Aurum Court Dragons: Boxset Books 1-5

by Emilia Hartley

  “Quit posturing and tell me why you think you’re welcome on my territory,” Jasper snarled.

  The largest dragon, a coal gray beast with bony spires on the back of its head, shrank down to the shape of a man. The man had a beard flecked with white hair and eyes that were as cold as the mountain winter.

  Colder, even.

  A green dragon behind the man glanced nervously at Mina and Lilah. The feeling of his teeth in her shoulder returned. It sent pain through her muscles as if he’d bitten her all over again. While others shifted to their human forms, the green dragon stayed in his beastly form. Lilah wanted to knock his skull in.

  The desire hit her so hard and fast, she barely had time to process it or where it’d come from. Had it been her own thought? Or was the beast feeding her rage?

  “Give the shifter back to us,” the cold man said. “If you hand her over, this war will be done. We will return to our own mountains and you’ll never have to see us again.”

  “Not. Going. To. Happen.” Jasper’s words were final. He allowed no room between them for anyone to argue.

  It was in this moment that Lilah saw why he was king. Though his mind had been scattered by his mate’s refusal of him, he was stalwart in the face of her enemy. Jasper stepped up to the cold man, no fear on his face. He put himself between the enemies and his family. If anyone struck, they’d have to get through Jasper.

  Lilah was grateful for the family she’d found. They were strong and loving and so fiercely protective of their own. She couldn’t imagine belonging to any other dragon clan.

  “She doesn’t belong to you,” the cold man growled in Jasper’s face.

  She tensed, expecting Jasper to throw the first punch. Her king didn’t move. He only looked down his nose at the cold man.

  “Last I remember, people didn’t belong to anyone. If the woman wants to leave your family, she has every right.”

  “And when she leaves you, too?”

  Jasper’s jaw clenched. A vein in his temple bulged. “Then she has every right to leave.”

  The cold man made eye contact with the dragon shifters he’d brought with him. They, in turn, surveyed their surroundings. Their eyes didn’t move over Ryker, Mina, or Griffin. Instead, they took in the houses, the work shed beyond the trees, and the fountain. Lilah knew what they were thinking.

  For a split second, she worried her curse had struck again, that it spread out over not just her but the whole of the dragon family she was now a part of. The curse threatened to take their home from them in one fell swoop, but Lilah had to remind herself this wasn’t part of a curse. If these dragons destroyed their home, then they were the ones to blame.

  Not some curse.

  Lilah’s life was her own.

  She commanded her luck, her future.

  “Are you planning on playing dirty?” she asked.

  The cold man pinned her with his gaze. She tried not to squirm. It was easy while holding Griffin’s hand. He lent her strength.

  “All is fair in war,” the man growled back.

  He confirmed her suspicion. If he couldn’t get through the door, he would rip down every wall and brick that stood in the way. He would reclaim Cora and leave Jasper’s family with nothing.

  Her beast’s hackles rose. It was prepared to fight.

  Then, the cold man smiled. The sight was so alarming that Lilah’s heart leapt into panic mode. Her pulse thundered in her veins. Griffin had to feel it, because he tightened his grip on her hand.

  “Your family won’t let you keep her once they learn Cora started the fire that nearly claimed one of your dragons’ mates. As far as I understand, the human suffered lasting effects from that fire.”

  Silence washed over the courtyard. The man raised his hand and several shifters launched themselves into the air. They turned and flew away in formation. He was going to let them destroy themselves from the inside out. The seed of discord had been sown and all he needed to do was let it grow.

  It was a coward’s move, she realized. The fight would have been their five against the cold man’s eight, but still he retreated. He knew he couldn’t take Jasper and the others. Every battle they’d had as of yet had been in Jasper’s favor.

  Lilah heard the familiar creak of the guest house door. Cora stood in the doorway, her eyes on the cold man. They both stood there for a moment that stretched out. The tension between them crackled like electricity. Lilah thought that if she stepped between them, she’d be shocked.

  Jasper and Griffin tensed, waiting for the cold man to strike. Lilah knew he wouldn’t. The cold man wanted Cora to come back to him once she lost her new protectors. Lilah swallowed. The coming weeks were going to be rough.

  As soon as the cold man left, Cora shut the door and disappeared again. This time, it wasn’t locked. Lilah figured it was time Cora understood that the guest house was always open to the family.

  She let herself inside. The others followed, with Jasper between Griffin and Ryker. Jasper was terrifying, but Lilah didn’t think he was going to do anything dangerous. If anything, he looked forlorn. Worry was etched into every line on his face. He feared the seed of discord the cold man had planted.

  Considering Mina was a dragon shifter like the rest of them, Lilah didn’t think the human mate in question was present. They had some time before the discord spread. Until then, they would get some answers.

  Cora was seated on the floor. There wasn’t much left in the way of furniture as Griffin and Lilah were moving out. Cora wrapped her arms around her knees and held them to her chest. When they entered, the shifter looked up at them with defeat in her eyes.

  Before anyone could say anything, Ryker and Mina collapsed onto the floor. They let out a sigh of relief in unison. Cora watched them, her brows pulled together in confusion. Lilah couldn’t help but follow suit, dropping to sit on the floor and give her shaky knees a break.

