by Lauren Smith
He wished Mikhail was here now. Mikhail knew Grigori better in some ways, even though he’d been exiled since the sixteenth century. Mikhail would have known how to warn Grigori against the temptations mortal females presented.
“Rurik?” A sweet voice caught his attention and dragged him out of ancient thoughts. A beautiful woman with dark hair and green eyes watched him from across the bar. His bartender, Nikita, wore silver sequined dress and killer black heels that made every man in the room assume she was a customer and not the bartender. Whenever he looked at her, the hardness in his heart always softened. But she was human and he couldn’t never be with a human.
“How are the numbers tonight?” he asked as he joined her, leaning on the bar toward her. He couldn’t help it, she pulled him in like the glint of a diamond just within reach. It made him practice his self-restraint.
She smiled warmly, a smile meant only for him, and he knew why. She was in love with him, but she was too much like him, a free spirit, unchained even by the forces of love. Any other woman he would have slept with and moved on, but he didn’t do that with Nikita. She had the potential to be a possible true mate and if he dared to even kiss her, it could destroy his family. Battle dragons couldn’t risk love, their lives were dangerous. If they dared to mate a human, the human could be used against them. A fragile mortal life would be easy for their enemies to snuff out and that would kill the battle dragon.
“Good. We are at maximum capacity, but—” her voice trailed off, her eyes widened as she stared at something over his shoulder.
“Niki?” he queried.
Her green eyes cut to his and she whispered one word.
“Drakor.”
He spun, battle instincts kicking in. Ruslan Drakor stood only a few feet away, grinning like the devil he was. As the eldest son of Dimitri Drakor, the head of the Drakor family, Ruslan was an arrogant bastard who believed he didn’t have to abide by the terms of the treaty between the Barinov and Drakor families.
“Ruslan. What the fuck do you want?” He made a grand show of leaning casually against the bar, even though every muscle in his body was tense.
He prayed that Ruslan wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack them in a club full of humans. There was a treaty in place for a reason. The Drakor family ran the eastern half of Russia while the Barinovs controlled the west. The Yenisey River acted as the formal boundary between their territories because it split Russia almost cleanly in half.
The Barinovs, having control of both Moscow and St. Petersburg had, under Rurik’s father in 1750, made a treaty which allowed the Drakors to enter and leave those two cities without incident, so long as they did not interfere with Barinov business or cause trouble.
“I’ve come for a drink and women.” Ruslan laughed, but there was a feral gleam in his eyes.
Rurik remained still, the picture of casual ease. They both knew that Rurik could knock Ruslan on his ass in three seconds.
“Good for you, Ruslan, but find another club. Not mine.” Had they been outside the city, Rurik would have attacked, but the damned treaty was keeping them on his best behavior.
Ruslan brushed his dark hair out of his eyes and walked to the other end of the bar, his expression changed to one of hunger as he spied Nikita.
“You, female, bring me the best vodka in the house.” He slapped his palm on the counter hard enough that the expensive glass layer over the wood fractured, tiny cracks in the glass fanned out around his hand like spider webs.
Son of a dog ... Rurik growled softly, the dragon inside him stirring. He could feel the tattoo move on his back. He’d never been very good at restraining the beast within him. His father had said it was because he was built for battle.
“Ruslan, leave now,” he warned.
The other man made a show of getting comfortable. Then he looked over at Nikita and licked his lips. That was it.
“Nikita, the alarm if you please.” Rurik tried to stay calm, but he could feel the dragon surging to the surface.
His bartender ducked beneath the bar and slapped a red button. An alarm siren blared, cutting the music off. Dancers scrambled out of the cages and off the dance floors, rushing toward the exit in varying degrees of panic.
It was a shame to lose a good night of business, but better to have an empty club than risk human casualties. There was nothing like a spike in mortality rates to draw the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon into their business. They had no offices in Moscow that he knew of, but there were always agents about, and they could mobilize more from St. Petersburg in short order. The last thing either he or the Drakor family needed were supernatural hunters swarming the city looking to take down dragon shifters.
“One last chance, Ruslan. Walk away and I leave your pretty face intact.”
The other man laughed. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”
Rurik sensed Nikita close behind him. Not everyone had left when the alarm went off. “Nikita, get out of here.”
“But—”
“Go!” he roared. The sound reached a low pitch as his vocal cords started to transform to that of a dragon’s.
Nikita tried to flee, but Ruslan threw up a hand. Fire shot out of his palm and a blazing beam, cutting off her escape. Ruslan’s eyes morphed into red irises with slitted pupils. A hint of smoke puffed from his nostrils. Both Rurik and Ruslan were fighting to stay in control and not fully transform. The club wouldn’t be able to hold two full-grown dragons, let alone one.
“You would break your father’s treaty?” Rurik bellowed, raising his own palm. He unleashed a spray of fiery sparks toward the other dragon. It was the closest thing to a warning shot he could manage without starting a fire in his club.
“I am not bound by his word!” Ruslan balled his other fist and slammed it down on the bar. The glass counter shattered, thousands of pieces in the wood beneath exploded in a burst of massive splinters.
