They slept in the next day. When they woke up, Damon was confused for a moment to be woken by brilliant sunlight and a view of a fluffy carpet of clouds spreading below him.

A moment later, he remembered what had happened during the past night. With a grin, he reached out with the new-found powers now pulsing gently within him, easily contained by the golden chain of the mate bond.

All it took was a gentle nudge to make the protrusion of rock that had destroyed the mirror melt back into the wall. He shifted the large crystals he’d grown out of the floor a little, so that they were out of the way.

And the huge window with the panoramic view of the clouds below he left just as it was, together with the flowering vines that covered the entire wall.

Let the chimera deal with it if he didn’t like Damon’s redecorating.

By the time they’d showered and dressed and made their way into the small kitchen, Ginny was already awake, preparing breakfast.

She beamed when she saw them, her eyes lighting up when she realized what had happened. Damon smiled proudly.

“Congratulations,” Ginny said softly.

Autumn rushed forward to hug her.

A little later, they sat down with bacon and pancakes and a huge pot of coffee. Half an hour passed while Autumn and Ginny traded stories of what had happened to the other while Ginny’d been racing through tunnels to find help and Autumn had hidden in their prisoner’s bedroom.

“He’s really not all that bad,” Autumn said firmly. “Can you believe he doesn’t even know that we’ve gone to the moon? Hey, if you’ve got shifter carpenters who hooked you up with a kitchen in these caves, surely there’ll be a werewolf engineer or something who can get you satellite internet on the mountain?”

Ginny smiled. “That’s the one thing I miss since working here. Catching up with my series. But I was planning to go back to Mountain View next month. I’m just covering for the chimera’s caretaker while she’s off admiring her first grandkid.”

“Hmm.” Autumn made a thoughtful sound. “If not for you, then for the fire dragon. I know you guys need to know what he knows. But I’ve seen him. He’d rather die than be a traitor.”

“And you really think getting him Netflix is the solution?” Damon demanded.

Autumn grinned. “He’s already feeling guilty about the danger he’s put me in. That’s because now he knows me. It’s much harder to hate someone you know. He knows absolutely nothing about humans. So let him learn about us.”

“That could backfire,” Damon said and laughed. “What if he gets into sci-fi and starts believing that he needs to conquer space next?”

“Oh, come on,” Autumn said with mock sternness. “He’s naive, but not stupid. And so would you be, if you’d grown up locked away in some cave. I’m just saying that you need his help, and you haven’t gotten it so far. Why not try my approach?”

“The chimera’s very suspicious of technology,” Ginny said. “No one knows how old he is—but he’s far older than electricity.”

“I guess he’ll have to learn as well then,” Autumn said firmly. “Everyone wins.”

Just then, Damon felt the niggling sensation of other dragon shifters arriving. The dragon of the water and the storm had finally made it back from Iceland—and they’d conveniently missed all of the action.

Damon smirked. The dragon of water wouldn’t like that.

Just as he’d expected, the chimera sent a mental summons a moment later. Through the bond, Autumn felt it too and gave him a questioning look.

Meanwhile, Ginny jumped up guiltily. “I almost forgot about Braeden’s breakfast,” she said, quickly preparing a tray for him when Damon and Autumn rose at last.

They left her behind in the kitchen as they climbed back up through the narrow tunnels meant only for humans—or the rare human-sized shifter that received an invitation to appear at the council of elements.

As they walked towards the chamber of the council, Damon reached out with his powers, testing the stone around them. Whenever he found a weakness left by dragon fire, he quickly repaired it, the rock singing to his dragon louder and more joyfully than ever before.

And this time, the immense power concentrated in his body didn’t give him a headache, or burst out of him uncontrollably. The mate bond glowed with steady heat in his heart. His element was calm, its energy at his command whenever he needed it.

“Welcome, dragon of the earth. And welcome, Autumn Drago, mate of the earth,” the chimera boomed from the shadows.

The symbols on the plinths were glowing—water, air, earth, and fire—but the dragon of water and air were in their human form, joined by Jared, the griffin shifter. They looked rather calm for a trio of shifters that had just hurried back across an ocean. The chimera must have filled them in about the past night’s attack while he and Autumn had been talking to Ginny.

When Damon and Autumn approached, Gregory and Jared grinned at him in obvious delight at seeing him mated at last.

