Briefly chewing her lip so she didn’t laugh out loud, Braith called out, “How are you, dearest Éibhear?”
Sighing—dramatically—something his ridiculous princely nephew, the son of his brother Bercelak, had managed to make into a bloody art form in his short, less-than-a-century-old life—the idiot boy didn’t even turn around before he started complaining more!
“I’ve had better days, Auntie Braith.”
“I’m sure you have.” She tugged on Addolgar’s arm, raised her eyebrows. Lower it, she mouthed at him.
I don’t want to.
Do it anyway.
With much regret—he’d never have a chance like that again—Addolgar lowered his weapon just as the idiot boy faced them.
“I thought you were staying in Dark Plains for a little longer,” Braith prompted Éibhear. She looked over her shoulder at the boy, and the way her cotton shirt was cut, Addolgar could see part of the Claiming brand that he’d placed on her upper chest all those years ago. Addolgar wore Braith’s Claiming mark with pride on his entire right leg, from ass to foot.
“I did, too,” Éibhear continued to complain. “But apparently my father had other ideas.”
“It was either that,” Addolgar shot back at the boy, “or let Bercelak cut off your head like he planned!”
Éibhear, human and dressed in chain mail and the surcoat of some long-dead army, put his hands on his hips. “Why? Because I didn’t agree with the old bastard?”
“You’re a soldier!” Addolgar yelled. “You don’t agree. You don’t disagree. You follow orders!”
The boy raised his hands in the air. “Well . . . I don’t like following orders. How about that, Uncle?”
Addolgar went for the boy again, but Braith rammed her hand against his chest, stopping him before he got more than a few feet.
“Éibhear dear,” Braith said, “why don’t you go inside and see your cousins.”
“I don’t feel like seeing anybody,” the idiot boy complained.
Now, it was one thing when Addolgar’s demands weren’t followed, but it was another when Braith’s nicely put requests weren’t.
Slowly, the She-dragon faced her nephew-by-mating. As always, she had two hammers secured to her back. One was once Addolgar’s hammer. The other was one Addolgar had had made for her. She’d been fighting with those two weapons for centuries now, and dragon, human, and centaur feared her. Of course, Addolgar had been right . . . the hammer was the perfect weapon for her. Unlike the current queen, Rhiannon, Braith was not sharp-tongued. She was blunt in word and deed, and blunt weapons were perfect for her. Lack of an edge never stopped her from killing enemies with an enthusiasm that even her own kin respected . . . and feared.
“Nephew,” she said, walking up to Éibhear. “Go inside and see your cousins.”
“Was I not clear?” Éibhear snapped back. “I said I don’t feel like it.”
“Oh. I see.”
Braith turned away from the idiot boy and with her eyes on Addolgar, she pulled out one of her hammers, hefted it between both hands, and spun, swinging the weapon.
The boy, to his credit, was quick, though; his time in his mother’s army had enhanced his reflexes. He dropped low and the hammer zipped by, the head of it ramming into the ancient tree beside him—and tearing it out at the root. The tree tipped over and, with great noise, fell.
Horrified, Éibhear stared first at the fallen tree, then up at Braith from his still-crouched position.
“I said,” Braith calmly repeated, “go inside and see your cousins.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The idiot boy stood on shaky legs and stumbled quickly toward the Penarddun cave. Once he’d disappeared inside, Braith secured her weapon and again faced Addolgar.
After staring at each other for a long moment, they both burst out laughing.
“Gods, Addolgar—what the holy hells? What happened to my sweet Éibhear?”
“And if I have to hear that bloody question again from some besotted female . . . I will end him!”
She returned to Addolgar’s side. “What happened? I thought he was to stay in Dark Plains for the next two or three moons. At least. And I definitely didn’t think he’d be going back to the Northlands with the Lightnings after what he did to that Northlander’s cousin.”
Refusing to think too much about the near-war the boy had almost started with their current Northland allies, Addolgar stepped close to his mate and said low, “I’m not taking him back to the Lightnings.”
“Where are you taking him?”
Addolgar didn’t answer right away, trying to think of the best way to say it.
“Addolgar?” Braith pushed.
Forget it. There was no best way to say it.
“I’m taking him into the Ice Lands.”
Braith blinked, shocked. “What the battle-fuck for?”
“He’s to become Mì-runach.”
She gasped, hand clasping over her mouth. “Addolgar, no! No!”
Although the Mì-runach were rarely mentioned among the Southland dragons, everyone knew of them. They were nothing more than a brutal death squad made up of warriors who couldn’t follow orders. Who were more a risk to their comrades than they were a help. And the training for those who joined the Mì-runach was brutal, heartless, just like the dragons who made up their ranks.
