Chapter 17: Like a Honeybee to a Flowerbush

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"You've gone too far, Summerdream!" After her plan to use the male healer as her minion to kill Uvie and take back his heart failed, Tania fled from Auberon's wrath. It was only after some days searching the furthest corners of the realms of dream that Auberon thought to look much closer, into the dreams he holds dearest, those shaped by himself and Uvie together.

"It is you that has gone too far!" Tania shouts back at him, "Giving yourself to a mortal! All I have done is try to save you from your folly. You may think it's just a harmless dalliance, but I've seen how she is changing you. And I had to stop it before the Auberon I know is gone forever."

"You are wrong, Tania; I know very well that this is no harmless dalliance, and I see the way Uvie has changed me, continues to change me every moment that I am part of her."

"For one," he continues as he knocks her back with his thought alone, "She has given me the quality of mercy. If it were not for that, things would go much harder for you now." Auberon weaves a spell around Tania before he ejects her from his dream, "You will know love, Tania. When you wake from this dream, you will burn with love for the first person your eyes light upon. You will not be able to rest without his touch, you will do anything to feel his lips on yours, to be with him. You may take this as a curse, a punishment, but if you are wise you will learn from the lessons love will teach you."

Tania wakes from her slumber confused, not remembering where she is or why she chose a place frequented mostly by dragons as her resting place. 

As she looks about her, Tania's eyes fall on a dragon, looking about him as though lost. Even at this distance across the pond, Tania is struck by beauty and smitten with a desire unlike anything she's ever felt before.

It had been a long journey back from the new lands, and now that Tegan has arrived, he's unsure how to proceed. Before they all left, Aymeri was known to have made a nest with Riain and their fairies, but Tegan doesn't know the location of that nest.

His thoughts are interrupted by a fairy who approaches, and giggles as she tells him her name is Tania.

"Well met," Tegan says, gruff and reluctant, never having believed the day would come when her kind would be so confident as to approach his without fear. But that is the new way, and he will have to accept it if he's to stay here.

"Oh, you're injured!" Tania cries out when she notices the cut across his brow, "Let me take you to a healer!"

"I am a healer," Tegan says as he pulls her caressing hand from his cheek, "It was much worse before, and it's healing now. Your concern is unnecessary."

Despite his pushing her away, her hands fly to his face again as soon as he releases her. "It would be a shame if it left a scar on your beautiful face," she purrs, leaning close to brush her breasts against him.

Tegan has reached the limit of what he can tolerate, and he grabs her wrist roughly. "Leave it alone," he growls.

"I was just...I just want help!" she pleads.

Her eyes, large like a doe and full of sadness, move Tegan to some kind of pity, and he lets go of her arm. "Do you know where the dragon Aymeri makes camp with his fairy?" he asks her, offering her the chance to help him in a way that he actually needs, if that's truly what she wishes.

"Oh, yes!" she exclaims, throwing her arms around him in an enthusiastic embrace, "Come with me, I'll take you to them!"

"The way you closed the hunters' wounds," Ardax says, true awe in his voice, "Your magic is unlike anything I've ever seen."

It had been a bad hunt, the prey had turned predator, and several of the hunters were gored by antlers before the others could take the rampaging beast down. Though Uvie prefers not to show the full extent of her powers, many hunters would have died that day if she had not done everything she could to close the wounds, stop the bleeding. After their work was done, the healers went together to the water to wash the blood from their hands.

Uvie stays silent, hoping she can leave the subject of her magic behind.

"With such power...I fool myself to think I am capable of offering the slightest help. You don't need me," Ardax says, his voice heavy with sadness. He'd lost everything he loved, all that he had left was his ability to serve the people. 

"That's not true," Uvie protests, "I have been given a great magic, but I haven't your way of talking to people. Magic cannot do everything, and you are very much needed."

Ardax shakes his head, "The spirits taught me how to see inside a person, how to listen and understand. You will learn that in time, as well."

Uvie glances away, into the water. Her 'spirit', Auberon has given her much, but she'll never gain understanding of her own kind from him, as he so often struggles to understand her. "I am not a true Spirit Talker, Ardax," she says, hurriedly, getting it out before she can change her mind. In the past few days she's come to trust and rely on Ardax and he's become her only true friend amongst the people. It is time she trusted him with the truth, she decides, and tells him the whole story, from her mother capturing Ico to her swallowing of Auberon's heart in the spirit realm. "And so I am bonded to him, like a spirit guide, but more, as he and his magic reside inside me. And yet less, too, as he isn't like the spirits of our tribe at all. He says he is 'fae'," she finishes, looking nervously to her friend for his reaction.

