CLAIMED BY A DRAGON: Fated Dragon Series (Book 3 of 3) (DRAGON MATED)

by Christina Wilder

  CLAIMED BY A

  DRAGON

  PJ & Jarik

  (Dragon Mated Series, Book 3)

  Christina Wilder

  CLAIMED BY A DRAGON

  Copyright © 2018 Christina Wilder

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or

  reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written

  permission except in the case of brief quotations

  embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book

  is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents

  are a product of the Author’s imagination. Any resemblance

  to an actual person, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  AISN: B07L2JBTZF

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not be here without the support of

  many special people.

  First, I want to thank my mom for always believing in me.

  And my family, who puts up with rushed meals and

  my endless talk about characters, cover art, and plot twists.

  And, Stephanie, my very first CP. Even though my writing was

  Absolutely awful back then, you’ve stuck with me!

  Renée, who is spot-on with plot suggestions.

  Alex, who always cheers me up when I’m feeling down.

  Jes, who is fabulous with graphic design & critiques.

  Lee, my bestie, even though we live on opposite sides

  of the world.

  Laura, who gives me endless practical advice, keeping me

  grounded.

  And Katrina, whose friendship I could not live without.

  This book wouldn’t be here without all of you.

  Cover Design by Black Canvas

  3 Fierce Dragon Shifter Princes meet

  3 Feisty, Curvy Best Friends who are

  fated to be mated to dragons.

  PJ: After my friends fall in the cave, I’m determined to save them. With a rope clipped to my harness, I jump back in, only to wind up dangling mid-air in a huge cavern. Now, someone needs to rescue me. My rope releases, and I fall, smacking into a dragon. Since I’ve killed him, my university career is ruined. Until he shifts into a man, and we kiss. He’s seeking a dragonstone heart, and I offer to help, which leads to more kissing. A relationship between a dragon shifter prince and a career-focused archaeologist will never last, right? But he is awesome at persuasion…

  Jarik: My quest for the dragonstone heart brings me PJ, a woman who steals my heart. I’ve marked her as my mate, but she’s been burned in the past and fears I’ll hurt her, too. While she’s unsure I can give her what she needs, a dragon shifter mates for life. No way am I letting her go. I’ll just have to use my wits—and my body—to convince her to stay.

  Other books from Christina Wilder

  DRAGON MATED

  A humorous dragon shifter novella series.

  CAPTURED BY A DRAGON

  HUNTED BY A DRAGON

  CLAIMED BY A DRAGON

  MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE

  A romantic comedy with a gladiator twist.

  On Amazon

  Books Co-Written with Laney Kaye

  CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR

  A Sci-Fi Alien Shifter Romance Series

  ESCAPE

  ENGAGE

  ENSNARE

  ENDINGS

  On Amazon

  Chapter One

  PJ

  It’s not every day that a girl slays a dragon.

  Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up here.

  When Jenny, Tanya, and I fell into the hole in the back of the cave, I slid only a short distance before coming to an abrupt halt. Turning, I climbed back up to the cave where we’d sat around joking just a short time ago.

  I was the only one who made it out.

  After waiting ten minutes, and hearing nothing from my friends, I knew I had to save them. After all, I’d talked them into this adventure. In some ways, I was responsible for whatever came next.

  Standing beside the hole, I fretted. What could I do?

  Some would say I should call 911, but it could take an hour or more for them to reach us. And I’d already determined I had no cell service when we were eating lunch. I could hike back outside and to the vehicle, where my phone might find service, but during that time, my friends could be stuck somewhere in the cave system, suffering.

  There was nothing quicker I could do except wrap a rope around a stalagmite, attach it to my harness, and leap in behind them. Once I located them, we’d regroup and find our way back to the surface together.

  As an archaeologist, my expertise would be invaluable, wherever we ended up.

  I stepped down, but my feet went out from underneath me immediately, and I was swept away from the upper cave by what felt like a mini tsunami. Coughing and sputtering and spitting out brackish water, I sloshed back and forth, plunging toward the bowels of the Earth.

  It seemed I fell for days, which was impossible, partly due to the length of my rope, and also because a channel like this couldn’t extend for more than a few hundred yards. The dark must be messing with my perception of time.

  As I swooshed along with the water, I didn’t see Tanya or Jenny. After their first few shrieks, I no longer heard them, which scared the hell out of me. Were they unconscious and unable to cry for help? Or worse? My heart ached for my friends.

  Sadly, the only sounds were the rush of the water and my grunts when my body hit a hard corner.

  I had to admit, if I wasn’t so frightened for Tanya and Jenny, this ride would be cool. I’d always loved waterparks, action, and adventure. The breeze from my movement whipped back my long, blonde—no, make that bright blue—hair, colored in honor of Tanya’s birthday. My body zipped along, cresting small hills, then plunging down the other side. I took corners higher than if I competed in an Olympic luge event, flattening out as I skimmed along the top of the walls. I could swear I even looped in a complete circle.

