by Kayle Wolf
Auctioned to the Dragon
A Paranormal Romance
Kayla Wolf
Copyright © 2019 by The Wolf Sisters Books.
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of the book only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form, including recording, without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Books by The Wolf Sisters
Chapter 1
Helena took a deep breath of the delicious steam that was wafting from her plate and tried very hard to keep her attention on what her brother was saying. She knew she should be more attentive—he was the king, after all—but her sister-in-law had been cooking the most fascinating meals lately. How was she expected to sit here paying close attention to his boring speeches when there were such amazing smells and tastes to be explored? How was anyone else not absolutely hypnotized by the way the steam rose gently from the rice, by the delicious, glistening piles of carefully cooked and seasoned meat? The medley of colors exhibited by the vegetables… the mouth-watering shine of the sauce…
“Helena?”
“Sorry. This just looks so wonderful,” she murmured, glancing up to meet her sister-in-law’s amused gaze. They were all sitting together around a grand table in the palace, a formal dining room that had once been set up to entertain dozens of guests at once. It didn’t get much use these days, but they still made an effort to have a family meal here together once a week at least. Sunday lunch, Lisa had called it—apparently a tradition where she was from, too. It felt a little empty, still, with the four other tables in the space unused and gathering dust, but their little family was still a cheerful point of warmth in the emptiness. Helena’s brother Alexander sat at the head of the table where their mother had sat, years before. It was customary for the ruling monarch to take that place, after all, and Alexander maintained an allegiance to tradition that had served him well in his term as king. Their father sat to his left—looking at him, she felt a pang of sadness, thinking back to their family meals when their mother had still been alive. That had been his favored spot then, too. Helena still missed her mother furiously—she could only imagine how deep her father’s grief was. But he was mending, slowly, as they all were.
“Yeah, you’ve been staring at it for long enough. It’s just a stir-fry,” Lisa pointed out. “Seriously, not a big deal.” Lisa had volunteered to cook for them today, and she’d outdone herself, as far as Helena was concerned. Since the woman had moved in with them, Helena had tried so many dazzling new dishes that it made her head spin. Not that her family didn’t ever cook—but they had a rather outdated stable of tried-and-true recipes that, while tasty and filling in their own way, lacked a certain energy and excitement.
“Sure, but…” Helena gestured vaguely, aware that her brothers were looking down the table at her with expressions that were a lot less tolerant than Lisa’s. “I’m just—still so excited about your cooking. You’ll have to teach me this one as well.”
“Add it to the list,” Lisa laughed. “It’s a lot easier with electricity, at least.”
Electricity was a recent introduction to the palace. Buried deep in a particularly inaccessible section of the Rocky Mountains, their home had been quietly avoided by most of the technological innovations of recent centuries. For many inhabitants, that was exactly how they liked it. But since Lisa had successfully negotiated the installation of electricity in the palace a few months ago, their whole community had been abuzz with gossip. To press a switch and find a room suddenly bathed in steady, clear light… was it magic? There had been audible gasps when Alexander, their king, had revealed the new installations at a recent gathering. It was probably the most exciting thing that had happened since… well, since Lisa had moved in, probably.
Or had Jessica and her little sister Angela caused more consternation, Helena wondered? Her other brother’s wife was already halfway through her meal with evident enjoyment, sauce glistening on her chin. Angela was eating more primly, giving her older sister occasional horrified sidelong looks, and Helena resisted the urge to giggle. Jessica always got so sensitive about her table manners. There had been incredible controversy when she’d moved in—an ancient enemy, living among them? Samuel had done a huge amount of diplomatic work to get his new wife and her sister tolerated, if not quite accepted, among the members of the community, but tensions were still high, and snide comments were still frequently made at gatherings. Their presence was more controversial than Lisa’s, perhaps, but Lisa had done far more to interrupt their way of life than Jessica and Angela ever had. It was a tie, then, Helena decided with a grin.
Dragons didn’t cope especially well with change, after all.
“How wonderful.” Her father spoke, unexpectedly, and she glanced up at him. “How wonderful, to sit at a table, representatives from every species breaking bread together. What a triumph for the progress of peace in our time.”
“Are we every species, really?” Angela asked in the silence that followed. Stephen had been plunged into a deep sadness following the death of his wife and soulmate, the Queen before Alexander—for months on end, he’d hardly spoken a word. Lately, his mood had seemed to be improving, and he spoke much more often, but there was still a certain hush in the air when he spoke, as though they were afraid any interruption could startle him into silence again. Helena privately felt that Stephen’s improving mood had been brought about by the new arrivals—by Lisa, who’d been living with them for nearly two years now, and more recently by Angela and Jessica, who had moved in maybe six months ago. He and Angela had grown especially close—the young woman loved history and folklore, which were Stephen’s special subjects, and the two spent long hours down in the library, poring over old tomes and arguing excitedly about the histories of their peoples.