Ardax listens intently, as is his way. "My spirit has been uneasy since we arrived here," he says, "Now I understand why."

"Please, you won't tell anyone, you won't---"

A wave of nausea hits her, and Uvie rises, running behind a tree to vomit.

"That's the third time today," Ardax observes, "And it was the same yesterday."

"I don't understand," Uvie says when the nausea is gone, "I have no other signs of illness. What is wrong with me?"

"You have no fever," Ardax says, touching her face, "I have seen this before...many times. You are with child."

Aymeri rises in a defensive stance when Tegan approaches.

"Don't be afraid," Tania whispers in Tegan's ear, "It's just posturing. Dragons are a lot like birds, puffing out their chests and displaying their feathers..."

"Posturing? Dragons are nothing like...birds," Tegan sputters the word in disgust, more than a little insulted by the fairy's observation, "And I'm not afraid of Aymeri. I'm a dragon, and his elder."

"Tania, come," Ico says, prying the fairy off the dragon's arm.

"But, I want to stay with Tegan," Tania protests, her gaze lingering at her beloved.

"Trust me on this," Ico says, "The last thing you want is to be hanging on when dragons are conferring about dragon business."

"I am Tegan," Tegan says beginning the traditional formal greeting required when a male enters another nest, even though this is no proper nest without a female dragon, "Formerly Third to Scaea."

"Formely?" Aymeri asks. Scaea was one of the females that took her nest to follow Aithne, and as far as Aymeri knew all her mates had gone with her.

"Aye," Tegan says, "I am nothing now, a dragon without a nest. So, I've come to join you, if you'll have me."

"I would, gladly, but your brother Seirian is my second. Females never take a blood brother of one her mates. I could speak to Tearhne of this, but she's grown..weary...of being the first to break tradition." What Aymeri doesn't speak of is how strained his relationship is to his mate at the moment. Though she has decided not to cast him out, they haven't be able to talk as they once used to, without recrimination, without anger, and he only goes back to the nest to see his son and his brothers.

"I'm not looking to mate with Tearhne," Tegan says, "What you did, Aymeri, standing at the council, daring to speak the truth, that was admirable. I am here to follow you, not your mate."

"You left with Aithne, didn't you?" Aymeri asks.

"When the council was done, I had hoped that was an end to it. I believed the old ways were best, but if the council decided otherwise, I could live with that decision. But when Aithne put out her call to leave, Scaea answered. And so I went with my nest, my mate, to live the old way somewhere else. But things very quickly changed. We had no council, only Aithne to lead us, and though she spoke of tradition and law, she set us on a course that would change everything we were. Dragons always kept to ourselves, didn't we? Yet, she became aggressive, she said we would maintain our secrecy by destroying anything that might see us and know us for what we were. She ordered us to attack the camps of the mortals who lived in the lands she'd chosen for our home. She set us to burning their huts, taking them as prey. But they aren't prey, aren't simple beasts. You only have to look one in the eyes to see, they have intelligence. I watched as my mate took a woman and her young, and I could call myself mate to her no longer. And so I left, to return home," Tegan glances over at Kirwyn, the scars he bears, and he does not speak of the own beating he took when he informed his nest that he was leaving them. Tegan has not come back seeking pity. "Our old ways were good," he continues, "But I have seen that change is unavoidable, and I have no choice but to follow Aithne's path or yours, Aymeri." 

"He's so handsome, and rugged," Tania babbles on, praising the many qualities of her new found love.

"You just saw him in the forest, and fell in love?" Shayeleigh asks, unable to hide the doubt in her voice.

"Wasn't it the same for you? Both of you? Why should it be any different for me?" Tania protests.

Ico and Shayeleigh share a worried glance, neither of them wanting to point out the vast differences in their personalities. Ico finally breaks the short but tense silence, "He doesn't seem to return your feelings." Though she'd only seen them together for a brief moment, it was enough to see the way Tegan shrugged her off and tried to maintain some distance as Tania hovered around him, pouring affection on him that he clearly did not want.

"Nonsense," Tania says, "He does love me, I know. But he's a dragon, and too proud to admit it."

Ico and Shayeleigh exchange glances again. "I think she's been ensorcelled," Shayeleigh says under her breath, and Ico nods in agreement.

