by Juniper Hart
Gia changed into her work clothes and slammed out of her crumbling apartment. As she bolted down the rickety stairs to cross the filthy street, she was roughly shoved from behind, and she went flying to the other side of the road. She fell forward on her shoulder, crying out in pain.
“What the hell—!”
A truck barreled past the spot Gia had been about to cross seconds ago. Whoever had shoved her out of the way had just saved her from certain death. Gia looked around for her savior, her heart pounding wildly in her chest.
A few feet away from her, a blonde girl sat on her knees, shaking.
“Oh!” Gia rushed over to her, helping her to her feet and hurriedly pulling her off the cobblestone street, back to the safety of the sidewalk. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m—I’m okay. What an asshole! He didn’t even stop!” the girl cried, glaring after the truck. With a frustrated sigh, she turned to Gia, smiling kindly at her. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Gia said. “I’m fine, thanks to you. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good!” her savior promised. Then her green eyes narrowed slightly, like she had noticed something strange about Gia. “Do I know you?”
It was until she asked that question that Gia realized how weirdly familiar the girl looked, but she couldn’t place her.
“I… don’t think so?” she replied. “I work at a couple of bars in Sunside.”
The girl laughed. “I try to avoid Sunside as much as possible. The mortals and alcohol are a bad mix.”
“Tell me about it,” Gia chuckled. “Not my dream job.”
The blonde cocked her head to the side. “I actually work at the palace,” she said, “and there’s a party tonight. Do you want to come? It sounds like you could use a break.”
Gia let out a laugh of disbelief. “You save my life, and now you’re inviting me to a party at the palace? What are you, my fairy godmother?”
“Maybe?” the girl answered with a broad grin. She held out her hand. “My name is Allegra.”
Gia smiled and reached out to shake Allegra’s hand. “Gia.”
When their palms touched, flashing images flooded Gia’s mind, drowning her in a torrent: Allegra standing at her side in a ballgown, pointing at a staircase as a breathtakingly handsome man descended; Gia lying naked in the man’s arms, staring into his intense green eyes as he whispered his love for her; Gia and the man pressing their hands together through a wall of glass…
Gia pulled her hand back at the same time as Allegra, breathing heavily at the sea of emotions running through her.
“Woah,” she mumbled. “Did you feel that?”
Allegra nodded at her, her eyes wide in disbelief. “I think that’s a sign you should come tonight.”
With a choked-off laugh, Gia found herself agreeing. “I think you’re right.”
Epilogue
“It has been confirmed that Mira has been put to death. I’m still not sure how Wilder figured out she was leading the traitors, but we are very fortunate to have made that discovery. So, I assume that is the last order of business. Is there anything else?” Lennox groaned. “We’ve been here for three hours!”
“These meetings were your idea, brother,” Wilder reminded him. “If you want, we can go back to how things were before—”
“No!” the other four brothers chorused in unison.
“Nice try, megalomaniac, but we’re happy with even distribution,” Owen chimed in. “Lennox is right, though. We’ve dealt with everything on the agenda today. I think he’s got something to take care of.”
Owen, Wilder, and Reef cast Lennox a knowing look, and he rose to his feet, smiling.
“Are you sure about this, Len?” Keppler asked him, not unkindly. “It seems so… fast.”
“It feels right,” Lennox replied confidently. Keppler nodded, his eyes wise.
“Somehow, it feels like she’s been around much longer than a few weeks,” he agreed. “Go get her. And congratulations.”
“Don’t congratulate me yet,” Lennox chuckled. “She hasn’t said yes.”
“She will,” Keppler said, and the rest of his brothers voiced their support. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman look at a man the way she looks at you.”
Lennox grinned at them and turned away, marveling at how much everything had changed in such a short time.
One day, he and his brothers seemed to be fighting for power amongst themselves, Wilder monopolizing both the Hollows and Sunside with his domineering ways. For a time, Lennox had been sure his brothers would enact a hostile takeover. But then, out of nowhere, Wilder had presented them with a treaty to keep the peace.
“I worry about the future of the Hollows if we’re always fighting,” he told them, an almost sheepish expression on his face. “We’ve had civil unrest before. I don’t want to invite it again.”
“What are you proposing?” Lennox demanded. A strange sense of familiarity coursed through him, as if they had discussed this matter before.
“A truce,” his brother replied, and so a truce had been brought forth. Wilder no longer took control of all matters in business, and their weekly meetings covered all their concerns and victories.
For the first time in eons, Lennox was beginning to feel like he and his brothers were bonding, even taking to the atrium to have their infamous races, which inevitably left a pillar broken as one of their dragon skulls crashed into it.
Déjà vu seemed to consume Lennox over the past weeks, and not just in the comfort of his family relationship. The feeling he had with Gia was something he had never known before, and yet he felt as if he’d always been with her, like they had existed together in another life.
From the moment he had laid eyes on her at the gala, three weeks earlier, he had known they were fated to be together, and the ring in his breast pocket was going to solidify eternity in another form for them.
Lennox knocked on the door to Gia’s suite, waiting for her to call out, “Come in!”
