Embers - Dragon shifter romance story, Chapter Five (Patreon)

Eeep, it's a bit later in the day than I'd planned, but I am away from home and we did move from one holiday accommodation to another today, so it's been a bit all over the place. Anyway, here's chapter five, in which we get to see a bit more of our boy's character... 

And I seem to have thrown my 'short chapters/800 words only' thing out of the window. This one is the longest so far, at 2455 words long. *rolls eyes at self*.

Hope you enjoy! Don't forget to let me know your thoughts on where it's headed in the comments or over on Discord or wherever. x

  One, Two , Three , Four 

An entire week passed without word from Mikaeïl. You had almost given up on the whole commission for this departmental murder mystery dinner, when one lunchtime your phone buzzed and you answered with barely a glance away from what you were doing. With a searingly important deadline looming for work, your stress levels were possibly at their highest since university finals, and you had been staring at the computer screen for what felt like days without a break. 

“Yeah?” you barked, still tweaking the design while holding the phone with your other hand.

“It’s Mikaeïl,” came a surprisingly shy, male voice at the other end. “Is now a bad time?”

Your heart skipped a beat or two and you grinned despite the lingering frustration that the design wasn’t looking anywhere near ‘there’ yet. “No, not at all,” you smiled, “I’m at work, but I’d much rather talk to you.”

That seemed to fluster him a little, but he cleared his throat and said, “Well… I spoke with the department and showed them your preliminary design. They loved it and are very happy to commission you to do the posters for the event.”

“Fantastic!” you grinned, genuinely thrilled to have a more exiting project to work on than this steaming pile of minotaur shit currently sitting on your computer.

“I thought we might discuss it in more detail when you bring Celia over on Friday...” he said, his softly-articulated words doing odd things to your insides and heartbeat. You could imagine him standing amongst his hoard of plants, one arm folded protectively across his slim chest as he stood, ramrod straight, surveying the gardens beyond. 

A second after that image had flashed through your mind, you realised that it wasn’t your turn to being Celia to her flute lesson that week. When you said as much, he sighed and said, “Never mind.”

“I mean... Celia doesn’t have to be my only reason to come over and see you, does she?” you asked playfully, doodling with the stylus on a new layer of the design. As you listened to him speak, his eyes began to stare out at you from the screen as you drew them, all distant and guarded, but glittering and somehow soft all the same.

“No,” he said slowly, the slight smile audible in his rich voice. “No, of course not. I’m rather busy with work this week, and I’m presenting a paper at a conference on Thursday, but if you’re alright to meet up in town instead during the week we could do that?”

“Stickybeaks?” you suggested, thinking of the cafe where you’d first met him.

He clearly along the same lines because he gave that sonorous chuckle that made your stomach churn pleasurably. “Perfect. What day suits you? I’m free most days after five, except this Thursday.”

“Friday?” you suggested. “I think Stickybeaks stays open til seven. We could have an early supper? That way you can tell me all about the conference too, if you like.”

“I wouldn’t want to bore you,” he said reflexively.

“Oh, I think you’d have to work quite hard to bore me. I’m really quite a curious person...”

There was something melancholic about the tone of his clipped response. “If you say so,” was all he said. “Well, Friday works well for me. Shall I meet you there at half past five? That will give me enough time to walk over from the department.”

“Perfect. Looking forward to it.”

A beat too late, he said with a slight crack in his voice, “So am I.”

You rushed out of work that Friday and ended up getting to the cafe way too early, so you got out your A3 sketch pad and started to draw a number of variations on the same theme that you’d doodled back at Mikaeïl’s house. When he stepped through the doorway at precisely 5.29pm, Mikaeïl glanced around, the lenses of his round glasses glinting in the low light, and when he saw you, the hard line of his tense shoulders eased just a little. 

Mikaeïl nodded politely at Lidaë, who was fluttering around behind the counter as usual despite the fact that there weren’t all that many customers in at that time, and then he strode over to your place in the back corner. The pathway through the sleek, modern tables gave you the opportunity to admire the slender form of his body and the effortless grace with which he moved, almost like a dancer. Today he wore a butterscotch coloured trench coat, belted tightly at his slim waist over black skinny jeans, and his autumn-red hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail again, with the shorter sections at the front falling down to mask the full intensity of his bright golden eyes. 

