Dragon Deception Read online

  Daisy had been trying to teach the kits table manners, but even though they all managed to use a fork and knife to eat, they stuffed their faces quickly and dashed off.

  "Bath time!" Daisy yelled after Lumie and Chrome, who both ran out of the kitchen pretending they hadn't heard her. Daisy sighed, but collected dishes from the counter. "I'll catch up with the scamps," she insisted when Dane stood and began helping gather the dirty plates. "I'm sure ya still have work to do."

  "I don't know what I would do without you," Dane told her seriously. With both Mercury and Dane working, there was no way they could have raised all the kits without Daisy's help. "How were your parent/teacher conferences?"

  Daisy sighed. "Good. My brats are passing middle school, although Jeremy wants to take up football." Dane winced, thinking about her rambunctious kids running around learning to tackle people. It would only be worse if Chrome were the one who wanted to play. Dane made a promise to himself to never let Chrome even try. Although Dane couldn't even get any of his kits into school at all.

  Nickel had heard just how long the school day was, asked Dane how he was supposed to get any work done when he was stuck in a horrible classroom all day, then informed Dane that he wouldn't be attending. Luckily Dane had gotten a compromise out of Nickel that he would study for three hours every day with a tutor Dane had hired for him and spend at least one hour every night on homework. Once the other kits had learned that Nickel wouldn't be attending school, they had also refused, but thanks to Nickel's compromise, they spent the better part of the day in a classroom. When Mercury, the tutor, or Dane could catch them first, of course. Dane was going to make certain that they would all get their GEDs at the very least.

  "Yeah, it's a mess," Daisy finished, echoing Dane's own thoughts closely, "but I'll figure it out. Now, ya git. We've both got stuff that needs doing." She was smiling as she made shooing motions, so Dane allowed himself to be pushed from the kitchen.

  He walked up the stairs and turned towards his bedroom where he had left his laptop. Dane could hear splashing from one of the bathrooms down the other wing of the house, so at least someone was obeying Daisy. Probably 'Ron or Zinc. Nickel would finish his work first while Copper would avoid the water for as long as Daisy let him. Daisy would have to catch Lumie and force him into the water, and Alloy depended on whether he was embracing his fire or water half that day.

  Dane left them to it and headed into his bedroom. His computer was where he left it, so he settled into one of the armchairs, popped it open, and called up a map of the Great Appalachian Valley. It stretched from Alabama all the way up into Newfoundland. Dane's territory was a small part of that. He controlled from north of the Mason-Dixon line—although his territory did stretch down the Chesapeake Bay into Maryland in a few places, so that wasn't exactly an accurate border—and ended at the Canadian border. Dane watched over the Northeast primarily, the description of which depended on which map he looked at. Some said the Northeast began in Virginia and followed the coast to Maine; others said it began in Pennsylvania; and yet more insisted it was everything east of New York, which was essentially New England. Either way, north of the portions of Maryland that he controlled was all his.

  The werewolf's pack territory was in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. The mother dragon wouldn't have traveled south or west as an extremely territorial Minotaur had set up his maze in the mountains there. She couldn't have gone east because she would have run into human civilization, the very creature she was running from. Which only left north. Given the amount of time she had been on the run and the distance Dane calculated she could have traveled with three kits in tow, she must be in the Hudson or the Mohawk Valley in New York. It was a large amount of space, but aside from the lone cat shifters setting up small territories throughout, there wasn't anything to keep her from feeling safe. It was the most logical area for Dane to resume searching. He would start walking a grid in the Hudson Valley, keeping away from the suburbs of New York City, and head towards Albany. She and her kits had to be somewhere in between the two big cities.

  First thing tomorrow, Dane would start walking through the valleys.

  "Almost done?" Mercury asked, leaning over Dane's shoulder to look at what he was researching. Mercury's long bronze hair brushed Dane's arm as he settled his chin on Dane's shoulder.

  "Yeah," Dane sighed. He had his starting point, so he didn't need to keep looking at maps. Going out searching in the dark in those mountainous woods was dangerous. Dane had to at least wait for first light.

