Deep River Shifters 4 Book Box Set

by Lisa Daniels

  Seven dragons now existed on the field. All but one of the super aggressive ones had been cleaned out – and the last reckless charger had aligned himself with a yellow-scaled exploiter. Tarek kept moving himself out of the field of vision of the fighters, before launching himself at a weakened dragon who had tried to flee combat. Taking him down, he then reared up and gestured furiously to the aggressive fighter, grabbing the attention of the dragons advancing on him. A moment later, Tarek had two allies, and they tore into the aggressor and exploiter, who were battering down Karley by attacking her from two sides.

  Despite herself, Lystra had to admire Tarek’s cool combat acumen, even though she saw the crowd acted less favourably to that style of fighting, and instead roared their approval of the reckless, powerful fighters.

  He’s improving his chances of victory. He’s accessing threats. He’s not an exploiter like the others. He’s a lurker. A late game contender. Drat. She was really getting into this, wasn’t she? She hated herself for it, but still watched on the edge of her seat anyway, her heart pounding the blood around her body as the brawl unfolded.

  The four versus two fight turned into a three versus two as Karley’s bracelet broke, then two versus two as one of Tarek’s allies was forced out of the battle. Now Tarek’s patience proved strong, because he collectively had the most health out of all of them there – and his ally seemed unwilling to switch sides against him, perhaps not registering this fact.

  One versus two. The yellow exploiter snarled his annoyance as the bracelet broke.

  Finally, the black-scaled, reckless dragon’s bracelet broke, much to the groans of the crowd. Karley’s damage from earlier came in handy – she had managed to chip off a fifth of the reckless one’s health by herself before being ousted.

  Now Tarek faced his former ally, who had taken the brunt of the damage against the aggressor. The blue dragon let out a snarl and charged at Tarek, and the red dragon smashed into him with brutal ferocity.

  The blue dragon’s bracelet shattered with the sound of cymbals.

  When it was just down to two versus one, he should have switched sides and gone on Tarek. Idiot, Lystra thought. Tarek still had around half of his health bracelet left, and he stood up on his hind legs, basking in the cheers of the crowd as the announcer screamed his victory.

  Meanwhile, Lystra sat frozen in her seat, her heart having braked to an ungainly stop. The bastard had actually won.

  She groaned and placed her head in her hands.

  Chapter Four

  Great. Just great. Back in Tarek’s place, Lystra immediately started plotting her escape. Tarek walked around, rather smug with himself, a little gleeful of Lystra’s frantic panic as she bustled around his cavern, making herself busy.

  “Why do I get the impression you’re seriously regretting your decision, princess?” Tarek purred, leaning on one elbow, not bothering to conceal his amusement. “One might think you didn’t do that inspirational speech to get me to enter the arena.”

  “I didn’t know you were a… a… pervert!” Lystra waved her hands in distress.

  “No? You could have just looked around better. It’s not like I was hiding the books.”

  “I don’t want to be with a pervert who thinks about doing things with princesses! I have my chastity to think of here!”

  Tarek practically burbled in delight. “Ah, yes. I might get too excited and ravage you, because of those nasty books giving me strange ideas.”

  It took Lystra a few frightening seconds to register that he was deliberately teasing her. “You fiend.”

  “Original. We’re all fiends here.” Tarek let out a yawn, then seized one of his books. “Now, there’s a good passage in Tales of a Dragon’s Princess…”

  “No!” Lystra shrieked, clapping hands over her ears and dashing out of the room into the corridor. She then desperately tried each door until she found a stairwell leading hopefully up to a tower, and darted up there. Sure enough, Tarek had indeed stuck to tradition – designing a single, circular room on top with everything she needed, including the appropriate cobwebs and spiders hanging from their traps on the ceiling. The floor spat out dust when she stamped over it, and she flumped into a rather musty smelling bed, likely unwashed for months. Drat, she’d need to start on that as soon as possible. She lay there for a minute, waiting to hear if Tarek followed. When he didn’t, she got out of bed and examined the copper bathtub attached to some shoddy plumbing, and the toilet, isolated in a small, boxed-off room in the corner.

