Kiss of a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 1) - Paranormal Fairytale Romance

by Alisa Woods

  He had saved her from a demon in an alley. Then he’d slowly gone about winning her over—first, offering to help with her practice; then working together on this faux search for a mate; and finally, through the hot healing power of his bed.

  It was always you, Arabella. Always you.

  He’d whispered the words, but they’d resonated straight through to her soul.

  Lucian was at the end of his life, he needed a mate, and he wanted her. Even if she didn’t love him, it was something to consider. But he’d made it clear he was serious about finding a woman who could love a man like him. True Love, he’d called it. This sealing thing for making the dragonling would only work if she really, actually, truly loved him.

  But you’re unsure. Those were Leonidas’s words, and they brought her march down the hallway to a standstill. That was why his brother had seemed so cool, examining her, saying nothing, revealing nothing—he was just looking out for his brother, making sure she was the kind of mate who could actually love him. Because that mattered. A lot.

  But how could even she be sure of such a thing? How could anyone really know if their love was “true”? She’d certainly thought she was in love before—and all it had gotten her was nearly choked to death.

  Something buzzed in her pocket, making her jump. It was just the phone Lucian had given her. She fished it out.

  Back early. Meet me on top of the keep. Want to show you something.

  And like that, her traitorous heart was skipping beats. She had no idea what Lucian wanted to show her, but it didn’t matter. She just wanted to be with him again. Flying around the keep, in bed, or maybe just talking for a while. And they had a lot of talking to do.

  She trotted down the hall, following her GPS tracker on her phone back to Lucian’s lair. She’d left it unlocked, so she just tapped the wall panel to get in, hurried through the great room and up the stairs. It wasn’t until she was passing Lucian’s bedroom that it occurred to her she might stop to brush her hair or something. But the wind outside would just blow it around anyway. She tucked the phone in her pocket and climbed the spiral stairwell to the roof.

  The sun was glorious outside, slowly setting toward Seattle in the West and turning the clouds to fire. She wrapped her arms around her, a slight chill rising in the cooling breeze. She scanned the air for Lucian’s dragon form winging its way back to her.

  It took a moment, but then she saw it—just a shadowy form in the distance, but he was rocketing across the sky. She raised her arms to wave so he would see her. He was still far away, but with those super dragon senses, he had to be able to see her, if she could see him. Sure enough, he banked toward her and quickly grew closer, only…

  Arabella squinted against the setting sun. His shadowy dragon form wasn’t just shaded by the sun… it was black.

  Black as midnight and tar and all the dark things.

  Lucian’s dragon was warm golden silk-over-steel, and this thing—this black thing coming for her—had no hint of gold across the full sweep of its dark wings.

  Her heart lurched—once, twice—then she ran.

  Breath seized in her throat as she scrambled for the door to the keep, but the black dragon was coming in like a missile. She heard his scream, and she looked back just as horrific, razor-sharp talons reached for her. She leaped for the door—

  —and never landed.

  She was yanked up, violently, pain slicing across her body with knives of steel clamping down on her and whisking her up, up, up…

  Her heart seized as the keep dropped away below her.

  She was caught.

  “Who’s your sire?” Lucian demanded.

  “You’re fucking crazy!” the demon replied. Or rather, his human half did, with wide eyes and apparent confusion as to why Lucian had him pinned to a brick wall in a dank Seattle alley. His demon half was busy clawing at Lucian’s hand, fighting a hopeless battle against the fae runes that had gathered at his hand and held the man’s chest with an iron-press. There was no hope of escape.

  “You can lie to me, invidias daemonus, but it will only prolong the agony of your death.” Unfortunately, Lucian couldn’t actually kill the demon, not until he had traced it back to its maker, but the man—and the demon—didn’t need to know that.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The man’s voice had hiked up to hysteria. Which was troubling—because he was clearly demon, but it was possible the human side of him had no knowledge of it.

