Betrothed to the Dragon Read online

  Ahh, the little lies we tell humans.

  Lucas looked up at me. “Lana is a computer genius. She’s the one who helped us find the home base of the Devourer.”

  Right. The Devourer. I turned away and looked out the window to the night sky.

  They were really going to do this. They were going to confront the monster of my childhood nightmares.

  “I’m Daniel,” said a voice to the left of me. I turned to the Milan-ready model who offered his hand to me and shook it. There was a similar light in his eyes that I was starting to recognize as draconic. “I’m the one flying the plane,” said Daniel.

  “We are so very clearly in the cockpit,” I said, taking his hand and making a show of looking at the conference table.

  Daniel pointed to the computer tablet underneath his arm. “It’s amazing what you can do with computers, especially technology from another world. Things like fly a plane remotely.”

  Right. Their home world had been so advanced it still made our current technology look rudimentary.

  “I heard you were a Justice,” said Daniel. “Don’t worry, I’ve hidden the magical silver.”

  “Magical silver?” said Lana, looking up. “I thought silver wasn’t magical.”

  “Daniel was trying to make a joke,” Lucas said.

  “And failing,” added Hunter.

  “Thanks for pointing that out, buddy,” said Daniel, tapping at his tablet.

  “Any time,” replied Hunter.

  Daniel looked at me. “We have a new plan.”

  “It’s a bullshit plan,” said Hunter, standing up. “You were right, Sophie,” he said as he stalked away from the area. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  What was going on? I wanted to run after him, but pride held me back.

  Daniel watched me with caution, as if I would suddenly wave my hands and suck his magic out or something. “We can’t save your grandmother, Sophie.”

  I gripped the soft black leather of the chair in front of me. Somehow, that wasn’t a surprise.

  Grandma was gone. I had felt it with the breaking of the wards that were supposed to stand even after her death.

  Sounds seemed to melt away and for a moment I felt as if something inside me was on the verge of rupturing.

  “Sophie?”

  I blinked, saw Daniel waving his hand in front of me. “Are you ok?”

  I blinked again, my mouth as dry as sand.

  I pulled out the chair and sat down. “She’s dead,” I said.

  To my surprise, Daniel shook his head. “No. We’ve got drone eyes inside the Devourer’s compound and we believe she’s still alive.”

  I was sure I had heard his words wrong, and yet I repeated them. “Alive?”

  “Yes. But that’s the problem.”

  I felt as if I should be screaming at him. But yet, the initial shock seemed to have numbed me to any rationale response. So calmly, as if I were divorced from emotion. “What do you mean?”

  Daniel pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “The Devourer means to use your grandmother to access the deep magical nodes under the Earth’s crust. It’s the same method she used to destroy our home planet. We can’t let her succeed.”

  Fury. It was there inside me, with its heat, its frenzy, and yet I held on to that stillness. I already knew where the dragon was going with this. But I needed to hear him say it. “So what is your plan?’

  Daniel looked at me, with compassion in his eyes. “You know what we’re going to have to do.”

  I took a deep breath and looked away.

  “I won’t stop you,” I said.

  “We need more than that. We need your help.”

  I snorted, shook my head. “You know what my answer will be.”

  Daniel tapped at his tablet. “If Hunter is right, you may be Earth’s first Justice.”

  “I’m not erasing my grandmother’s magic. That would kill her.”

  Daniel opened and then closed his mouth. “If your grandmother lives, then the Earth dies.”

  I blinked, and suddenly, I was in a space of white.

  Grandma, stood in front me in her favorite pink kimono. Her face had that ageless youth some women had with streak of white in her long dark hair. She looked down at me with a smile and took my hand, covered with paint specks and glitter.

  I looked at my shoes, and saw the rainbow ponies on them, my favorite pair from when I was six.

  “Sophie, I’m hiding this memory in your head. It’s kind of like a keyword, only, it’s set to reveal itself when you feel something I hope will never come. But if it does…

  Tears filled Grandma’s eyes.

  I have lost and loved. I’ve had an amazing run in my lifetime. But if there is ever a choice to be made between my life and your future, you must take mine. I know it will not be easy. But it is what your parents did for each other. And though your powers have yet to manifest, I see them in you. Your father’s strength. Your mother’s determination. They live within you.

  You can do it Sophie. Choose your future, not my life. That is my request.

  She sniffed, wiped her eyes and smiled. “Oh, and marry the dragon.”

  I blinked again, and realized that Daniel was still talking.

  “—but the Devourer is an ancient entity, but is what humans would now call an artificial intelligence. It learns from its past fights.”

  Grandma. She could enchant me, and program me as well as she could any human. The old fox always had her secrets.

  I thought of when we had gone camping and how she would curl around me in her fox form and we watched summer meteor showers together.

  It didn’t matter, because she was Grandma.

  “You are sealed to Hunter. The key to discovering the extent of your abilities will lie with him.” Daniel finally paused. “Will you help us?”

  I took a deep breath. “Let me think about it. Tell me where to find Hunter.”

