8. Matty

Chapter 8

Matty

A nt was flipping out about being able to study a fire spirit and a golden dragon, all in the one day. He'd probably class this as the best day of his life (maybe with the exception of the day his mate claimed him, but then again, knowing Ant, maybe not).

I still wasn't going to relax.

Ant might be a trusting person but I wasn't. And that dragon had smacked Ant's hand away so easily and quickly that I hadn't been able to stop it. I'd felt the crack against my spells, the protective ones that were layered up over Ant. They were there to keep him safe but they actually weren't that effective at protecting him from physical harm. My spells were there to stop him getting sick, to let me keep track of him in case he wandered off or was kidnapped or something.

What? I wasn't paranoid, I was just cautious!

Ant and I had been through a lot in our lives and just because we were safe and happy now didn't mean I would suddenly get a personality transplant and think the world was a good place. It wasn't.

The problem was that Ant thought it was .

He never even considered that he might not be allowed to touch Blaze, because he knew he wouldn't harm him. Alfie didn't know that, though.

Poor Ant hadn't considered for a second that Alfie might hurt him. Which is why I was here. As always.

I'd always stand beside my brother and I didn't care what kind of dragon Alfie was, if he hurt Ant again, I'd kill him.

Whether it was by accident or whether Dimpy had subtly steered it that way, I wasn't sure, but Ant was studying Alfie now. I'd noticed that Dimpy never curbed Ant's enthusiasm for learning new things but he did sometimes direct his fascination onto new things when Ant became interested in something that might bite him .

In this instance, it was probably better that Alfie was the centre of attention. I wasn't a dragon myself, and I didn't fully understand their instincts, but I did know that they were very possessive of their mates.

Meh, I guess I could understand that.

It meant that Alfie was the one shifting and the one who had Ant's eyes all over him. Ant studied him with the same objectivity he did everything else, but it was best that focus was on the dragon and not his mate. Alfie might get snappy again if Ant looked at his mate with those fascinated eyes.

I watched and half-listened as Ant questioned Alfie about everything. About things I'd never even thought to ask.

"Can you feel your bones growing? Do you think you were born golden or were you born silver and changed at some point? Have you always been immune to fire?"

Ant was nodding away with each answer and seemed only to need to know more with every answer that Alfie gave.

I recognised the look on Alfie's face. It was increasingly bemused.

Ant was like that. Talking to him was like being attacked by a really curious puppy, and Alfie was having to describe parts of his experience he'd never even thought about before. He looked visibly relieved when Ant asked him to shift. He probably thought that meant he'd get a reprieve from the questions for a while.

I admit that I wasn't prepared for it when Alfie did shift.

Having been around dragons for so long, I'd got used to their power. They had magic inside them in a way that was finally getting familiar, but Alfie pulsed with a power I'd never felt before. When he shifted, he seemed to release his power and it engulfed me. I struggled to breathe, feeling like I was drowning.

"Matty, are you alright? Does it hurt?"

Ant was beside me in an instant. I hadn't realised he was keeping an eye on me but I should have known better. Ant was always looking out for me. We looked out for each other.

"Yes, I'm fine."

My eyes were watering and my voice scratched out of my throat, so they all knew I wasn't fine, but I wasn't going to admit that in front of the golden dragon. I didn't want him getting ideas about being able to squash me and hurt Ant again.

"If you're sure…" said Ant.

"Yes, I am. He just released a lot of power suddenly, that's all."

I spoke without thinking. And it was a mistake.

Ant's eyes lit up. "You can feel his power? And he released more of it?" He turned to Alfie. "Was that deliberate? Were you keeping some of your power back?"

Alfie, in his dragon form, shook his head. I was convinced he still had that bewildered look in his eyes, even though they were golden yellow now and hard to read.

Against my better judgement, I found myself looking at the golden dragon with curiosity. He was smaller than Dum and Dee, much smaller than some of the larger curaidh , but he was still a dragon. He towered over me, his huge body was long and sleek and his neck curved upwards. In form, he looked exactly like the other dragons.

The only difference was his colour. His scales and his eyes.

As I watched Alfie, I realised his eyes changed colour. That made me alert. It could be a warning sign that he was feeling anger or stress or something.

I gathered my power into my hands, ready to fling it out, and I built up more protections over Ant and his mate. They had loads on them by now but I was always adding more, just in case.

Every time I worked out how to perform a new protection spell, I put it on those two. I don't think they even realised. Even Ant was so used to feeling the low hum of magic around him these days that he didn't bother to try and identify where it was coming from.

The irony was that it was mostly Ant who taught me the spells. He was going through all the books in the library and it was going to take him hundreds of years but he'd read every single one of them. The ones with spells in, he read and then told me the relevant spells.

Ant could memorise them, their origin, their form, but he couldn't perform them. I could.

It was a system that worked for us.

From across the lawn, I saw my mate walking towards us and nearly rolled my eyes. That was all we needed .