  Then again, he’d clearly understood what he was doing when he broke into a woman’s apartment to steal her laptop. Lucian had caught a whiff of him as he made his exit out the back of the building. The stolen computer lay discarded on the ground, probably damaged when Lucian descended on the man in dragon form and nearly made him piss his pants.

  Stealing. It was consistent with the invidia class demon Lucian scented on him, full of the deadly sin of envy, covetous of things that belonged to others. Not odious class like the demons Erelah and Leksander had slain, which was even more troubling. Were all the demon classes suddenly afoot in the city? And for what purpose would the Winter Court risk war with the Summer Court by releasing them into the human world? And halflings at that.

  It made no sense.

  “I’ll give you one more chance, demon—” He cut himself off, whipping his head to the side at the scent of angel and dragon, not to mention the sound of air beaten by wings.

  Leksander and Erelah dropped to the alley floor next to him.

  Lucian grimaced. He’d turned off his phone while apprehending the demon, just to keep it from going off and calling attention to their interrogation in the alley. “I was going to call you, just as soon as I—”

  “Lucian.” Leksander’s harsh tone cut him off more than his word. “Arabella has been taken. I tried to call you. Your phone is off.”

  “Taken?” Lucian dropped his hold on the demon and stepped back. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s been snatched from the lair—”

  Fuck. Lucian shifted, cloaked, and was in the air before his brother could finish speaking. Goddamnit, why had he left her alone?

  Behind him, he heard the demon scream its death throes. Erelah must have already plunged her angel blade into him. But that was unimportant—the only thing that mattered was getting back to the keep.

  Lucian, don’t go alone! Leksander must have shifted to dragon to get that message to Lucian’s mind, but he was quickly out of range, pumping hard to get clear of the city, then boosting his speed with every drop of magic in his blood. He left a sonic boom behind him, a mysterious sound for the inhabitants of Seattle to puzzle over while he rocketed back to his lair.

  Who had taken his treasure? It was a screaming demand inside his head, every dragon instinct he had rearing its primal need to protect what was his. The power of it fueled his speed and sharpened his senses for battle. The fact that Arabella summoned this urgent need to protect her, to get her back, was purely instinctual—at least, that was what he told himself, over and over, as the mountains slid under him. The sun was setting at his back and sending long, daggered shadows across the ground, pointing toward the keep that was supposed to be holding his beloved.

  Beloved.

  Fuck. No, this was simply a raging dragon desire to get back something stolen from him. And dip his talons in the blood of the dragon responsible for stealing it. Worse than any invidias daemonus, a dragon who stole another’s treasure knew exactly the nature of that challenge. Whoever it was, Lucian would shred him apart. This was about honor and instinct and treasure, not love.

  Not love.

  By the time he reached the keep, he had almost convinced himself.

  He landed in a flurry of flapping wings, killing his speed but nearly plowing through the glass panes of the keep that shuddered with his arrival. He had aimed for the central conference room, figuring Leonidas must be waiting for him there, but then he saw his brother atop Lucian’s lair, near the stairwell to the roof. Lucian
leaped into the air again, crossing the flat expanse of the keep to reach Leonidas fast, shifting again to human as soon as he landed.

  Leonidas was staring at something in his hand—a phone.

  The one Lucian had given Arabella.

  A chill swept through him. “What happened?” Lucian demanded.

  “That’s what I’m trying to ascertain,” Leonidas said tightly. “I messaged you first, then Leksander. Did you bring him with you?”

  “Leonidas. Tell me who took her.” Lucian stalked over fast enough that Leonidas took a wary step back.

  “All right. All right.” He shoved the phone, face forward, at Lucian. “Someone hacked your phone, my brother. Lured her up here, pretending to be you, to get her outside the protection of the wards. This isn’t the time to warn you once again about the holes in your security.”

  “Fucking hell.” It was a dagger through his chest.

