“I’ve already mentioned the sun and moon.”
“And that was lovely, something I’ll always cherish, but I need more.”
He sighed dramatically, then tilted my head up and kissed me, saying, “You have my heart, Aoife, and all the love that I possess. You are life to me. Without you, I would cease to exist.”
“What’s that?” Aisling said, smiling as she held a hand to her ear. “I didn’t hear you, Kostya.”
“Do not be cruel, Mate,” Drake said, a pained look on his face. “It’s bad enough when you make me say it, but at least you don’t require me to declare myself in public.”
Jim hooted in laughter while Aisling pointed at her husband. “You’re just lucky I’m secure enough in the fact that you’re crazy wild in love with me so I don’t make you say it right now. Kostya, however, is still new to all of this. Go ahead, Kostya. Say it so we all can hear it.”
“Once,” Kostya said against my lips. “I will say it once.”
“Every day,” I countered.
He looked horrified. “In public?”
I laughed, and bit his lower lip before moving out of his arms and gesturing toward the others. “No, just the once in front of witnesses, and the rest of the time in private. Okay?”
He sighed again, then said quickly, “Very well, but I will remember this when we are alone, and you are vulnerable to reciprocation. I love you. Now can we get on with plans on how to get whatever item is needed for the Charmer so that my brother will stop trying to kill me?”
Aisling and Rene applauded. Drake, with a roll of his eyes, nodded at his men, who left to go fetch their car.
Bee gave me a long look, then said simply, “I’m sorry that you suffered, Aoife, but I’m truly delighted to know that you have such a bright future.” Her gaze shifted to Kostya, and she said in a bossy voice that was very familiar, “You had better treat my little sister right, dragon, or you’ll have my brother and me to answer to.”
Kostya was about to make a snarky answer in return, I was fairly certain, but I stopped him by putting my hand on his chest and leaning into him, rubbing my nose on his as I said, “No. It’s not important right now. The fact that you’ve finally realized that you can’t get along without me is, however, and if we’re done here, then I suggest we hurry back to Drake and Aisling’s house so we can get into our bedroom before they come home, and you can tell me again how much you love me.”
He pulled me close, kissing me with a passion that lit my own into an inferno, Kostya’s dragon fire spiraling up our bodies. “Drake was right. You’re going to make my life a living hell.”
“That’s right,” I said, not paying any attention to Aisling’s laughter or Jim’s mumbled “Abaddon.” “And you’re going to love every single minute of it. Just as I will love you making me crazy. Kostya?”
“Yes?”
“I love you, too. Let’s go see just how fireproof Suzanne’s bedroom is.”
About the Author
For as long as she can remember, Katie MacAlister has loved reading, and grew up with her nose buried in a book. It wasn’t until many years later that she thought about writing her own books, but once she had a taste of the fun to be had building worlds, tormenting characters, and falling madly in love with all her heroes, she was hooked.
With more than fifty books under her belt, Katie has written novels that have been translated into numerous languages, been recorded as audiobooks, received several awards, and are regulars on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. A self-proclaimed gamer girl, she lives in the Pacific Northwest with her dogs and frequently can be found hanging around online.
You can learn more at:
KatieMacAlister.com
Twitter @KatieMacAlister
Facebook.com/Katie.Mac.Minions
Constantine has always been supernaturally unlucky in love. But when he encounters a beautiful, blue-eyed woman imprisoned in a dark dimension, he soon finds he’s the one in need of being saved…
Please see the next page for a preview of
Dragon Storm.
Coming in November 2015
One
“Baaaaa.”
Constantine of Norka, once the famed warrior leader of the sept of the silver dragons, jerked upright from where he had been dozing in the weak morning sun. The air in the small sitting room was still and quiet, the gas fireplace gently blowing warmth into the room, leaving him with a sense of being frozen in an endless moment of time. He cocked his head and held his breath, wondering if his mind had been playing tricks on him.