“Hey,” you said, half standing. 

“I hope you haven’t been here long,” he said by way of a greeting and staring at your drawings again with that odd expression again. 

“No, not really,” you said, awkwardly sitting back down again. “I finished work a bit earlier than usual and came straight here. I roughed out a few more designs for the poster anyway.”

“You’ve been here long enough to have finished your drink,” he said pointedly. “Can I get you another?”

You eyed your empty cup and then glanced at your watch. “I just turned in a major project that’s been bugging me for weeks,” you grinned. “I think I earned a grown up drink…”

He cocked his head slightly and the corner of his pretty mouth twitched ever so slightly to show his amusement. “Congratulations. And I think I might join you in that.”

By the time he returned, you’d shunted the sketch book to one side and once he’d set your drink down, he took his coat off to hang it on the back of his chair. It was a real effort not to stare at the beauty of his figure. Perhaps it was the artist in you, but you really noticed the strong, straight lines of his waist and thighs, his body clearly tightly corded with extremely lean muscle, and the elegant movements of his fingers as he worked the buttons of his coat. 

When he was finished, he sat and shyly drew his ponytail over one shoulder, twisting the end of it between his fingertips and blinked softly at you. “What?” he asked in a breathy murmur. 

“I… Uh…” you blushed, and settled on a bashful, “Nothing. Have you come straight from teaching?”

He nodded. 

“Oh boy,” you laughed. “Your students must love you.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not,” he said bluntly. 

“I wasn’t,” you said, feeling a heat creeping up your neck. Did he seriously not have any idea how attractive he was? “Don’t take this the wrong way then,” you said, sipping your drink and letting the warmth of the alcohol ignite a little courage in you, “But if you were my professor, I’m not sure I’d get much learning done…”

“Then I’d be failing in my duties as a teacher…” 

Damn but he was hard work. 

“Never mind,” you said. “How did the conference go?”

“Very well, to my surprise,” he said, holding the stem of his wine glass as if it were a rare specimen rose. He inhaled the scent of the wine before drinking, and closed his eyes briefly as he savoured it. His throat worked and you watched his sharp Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and that newly-kindled heat in your cheeks flared a little hotter while blood rushed south away from your brain to somewhere a little less articulate. 

“What was your paper on?” you managed to rasp.

He cleared his throat and swirled his wine absentmindedly around his glass. “It’s… hardly a dinner time conversation,” he said. 

“What, because you study bodies and death?”

His golden gaze flicked up to meet yours. “Most people find it repulsive.”

“You’re searching for answers,” you said. “I’m sure you’re respectful about the way you treat the remains. What’s repulsive about that?”

Mikaeïl blinked, and then his hard, wary expression flickered to something a little gentler, bordering on relief. “Well, alright. I was presenting my preliminary findings on the use of MRI and CT scans to determine the presence of necromantic activity in long-dead remains…”

“That stuff shows up? Even centuries later?” you asked, instantly intrigued. 

He made a side to side shake of his head. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. X-ray has been used in the past, but because any damage caused post-mortem usually presents exactly the same whether the person in question was truly alive or undead, it’s not always particularly accurate… I want to explore the use of other technology to explore the effects that necromantic magic in particular has on the body after the heart has ceased beating.”

“That’s awesome,” you breathed, and he smiled again. “Was it well received?” you asked tentatively. 

“Yes, for the most part. Non-invasive examination is always preferable, so there was a deal of interest from others in the field. I even had a lich in the audience who was willing to undergo some testing, which was encouraging.”

“Did you study medicine at the university here?” you asked, and he nodded. 

“Quite some while ago though,” he said. “I worked as a medical examiner for a long time.”

You frowned, and he read your next question in your eyes. 

“I’m not as youthful as I look,” he said. “My kind is long lived. And before you ask, I’m just over two hundred and sixty.”