“We have no other option,” Addolgar told his mate. “You see how he’s acting.”
“He’s young. And obsessed with some human female with impossibly long legs. Give him time. He’ll work through this.”
“Not without some help.” Not without the heartless training of the Mì-runach.
“Isn’t that what kin is for, Addolgar? Leave him here with my aunts. They’ll get him in line.”
“Absolutely not. First off, this wasn’t my decision or even just Bercelak’s. It was Rhiannon’s. She made this decision, so there’ll be no going back. And secondly, I’ll not have my daughters around that idiot boy’s bad influence.”
Braith’s lips pursed and she rested a hand on her hip. “What about your sons?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t they matter?”
“If they did, you would have warned me long before we had them,” he said, as he’d been saying ever since his first son had been hatched.
“This again?” she demanded.
“You should have warned me!”
“What would it have changed?”
“Everything.”
“Da!” one of Addolgar’s sons yelled from behind him, making Addolgar cringe. “Hello, Da!”
Addolgar turned, faced his middle son. The boy was standing right behind him in human form, eating a big wheel of cheese, and yelling at him even though Addolgar was less than four feet away.
“Hello, son.”
“You staying long, Da?”
“Not on this trip. But when I come back this way, I’ll be staying for a bit.”
“Good!” the boy continued to yell.
“Why are you yelling?”
“Was I?” he yelled.
The sound of something heavy hitting rock had Addolgar stepping around his middle son, but that just showed him the tragic sight of his two youngest sons taking turns running and ramming their heads into the side of their mountain home. Over and over again.
It’s what Braith hadn’t warned him about, even though Owena had apparently warned her. That although the males of the Penarddun line were big and strong and good, solid fighters, they were, to put it bluntly, painfully dumb. Not like their sisters at all.
“Cheese?” his middle son yelled, shoving the half-eaten wheel under Addolgar’s defenseless nose.
“No.”
Braith patted their son’s arm. “Why don’t you lot go inside? Éibhear’s here, but only for the night.”
“Éibhear’s here?” the boy yelled. He faced his still-ramming-into-the-mountain brothers and yelled, “Oy! Éibhear’s here!”
“Éibhear’s here!” the other two cheered in unison. Then they charged toward the cave opening, but as they neared it, the youngest shoved his older brother so that he missed the opening and ran snout-first into the cave wall.
The boy flew back, landed, sat up, shook his big, blue head, and laughing, got to his claws. “Bastard!” he yelled before charging after his brother. Now the two would batter each other all the way inside until their great aunts and older female cousins told them to cut it out.
Grinning, his mouth filled with cheese, Addolgar’s middle son ambled back into the cave.
“They could be worse,” Braith reminded Addolgar.
“They could be?”
“They could be like Éibhear.”
Addolgar remembered his brother’s face when Bercelak had ordered his youngest son from his sight while Addolgar, Ghleanna, and Bercelak’s second oldest son, Briec, worked hard to hold the dragon back from murdering his own flesh and blood.
“You’re right,” Addolgar finally agreed. “It could be worse.”
Braith slipped her arms around Addolgar’s waist, hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“So am I.” He pulled her close, kissed her temple. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but this needs to be done.”
“And Bercelak chose the one dragon he could trust to make sure Éibhear gets to the Ice Lands safely. But you can’t keep trying to kill that boy with your ax. It’ll put a strain on family dinners.”
“Only with Rhiannon, since she really loves the nasty bastard. And it wasn’t me ax, it was me hammer.”
Braith laughed. “Oh. Well then.”
Addolgar hugged Braith again, resting his head on her shoulder. “Do you think the idiots—”
“Addolgar,” she softly chastised.
“Fine. Do you think our sons will keep Éibhear here for the night? You know, keep him busy?”
“I do. They love Éibhear and they’re such cheery bastards, they overlook almost everyone’s rude behavior.”
“Then let’s go to town. Spend the night at that pub there.”
Braith lifted his head from her shoulder, kissed him. Centuries and her kiss still made him as weak as one of her fists to the face.
Panting, they pressed their foreheads together and gazed at each other.
“Aye,” Braith breathlessly agreed. “Let’s go to the pub. You can have breakfast with the rest of our brats in the morning, before you leave.”
She stepped back and took his hand. They were grinning at each other when Éibhear stepped out of the cave and yelled, “Do I really have to stay here talking to these dragons?”
Addolgar was marching over there to tell the idiot boy exactly what he had to do and how to do it, but Braith, still holding his hand, pulled him back as his two eldest daughters in their human forms came out of the cave and cut in front of the boy. They blocked him and his eldest daughter raised her arm and pointed her finger, motioning back inside the cave.