by Selena Scott
“Time to clock in,” he told Carter, giving the bar a quick double tap.
And turning, he walked toward the edge of the stage, relieving the other bouncer whose shift was over. Idris crossed his arms over his chest, glared out at the crowd of men, and guarded his girl.
The End
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“ The Dragon Realm” Series
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This prequel can also be read as a standalone story. For a preview check out the FIRST TWO chapters on the next page. I hope you enjoy!
CHAPTER ONE
The woman plays with the celery green jewel at her neck. It’s heavy and oddly warm to the touch. She doesn’t think twice about all the people watching her. She’s used to it by now. But she doesn’t want to be here. In this stuffy room. She never wants to be here. She wants to be flying. Swooping through the air.
She pushes the thought from her head. She needs to concentrate. Today is the most important day of her life. It’s the most important day the entire kingdom has known for a generation.
The woman takes a knee in at the front of the room and a great gold crown is placed on top of her head. She knows what it looks like without having to look. She’s seen it every day of her life on the head of Queen Romilde. Its intricate gold spires braid upward into large red gems. It is beautiful and stately.
The woman shifts on her feet. She didn’t expect it to be quite this heavy. How did Queen Romilde stand wearing this every day? The woman widens her stance, trying to hold her head high despite the ungodly weight on her shoulders, but the crown seems to be getting heavier and heavier and soon she drops to one knee. And then the other.
The woman plants her hands on the ground and tries to keep her head up. But, as strong as she is, she’s no match for the weight of the crown. The ground rushes up to meet her.
She squeezes her eyes shut, expecting to smash into the ground, but the impact never happens. Opening her eyes she realizes she’s out in the open air, away from the stuffy room. The weight from the crown has moved off of her head and onto her back. Looking back, she realizes it’s no longer a crown she wears, it’s a golden shield, lashed to her back.
Much more comfortable with that, the woman rises, grabbing the shield and holding it across her body. A golden sword materializes in her hand. She looks around for the third and most important part of her warrior weapons. Her partner. She looks to the skies and sees him. A green beast, plummeting through the air to join her in battle.
Felice sat straight up, wrestling herself out of the sleeping bag that confined her legs. Jeez. Couldn’t she get through a single night without a dream like that? She ran her hand through her hair, trying to erase the feeling of the heavy crown on her head. Her other hand crept to her throat, searching around for the great, green jewel. She let out an annoyed laugh at herself as she realized that had been a part of the dream too.
She needed fresh air. “Luckily I’m in the freakin Rocky Mountains,” she mumbled to herself as she unzipped her tent and pulled on her boots and coat over her pajamas.
Felice stood in the crisp night air and surveyed the small village of camping tents around her. The campfire glowed faintly orange as its dying coals wiggled themselves into the dirt. The outward bound trip with her study group had been her idea. And of course they’d all been super gung ho about it. Felice couldn’t say exactly why that annoyed her so much, but it did. As always.
For some reason people were always extremely excited about any suggestion she might have. She always found herself getting her way. It had started right around the time she’d turned 18.
Right around the time she’d gotten a body, Felice admitted to herself as she tightened her coat around her and shuffled to the cooler of water at the center of the campground. She knew she was physically striking. She had long dark hair and dark eyes. Gold colored skin and a very curvy body. A guy she’d gone on a few dates with used to call her Cleopatra.
Now that had really annoyed her. Comments on her looks set her teeth on edge because they always came along with questions like, ‘What’s your ethnicity?’ and ‘Where is your family from?’ Questions that deeply bothered Felice, as she didn’t have the answers. She had been in the foster system basically since birth, bouncing from one family to the next. Never knowing where she came from, and worse, never knowing where she was headed.
Felice polished off the cold mug of water she’d drawn from the cooler and wandered over toward the campfire which was almost extinguished. She crouched next to it and warmed her hands by the coals. She nudged a curl of kindling in toward the glow and watched as it threw a burst of light out onto the stone circle of the fire pit. Shadows danced around the campsite as a breeze twirled through the trees. Nature’s disco ball.
The foster kid thing was probably why people’s easy acquiescence to her bothered her so much. Because for 18 years of her life she barely got acknowledged, let alone listened to. And then at her 18th birthday it was suddenly like people were hanging on her every word. She’d gone from zero to sixty overnight. She needed less of that attention now.
She sighed and kicked some dirt over the coals to put the fire completely out knowing it wasn’t safe to keep it burning while everyone slept. She wasn’t scared and she wasn’t a kid anymore. At 25 she was the oldest undergrad in her program. But she certainly was lonely. She turned back to look at the tents, filled with sleeping people who laughed at her jokes, listened to her ideas, and clearly all wanted to be friends with her. But still, she’d been born lonely, and late at night, at vulnerable moments like this, Felice worried she’d die lonely too.
Felice sighed and tightened her coat against the chilly breeze that was curling through the campsite. She’d better try to get back to sleep. There was a hike and, she thought with an eye roll, team building exercises early in the morning.
