I’d been a bookworm since I was a little kid. The library had always been a sacred place to me, whether it was an old one lined with leather-bound books, a community one with a corner for kids to play in, or even a touring bookmobile. To me, all books had a magic to them.

All that said, the library in the basement of the castle was a bit special, and probably had a bit more magic to it than most libraries. The first thing I noticed was the disparity in the sizes of the books.

"What the hell is that?" I asked, pointing to a book as tall as I was.

"Dragon book," shrugged MacKenzie. "Dragons read, too, you know. As long as you don't sneeze while you're reading so the whole thing goes up in smoke."

"Why don't you shelve the human books separately to the dragon ones?" The enormous books with claw marks in the leather stood alongside normal-sized volumes.

MacKenzie frowned. "Then how would we find anything? This way makes more sense."

And presumably it did…to them. They were comfortable living in two sizes, shifting between without really thinking about it.

For an afternoon, I pored through ancient texts on magic, MacKenzie shifting and flying up to the higher shelves to fetch down the next book and translating for me where I needed it, which was not as often as I would have thought.

"How come these are all in English?"

MacKenzie made a face that I had come to recognize as meaning there was something he was not sure if he should tell me or not.

"They're not."

"But they are. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to read them." I could see the words there in front of me, clearly in English.

Weren't they?

Before my eyes, the words wobbled, phasing between letters I recognized and symbols I wouldn't even have recognized as being language. "Do you mean, I can read these because I'm part dragon? Because I have dragon blood?” I demanded excitedly.

He made the face again. "Yes and no. Mostly no. You don't really need to know."

"But I want to know."

The face again. "Not sure you do."

"MacKenzie!"

The big man shrugged. "They're magic books. Not just books with magic spells written in them, the books themselves have a degree of magic, a degree of... sentience."

I stared at the book I was reading, glad I hadn't folded back the corner of any pages to mark my place.

"You mean, it's alive?” I whispered reverently.

"Not exactly," MacKenzie hedged. "But the truth is more complicated."

"How does that explain how I can read them?"

"You're not reading them," MacKenzie explained.

"Yes, I am."

"No. They're reading themselves to you."

"But I can see the words,” I shot back, exasperated.

MacKenzie sighed. "The books are reading their contents directly into your mind so it seems as if you're reading them in English."

"The book is in my head?"

MacKenzie nodded, then, observing my still befuddled expression, he added, "Told you, you didn't want to know."

However the information got into my mind, there was a lot of it, and interspersed amongst it was some useful stuff.

In the evening, we went to another room in which I had not been before; the forge. If the library had been designed with both human and dragon in mind, the forge was the realm of dragons.

"It's a place of fire," explained Callum. He shifted into dragon form, his body a deep violet, while his eyes remained dark, and blew fire into the forge itself.

"He loves this shit,” Duncan whispered to me. "Every birthday, we all get something he made in here. Clever, mind. He could make anything from a girder to a strand of wire as fine as your hair. He'll make your sword."

The book had given very definite specifications for the sword, starting with it being forged by someone who loved me.

I might not have enjoyed the physical intimacy with him that I had with Alistair and Duncan, but that didn't lessen my feelings for him, and his feelings for me were strong enough that I could sense them.

I watched him as, with extraordinary dexterity, he turned the tiny blade in his claws, laying it on the anvil, hammering it flat, then folding the metal, heating it with his breath, then flattening it out again, shaping the edge. As I watched, I realized that I no longer saw a dragon when I looked – or, at least, I saw a dragon, but it was Callum.

Human or dragon, it was Callum.

And human or dragon, I found him equally attractive.

There was something about watching him at work like this that I found deeply sexy. I felt Duncan nudge me playfully in the ribs and I blushed. I still wasn't quite as comfortable with this situation as they were, still found it odd to think that I could sleep with all of them and there would be no recriminations or jealousy. There was something to be said for it as a way of doing things, but it still weirded me out a bit. Perhaps that uncertainty showed in my face because Duncan kissed me and whispered in my ear.

“Don’t fight it, love.”

I shook my head. “I won’t. I’m just getting used to... how you do things." My eyes moved from Duncan's achingly handsome face to Callum at work.