  "Good," Mercury breathed. He tilted his head and took the point of Dane's ear in his teeth. "Because Daisy has Lumie in the tub right now. She's running the water faster than he can evaporate it, but they'll still be a while."

  Which meant that they didn't have to worry about Lumie walking through the wards and locked bedroom door and seeing something he shouldn't. Dane grinned and shut his laptop, then turned his head to take Mercury's mouth in a proper kiss. Dane wrapped his arms around Mercury's waist so Dane could pull him onto his lap as Mercury groaned and pressed closer. Mercury let himself be manhandled happily. His fingers ran down Dane's chest a few times, feeling Dane's muscles through his shirt, before Mercury began to yank open the buttons.

  Dane was getting hard. Hell, he was usually hard whenever he was around Mercury. He loved the way Mercury looked with his full lips, small and pert nose, and his thick lashes over his bronze colored eyes. Mercury's hair was also a beautiful bronze color that echoed the large scales that covered most of his body. He was too sexy not to get Dane aroused with only a smile and a come hither wink. Mercury was hard too. Dane reached out to feel him through his pants and grinned into their kiss when Mercury's hands shook and he fumbled a button in response.

  They didn't make it to the bed the first time, panting and grinding against each other on the couch until they both came. After a few minutes where they cuddled close, trying to catch their breath in between long kisses, they stumbled to their feet and shucked off what little clothing had survived on the way to the bed.

  Sometimes it was awkward finding time to be together. Scheduling sex around Lumie was decidedly odd, but Daisy had informed Dane that he was only living the hell of any parent. In a way, it made the time they did find together more special.

  Dane loved Mercury. He didn't need to have lots of sex with Mercury to prove that fact to himself or to anyone else. Still, he couldn't complain as Mercury's fingernails dug into Dane's back and Mercury moaned in Dane's ear as they geared up for round two.

  It was nice to know Mercury loved Dane too, even after five years together.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mercury reclined on the pillows, wondering when they had actually made it to the bed. Dane was tracing circles on Mercury's stomach with two fingers. He wasn't glowing any longer now that the fun had ended, but he hadn't put his glamour back on. His long blond hair was splayed behind him in tangles. It was the color of sunshine and mesmerizing if Mercury looked at it too long. He preferred to get lost in Dane's eyes, but the blue orbs were closed as Dane fought to even his breathing back out. Instead, Mercury reached out to run one finger along the pointed tip of Dane's ear, jingling one of the silver rings pierced through the cartilage.

  "Lumie wants us to go on a picnic during lunch tomorrow," Dane said out of the blue. He opened his eyes to look at Mercury. There was a pinched line between Dane's eyebrows that made Mercury laugh. Dane was very worried about what Lumie had planned.

  "Sounds like fun," Mercury replied with a shrug just so he could see that line deepen and Dane frown. "I can leave work for an hour around one o'clock."

  Dane saw the smile on Mercury's face and buried his head in a pillow with a groan. "It's Lumie's picnic. Something is going to go wrong," Dane insisted. He peeked one eye out to look at Mercury, who couldn't help laughing even louder.

  Lumie was a menace, admittedly, but it was far too much fun watching Dane try to handle Lumie's quirks. Dane was smart in that he knew offendin
g Lumie wouldn't end well for him, and trying to dance around the delicate line between upsetting Lumie and appeasing him was going to slowly drive Dane insane. Mercury was enjoying every moment of it and he thought Lumie might be too.

  "You're sure you can get off work?" Dane asked hopefully after a moment of thought.

  Mercury's smile couldn't help growing at the plaintive note in Dane's voice. Dane was an amazingly powerful person, both in magic and personality, and a five-year-old dragon had felled him.

  "I've taken lunch at my desk while working for the past few days," Mercury explained, much to Dane's consternation. "No one will complain if I leave the office for a bit tomorrow."