  “Ashton is going to be livid,” Griffin warned Jasper.

  So, it was Makenna who survived the fire. Lilah remembered reading about it in the paper. It hadn’t killed anyone, so no photos had been printed with it.

  “Everyone is alive,” Lilah reminded her mate. “I’m sure he’ll learn how to move on.”

  While Ryker grimaced, Jasper never took his eyes off Cora. She was avoiding her mate’s gaze. No one could tell what was going through their king’s mind. His face was a blank slate. Lilah wondered if he was hiding his emotions from his family or from Cora.

  “We can’t hide the truth from him forever,” Ryker said.

  “I didn’t mean to do it.” Cora’s voice was small. It was filled with regret. “I was camping, and it got cold. These mountains are so cold. All I wanted was to be warm.”

  The coming days were going to be difficult, but Lilah knew they could get through it. She tugged Griffin’s hand and led him out of the house. It didn’t belong to them anymore, anyway. Not long after, Ryker and Mina followed. They were quiet. The threat of what was to come weighed heavy on their shoulders.

  This war was no longer about physical battles. They would have to find a way to make Ashton forgive Cora. Or else his anger would tear them apart from the inside out.

  Everyone strained to listen to the conversation inside, but there was none. Neither Cora nor Jasper said anything. If the family survived this war, those two would have a lot of work on their plate. Lilah hoped they could come to understand one another because she knew life was infinitely better with a mate.

  No matter what war raged on, she would survive as long as Griffin stood by her side.

  “Let’s go,” she said to him. “We have things to unpack at the house.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lilah couldn’t believe her luck. She held a cardboard box filled with little bits of her life and faced her new home.

  Their new home.

  Griffin laid a soft kiss on her head as he passed by with Bumble in a pet crate. The cat rattled the crate, but Griff
in held on tight. Bumble would be much happier once they got him inside.

  Lilah smiled. The house was small, only a two-level craftsman in which the second level was basically an attic bedroom, but the truth was they didn’t need a whole lot of space. Lilah was happy to be near Griffin. As the house filled with furniture and bits of art she finally unpacked, it became cozier and cozier.

  Everything she had was so much more than she ever expected out of her life. For as long as she could remember, the dark haze of a family curse hung over her head. She blamed every bad thing that happened on the curse and never bothered to look any further. Not once did she stop and consider what she might have if she threw the whole idea away.

  Never once did she think she would have the kind of love that mates had. She still wasn’t all that used to the beast inside her. It was often a war of wills, but Lilah was learning. She was listening to the beast and what it needed while reasoning with it, telling it what Lilah needed too.

  Lilah needed hugs from her mate and little kisses throughout the day. She needed his hands on her to remind her that he loved the shape of her. She needed late night movie marathons with chicken wings from the diner because they reminded her of that first date. It was the first date, because that was the first time they learned anything real about one another.

  “Did Wyatt and Ryker bring your tools?” She asked as she pushed through the front door. “Because we need a new table. Those idiots broke the last one.”

  Griffin groaned from another room. “I thought I was done making tables!”

  She raised an inquisitive brow. What happened before she became part of the family?

  She found Griffin in the bedroom, on the floor with Bumble. A feather toy sat on the floor between them. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Shouldn’t you be unpacking?”

  When she’d first met Griffin, he’d been intimidating. He looked like he was ready to knock some heads together. It didn’t matter who, just the next person to look at him funny and whoever stood closest. Over the time she’d spent with him, it was as if he’d changed. But, he hadn’t.

  The man on the floor with her fat cat had let go of his bitterness. With the festering bitterness gone, Griffin had made room for happiness. So, when her cat pounced on his silver pony tail instead of the feather toy, his laughter filled the room. He swung his hair over his shoulder, but Bumble wasn’t to be stopped and pounced on Griffin’s shoulder.

  “The cat wouldn’t have attacked you if you’d been unpacking,” she said with a smirk.

  Already, the cat scratches were starting to heal over. In a second, they were completely gone. Griffin gathered Bumble into his arms and stood. Leaning in, Griffin stole a kiss. Lilah opened to him and the kiss deepened until Bumble yowled between them.

  She broke away with a laugh on her lips. As she turned back to the task of unpacking, her phone vibrated on the kitchen counter. Once upon a time, the name on the screen would have filled her with dread. Now, she grinned as she lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Vivi shrieked.

  “Do I have a long story for you,” Lilah responded. She fingered a take-out menu as she spoke to her sister. Lilah would have to hide her purse after she ordered food for them. As much as she wanted to rekindle her relationship with her sister and debunk the made-up curse they’d been living with, she still wouldn’t trust Vivi alone with her wallet. “How about you come over for dinner tonight and I’ll tell you all about it?”

  JASPER DRAKE

  Emilia Hartley

  Chapter One

  Cora knew he was on the other side of the door. Her mate. Her monster.

  She couldn’t bring herself to open it. There was the rough scraping sound of his hand dragging along the outside of the door. She imagined his head pressed against it, a snarl on his lips because she’d never seen him without it.

