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

  They bounced off the ground twice before collapsing into a pile, gasping for breath, trying to recover from their duel.

  Galen suddenly found himself mere inches away from her face, his eyes still locked on those eyes as the light faded from them, returning them back to the gray he’d first seen.

  “You have my respect, Kyla Langston,” he said gravely, noting once again that she was quite lovely, even for a mage.

  “And you mine, Galen Drakon,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his.

  They fell silent for a moment.

  Galen wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline from the fight, or some other deep-seated desire that provoked his next action, and he would never quite be able to figure it out either.

  His mind was too busy being burned by fire to figure it out as he leaned up and kissed her.

  9

  What. The. Fuck?

  Kyla’s brain was firing like mad, all sorts of thoughts racing through it. Yet even as her mind tried to sort things out, her body was reacting.

  She leaned into Galen, into the kiss. Something about it burned like the fire they’d just been trying to kill each other with. It scorched her lips and stole the breath from her lungs. She ached for him, her anger turned to arousal in an instant.

  Without thinking, she slid completely on top, one leg to either side while straddling the dragon king. Her hips ground against him, and she could feel the bulge between his legs.

  Kyla needed that. Needed him. Her entire body was ready, heat blasting between her legs in an unexpected furnace.

  Nor was she alone. Galen’s growl of desire sent goosebumps down her spine, and he continued to make sounds as she rubbed her crotch against his, like an animal in heat, in desperate need of him inside her.

  Strong hands locked on her shoulders. The world spun briefly and then Galen was on top of her, their lips still locked in frantic passion. She felt her back arch up toward him as one hand pawed at her breasts, feeling them through her clothing. His touch was like a brand, searing her skin even through the material.

  She was his, right then and there. Completely and totally. Galen could have done anything to her that he wanted and she would have simply drooled and asked for more. Her body was burning to his touch, and when his hand slipped between her legs, she writhed, unable to stay still as he found her mound through her pants and teased her.

  The combination of the fight, the kiss, and now his touch was frying her brain. She couldn’t react even if she’d wanted to, and so she just lay there, letting him kiss her and please her. Every so often, their lips would part enough for a moan to slip from her mouth, but that was all.

  Then she moved her head to the left. Galen went to the right, and their front teeth accidentally clicked against one another. It was a tiny thing, one that happened all the time with new partners as each learned how the other worked, and what to do. It was nothing, and she opened her eyes to share a laugh with him over it.

  Galen’s eyes opened too, and suddenly they looked upon each other for the first time since the kiss had started.

  Memories poured back in, and her brain suddenly worked again, like a movie going from slow motion to full speed again. What she was doing hit her like a freight train.

  Galen was much the same. His eyes went wide in shock. Air swirled around him and he flung himself up and off her, landing upright nearly ten feet away as he stared, like her, still trying to fully comprehend what had happened between them.

  She saw his eyes cloud over with anger, and the moment between them had passed. He was ready to resume the fight. He wanted to kill her.

  Kyla got to her feet, eyes flicking over the dragon king warily. She was weakened, her strength stolen from her. It would take time before she could duel the dragon again. He, however, still had his supernatural strength. If Galen wanted, he could rip her apart limb from limb here in the chamber, where nobody would hear her scream, and now there wasn’t anything she could do to stop him.

  “You need to go,” Galen said, practically shaking with fury. “Now.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?” Galen snarled. “Not done your mission yet?”

  She shook her head. “No. Too tired. Couldn’t open a portal home even if my life depended on it.”

  Galen’s lips pulled back, but he didn’t say anything. Kyla waited for him to say that her life did depend on it, but the heavy-handed threat never came.

  “You may stay the night,” he snapped, seemingly in disbelief of what he was saying. “But you must never speak of this fight, or…” he trailed off. “Or.”

  She knew what he meant, though why he seemed to care so much about that was beyond her. Why would she tell anyone what she’d done anyway? It made no sense for Kyla to speak of it. Her peers would only ridicule her at best, or ostracize her and call her a traitor at worst, thinking that she’d been seduced by a shifter.

  As if.

  “Not a problem,” she assured him. “I don’t ever want to think about…about it.”

  That was going to be impossible of course. Her body still burned from where he’d touched her, and the scrape of his stubble against her lips would have the skin tingling for hours, she was sure. No, forgetting this encounter entirely wasn’t something that Kyla expected to happen.

  “Out,” Galen growled, gesturing at the door.

  Nodding, she got to her feet, shuffling across the room to get her staff. Leaning on that, she steadied herself and headed for the door. Galen followed behind her, saying nothing.

  They reached the top of the stairs. The room was near identical. Galen pressed a brick on the wall and the floor slowly rose back up to place. As it did, the wall panel opened, and Kyla, at his prodding, walked back out into the corridor.

  “What are you waiting for?” he growled when she paused after emerging into the main corridor.

  “I’m lost,” she admitted uncomfortably. “Which way?”

  “Lost?” he asked, sounding extremely surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be lost? You knew where to find the cavern. That means you know our layout. Now back to your room, enough games.”