  Mercury still wasn't entirely certain how he had gotten a job with the local division of the SupFeds, also known as the Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigations. He had applied on a whim, joking with Dane at the time that he would make an excellent spy inside the SupFeds to see if they still had any hand in the dragon abductions and cruel experiments. Mercury had never expected to be called in for an interview and had been even more surprised when he had been offered the job.

  He was a low-level analyst. His job was to comb through alleged supernatural crimes to find out which ones actually had magic or a magical creature involved. The various police departments in the region handled most local crimes, even the supernatural ones, but it didn't hurt the SupFeds to stay abreast of what was going on. Mercury looked for patterns, repeat offenders, and crimes with enough magic that the local police wouldn't have the resources to handle them. Then he passed everything he found to analysts higher on the food chain. It meant that he recognized when a dragon in distress caused a disturbance, and he did break his security clearance to point Dane in the right direction.

  Sometimes Mercury thought he had been hired so the SupFeds could prove how diverse they were in their hiring practices. He was the only dragon on staff and the vast majority of his colleagues were human. Other times Mercury wondered if they were using him to watch Dane. Someone had to know that Dane wasn't a mere human or an ordinary supernatural creature, and once they realized that Dane was involved with Mercury, they probably thought they could somehow keep better watch on Dane's activities through him. Mercury wasn't certain whether that meant they thought he would disclose information about Dane—which he wouldn't—or whether they just wanted a firmer connection with Dane. Mercury wondered if they also realized Dane was using Mercury to keep a better watch on them in return.

  "Yay, we're going on a picnic," Dane deadpanned with a heavy sigh. "You bring Lumie's picnic basket and I'll sneak us a pizza."

  "You don't think Lumie's picnic is going to be delicious?" Mercury asked. He couldn't help teasing Dane. It made Dane's beautiful face scrunch in the most interesting expressions of disconcertion and disgust.

  "Lumie cooked it himself," Dane groaned. He buried his head under the pillow again as he spoke. "There's no telling what's actually in it or whether anything will be edible. I think Daisy just left Lumie to it and only supervised enough that I wouldn't need to replace another oven."

  "It'll be an adventure," Mercury declared. Dane just grumbled incoherently into the pillow.

  It certainly would be, Mercury knew. Dane was right: there was no telling what Lumie had put into the picnic basket. It could be something dangerous or poisonous for all he knew. Yet, if they ditched the food somewhere and got a pizza instead, Lumie would somehow know and hate them forever.

  "So how did your search go today?" Mercury asked, hoping that changing the subject would get his own mind off of his fears over Lumie's picnic.

  The pillow covering Dane's face didn't move and Dane's breathing halted for a long moment. It was almost as if Dane were embarrassed, which wasn't an emotion Mercury saw from him a lot. He mumbled something so softly that Mercury couldn't hear what he said through the pillow.

  "What?" Mercury asked. This time he kept his smile in check. As funny as it was to see Dane out of his element, the topic was far too serious to tease him over. They had to find those dragons before the enemy did.

  Dane slowly pulled the pillow away. "I'm an idiot," he repeated scathingly. "The mother dragon wouldn't stay in pack territory. She moved on while I've been uselessly searching the wrong area."

  Mercury hadn't thought of that either. It was common sense that a dragon would want to leave someone else's territory as quickly as possible and Mercury hadn't thought to mention it, or honestly even thought of it at all, the last time Dane had mentioned his search.

  "So you were figuring out where to restart your search when I interrupted you?" Mercury wiggled his eyebrows to let Dane know exactly the type of interrupting he meant. Dane's grin was a little sharp as memory quickly surfaced.

  "I've got it all figured out. Now, come here so I can figure you out too."

  Mercury laughed and let Dane pull him close so their naked bodies still slick and warm from just a few minutes before could press together. Mercury bent down to kiss Dane, and when Dane's hand landed on his butt and squeezed, Mercury smiled.

  *~*~*

  Dane put on his sturdy boots with his outfit that morning while Mercury was contemplating actually wearing a tie. His kits would tug on it and choke him. Besides, he only wore a tie when he had a meeting with his boss. Wearing it today just because he was going to take a long lunch would probably raise some red flags.