“Baaaaaghhh.” The distant noise started out in a tinny, mechanical approximation of a sheep’s bleat but ended in what sounded like the cough of an asthmatic toad. One with a heavy smoking habit.
“Constantine!” The bellow that followed the horrible noise all but shook the stone walls of the castle. The gas jet sputtered as if in sympathy with the noise.
With a martyred sigh, Constantine got to his feet, taking a corporeal form despite the desire to fade into the spirit world where no one could see him.
“Is it too much to ask you to keep your deviant sexual aids from my son?”
Constantine pursed his lips, crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall as the dark-haired, dark-eyed man strode toward him, a fast-deflating blow-up sheep clad in fishnet stockings clutched in one hand.
“What makes you think that belongs to me?” Constantine asked in a conversational tone. He’d found through centuries of experience—not including the time while he had been inconveniently dead—that doing so had the tendency to enrage Baltic even more. And there was nothing Constantine liked better than to push Baltic’s buttons. It was payback, he felt, for all that he had suffered at the hands of his once friend, later mortal enemy, and finally, reluctant acquaintance. “That guard of yours—what is his name? Pablo? Pachebel? You know who I mean, the one who enjoys both sexes—he has many such things. You do me wrong to accuse me when it likely belongs to him.”
“His name is Pavel, as you well know,” Baltic said, breathing heavily through his nose.
Constantine gave himself two points for the loud nose-breathing. He wondered if he could get Baltic to grind his teeth—that was a worth a full five points, and getting that would push his daily Aggravating Baltic score to over twenty. It would be a new high, and one which he had long sought. “Pavel? Are you sure?” Constantine rubbed his jaw as if he was considering the fact. “Doesn’t sound very likely to me. You’ve probably gotten it wrong. Such things happen when you get old, you know.”
Baltic took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I bother conversing with you. You never have anything of intelligence to say, and simply use up air.”
“You talk to me for the same reason you begged me to join your sept—you know I am the superior wyvern.”
“You are deceased,” Baltic said, enunciating with deliberation. “You are a former dragon. You no longer exist. You are, in effect, a nonentity, and the only reason I went against my better judgment to include you in the sept of the light dragons is because Ysolde—my Ysolde—pleaded with me to do so in order to keep you from being without a sept.”
Constantine sniffed. He disliked the way the conversation was going, and said the one thing he was sure would derail it. “Perhaps Ysolde got that sheep with the charming garters and stockings to distract your lusty attentions. Perhaps she is tired of you but is too kind to tell you. Perhaps she desires another. Say, for instance, me…”
“Out!” Baltic bellowed, pointing dramatically at the door. The sheep gave a feeble “Baaagh” before the last of the air slid out of it with a rude noise.
“Out?” Constantine brushed his fingernails along one arm and lazily examined the results. “Out of what? You speak in riddles, Baltic. Is your brain addled?”
“Out of my castle! Out of my sept, and my hair, and most of all, out of my life!” Baltic yelled, glaring at the sheep when it uttered one last rude noise before falling
limp in his hand. He flung it to Constantine’s feet.
Baltic strode off before Constantine could goad him further.
“Fourteen points,” Constantine said sadly to himself, idly looking through the window to the wilderness beyond. Dauva, the home of Baltic and Ysolde and all the rest of the light dragons (whose numbers totaled six, including Constantine), was situated outside a remote town in Russia. Constantine had been born and raised in a region that was now Poland, but he much preferred the South of France and its balmier climate.
“Only fourteen, and I used my strongest verbal weapons. What has gone wrong with my life that I find myself here, at this time of year, cold even when it’s sunny? I am unwanted, undesired, and alone,” he said aloud. No one answered him, which was exactly what he expected. All too frequently he’d found himself on the outside of the family that was made up of Baltic and Ysolde and their two children. Even Pavel, Baltic’s right-hand man, was a part of the family, whereas he, Baltic’s oldest friend, and once mated to the lovely Ysolde, existed on the fringes of their attention. He’d never felt so ghost-like and insubstantial as he had the last few months. Lately, there were days when he didn’t even bother to slip into his corporeal state.