“Whoa…” Honestly, it wasn’t actually that much of a surprise, given how… ‘remote’ he seemed at times. A moment later you added with a wry smile, “You must have enjoyed watching the leaps and bounds that science has made then in the last hundred or so years! I’d love to witness something like that…”

“That’s…” he faltered into silence. 

“What?”

Mikaeïl steepled his long, fingers and rested his lips against his index and middle fingertips, elbows resting on the table. “That’s… honestly not a reaction I’ve had before.”

“I don’t understand?”

With a dry chuckle, he said, “Most people - though the number is admittedly few - discover I’m old enough to be their ancestor, and they start to act strangely. Friendships have been hard to initiate, and even tougher to maintain, though I’m sure that’s partly due to my own…” he swallowed, apparently unsure of the word before settling on, “‘Quirks’.”

You shrugged. “It sucks, I’m sure, but anyone who doesn’t at least try to understand or get to know you is missing out, and probably isn’t worth the effort anyway, at least in my limited experience. Can I ask you another question though?”

As his lips hitched up on one side, he nodded. “Of course.” And with that, he seemed to relax a little more in your presence.

“Is it super rude of me to ask what you are? I had thought you were at least part tiefling, but that was literally just from the horns and the eyes.”

“A common misconception,” he said over the rim of his wineglass before he took another sip. “And one I usually let slide. But no, I am not any part tiefling. I am… my family is… that is to say…” He set his wine down, took off his glasses, and cleaned them with a little cloth that he drew from his top pocket while he said quietly, “We are dragon shifters. Wyvern, technically.”

You blinked in silence for a stunned moment. Dragon shifters were exceptionally rare these days, having been hunted ruthlessly for sport, mostly by orcs but also by humans, about five hundred years ago. They’d been massacred in droves almost to the point of extinction. “No way,” you finally breathed. 

He acknowledged the truth with a brief pursing of his lips, and returned his glasses to his face. Tersely, he added, “Please don’t ask me to prove it here. I won’t fit into this corner of the cafe, and besides, shifting is a huge inconvenience to say the very least.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” you said hastily. “I’m just… amazed? Surprised? Honoured?” 

Mikaeïl deftly and promptly steered the conversation onto your drawings and drafts after that, and you allowed him to slide the limelight onto you. Clearly an intensely private individual, Mikaeïl had just honoured you with the truth about himself, and, curious as you were about what he might look like in his wyvern form, you respected his gift by focusing on the real reason you were there. This was not a date after all, no matter how much you wished it were. 

Despite that fact, however, it was five minutes before closing time when Lidaë flitted over to you, her iridescent hummingbird’s plumage shimmering, and politely asked if you’d mind wrapping up so she could close up her cafe. 

Mikaeïl startled from your conversation as if he’d suffered an electric shock. “I’m so sorry, Lidaë,” he said, standing abruptly and pushing his chair back with a decidedly ungraceful scrape on the wooden floorboards. “I had no idea it was so late.”

She patted his arm fondly and shook her head. “Never you mind, my lovely. I’m glad to see you having such a good evening.”

For the first time since you’d met him, his pale cheeks flushed and he glanced briefly at you before fumbling to pick up his coat. Once he’d slid it on, he fished out his wallet and insisted that he pay for everything. 

Outside, with your bag packed and a design finalised, you looked up at him and he turned his deep, golden eyes on you. In the light from the street lamps overhead, his yellow eyes reflected the soft glow in a decidedly inhuman way, and you felt something stirring inside you again. 

Feeling perhaps a little uncharacteristically bold, you reached for his shoulders, took them gently in your hands, and leaned in to kiss his smooth, cool cheek. As you withdrew, you saw that he’d gone rigid, his eyes wide with surprise. Allowing yourself a small giggle at his expense, you grinned at him. 

“I’ll bring the finished design with me when I bring Celia over next Friday, if that’s ok.”

“Mmhmm,” he hummed softly. 

“Looking forward to it,” you said. “And thank you again for supper.”

“My pleasure,” he croaked, bowing his head. “Sincerely.”

Tossing a final grin and a wave his way, you walked off down the street, leaving him standing there, and when you glanced back, you saw that he was walking away in the opposite direction, his fingertips just brushing his cheek where your lips had kissed his skin.

Chapter Six