabbled for control.

The slow descent continued.

Damn. She’d gotten the better of him again.

Since when did a fox outwit a dragon?

Something wasn’t right in the magickal world.

Thick, hot darkness overtook him, dragging him straight into a pit filled with a
fiery, raw pain and agony unlike anything ever inflicted on him by another dragon.

And yet this was no dragon.

Chapter Three: New Omens & Auspices

Winters in Southwestern Pennsylvania could be hard and bitter. This winter was no exception.

April heaved another shovel of snow off the sidewalk in front of The Tea Cozy, then leaned on her shovel to survey the street. Otterman was lined with shops and restaurants, some that had been in business for longer than she’d been alive.

Take the Nit & Pick—the knitting store catty-corner on the block. Mrs. Crossman had owned and operated it for forty years. Now, her daughter ran the store, but Mrs. Crossman tried to make it into town at least twice a week to check on things and make sure Mary was holding the standard she'd set.

A cold, icy wind whipped down Otterman from South Pitt, causing the snow in the street to swirl like vapor on
the plowed macadam. A few leaves, leftover from fall, caught up in the swirl floated in the air, creating a pattern. A sign. The shape took form. The meaning clear. A dark woman.

The dried leaves
fell to the street, then were picked up again by another gust of wind. This time, the shape formed that of a caterpillar. Change coming.

April shook her head and laughed. When didn't change hover on the horizon? And the dark woman could be anyone
—bad omen or a favorable, auspicious sign.

The Tea Cozy sat opposite the gold domed county courthouse. The whole block across the street was dedicated to the huge granite government building and
the park with black wrought-iron benches in strategic spots that ringed the county seat. But, beyond the alley and diagonal, a whole row of shops lined the street.

Most of them
were still quiet at this early hour, except for The Book Worm, the bookshop on the corner. J.C. always arrived before dawn to begin to shelve books. She wielded a feather duster like a weapon. The store spotless and quaint. The girls were enchanted by J.C. and her store. April encouraged them to visit J.C. often—a girl could never read too much.

Next to her, across the alley stood O'Rielly's Sports Bar & Grille. Owned and operated by Mick O'Rielly, a hunky ex-Pittsburgh Penguins hockey player who'd
transplanted to Mystic Springs a year ago, shortly after Derkesthai Academy had begun construction out on the old Schaeffer Homestead.

Mick stepped out
onto the sidewalk where he'd already cleared a generous pathway. He sprinkled ice-melt crystals on the now bare concrete. The bar wouldn't open until eleven o'clock—more than five hours away—but Mick was an early riser and he and his daughter lived in an apartment above the bar.

The
single father of a talented young girl of twelve, he’d enrolled her at the new academy before they’d even opened the doors. While Heather looked very much like a young Hermione Granger, with big blue eyes, an unruly mop of long brown hair, and heaps of book smarts, she did not possess one lick of the athletic grace her father exhibited just walking down the street, or, apparently, clearing a sidewalk.

April couldn’t help watching him.

Mick O’Rielly was pure, unadulterated man-poetry in motion.

But
, more than anything, April wanted her own man-poet home. Right now.

God, she needed her husband. There were times she missed
Noah so much she thought she’d go crazy from the ache, the longing, and the restlessness that had her feeling like she would crawl out of her own skin until she saw him again. Skin that quieted the instant his strong fingers whispered against it. Shushed and satisfied by the gentle, wet press of his mouth. She hungered for those hot kisses, his tongue pressed to the spot on her neck, just below her ear, that drove her nuts. And, God, his smell—spicy hot like buttered rum, yet fresh like a blast of icy winter wind. Or his intensity and focus that made her feel like the only woman alive, the only woman that mattered to him. But most of all, she missed his voice, calm, deep, and assuring.
I love you, babe.
Always so sure of himself. Comfortable in his own skin. And always strong and in control. In command.

Her
Noah.
God, she missed everything about him.

She loved that he took care of her. When he was home.

A gust of wind slapped April in the face, snatching her breath away and bringing her back to reality. Noah wasn’t here and wouldn’t be home for a while yet. She’d have to make due with the fantasies she replayed of her husband.

Alone. At night. In bed.

It was time for Noah to come home for good. Abigail, her youngest was now six years old. The Consortium dictated that male dragon mages couldn’t cohabitate with their own children for the first five years of the child’s life, which meant for the past nine of their ten-year marriage, Noah had thrown himself into his military career and had been absent more than he’d been physically present.

That had to change.

And she planned on fighting that battle the next time he came home, because she was tired of being a single mom in every way except on paper; no matter how much she loved the man, something had to give, and she would push hard for the military gallivanting to go the way of the wild wild west. She had no idea what else Noah would do, but they’d figure it out because they needed him at home with them.

She huffed out a frustrated grunt as she heaved another shovel of snow.
Another bitter reminder of her missing husband.

“
Hey, April. How's it going?” Mick said. He grabbed his shovel and walked across the alley to help her.

She unloaded the snow she carried, and leaned on the handle of the shovel panting.
“I wish
the snow
would go. Where is my husband when I need him?” She laughed. Only she knew the full subtext of that last comment.

“
Off fighting other battles.” Mick smiled at her and then put his back into removing the heaped up snow on her sidewalk.

The man was a looker. Dark hair and green eyes with a shadow of beard on his strong jaw, he stood over six feet tall and still packed a lot of muscle for a man who hadn't played professional hockey in over a year.

She'd heard he'd taken the national hockey league by storm for the five years he played professionally. Yet, as far as she could tell, he hadn't taken the dating scene in Mystic Springs by quite the same storm. He stayed in. Not mingling with others much, he served beer and drinks at the bar every night and took care of his daughter. When he did decide to break his relationship moratorium, the single women in town would line up around the block.