A woman with long blond hair bustled into the room, speaking as she did so. “… told him that we do too have to worry about it, but will he listen to me? No, he won’t.” Ysolde de Bouvier stopped in front of Constantine, a toddler perched on her hip. “Honestly, there are times when I could just whomp him on the head with the nearest blunt object.”
“If you’re speaking of Baltic, I would be happy to be of service. Bashing him over the head is always high on my list of things to do,” Constantine said, rising and making a formal bow before chucking the child under his chin. Constantine had a love of babies that led him to making secret forays into the child Alduin’s chambers, bringing toys that he thought would amuse.
Alduin said, “Uncle Connie!” and held out his arms for Constantine.
“Lovey, Uncle Constantine doesn’t want to hold you, not after you’ve been helping Uncle Pavel make baklava. You are one sticky little boy and are going to have a bath just as soon as I’m done here.” Ysolde set the boy down and gave him a mock look of regret before turning a smile onto Constantine. “Good morning. Do you have a moment, or are you busy planning something with your blow-up doll? If so, please let me talk first. It’s really most important. I want to talk to you about this curse.”
Constantine frowned. “The one affecting the dragons, or is there a new curse?”
“No, that’s the one.” Alduin clasped the deflated sheep to him with a cry of delight. Both Ysolde and Constantine ignored the sheep’s plaintive baa.
“Did they find Asmodeus’s ring, then?”
“I gather so, or they wouldn’t have a Charmer lined up to break the curse. Evidently, they are looking for something that belongs to Asmodeus to use to help break it… a talisman of some sort.”
Constantine scratched his chest. “What has this to do with us?”
“I told Aisling that you’d get the talisman.”
He gawked at her, outright gawked, something he never did. “Ysolde—”
“Now, hear me out,” Ysolde interrupted.
“Even deceased, former wyverns have some standards, after all,” he said with a sniff. “Just because I don’t actually lead a sept anymore doesn’t mean I don’t have important demands on my time.”
Ysolde pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow at the deflated sheep.
Constantine sniffed again and looked away.
“I know you have lots of important things to do,” Ysolde said soothingly. “But don’t you see just how ideal you are for the job? For one, you think well on your feet.”
He had opened his mouth to protest, but at the words of praise, he hesitated. “This is true. But—”
“And you can blink in and out of the physical world, which no other dragon can do.”
“Yes, but—”
“Not to mention the fact that you are clever enough to get in and out with the artifact before anyone even knew you had been there.”
“Again, you speak the truth, but I must point out—”
“And you would be saving all dragonkin,” Ysolde ended triumphantly. “You would be a hero!”
“I’m already a hero,” he protested. “I am the wyvern of the silver dragons!”
“Constantine,” Ysolde said in a distinctly chiding tone of voice. Constantine did not care for it at all. “I can’t believe you’d be such a coward.”
“Coward?” he asked on a gasp of disbelief. “Me?”
Ysolde brushed a bit of lint from her sleeve. “Well, what else am I to think when you, a brave and heroic dragon who has sworn himself to my eternal service, won’t even do this one simple little task for me?”
“If you think such ridiculous statements are going to bait me into jumping to your command, you are mistaken,” Constantine said dryly, but despite that, he began to seriously consider her request. He didn’t want to do it for a number of reasons, but he had to admit that when he reached the state where the high point of his day was irritating Baltic, he should reassess his life plan. Perhaps a little adventure would be just what he needed to shake himself of the sense of gloom that pervaded him of late. “You say this object belongs to Asmodeus? Asmodeus is sure to be in Abaddon.”
“I assume so.”
“I don’t like going to Abaddon,” he said slowly, still considering the idea. “All I would need to do is find this object, a talisman? Is there one in particular, or will any item do?”
Ysolde picked up her child and pulled a strand of her blond hair from his sticky grip. “Aisling didn’t say it was one in particular, and she would have if that was the case, so I think it’s safe to say you can get anything that suits the bill.”
