Embers (Scales 'N' Spells 4)

Gunter tightened his arms around Nikki and rolled them onto their back. “Be careful with that old talk. I’ll have you know I’m in my prime now as a dragon.”

Stretching along Gunter, Nikki wrapped their arms around his neck and hooked a leg on his hip. “And what kind of a recovery time does a dragon in his prime need?”

Gunter could only lift his brows in surprise, his tongue completely tied at the sexy nymph in his arms.

“I’m thinking you need to fuck me now. So I can properly compare and figure out which I like best.”

Gunter captured Nikki’s puffy lips on a growling kiss while his dragon trumpeted with joy in his head. Yes, they were in agreement. He finally felt perfectly in sync with the person in his arms. They’d each found their mate, knew they belonged to each other, and there were no doubts throwing them out of step.

It was, in a word, blissful.

And entirely sexy. Gunter was all too happy to wallow in this moment with his mate.

Nikki didn’t know why Cameron had gathered them together. It wasn’t just Nikki but Lina as well, and they were all sitting in Cameron’s workroom.

Normally, a mage’s workroom had a lot of herbs, spell ingredients, cauldrons—the usual. Cameron’s seemed more a hodgepodge of spell ingredients and machinery. Anyone into steampunk would take one look at this room and explode into an orgasm of happiness. Nikki had heard Cameron was an engineer by trade before discovering he was a mage. Looking at this room, that was totally believable. And Nikki was super glad they hadn’t been in this room on their initial investigation of mage workrooms—it would have sent them running for the hills.

The broken device Dimitri had brought back to Burkhard lay on Cameron’s table, looking very sad indeed. Nikki knew it all too well and stared at the machine in disgust, their skin crawling in memory of it being used on them. Cameron wouldn’t mind if Nikki took a sledgehammer to that thing, right?

Cameron gave them both a smile, expression warm and inviting. “Thanks for coming to talk to me. Something’s nagging at me, and I want a confirmation. Nikki, I suspect something like this machine was used on you?”

“Pretty regularly,” Nikki answered sourly. “I can destroy this later, right?”

“Absolutely. It’s not like we have any use for it. Explode it to your heart’s content.”

Oooh, explosions. Now there was a good idea. Nikki immediately started scheming.

“But the machine itself brings up a question.” Cameron’s attention bounced between them as he spoke, leaning over the table with arms braced on the stainless-steel surface. “Lina, from what I’ve seen, the Jaeggi use very limited spell ingredients. Nikki said the storerooms were never very large, something about the size of this room. Is that right?”

She dipped her head cautiously. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Now, see, I find that very, very curious. Look all around me, the variety of the spell ingredients I have. And I don’t even have a tenth of the common spell ingredients in here. This is for my personal use. But you’re telling me your entire clan was satisfied with this amount of spell ingredients?”

Nikki blinked, then looked around Cameron’s workroom with more care, evaluating. It was true, there were only about three hundred bottles and packages of elements in here. Lisette’s workroom had double the amount. Put in that perspective, it was very strange. As nomadic as the Jaeggi were, surely they couldn’t manage to do much with such a limited supply.

Lina’s eyes swept around the room once before coming back to Cameron. “It’s true, I’ve seen more elements here than I ever have before. More variety, too. I just assumed it was because the Burkhards are richer than my family. And you don’t have to move around, so you can stockpile things.”

“Is it just that, though? It can’t just be a matter of wealth. It’s not like we can buy spell ingredients. We have to harvest and grow them just like your family must need to. Magical stores aren’t a thing that exist right now.”

“Oh. I guess that’s true.” Lina looked around the room again, assessing. “But the way you do magic is totally different from us, too. I guess it makes sense.”

Cameron leaned in further. “Yes, that. Explain it to me better. How do the Jaeggi do magic?”

“It’s not like you do it. I’ve never seen someone combine so many spell ingredients and then just speak words and make things happen.” Lina gestured toward herself with a wave of her hand. “Every time Sora works on me, it takes me by surprise. I keep expecting him to pull out a device of some sort, but it never happens. Your workroom is the first one I’ve seen that looks more normal.”

Cameron’s eyes narrowed on her face, the cogs spinning in his head. “So this looks normal to you? All of this machinery?”