When the sword was finished, I laid it between the pages of the book and placed my hand on the cover. The men did the same, covering my hand with theirs. Then the males still in human form shifted, one after another, their massive claws on top of my tiny hand, on top of the book, and on top of the sword. That was the spell—a spell of protection. Whether or not it had worked I would not know until the battle.

There was another spell I wanted to try. One that would give me strength, but the idea of it made me a little queasy and yet, in that dark corner of my mind that seemed to have flourished since I arrived here, excited.

“Sooo, apparently, I’ve got to drink your blood," I explained to the guys, expecting some sort of reaction.

They took the announcement far more prosaically than I had expected.

"Whose?"

"All of ours, of course."

"You don't know that. You didn't read the book. It's not a stupid question."

"If it's just one of us, then which one?"

"I think, even if the spell only requires blood from one of us, she should drink all our blood. Just to be fair."

"And to make sure it works."

"Sure, that, too."

"It's all of your blood," I cut into one of the weirdest arguments I had ever heard—and I had heard some odd ones recently. "All of your blood."

Specifically, it was the blood of my beloveds. Dragon magic centered around love, and always used the word “beloved” in the plural—making the assumption that a female would have more than one. There was something mystical about love to them, it allowed them a closeness that went beyond intimacy and into empathy, close to telepathy. Love to a dragon was more than a promise, it was a state of being, you couldn't fake it, you couldn't deny it. As someone who had been with her share of jerks in the past, the dragon way of doing things seemed very appealing. Love was magic, it should be treated as such. The thought made me glow from the inside out.

"Individually or all mixed together?"

"Don't know. Should probably check the book."

They were still chattering about me drinking their blood as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Only MacKenzie had the insight to ask the important question.

"What does it do?"

"Makes me stronger," I replied.

"Stronger how?"

"The book wasn't specific," I admitted. "But stronger has got to be good, right?"

MacKenzie nodded, but I could not help thinking that there was something on his mind.

A few minutes later, I watched as Duncan sliced a blade across his thumb and dribbled some of his blood into a goblet.

"Is that enough?"

"Just a few drops is fine." I smiled back.

"Keep the change."

Callum was next, then Alistair, and finally MacKenzie, who then passed the goblet to me with solemn ceremony. I looked down at the red pool in the bottom.

This was gross. I mean, seriously; blood drinking? That could hardly be... hygienic. And yet, I wanted it, too.

"Drink it while it’s warm," said Duncan, making MacKenzie shake his head in despair.

I nodded and gulped down the blood of the Dragon Shifters before I could change my mind.

It was sweeter than I expected, complex and murky but not at all unpleasant. They all watched me, as if waiting for bulging muscles to explode from my arms.

They didn't.

I couldn't feel anything much happening, in fact. Which was rather disappointing.

"How do you feel?" asked MacKenzie.

I considered the question. "Hungry."

"How can you be hungry?" asked Duncan. "You just had the blood of four dragons."

But as we ate a short while later in the dining hall, I noticed two things happening. The first was the empathetic link I had felt between myself and these men since I got here seemed suddenly deeper. It was nothing clear, nothing definite, just a sense.

Duncan made a joke and I felt his exhilaration when the others laughed, and also felt the others' enjoyment of the joke, jostling alongside my own.

MacKenzie smiled at me and the warmth of his feeling, the protectiveness he felt for me, washed over me.

A pang from Alistair told me that Catriona had crossed his mind just a moment before he looked at me and a rush of pure love washed over me.

I felt it all.

Their desire for me, their love for me, and their fear for me. But I also felt the brotherly love between them, the sense of belonging to something bigger than myself. I felt the bond that held together the clan MacKenzie and knew that now I was part of that bond.

The second thing I noticed was that, though I ate well, I did not get any less hungry, and the realization came upon me that it was not a hunger coming from my stomach, and not one that could be sated with food.

"Ella?" MacKenzie looked at me as if he could read my mind, and I was struck again with how handsome he was.

They were all so perfect for me, so handsome, so brave and strong… So mine. It all made sense to me now, and any lingering embarrassment over the idea of communal love was easily brushed away by feelings that had always been there, but which were now strengthened by blood, by understanding, and by the bond of belonging.

"I'm not hungry for food."

My words were blunt and to the point, but at a time like this—we were going to war in the morning—there was no time to do more than speak plainly.

"I'm hungry for you. For my mates."