The platinum dragons mat.., p.1
The Platinum Dragon's Mate (Shifter Dads Book 6), page 1
The Platinum Dragon’s Mate
Shifter Dads, #6
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2020
All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1: Reid
Show them nothing.
The mantra echoed through Reid’s head as he stepped outside, joining up with the small group of shifters who were preparing for a visit to enemy territory.
Enemy for some of them, at least.
The four of them were neatly divided: there was Reid himself, along with his oldest friend Santos, two native sons of Oak Ridge, a haven for shifters and humans alike. A town where they could all live together in peace, no need for secrecy. Or violence.
And then there was Athena, Santos’ newly discovered mate, and her brother Alaric. The two of them were from—well, as far as Reid had been able to tell, their settlement didn’t have a name. Or a permanent location, even; Athena had implied that the clan moved around a lot. Presumably to keep anyone from learning where they hid out.
Athena’s clan was not in the habit of socializing with humans. In fact, they seemed to believe that shifters were feral creatures, violent by their very nature, without the need for safety or comfort.
Or doctors. Apparently.
Reid let his gaze settle on the fifth member of their party, the one who’d sealed his decision to go on this possibly suicidal visit in the first place: Athena’s baby daughter Olivia.
There were children in this clan, and they didn’t have any kind of basic care. Shifters were hardy, they healed well, and they weren’t susceptible to many of the issues that humans were, but they still needed something.
So when this insane idea was proposed—just walk into enemy territory and hope that no one attacks and kills anybody!—Reid had known he had to volunteer.
He sure wasn’t looking forward to it, though.
“Hey.” Santos nudged him. “You ready to do this?”
“Of course I’m not ready to do this. None of us has ever done anything like this before.” The words came out of Reid’s mouth before he thought better of them, and he bit his tongue in annoyance. Show them nothing.
Santos was his friend, of course—but he didn’t know Athena and Alaric yet. It was better to have an idea of how trustworthy people were, before letting them see all your emotions right there on your face.
“We have,” Athena objected. “We came to Oak Ridge without any backup or preparation at all.”
“And some of us thought that that was a bad idea,” Alaric put in. “Some of us perhaps didn’t have any input on that decision at all. Maybe.”
Athena rolled her eyes. “It all worked out.” She hefted Olivia to her shoulder. “Are we ready?”
All eyes turned to Reid for some reason.
Well. Not for some reason. He knew why. He didn’t let on how uncomfortable it made him.
“I already spoke to my mother this morning,” he said. “There’s no reason to delay. Let’s go.”
***
His mother, the mayor of Oak Ridge, had met with him over breakfast—not at Lachlan’s Diner, the place where most people went for food, or even at the new coffee shop down the street. No, they’d met in the privacy of his parents’ lavish home.
“I’m surprised you volunteered for this,” she’d said as an opening salvo, sipping her espresso.
“They don’t have any doctors,” he’d told her for the fourth or fifth time.
“But you understand the political implications. Especially for a society like theirs. You’re the son of the clan leader: therefore, you’re my representative.” She’d smiled a little, a tiny quirk of a perfectly lipsticked mouth. “You hate being my representative.”
“I do,” he’d admitted. She already knew that, anyway. “I just think that this is more important than what I hate or don’t hate.”
“Mm.” She set her cup down and met his eyes. “I’m surprised, but I’m not unhappy. I couldn’t have gone myself.”
He understood why. “It would’ve been too much of a challenge.”
“Yes. From what I know of their leader, he’d start a fight immediately, and—” she shrugged— “he’d win. I haven’t fought another shifter in single combat in decades, and it seems like he does it every day and twice on Sundays.”
Reid preferred to convince people with knowledge, skill, and confidence rather than violence, himself. “If we can show the rest of the clan what they’re missing...”
His mother nodded. “Exactly. Maybe we can bypass him entirely. From what Athena’s said, it seems like they’re basically living in the woods. See if you can convince them that they could do better.”
“After I make sure anyone who needs medical attention is getting it,” he reminded her.
“I don’t see why you can’t do both simultaneously,” she pointed out.
Reid was never going to be a politician.
***
So now he was on this stupid, crazy mission, visiting a feral, violent clan, knowing that everyone there would expect him to be—Oak Ridge’s crown prince, or something equally medieval.
But he looked over at Athena and Santos, shoulders brushing as they strapped Olivia into her car seat, and he knew he couldn’t do anything else. That child needed a better future.
Chapter 2: Sage
“I’m going to kill them.”
Sage rubbed her forehead, looking through her fingers at a sight she’d gotten very, very used to over the years: her brother pacing back and forth in a rage.
“They stood there and looked me in the eye and told me they were traitors. Traitors. To. Our. Clan. I’m going to—I’m going to—”
Shiloh ran out of words and let out an infuriated noise instead.
“Did you ask them why they did it?” Sage asked, taking advantage of the momentary silence.
Shiloh whirled on her. “You think there’s some excuse that would justify this? Going over to the enemy?”
