The lovely Holly Day is back on the blog today. It’s always great to have her here, but I’m happy she keeps her dog out of my blog space. You’ll understand when you read her post. Welcome, Holly! 😘
Hello, everyone! Thank you, lovely Nell, for allowing me back on the blog 🥰
If you haven’t seen me around before, I’m Holly Day, and I write MM romance stories for all the special little days out there. You know, all those days you wonder why they exist. They’re around to tickle my muse, that’s why.
What’s your take on wet socks? Did I hear anyone in favour of them? Nah, didn’t think so. I have a hard time believing many like to walk around in wet socks.
I hate walking around in wet socks, and I’m assuming some of you seldom have to deal with it, but I live with a slobbery dog. He doesn’t drool, you never see any slime hanging out of the corner of his mouth. It’s not that kind of slobber. It’s that when he drinks, he doesn’t swallow the last mouthful, and he doesn’t close his mouth when he walks away from the water bowl.
My kitchen deserves one of those Caution! Slippery! signs with a sliding stick figure.
So I’m either wearing slippers or I’m barefoot. I can stand wet feet if I have to, but I refuse to rush into the kitchen to get something only to realise (too late, always too late!) that he’s been there slobbering again. That feeling of the sock fabric soaking up the cold liquid. Do you feel it? *shudder*
If you’ve read this far, I applaud you 😆 and you’re probably wondering why the heck I’m babbling about wet socks. Well, you see. I’ve written a story called Mated to the Fire Dragon, and I wrote it to celebrate No Socks Day – see the connection. Crazy days to tickle the muse, wet socks equals no socks, and the dragons are just for fun LOL
In Mated to the Fire Dragon, we have Albus, who is a dragon shifter and has a bit of a foot problem. Whenever he gets nervous or agitated or startled or whatever, his claws pop out. This makes wearing socks and shoes a problem.
While this bit is a bit comical, I don’t want you to go into this story thinking it’s gonna be a story that makes you laugh. It has a few moments that might leave you smiling, but it’s overall a pretty serious story (when we’re not dealing with socks, of course.)
Zale has come to Edge to die. He doesn’t have much time left but wanted to see where the human realm ends before he passes. Seeing a dragon is a bonus, being given a miracle is beyond anything he ever could hope for.
It deals with illness and grief, but no one dies. There is a happy ending and some fluffy moments.
Mated to the Fire Dragon
Zale wanted to see a dragon. He never expected a miracle.
Zale Hagan is dying. He doesn’t have many days left, but he wants to see a dragon before he leaves the world behind. As a fisherman, he’s seen where land ends many times, but he wants to visit the town where the human realm ends and the dragon realm begins.
Albus the Abomination is a blacksmith on Dragon Row. As a white dragon, he has no status and does his best to keep out of the way of the other dragons living there. But one day Zale steps into his smithy, and everything inside Albus catches fire.
Albus can tell Zale is very ill, but he can’t let him die. Dragon mates don’t get sick, and they live for a long time. Albus tries his best to get one of the other dragons to mate with Zale, but when no one wants to, Albus is at a loss. He could breathe fire into him, but then Zale would have to live his entire life with a white dragon, and no one wants that, do they?
NOTE: Mated to the Fire Dragon takes place on the same street as The Book Dragon’s Lair but can be read as a standalone story.
Paranormal Gay Romance: 38,392 words
Buy links
JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/MatedToTheFireDragon
Excerpt:
Albus watched Zale from the doorway. Claws grew on his feet, but he ignored them. There had been no more customers. It was how it usually was. Sometimes he closed the shop and went into the smithy instead. Standing around waiting for someone to buy his non-sparkly products was a waste of time, but he was reluctant to move away from where he could watch Zale.
The way his face twisted in his sleep had fear gripping Albus’ soul. He shouldn’t care about a human. They were everywhere, overflowing the earth, one less wouldn’t make a difference, but Zale… He’d talked to Albus, had walked into the smithy because he was curious about what he was doing. No one ever cared about what Albus was doing.
