The Dragon's Secret Baby

by Jasmine Wylder

  "Patrick!" Dominique gasped. "He's got—"

  "Patrick is dead." Virdi pushed her away, back to the other women.

  Dominque's skin tones, usually the color of red cedar planks, paled. "For the egg? Fine, we'll give it to you, just stop him!"

  Already the Dragons were being homogenized. Paul tossed the human aside and lunged for a second one.

  "He's not from my clan," Virdi snarled.

  Nobody liked Paul's clan. They were a bunch of violent drunks who acted more like a gang, muscling in on claimed territory, attacking human populations and causing trouble for all of them. Virdi had had run-ins with them before… well, this was the perfect time to even some scores.

  With a grin, he released Dominique and launched himself through the window, shifting as he did so. His wings snapped to either side and he rammed into the red Dragon before it could catch another human in its jaws.

  If he took out a Dragon like this, his own status would rise among his peers–and the humans might even decide that his heroics deserved a bit of a reward. He let himself be distracted for a split second by the thought of Dominique on her knees, thanking him for rescuing her–although that would never happen.

  Paul snarled, claws tearing at Virdi's face as the green Dragon attacked. Virdi whipped his tail around, lacerating Paul's side with his spiked tail. Paul roared, rearing on his back legs. Virdi clawed at his ankles, bringing his own wings under his body as the red Dragon crashed down on him. Virdi bucked his back upwards, impaling the other Dragon on his spine spikes. Paul yanked back, his roar turning to a howl of pain.

  A billow of red fire erupted from Paul's mouth. The scorching flame sizzled against Virdi's scales and he responded with a jet of his own green fire. The two clouds of flame collided, sending bursts of black smoke up into the air. Virdi charged through, intending on taking the other Dragon by surprise. Paul knew he was coming. A clawed hand lashed out, grabbing Virdi by the knee.

  Paul yanked hard, sending Virdi stumbling, then grabbed the wing on the other side of his body. The red Dragon flipped the green one onto his back and launched himself over Virdi. Virdi clawed at his attacker's face—and then Paul was gone.

  A third Dragon, this one a royal purple, pinned Paul to the ground. Huge jaws clamped over the red Dragon's throat and shook back and forth violently. Golden spikes spread over his shoulders and jade tattoos ran down his back and onto all four legs.

  Virdi backed away. It was Alom, king of his clan's rival. The fact that the king was named for the Mayan sky-god was all Virdi needed to know about him to know that he wasn't to be trifled with. He backed away from the fight, keeping himself close to the ground. If he was going to make it out, he would have to attack right when the king Dragon finished his kill, before he had time to turn his attention to Virdi. Alom made quick work of Paul but as he finished him off, another red Dragon dropped in from the sky. It landed on Alom's back and screeched as it clawed at his sides.

  "Claire! Come on!"

  Dominique's voice hissed behind him. He turned to see Esther and Dominque halfway to an ATV, while Claire stood frozen in the doorway to the camper. The egg was cradled in Dominque's arms. Virdi glanced once more at the two fighting Dragons before he launched himself towards the humans. Dominque was so focused on Alom and the newcomer that she didn't notice Virdi until he had seized her in his claws. A startled shriek rose from her throat. Esther shouted. Claire screamed.

  Virdi dragged Dominque into the woods, pressing her against his belly. He could feel the egg between their bodies and moved as quickly as he could. Flying through the thick foliage around camp was out of the question. Who knew what other Dragons were waiting in the sky?

  "Let go of me!" Dominque shouted, squirming in his grip.

  Virdi growled, trying to warn her to be silent but she only screamed louder. Did she have a death wish? If she kept this up, she'd bring the other Dragons on them in a heartbeat. Did Alom care if there were human casualties? No. There was only one reason he was here. The egg.

  A third red Dragon burst through the trees. It lunged at Virdi. He was just able to toss Dominque aside before its jaws were on him. There was no time wasted trying to identify his attacker this time. Virdi slashed with his claws, taking off deep strips of scale and flesh. The salty tang of blood filled the air. The red Dragon clamped its jaws onto his shoulder, clawed hands reaching for his wing joints. Virdi tucked his wings tight against himself and rolled. He flipped the red Dragon over and tossed it into a tree. The trunk snapped; it fell directly onto the red Dragon's skull and the Dragon was still.