  Kyla spun on him. “Listen, Galen. King Galen. Mr. Drakon. Whatever you want me to call you so that you realize I’m serious. I do not know the layout of Drakon Keep. I have never been here before. I did not know that the cavern below existed. I found it by accident. I ducked into the other corridor to avoid someone walking in the halls. I sensed the magic, and found my way down there. That’s it.”

  Galen opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off with a slice of her hand.

  “I don’t know what grand conspiracy you think I’m behind, but I swear to you there isn’t one. Nothing. Nada. I came here to find out why the shifters have allied, and in hopes of heading off a renewed war between us. You can choose to believe me or not. Frankly, at this point I don’t give a shit, but that is the truth.” She stood up straight, eyeing him defiantly. “Now which way to my damn room?”

  Wordlessly, Galen pointed to her left.

  10

  She awoke to the sound of someone pounding at her door.

  Having anticipated a lack of privacy through the night, she’d slept in her clothes. Rolling onto her side, still bleary and somewhat sleep deprived, she concentrated on the door. A gentle burst of magic undid the lock on the inside. It immediately swung inward.

  “Good. You’re up,” Galen said, his large frame filling the doorway.

  Kyla quickly shut her brain off as it tried to force her eyes to run up and down his body. There wasn’t time for that. Nor was this the place. Whatever had happened the night before, it was over now that her dreams of it had faded. She swallowed, taking a calming breath to ease her body out of its dream state, and got to her feet.

  “Get your stuff,” the dragon king said gruffly, gesturing at her staff and coat. “It’s time.”

  She did as ordered and stepped out into the hallway.

&
nbsp; “Out the front door,” he growled. “No games, or you go back to the Guild in a body bag.”

  “Someone hasn’t had their coffee yet,” she muttered, following his pointed directions.

  Galen didn’t rise to the taunt, and they walked in silence through the Keep, and out the front door.

  Looking around, she noted that nobody else was there with her besides Galen. It was just the two of them.

  Screw it.

  She was going to be gone soon anyway. What harm could come from asking a few questions? May as well put them out there, and see what he had to say about them.

  “Those statues,” she began. “In the cavern. What were they, Galen? Why are there so many?”

  Galen snarled. “Why were you down there?” he asked angrily, completely ignoring her question. “What were you doing, if not going down there to destroy my brothers?”

  Kyla breathed out heavily, ready to fire back at him. She refrained, however, as the words sank in. Galen wasn’t accusing her of doing that. He was saying that’s what he thought she was doing, but he wanted to hear her answer. Her reasoning.

  “Sheer dumb luck,” she said, holding back her own anger at still not being believed. “I told you last night. I was in the hallway. I heard footsteps coming, so I ducked into the side corridor. I had no idea what it was. I sensed magic from the room at the end, so I went looking for it.”

  “Why?” Galen wanted to know.

  This time, Kyla responded with a question. “You believe me,” she said, surprised. “Don’t you?”

  Galen took some time to reply. “I fought you last night,” he said. “You are strong, incredibly strong. I know your power now. If you’d wanted to, you could have killed them all, destroyed the cavern, long before I responded to the alarm. You would have noticed the wards before crossing them if you knew what was down there.” He clenched his jaw tightly. “There are too many signs pointing toward you having found it by accident, and not on purpose.”

  He didn’t like to admit that. Kyla thought about rubbing it in, but strangely she didn’t feel that vindictive over everything.

  “Thank you,” she said instead. “To answer your question, I was looking for the other dragons.” She held up a hand to forestall his outburst. “I assumed you were lying about their whereabouts. That you had perhaps sent them off to attack the guild even now while I was staying at the Keep. That is what I feared, and why I tried to trace down the magic I was feeling. To figure out what your plan was to renew the war. To kill us all, and eliminate the mages once and for all.”

  Galen snorted, looking away from her, out over the lawns that covered the grounds of Drakon Keep, and beyond it the treeline that blocked anyone from seeing in.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “I told you what the threat to my people is,” Galen told her. “Where our focus is. I explained all this to you, in plain, honest truth. Yet you refused to believe me. Your blind prejudice made you assume that I was lying to you.”

  Kyla gaped. “Who are you to speak of blind prejudice!” she cried. “Are you serious right now?”

  Galen stared back at her stonily, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Really? Really?” she shouted. “You found me in the cavern, and your first instinct, your first assumption, is that I am there to commit genocide. That I’m some sort of mass murderer trying to kill all of your sleeping brothers! You speak of prejudice as if you’re exempt from it, yet you’re so blind and assured of your own supposed goodness, you can’t recognize it in your own actions!”

  Galen’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t say anything, again looking away.

  She sighed heavily. “Maybe you’re right,” she said softly. “Maybe I did assume the worst in you. But let’s not pretend like you didn’t do the same to me.”

  The dragon nodded reluctantly. “There is much bad blood between our kinds,” he rumbled.