  A drawling voice filled the air. “The princess knew that what she did was forbidden, but still she went into the room, still she slipped off her fine silken dress, shivering like a butterfly, her body on a platter to be devoured by the eyes of the monster she beheld…”

  “Go away!” Lystra shrieked, glaring furiously at Tarek, who stood at the top of the stairwell grinning, completely ignoring her as he turned the page, took a deep breath, before bursting out into laughter as Lystra jumped up and down on the spot in a tantrum.

  “Ahahaha, you’re too easy, princess…” He winked, then gave an elaborate bow, and started walking down the stairs again. “By the way,” he added, “there’s some erotica books under your bed.”

  Lystra gave out another maddened screech, prompting another raucous wave of laughter from Tarek.

  Oh, she fucking hated him. The anger threatened to froth out of her like a volcano, and it took every ounce of her self-control to not go hurtling after him and trying to strangle him.

  Then, in an extra effort to distract herself, she explored the room, opening one wardrobe to reveal some shabby maid clothes and dull fur gear. In the other one next to it lay a mop and three buckets, a straw-ended broom, cleaning liquid, cloths and a drying rack. The chest of drawers next to her bed contained a small box of mass-produced panties and socks. She sniffed dubiously at the panties, which smelled fresh from whatever lined the box, and then wriggled out of her dress to change into the new servant’s robes and fresh underwear.

  She set herself to cleaning up the place afterwards, opening the single tower window to let in the mountain air, which came crisp and cold. Using the captured princess training Lystra had learned over the years, she set the place to rights in a few short hours. She also threw all the erotica books from under the bed out the window for good measure. She swept all the dust out and attacked the cobwebs, and the few dejected spiders wriggled their legs at her before streaming out the window. A fly buzzed in hopefully, then let out a high-pitched whine as Lystra swatted it, and it buzzed right back out again. Isn’t the cold supposed to kill these things? She stripped the bed, beat out the mattress, scrubbed out the bathtub, washed each of the sheets in it, tried to replace them with fresher sheets but realized they needed washing as well, mopped the floor and scraped away some of the mold from the walls. She finished with hanging the wet sheets on the drying rack, needing to fold them up a few times to fit.

  Sweating profusely, she stepped back to admire her work. The stone floor gleamed beneath her, the air smelled fresh and the bed no longer looked choked up in dust. All the spiders had gone, and she went to the window to allow the air to slap her face and dry the sweat, relaxing for a moment. A stray thought entered. What if she was just too good at cleaning, and ran out of things to do?

  Then she’d have to sneak past Tarek, somehow. She doubted he’d just let her walk out the cave without some notice, in spite of the potion fuelling her insides.

  Maybe she’d better tone it down for the cleaning. Stretch things out a bit. Maybe read a book… if this bastard had any normal books.

  Still waiting for everything to dry, she settled grumpily into the bare bed, thinking it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t have sheets for one night.

  She slept restlessly, with her dreams mostly filled with books creeping up on her, before splitting open and spewing out their words at her. She needed to run away, ducking stray pages, only to slam into Tarek, who smiled evilly at her, before getting out a h
uge, gleaming book with a naked image of Lystra on the front cover. He flipped the page and said, “Well, let’s see how this love story turns out…”

  Lystra woke in a sweat, tearing at her long, dark blonde hair, breathing hard and fast. The red dip of dawn filtered through the shut window, leaving a slice of light just above the headrest. Groaning, she rolled out of bed, and her foot kicked something. Blinking, she checked under the bed – and saw about thirty books there, all with obvious erotica titles.

  Immediately, anger and alarm rippled through her. He put them back during the night? When I was sleeping? He was in this room? A cold sweat broke out over her. He was watching?

  Seething from the ears, she scooped out all the books and threw them out the window.

