Claimed by the Dragon King (High House Draconis Book 5) Read online

  Galen’s eyes bored into hers heavily.

  “Vampires.”

  5

  “Vampires, you say.”

  It was the only answer she could think of to something that sounded so preposterous. Everyone in the paranormal world knew that vampires had been killed off an age ago. She’d read about it in ancient texts from mages who had been there. Who had lived through that terrible era, and the fall of the vampires and the empire they had built on the backs of Rome.

  “Yes. Don’t believe me?”

  “It seems farfetched,” she said, trying to get her mind in order.

  Absolutely nothing had gone the way she’d expected it to.

  In her mind, Kyla had built up a picture of shifters over the years. A mental image of what they would be like. How they would talk, act, even dress. It hadn’t been hard. In her youth she’d talked to many old mages who had lived through the ending stages of the war. Mages who had first-hand experience with shifters, even the dragons who had disappeared in the years after the war.

  She knew what they were like. Brutish, uncivilized, raw. They couldn’t speak properly, they were gruff, easily prone to anger and all around almost barbaric. Kyla knew this on a level so instinctive she felt it.

  Then she’d come to Drakon Keep, and the dragon shifters had blown that all up. Their King, Galen, was well-spoken, well-groomed, and he wore a fitted polo and dark blue jeans.

  Not to mention he wore them well. Comfortably, like he was used to that method of dress. His hair was combed nicely to one side, resting easily, as if it was naturally looking that good. He was everything she hadn’t expected.

  Trying to wrap her mind around the differences between what she’d been told to expect and what she was seeing had been hard enough without her eyes constantly admiring the physique under the shirt and pants.

  But then he’d gone and told her that the shifters were uniting to fight vampires. Altogether, it was leaving Kyla feeling unprepared and overwhelmed by everything.

  Get it together. Keep your cool. Don’t let them see you sweat. It’s not worth it. You’re better than them. Remember that.

  “We have one downstairs?” the King said calmly. “You can go see him anytime you want, if you wish proof. Open offer.”

  “Actually?” she said, disbelief coloring her words.

  “No of course not,” Galen said, rolling his eyes. “If we find one of them we kill them. Immediately.”

  “I see.”

  “You can either choose to believe me, or not,” Galen said, fixing her with a glare. “I have no reason to lie to you, but trust me, they are back.”

  Kyla nodded slowly, returning her eyes to the King. He wasn’t acting, she decided. Not about the vampires, nor were his mannerisms a front either. This was Galen, the real Galen. Nobody could pull off this cool, detached demeanor so well, while continuing to remain well spoken.

  If she wasn’t seeing it with her own eyes, Kyla doubted she’d be able to accept it, but she was seeing it. The dragon shifters at least, were nothing like what she’d been led to believe.

  Which likely means the others aren’t as bad as we think either.

  Kyla didn’t like what that implied if she traced the logic back.

  It meant that the mages were in the wrong. That they were the ones prejudiced against shifters.

  We’re not as good as we think we are.

  “Why are the Mages worried?” the King asked, speaking into the silence that had fallen over them as Kyla came to her very unpleasant conclusions. It would take her time to process them, and she had many more questions to ask of herself and her fellow mages before she truly believed that they had gotten it wrong, but right now…things weren’t looking so good.

  I can deal with misconceptions, purposeful or not, later. Right now, focus on the issue at hand.

  “Are you up to something that you shouldn’t be? Are you violating the Novarupta Accords?” Galen wanted to know, his voice hard.

  “No,” she said sternly. “Any violation of the Accords is dealt with appropriately, either by us, or by the teams your Houses continue to run. The anti-mage teams. We respect the boundaries, and have for a century,” she said defiantly.

  “Of course,” Galen said, waving the point away with a hand.

  “We have no interest in a renewed war,” Kyla stated, making the point clearly, not wanting it to get lost. “That, after all, is why I am here. We feared you were uniting the shifters to come after us. To eliminate us for good.”

  Galen snorted. “In all honesty, the Mages Guild had not even entered my mind until you arrived here,” he said. “Our focus is elsewhere, you may rest assured of that. Our enemy, this enemy, is much, much worse.”

  “Worse how?” she asked, curious. Vampires were not a subject she had much experience with. They existed in the textbooks, a footnote from a time in the past. No mage studied them anymore. They were extinct, after all, so why bother?

  The Dragon King shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Kyla bit her hard to keep her face from showing any emotion.

  It was bad. She could tell just from his body language.

  “The vampires are…different,” Galen said at last.

  “My King.”

  Kyla started as Valla spoke up for the first time. She’d forgotten he was standing behind her and the sudden reminder of such a powerful figure at her back set her heart pounding.

  “It’s fine, Valla,” the King said, waving the protest down. “They deserve to know what’s out there. They inhabit our world, they should know what dangers await.”

  “What do you mean?” Kyla wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, but she needed it. The Archmage would want all the information he could possibly get before he decided on how to react to all that she would tell him.

  “The vampires aren’t just here to kill us, to eradicate all shifters,” Galen explained. “They mean to subjugate us. To rule us. To fit among us.”