She was clomping back across the campsite toward her little one-man tent when something glinted in the woods, catching her eye. That was weird. It was a sort of green refracted light. Felice felt an odd feeling zip up her spine.
There. She saw it again. Through the dark trees. It was like sunlight bouncing off of a green glass window. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Felice knew she should be zipping herself back into her tent immediately, but there was something about the light. It was calling to her.
She took one step toward it, and then another. Something about the light reminded her of the green jewel she’d worn in her dream. Vaguely, Felice knew it was really dumb to be wandering through the dark woods without a flashlight, without even telling someone where she was going. But she couldn’t ignore the racing feeling in her chest. Something deep inside her was telling her to keep going. To find where the light was coming from.
Felice paused about 75 feet from the campsite. The rustling pines of the forest seemed to crowd in on her. She wished she could see the moon, she needed something friendly. But when she looked up, all she saw was a velvet strip on the night sky, a smattering of jeweled stars.
The light hadn’t flashed in a minute or so and she was unsure of where to turn next. But when it flashed again, she was almost expecting it. She let it guide her.
She tightened her coat, ignoring the skittering of a small animal in a nearby tree. Felice squinted her eyes. There seemed to be a strange lightening in the dark of the trees ahead. The glowing of a campfire maybe? The green light had looked like it was coming from there. She crept closer and closer, hoping for a glimpse of whatever it was that was drawing her.
Creeping from one tree to the next to keep under cover, Felice held her breath. When she was close enough to see where the lightening between the trees was actually coming from, she had to blink her eyes a few times to make sure she was seeing it correctly.
The trees had thinned a littl
e bit, so she was looking into a relatively clear chunk of sky, but that’s not where the light was coming from. It was coming from a slash in the sky. A slash of… daylight. Felice rubbed her eyes. But the sight remained firmly in place when she opened them again. It looked like a slice of the night sky had been cut away to reveal a ribbon of daylight behind it. What she was seeing could not be real. There was no way. She racked her mind for a scientific explanation.
Pollution?
Not this far into the pristine mountain range.
Aurora Borealis?
Not this far south.
Felice crept even closer but froze when the green flash happened again. She realized her first impression of it had been correct. It was like sunlight flashing off green glass. Something was moving inside the ribbon of daylight and reflecting the light back toward her.
Something huge. And flying. And green.
Felice’s dream came racing back to her like a steam engine. The shield. The sword. The great beast, rushing down from the sky to fight alongside her. But that was crazy. She was seeing things. She was still dreaming. Yeah, that was it. She was still dreaming.
But dreaming or not, Felice couldn’t stop herself from getting closer and closer to the crack in the sky. Something about the bright blue was calling to her. She had the craziest feeling that home was through whatever that thing was. As a foster kid, she’d never really known home. So how could she even begin to identify it now? But she couldn’t talk herself out of the feeling.
The green flashed again, too quick for her to see anything but its reflection off the trees. Her steps became quicker, more reckless as she hurried toward the wonder. And then she was bursting completely through the line of trees, leaving them behind her. The forest was thinning, giving way to shrubs that she picked her way through, her eyes on the sky the whole time.
And then, she was close enough, she felt like she could reach out and touch it. Periwinkle sky peeked out from the glossy black of night. Puffy white clouds winked at her. She couldn’t see the green thing flying. But maybe she just needed to get a little bit closer. She hopped over a bush and trained her eyes on the blue slash in the night sky, not wanting to miss the green light if it came again. And still she moved forward. She didn’t see the ground give way to the cliff before her.
Felice let out a single scream as the world betrayed her and there simply was no more ground below her feet. She plunged, downward, into the night and also, somehow, into light. She watched her own hair stream upwards, as if it was trying to get back to the cliff she’d tumbled right off of.
Felice didn’t close her eyes. She opened them wide as she flung her own arms across her chest. Wrapping herself up. Saying goodbye to herself. Her only real friend in her whole lonely life. She stared at the line where night gave way to the day at the mysterious spot in the sky. And fell into nothingness.
CHAPTER TWO
Donovan grimaced at the ground racing up to meet him. The ground wanted him so badly. It always had. But it never got him. He pulled up out of the nosedive at the last second, flattening the prairie grass below him with the wind off of his humongous wings.
He swooped upward as easily as he’d plummeted down toward earth. Well, earth in the dragon realm. Which was pretty different than human earth.
Donovan felt the cool, squeezing pressure as he soared. The air thinned as he spiraled around the outside of a puffy cloud. He wasn’t really playing, he hadn’t played since he was a boy. But Donovan was a simple being, and little things like the feeling of sun on his scales, and the wet dew of a cloud on his tongue had always been able to please him.
He was at home in the air. In a way he never was able to be on the ground, in his other form. He felt his dragon form was a better reflection of who he was on the inside. Fierce, wild, instinctual, dangerous.
He'd never had much success in his human form. When you were human, people expected you to communicate with words. For hours. You had to do things like pick clothes, hold a job and make nice around a dinner table.