  Virdi snorted and turned to where he had thrown Dominque. She was gone. The sounds of battle back at the campsite were too loud to hear a single human running through the woods, so Virdi inhaled deeply. He found her honeyed-jasmine scent quickly and followed it, shifting as he did so. As he shrunk down, moving between the massive trees became easier.

  He came on Dominque soon after. Her arms were still wrapped firmly around the egg and when she heard him coming, she whirled. Her eyes glittered with determination.

  "I don't know what you are all after but you're not getting this egg. It's important to the archeological record and until we can prove which clan it belongs to—"

  "It doesn’t 'belong' to any clan, not the way you think," Virdi interrupted. "That's an Emperor Dragon. Clans from all over the world will be fighting to claim it. And you are going to die in the fight unless you trust me."

  Dominique laughed. "Trust you?"

  "Yeah. We can work together. You care for the egg, I make sure nobody kills you, and when the Emperor is born, everybody knows that I was the one that made it possible. You get your archeological crap and my grandfather promotes me to a prince instead of just being Skaldi's son. Most importantly, you don't die. Win-win, don’t you think?"

  The archeologist's eyes narrowed. Her grip on the egg tightened. Somewhere in the jungle, a howler monkey started shouting and Virdi realized the sounds of Dragons battling had ended. He cocked his head and cursed.

  "We don't have much time. So are you going to come with me, or do I have to take the egg and leave you to whoever comes next?"

  Her face twisted in anger but she nodded reluctantly. Virdi nodded and strode forward. He grasped her wrist and pushed her ahead of him through the forest. There weren't many places where they would be safe from other Dragons, but he knew where a cave was that nobody else knew. He just had to make sure the human stayed in front of him, so his passage would burn away her scent.

  "The least you could do is put on clothes," Dominque grumbled.

  Virdi glanced down at his naked form. His jeans had shredded when he shifted. Shame. He liked that pair.

  "You're one to talk," he said, unable to help himself from teasing despite the situation. "Look at you. You can't tell me that your shirt just happened to tear along your midriff and nowhere else."

  She twisted to glare at him. He grinned back, though he wanted to do anything but. He would just have to remind himself why he was doing this–for glory and power. That was all that mattered in the world.

  Chapter Three

  Dominque

  Her arms and back ached from carrying the egg but there was no way she was letting Virdi get his hands on it. Dominque rolled the egg in her shirt, wrapping it up firmly to make sure that it stayed in place, then tied the arms around her waist. It was a good thing it had been a slightly cooler day and she had worn her undershirt, so she could make this sling.

  Still, she didn't like the looks that Virdi kept giving her. If he thought that he could seduce her into giving him the egg now when he'd never so much as looked at her before, he had another think coming. She wasn't going to give up this egg for anything. No amount of heated stares and slow passes over her figure were going to change that.

  "Where are we going, anyway?" she asked, trying to distract herself from the uncomfortable heat. "You said that Dragons from all over the world are going to be after this egg. So are we going somewhere s
afe?"

  Ugh. What was wrong with her brain? Of course they were going somewhere safe.

  "Yes," Virdi grunted. "And it's not just an egg. It's an Emperor."

  "And what does that mean?" Dominique ducked under the branch of a baboon cap tree, keeping a hand on the egg at her waist. "It's been buried for thousands of years, it can't be viable."

  Virdi glanced at her with a troubled expression. "You archeologists. You're all the same, you come and take whatever you find and don't bother talking to the living descendants of the people you're studying. If I had a grain of rice for every time I could have explained something you dug up to you but you refused to talk to me, I could feed a small family for a week."

  Dominique winced at the accusation. "We consulted with a lot of the locals about the egg. Nobody said anything."

  "Probably because they either thought you'd laugh it off or they wanted it for themselves."

  "Look, I have included the Dragons in this dig as much as I could. I didn't listen to you because you always came in acting like I should know it already. I didn't actually study for Dragon archeology in school. I wanted to focus more on my own heritage."

