Mated to the Dragon Read online

  Mated to the Dragon

  A Paranormal Romance

  Kayla Wolf

  Copyright © 2019 by The Wolf Sisters Books.

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of the book only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form, including recording, without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Alexander

  Chapter 2 – Lisa

  Chapter 3 – Alexander

  Chapter 4 – Lisa

  Chapter 5 – Alexander

  Chapter 6 – Lisa

  Chapter 7 – Alexander

  Chapter 8 – Lisa

  Chapter 9 – Alexander

  Chapter 10 – Lisa

  Chapter 11 – Alexander

  Chapter 12 – Lisa

  Chapter 13 – Alexander

  Chapter 14 – Lisa

  Chapter 15 – Alexander

  Chapter 16 – Lisa

  Chapter 17 – Alexander

  Chapter 18 – Lisa

  Chapter 19 – Alexander

  Chapter 20 – Lisa

  Chapter 21 – Alexander

  Chapter 22 – Lisa

  Chapter 23 – Alexander

  Chapter 24 – Lisa

  Chapter 25 – Lisa

  About the Author

  Books by The Wolf Sisters

  Chapter 1 – Alexander

  The first thing Alexander noticed about New York City was that it was much, much louder than he remembered. Whether that was because it had been a decade or ten since he'd visited and times had changed, or that he was unaccustomed to seeing more than a few people at any one time, he wasn't sure. But emerging from the construction site was a rude shock. Wasn't it the middle of the night? Didn't people sleep during the night? That had always been the case. The night belonged to him and his. A pang, deep in his unfamiliar chest. Not for long, if his mission here was unsuccessful.

  The clothes he had brought with him had been perfectly acceptable when he'd last worn them, but the glances he was drawing from passersby suggested that perhaps the times had changed. When someone informed him, not unkindly, that Broadway was on the other side of town, he resolved to get a change of clothes immediately. It was important to blend in, to look as though he belonged here. Who knew how long this search would take? There were at least a few thousand people in the city. Maybe more. It had been a long time, and people did have a tendency to ... multiply. Another pang of sadness there.

  It felt strange to walk, but the rhythm came back to him as he paced the streets of the city, getting his bearings again. Reacclimating. He thought of his sister and felt a smile pull the corners of his lips upwards – an unfamiliar feeling, but not an unwelcome one. Helena was always shifting, and urging others to do the same. It was part of who they were, she always said – not a disguise, or a mask, but a form as true as any. He'd ignored her. He regretted it a little, now. Walking shouldn't have been this difficult. He was rusted right through.

  By the time the sun began to rise, Alexander had covered a considerable amount of ground and was feeling a lot more at home. The streets were choked with cars, and the foot traffic was building. He was a little surprised to notice how tall he was compared even to the men he encountered. In the whole long night's walking, he didn't encounter anyone who came close to him in height. Perhaps that was a good thing. It would discourage interference from thieves and criminals. The idea that he was a formidable or powerful creature in this shape was laughable, especially given how tiny and fragile he felt – but the stares he was getting from passersby indicated that, in this world at least, he was someone to be feared.

  Good.

  Satisfied with his research, Alexander stepped into a clothing store he'd identified on his long walk. A curious but helpful young woman approached him, chatting on about the current trends as she picked out shirts for him to try.

  “Are these for work, or...?” she prompted him, and he shrugged his broad shoulders, a gesture he was pleased to remember.

  “No. I am here to find someone.” The language felt unfamiliar in his mouth. How strange, to communicate with sound.

  “Oh. Who?”

  “I do not know. A woman.”

  “Oh.” An expression Alexander couldn't quite identify flickered over the shop girl's face as she handed him a white shirt. “Well. A new outfit is a good start.”

  “It is?”

  “Oh, absolutely. With the right clothes, she'll find you.” The girl winked as she ushered him into a small changing room in the back of the shop. “I'll leave you to try those on.”

  Shrugging the enormous coat from his shoulders, Alexander examined his reflection carefully. The tunic and breeches definitely did not suit contemporary New York, that was for certain – he shed them briskly, and examined his form in the mirror. The shop girl raised an interesting point. Was he attractive, like this? It wasn't a question he'd given a great deal of thought. What did humans find attractive? He was well proportioned, at least by their standards – a muscular, compact frame, no excess flesh or flabby areas. He had seen enough billboards on his walk to understand that these were not desirable – no longer a marker of wealth, it seemed. Interesting.

  Harder, though, to assess his face. His eyes were the only parts that were at all familiar to him – keen, sharp, the color of sunlight. A family trait, those golden eyes. It made him feel more like himself, to look this unfamiliar form in the eye and see his sister, his brother, his mother and father gazing back at him. His dark hair fell across his face, unruly in its curls – perhaps he should have it cut short, he reflected, pushing it back to scrutinize the angles of his face.

  With the shirt on and buttoned with his clumsy fingers, he looked a great deal more like the men he'd seen on the street. Heartening, how easy it was to disguise himself. He emerged from the small room, and the shop girl hurried back to him.

  “Looking good! What do you think?”

  “Good,” he acknowledged. “Do I look – normal?”