  Leonidas pulled the phone back and held up his hands. “Right. Not the time. But whoever snatched her, he had to know our systems. He was here within seconds of breaching the perimeter. We scrambled, but by the time we were clear of the keep, he had cloaked and gone. I’ve got Rynor pulling up the security tape.” He checked the phone, tapping it. “He’s going to message me as soon as they have it.”

  Lucian rocked back. Someone targeted her specifically. They timed it, hacked in, and snatched her away. “Why, Leonidas…” His voice was weak. How could he have not seen this coming? His head was so muddled with rage, even now, he couldn’t think straight. Who would do this?

  “You are the crown prince, my liege,” his brother said, softly, using words and a tone he rarely did.

  And of course, that had to be it. He was naturally a target, no matter what the source. Which made any possible mate of his the soft underbelly that could be taken… and hurt. Arabella was so delicately human, so innocent and undeserving of any of this… this deception he had forced her into…

  A physical pain carved through his chest as images surged up—bloody ones he had spent decades trying to forget.

  Leonidas looked up from the phone. “She came to see me, Lucian.”

  He blinked, shaking his head from the flashback. “She did? Why?”

  Leonidas’s face mirrored his pain. “She was asking about mating. Talking about falling in love.”

  “Oh no.” It was just an exhale, not words.

  The phone pinged.

  Leonidas quickly swiped through, but Lucian’s head was swamped with a tsunami of emotion. He had brought her here, seduced her into loving him, and then he left her unprotected. Sure there was the keep. The wards protecting it, and the dragons inside it, but that hadn’t been nearly enough, had it? Because any woman even partially in love with him would naturally stir the deep magic that was part of the treaty. It would swell up and broadcast across magic-space, like tremors of an earthquake a thousand miles away that only the birds can sense, but that sends them up into flight. She had fallen in love with him… and now she was paying the price for it.

  And he had left her unsecured, left her side, run off to let the winds scour him of the possibility that he might lose his heart to her in return.

  What manner of beast was he that he did such things?

  Leonidas held the phone out to him once more. The face of it was filled with an image of black wings bending down. Arabella was obscured. All he could see were her legs dangling from where the dragon held her close to his body, gripping her in his talons.

  “House of Drakkon,” Lucian whispered, horror drenching him and draining his voice.

  Leonidas nodded. “I’m almost certain it was Tytus himself.”

  A roar rumbled deep inside Lucian’s chest. Tytus. Brutalizer of women. The most base of dragons. And Arabella… her dark past with men… her near-death rape that scarred her so deeply… the roar built and built and erupted out of his mouth in one long dragon-scream that sent blue fire billowing over the surface of the keep.

  He shifted and leaped and pumped into the air, pouring everything into getting distance from his keep and hunting that foul wyvern down in his lair.

  “I’m coming with you!” Leonidas’s voice was quickly lost in the wind in Lucian’s ears and the rage in his mind.

  His brother would follow. And his lieutenants too.

  But none of them would beat him to tearing out Tytus’s heart.

  A haze of pain and terror clouded Arabella’s vision.

  She spent an endless time flying through the air, clutched by steel talons, body numbed by the bone-chilling cold of the air whipping past her, heart frozen by the horrible knowledge that she was captured by an incredibly strong dragon against whom any defenses she had would be useless. The only question was what he intended to do with her… and if she would survive it.

  Or want to.

  The flight lasted an eternity… then came to a sudden halt as the dragon swerved and dove down into a midnight-black castle, like Lucian’s only the glass was obsidian instead of clear. A million sharp spires and hard-cut angles of black glass glinted in the moonlight, but she only caught a glimpse before they dropped into a dark maw that had opened below. Then they landed with insane, skull-jarring speed—he dropped her just before they reached the stone floor, and she hit it hard, barely getting her hands in front before her face smacked down. A rustle of wings and a stomp of boots said he must be shifting, but she couldn’t see him with her face smashed against the floor. Not to mention, she was so terribly cramped, every muscle in her body seizing up.

  She hurt everywhere.