  "Your heritage?"

  "Yeah. Although what that is, I don't know." She slapped at a mosquito and frowned at the splotch of blood it left behind. "I never met my dad and my mom never told me anything about him. One night stand gone wrong or something like that. All she would tell me was he was part Native American–I don't know what tribe–and Asian. Maybe Chinese."

  Her frown increased. Why was she telling him this? It wasn't like he cared. A banana leaf smacked her in the face and she growled. This situation was bad enough. She wasn't going to give him any more ammunition. It wasn't like he cared about her mother's lack of cultural knowledge.

  "But Claire approached me and she could fund the research, so I changed focus," she continued. "It was an incredible opportunity."

  "Claire…" he drew her name out. "That's the redhead, right?"

  "The redhead who is always throwing herself at you. How do you not know her name?"

  Virdi frowned. "And she chose you instead of someone with more experience to head her dig here?"

  Dominique grunted back at him. She scrambled over a log but her pant leg got caught on the other side. She pulled at it, then tried to go back over. Her foot slipped, the leg already over the log caught and with a yelp she toppled downwards, clawing the moss off the log as she tried to steady herself. Virdi caught her and pulled her upright. He lifted her off the ground and swung her over the log. Dominique yelped again, this time the sound more high-pitched.

  He set her down right before him. Their bodies were so close that Dominique's breath caught in her throat. There was a spicy smell to him, the way buttercup flowers used to taste on her tongue when she ate them. She always did love buttercups. She leaned in unconsciously, inhaling the scent.

  Virdi chuckled, his dark gaze on hers. Something smoldered in his eyes, lighting a fire deep within her. One of his hands slid down her back, toward her ass–and the egg.

  "Hey!" she shouted, smacking him in the chest. She yanked away, cheeks warm and chest heaving. "Don't think that you're going to steal the egg from me again."

  "It's an Emperor. We haven't had one for thousands of years. That egg is going to bind all the clans back into one race, he will break down the barriers between us and restore harmony. "

  Dominique narrowed her eyes. "You didn't answer my question. How can it still be viable after all these years?"

  "It's not the egg itself that carries the Emperor. It's a…" Virdi hesitated a moment, clearly struggling to word it. "I suppose you could say that it's an indicator. The egg was crafted by the last Emperor, to show when the next Emperor would be born. Whatever clan ends up with him—"

  "None of you get to just claim him." She wrapped a protective hand around the egg and moved back. "Now where are we going? If you don’t tell me, I'm going back to the dig. I have to find out who's been hurt and get the cops in to take care of the Dragons who—"

  "You go back, you'll die," Virdi snapped. His eyes darkened and he loomed over her, fists clenched. "And as much as I would love to get rid of you, Miss 'I've got a stick so far up my ass I can taste wood'–but not the right kind," he added, giving her a nasty smile.

  Dominque gasped. How dare he?

  "I'm not giving up my chance at fame and glory because of you," he continued. "So you can go back to your camp if you can find it, fine by me. But you're giving me the egg."

  "You're not touching this egg," she snarled.

  It occurred to her that she was being irrational and that without the information back at the dig, this egg wasn't worth anything from an archeological standpoint. And if it was what Virdi said it was, did she really want to get involved in the war to claim it? But if there was a little baby in this egg, waiting to be born, he deserved a chance to make up his own mind, didn't he?

  Virdi jumped forward suddenly. One hand latched around her shoulder while the other reached for the egg. Dominque threw herself backward. Only to trip on a root. Virdi's grip tightened as she fell. Her tank tore and her arms flung out. It was enough to give her the balance she needed to regain her footing. Both hands wrapped protectively around the egg.

  "I said you're not touching it," she told him with narrowed eyes.

  "Will you just give it here—" Virdi's gaze landed on her exposed cleavage.

  His eyes widened and Dominque froze. The fire inside roared to new life, surprising her. One of her hands flew to cover herself. "Hey, eyes up here."

