CHAPTER TWO
Jareth~
He was at a crossroads. He knew it. This was the year he was to declare his mate hunt and seek a bride. Establish a family. Create a home for himself and his family. It was his dearest wish. And yet he also feared it. Feared passing his genes onto his children. And damned if Uncle Thorvald hadn’t guessed his darkest secret.
Not that his cowardice could be any great secret within his family. He had failed as no Lindorm was supposed to. After that last trial, the Swedish Royal Navy had struck him from their list of candidates for Special Ops. Unceremoniously returned him to regular service.
Uncle Thorvald wasn’t cruel. When the Eldest had decreed that Jareth join the Swedish Royal Navy, he had merely been trying to mold Jareth into a proper dragon. Lord Lindorm had said nothing when his nephew and sword bearer had utterly failed to distinguish himself. He had said nothing when Jareth failed to earn a position in Special Ops. And this year he had granted permission for Jareth to seek a wife, as was customary for Lindorms when they turned twenty-five.
To know true happiness, it was essential for dragon shifters to find their fated mates. There was extra urgency to do it young, because for hundreds of years female children had not been born to dragons. Moreover only dragonesses were fertile. If he wanted children, and he certainly did, Jareth had to find himself a virgin to transform into a dragoness.
Even though the curse had been lifted* and female children were being born throughout all Dragonry, that did not help Jareth or other dragon bachelors. They would have decades to wait before those baby girls were old enough to marry. And even then they would not choose some old fart over a young dragon. He hoped to marry long before he turned into one.
Jareth had grown up in Uncle Thor’s castle. Almost, but not quite, a son. The orphaned child of the Eldest’s first cousin. Like all Lord Lindorm’s vast extended family, Jareth hero-worshiped the Eldest. He desperately wanted to make him proud. To have Lord Lindorm’s voice ring with pride when he spoke of ‘my cousin Johann’s boy’. As it always rang with pride when he mentioned Jareth’s cousin Theo.
Of course Cousin Theo was a special case. A heroic role model in a family of heroes. Every Lindorm looked up to him. When Theo had been Jareth’s age, he had already been the most decorated Lindorm in an illustrious lineage of naval officers. Among his honors was a medal usually reserved for Swedish royalty. Despite their being official secrets, his exploits were whispered about whenever Lindorms gathered.
Jareth knew the Eldest had dispatched him to Severn Island in the hope that some of Theo’s valor would rub off on him. The Thane of Lindorm was too kind to say so directly, but his intention was plain to the least of his sword bearers. He wanted Jareth to shake off his fearfulness.
Like Lord Lindorm’s island home, Severn Island was another rough stretch of rock in the Gulf of Bothnia. Theo had built a house here, near to his father and mother’s home. Severn Island was remote. Far from prying human eyes. A suitable place to try to train a laggard dragon and instill some pluck in his gutless heart.
Theo had taken him skin diving, hang gliding, and flown with him in the dead of night. Jareth had enjoyed those activities in his burly cousin’s company. No one could be afraid when intrepid Theo was nearby. And Theo was as large-minded as he was large. Likable. Encouraging. Inspiring. Being around him was a great way to spend his leave.
But flying hour after hour beside his magnificent cousin only emphasized that Jareth was neither large nor intrepid. He was still the same size he had been at fourteen. A dragonling when measured against Theo’s long and muscular dragon. Jareth was simply not hero material. Not much of a Lindorm at all. A failure as a dragon and an officer.
He was certain that when Theo had been doing his night swim in the North Atlantic, he had not panicked just because tiger sharks were circling. He had probably smacked them in the snout and driven them off to seek easier prey. Unlike Jareth. Of course, if Jareth had been in dragon, the sharks would have bothered him less. As in not at all. But the object of the exercise was to test your mettle. Apparently Löjtnant Jareth Lindorm lacked any.
As long as he could remember he had feared the sea. Feared drowning. An inappropriate fear for any Swede. A source of shame to a dragon. And one that made sailing or swimming an exercise in courage. It never got any easier. He had of course learned to swim and sail. How not in a family where athleticism and the ocean were everyday matters?