  Her arms were frozen—she could barely get them under her, much less control them—so she stayed down, sprawled on the floor. Something wet trickled down her face. She swiped at it with the back of her hand, and it came away bloody. Her clothes were tattered from where his talons had gripped her, and there were slices of pain and blood there as well. She was almost too numb to tell, but she didn’t seem to have any major injuries. Yet.

  Holy shit, I’m going to die here. That was as far as she got in her scattered, scrambled thoughts before something gripped her arms and hauled her up from the floor. His dark eyes glinted with a sharper blackness the color of his wings. He held her close to his face, his nostrils flaring as he breathed her in.

  “Lucian’s treasure,” he said with a satisfaction that sent ripples of fear chasing each other throughout her body. “So easy to take. And you bleed… so he hasn’t sealed you yet. So sloppy for a crown prince.” He seemed delighted by this.

  Arabella could feel her body shake in his grasp. “Fuck you,” she gasped out. If she was going to die, she wanted to go out with her pride intact.

  Something growled deep inside him. “Oh, yes. He pretends to be better than me, but he likes them feisty, just like I do.” His cruel smile made her shudder.

  Oh, God… she recognized that look. That horrible, terrible look in a man’s eyes when he knows he has all the power to hurt you any way he wishes… and he wishes to very much.

  Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Her breaths were becoming rapid. She needed to think of something to say to make him reconsider. Or at least end it quickly. Something.

  Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

  He leaned forward and—oh, God—he licked the tears as they ran down her face. “Your fear… it tastes so good.” He licked his lips. “But let’s make sure, shall we? If Lucian’s mark is on you, then the fae can have you. But if not… well…” He rumbled that growl again like he was tasting her in that magical way and liked it. “Maybe I’ll take you for my own. If you’re such a treasure that Lucian wants you, then sealing you for myself will be all the more satisfying.”

  One of his hands gripping the top of her arm shifted into those terrifying talons. She couldn’t help the gasp and whimper that escaped her as he gripped her t-shirt and tore it to shreds, taking her bra with it and leaving half her chest naked. Thin lines across her skin, where his claws had raked her, wept with tears of blood—she was so terrified, she
hardly felt the pain. Then he turned her around. She held as still as she could while shaking like crazy, but she couldn’t help crying out as he tore away the rest of her shirt, leaving her bare from the waist up. Pain lanced across her back as he grazed her with those razor-sharp talons.

  His hand shifted back to human, skimming up her back, tracing every curve. He sighed out a long breath that she felt hot on her back. She couldn’t help cringing, but his other hand gripped her shoulder so hard, she couldn’t move.

  “So you are unsealed,” he whispered in her ear, making her shudder so violently that she banged into his lips hovering near her. He slid a hand around to clamp down on her breast. She gasped from the pain of it. “Should I just take you now or seal you first? Or maybe give you a chance to run… I do like my prey fresh from the hunt. Decisions, decisions.”

  Fear was clouding her mind, trying to send her away to someplace where she wouldn’t have to live through this. Wouldn’t have to feel it. But the raking of his teeth across her shoulder jolted her back, churning her stomach with revulsion and making her whimper again. Tears gushed hot on her face.

  Then suddenly, a boom wrenched the air, pounding her eardrums and wrenching him away from her body. She jerked in surprise, then whirled around, her entire body still shaking. Her captor had shifted into his dragon form, roaring with displeasure, then shifting back to human just as quickly. He picked himself up from the floor and snarled… but it wasn’t directed at her.

  Another man stood in the stone-floored entryway of the dragon’s lair. “Do not go against me, dragon.”

  “I was only taking a taste,” the dragon hissed, but he took a step back from both Arabella and this strange new man who had stopped him.

  He was beautiful in the way some men were—slender but high-cheeked; dark, flowing hair long past his shoulders, wispy and straight. Those runes that Lucian had were on this man as well, only just on his face. His eyes were ice-colored, nearly clear, with a hint of blue that dazzled as he fixed a stare on her. But the most strange part about him was his ears… they were pointed, like an elf. Or maybe a faery.