Page 1 of Sapphire Seas

Chapter One

Mattias

When I’d envisioned what it would be like to bring my mate into my home, I never imagined there being two of them or that one would wash up on the shore of my private beach, unconscious and barely alive.

Raven had done all she could for him. It was in the Goddess's hands now. I just prayed she had pity on me after the long wait I’d already endured. The longer he lay unmoving in my bed, the more I feared that he would never open his eyes. I still didn’t know what color they were.

Kes’ was blue and scared. What lay beyond the eye patch covering the other he still hadn’t allowed me to see. I'd have to earn his trust first, but the only way I’d have the opportunity to do that was if the Merdragon on the bed woke up.

If he did not survive whatever had befallen him, Kes and I would follow him into the grave and leave my brothers one protector short of fulfilling the prophecy.

Maybe.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that since the dragonets were born. More specifically, Griffin, after the scare we’d had when Caro had accidentally stolen a Merdragon baby. The prophecy spoke of five, but it did not specifically say that the five had to be of the same generation. If one fell, we would have five in Griffin, as long as he was kept alive to reach maturity.

Still. There might be a chance for us if one should fall, or at least, I had to hope that the Goddess built in a failsafe and provided us with our mates just when we needed them most.

As each was found, our powers increased, then increased more when a new dragonet was born. I’d known the magic was woven through our family line, as it was for all dragons, but this was the first time I truly understood it on a deeper level. The Denarius clan were in essence dragon royalty.

This was why so many of our kind had gone into hiding. To preserve what remained, because once the last dragon was gone, so too was the remaining spark of hope for rebuilding a once strong and powerful lineage.

The Gorynych had been picking us all off slowly, generation after generation, all building toward the one thing that would ultimately doom us as a species.

And yet they were too proud and power-hungry to see that reducing us down to one line, their line, would mean that eventually, our connection with the elements would be limited to only those who carried it in their blood.

If left up to them, there would come a day when no dragon had the connection to the sea that I had, where I could feel the rolling waves in my blood, all the way inside my mountain home. The tides and slipstreams surged through me every minute of every day. I knew when storms churned up rough waves and when a human threw something as small as a soda cap into it. I knew when a quiet brook was reduced to sand due to global warming, and I knew when rainwater carried pesticides and other toxins into rivers, deeming them no longer safe to swim in.

Humans.

I’d like to put every last one of them over my knee and spank the hell out of them for what they’ve done to this planet.

Though I discovered that some dragons weren’t much better. After what we saw in and around the village Kes had lived in when he was young, there were some dragons who deserved a beatdown too. The elder dragons had been kidnapping and controlling younger, weaker ones to force them to work in the mines, where two veins of precious stones had converged.

Greed.

It always came down to wanting more than you could possibly know what to do with.

Says the dragon with two mates. Irony was having a field day with me on that one.

“Would you like something from the kitchen?” Kes asked, already half out of his chair and clearly in a hurry to leave the room for a few minutes. I knew exactly how he felt, my anxiety was beginning to get the best of me too.

“No, thank you, I had something earlier,” I replied and watched him rush out.

It was only after he was gone that I wondered if maybe our mate arriving in the condition he was in might have triggered memories of whatever happened to his eye. I’d gleaned a few things from our conversations that led to questions I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask him yet.

Would I ever get the chance?

Was there anything in the archives about what to do if a mate was found barely clinging to life? Was there still a way to save them without the bond being completed?

If he’d just wake up, all the wondering would be over, and maybe the boulder on my chest would ease up.

I should have asked Kes to stay.

A stray thought entered my mind, one I’d never admit to anyone, but I pictured myself sinking my claws into the mattress and shaking it until my mate woke up.

Impatient much?

Dragon, this is not the time to start giving me shit about being impatient when you dented the wall carrying him in here.