“Of course not!” she snapped. Shiloh was such a damn hothead. “There’s no excuse. But if you knew why, then maybe you could change their minds. We need them.”
Athena was the only other clan member with a young child. Without her and Olivia, their new generation dwindled to...one.
And Alaric...Shiloh wouldn’t hear this, but since Ronan had left, Alaric was their best fighter. His loss would weaken them severely.
Shiloh, of course, was not about to think strategically when he could get angry instead. “We don’t need traitors. We could never welcome them back. Not after something like this.”
Sage closed her eyes. Whatever her own personal opinion, Shiloh was right. Because Shiloh took after their father, and Jeremiah’s word would be law here.
“Can’t you see, Shiloh?” Sage tried one more time. “First Ronan, now Athena and Alaric together...we can’t lose any more people! We’re going to disappear at this rate, and...Rhiannon will be the only one left.”
She couldn’t bear the thought of that. The clan dying off or leaving, one by one, and her daughter left alone in the world, no one to take care of her, no one to love her...
Protect the clan! her inner dragon hissed. Sage was in full agreement.
Shiloh’s eyes flashed. “I won’t let that happen.” He gripped her shoulder. “Rhiannon is going to grow up in a strong clan. The strongest. I swear.”
He let go and turned to leave. “Wait!” Sage said.
Shiloh stopped, sort of. Still pacing back and forth, he turned. “What?”
She bit her lip. “What are you going to tell Father when he gets back?”
Worryingly, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll think of something.”
The door closed behind him, and Sage was left alone in her broken-down little house. She looked around in despair.
The place was full of little remnants of the humans who had lived there once, and abandoned it decades ago. Jeremiah was good at finding these little run-down settlements, places where the humans had tried to make a life and, ultimately, failed. It was better than living in caves, but still...
Sage wished there was a way for shifters to build their own towns. Where clans could live in—not luxury, she didn’t need that, but in a bit more comfort than this.
Maybe then they’d have a chance to grow. Sage bit her lip suddenly, feeling tears rise up behind her eyes. With Athena and Olivia gone, that was it. The clan was all men...and her and her daughter.
She wasn’t going to cry about it. She wasn’t. It had happened, and that was that, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
It wasn’t like she and Athena had ever even been friends, really. Athena was more like a man than like Sage. She liked fighting, and flying, and—Sage didn’t even know what else. Even having a baby hadn’t softened her, really.
But still. The house felt so much lonelier, all of a sudden.
“Rhiannon?” Sage called, wanting her daughter close, now that the safe part of the world had shrunk once again. “Baby, where are you?”
Rhiannon didn’t call back. Probably caught up in one of her little games again—she got so absorbed in her make-believe, sometimes, she forgot the rest of the world even existed.
“Rhiannon?” Sage moved through the house, but Rhiannon wasn’t anywhere she could see.
She tried again, this time focusing on places a seven-year-old might be hiding. There weren’t many—the house only had four rooms.
Then she noticed the back doo
She’d locked it. Right? She had definitely locked it.
Great. Sage tried to calm the fear that was rising in her—Rhiannon played outside all the time, nothing was necessarily wrong—but she couldn’t.
Her dragon rose within her. Find her. There’s danger.
Sage ran out the door. Looked around. “Rhiannon!”
No sign of her daughter, and no answer when she called again.
Grimly, Sage braced herself, and shifted. Her dragon form could move faster and see better, and she was going to find her daughter fast.
It wasn’t safe out there. And it was getting more dangerous all the time.
Chapter 3: Reid
It was a long drive to the red dragons’ hideout.
They could have flown more quickly—the mountain roads wound around and through the forest, taking them far out of their way, and as the dragon flew it was a much shorter trip—but having baby Olivia along made that impractical. Even if Athena had been willing to fly while holding her daughter in her talons, Reid would have recommended against it.
Fortunately, Athena, Alaric, and Santos all wanted to ride together—well, Santos and Alaric probably would have been fine staying apart, but neither of them was willing to separate from Athena and the baby.
So Reid drove his own car, and therefore had quite a few hours of peace and quiet.
And foreboding.
He wasn’t nervous. He was just—aware. Aware of the danger that could be ahead, the uncertainty. The stakes.
But he was a doctor. He was accustomed to high stakes. He’d been trained for high stakes. Just because he rarely encountered them, working as a small-town doctor for a town full of people with shifter healing, didn’t mean he wasn’t capable.
As long as he kept his cool, stayed professional, and thought before he spoke, it would be fine.
He followed Athena’s old station wagon off the main road and onto a little dirt track, bumping along into the woods. It was barely drivable, but he gritted his teeth and kept going.
They stayed on the track for almost twenty minutes before coming out into a clearing—no, not just a clearing, the remains of an old town. Houses half-fallen, roofs caving in, vines growing through windows...this was where they lived?
Athena brought her car to a stop in front of one of the ruined buildings, so Reid had to assume that it was, in fact, where they lived.
He waited until Alaric opened his door before getting out of the car. These people were unlikely to react kindly to a stranger showing up.
