A Tale Of Two Dragons (Dragon Kin 0.2)(60)

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-f*ck 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.