  Then she stormed downstairs to see Tarek cooking for himself, and he turned to see her bristling, and smiled politely.

  “Good morning, princess.”

  “You put the books back under my bed! You came into the room!”

  What if he was watching me? Ugh.

  “I’m not going to let you waste perfectly good books, princess. You should give them a read.”

  “You’re harassing me!”

  At this, Tarek’s smile took on a dangerous glint. “Oh, believe me, princess, I can do a lot worse than this.” He abandoned his food, striding towards her. He then scooped her up as she protested shrilly, beating her fists on his back, and let out a squeak when he slapped her on the ass.

  “No! What are you doing?”

  He took her to one of the armchairs, flung her on it, then reached under the chair to reveal chains. Before she registered what was happening, he clapped the chains on her wrists, and stood before her as she struggled uselessly, jerking against the confines.

  “Now I can do whatever I want to you. And there’s not a thing you can do…” Tarek growled.

  Fearful shivers consumed Lystra’s skin. Oh Gods.

  His dark eyes pierced her from the inside out, and the smile grew demonic, twisted. A low chuckle welled in his throat. “Anything I want…” He briefly touched her arm with his finger, gliding it softly over, stirring the thin hairs there, sending little bumps all along her skin.

  To Lystra’s horror, she felt arousal flare through her, and the reaction caused her to jerk more violently against the chains. Anything to escape. Anything to stop her body doing this.

  “You won’t be able to stop me doing this…” His voice dipped to almost a whisper.

  Then he took a book from the bookshelf, and proceeded to read it from the beginning.

  Lystra huffed and puffed, glaring murder at Tarek as he cheerfully read The Dragon’s Sword. And she had to sit there and endure it. Two bloody chapters.

  Please. Help me…

  Chapter Five

  Some people like to punish their princesses in traditional ways. Overworking them. Locking them in a room until they saw sense. Maybe even hitting them, though that was generally frowned upon. For Tarek, his punishments simply meant reading books. And he read them until her cheeks were dark red, her breath weak from protests, and her mind filled with shame because on some occasions, she’d even enjoyed listening to the books. A few were masterfully written, with the unfortunate taint of erotica in it. Others read like something a horny teenager might write. Some had graphic descriptions of sex, others focused more on the emotional side. A princess shouldn’t like erotica. It just wasn’t done.

  Out of all the things Lystra prepared for in captivity with a dragon, she didn’t expect something like this. A bloody, erotica-book-reading dragon.

  On one hand, Lystra felt immensely grateful that Tarek didn’t actually do anything else to her. Nothing like what the contents of those books suggested, from dragons mercilessly trapping their princesses, to love potions and controlling spells, and being chained and taken without reprieve, forced to do all sorts of things in various interesting yet compromising positions at the same time. Sometimes, with the way Tarek grinned, or carefully examined her reaction to whatever he read, Lystra’s heart gave those irritating lurches, almost like she wanted to hurl, except it all kept churning inside in a ball of confusion and lust. Sometimes her breath stopped, when she realized that she might be staring at him a little too long, letting her eyes trace over his night-black hair, his clever yet infuriating jawline, his well-sculpted body and stupidly attractive features, which always seemed to be twisted in perpetual amusement because of his teasing.

  It was as if he was quite determined to passive aggressively annoy her to death, for her decision to provoke him into fighting for her hand. Either through stupid books, or pretending to grab her nose and yank it off, running away and holding it up in triumph, or placing a bag of flour over her head, or pretending he was going to comfort her, only to flick water in her face, or that one time he swapped the shampoo in her chambers with a bottle of Ever-Gro.

  That little incident left her resembling some kind of hairy bear, as every single strand of hair decided that now was the time to transform into a fur monster.

  He gave her the antidote later, but only after laughing himself sick.

  Living with this dragon was like living with an incorrigible prankster. A giant kid who happened to have the ability to transform into a massive, fire-breathing, red dragon, and who looked as if he was in his late twenties or early thirties in human form.

