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  “Only the ones I want to seduce, tie up and store in the basement,” said Conor. “By which I mean ‘no one but you.’”

  She turned and glared at him playfully. “Tie me up? You don’t want to do that,” she said. “You have no idea what I would do to you.”

  “Perhaps not. But I would love to find out.”

  * * *

  8

  Torn, Chapter Eight

  Upstairs, they came to a large sitting room decorated with the most eclectic assortment of furnishings that Lily had ever seen. A table inlaid with bits of ivory from a time when such things were legal; a carved wooden chair that looked as though it might have come from Asia. But what caught Lily’s eye was the large model of a medieval-looking building encased in glass on a large table in the middle of the space.

  “That’s our castle, home of the Dunbar clan.” said Conor as they approached. “In its former glory, of course.”

  “Looks like Dundurn,” murmured Lily, examining it closely. Its style was very similar, its fortifications all but identical. Conor’s ancestors must have been Scottish nobles around the time when she was born.

  “What’s that?” asked Conor.

  “Nothing. Just that it looks a little like a castle I visited with my parents when I was little.”

  “Tell me…” he began.

  Lily felt it again: his fingers grazing her hand. Only this time it was no accident, and this time his fingers encircled her own, squeezing gently as he spoke. “Tell me about your parents. I want to know. I want to understand what it is about you that draws me to you, Lilliana.”

  She studied him. Those eyes of many colours were exploring hers again, as though he could read everything inside her. Why did she even need to explain anything to him? Obviously he knew everything already.

  But no, he couldn’t. He couldn’t know that she was a shifter, destined to find a life in her century with two mates.

  She snapped herself out of the trance by pulling away, pretending that her intention was to walk around the table.

  “There’s nothing to tell, really. They’re just like everyone else’s,” she lied, adding silently, Except that my mother is a dragon queen, my fathers both dire wolves and they have two armies at their disposal and can pass through time.

  “I don’t believe you for a moment,” said Conor. “You’re not like anyone else, and as I understand it uniqueness tends to be genetic.”

  “Then your parents must be very odd indeed,” Lily teased, now standing opposite him, the castle acting as a barrier between their bodies.

  “Must they? Are you saying that I’m different?”

  “There you go again. Always trying to extract compliments from me.”

  “Of course I am.” He was moving around the table now, towards her. The only escape would be to continue around to her left as he approached, drawing him in a circle. “How could I not want your good opinion, Lilliana?”

  “I don’t really see why you want it,” said Lily. “It’s not as though I’m something special.”

  “You’re everything special,” he said. He’d caught up to her and now he had his hand on her again, wrapping itself around her side.

  This was no good. All his admiring looks would end in the realization that she wasn’t perfect after all; she would seem flabby, out of shape to him. He would feel her softness underneath her clothing.

  But he didn’t pull away in disgust; nothing of the sort. Instead, seeing that she was at last within his reach, Conor pulled her closer to his own body.

  “Why am I everything?” she whispered when their faces were an inch apart.

  “You just are. You were made that way. And I haven’t stopped thinking about you, your scent…how you might taste…since the moment I first locked eyes on you in that classroom.”

  No. No. No. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. She was leaving in a matter of hours and this would complicate all of it.

  Lily opened her mouth slightly as if to speak, but before she could do so, soft lips were on hers, first almost tentatively and then taking her in, enfolding all of her senses within their touch. She seemed to sink into the wooden floor, her head floating towards the ceiling as his tongue met hers.

  This moment. She’d waited for it all her life and only now realized it.

  Desire wrapped her up, swaddling her in its clutches and refusing to let go. Damn the security cameras; damn convention, tradition, shifter codes. She wanted him. She wanted all of him here, now. And as though to let her know his own desire, his delicious scent poured off him, his body moving deeper into her own. She felt him harden against her through their layers of clothing, his own wishes so very palpable, so conspicuous and yet so…inaccessible.

  “I…can’t,” she said a moment later as clarity struck, all her strength surging through her in a reluctant attempt to push him away.

  Lilliana was stronger than Conor expected and he found himself taking several steps backward, nearly losing his balance.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice strained with emotion, his hands gesturing helplessness. “What is it with you, with us, Lilliana? I have never wanted anyone so much, and you seem to want me as well…I am meant to be yours, and you mine. I know this. And yet you do this thing. Tell me what you want, because I can’t…I can’t see it.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. To hear the word felt like a knife in her side, twisting. Want.

  But another word warred with it: Duty. The conflict between her inner animal and the woman who stood in that room, opposite the man she so needed, was too great and she couldn’t keep all of it in much longer without catastrophic results.

  As Conor watched, the woman he’d grown in a very short time to adore disappeared in front of his eyes as though she’d never been there. Only her lingering scent told him that he had not just gone mad.

  * * *

  9

  Torn, Chapter Nine

  The large sitting room was welcoming as always when she arrived, a fire burning in its great hearth and comfortable upholstered chairs which had likely been swiped from the nineteenth century facing the flames, begging for visitors to seat themselves and to rest.