“You’re not going to get into this argument again, are you?” Samuel murmured with a tone of quiet desperation that made Helena giggle.
“It just doesn’t make sense that there are only two kinds of shifter on the whole planet,” Angela said indignantly. “All the old books refer to shifters the same way human histories talk about countries.”
“The implication is that there are many kinds of shifters, not just wolves and dragons,” Stephen agreed thoughtfully, “but really all we can glean from that is that that was true at the time of writing. And that, as we know, was hundreds of years ago.”
“Yeah, but we’re still all here, aren’t we? There are wolves everywhere, we know that, even if a bunch of us are isolationists. And Alexander agrees that there are more dragons out there somewhere, right? So doesn’t it follow that there could be other species of shifter entirely—we just haven’t met them yet?” Angela gazed challengingly up the table at the king, who looked a bit taken aback. Helena grinned quietly to herself. The two young wolves had rebelled against their pack six months ago and come to join the dragons—and ever since, both h
ad had a decidedly un-wolf-like disregard for authority and hierarchy. Angela, in particular, was extremely critical of leadership structures that didn’t derive from a group decision. She and Stephen had had long conversations about the possibility of holding elections for King, something that everyone else found absolutely laughable. Lisa pointed out that human beings, at least in her country, held elections for leadership every four years. To dragons, an ancient and slow-moving people, that sounded absurdly fast. Why, you’d hardly get settled in to your position before you’d be replaced. But humans and wolves lived a lot faster than dragons—which was why Helena so appreciated the breath of fresh air that Lisa, Angela, and Jessica had brought to their previously stuffy and hidebound little colony.
Alexander was stammering a little in response to Angela’s rather impertinent question, trying to come to grips with the prospect of other kinds of shifters. For all his adherence to authority and tradition, Helena reflected, he was the most revolutionary of them all. It was Alexander, after all, who’d first broken their isolationist position—in pursuit of a prophecy, he’d headed to the human world to seek out the woman who would be his mate. And sure enough, he’d found her… though it had taken him and Lisa a little while to figure it out. That always made Helena laugh—that he’d spent so long searching for his prophesied soulmate when Lisa had been right there, actively helping him search. But it was Alexander who’d first brought home a human woman. And then, as if to one-up his twin brother, Samuel had proceeded to fall in love with a wolf. Helena found the whole thing absolutely delightful—though the political upheaval it had caused in their sedate little community had been less than funny.
“Speaking of other shifters, actually, I have something I wanted to bring up,” Alexander was saying now. His golden eyes (a family trait shared with his father and siblings) were gleaming, and Helena leaned forward a little, interested despite herself. Alexander didn’t often bring news. Things moved rather slowly around here, at least where the dragons were concerned. She could look up from her stir fry for this, she felt.
“You know we’ve been sending out scouts to surrounding territories, of course,” Alexander said. Helena nodded—she’d done a little of that work herself. Since their little community had nearly been lost in the wake of the death of the Queen, Alexander had been working hard on outreach. There had once been dozens, if not hundreds, of dragon communities all across the world, according to their history books—but one by one, they’d fallen out of touch with them, until all that remained was their little village high in the mountains. It had been decided that it was too dangerous to persist in isolation and that attempts should be made to reconnect with their cousins and relatives across the world—if they were still out there, of course. So they had flown out across the country, searching for any trace of people like them. Helena herself hadn’t found anything—but it seemed that somebody else may have.
“We received word just today of a festival being held a few hundred miles to the north. A once-in-a-century event, it seems—and an invitation had been forwarded to us, courtesy of a connection one of our scouts was able to make with some neutral wolves in the area.”
Helena’s eyes widened. This was a huge development. Contact with wolves was always dangerous—there was an ancient enmity between their peoples that tended to get in the way of positive diplomatic relations. To hear of a neutral group—and more to the point, one that was willing to facilitate communications … well, there was hope yet for them to rejoin shifter society. Helena could hardly imagine a world like that—but the very idea made her heart beat faster. How wonderful, to meet new people, to expand their closed-in little horizons!
“A festival! How exciting!” Lisa clapped her hands, delighted. “Is it a big wolf thing? Jess?”
“I’ve never heard of a festival,” Jessica said, a troubled look on her face. “But you know what Fallhurst’s like.” Jessica and Angela’s town was home to a pack of wolves who refused ever to leave the borders of their village. It was no surprise that they wouldn’t participate in a festival, even a once-in-a-century event like this one.
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s not just wolves. From what our scout reported—the festival is run by dragons.”
Stephen, Samuel, and Helena all whipped their heads around to Alexander in a movement that would have been comical if they weren’t so shocked by this revelation.
“Dragons?” Helena gasped. “Actual dragons? Like us?”