A six-inch piece of wood buried itself in Rurik’s lower belly. Fuck! Pain set in like a dull ache and he knew that was bad…
“Rurik!” Nikita screamed and ran toward him. He gripped the splinter and ripped it out. Hot blood streamed down his shirt and his wound throbbed. He would heal fine, but the sight of it must have scared her. When Nikita reached him, he waved her away.
“You have to get out.” He panted. “I can’t fight him and worry about you.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “Be safe,” she said. She kissed his forehead and fled, but never reached the door. Ruslan raised his hand aimed a jet of fire straight at Nikita. She was knocked into the wall against a massive mirror just feet from the exit. The mirror shattered and her limp body fell to the ground. Blood dripped from Nikita’s lips and the light in her green eyes faded like the light of a dying star a thousand miles away. Something inside him broke, a piece of his heart fractured.
A cold, harsh laugh escaped Ruslan’s lips. “What’s one more human, more or less?”
Shock and grief raged inside Rurik. His Nikita, his Niki was gone. A red mist descended over his vision. He didn’t care about the club, the treaty, or the Brotherhood right now. He cared only of vengeance.
With a deafening roar, Rurik’s clothes shredded to the floor as his body transformed into a fifteen-foot-tall black scaled dragon. His frill fanned out around his neck as he opened his jaws and a stream of fire shot out that was so hot it was nearly blue.
Ruslan tried to morph into his own beast but. Rurik’s jaws caught Ruslan’s elongated neck mid-change and snapped shut. The heavy crack echoed in the room as Ruslan went limp beneath him. Rurik released him, and the body transformed back fully into a man, laying broken and bleeding at Rurik’s feet. Rurik’s eyes darted around the room, seeking out more threats, then he saw Nikita’s body. The beast recognized the loss of a woman he cared about and he let out a mournful sound.
Rurik let go of the dragon side of him and his body shrank back to its mortal shell. Rurik fell to his knees.
Nikita was dead, Ruslan was dead, and a
three-century old treaty was broken.
He dug his hands through his hair, trying to stop them from shaking as emotions rolled through them like violent riptides. How was he going to tell Grigori that he killed Dimitri Drakor’s eldest son?
I’ve just started a war…
Chapter 1
Among all the kinds of serpents, there is none comparable to the dragon.
– Edward Topsell, 1658
Moscow, Russia – Three months later
Charlotte MacQueen tugged the sweetheart neckline of her red satin cocktail dress up a few more centimeters. Despite the fancy but thick winter coat she wore, her exposed skin had drawn the cabdriver’s eyes and made her shift restlessly until he’d had to focus back on his driving. But then, she’d know her dress would have this effect. She was practically falling out of the damn thing, but she had a hunch this would be one of the few times having full breasts would be an advantage instead of a hindrance.
She’d spent most of her life hiding her curvy figure behind draping sweaters and lab coats. It was silly, but she’d never felt comfortable in sexy clothes.
Charlotte wasn’t sure if it was how the slide of satin felt on her skin or the way every masculine eye fixed on the high cut of her dress or the lowered neckline, but tonight she was trying hard to ignore how exposed she felt because she was pulling a Mata Hari. She was going behind enemy lines—or rather, into dragon territory—to seduce a seriously dangerous dragon shifter.
Before tonight, she would have thought the idea of her chasing down a man who could shift into a dragon was impossible. Not because she didn’t think they were real, mind you. She’d grown up her entire life knowing the truth about things that went bump in the night. Vampires, dragons, werewolves, shifters—all of it. Until now, she’d been kept safe by her overprotective older brothers, but she was done with that. She wanted to do something meaningful with her life, and tonight that meant quite literally walking into the mouth of the dragon’s den.
If my brothers figure out I’m here, they’d probably try to send me to some convent like it was the middle ages. The thought almost made Charlotte smile, despite the dangerous situation. Her brothers, Damien and Jason, were the experts at this sort of thing—well, not the seduction part, but the infiltration. They would know exactly how to handle something like a dragon shifter. But she’d never been a part of that secret supernatural hunter lifestyle. Until tonight.
If I bring home a Russian dragon, they’ll have to admit I’m not just their kid sister anymore. Maybe then they’ll let me join the Brotherhood instead of shutting me out.
But if she were being honest with herself, coming all the way to Moscow hadn’t just been about proving her brothers wrong. It had been about seeing the man from the files she’d gotten from the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon’s headquarters. The man she couldn’t get out of her head. The man she planned to capture.
Her target was Rurik Barinov, youngest of the three remaining dragons in the Russian Imperial bloodline who controlled the western half of Russia. Pulling out her cell phone, she scanned the pictures she had of him, probably for the hundredth time. She’d been lucky enough to snap some shots of the surveillance photos they had of him on file.
He was gorgeous in a dangerous sort of way, with a strong jaw, bright green eyes, and wavy dark hair that was a little too long, making him look a bit like a pirate from those swoon-worthy romance novels she’d devoured as a teenager. Charlotte hadn’t known men could look like that in real life, and she’d already had some seriously dirty thoughts about what he was like in bed. He’d been her first choice out of the three brothers to try to capture.