  In spite of the pain of leaving Conor behind, Lily wanted desperately to see her family before settling in, and that meant the usual hunt through the many labyrinthine corridors between Dundurn Castle’s walls.

  She must do her best not to let what had occurred between herself and Conor be a hindrance. Now she was home and would have time to sort her feelings. Perhaps her mother could even offer a word or two of advice. After all, she would know that something was up.

  Carrying only her small bag, Lily wandered into the hallway. All that she’d required in the twenty-first century was unnecessary here; the clothing that she’d worn in London would feel unsuitable, and any appliances that she’d left behind in her flat would be unusable with no electrical outlets. She’d packed up only the bare essentials to make life more comfortable, which included some gifts, a modern toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, quite a few pairs of panties to which she’d treated herself, and feminine hygiene products—a luxury in her own century.

  The castle’s dire wolf guards nodded to her respectfully as she passed, recognizing her as the Lords’ and Queen’s daughter, but it was some time before she saw someone she knew intimately, a woman who had paused in order to straighten a painting which had gone slightly wonky on the wall.

  “Ygrena,” Lily called out to her old nanny, who turned around when she heard the familiar voice.

  “Lily!” Ygrena ran to her and threw her arms around the young woman she’d helped raise from birth. “It’s been so long.”

  “Has it? I wasn’t sure if I’d step back through that portal and discover that only a day had passed, like some sort of C. S. Lewis adventure,” laughed Lily.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could turn back time or slow it like that?” asked Ygrena, whose human form had always given her grief for its inability to behave in the
fantastic ways her shifter friends’ bodies did. She aged so much faster than them, for one thing; faster than her lover, Hallam, who would always look like a gorgeous twenty-five year old man while wrinkles formed on Ygrena’s brow. But he seemed to love her regardless of her flaws, and for that at least, she was eternally grateful.

  “Speaking of aging, I brought you something,” said Lily, who reached into her bag and extracted a tub of lotion. “It’s supposed to be for wrinkles,” she said. “Not that you have any, of course. But I thought you might like it.”

  Ygrena opened it and peered inside. The white stuff glistened and smelled quite delicious, really. “Do I eat it?” she asked, puzzled.

  “No, silly. You spread it on your face. Sort of like a salve.”

  “Thank you, Lily,” Ygrena said with too much hope in her voice. Everything from modern times seemed so effective that surely this stuff must work.

  “You’re welcome. Hey—I want to catch up with you, but do you know where my parents are? They’ll kill me if I don’t find them as soon as possible.”

  “Lord Rauth is around, somewhere. I think he’s in one of his diplomatic sessions with some lord or other. And Lord Lachlan is off combing the woods for dinner—you know how he is when one of you children comes home,” she said. “Though in all honesty I think they’ve been expecting you for days, so there has been a good deal of game around here for nightly dinner.”

  “Well, when Rohan returns, no doubt he’ll travel to some exotic locale and find an elephant or a blue whale to roast.” Lily laughed. “I do appreciate the sentiment, though.”

  “And your mother is, I think, in the courtyard, reading.”

  “Of course she is. Always with the books. I’m amazed that she hasn’t gone blind.”

  “I’m not entirely sure a dragon can go blind,” said Ygrena. “If anything, her eyesight’s improving. As is her mind, I’m sure.”

  “Well, I like hearing that. I can only hope my own senses improve as my déor ages. As for reading, I’ve done enough of that to last a lifetime. Do you know that in the twenty-first century, they act like people of our era are utter idiots?”

  “I suppose we must seem a little simple to them,” admitted Ygrena, who’d always found herself baffled by the stories that came out of modern times, of so-called airplanes and cars. There was something called the internet in which people communicated with one another from great distances via small machines that they kept in their pockets. The whole thing was fascinating yet more horrifying, somehow, than the notion of a fire-breathing dragon.

  Lily gave Ygrena a kiss on the cheek and took off running for the courtyard, where she did indeed find Gwynne firmly absorbed in a novel. She stopped only when her daughter was close enough that her scent proved an interruption. A dragon mother knew nothing better than the smell of her own offspring.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Gwynne said, throwing her arms open for Lily’s violent embrace, which nearly knocked her off the bench. “I wasn’t sure when you’re arrive.”

  “Neither was I. The perils of time travel,” said her daughter, seating herself on the stone bench next to her mother. “How are you?”

  “Very well. Sad, of course, to be without my children for such long periods.” With that she twisted her mouth into an exaggerated frown. “I’m only kidding. Of course I was delighted to have the place to myself. You and Rohan eat all the food around here, and your late night joy rides drive me to distraction.”

  “Ha,” said Lily. “Joy rides have such a different connotation when you’re talking about shifters, don’t they?”

  Gwynne smiled. “It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it? Since you’ve flown?”

  “It has, and I’ve missed it. But I’ve had plenty of distractions to keep my mind occupied.”

  “Have you now?” Gwynne put a hand on top of her daughter’s. “Lily…are you saving yourself for the Ritual?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, to be honest.” She looked at her mother, uncertain of what to reveal. “I met someone.”