“Astonishing,” Stephen murmured, his hands trembling. Helena saw him look over at Angela, and grinned to herself, knowing that the two of them were definitely going to be spending the rest of the week in the library.
“They live up north in a little settlement called Mossley. It’s not on any maps, I checked,” Alexander explained as both Angela and Stephen’s mouths opened, clearly with the same question in mind.
“Mossley,” Angela frowned. “That’s familiar.”
“It may have been listed in the records—” Stephen started, but Angela was still frowning.
“No—no, familiar from earlier. Familiar from Fallhurst. Didn’t we—Jess, do you remember our history lessons? Didn’t we fight dragons from another town? A town by a river?”
“It rings a bell,” Jessica said thoughtfully. “But I hated history, you know that.”
“Our ancestors fought dragons before you guys,” Angela explained, glancing a little apologetically around the table at the dragons—Alexander flicked a hand in dismissal. The ancient war was a sore subject among the other dragons of their little community, but everyone at the table was thoroughly reconciled. “There were a lot of different battles… I remember Mom talking about one group in particular, though. They were smaller than the other dragons we’d fought, so the Alpha at the time thought they’d be easier to deal with, but they were ten times meaner than even the worst of the big ones. They used to take prisoners. The stuff they did to them… it—it wasn’t nice.”
There was a solemn silence at the table. Angela broke it, looking uncomfortable. “But—I mean, that was hundreds of years ago. Pack memories, and everything. If there’s a festival, I’m sure the war’s long over, right?”
“Peace is a slow process,” Stephen said gently. “But no progress will be made if we don’t reach out. It was kind of the river dragons to invite us to their festival. I suggest we send a delegation to attend.”
“I will be going,” Alexander said, but Helena didn’t miss the look his wife shot him. Lisa was a brave woman, and very adept at hiding her feelings, but Helena knew her well enough to recognize a look of worry, masked as it was by a seemingly-casual interest in what he was saying. She was frightened. And fair enough, too. A pack of unfamiliar shifters had nearly killed Alexander before Lisa came to live with them all. Shifters were territorial, suspicious of one another—and they had long memories of war and conflict. Especially dragons, whose long lifespans made their memories even longer.
“I’ll come with you,” Samuel put in—had he picked up on Lisa’s concern, too? The woman relaxed a little, but now Jessica’s hackles were raised.
“And me. We should have a wolf rep, if we’re doing a convention, right?” But her body language suggested she was far more concerned about the possibility for an altercation. She’d saved Samuel’s life in a battle against the wolves of Fallhurst not long ago, and it was clear that she still considered his safety her responsibility.
“That might be—complicated,” Samuel said, giving his wife a sidelong glance. “A meeting of dragons and dragons is going to be fraught enough without adding wolves to the mix—”
“And whatever other kinds of shifters might be there,” Angela said brightly. “Can I come too?”
“We’ll discuss who is and isn’t going later,” Alexander said with a note of finality. Helena hated that tone—it meant that any further attempt at conversation would be met with stony silence from her brother. It was a quality he’d inherited from their mother—a kind of icy, arctic wall he
could put up at a moment’s notice. Helena had hated it from their mother, and she hated it even more from her brother, whom she’d always been able to push around. Not so any more—or at the very least, she had to be a little more subtle about it.
They passed the rest of the meal chatting more generally about shifters—Angela was deeply excited about the prospect of shifters of other species and was rattling through all the species native to North America and discussing the various qualities of the animals that may be present in their human form with Stephen. They were as bad as each other, Helena thought with amusement. A strange little family, they were. She reflected as she ate the delicious meal Lisa had prepared for them with great enthusiasm, on how much her life had changed for the better in the last two years. She’d always been something of an outsider in their family. Her two older brothers had always had each other—there was a bond between twins that she couldn’t compete with, though they’d always been kind to her. She’d never been close to her mother, who had always been busy with the duties associated with being Queen, and she and her father had always been so different. They all loved her dearly, of course, but she had a lot of time to herself. And her interests never had quite gelled with the interests of the other dragons.
At an early age, she exhibited a preference for her human shape over her dragon one—that had been met with surprise and gentle disdain from a people who quietly felt that they wouldn’t be too much disadvantaged by their human forms disappearing altogether. Until he was tasked by the prophecy to go to the human world to find his soulmate, Alexander hadn’t taken his human shape for almost a decade. Helena had laughed at how clumsy he’d been when he tried it before he left—he’d almost fallen over the instant he’d shifted, he was so used to having four legs and a set of wings to balance himself. That had changed lately, but there had still been a very long stretch of time during which Helena had been the only human-shaped shifter in the palace. It had never made sense to her, her family’s disdain for their human forms—after all, there were entire rooms in the palace that were purpose-designed for this form, spaces that their large draconic forms wouldn’t fit in.