  Kyla licked her lips. “But...I don’t understand,” she said, confused. “Why would any shifter ever submit to them? They aren’t like you.”

  Galen looked down. “Some of them are,” he admitted.

  “Are what?” She didn’t understand.

  “Some of the vampires can now shift,” he told her uncomfortably. “We don’t know how, but they obviously have figured out a way to combine shifter and vampire DNA to create something evil. Now they feel as if they are entitled to a seat on the Shifter Court. A seat they intend to take by force, where they will then exert their will over the rest of us.”

  “They are building a House,” Valla said when the King paused. “Like Drakon Keep, or Ursidae Manor. They intend to take control of all shifters, and then extend their empire to include that of man.”

  Kyla shook her head in disbelief. “They’ll never succeed.”

  The dragons didn’t reply.

  “Will they?” she asked nervously.

  “We will fight them to the end,” Galen said, his voice strong. “Not one of us will bend a knee to their King, I assure you of that.”

  Kyla nodded, noting to herself that Galen didn’t say anything about winning, about defeating the vampires.

  He expects to die. He expects them all to die, she realized suddenly.

  “Where are the others?” she asked, wondering why she’d only seen the two dragons during her trip through the Keep. “Where are the other dragons?”

  Galen turned away abruptly. “This meeting is now over. I have many things I must get done.”

  Kyla almost pointed out that he had been sitting on a couch reading a book when she arrived, but decided against it.

  “I have more questions for you, King Galen,” she said, trying to appeal to his vanity, if he had any. “Things the Council will wish to know.”

  “Then we can meet again tomorrow,” the King said, an obvious dismissal.

  Kyla frowned. She hadn’t intended on staying overnight.

  Nor had he offered her anywhere to stay. He expected h
er to simply leave, to let it go.

  “You may stay the night if you wish.”

  The offer was tacked on as a throwaway. Galen didn’t expect her to take it, and Kyla had no intentions of doing so. She would take a portal home, and then return in the morning to bother him again.

  “Thank you, that would be perfect.”

  The words came out, but Kyla couldn’t believe it was her voice saying them. Why would she do such a thing? There was no need for her to stay in the huge, empty Keep. A solitary mage surrounded by dragons.

  She was supposed to go home!

  “I can show her to her room,” Valla offered.

  Galen turned around, giving Kyla a long, hard look.

  “No,” he said quietly. “I can do that. Thank you, Valla.”

  The ice dragon bowed his head and departed.

  “Come along then, Council Mage. Let us find you somewhere to stay,” the King growled, clearly displaying his anger.

  Was he angry at himself for offering, or at Kyla for accepting? She decided that if it was the latter, then he could go get bent. She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her. Absolutely not!

  Too bad for you, mister. Shouldn’t have made the offer then!

  6

  You’re an idiot.

  Galen was well aware this was his fault. He’d belatedly extended the offer without thinking, wanting to at least keep up the appearances of being polite. After all, he was King of House Draconis.

  He’d assumed that the mage would read his body language and dismissal after her last question and realize that he was done with her, that it was time for her to leave. Instead, she’d accepted his offer.

  Now not only would he have to meet with her in the morning, but he would have to feed her and make sure that she was well looked after for the rest of the afternoon, evening and night.

  What an idiot.

  The idea of having a mage as a guest in Drakon Keep. It was an absurd idea, but here they were anyway. Maybe he should just ask her to leave instead. Say that he’d changed his mind and that she had her answers, and that he wanted her to leave.

  But that would be lying, wouldn’t it?

  Galen bit back a snarl as he walked through the hallways of the Keep to the guest area, hoping Kyla wouldn’t notice his discomfort.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, proving that she had noticed.

  “Yes, everything is fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

  Except it wasn’t. Galen couldn’t figure out why, but a part of him was curious about her. It wanted to know more.

  He was fighting it down with every ounce of his considerable willpower, and yet she kept intruding into his thoughts with her bouncy black hair and calm gray eyes.

  “Sure feels empty in here,” Kyla said out loud as they walked. “I expected there to be a lot more dragons around.”

  He wondered what she was doing, why she was fishing for information.

  The mages couldn’t possibly know the magic was failing, that the dragons could now only be awakened one by one, could they? That the magic of the earth that was supposed to awaken them in times of need, hadn’t awoken a single dragon.

  “You should be glad,” he said gruffly. “If the others were around, you might have had an encounter with someone who isn’t polite.”

  It was worth a bluff, to see if she would believe his impromptu lie, that the others were off somewhere else, unavailable for whatever reason.

  “Perhaps,” Kyla admitted. “But then again, I might have had an encounter with someone who is.”

  Galen reared back, nostrils flaring at the not-so-subtle insult to his manners.

  “Do you have a problem with the hospitality you’ve been given, mage?” he growled, not proud that she was able to get under his skin so easily, to provoke a response.

  “Of course not,” Kyla retorted hotly. “But it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that you aren’t happy about it. Your offer of hospitality was demanded of you by protocol, not because you have any desire to be nice to me. You hate me, it’s written on your face, has been since the second I walked in. But you don’t even know me. We’ve never met before.”