“You.” A man burst out the door of one of the ruins—was he truly living there?—and came right up to Alaric’s face. “Are you crawling back for mercy? After you turned coat so obviously?”
Reid supposed these people weren’t likely to react kindly to acquaintances, either.
“We’re not crawling back for anything, Shiloh,” Athena snapped, stepping out of the car and coming forward to get in the man’s face herself. “We’re here to negotiate.”
“Negotiate.” The man—Shiloh, who Reid understood to be their leader’s son—acted like it was a curse word. “We don’t negotiate with traitors.”
“That’s not for you to say, Shiloh,” Alaric broke in, quiet but implacable. “Where’s your father?”
Shiloh’s face twisted; Reid couldn’t quite interpret what the expression meant. “Away,” he spat. “But I don’t need him here to drive you off. You’re outnumbered, you know.”
And Reid noticed that there were other men appearing in the clearing, coming out of doors or just melting out from the forest. Hard, tough-looking men. Four—five—could they fight all of them, Santos and Alaric and Reid and Athena, with baby Olivia as a potential hostage?
Had this been an even stupider idea than Reid had thought?
“You don’t want to attack us,” Athena said dangerously.
Time to step up. “Shiloh,” Reid said, and immediately had the man’s attention. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
Shiloh nodded once. “And don’t you forget it.”
“You’re Jeremiah’s son?” Asking calm questions, Reid had found, tended to dissipate people’s rage or terror. It was a useful way to keep patients from freaking out in the exam room.
And it kept him in charge. Show them nothing.
“That’s right.” Shiloh had at least backed down from being ready to shift and attack immediately.
“I’m Reid MacAllister, Mayor MacAllister’s son,” Reid said, still keeping his voice calm and easy. “I’m here to—”
“To take over?” Shiloh interrupted, his voice rising. “To show off how you’ve suborned two of our people, and taken a clan baby hostage? I won’t stand here and listen to you boast about your power—”
Should have stuck with questions, should have done something else—Shiloh’s voice was rising up in volume and pitch, getting angrier and angrier. Would interrupting him make it worse? Probably. The other men were coming closer—any second now, they were going to have to fight—
No!
Shiloh fell away. The whole clearing fell away, out of Reid’s attention, his sight, his hearing. He found himself pivoting to look out to the left—at a wide expanse of trees, nothing else.
What—?
“Help!”
The cry was faint and far away, but Reid heard it.
“Who’s that?” he asked sharply, already moving towards the sound.
“What?” he heard behind him, Shiloh’s voice, deep and angry—but confused, also.
“That voice,” Reid said impatiently.
“What voice?” Athena this time, sounding baffled.
He strained, but he couldn’t hear anything else.
Then there was a new sound. Wingbeats. Coming closer.
And crying.
Then everyone was turning to look, because over the treetops came a fiery red dragon, scales brilliant in the sun, driving her wings as fast as possible, and cradling a little girl in her talons.
That was where the crying was coming from. Reid found himself running to meet them, without conscious thought interfering. If a child was hurt—
The dragon alit in the clearing, shifting immediately into a beautiful dark-haired woman, her face tight with worry. “She was climbing a tree and she fell,” the woman gasped. “I saw it but I couldn’t get there in time—”
It was like the woman’s fear rippled across the clearing and hit him in the chest. He was starting forward before he knew it, eyes fixed on her body, curled protectively around her child, and her terrified expression.
“It’s all right,” Reid said, hearing his voice come out calm and controlled, the way he’d learned as an intern. Doctors weren’t supposed to show emotion even when something truly terrible happened, and he’d worked hard to hone his already-developed skills into a perfect mask.
So even though he was shaken inside at the sight of the girl’s tears, the woman’s terror—more so than he ever was by injuries—he continued in a smooth, confident voice. “I’m a doctor. Is she a shifter?”
The woman nodded. “But her arm—she broke it, it’s going to heal all wrong—”
Reid could see the problem immediately, when the woman relaxed her hold to show the little girl to him. Her arm was at the wrong angle.
Shifter healing could be a disadvantage with broken bones like this. If it healed before the patient could get medical attention, the bone would be wrongly-aligned and might need a hospital to fix—and hospitals were dangerous places for creatures who were supposed to be mythical.
“I can set it for her,” Reid said. “What’s her name?”
“Rhiannon,” the woman said.
Peripherally, Reid was aware of a crowd behind him. It wasn’t nearly as important as the patient in front of him, though. He crouched down to look at her. “Hi, Rhiannon,” he said. “My name is Reid, and I’m a doctor. This probably hurts a lot, huh?”
She nodded, still crying in loud, shuddering wails.
“I’m going to make sure it heals all right. It’s just going to take—”
“Hold on a second!” came a voice from behind him. Deep and angry. Shiloh. “You’re not touching that kid.”
“He’s a doctor.” Athena. “He gave Olivia a checkup. Half the reason he came here at all is because we don’t have one.”
“We’re shifters. We don’t need a doctor. We heal.”