When he walked through the door, he was greeted warmly.
“You’re done with your meeting!” Gia exclaimed from the vanity, where she was brushing out her dark hair into gleaming strands. “How did it go?”
“No one died,” Lennox chuckled. “How was your day?”
She gestured around the suite with a manicured hand and laughed. “Three weeks ago, I was living in squalor in the Trenches. Now look at me! I’d say my day is going really well.”
Lennox pressed his hands against the bare skin of her shoulders.
“You are so beautiful,” he said. “I don’t know how I got through my entire existence without knowing you.”
“Did you?” Gia asked, her tone almost amused.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, gently massaging her shoulders. He leaned down to press a kiss to the side of her neck, and she closed her eyes, humming contentedly. “I was going to wait until dinner to do this, but I feel like we’ve already lost so much time. I know that sounds strange—”
“No,” Gia said, shaking her head. “I know exactly what you mean. What did you want to say?”
Lennox dropped to one knee, and Gia’s eyes widened in shock as he removed the ring box from his pocket, popping open the red velvet container.
“I never want to be without you again, Gia,” he told her. “I can’t get over the feeling that I had you and let you go, and I want you to know that I will never make that mistake again… if you’ll have me.”
Her face twisted into an expression of absolute joy, and she nodded her head.
“I’ll have you,” she promised, her voice wet with emotion and her eyes damp with tears. “Every which way you’ll allow.”
Lennox chuckled, blinking back his own tears. He had never been an emotional being, but things were different with Gia. There was so much she had shown him that he had never known existed.
He pulled the ring out to slide it over her finger, and Gia pressed her lips to his.
“I�
�m going to take care of you,” Lennox whispered, their mouths still together, their eyes locked and full of love. “For all of eternity.”
She nodded through her tears. “I know you will.”
And he knew she believed it.
THE END
To continue reading the entire Hollow Earth Dragon series, download the box set on Amazon!
Mate’s Baby
Royal Dragon Curse
Prologue
500 Years Ago
Never before had the dirt street of the England village been so packed. Every resident, from serf to lord, was in attendance. The crowd was so tightly jammed together that the air was hard to breathe and was thick with the pungent smell of body odor and manure. Perhaps even thicker than the air was the tension which hung in it.
The voices were indistinguishable, the hysteria reaching a fever pitch as the accused was dragged by two strapping young men through the waves of screaming town-folk and into the center of the town square. People of all classes launched rotten food, rocks, and dung pies at the hunched, gray-haired woman. Her stance was merely to shield her face from the projectiles. There was no fear, shame, or guilt in her sky-blue eyes—only sheer rage.
Shoving her up onto a platform, the elderly woman was presented to Reverend Tallant. They exchanged deadly glares, but only Tallant wore a smirk. One of the young men handed the reverend the iron chain which bound the woman’s hands together. With a sharp tug, the reverend moved to the edge of the stage and took the woman with him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” his demanding and charismatic voice boomed, managing to break through the rumbling shouts. With just three words, the reverend sent a hush over the crowd—all eyes and ears were Tallant’s. Even with being hunched over and her wild hair in her face, the woman could see the excitement in the reverend’s eyes; no, the ecstasy.
While the smugness grew, his smirk faded, and a stern, fatal expression dominated his face.
“Kind and loyal subjects to the king, devoted servants to the one Almighty God, have you not been experiencing the worst luck of your lives, your father’s, of his father before him?”
The town gave an agreeing roar.
“Why do think that is?” he pondered, gesturing to the crowd to give answers. They all waited with baited breath for him to continue. “Do you think that God would turn his back on his devout, virtuous people?”
It was replied by a resounding, unified, “No!”
His voice then packed a fiery punch. “Would He cause such a drought in a country which is so righteous? Our God pours down pails upon pails of rain and blessing all year long upon us, why would this change?” There were more excited hollers. “If this was any sort of punishment for us, it is because His people are allowing these unholy women to walk among us!”
If the crowd had reached a fever pitch before, it was then pure hysteria, screaming so loudly and vehemently, it didn’t even sound as though they were speaking English any longer. Just animalistic, deranged noises.
“There is only one way to cleanse this sin from the land. We must find all of the witches and purify their bodies and souls, and hope that God has mercy on us and them!” The Reverend’s peculiar clay brown eyes fell back down to the witch, the smug smirk returning to his face as the crowd chanted to burn her.
The woman’s wild eyes lifted to the crowd, manic and enraged. “Sheep! Sheep! You are all senseless sheep! You listen to any dribble that comes out of that man’s vile mouth! This heretic claims another in order to distract the masses from his own sins!” The array of projectiles began again, the woman lifting her arms to shield her face. They all began to chant, burn her, burn her! Just as their anger grew, so did hers. When she reached her own fever pitch, she spat, “You’re being fed lies, right from the dragon’s mouth!”
The two young men who had brought her to the makeshift stage, who had a striking resemblance to the reverend, took the chain back from Tallant and jerked the woman back and toward the very center of the stage. A tall stake was there, surrounded by a bed of dry leaves, twigs, and coals. Her back was pressed against the wooden stake, and the heavy iron chain was wrapped about her and secured firmly.