  The plane was huge and luxurious, with wood-paneled walls, bespoke furniture, and private cabins scattered throughout. I knocked on three different doors, finding the mop closet, a bathroom, and a room of computer servers before I found what I hoped was Hunter’s room.

  I knocked on the closed door.

  No answer.

  I knocked again.

  “Hunter,” I said to the door. “It’s me.”

  The door opened by itself into small room with a vast bed. From his damp hair, and the towel wrapped around his waist, he had apparently just come out of the shower.

  I missed the Nihao Cat towel.

  The door slid closed behind me.

  “You’ve heard Daniel’s plan,” he said grimly.

  I took a seat on the edge of the bed since there were no chairs. “Yes.” I already knew what I was going to do. But somehow saying it would make it even more real.

  Hunter paused before saying slowly, “What if I offered you a chance at another safe house? Daniel has been wrong before.”

  I shook my head. Like everyone else non-human in my life, he thought I was too weak. “No. No more running.”

  He came toward me, all muscles and man, far too distracting in that towel of his. And yet, it was a relief to feel something other than shock and sorrow. I was beginning to think that his constantly being naked around me was a plot to scramble my brain. I opened and closed my hands. “I’m willing to try to learn. If you’re willing to help.”

  He snorted. “You think it’s that easy? The last Justice was killed thousands of years ago. And you’re shen, not dragon. Your magic is different.”

  “If you’re not willing to help, maybe I can ask someone else to seal with me. Or—”

  I let out a gasp as I was pinned to the bed underneath his thickly muscled, barely clothed body. “No,” he said, his voice strangely controlled, at complete contrast with the gold flaring in his eyes.

  I wiggled trying to free myself of him, but the press of his hips became even more insistent. The scent of him, the feel of him, t
he determination of his gaze, only confirmed how utterly lost I was when it came to him.

  “Hunter!” I dug my heels into the bed, trying to get up, but all I did was grind my hips against him. He made a rumbling noise as his cock hardened against me.

  “No,” he said again, and this time his voice had a harder edge.

  I know what I should say: There was no reason for us to remain betrothed. We no longer needed to adhere to a fake marriage imposed upon us as children.

  But as he stared at me with those golden eyes that seemed to mask a struggle within him, I realized something had irrevocably changed between us.

  Something that if given time could be... No, it was useless to even think such things, because we had no time. And we would probably all be dead within the next forty-eight hours.

  Forty-eight hours to live.

  “Okay, ” I said, because to say anything more would certainly jinx whatever possibilities we had left.

  He looked puzzled for a moment. His grip on my hands loosened. I touched his face, my fingertips drifting over his freshly shaved cheeks.

  “Okay,” he repeated slowly, almost more of a question than a statement. Hunter looked as if he were about to speak, maybe about this new strange thing between us.

  But that was a terrible idea. Because if he did, I didn’t know how I could possibly go through with Daniel’s plan and what had to be done.

  Making sure Grandma didn’t suffer.

  Marry the dragon.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled Hunter down in a kiss.

  For the tiniest moment, he was still with surprise.

  And then his hands were on my ass, pulling me against him, ripping open my jeans with his inhuman strength as if they were tissue paper. His hands and his mouth were everywhere, claiming my body with his hot, possessive touch. Mine mine mine, they said. I pulled the towel at his hips and his cock sprang free, so thick I couldn’t even fully close my hand around him. The thought of him inside me with that made my core clenched in delicious anticipation.

  “Tell me there’s no magic on this plane,” I gasped, because I didn’t want to destroy the plane like my grandmother’s wards

  “No magic,” he growled. “Justice,” he added, the curling influence of Draconic language leaking into his words. His hand went between my legs. I opened to him, trembling at the touch of his thumb against my clit, his fingers sliding deep inside.

  Why did he keep calling me that?

  And then I realized he wasn’t saying ‘Justice.’

  He was saying ‘just us.’

  “You’re so wet for me,” he said, the grin of a dragon claiming new treasure. I reached between my legs and smeared my juices all over his cock. He growled and pinned my hand to the bed, thrusting himself against my slit. “You’re going to make this end faster than it should if you keep doing that, Sophie.”

  I wrapped my legs against his hips, arching against him, urging the tip of him inside me. “I don’t care,” I said, my voice almost breathless. “I need you inside me now.”

  He thrusted hard. I bit his bicep to keep from screaming out. My sex clenched around him, and he kissed me as he began to move, every muscle bulging with effort as he held himself back. He withdrew slowly and then slammed back inside. I whimpered with the fullness of him. “So fucking tight,” he said. “I’d fuck you like this for the rest of my life.”

  Those words hit too close to reality. I can’t have it. I can’t have him, I thought, even as he was inside me thrusting, making me feel things more intimately and deeply than anyone else had. For a moment I felt hollow, because this, he might just be the one.

  I wouldn’t ever know. We just didn’t have time.

  His heated fingertips roamed my skin, leaving hot trails that made it easy to forget

  everything but opening to him. My inner magical self opened, needing his magic, needing his power. With each thrust he gave it to me, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more, needed more, and fuck, I needed it fast. All my words came out in a rush: “Hunterdon’tholdbackfuckmehard.”