  Mercury got away with dodging the business professional dress code because he growled at anyone who mentioned it to him. It probably fell under some species awareness law so the HR department couldn't force someone of another species to conform to human standards. He tossed the tie he was holding on the back of a chair with a growl of disgust and left it where it lay. He was wearing a pair of nice dress pants and a collared shirt, which was good enough as far as he was concerned.

  They both went down to the kitchen together for breakfast. Lumie and Alloy were waiting for them. Both kits were holding their breakfast bowls in their hands and were waiting patiently for someone to come and help fill them with food. Lumie had just allegedly cooked an entire picnic, yet he couldn't get the cereal down from the cabinet and pour himself and Alloy some breakfast? Something didn't add up, and unfortunately the answer was locked up somewhere in Lumie's head, which meant Mercury would never know.

  Between Mercury and Dane, they were able to get Lumie and Alloy happily crunching on cereal. Nickel wandered into the kitchen yawning widely and fixed himself a bowl on his own.

  "I'm not bringing all of you to work today," Dane grumbled ineffectually. If Lumie and Alloy wanted to go to Dane's office, they would go. Nickel went to Dane's office every weekday and did his schoolwork and some easy office work. It kept Nickel happy and gave Daisy fewer kits to look after during the day.

  Lumie made a face. "Just want breakfast. Don't want to walk in the woods. Make sure you come back for your picnic!"

  Dane sighed tiredly and Mercury had to suppress a laugh. "I won't forget," Dane replied.

  "Neither will I," Mercury echoed.

  Dane gripped Nickel gently on the shoulder, and they both vanished with a whoosh of magic. Mercury ruffled Lumie's and Alloy's hair.

  "Try to behave today?" he asked them both. He got reluctant nods in return, which was probably the best Mercury was going to get out of them. "I'll see you for dinner."

  Mercury's magic was different than Dane's magic. He couldn't just vanish into thin air. Dane emulated a basic transportation spell by using enough power to do what he wanted it to. Mercury, on the other hand, needed to recall how the magic had to be shaped around him so the transportation spell would work properly before he cast and magic pulled him away. The kitchen vanished around him and the front entrance of his office building appeared instead.

  The building had magical shields around it that prevented someone like Mercury from appearing inside his cubicle at will. Instead he had to walk through the front entrance just like every other employee. Mercury didn't need to carry car keys, though, which made walking thr
ough the metal detector a quick process. His badge was scanned by the guard and then he was waved towards the elevators as the guards tried to hurry the morning line along.

  There was more than one federal department inside the building. Mercury's office was on the sixth floor, the entirety of which belonged to the SupFeds. His space was a small cubicle amid a floor of small cubicles. The outer edges of the room were lined with windowed offices for people with considerably more clout than Mercury. He didn't want an office like that; it just brought more scrutiny and more work hours. Daisy did an amazing job corralling Mercury's kits, but it wasn't fair to keep her from her own family just because Mercury's job required more hours. He would apply for a promotion to get a slightly larger cubicle, but going into a private office was too much.

  The fuzzy walls of Mercury's cubicle were an ugly gray. Some of his coworkers had plastered their cubicle walls with family photos and awards certificates. Mercury had one lone picture hanging next to his computer. He studied it while he waited for his computer to boot up.

  Alloy was hanging over Copper's shoulder, grinning widely. Lumie had his thumb in his mouth and was clinging to Dane's leg. Copper and Zinc were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the frame. Nickel was in the center of the picture next to Mercury. His smile was small and hesitant, as if he were still unsure of his place in the world. The picture had been taken before Dane had finally relented and Nickel had become a permanent fixture at Dane's office. 'Ron was clinging to Mercury's arm and grinning widely, and Chrome was standing on Nickel's other side glaring sullenly at the camera.

  Daisy had only gotten the one shot before the kits started wandering off to play in different directions. Dane had a copy at his office too.