DragonMate Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Dragon Mate

  ISBN 9781419921292

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Dragon Mate Copyright © 2009 Jory Strong

  Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication March 2009

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Dragon Mate

  Jory Strong

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Starbucks: Starbucks U.S. Brands

  Chapter One

  Kirill paced. First the length then the width of the lair’s outer chamber. Every few turns, flames erupted from his mouth and engulfed the collection of gems piled in the center to serve as a bed.

  Centuries of being a dragon’s target had shattered the weakest of the stones and napping on them had done the rest, further reducing the inferior ones until they were a powdery dust that incinerated or blew from the chamber with each fiery breath.

  If such hard usage had destroyed all of the jewels making up his daybed, he wouldn’t have cared. They were baubles really, except to humans. Like most of his kind, he kept his priceless treasures in the hidden depths of his lair.

  Color reflected off the silver of his torso scales. The blue of sapphires and green of emeralds. The red of rubies and black of onyx as well as the sparkle trapped in opals and diamonds.

  Kirill roared and blasted the stones again with dragon fire. The deep blue of his tail swished in aggravation and the matching crest along his neck rose and fell as he cursed the fate that had landed him in the position he now found himself in.

  Another stream of flame followed, heating his bed of gems into something even a dragon would find uncomfortable to lie on. And as one of the outer gems gave up the battle and broke apart, Kirill cursed one long-dead sorcerer in particular, then sorcerers in general.

  He stalked to the lair opening and looked at the portal building in the distance. It sat on top of a narrow column, high above the ground and accessible only to those who could transport magically or were winged. A ledge surrounded it, allowing dragons to arrive and depart in their first form, though the dimensions of the chamber itself required them to shift into a magical construct making them appear human before entering it.

  The portal chamber taunted him from its position in neutral territory. It mocked him for his delay, his past mistakes, his reluctance to admit to himself that even cursed as he was, he would never walk away from the treasure of a human mate—the one whose image he’d seen centuries past in the sorcerer’s mirror.

  He exhaled through his nose. Only this time the flames were the venting of lust and not anger, the eruption of a heat that boiled through his veins though his cock remained sheathed and frozen inside his body.

  There were ancients who never shifted from their first form because they loathed the weakness inherent in the human one. Kirill wasn’t one of them even if he could count on two hands the number of times since he’d been cursed that he’d focused his magic into constructing the second shape and containing him in it.

  In dragon form his penis remained retracted within his body, enabling him to hide the truth from himself—his inability to harden and claim a female with the thrust of his cock into her waiting channel.

  Without having to confront the horror of his always flaccid organ, he could lose himself in the study of his various treasures. He could pretend that collecting and possessing a wealth of rare books and priceless gems were all that mattered to him.

  In human form there was no such escape. His mind strayed constantly to his limp penis and the woman who was his perfect mate.

  His inability to take her taunted him, becoming an ever-present reminder of his youthful foolishness and the spell that had rendered him impotent. Virgin. Without hope…until his soon-to-be-named heir Xanthus returned to the dragon realm with a Drui mate.

  By the Great Shared Ancestor, how had Xanthus managed it?

  The Drui were originally a nomadic people of magical bloodlines. They’d hidden the truth of their natures by blending in and traveling with human tribes known as the Galatai.

  Because of their ability to draw poison and disease from human bodies, they’d been viewed as great healers. The Drui could also use their abilities to restore supernaturals to health.

  All this was before the dawn of religions and priests who felt threatened by the Drui ability to heal, and the influence they held because of it, men who’d labeled them evil and urged those in power to round them up and kill them. In their fight for survival, some of the Drui used their ability to heal supernaturals, not to draw away poison and curse-born afflictions, but to draw power—the magical lifeblood—of those beings who weren’t human.

  As soon as the supernaturals realized what the Drui were capable of, they began hunting them as well. Enslaving some, killing others, and mating with a few in the hope of gaining control over such a powerful ability.

  From time to time Kirill had heard rumors of a Drui living among elves, and another among the Sidhe. He’d believed the first telling but not the latter.

  The elves were the first to see a future where the humans not only walked in the same world as the rest of the supernaturals but took it over. They’d fled and carved out a home for themselves in an alternate realm. The dragons followed later, and lastly, the most powerful of the fey and those allied with them, leaving behind a magic-poor world for the humans to rule.