  Just when I was beginning to believe this natural waterpark ride would never end, I spied a solid stone wall waiting for me ahead.

  Oh-oh.

  I scrambled, clawing at the sides of the channel, trying to slow my plunge, because it looked like I was about to become a PJ pancake against the solid granite.

  Then I spied three holes, evenly placed along the lower part of the wall. Daylight gleamed from beyond the holes.

  The water took a sharp turn left, but, oddly enough, my body was swept to the right, aiming for the farthest opening, as if the cut-out had been made just for me.

  Feet first, I flew through.

  With my heart jumping up into my throat, I shot out into an enormous, open cavern, where I kept falling like I’d leapt from an airplane without a parachute.

  As I plummeted through the air, I could swear I saw the ruins of what had to be a lost city below me. Lost, because I hadn’t heard of any discoveries like this beneath the cave systems in western Georgia. Believe me, I not only would’ve heard, I would’ve been down here exploring already. On a volunteer basis, if they wouldn’t hire me on at the dig.

  My rope pulled up sharply, bringing me to a jarring halt and knocking the wind from my lungs. I was left gasping, hanging in space.

  Gulp. I bit back my scream, because I did not like heights. A minor flaw in my chosen career, because, sometimes, archaeologists needed to work on scaffolding or cliffs. But then, I only got out in the field during summer, and when I did, I found work on ground level.

  For the rest of the year, I rode a d
esk at the university.

  Just call me Indiana Jones. Actually, it’s PJ.

  “Help!” I squeaked. Not that there seemed to be anyone around to jump to my assistance. Above my head, I dangled from the hole in the top of the cavern. The ceiling around me appeared to be covered with blue-green twinkle lights. Stationary, they lit up the enormous cave, essentially substituting for the sun. I shook my head, because I’d never seen or heard about anything like this before.

  Being suspended from a rope a hundred feet below the top of a huge cavern, with at least eighty feet of air beneath me, was not my idea of a fun way to spend an afternoon.

  Maybe I needed to rethink my love of adventure.

  I peered around. No Tanya. No Jenny. Had they fallen through the same hole, or had they somehow been sucked through the others? Strange. Almost as if it was fate.

  “No way,” I whispered. Who believed in fate, anyway?

  As soon as I got out of this predicament, I’d find my friends, but there was nothing I could do for them at the moment. I couldn’t do a thing for myself, at the moment.

  Despite my nausea-inducing fear of the height, let alone my valid concern about falling, this place fascinated me.

  Why hadn’t I heard of it before?

  The city ruins appeared to be made up of dusty-tan stone buildings in various sizes and shapes, although most were covered with vines.

  And what a city. It had to span at least a mile. I ached to yank off the vegetation, pull out my excavation tools, and begin a new dig. There was nothing better in life than unearthing a new find’s secret treasures.

  A lush forest surrounded the ruins, stretching away in all directions. In the distance, I spotted tiny meadows filled with colorful flowers. Insects hummed as they zipped through the air around me, and high-pitched chirps coming from the woods told me there could be animals and birds living among the vegetation.

  “This is freakin’ awesome,” I said.

  Imagine the headlines when I returned home and shared my discovery. Articles would be written about my great adventure. The internet would be on fire, with people calling, asking for my take on what I’d found. Grant money would pour in, everyone eager to become part of the excavation, which I would head, because this was my find.

  I’d finally get tenure at the university.

  Overhead, from inside the hole, a creature screamed. It wasn’t a, “help, something’s chasing me,” scream. Or even a, “I’m super-happy,” scream. It was more of a, “hey, what’s that yummy thing dangling in the air?” scream.

  “Oh, hell,” I whispered as a big black rodent peeked through the hole. Its yellow eyes lit up when it spied me rocking below it like a very plump minnow on a hook.

  Just call me rat-bait.

  “No, no, no,” I shouted, shaking my head. I rubbed my eyes, but the creature still peered down at me. “One, go away! And two, you can’t be a spelaeomys florensis.”

  Or, flores cave rat to the rest of the world. Well, the part of the world who was not excited about prehistoric rodents. Thought to have died out before the fifteen-hundreds, the only information anyone could learn about the creature came from subfossil fragments.

  Obviously, someone got their extinction date wrong.

  Called the biggest rat that ever lived, these babies weighed in at about three pounds.

  Ugh. My flesh crawled as I gawked up at it.

  As the rat squirmed out of the hole, I shrieked and tried to swim through the air to get away—a totally useless move on my part. With what I could swear was a sly look in its eyes, the rat started shimmying down my rope like an Olympic climber.

  My archaeologist friends got the creature’s weight wrong, too. Based on the creaking of my rope, this one had to be ten, twelve pounds, about the size of a poodle—without the curly hair. Or the cute doggy face.