  The Dragon ignored her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled it down, continuing to stare at her breast. Dominique thought about letting him continue. A brief image flashed through her mind of his breath and then his lips touching her skin. The fright at imagining such a thing left her breathless and she slapped him soundly across his face before she could stop herself.

  "Ow!" Virdi gave her a glare. "What was that for?"

  "What else am I supposed to do, when you're ogling me like I'm some dancer at a strip club?" Dominique huffed, trying to use anger to cover up just how much her heart was hammering. This was not the kind of attention she enjoyed from men. She liked them to ask her out and give her roses. Not… whatever Virdi was doing.

  "I wasn't ogling you," the Dragon snapped back. "How long have you had that tattoo?"

  Tattoo? Dominque glanced down. Her eyes widened. A symbol identical to the one on the egg was emblazoned in gold on her breast. Her jaw dropped and she touched to make sure that it wasn't a sticker or something. Her warm, smooth skin was all she felt.

  "What is that?"

  Virdi let out a string of curses in what sounded like Spanish, Belizean Creole and even some Latin. Dominque's brows rose. He was better educated than she had given him credit for. At least in swearwords. His cursing and spitting didn't tell her where this strange tattoo had come from, though and she pulled her tank over it again. At least her bra would give her some modesty–as long as it didn't rip, too.

  "The egg has bonded to you," Virdi said bitterly. "Of all the… Couldn’t it have bonded to a nice girl? It had to stick with a humorless woman like you?"

  Whatever attraction she may have been feeling towards him vanished instantly. There was a lot she would have liked to say to him in response to his rant but chose the high road instead. "Bonded to me? What does that mean?"

  "What does that mean," Virdi repeated in a mutter. He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. "It means that out of all the women in the world, the egg chose you. You are going to be the Mother of the Emperor."

  Dominque wasn't sure whether to laugh or faint. Her knees buckled and though her rational mind tried to brush it off as a lie, she couldn't disbelieve the words he was saying. He believed what he was saying. That much was clear.

  "Me… Mother to the Emperor?"

  "Yup. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing. Maybe it's just a fluke. Were you the first woman to touch the egg?"

/>   "No. Claire touched it first. I hadn't even noticed…" She glanced down at the tattoo again. "What does that even mean, that it bonded with me?"

  "I said that the egg was crafted by the former Emperor to show when the next Emperor would be born. It was always that the egg would bond to a woman, and she would give birth to the new Emperor. Like I said, it's not the egg itself that holds the Emperor. But since it's bonded to you, it's activated something in your internal… stuff so that you'll be pregnant with him."

  Dominique gaped at him. That couldn't be possible… could it? "You're wrong. It can't be me. I'm not in a position where I can even have a baby. I'm not pregnant, am I? I can't be the Virgin Mary!"

  Virdi's gaze flickered to her face and heat rose in her cheeks. Great. So she had just not-so-subtly told a man who had no business knowing anything about her that she was a virgin. Could this day get any worse?

  "You're not pregnant. It's just that your first child will be the Emperor Dragon. I'll have to be quick, then. I didn't expect this." Virdi's face twisted. "I don't like this but I'm going to have to keep you. As soon as it's known that the egg has bonded to you, every unmated male will be trying to claim you as their mate. To be Father of the Emperor… it would be a grand honor."

  Every unmated male.

  I'll have to be quick, then.

  Dominque backed away. "Don't you dare touch me!"

  To her surprise, the Dragon backed away. "What? No! That was not what I was saying. I have no desire to mate you."

  The tone he used ought to have been insulting but Dominque didn't care. She sighed in relief. He wasn't going to try anything. She ran a hand through her black hair. Her braid had completely come undone. "Okay. In that case, what happens next?"

  "We continue. I'll deliver you to my mother and she'll get you to this place where you see your mate or something like that… The details are a little vague. But we need to keep moving. We don't know when another Dragon will show up."

  He hadn't even finished speaking when a dark shadow burst from the trees behind him. A tall, muscular man hit him over the head with a tree branch and grabbed Dominque. Even as she screamed, the arms around her became scaled. With a rush of wind, the Dragon leaped into the air, beating his wings. Dominque hung in his grasp. Her head spun as the world below grew smaller.