Dum – closely followed by Dee, naturally – was as likely to cause mayhem just for the fun of it as he was to saunter past without taking an interest. I kept them in my peripheral vision as they approached, keeping most of my attention on Alfie and Ant.

Only when Dum got close enough that I could hear him did he stop, and I was grateful that he was keeping away. At least, he was too far away to touch anything. Specifically, he was too far away to poke the fire spirit or pinch the golden dragon or whatever he took it into his head to do.

Being mated to Dum was like a full-time job.

Did I complain about it? Often.

Would I change it for anything? No.

Would I tell him that so he could get all smug about it? Also no.

I noticed that, when the two Hoskins dragons arrived, Alfie tensed up a bit more. His shoulders bunched and his body arched subtly. His tail curled round his mate, who was drawn closer to him and round behind his bulk, away from Dee and Dum .

Looked like we weren't the big, happy, trusting family we were meant to be then. The Somerville's instincts were still to see us as a threat.

That might have been mutual, actually. The Hoskins clan had been just as tense whenever they were around some of the Somervilles. Their dragons could feel the power radiating out from Alfie, and though they might not realise it, they tensed when Glimmer was nearby, though he looked so slim and slight that I'd almost believe he wasn't a threat at all. If I couldn't feel the deep well of magic he was drawing from, that was.

Glimmer's mate, Kingsley, though… he was dangerous. And the Hoskins clan felt it, too. They felt it even more instinctively than I did, and they knew they were tense around him.

I also happened to know that Dee and Dum had spent the morning following Kingsley around, trying to talk to him, provoking him, and generally being pains in the neck. I knew because I'd given the whole Hoskins family orders to text me if they saw Dum do something dumb and my phone had been buzzing almost constantly.

So far, they seemed to think Kingsley wasn't reacting to any of the barbs my mate and his partner- in-crime had been flinging at him, so I hadn't had to leave Ant. I was simultaneously relieved that Dum was finally where I could keep an eye on him, and worried that he was probably going to do something to the Somerville elder.

I assume Dum wanted me to hear him, since he could have spoken much quieter and had only the dragons – or even only Dee – hear him if he'd chosen to. However, he spoke clearly and loudly.

"My mate is so sexy when he's pissed off, don't you think so, Dee?"

She studied me, scanning her black eyes over my body as though she was genuinely thinking about it.

"Is that why you always go out of your way to act like such a moron, Dum? Because your mate looks good when he's about to lose it?"

Dum sniffed. "No, I don't try to be a moron at all. I'm just naturally talented at that."

I wanted to shake my head in despair and simultaneously burst into shocked laughter. How was it that man always did this to me?

I tried to glare him away, but it didn't work. Dum gave an audible moan and I had to look away before I laughed or got a boner .

Instead, I turned my attention to the golden dragon. Neither Dee nor Dum had shown any surprise or interest in seeing him, despite the fact that he was a golden dragon, right there in front of them. With those two, I genuinely couldn't tell whether they weren't bothered or whether they'd got their shock out of their system before I'd been able to make out their expressions.

"Do you think Anthony wants one of his scales to experiment on?"

"Why don't we ask?"

They stepped forward and Alfie's body tensed again.

"Dum," I snapped. They both paused, which was a relief. "If Ant wants a golden scale, he'll ask for one."

Both of them turned to Ant and gave him their identical grins, the ones that had too many teeth. They were trying to weird him out but Ant was immune to that kind of threat. Maybe they were trying to weird Alfie out instead.

Unfortunately, it might be working.

Ant said, "I don't want a scale, but thank you for the offer." He made it sound as though Alfie had been the one offering. "But I'd like to do some tests on you."

"They sound interesting. Will you tell me about them? I'd like to know what sort of thing you're looking for."

I'd almost forgotten Blaze was there until he spoke. He had that same kind of magic wrapped around him that Gramps had, the one that made him sort of fade into the background until he spoke. I'd studied it on Gramps until I worked out what it was, and now I was trying to replicate it. I hadn't managed it yet but I was getting better at it. The magic was created by Nana, and it meant nobody could see her mate until he chose to reveal himself.

For Nana, it was a way of protecting her mate, probably done instinctively.

For me, it was a fun challenge.

For Dum it was a potential way he could sneak around and creep people out.

Hey, he might be a pain in the ass but he was my pain in the ass and I wanted him to enjoy himself.

Dimpy stepped in. Spoilsport.

"Why don't you shift back, Alfie, and we'll go back to the castle and get a drink? Anthony can tell you what sort of tests he has in mind and you and Blaze can decide together whether you'd be willing to do any of them."

Dum pouted, and I could see it from here. He was disappointed they were going inside and he wouldn't be able to poke the bear, as it were.

Dimpy knew exactly what he was doing, and he got all of them inside without any further incident.

Dee and Dum tried to sneak off with them.

I folded my arms again.

"Hold it, you two. I want a word."