  How long would it take a creature that size to gnaw through my bones? Because I was too big to be consumed in one gulp. Assuming the beast could leap onto me and somehow kill me.

  Please, let it kill me before it started to eat me.

  “Stop,” I yelled, banging on the rope, hoping to dislodge it. I knew it was mean that I hoped it would lose its grip and fall to the ground, but I did not want it turning me into the latest food supply. There must be smaller rats or plants or bugs or something up in the cave system it could eat instead. “Get lost, creep.”

  Yeah, like that would scare it away.

  The rat was not listening. And its grip was better than a toddler clutching a forbidden piece of candy.

  Inching further down the rope, getting closer to me all the time, the spelaeomys florensis wiggled its whiskers and chomped its not-so-little teeth.

  It was going to chew on me. Latch onto me and give me a horrible disease. Assuming I lived long enough for the disease to take hold.

  My short life flashed before my eyes. Parental abandonment. Foster care. Graduating from college. Hooking up with, followed by breaking up with Jim, who became a certified, first-class a-hole when he told me he wasn’t turned on by my overweight body.

  And lastly, hiking with my friends.

  “Go away,” I shouted at the rat.

  “Prehistoric rats are extinct. Prehistoric rats are extinct,” I chanted, as if saying it over and over would make the creature disappear.

  But rat-boy was determined. He—or she—kept working its way down toward me, one clawed foot placed in front of the other, big teeth gnashing.

  Just when I thought it was going to hop off the rope and onto my back, where it would proceed to touch me while I screamed and flopped around, the rat stopped.

  It almost smiled, if a spelaeomys florensis could smile. I imagine it did for its baby spelaeomys florensis’s, but that was not me.

  “Please, leave me alone,” I said softly. “Be a good ratty and climb back up to the hole.”

  The rat started gnawing on the rope.

  Shit.

  Hauling back, I tried to smack it, but I lay face-down and had to twist and fling out my arm. The little beast was beyond my reach. Ignoring me, it kept chewing on my rope. Working its way through.

  Threads went ka-boing. Frayed pieces were caught in the breeze and carried away like dandelion fluff.

  Ratty paused and grinned. No other way to look at it. This thing was out to get me. It dug into the shreds of my rope once more.

  Snap!

  In seconds, my rope gave way, and I was free-falling, wailing. Scrambling to clutch air. I didn’t check to see what the rodent was doing. Climbing back up to the hole, for all I knew. After all, its mission had been accomplished.

  As I tumbled, I caught movement to my left. A giant bird was flying my way, roaring.

  Great. I’d barely avoided becoming a rat snack, only to turn into a big bird’s dinner instead. It would swoop in and swallow me down in one bite.

  Of course, I might splat on the ground before something ate me, because it was rushing up fast.

  Below, I spied a grassy area in front of the ruined city, which might break my fall. Sort of. But no memory foam bed was lying around, waiting to catch me.

  Something big and shiny and sapphire-red dove below me.

  No time to rub my eyes, but…I had to be wrong.

  Remember, my brain shouted, the spelaeomys florensis was not extinct.

  Who could say if someone had messed up and declared dragons extinct, too.

  Not that anyone believed they’d existed to begin with.

  It couldn’t be a dragon. If I was going to start believing that, I might as well start believing in unicorns.

  “Not possible,” I shouted as I flew toward it like an overzealous kamikaze bomber.

  I smacked into the bird—okay, dragon, because tail and spiky back ridges and scales!

  We flipped, spiraling toward the ground.

  Clinging to the creature’s neck, as if I rode a rollercoaster toward hell, I screamed.

  The grass rushed up to us, and I didn’t just splat on the ground. I land
ed hard, like I’d been filleted on top of the dragon’s belly.

  Dragons were not squishy.

  Air chugged from my lungs in one quick gasp, and I floundered, trying to suck in wind. My head spun, and it took me too long to find my wits.

  When I finally re-gained control of my breathing, I sat up, straddling the dragon’s stomach.

  It lay underneath me, its neck extended, its snout flopped to the side, on the ground. Its wings lay sprawled apart like I’d impaled the poor beast with my plus-sized body-spear.

  “Forget tenure at the university,” I said hoarsely.

  This was horrible! Worse than when I tripped at the introduce-the-new-dean-of-the-department social, dumping my Bloody Mary down the front of her white dress.

  It even topped that time I’d farted in my classroom while my students were working on their finals.

  My colleagues were never going to let me live this down.

  Because I, Pamela Jean Brendon, had just killed the sole surviving Earth dragon.

  Chapter Two

  Jarik

  Leave it to me to get knocked on my ass by my mate. Talk about mortifying.

  As I lay underneath her, trying to catch my breath from when I smacked on the ground—not from her landing on top of me, because she weighed less than a blade of grass—I wondered if there was some place I could slink away to, because my ego demanded I retreat.

  Then I could brush myself off, gather up my pride, and stride back into my mate’s life.