Most dragon shifters split their time between their two forms, striving for balance between the passionate dragon nature and the logical human nature. But not Donovan. He infinitely preferred the feral life of a dragon. Scrounging and hunting for food, defending his territory, resting when he needed to, flying the skies when he had energy.
He actually couldn't remember the last time he’d shifted back into his human form willingly. Most nights he was so fatigued from patrolling, protecting his land, that shifting back to human form wasn't something he really even chose to do. It just sort of happened as he stumbled toward his bed to pass out.
Patrolling was basically a full time job. He might not have cared so much about it if it weren't for the fact that his aunt and uncle lived in the same area of the mountain as he did. The three of them were the only dragons for a hundred miles in any direction. And Donovan wanted to keep it that way.
He and his family had good reason to be suspicious of other dragons.
So Donovan spent his days scouring the edges of their territory for signs of breaches. Signs of nosy dragon shifters. Signs that the king had finally found the last three dragon shifters in the Prodigo family line.
He spread his wings and caught a current of air. He loved cumulus clouds. They were like castles made of a cool breath of air. Nothing more refreshing.
But it was enough fun for now. It was time to get back to patrol. Donovan dipped below the cloud line and scanned the horizon. No dragons as usual. Just him alone in the sky.
But then something whipped across the corner of his eye. Craning his long neck and dipping one wing to bank around, Donovan tried to make out what it was. Maybe an albatross? He'd seen plenty of those in the past and never had a problem. They didn't eat the same foods so they weren't competition. And they didn't speak English. So there was always that plus side.
Donovan caught sight of it again, still plummeting toward the ground. Was that? No. Couldn’t be. A human woman?
Donovan didn’t ponder the fact that humans hadn’t been spotted in the dragon realm in centuries. He didn’t wonder why she was falling out of thin air. He didn’t think about what he was going to do when he reached her. All he did was tuck his wings at his back and dive.
She was falling fast, toppling through the air. Her long black hair slashed out behind her like a flag. She plummeted through a shaft of sunlight and something tightened deep within his dragon chest. He tucked his head and glided even faster after her.
He was a very lean dragon, made for feats of speed. Dragon shifters don’t often feel things like gratitude when they are in their dragon forms. But Donovan did. He said a prayer of thanks to the whole dragon realm when he began to gain on her. He was fifty feet from her. Thirty. Ten.
The ground was there, waiting for him like it always was. But he ignored it completely, thinking only of the woman. At the last second, he shifted his body so he led with his open claws. One of them clamped firmly around her soft belly. He loosened his grip slightly, not wanting to hurt her, being completely unsure on how to touch a human. But he didn’t have long to dwell on it as gravity won.
Donovan tried to swoop back up into the air, altering their trajectory, but they were out of time. The ground was there, arms open for them. All Donovan could do was roll onto his side and back. Let his giant body take the brunt of the force of the fall.
His body hit with an earth shaking boom and slid along the ground, creating a ten foot wide ditch behind him. Donovan felt his bones rearrange. His scales ground against one another and he gnashed his teeth against the pain. But he was careful not to clamp down with his claw. The human was so delicate and his claws were so strong. He could crush her like a bug if he wasn’t careful. He laid his claw down and set her gently on the grass.
The two of them lay completely unmoving in the aftermath of their crash to the ground. It was like the whole world had gone still. Even the clouds in the sky held their breath. Their hearts in their chests f
roze mid-beat.
And then she moved.
The woman rolled to one side, brushing her hair out of her face. She pushed herself up and blearily looked around.
True mate.
The words flashed across Donovan’s brain as he watched her brush the dirt off her hands. Her inky black hair spilled everywhere, looking almost liquid. Her face was regal and straight, every angle precise, as if it had been planned out. Night-dark eyes blinked at her surroundings. She pursed her full lips.
True mate.
If he’d been in his human form, his logical brain would tell him that it was silly to think something like that. That there was no way to tell if a woman was your true mate unless she bore your child. And dragon shifters didn’t have human true mates.
But Donovan was in his dragon form. And his passionate dragon heart cried out again, this time a single word. This word he echoed out loud.
“Mine,” he growled. His dragon voice impossibly deep and gravelly from lack of use.
The woman jumped about a foot off the ground and turned to look at him. Her mouth dropped completely open. She scrambled to her feet and he thought she was going to bolt away from him. But she didn’t.
She took a step closer. And another. And another.
“Wake up, Felice,” she whispered to herself. She dropped to her knees next to Donovan’s gigantic dragon head, studying him. “On second thought, maybe keep sleeping for a minute.”
She’d called herself Felice. That’s funny. Didn’t she know her name was true mate? Donovan held completely still while she leaned forward, staring into the one of his eyes she was facing. The sun slashed across her face, making her eyes go translucent. He could feel the heat her body was throwing off. Except from where the puffy cloak thing she was wearing blocked it. He wanted her to take the cloak thing off. It was blocking her body from him. He felt her breath wash over him and he wanted to lean into it. Like a pet. The thought almost had him pulling away from her. Almost.