Even the dragon of water managed a smile and a respectful bow to Damon’s new mate.

“Congratulations,” Timothy said. His eyes shone blue like the ocean for a moment as he looked at them, and then his smile intensified. “She’s better than you deserve, but I’m glad for you two nevertheless.”

“There’ll be a ceremony back home, I hope,” Jared added with a grin. “Dragon Springs knows how to party, from what I’ve heard.”

“You're all invited, of course,” Damon said, proudly wrapping his arm around Autumn. “Although first I’ll probably have to make sure that there aren’t any further cake-related fights breaking out at home.”

“Two cakes.” Autumn giggled at his surprised look. “Seriously, with so many people, we’ll need a lot of cake anyway. Just ask both the foxes and the bears to help out with a cake.”

Damon opened his mouth to protest, thinking of the latest quarreling—and then he snapped it shut again. “You know what, that might just work. If I explicitly ask both of them for their help together, they’ll try extra hard because they’ll assume I think they can’t do it.”

“And given what I know about you shifter clans and your honor, neither will want to lose,” Autumn said with a grin.

“It might just work.” Damon laughed, then turned back to the other shifters. “You’ve heard it. In one month’s time, we’ll have a ceremony that Dragon Springs hasn’t seen since my parents found each other.”

“Congratulations,” the chimera boomed, sounding a little impatient. “Now back to more important things.”

Damon looked at Autumn, who returned his grin, quite obviously no longer intimidated by the gruff monster in the shadows at all.

Nothing’s more important, she mouthed silently.

He sent his answering laughter through the mate bond.

“You’ve already seen this worrying development,” the chimera growled from the darkness.

Chastened, all eyes turned to the new plinth with the glowing symbol of fire.

“I’ve thought about it and consulted my books. It can mean only one thing: that for the first time in a thousand years, a fire dragon has gained mastery over the element of fire itself.”

“Impossible,” the dragon of water called out angrily. “They’ve attacked us! There’ll never be a fire dragon on the council.”

“There won’t be,” the chimera grumbled from the darkness. “Let’s take this plinth as a warning sign. They’re rapidly gaining in power. And somewhere among them, a powerful enemy is hiding. It’s that dragon we need to defeat, before they cause further destruction.”

“We’ve searched Iceland—at least until we heard about the attack here,” the dragon of air said. “We found no trace of them. They’re back in hiding. This is taking too long. We need to get that information out of our captive dragon somehow.”

“Yes,” the dragon of water agreed. He took a step forward, towards the shadows hiding the chimera. “Let me get in there with him for an hour or two. I’ll get him to talk.”

“No,” the chimera boomed. “I’ve got a different task for you. Timothy, dragon of the water, I hereby command you to find a mate as quickly as possible.”

“What?” The water dragon’s shocked exclamation echoed through the cave.

Next to Damon, Autumn giggled.

Damon gave the storm dragon a knowing look, who grinned back at him.

“That’s stupid,” the water dragon said heatedly. “What does that have to do with anything? Fire dragons are planning to take over the world, and you—”

“I will not be called stupid by my own council,” the chimera roared.

Timothy obediently fell silent, although Damon could feel the waves of annoyance rolling off him.

“It is decided. There will be no argument. Two out of the three dragons of the elements are mated. Two alpha dragons who have come into their full power out of the three of you. To deal with this new threat, Timothy will need to find a mate as well. Then, at last, we’ll have a council more powerful than we’ve seen in hundreds of years.”

“Damn,” Timothy muttered under his breath, although he’d stopped arguing. “Guess I better start speed-dating then, huh? After all, everybody knows how easy it is to find your one true mate out of the hundreds of dragons scattered all over the world.”

“A human mate,” the chimera growled from the darkness. There was a hint of smug satisfaction in it. “It’ll have to be a human mate. Things are changing, my council. Two of you have found human mates; the third will have to do so as well. That is what fate has decreed. That is how you will find the power to find and eliminate this new threat.”

With his last sentence still echoing through the cave, the shadows thickened. The final look they got of the chimera was one last glimpse of a writhing serpent’s tail throwing a shadow against the wall.

Then there was only darkness where before, shifting shadows had been.

Together, they all turned towards the eerie light of the fourth plinth, where the symbol of a flame still burned in bright defiance, as if to mock them.

“Well, shit,” the dragon of water finally said, breaking the silence. “Any of your human mates have a single sister?”