  He paused, placed his forehead against mine, looking me in the eyes. “Okay,” he said gently.

  My heart stopped at the sight of his golden suddenly serious eyes, the ones that saw too much.

  And then he moved in a way that no mortal could for he was dragon and I was shen. I screamed from his powerful thrusts, faster and faster, filling me with heat, with fire. It was all I could do to hold on. His hands were on my waist, twisting me, as he fucked me and used me the way I wanted. I cried his name, and he snarled mine.

  His power exploded within me.

  And my magical inner self took it all, riding the wave of ecstasy and pleasure that was beyond human, beyond shen, beyond dragon because we were light, we were fire.

  10

  Gradually, I awoke. Hunter’s big warm body was curled around mine, my back against his chest, one of his legs around my thigh.

  There was no place in the world I would rather be.

  He stroked my forearm slowly.

  “Sealing…it’s not like that for everyone is it?”

  “No.”

  I turned to face him, propping myself on my elbow against the pillow. “But no magic was exchanged. I just took yours. Why are you not weakened?”

  He looked at my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb and brushing hair out of my eyes. “Magic isn’t like water in a glass. You can’t empty someone of magic. It’s more like…an emotion. You can feel something deeply. You can share that feeling. But just because you share that feeling doesn’t mean you have any less.”

  He closed his mouth abruptly as if he had said too much.

  He turned from me and sat up, placing his feet on the floor.

  It was better this way, I said to myself. I tried to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s a different understanding of magic than the shen have.” I paused and forced my thoughts onto a different track. “Wait, if that’s the case, how does a Justice erase magic?”

  Hunter stood up, picked up a tablet from the side table, and swiped. I tried to ignore how close his cock was to my face, wondered what it would be like to have him in my mouth.

  The heat simmering within me began to spark.

  Hunter kept his gaze on the computer. “In the stories, that’s what they did. But those stories are so old, that they’re more myth than history.” He raked his hand through his hair, muttering under his breath, “That symbol isn’t right. It’s not ‘energy-balancer,’ it’s something else.”

  I was so close to reaching out to him. “What?”

  He swiped at something on the screen. “I was never the best at Draconic,” he said, referring to his ancestral language, “and the texts I’m looking at are in the classical form which make it even more difficult.”

  “At least you learned. I thought I was being cool and rebellious by refusing to learn to read proper Shen. I’m pretty much illiterate now, but if you tell me to clean my room or get off the phone, I’ll understand.”

  He looked up and gave me a wry smile. “It was either Draconic or two other languages not even used on Earth. I picked the one that I thought would be more useful.”

  Hunter looked at his screen again. “The reality of what these Justices were? All the authoritative sources disagree.”

  “So in the end, you’re not sure what I am.”

  “Isn’t it the nature of shen to be unpredictable? You have some magical ability, even if it’s not what you expect. You just have to learn how to access it and control it.”

  I lifted my chin up as I spoke. “Are you going to try to teach me?”

  He let out a long breath. I thought he was about to say no.

  “We can do the basics.”

  I sighed. “Let me guess: close my eyes, breathe, clear my mind, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  “There’s a reason that that practice transcends cultures.”

  I sighed. “Do you know how many times I’ve done this?”<
br />
  “Don’t think about the past. Don’t think about the future. Just focus on the movement of your breath.”

  I crossed my legs, and straightened my back, palms turned upward.

  I felt Hunter reach out to me with his fire, caressing my skin tenderly.

  “What do you feel?”

  “Hunter,” I breathed.

  I opened my eyes, and I could feel his power within me, powerful heat that made my skin hot, and oddly enough, my mouth numbingly spicy as if I had just eaten.

  “Now exhale.”

  I exhaled and smoke billowed from my lips. I stopped in amazement, staring at the vanishing smoke. “How is this possible?”

  Hunter’s voice was clipped. “It shouldn’t be.”

  I turned to him. He was putting on his clothes in a rush.

  Had I done something wrong? “Is everything all right?”

  “You’re not a Justice. At least, not in the way that dragons understand.”

  Then what was I? All my life, I had wanted to be a true shen with some talent, even the ability to make flowers grow or leaves change colors or something stupidly innocuous like that.

  For the span of a few hours, I thought I had figured out what I was: a Justice, but now he was telling me I wasn’t.

  There were never easy answers when it came to the question of what I was.

  I got out of the bed and found my pack and my father’s sword by the side of his bed. Of course he’d had it placed in his room, because where else would I sleep? Did he not want me anymore now? I felt a cramp in my chest, like my heart was in a vise, and so I kept talking. “I’ve never known what I was. Shen, human—but in the end, I realized it doesn’t matter because I’m still running. I’m tired of needing to be protected, tired of others dying for me. I’ve been running away my whole life.” I looked at him, focusing on the resoluteness I felt, rather than…whatever we were. “I’m not running anymore.”

  Hunter didn’t waver. “You can’t commit to Daniel’s plan. You’re not a Justice.”

  “How do you know I’m not a Justice?”

  “Because a Justice…you shouldn’t have been able to exhale dragon smoke.”