  He’d thought the Drui extinct in the human realm. Otherwise he would have parted with every gem and pearl, every piece of gold and bar of silver, every book of magic he possessed in order to be cured of the curse centuries ago, with plenty of time to regain his fortune and collect his mate.

  Kirill swept his tail across the floor of his lair in aggravation. The tip of it struck the edge of his bed and sent gems scattering across rock and bouncing off walls.

  He couldn’t fathom why Xanthus would entertain the notion of allowing Marika to return to the human world. But then, there was fey in Xanthus’ bloodlines. Perhaps that was what had corrupted his thinking. It certainly explained Xanthus’ taking of both a male and female mate. Then again, perhaps Xanthus had come to prefer the human realm over this one as many of the younger dragons did.

  I will never understand it, Kirill thought, glancing around his lair and thinking of all the treasures it contained.

  Dragons hoarded and guarded. It was their nature, and nothing was more priceless to a male than a human mate. With or without
magical ability, such a mate was to be kept in the lair, nestled on a bed of gems preferably, or, if she insisted, allowed outside, but never out of sight and rarely any further than the boundaries of a male’s territory.

  Whatever Xanthus’ reason for thinking otherwise when it came to his mates, could no longer matter to Kirill. Learning that the Chalice of Enos had been found and would be made available to any male and his mate without discrimination or price, changed everything.

  Kirill roared, cursing sorcerers yet again. This time directing his anger at Enos, the wizard who’d crafted a chalice then tied the fertility of the dragon race to it.

  While the wizard lived and maintained possession of the chalice, dragon-kind had been held hostage, forced to turn over vast amounts of treasure in order to drink from the cup. Then afterward, until the chalice was lost in the mortal realm, it had been in the possession of Queen Otthilde, one of the Sidhe fey.

  Cursed as he was and without hope of mating, much less siring offspring, Kirill had agreed to name Xanthus as his heir on the condition Xanthus’ Drui mate remain in the dragon’s realm, where she could be guarded as the treasure she was.

  He’d planned on collecting the female who was to be his mate and bringing her to his lair then finding something—besides coming and going between realms as she pleased—to offer the Drui, Marika, if she could undo the sorcerer’s curse. But in the wake of Marika’s arrival and his agreement with Xanthus, he’d learned of the Dragon’s Cup recovery, adding complication to his situation.

  Kirill hissed, sending a wall of flame out before him, finally accepting the only course of action possible for him. He would trust the Drui to heal rather than kill him. He would renegotiate with Xanthus. There was no other way.

  If Xanthus was foolish enough to allow his mates the freedom to choose where they went and do as they pleased, then so be it. That was Xanthus’ problem and his failure.

  I won’t make the same mistake with mine, Kirill thought, launching himself from the lair’s rim and flying, his silver wings revealing an underside of the same blue as his tail and neck crest.

  Once, the entire valley had belonged to his ancestral lair. They’d guarded it fiercely and managed it wisely so despite the scarcity of game, the harsh landscape and cold climate, they’d thrived. But slowly, as the effects of the sorcerer Enos’ curse had diminished their numbers, feuds erupted and boundary lines were drawn.

  Things would change now that the Chalice of Enos was in dragon possession—in male possession. Even in the days when it was possible to find a submissive female dragon, many males preferred human females. They were deliciously fragile, the rarest of treasures, made more so in those times because so few of them survived the shock of being taken away from their families by creatures they saw as terrifying beasts.

  Those who did survive and accept a dragon lover were guarded fiercely because it was generally believed if a human female could accept one dragon male, then given enough time, she would respond to a new mate. His kind were acquisitive and competitive. Stealing a treasure added to the satisfaction of acquiring it, though Kirill was glad their culture had evolved so physical possession no longer equaled right of ownership when it came to a human mate—not that he intended to put such a thing to the test with his female. He wouldn’t allow her to stray far enough away for another male to carry her off.

  He would go to her realm and collect her from the location where he knew he’d find her, where centuries earlier his future mate had been revealed as he looked into a sorcerer’s mirror. He would return to his lair with her immediately, and once there he would proceed to couple with her until he was certain he’d claimed her so completely that she had no desire to leave him.