  “I know your kind,” he growled. “I don’t need to know you in particular.”

  Kyla shook her head. “Yeah, well, just because you met other people, or read about them, doesn’t mean they’re what you think they are.”

  There was something in her tone when she spoke that had Galen frowning in confusion. Was she talking to him, just there…or herself? He couldn’t quite tell.

  What did it mean?

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he rumbled, deciding she was talking to him. “I’ve been around. I’ve met mages face to face. They’re all the same.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t force you to put up with me,” Kyla snapped, gesturing at the air in front of them with her free hand.

  Galen sensed her attempt to use magic, but it didn’t work.

  “What are you trying to do?” he asked.

  “Go home,” she said, biting off the words as she gestured with her hand again.

  The air shimmered slightly but that was it.

  “You won’t be able to open a portal inside the wards,” he said with a sigh. “They prevent that sort of magic from being cast. For obvious reasons,” he added.

  Kyla spun, giving him an angry look.

  Galen just shrugged. “Do you want to see your room, or the front door?”

  He wasn’t about to revoke his offer of hospitality. Doing so right then would make Kyla correct, and Galen wasn’t going to give her that sort of satisfaction. Not to a mage.

  Kyla looked at him, her eyes searching his face, looking for any sign of deception. She wouldn’t find it, he knew, because Galen was being truthful. He would show her whichever place she wanted. The choice was the mage’s, and the mage’s alone.

  “A room then, I suppose,” she said tightly, looking away.

  Galen smiled. He suspected she wasn’t completely done with the mission the Archmage had given her and leaving now would ensure she could never complete it. Kyla was forced to accept his hospitality now.

  “This way then,” he said, putting on a cheery tone, letting her know he was aware of her reasons and considered it a minor victory for himself.

  Kyla followed along grumpily.

  “By the way, you would do well to drop the high-and-mighty act,” he added over his shoulder, turning the last corner. “It’s quite clear to anyone involved that you don’t like me either.”

  There was a long pause before the mage replied. Long enough that they arrived at the door to her room.

  “I don’t hate you,” Kyla said, speaking slowly, choosing her words with care.

  “Your face certainly says otherwise,” Galen said, pushing open the door for her.

  “Let’s just say that you aren’t what I expected,” she said cryptically.

  Galen frowned as she waltzed into the room. That was a rather odd way to admit that she didn’t like him. Had she come in expecting him to be nicer to a mage?

  Humans. So naïve.

  “Enjoy your evening. A steward will be by to see to your needs,” Galen said, pulling the door closed as he stepped back into the hallway.

  He turned and headed back down the hallway to his own quarters, trying his hardest to get the young mage off his mind.

  It didn’t work.

  7

  Kyla’s eyes flicked open as her spell wore off.

  After an admittedly delicious dinner, she’d climbed into the oversized bed in her clothes and cast a sleeping spell on herself, ensuring she would wake up at a very specific time.

  There was no light in the room, and the window let in only a sliver of faint moonlight from outside. It was just after midnight, which meant it was time for her to get to work.

  Too many unanswered questions had arisen from her meeting with the King, and Kyla was determined to figure out at least some of them, even if he didn’t wish to provide he
r any answers. Her fellows needed to know what the dragons were truly up to.

  Throwing back the covers, she padded over to the door. Unlocking it, she turned the handle, eager to be about her mission, to cover some ground. The Keep was a huge place and she had a lot of places to search to find her answers.

  The door didn’t budge.

  “Surprise, surprise. Not much of the trusting sort, are we, Galen?” she whispered, not shocked at all that her door also locked from the outside.

  A simple spell worked its way through the door, and seconds later she pulled it open easily. There were no guards waiting in the hallway either, though Kyla hadn’t expected there to be. Just another sign that seemed to confirm her suspicions.

  Most of the dragons were elsewhere.

  The real question that Kyla wanted answered, was where. Where had they gone, and why was King Galen so unhappy at her attempts to find out what they were up to?

  Something was wrong.

  Kyla padded off into the darkened corridors, only pausing for a moment to cast another spell, this one designed to muffle any noise around her so that a dragon or anyone else would be oblivious to her passing. She doubted Galen or the others would take well to her snooping around the Keep late at night.

  The lack of presence of dragons in their ancestral home worried Kyla. Her mentors had told her a great many stories about the powers of the dragons. House Draconis was the most feared enemy of the Mages Guild, and for good reason.

  Dragon shifters could wield mighty magics that came to them naturally. Power over fire, water, ice, and more. Some dragons, it was told, could control the very earth itself, while others commanded the air in her lungs and the breath of the wind.

  Unlike Kyla, who had studied for decades to be able to wield two of the three magic levels, these powers came instinctively to dragons. As they aged and grew in power, they became more in tune with their abilities until they became elder dragons. The most powerful of all.

  And the greatest enemy of a mage.

  Creeping along, past pictures and tapestries on the wall depicting great moments and battles from the past, a terrible idea started niggling at the back of her mind. The dragons were gone, that much was obvious. The more she thought about where they might have gone, however, the more she feared that they were off, preparing to attack the Guild.