Embedded Files
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.”
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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: https://www.emilycarringtonauthor.com/
Emily on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emily.carrington.370
Emily on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CarringtonEmily
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
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