  Despite the size attributed to his kind by human legend—a size made bigger not only with each telling but because of dragon illusion magic—he could mount her both in human and dragon form. He might be larger and heavier in his first form, but with care he could still penetrate his mate. He could still pleasure her to orgasm and impregnate her while he was dragon.

  Thinking about it built up such heat that Kirill exhaled flames and increased his speed, anxious to get to Xanthus’ lair and speak with the Drui.

  At the edge of his territory he stretched out his neck and trumpeted a call. Xanthus’ grandfather responded, both acknowledging Kirill and granting permission to pass through claimed lands.

  The valley narrowed further. Occasionally there was movement on cliffs seeming too sheer to navigate. Kirill caught glimpses of pygmy goats and scurrying rodents but the hunger driving him had nothing to do with the prey animals below.

  His shadow marked his passage along red and gray rock. The cold light made his dark reflection seem deadly and sinister. It reminded him of the fear that used to erupt in villages and fields when dragons passed overhead in the days his kind shared the same realm as the humans.

  He trumpeted again. This time Xanthus answered, not bothering to hide his irritation at being interrupted from his mating, though he granted permission for Kirill to enter both his territory and his lair.

  When they’d last met, they had agreed Xanthus would come to Kirill’s lair when he was ready to finalize the details naming him heir and spelling out his responsibilities as well as his rights. But given the news of the Dragon’s Cup, and Kirill’s own decision to trust Marika, Kirill couldn’t wait any longer.

  As a courtesy he forced himself into a human form at the entranceway. He was surprised to encounter a huge cougar in the lair along with Xanthus and the Drui. Shapeshifter? he wondered, even as beast became man and another word formed in place of the first. Sjen.

  How had Xanthus managed it? But then Kirill’s gaze settled on the hair-woven collar around the Sjen’s neck, matching the color and texture of the strands to the Drui’s, and he knew.

  He bowed low to Marika, seeing compassion and curiosity in her face and gaining confidence that his decision to trust her was the correct one. “May I have a word in private with you?”

  Had he not already agreed to name Xanthus his heir, it would have been a dangerous, outrageous request for one male to make of another. Despite their tie by blood, they were essentially strangers to one another.

  The answer came in a growl from the Sjen along with a matching one from Xanthus. Marika touched both of their arms, soothing them automatically, and Kirill could tell they spoke in the way of bonded mates, mind-to-mind.

  The Sjen took the form of a cat no larger than a rabbit then left the outer chamber by way of a small fissure in the rock. Xanthus released the magic holding him into a human form and launched into the air to glide and circle above the canyon as a dragon.

  “Thank you,” Kirill said, spine stiffening to counter his sudden awkwardness over the nature of his problem.

  “Would you care to sit?” Marika asked, a wave of her hand indicating a museum-quality Oriental rug on the floor.

  Kirill nodded and followed her deeper into the lair. The carpet was littered with plush cushions but she pushed them away in favor of sitting cross-legged. He matched her pose, though he couldn’t mimic her calmness. For the first time in memory, his tongue felt tied to the bottom of his mouth, held useless there like a fledgling whose wings were still too weak for first flight.

  Thankfully she took pity on him. “You’ve been cursed?”

  Kirill only barely resisted the urge to look down at his flaccid cock. Was it obvious despite the clothing created by his magic?

  Of course it was. Marika would stir any male to life.

  He felt heat rise to his face, shame and embarrassment and dragon fury. If he hadn’t already incinerated the sorcerer…

  Kirill took a deep breath then exhaled carefully to ensure only air emerged. “Yes.”

  The Drui nodded. “I thought so. Granted, I haven’t met many dragons, but all of them except for you have carried what I think of as a signature energy pattern around them. What was the curse?”

  Kirill closed his eyes, almost preferring to ha
ve the Great Shared Ancestor call him home in that instant rather than be forced to say the word.

  The image of his waiting mate gave him the strength to proceed. “Impotence.”

  A heartbeat passed. Then a second and a third. Plenty of time for the Drui to compose her features before he opened his eyes and looked at her again. “Can you undo the curse?”

  “I need to know more about it first. Was witchcraft used, or sorcery?”

  “Sorcery.”

  “How was it cast?”

  “With words delivered on lightning bolts shot from his fingertips.”

  Kirill’s nostrils flared as he remembered them striking him in the region of his hidden genitals, icy cold spears that caused him to drop the mirror he clutched into the ocean surf and very nearly follow it into the water.