"But by who?" Ico wonders.

"Who but Auberon," is Shayeleigh's answer.

They mostly meet in dreams, but Auberon responded quickly to her call, her insistence that he come to her in person, to meet her in the spot where they had first met, the day he was looking for Ico.

"I am with child," she tells him as soon as she has him in her arms.

Auberon has no words at first. After so many lovers in the long span of his years, that the first to bear him a child would be a mortal girl..."Of course," he muses, "Your kind is more fertile than mine. You would have to be, because of your mortality. If you weren't, your kind would die out quickly..."

"Auberon," Uvie calls him back to the moment, "I am carrying your child. You must take me with you, to live with you."

"I cannot," he says, caressing her cheek, "You cannot live amongst the fae. You belong with your kind."

"But I don't," Uvie protests, "I belong with you; we belong together."

"We are together, always, Uvie," he says, his voice low and seductive, "I am inside you."

"Auberon," she gasps, trying to maintain her focus. But it's a futile attempt, his charm is irresistible, and when he magics away their clothes and presses her close to him, she can only succumb to the pleasure he offers.

"I will never abandon you," he promises her as he lays her down in a bed of flowers.

"I am part of you always."

As the sun sets, Aymeri and Ico take to playing in the waters, behind the screen of reeds and cattails for privacy.

Shayeleigh and Riain have retreated to their tent, and Kirwyn has gone off in pursuit of his Arienh, leaving Tegan alone with Tania by the fire.

"You are a persistent one," he says gruffly as she wraps her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder.

"It is my love for you that drives me," she whispers, "I will die of love if you don't hold me and make me yours."

"As a healer, I can tell you, no one ever dies of love," Tegan says, trying unsuccessfully to wrest himself from her grasp. "Your friends say you are under spell," he adds.

"Oh, I am. Under the spell of your love," she murmurs as she slides her way around him. Like a serpent, he thinks, wrapping herself around him, choking him, "How can continue to deny me, when I love you so much?" she persists, her hand reaching down between his legs.

In the end, Tegan is just a male, and there's only so much he can bear before resisteance becomes futile.

"You're going to make me regret this, aren't you?" He asks as he lifts her in his arms to carry her into the forest.

"Never," she assures him, "I will love you until the end of time.

"I need you," she whispers hoarsely as he lays her down on the forest floor.

They make love through the night, fulfilling her insatiable need in as many ways as imaginable.

She continues whispering her words of love as she falls asleep wrapped around him.

In the hours before dawn, their camp is invaded again by the unicorn, bringing a pack of wild horses with them. The noises waken the two dragons and their fairy lovers, who come out to watch the spectacle.

The unicorn gazes at Shayeleigh, and her child begins to kick at her. "Oh," she gasps, "I think it's time"

 His horse companions have fled, but the unicorn remains, watching as Shayeleigh gives birth to her son.

"He's not a dragon," Riain observes as he holds his son for the first time. He snuggles the boy close to his chest, "He's beautiful. Like you," he whispers to Shayeleigh.

"We'll call him Ametair," Shayeleigh says, naming her son. The unicorn approaches one last time to look on their child before he runs off again.

"What do you think it means?" Riain asks her. 

"I can't say," she answers, "Unicorns are even more secretive than dragons. We know so little about them." That this one seemed to have come specifically to see their son born into the world is a mystery neither parent can comprehend.

"I knew I was going to regret this," Tegan groans as he wakes to find a threatening Tania looming over him,  preparing to cast some kind of magic on him.

"You seduced me, took advantage of me!" she shrieks.

"I think you've got that backwards," Tegan says with a wry smile

"Back off, Tania," Ico says, coming upon the couple at the right moment.

"He dared to touch me! Me! He must be punished!" Tania insists.

"You spent all of yesterday hovering about him like a honeybee to a flowerbush," Ico says, "He took nothing that wasn't thrust in his face and freely offered. I'm not surprised he wasn't able to resist, you were so persistent in your affection," Ico mentally chides herself for leaving Tania alone with the object of her lust, she should have seen how it would end. "Your anger should not be directed at Tegan, but at the one who put the spell on you."

"Auberon," Tania hisses, her memory coming back to her.

"Yes, Auberon," Ico says, unaware of what Tania had done to earn Auberon's wrath in the first place and thinking this spell was some prank of his. "We are not his playthings," she mutters in anger.