  “Don’t make me huff and puff,” he yelled through the door.

  Cora only shook her head. She retreated further into the nearly empty house. It smelled of Griffin and his dragon-wife. Mostly of Griffin. It was a bit intrusive, but she never felt truly alone and that helped soothe her beast. Ever since she left the clan, she’d been alone. The warm comfort of family had abandoned her long ago, and she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until she found it here.

  Too bad she couldn’t find it with the dragons themselves.

  They were a rowdy and wild bunch headed by a demon. Cora had no way of knowing what they wanted from her. She hid her secret deep down, revealing it only to Mina, the sweet dragon woman who’d crashed into Cora’s campsite. Mina had kept her secret, apparently, because Jasper had not forced Cora into a marriage bond.

  She grabbed a box of chocolate and peanut butter puff cereal from the kitchen and went back to the door. She hadn’t meant to. Cora intended to hide in the bedroom, as far from the front door as she could manage, but her feet had led her back to Jasper. The crinkling of the plastic bag inside the box betrayed her presence.

  The door creaked and groaned. She froze, thinking he was finally going to break it down, but then she heard the distinctive thud of someone hitting the ground. Jasper was sitting on the other side of the door. It wasn’t what she expected from the demon.

  Ever since she’d entered Jasper’s mountain, he’d been inside her mind. She felt his crazed beast, the thing she’d dubbed the demon, and every sharp emotion it felt. The creature wanted to ravage the mountainsides looking for her. It wanted to vanquish all who’d ever hurt her.

  This Jasper, the one sitting outside her front door, was not the demon she knew.

  “What are you doing?” she blurted out.

  His response was muffled by the door between them. “I’m attempting to be patient and understanding. Bear with me. It’s a new experience.”

  She laughed. It was so sudden and unexpected that cereal puffs rained on the floor when she clasped her hand over her mouth. She imagined him smiling on the other side, or felt it. She wasn’t sure which. The lines between her thoughts and his sometimes blurred when they were close. It was how he’d tracked her all across the mountains.

  Cora threw up barriers in her mind. Thoughts of cute puppies, taxes, and sunsets filled the space between the two shifters until her mind became her own again.

  “I’m officially the head of Aurum Bank,” Jasper began. “My youngest knight, Ashton, had been doing my work for me until he came home. The bank was failing. I didn’t know how my involvement would help, but I figured I had to try to do something.” He laughed to himself. “You wouldn’t believe the number of keyboards I went through in the first few weeks.”

  “Did you do it? Save the company, I mean.” Cora stumbled over her words, even if there was a door between them. There was no surefire way to find comfort in Jasper’s presence. Her skin sang with it, prickling whenever he was nearby. Her mind slipped into his so easily. Pulling back, she bit on the inside of her cheek until the pain brought her back to herself.

  “Yeah,” he said. There was a bit of shuffling as he rearranged himself outside. She heard his back hit the door. “We found a couple of big shots draining money from the bank and funneling it into offshore accounts. Aurum bank went through a very quiet internal investigation and the two employees were given very stern severance packages.”

  She could only imagine that a severance package delivered by Jasper included some bodily threats and otherworldly terror, especially for employees found stealing.

  “No jail time?”

  “We decided it would look bad for the bank’s image and kept it to ourselves. Aurum keeps the clan going. I couldn’t risk it any further.”

  She smiled, despite her fear of him. “That’s quite noble of you.”

  “The noble thing was me sitting at a computer at all.”

  She inched closer to the door. Just so she could hear him better. Not because she could smell his spicy scent through the gap in the d
oorframe. Not because the tension between her shoulder blades that had been there for months melted away in his presence. It was certainly none of those reasons.

  Silence spilled over them. It wasn’t heavy or intrusive, but just a state of being. There were no insufferable growls from the other side of the door. She didn’t feel the need to scamper away and hide under the bed. It was…comfortable.

  Cora almost wished she’d given up on hiding in the wilderness way earlier. But Cora refused to let the universe weave her into its preordained fate. The path she’d been given was cruel and desolate. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the clan leader’s face. She could feel his bone-breaking grip on her hand as he declared they would be wed.

  Tears began to rim her eyes. There was a soft warning growl from outside. She quickly wiped the tears away and built another mental barrier between them. This time, she imagined bricks and unbreakable mortar. There was a soft chuckle outside, as if Jasper was watching the imaginary wall being made.

  She’d never heard of a bond quite like this. There was no way she could deny that Jasper was her mate, though she’d long ago realized fate meant to torture her. This bond was its own unique kind of torment. It gave her an inside look at the demon. Another horrible path plotted out by fate.

  “I’ve said enough about myself,” Jasper said. “Tell me more about you. I want to know your favorite kind of birthday cake.”

  “Isn’t birthday cake its own flavor?”

  “Is it? I don’t bake, so I wouldn’t know.”

  Cora rested her head against the door. “I don’t like cake all that much anyway. I always ate my ice-cream before I finished the cake.”

  “If I’m not wrong, Griffin bought his mate a grocery store’s worth of ice-cream before they moved out. I doubt they thought to take it with them. You can have your fill tonight.”