LGBTQ, Shapeshifters, Polyamorous
Date Published: September 12, 2025
Two dragons are pulled into a murder mystery when their lover is
targeted.
The blind grandson of the world’s most powerful dragon matriarch wants a
male and female dragon in his bed. He’s bold enough to get what he
wants. Unfortunately, so is the serial killer hunting his family.
A male-female land dragon couple long for their matriarchal society to be
equal across the board. As they fight for their needs, they meet the water
dragon who will change their lives.
Now a serial killer has these three in his sights.
EXCERPT
There had been another death, this one of a female dragon Joel had never heard
of. She was a distant relative, though, a water dragon who lived in Central
America, trying to stay under the radar, as it were, by thriving in the
coastal waters of Costa Rica. Or at least she had been thriving. Lady
Claudette had called to warn their mother to keep Joel and Jules close.
“Rumor has it this monster is on the move north again.”
Joel Junior, whose name was pronounced in the Spanish style, Ho-el,
hadn’t actually meant to disregard his grandmother’s orders, but
his twin, Jules, was out swimming and Joel didn’t want anything to
happen to him. Jules was an impulsive dragon, and he would have probably gone
swimming even if he’d been there to hear the phone call.
With Jules most likely already in the water, Joel couldn’t use his sense
of smell to find his twin. Instead, because Jules wouldn’t give a crap
about a telepathic sending -- wouldn’t bother to reply, in other words
-- Joel stripped on the Alaskan shore, shivering slightly even though it was
May and the ice here had largely melted. He assumed his scaly form, all eight
feet of sapphire-blue scales, and walked into the water. For humans, he
understood, this would have been a Polar Swim despite the fifty-degree
weather, but for him, it felt like coming home. Eyes open but blind, he
submerged completely and used his other sense, the one honed by years of
blindness and necessity, and sought his brother’s large presence in the
water. It was almost like sonar, but not quite, being a combination of sound
and psychic sense.
He encountered a pod of orcas closer in to shore than usual. He knew them to
be members of the dolphin family rather than narwhals because of the amount of
water they displaced. Orcas were almost twice the typical narwhal’s
length. Now using his telepathy because the sea mammals disrupted his ability
to “listen” to the water beyond them, he reached beyond them to
see what had driven them toward the land. Orcas weren’t afraid of much.
He found his brother and another dragon devouring a school of fish. He swam
toward them, giving the pod a wide margin even though he wasn’t a threat
to them. Either the orcas could sense the dragons’ magic or they knew
something the dragons didn’t know about the deeper water. With the
enigmatic and relatively new interlopers into the Alaskan waters, it was hard
to tell. Unlike narwhals, which had shifters among their numbers, Joel
didn’t know if that was true of any other sea-going mammal.
He approached and recognized the shape of his brother’s mind. He sent
out a blast of sound, a snort through his nose, and realized the other dragon,
whom he’d taken for their friend Jean Pierre, was a female dragon. His
brother wasn’t hunting, then, or not just hunting. Like Joel himself,
Jules was bisexual, although he mostly flirted only with female dragons.
Jules snorted back at him and flicked his tail, stunning several fish. These
he gobbled up before heading farther out into the bay. The female dragon went
with him.
Joel vaguely recognized her as a distant cousin and wondered at his initial
assessment. Water dragons weren’t exactly inbred, but they were
connected by strong ties that meant they couldn’t lightly date those who
might even bear a strand of similar DNA.
Deciding his brother wouldn’t listen just now, and telling himself no
dragon had yet been accosted while in the water, he used his sense of the
current to lead him back toward land.
Surfacing, he shifted back to human and walked out of the Arctic Ocean. If any
human had seen him, doubtless they would have screamed, or run to get him a
blanket. But there were no humans here in this part of Alaska. Sparsely
populated as the state was, this little cove and the land that touched it was
private property, where no one except the sons of Lady Nicole and all the
servants played. Joel’s and Jules’s grandmother hadn’t even
been here, afraid as she was that whoever was killing members of her family
would find their way here.
Joel used to wonder if she thought he and his twin, nearly seventy years old,
couldn’t take care of themselves. Yes, they were blind, but, no, that
didn’t make them helpless. The two of them hadn’t been permitted
to leave the area around the palace for over a dozen years.
He made his way to the large rock where he’d left his white cane. But
when he was a stone’s throw from the place he always used to hold his
clothes and cane, he sensed someone there. He paused, listening. He heard
nothing. He reached out telepathically and found a shielded mind that he
didn’t recognize.
“You’re Joel,” the stranger with an American accent said,
although he pronounced Joel’s name correctly.
Wary, Joel took a step back. Despite his bravado of a moment ago, he was
anxious. This male dragon was a stranger to him.
Male dragon? He processed that knowledge, realizing he’d gained as much
from scent as psychic feel. “Who are you?”
“I guess I’m your uncle.”
That didn’t comfort Joel, not in the slightest. “What are you
doing here?” Was someone in their family killing other dragons?
He’d heard stories of dragons who ate others of their kind.
He tried to calm himself. If this was indeed the one stalking his family, he
sounded awfully casual. Not at all like a serial killer, in other words.
Although, beyond reading braille books and listening to the television crime
shows, how would Joel know what a mass murderer sounded like?
“I’m trying to decide if I’m really the best person to be
guarding you and your brother.” He shifted on the rock, the sound of
denim scraping against granite making Joel take a second step back.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Taking out my cell phone. It’s time I let your mother know her
defenses were easier to breach than she thinks.”
Joel gained his eight feet of height, putting on his scales. If this was the
one who’d been threatening his family, the last thing Joel wanted to do
was present him with an easy target. He channeled all his telepathic ability
into a single word and sent it to Jules. Danger. Then he settled himself for
hand-to-hand fighting.
“Why are you…” The other male dragon sounded flummoxed.
“I’m not a threat to you. I’m here to protect you.”
About the Author
Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender
women’s speculative fiction. Seeking a world made of equality, she
created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its
problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host
of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires. And in the
contemporary world she’s named “Sticks & Stones,” Emily
has vowed to create small towns where prejudice is challenged by a passionate
quest for equality. Find her on Facebook at Shapeshifter Central or on her
website.
Author Links
Author’s Website
Emily on Facebook
Emily on Twitter
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
Pre-Order Today