“Which means any object of a personal nature to the being in question.” Constantine thought about this. He added, more speaking aloud to himself than to her, “I suppose I could get in Asmodeus’s palace and find an object quickly enough. I wouldn’t have to spend any time in Abaddon, not that—” He remembered he wasn’t alone, and once again bit down on his words. With a brief nod at Ysolde, he added, “Very well. I will undertake this quest for you, my beloved former mate. But will ask for a boon upon completion.”
“What sort of a boon?” she asked suspiciously. “You know Baltic would go ballistic if you tried to do anything… intimate… with me, not that I’d let you to begin with, but I’d rather avoid getting him all bent out of shape.”
He shrugged. “I do not yet know what reward I’ll ask for, but if I take this mission for you, then you are indebted to me. Do you agree?”
She rolled her eyes briefly. “Dragons. Always bargaining. Yes, very well, I’ll owe you one if you do this, although really, I’d think bringing about the end of the curse would be reward enough.”
Slowly, so Ysolde would not notice, Constantine nudged the deflated sheep behind him. “I will pack my things. Where must I go to accomplish this burdensome task?”
“You are the cutest sticky child in the world,” Ysolde said to her son when he started to sing in a high, sing-song voice. “Hmm? Oh, the Charmer is evidently in Paris, but you could get into Asmodeus’s palace by any of its entrances. I don’t know where they are, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Ysolde dropped a kiss on her son’s head and started toward the door. “Thank you so much for doing this, Constantine. I would tell you how much I appreciate it, but it’s so much more than just my wishes at stake here. You’ll free all the dragons, and then we can get back to having the world be a normal place with all the septs able to talk to each other again, and no one at war. It’ll be heaven compared to how things are now. All right, my darling child, it’s to the bathtub for you…”
Constantine’s frown grew darker as he absently watched the love of his life leave the room, his thoughts, for once, not on his own grievances but instead reaching back in t
ime to his youth. “I wouldn’t do it if Bael were not safely confined in the Akashic Plain,” he said softly to himself. “But as he is, and has no way to get out, then I will act the hero. I will save the dragonkin. I will take my place in the annals of modern dragon history. I will do this for the glory of the silver dragons.”
With a little nod at his noble intentions, he took the sheep to his bedroom, already planning the items he would need on the trip. It didn’t occur to him until later that he never once thought of undertaking the job for Ysolde’s sake alone.
Fall in Love with Forever Romance
DRAGON FALL
by Katie MacAlister
New York Times bestseller Katie MacAlister returns to her fanfavorite paranormal series. To ensure the survival of his fellow dragons, Kostya needs a mate of true heart and soul before it’s too late.
FRISK ME
by Lauren Layne
USA Today bestselling author Lauren Layne brings us the first book in her New York’s Finest series. Journalist Ava Sims may be the only woman in NYC who isn’t in love with the city’s newly minted hero Officer Luc Moretti. That’s why she’s going after the real story—to find out about the man behind the badge. But the more time she spends around Luc, the more she has to admit there’s something about a man in uniform… and she can’t wait to get him out of his.
THE FORBIDDEN MAN
by Elle Wright
Sydney Williams has forgiven her fiancé, Den, more times than she can count. But his latest betrayal just days before their wedding is too big to ignore. Shocking her friends and family, she walks out on her fiancé… and into the arms of his brother, Morgan. But is their love only a fling or built to last?
THE BLIND
by Shelley Coriell
When art imitates death… As part of the FBI’s elite Apostles team, bomb and weapons specialist Evie Jimenez knows playing it safe is not an option. Especially when tracking a serial killer. Billionaire philanthropist and art expert Jack Elliott never imagined the instant heat for the fiery Evie would explode his cool and cautious world. But as Evie and Jack get closer to the killer’s endgame, they will learn that safety and control are all illusions. For their quarry has set his sight on Evie for his final masterpiece…
Dragon Fall Page 27