Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

minutes before he would demand we either get to business or leave. “Perhaps we could get started without Drake and Aisling?”
    “I would prefer that we wait, but since your mate appears to be anxious to leave, I’m agreeable to begin the discussion. Kostya?”
    “We might as well. No good will come of it whether we do it now or later,” he said with dark foreboding, gesturing toward a door.
    I looked at the door, glanced at Baltic, and spun on my heel to march in the opposite direction, throwing open the double doors that led to a room filled with tall, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling bookcases, warmed by amber pools of sunlight that poured in through the mullioned windows. “Our library.” I sighed with happiness. The furniture wasn’t, of course, the same as I remembered, but the way the light streamed in through the windows, the peculiar quality of it as it filled the room, swamped me with the sweetest of memories.
    “ My library now, I believe,” Kostya said with unnecessary emphasis on the pronoun. “I will allow the meeting to be held here, since you seem to desire it.” His gaze shifted to Baltic. “It is a courtesy I am happy to extend to you, Ysolde, despite the fact that you and your murderous mate are at war with the weyr.”
    “Oh, for the love of the virgin . . . will you please stop trying to bait Baltic?” I snapped, tired of all the posturing the wyverns felt it necessary to adopt. “He’s not so uncontrolled that he’s going to fall for that.”
    Baltic lunged forward so fast he was just a blur. The resounding thud of the two men going down in the middle of the hardwood floor, accompanied by the tinkle of a couple of glass knickknacks sent flying as they crashed into two occasional tables, left me with the intense desire to do a little smiting, but I managed to hold on to my temper.
    “You make it very difficult to convince everyone that you’re not the barbarian they call you,” I told Baltic as he punched Kostya in the face while trying to throttle him with his other hand.
    Kostya shifted into dragon form, Baltic following suit.
    Another occasional table, this one a pretty octagonal inlaid with rosewood, slammed into the wall. “No dragon form!” I yelled, looking with dismay at the remains of the table. “Human form only, and if you break anything nice, I’ll have more than a few things to say to both of you.”
    “You’re going to let them fight?” May asked, jumping aside when both men, now back in human form, rolled around beating the tar out of each other. “Is that wise? Mightn’t things get out of hand?”
    “I don’t think so. I figure it’ll clear the air a bit.”
    May looked like she was going to say something, but to my surprise, Gabriel spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mayling. I would like to say I’m above such things, but the opportunity is one I really don’t wish to miss.”
    After a moment of surprise, she gave him a lopsided smile and gestured toward the combatants. “If you really must.”
    “I must,” he said, giving her a swift kiss before flinging himself into the fray. May and I moved over to the door, out of the way of the whirlwind of three men who were accompanied by oaths, snarls, grunts of pain, and language that would make a sailor blush.
    “I’ve never seen the dragons come to physical blows so much as when Baltic is around,” May commented, wincing in sympathy when Baltic, overjoyed that Gabriel was now on his list of people to beat up, landed a solid right to Gabriel’s jaw.
    “He’s a very primal sort of dragon,” I said, watching dispassionately but cheering to myself when Kostya crashed to the floor with a fine spray of blood. “No ganging up on Baltic, now, boys,” I told them sharply when it looked like Kostya and Gabriel, who had a history of animosity, had decided to forge a truce in order to tromp Baltic.
    “What on earth . . . are they fighting again?”
    May and I turned as the doors behind us were opened. Aisling and Drake stood staring in amazement.
    “They seem to like it,” I told her. “I suppose it releases pent-up emotions. Now that you’re here, I’ll stop them.”
    “Not yet,” Drake said, peeling off his jacket and handing it to Aisling, his green eyes glinting like a cat’s.
    We all watched with utter astonishment as Drake, with a battle cry that would have done a warrior proud, leaped over the couch and launched himself onto Baltic’s back.
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake . . . have you ever met