Beads of sweat were forming on Zale’s skin like tiny uncut diamonds. Not healthy. Albus gritted his teeth. Who knew about human medicine? He wouldn’t ask the reverend. They had healers on this side of the realm. He’d heard talk about them. He wasn’t sure if he trusted them, though.
He flicked his tongue and ran it along the roof of his mouth to scent Zale properly. He was dying. The stabbing pain in his chest was silly. He shouldn’t care about a random human, but Zale was full of life, and yet it was quickly slipping away.
With a sigh, he headed for the door. There were humans on Dragon Row. He never talked to them, and they never talked to him, but there were two working in The Book Dragon’s Lair, and they had a hatchling. He couldn’t go near Ryu the Ravenous. He might be scarred, but he was still a black dragon, and Albus was as far from a black dragon as you could come.
Nithe the Nefarious knew the humans. He could perhaps ask Nithe.
He went around to the back of the house and walked past the two houses between his and Nithe’s. No one walked back here. All the humans stuck to Dragon Row and didn’t venture outside the cobblestoned lane they deemed safe.
With a deep breath, he walked through the small gap between Nithe’s house and the one next to his—Saxon the Sinful’s. Looking around to make sure no one was watching him, he hurried up the steps and into the pawnshop.
“Yes?”
The dim lighting had Albus blinking to give his vision a chance to adjust. Nithe watched him from behind the counter, his eyes blue until Albus took a step closer, then they shifted to the amethyst the humans found so alluring. Claws appeared on Albus’ feet right before his eyes changed and his teeth grew sharper. He didn’t want any conflict, but few could stand the ugliness of a white dragon. And by partly shifting, he’d shown his ruby eyes, allowing Nithe to see his irises didn’t have any pigment to speak of. Abomination.
Albus looked away and blinked again to force his eyes back into their human shape.
“Albus?”
Albus’ head whipped around on its own accord and shock reverberated through him. Nithe had spoken his name? And shortened it to only the first.
“Nithe.” He bowed his head in respect which had Nithe snorting.
“What are you doing here?”
Albus slowly filled his lungs with incense-laced air. The scent reminded him of home, and he wondered if Nithe had brought it from the dragon realm. “You know humans.”
Nithe put the pen he’d been holding on the counter and studied him. “I know Egil, Liz, and Ruby the Rapturous.”
A dragon name on a human? “The hatchling?” He bit his tongue as he realized he’d spoken out loud.
Nithe’s face split into a grin. “Yes, our hatchling.”
Our? This time Albus’ lips trapped whatever stupid questions he wanted to ask.
“I have a human—”
“You mated?” Then Nithe narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t shared your flame.”
Albus winced. He might have dreamed about sharing his flame, but he wouldn’t subject Zale to that level of degradation.
“No. I have a human in my home who’s sick. When Ruby the Rapturous gets sick, who do you go to for help?”
Nithe stood unmoving for several moments. “She… eh… doesn’t get sick.”
Humans got sick all the time. They were frail beings. “She’s human.”
“Yes, but… If you want to make a human healthy, you should share your breath with them. And if you don’t want to share your breath, then I think there are herbs. Liz took some a few months ago when she had a fever, but it took forever before it helped.”
Albus didn’t think Zale could wait for long. “Do you know what kind of herbs and where I could get them?”
Nithe walked into the room behind the counter, and soon Albus heard him talk to someone. He waited, growing more and more uncomfortable with each second passing. He didn’t want to ask for help. He didn’t want them to know Zale was in his home.
Nithe stepped out into the shop again. “Liz will come to your place in a few minutes. She’ll bring what you need.” His eyes shifted amethyst and a forked tongue slid out between sharp teeth. “Pay her.”
Albus nodded.
“She refuses to let us pay for her things, but she’s doing you a favor, so you can pay her without her throwing a fit.”
Albus didn’t know what he was talking about, and he wouldn’t ask. It was too much like an argument between mates or at least family members for him to get involved in. Instead, he thanked Nithe and hurried out of the pawnshop.
Fear of finding the house empty had him hurrying down Dragon Row instead of walking around to the back. Would Zale have left?
About Holly Day
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
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Nell Iris 