  Now she took to carefully sniffing her shampoo, nibbling at her food, and making sure Tarek wasn’t fucking around with her on anything else. She supposed, in a way, she made it far too easy for him to wind her up. Plus, there was the whole prissy prude thing. Honestly, Lystra’s experience when it came to the sort of content in those books was from tentatively dipping into sexual education books. Though even a few of those had been too dubious, because they said things like “And the woman can only be pregnant if she lies absolutely still when the man does his business, and encourages him with a winsome smile. Gravity can work against it, so never try to reproduce standing up.” Gods, even the royal sexual education books were too shy to actually educate the people reading them.

  I hope a Quester will come and save me soon. When she tried leaving the cave without Tarek’s guidance, she found that she couldn’t, and kept walking back into the cavern in a slightly disorientated state – suggesting he had some sort of navigation enchantment to prevent her from leaving.

  Great. When she made food for herself, it came out alright, since the cauldron was quite happy to cook for her, and the cutlery positively tripped over themselves in excitement to make sure she got fed. So that was something, at least.

  It took four more days before the first Questers arrived. She saw two knights standing awkwardly outside the front door, as Tarek was reading from some local newspaper. When he spotted them, he smiled in delight and dashed over.

  “Ah, excellent! Follow me, we’ll be fighting in the arena. We do it with health bracelets. Keep it all civilized, no bloodshed or wasting any auto lives. Because we’re a civilized kingdom.”

  An almost-kingdom.

  The two knights bobbed their heads awkwardly and followed Tarek to the arena. Lystra was permitted to come, and she slammed on her fur robes, because it was a cold morning, and paced behind them. She wondered about using the opportunity to escape. Instead, she went into the stand, rather than the special princess box this time. A few monsters sat around, conversing. Nothing compared to how packed it was when all the dragons competed for Lystra.

  Each competitor was given the bracelet and made to stand on opposite sides in the sandy arena, where Tarek morphed into his dragon form, alarming one of the knights, who still didn’t know that dragons possessed human counterparts. Since it was the first Quest duel for her freedom, Lystra didn’t expect very much. Everyone knew the first Questers were doomed to fail, and these ones obviously knew as well, because their faces had fallen when they realized they were the first.

  Questers left it later and later to go after the princesses nowadays, not wanting to be the first to arrive
there. Sure enough, despite the preparation the knights took to defeat Tarek, it seemed the rules here had changed. Tarek now used magic, along with his normal swipes. One knight blasted a jet of water from a divining rod towards Tarek, who simply conjured a shield to deflect it. He charged towards them, roaring, and bowled them over.

  If they hadn’t been wearing the health bracelets, they probably would have fallen instantly. As it was, the bracelets actually gave them a fighting chance – not that it looked like much of a fighting chance, since the knights were running around like headless chickens.

  “Sad, isn’t it?” Someone said quietly beside her. Lystra instantly yelped, taking her eyes off Tarek’s shiny red scales, and focusing on a blond-haired, green-eyed man with gorgeous features and a kind smile. “Having to watch your Questers fail in such disappointing style.”

  Unsure of the man’s intentions, or whether he happened to be a dragon or not (she suspected yes, because they were in the middle of a dragon kingdom) she said cautiously, “It’s part of the game, I suppose. The system here is quite good.”

  “I think so, too. But personally, it makes people sloppy. They don’t need to fight for their lives, so they end up taking more hits.” The man examined Lystra discreetly. “What if I told you I can help you escape?”

  Now Lystra immediately became suspicious. “Oh? And how would you do that?”

  “Easy.” He lifted up a nonchalant hand. “We just fly away. Right now.”

  “Erm. Aren’t you supposed to win me off Tarek? Isn’t that like, illegal?”

  The shifter gave her a steely smile. “You’re fair game for anyone that wants to dispute Tarek’s victory in the arena. After all, he won rather dishonorably, didn’t he? Not engaging in fights at all. Picking only on easy opponents. Manipulating. It was a shameful performance.”