Desperately, she cried out, “Osric is a dragon, but he has disguised himself as a holy man! He and his entire wretched family!” Everyone booed at her and launched more dung and rotten food at her. No longer did she hide her face; instead, her cheeks grew red and smeared with brown. “If I did anything, it was protecting you people from them! They will eat your children! They will manipulate you just as they are now! They will be the end of you!”
“Quiet, witch,” Reverend Osric Tallant said flatly, though the woman could hear the twinkle of amusement lingering in his tone. No one seemed to take notice when the torch Osric held caught fire on its own.
Lowering the flame to the dry debris, the witch screeched. Her wild blue eyes watched as the fire rapidly moved through the twigs and brown leaves before it finally reached her bare feet, scorching her flesh. A guttural noise escaped her, but she clenched her teeth and begged herself not to scream. She would never give him the satisfaction.
Her eyes locked with the Reverend Tallant’s. His pupils transitioned into reptilian slivers as he watched the flames traveling to her ankles with vicious amusement, and the smell of her burning flesh hung in the already nauseating air.
As she stared him down, the witch found the strength within herself to speak. Her words were in an ancient language, one foreign to the reverend’s ears. However, with the look in her crazed eyes, he knew it was a deadly attack. Osric paced backward, eyes widening.
The flames slowly overtook her body, and the hateful, intimidating chant spewed from her lips repeatedly until the pain transitioned into shock and overrode her senses. Her body locked into place, her face towards the sky as her life left her body.
Osric only stared in horror, wondering what the hell that spell meant. What had he done?
1
Present Day
The glass was cool against Asher’s forehead, but he wasn’t in a state of mind to pay any attention to it. His mud-brown eyes were fixated on a specific spot in space, and yet he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. His body over the past six months had transformed into a vessel of numbness and depression. Nothing at all brought him joy. His smile was as rare as an eclipse.
The town car had been stationary for several minutes before Asher even took notice. Blinking rapidly, he shook his head and wrapped his long, slender fingers around the door handle. Despite Asher’s immense strength, every small task involved a great deal of effort from his sluggish form. He had to press his side into the door to open it before he could finally emerge onto the busy city sidewalk, his eyes turning up to the family business, housed in a skyscraper.
Perhaps it was time for him to get more involved in the company; it could provide him with a distraction and a sense of normalcy. Then again, it wouldn’t exactly be normal. The family all had designated roles, but none actually did anything on a regular basis, and they all did their best to avoid the limelight. Even the thought of trying to get more involved exhausted him.
With the same flat expression on his face, Asher moved into the lobby of the building. To his left, a member of the staff approached him with an iPad in hand and a cheesy, fake smile plastered on his clean-shaven face. The name of the employee escaped Asher, but he remembered him being obnoxiously chipper—and Asher certainly wasn’t in the mood for that.
“Good morning, Asher, glad to see you made it in today!” the employee said in a sing-song, grating tone. Asher moved past him, pointlessly hoping that the man wouldn’t follow. “Of course, I’m sure you’re aware that the meeting will be held in the top floor conference room. To my understanding, it is a closed meeting with only the chief financial officers—” Theo and Eden. “—the public relations officer—” Sebastian. “—and legal advisor,” he finished with a chuckle.
That was Asher’s assigned role, complete with a law degree tha
t his father had paid for a few years back. Asher’s only duty was occasionally showing up to the campus to give the appearance of being a student. There truly were seldom things in life that money couldn’t buy. “Oh, and Mr. Tallant himself, naturally.”
Asher wasn’t quite sure why the young man felt the need to list off everyone, wondering if it was in some sort of weird way to impress him by all that the man knew, or perhaps because it was unprofessional for him to call it a family meeting, which was what it was. It would probably give a bad look and spread rumors of nepotism, as if that was something foreign to their company or any others like theirs. The people who actually did the jobs that he and his siblings were titled with were paid well enough to where a title just didn’t matter to them. At least it hadn’t so far.
“So, I can only assist you to the floor,” the man added, derailing Asher from his train of thought. When the private elevator door opened, Asher stepped inside and produced a dry, false grin.
“I don’t need assistance up an elevator shaft, thanks.” Before the expression on the once-chipper man’s face could change, Asher pressed the close button and disappeared behind two silver doors. It was probably arrogant, or something of the sort, to dismiss an employee like that. But he had no interest in playing office politics, knowing all too well that guy was trying to get sweet on Asher in hopes of getting a job above greeter and coffee-fetcher. Perhaps a year ago, Asher would have at the very least entertained it, but he had been in no mood for it. He never was anymore.
Asher had zoned out during the long elevator ride, and his mind found its way back to images of light brown hair and olive-green pools that he had always wanted to dive right into and stay forever. The thoughts were inviting and attractive, and yet they struck a chord so sensitive and so deep that tears instantaneously collected in his eyes. A distant, faint musical laughter sounded from somewhere in the back of his mind, but it felt like it was in the room with him.