When you grew up in a castle where every window faced the sea, when you learned to sail when you learned to walk, you were supposed to regard both as familiar comforts. Yet every storm made something inside Jareth quail. When the seas grew rough and waves mounted higher than houses, that was when the voices spoke loudest to him.
Having visions wasn’t completely unknown among dragons. All his cousins firmly believed that the head of the family could see into their hearts because Thorvald Lindorm was clairvoyant. But when Jareth heard voices and saw visions, dread filled his soul. If they had advice to give he could not hear it over his fear. In a family of heroes, he was the sole coward.
He had never told anyone about the apparitions that tormented his days and made his bed an instrument of torture. What was the use of visions that foretold nothing? They were just hallucinations that bathed him in sweat and oppressed his mind. Proof positive, if he had needed any, that he was a lily-livered disgrace to a noble name, if not actually insane.
All that staying with Theo had accomplished was to add covetousness to his sins. Jareth envied his more accomplished cousin, not just his battle honors, but his wife. Not that he wanted to sleep with Lexi. She was lovely, and he liked her. She was just the sort of plump and cheerful woman dragons were primed to adore. What he craved was a wife and baby like Theo’s.
He kicked savagely at the stones lying on the trail. One shot into the trunk of a tree and caromed off to splash into the burbling forest stream. Even that gentle gurgling made him cringe. He forced himself to walk over to the bank and confront his anxiety. The spring runoff had made the forest stream swift and cloudy.
Without warning, a vision struck. The damned or the dead howled. Shift. He swayed on his feet, balance gone, heart shuddering. Enthralled and helpless, fear pounding in his veins, the vision seized his eyes and ears. From the depths of the stream, a maiden with a face as pale as death raised pleading arms like long strands of twining seaweed.
Her coppery hair floated about a stark white face. Her black eyes opened and closed like a doll’s. He lurched as that soulless gaze captured his. She was naked from the waist up. Her breasts bobbed in the water. Sweetly rounded and tipped with crimson. Her skirts were foamy rags that moved languidly around her long white legs.
His heart seemed too large for his chest. Or too small. He could scarcely draw a breath. He knew from experience that there was no way to turn either sound or sight off. He had to endure. Gradually the unearthly wailing that accompanied this vision became a woman’s beguiling voice.
“Save me,” she begged. “Son of Lind, you are my only hope. Rescue me.” It seemed as if her long white arms would drag him beneath the water.
And then as suddenly as she had appeared, she vanished. The wailing wind became a whispering spring breeze. Jareth was alone on the rocky bank of the stream, standing in a bright ray of sunshine. It was a clear spring morning. The stream was just a stream. Swollen with snow melt. Rippling over mossy rocks. The haunt of kingfishers and herons. Nothing for a dragon to fear.
To prove he was not truly a coward, Jareth bent over the water, dabbling his fingers in the icy current. There was of course no sign of the woman. Tiny fish swam in a calm pool formed by a fallen branch that blocked the racing current. They nibbled at green weeds. And there on a flat, bare stone, gleaming as if it had fallen from someone’s finger only yesterday, was a ring.
It was bright gold, set with rounded green stones. Without thinking, Jareth plucked it out of the water. It was heavy in his hand. Holding it settled his blood. Like all dragons, he had the gift of recognizing the age and value of objects by touch. This ring was ancient. The gold and stones genuine.
He could feel the excitement of the goldsmith who had created it. Sense the weariness of the slave who had dug the emeralds from the earth with a pick. The dedication of the gem polisher who had made them glow. The valor of the warrior who had worn it into battle. He turned it over and over, wondering at the crispness of the engraving on the gold band.
It was incomparably old, yet every line was as sharp as if it had just left the polishing bench. It warmed on his palm as he admired it. Still it did not belong to him. This island was the property of Theo’s father lord Severn. An object this old was destined for some museum. Or the Lindorm vault. Or his aunt’s hand.
He slipped the ring into his jacket pocket and turned back to the house. What connection, if any, the ring had with the woman in his hallucination, he could not guess. Probably none. His visions never meant anything. But he had no intention of letting either Lexi or Theo guess that he was going crazy.
* Dragon’s Christmas Captive