No doubt
more women, per square foot capita, watched sports in Mystic Springs now than in any other town in America. All because one sexy, former hockey star opened his sports bar here in town a year ago. Most nights, many of Mystic Springs’ best, brightest, and most well-endowed single women hung out at Mick's. The man remained oblivious, or at least uninterested, or so it seemed. He’d yet to show an attraction to any woman . . . or so Yana’d said, and she was the Commander of the Mystic Springs Grape Vine Brigade. So she’d know.

But Mick sure was good for
his own business.

And that's what it was all about, wasn't it?

“It's a cold one.” April shivered, and it had nothing to do with the bitter-cold temps. Her sensitivity to magick always flared around Mick, but she'd never asked him outright if he was dragon. However, with his daughter enrolled at Derkesthai, there was a good chance if he wasn't dragon, he'd been married to a dragon at one point, which meant he had to be magickal.

Full mundanes didn't marry magickals, unless they had a good reason, or a strong strain of magick in their bloodline, like April. She wasn't
dragon, but she'd married one, which had given her three dragon daughters with oracle gifts. They were dragon and had an extra dose of magickal.

Samantha, nine; Caedan, eight; and, Abigail, six.

Heaven help them if
, and when, they all turned. Puberty would be a bitch. Three teenaged dragon girls all at the same time. What the hell had she been thinking? Obviously neither she nor Noah had been thinking at the time. And that thought alone gave her another hot flash so filled with images of tangled sheets and hot, lusty sex that she began to sweat despite the near zero temps.

She dragged her thoughts, kicking and screaming, back to the girls.
Until Cate and Grayson Cooper had started the school a year ago, April had been driving the girls forty-five minutes to the nearest private magickal school in Sewickley, and even then, the school hadn't focused on dragon lore or magick. The coursework had been light, and unimaginative. So when Derkesthai opened, April had jumped at the chance of enrolling the girls at a bona fide dragon mage academy close to home.

Noah was finally happy. He'd been frustrated with the academy in S
ewickley. When she’d told him about Derkesthai, he'd checked with his friend David Pearson, the leader of the North American Consortium of Dragons to vet the new academy and the owners. David vouched for Grayson Cooper and the academy, which was one-hundred-percent backed by the Consortium.

“Yup. Bitter day.” Mick was a man of few words. The tall, dark, and silent type. If the man felt the cold, you couldn't tell. He wore jeans, construction boots, a long-sleeved thermal shirt under an old hockey jersey and a knit cap. That's it. Yana would have a field day giving Mick a lecture about dressing for the weather. Thank God she wasn't here.

“
How's Heather getting along in school?”

“
She's doing well, thanks. How are your girls?”

“
Missing their dad like crazy, but doing well overall. They really like the new school. Of course I think it helps that they get to sleep an hour longer and don't have to spend almost two hours commuting each day.”

“
Makes a difference. Noah coming home anytime soon?”

“
We haven’t heard from in a few weeks. He’s not due for leave for another two months or so.”

Mick stopped, mid-shovel, as he scowled at the brunette across the street who unlocked the doors to the
new flower shop.

She was petite, but curvy, even bundled in a winter coat, hat,
and scarf. She wore black jeans tucked into tall black high-heeled boots. April had seen her once or twice over the past two weeks. She'd popped in and out before April could extend a neighborly hello.

Mick grunted, eyes still tracking the woman.
“Too bad. We could use him here.”

“
You know my Captain America—always fighting injustice, focused on keeping it safe for us to walk the streets here in the good old U.S. of A. without fear.”

“
Yeah, but sometimes the fight is closer to home than we think.” Mick dragged his eyes away from the cute brunette and pinned April. “You tell him I said that, okay? Next time you talk to him. It’s important.”

April studied Mick, a little confused
at his sudden intensity. “All right. Sure, Mick. I’ll mention it.”

“
Good,” he said, and resumed shoveling.

She changed the subject to ease the nervous tension that had suddenly gripped her.
“Do you know who she is? I haven't had a chance to introduce myself yet.” She indicated the shopkeeper across the street.

April was curious about the woman. It was always best to learn as much as you could about your fellow proprietors.
Clearly the woman was still settling in, because she went in with armloads of stuff, but the shop hadn’t opened for business yet. Winter was a hard time to start a floral business, but especially for an outsider.

“
Morgana LeFay.” He growled deep in the back of his throat.

April blinked, taken by surprise.

Mick always seemed pretty easy going. He didn't exhibit that same easy-going attitude right now. Apparently, this woman had already gotten under his skin in some way.

He wasn’t
a practical joker, either. Although if a joke, that comment wasn't particularly kind. And she’d never known Mick to be unkind. Silent, yes. Unkind, no.

She gasped and couldn't help the nervous laugh that slipped out.
“Really? You've got to be kidding? Why do you call her that? That’s kinda mean, Mick.”

He stood
up, hand braced on the shovel he held. “I shit you not. Her real name is Morgana LeFay.”

“
O-o-kay.” April shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the confused fog that had taken up residence there. “Morgana LeFay, . . . like the sorceress in the King Arthur legend?” Had Mick lost his mind? Taken one too many hockey puck’s to the head?

“
Yep. Same name. Same bloodline. Not a good one, either. I'm somewhat of a genealogy buff, so I've done my research.”

“
I had no idea.” Who would have thought it? Certainly not her. Mick a genealogist. Huh.

“
Look, April. Be careful around her, okay? I've got a good sense about people, and my gut reading of her is way off the charts. So watch your back. And, most of all, be careful walking your own hometown streets.” Then, without another word of explanation, Mick picked up his shovel and walked back to his side of the street to disappear inside the darkened bar.