  “Did you?” Gwynne smiled. She knew that in an ideal world, Lily would abide by all the unwritten laws of the shifter nobility. But she herself had enjoyed her university days and all that came with them, and perhaps her daughter should too.

  “Sort of. I know I can’t be with him. I…pushed him away. I told him I couldn’t.”

  “One of the perils of going out and finding one’s self is that it’s easy to grow attached to the idea of freedom, my sweet daughter,” said Gwynne, turning and taking both of Lily’s hands in her own. “But I’ll tell you something—being thrust into this life which is a very different sort of freedom, into this time and world—was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “But you were brought here almost against your will, mum. Wasn’t it hard for you to develop feelings for my fathers?”

  “Oddly enough, no,” laughed Gwynne, who recalled the vision of beauty that had first collided with her eyes when she’d set them upon Lachlan. “The fact is that we need to find you an appropriate mate. Two, in fact. And we will, and you will perhaps be surprised by how quickly you can grow to love them. It’s understandable that you would develop a fondness for a boy at school. Of course you did. You were on your own, and there was novelty to him, I’m sure. But now you must begin to think of your duty, of the long term…”

  Lily found herself once again on the verge of speaking but stopped herself. There was no point in stating that Conor seemed different, special. All of it would be attributed to a sort of puppy love, and she couldn’t have borne that. It was more, she knew; there was something deep between them that no one else would or could understand.

  “I’ll think about duty, mum.” She spoke the words with commitment. But she knew full well that she would also be thinking a good deal about the man she’d left behind.

  * * *

  10

  Torn, Chapter Ten

  That evening, Lily was reunited with her two fathers, the dire wolf pack’s two leaders: Lachlan, the alpha, and Rauth, who had given up the role years earlier. But the wolves still treated him like another alpha; Rauth was a force to be reckoned with and when he set his mind on a plan, the wolves followed through on it.

  The reunion was a joyous one. Lily had missed the her parents more than she’d known.

  “But where is Freya?” she asked when they were all together. Freya, her grandmother, had not been present since her return.

  “With a certain human doctor in another century,” laughed Gwynne. For years her mother had been involved with a man from the other side, and while she returned frequently for visits, she was no longer a permanent resident of Dundurn.

  “Well, as long as she’s happy, I’m happy.” Lily had to admit that she was disappointed not to be able to seek counsel with her Nana, but truly pleased to see her happy. Freya’s life had been fraught with difficulties and violence. But now she could be at peace. And Lily liked the idea that she’d found love with a human.

  That night as she lay in bed, Lily imagined Conor’s body above hers, the feel of his skin under her hands and his scent as he moved into her.

  In her mind their bodies became one.

  This was no puppy love. She needed to be with him.

  * * *

  She awoke early one morning to a knock on her door. As it swung open she rose, irritated at the intrusion and glad to have worn a nightgown.

  “Does no one around here ever wait to be invited —” she began, growling as she spoke. But her face altered immediately as she saw who her guest was.

  “Roh!” she cried, throwing herself towards her twin brother.

  “Hallo, Lily,” he said, embracing her in a great bear hug. The two of them had never spent this much time apart, and having her brother so far away had felt like a part of her was temporarily missing.

  “When did you get back?” she asked. “And I want to hear all about the United States and your studies.”

  “Just no
w,” he said. “I made sure to say hello to the parental units first, of course.”

  “Parental units. You’re all modern and hip,” laughed Lily. “I mean, like, ten years ago hip.”

  Her brother slapped her shoulder gently. “So tell me how everything is with you,” he said. “I want to hear about your adventures.”

  Lily filled him in on her school year; on how she’d enjoyed her time away yet missed her family and Dundurn unbearably. At first she hesitated to tell him about Conor, though. It turned out that she didn’t need to.

  “There’s a man,” said Rohan after a time.

  “Mum told you?”

  “No. I can tell. Call it brother’s intuition. Something about you is different, and usually a man’s to blame for that sort of thing.”

  “Fine. There’s a man,” she said. “And clearly I can’t have any secrets. To be honest I’m not sure how to deal with the whole situation—it’s new to me. But then again, he’s hundreds of years away so out of sight, out of mind, right?’

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works, not really,” said Rohan, his voice serious for once. “You need to listen to your instincts, Lily. They’ve never steered you wrong. If he stays with you, you need to consider that it may be happening for a reason.”

  “Maybe. But your theory is no good: my instincts have never steered me wrong? What about the time you and I ended up at the bottom of a well?”

  “You and I are never at the bottom of a well, or anything else, for long,” he said. “The benefits of flight are many.”

  “True.”

  “Well, you need to sort all of this out. Whatever happens, you’re an adult. You are not ruled by our parents, however they may try to tell you otherwise. And when it comes time to…mate…” the word stuck in his throat. Rohan’s sister would always be little Lily to him, and it was difficult to speak to her about such things. “When the time comes, you need to remember that your instincts are the ones that need to lead. Remember that mum followed her instincts in coming here. Until then she wasn’t even a shifter.”