  “I’m tired of all these assumptions of evil,” she said. “I’m tired of arguing with you. We mages have no quarrel with the dragons anymore. There are rogue mages that crop up from time to time, but most of us despise them as much as you do. Yes, we don’t like having to abide by a century-old set of rules that forbids us to use our powers to their greatest, but we’d rather do that than start another war.”

  Galen nodded, ingesting her words fully before speaking, the treeline growing larger as they walked. “And perhaps we automatically assume the worst in you, when we should believe that you are capable of change, that you aren’t always plotting against us the moment our backs are turned.”

  Kyla wasn’t sure either of them believed those statements to the core of their being, but it sure felt good to say it at least.

  “Why are the dragons turned to stone?” she asked quietly. “What happened? Why are there so few of you?”

  She expected to either be told to mind her own business, or some elaborate answer that left her befuddled and even more confused than before.

  Instead, she was greeted with silence. It wasn’t the silence of ignorance, however, but rather contemplative. Many times as they walked, Galen looked over at her, the deep royal blue of his eyes clouded with thought.

  He was trying to decide what to say, whether to tell her what was going on, or not. So she remained quiet as they walked, until they eventually reached the front gates. Just beyond them she would pass through the wards, and she would once again be able to open a portal, this time to back home.

  Galen turned to look at her, and she could see the troubled look on his face. The answer, it turned out, was much shorter than she’d ever imagined.

  When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, and she had to strain to hear it. “We don’t know.”

  11

  “You don’t know?”

  Galen bit his lip, shook his head. “No. I don’t know why I told you that either,” he said a little more gruffly than intended. “You should go now. Don’t want to spend too much time hanging around the front gates in full view of them.”

  Kyla looked out through the metal bars of the gate at the seemingly empty landscape beyond. “Full view of whom?”

  “The vampires,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “The vampires,” Kyla echoed slowly, looking left and right. Then she tilted her head up. “It’s daytime, Galen. Vampires can’t survive the sun’s light. Everyone knows that, it’s in all the history texts.”

  “Yes, they can,” he rumbled. “And they’re out there. They watch us, day in and day out.”

  “You talk like you’re under siege,” Kyla said with a bark of laughter.

  Galen just stared out through the gates, across the road and into the trees beyond. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them. The shadows were too thick down there under the forest canopy. Vampires were out, and they were waiting to pounce.

  “Just open your portal and be quick about it,” he rumbled. “Trust me, you don’t want to encounter one of them. They’re wicked nasty.”

  Kyla finally turned to look him in the face. Galen wasn’t sure what she saw, but it seemed to take some of the humor out of her attitude.

  “You’re serious,” she said softly.

  “Of course, I’m serious,” he said hotly. “I have no reason to lie to you. I might not like who or what you are, but I’m trying to act like a King, and not let my personal prejudices interfere with proper diplomacy and all that.”

  “Why do you not like me?”

  Flashes of a short woman with thick hips, snow-white hair and a laugh that could make even the angriest man soften came to his mind. He could picture her now as well as the day she was taken from him, a beacon of innocence and emotion in a world increasingly stripped of it as the war between mages and shifters grew worse.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Galen said. “It’s time for you to go. You don’t want them to see you if at all possible. To identify your face.”

  “What does that matter?” Kyla asked, wisely not pushing him on the previous topic. “They
’ll know I’m a mage the moment I open a portal.”

  “Maybe, but they don’t know you’re associated with the Guild, or a Council member. But if they find out…” he trailed off.

  Kyla frowned. “What? If they find out, what will happen?”

  “Do you really, truly think that if the vampires succeed and they defeat my brothers and me and the other shifters, that they will just leave humanity’s only other paranormal power in peace? Come on now, you’re smarter than that,” he explained, shaking his head. “Or will they come for you?”

  “That’s assuming they’re real,” Kyla countered. “You’ve given me no proof except your word.”

  “Look into my eyes if you want proof,” he said darkly, staring down at her. “Talk to any of my brothers who have fought them. Who have nearly died to them. They are real, and their threat is perhaps worse than it was before. They will come for the mages, and you will be the prime target if they realize who you are.”

  Kyla chewed on her lower lip, doing just as he’d challenged, staring him right in the eye. Galen looked back, trying not to let himself get dragged in too deep. The murky depths of her gray pupils threatened to suck him in like the abyss, never letting go.

  Galen couldn’t let himself be swayed. Not by her. His commitment was elsewhere, but he could appreciate her beauty from a distance.

  You aren’t that far away from her…

  He felt himself sway closer, saw Kyla’s mouth part in the tiniest of ‘O’s as they continued to look at one another, neither speaking.

  “I’m telling the truth,” Galen said abruptly, pulling himself upright, putting some distance between them. That had been close. Too close.

  What would your brothers think, if they saw you like this with a mage? What would Lana think? How dare you do that to her!

  Galen swallowed the lump in his throat. “The vampires remember the position the mages used to serve under them, I’m sure,” he said, getting the conversation back on topic. “The question is, do you and the rest of the Council remember?”