Rurik tended to wear leather jackets, jeans, and biker boots, and there was a long scar down one side of his face, which only made him look that much more dangerous. Her sexy biker dragon was too much of everything, and she had to admit getting close to him tonight was going to be one heck of a thrill. God, there has to be something wrong with me. He’s not my sexy biker. He’s my target. But she couldn’t deny the fact that the idea of getting up close and personal with Rurik turned her on.
Keep your cool and focus on the mission. It was the tenth time she had to remind herself of that tonight.
This mission was strictly recon, though. She needed to get into Rurik’s club, survey the scene, locate and observe him. Nothing more. She’d read the notes on the Brotherhood’s dragon monitoring. They really just tried to keep an eye on the dragons’ activities and not interfere but a few months ago two dragons had fought in a nightclub and a mortal woman had died. There were rumors of a coming dragon war between two families in Moscow and Damien and the other hunters were desperate to figure out how to stop the war. And it all came down to Rurik.
He’d been the dragon at the nightclub who’d survived by killing the other dragon from the rival family which had brought the dragon shifters in Russia to the brink of war. Damien had made a note in the file that if they could bring in Rurik, they could question him, determine whether the Brotherhood would have to intervene or not to prevent human casualties.
So far no one had been able to get close to Rurik, he never let any female agents get close enough to lure him to a location where he could be trapped, like a room with pure iron bars hidden in the walls. And bringing him by force would only result in danger to the agents and possibly innocent humans.
That’s why I’m here alone. Rurik won’t see me coming.
She grinned a little. She wore a light perfume she’d concocted that contained a bit of enhanced human pheromones. If it worked, she could catch his interest and then she’d go with him, rather than try to lure him off somewhere. And once she had him alone, she’d use her secret weapon to incapacitate him long enough to call in the Brotherhood to help her transport him to secure facility where he could be questioned safely.
The cabdriver hit the brakes as a car ahead of them swerved into their lane. Charlotte winced as she jerked forward and collided with the back seat of the cab.
“Sorry!” the driver muttered in heavily accented English. Then he flashed an obscene gesture at the driver ahead of them. At this rate, it would take them forever to reach the club where Rurik was supposed to be tonight.
Charlotte slid back in her seat and tried to still her jittery nerves. She would have been back in her little lab in Detroit, safe and sound, instead of here dragon hunting if it hadn’t been for her friend Meg.
Meg Stratford, a hunter for the Brotherhood, had called her secretly to analyze a serum Meg had found in London. Charlotte had unraveled the chemical composition in a matter of days. The product she’d synthesized based off the sample Meg had given her should be able to mute a dragon’s shifting abilities. It essentially made them human for a period of time depending on the dose, but it wasn’t permanent. She’d made samples that would last around twenty-four hours on an average sized shifter.
But the drug was potentially dangerous. Not in terms of directly harming the shifters, but because of how easily it could be misused. In the wrong hands it would threaten the balance that existed between the various supernatural factions. Even certain members of the Brotherhood, known for their overzealous nature, couldn’t be trusted with it. Meg had sworn her to secrecy, even from her own brothers.
A stab of guilt cut through Charlotte. She’d told Meg she needed more information on dragons to help her solve the mystery of the serum, but that wasn’t true. The real reason she needed to know everything about dragons was because she planned to catch one to prove she was a worthy hunter just like her brothers, but didn’t want to get herself killed in the process.
She’d created a batch of the dragon-dampening serum for herself, and had the vials tucked away safely in her hotel mini-fridge to use when she was ready. She went over the list of what she knew about dragons in her head as the taxi drove toward Rurik’s nightclub, The Lair.
1.Dragons could grow old—really old, like thousands of years—but for most of their lives they resembled men and women in their mid
-thirties.
2.There were more than a dozen breeds, including Russian Imperials and Nordic ice dragons. Rivalries were common between many of them.
3.Dragons could breathe fire as well as control it.
4.They had protective thick hides with scales, and those scales were often used in magical spells.
5.Dragons could shift between their human and dragon forms in seconds.
6.They were completely obsessed with jewels.
7.They were sensitive to pure iron and could be contained and unable to shift if trapped in iron cells. They could also be injured while in dragon form while weapons of iron. In human form any weapon could hurt them but their healing rates were fast enough that only iron weapons could do lasting damage.
Charlotte studied the Moscow nightlife nervously as the taxicab came to a stop in front of The Lair nightclub. Being out of America for the first time in her life, she definitely wasn’t used to the cultural differences. On the flight over she’d listened to some Russian language podcasts, trying to learn some phrases, but it gave her a headache. It didn’t help that Russian was a notoriously difficult language, requiring a greater range of vocabulary just to reach a basic understanding. Luckily, the majority of the hotel staff and taxi drivers spoke English, something she was incredibly grateful for. However, once she stepped foot into that nightclub, she was positive it was going to be all Russian. The driver had warned her that this was a Russian-only nightclub, off the beaten path from where tourists would go.
“Here is okay?” the driver asked.