  She laughed at that – he'd almost forgotten that strange sound. It made him smile. “You look better than normal.”

  “Do you think I am an attractive man?”

  She laughed again, another difficult-to-read expression flickering across her face. Had humans gotten more complicated, or was he just out of practice? “Oh, pal. Wrong tree, wrong forest.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I'm not the girl you're looking for.”

  He looked at her, shocked.

  “How do you know that?” How could she possibly know who he was looking for? There was only one copy of the book, they knew that – it had been in the family for countless generations, sealed away, protected – only to be consulted in the direst of circumstances when the very existence of their kind was threatened. Even Alexander's mother, who ruled as Queen for countless years, had never touched its pages – but her dying command had been for him, as the new King, to consult the tome, to find a way to save their people – how could this human girl have...?

  But the shop girl was still laughing at him. “I don't know, man. Maybe you should ask my girlfriend. Cash or card?”

  Alexander stepped onto the street in a new set of clothes, feeling even more lost than he had when he'd landed the night before. The city was large and strange, and full of people – and the more he thought about it, the less he knew what his plan was. It had all seemed so
simple back home. Out there somewhere was a woman who had the power to save them all. He simply needed to find her. Where better to search than the biggest city he'd ever been to? He had shrugged off his sister's attempts to ready him for the trip – something he sorely regretted now. At least he'd taken the leather wallet she'd given him, full of strange plastic cards and green paper. But he should have listened to her when she'd asked him what his plan was once he reached New York – where would he stay? How would he search? Would he even know the woman when he found her?

  One thing at a time. He could tell that the feeling in the pit of his stomach was hunger. Hunger, and a reasonable quantity of anxiety – but the hunger would be easier to deal with. On the next block, he spied a clustering of tables, populated by smiling people eating and drinking. He would get some food and decide what to do next.

  He picked an item from the menu at random and took a small table at the back of the cafe. There was a newspaper on it, but he didn't feel strong enough to attempt reading it. There was too much noise, too many people, the city itself too overwhelming. Snatches of conversation drifted to him, and he shut his eyes against the chaos of it all.

  You've stayed home too long, Alexander. Gods, he missed the mountains. The silence, the stillness, the pristine beauty of them. The cold air, the drifting cool caress of clouds and the brilliant beams of sunshine breaking through... and his family. He missed his family. Odd, to think of that – it had been so long since he'd been without them for even a moment that not having them there felt like missing a limb. He wished he could speak to his sister for just a minute. Perhaps he could go home. Surely there was time for a quick visit – the city would still be here in a few days, he could just...

  Just return home empty-handed and admit to his family that he'd failed, that he'd barely lasted a day in the human world? That their brave new King, their prize warrior, their golden son could hardly handle buying some new clothes from a shop before he was running home with his tail between his legs? His brother would laugh at him – but his sister would be worse. She'd pity him.

  No. Going home wasn't an option. He would go home with the woman from the prophecy – the woman he was here to find, the woman who would save them all from the wasting illness that nobody had been able to cure – or he wouldn't go home at all.

  A man brought a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of food to his table, offered him a distracted smile and returned to the bustling counter. Two thickly buttered slices of bread with two fried eggs draped across them, glistening in the low light of the cafe. He felt his unfamiliar stomach rumble and set about contenting it. Of course. Humans ate constantly. No wonder he had been beginning to feel so hopeless and lost. A miracle they ever got anything done, really, he thought with a flash of amusement. But as he finished off the crusts of bread, he felt like a new creature.

  “You're new in town.”

  Alexander looked up to meet a pair of slate-gray eyes, burning into him from across the table. The woman's hair was a fiery shade of red, but that wasn't the most eye-catching thing about her by far. Her face was full of metal. Rings and studs through every protruding part of her ears, her lips, her nose, even her eyebrows. The most eye-catching was a gleaming silver ring that had somehow been passed through the bridge of her nose, between her eyes – it almost looked as though it had pierced the bone there. She watched him studying her, and a smirk twisted the corners of her lips. It wasn't until her eyes flicked up to the right then to the left that he realized that two men had slid into the other seats at the table – almost silently. One had a mane of vivid green hair that obscured his face, the other was completely bald. Otherwise, they could have been twins. Still. Watchful. Waiting for something. Gray eyes, like the woman's. And a gleaming silver ring in each of their ears.

  Alexander had been in enough fights to know he was cornered. But the fact that they hadn't just jumped him indicated that they had some interest in maintaining the peace in the cafe. So he leaned back in his seat, trying to look casual – like a man who had happened to meet some friends for breakfast.

  “Who are you?” he asked, voice level.

  “Why don't we talk about it outside?”

  “I'd prefer to stay here.”

  “We don't care what you fuckin' prefer, scaly,” the bald man spat, his face suddenly twisting with rage – Alexander saw his green haired companion shoot him a glance that seemed to quell him a little. The woman rolled her eyes.

  “Look, you know why we're here. How long did you expect to trample around on our turf before we found out? We sniffed you out last night. Jax is furious. We're here as a courtesy. Fuck back off into the cave you crawled out of like a good little lizard, and we'll say no more about it. Otherwise...”

  “Otherwise?”

  “We'll fuckin' kill you,” the bald man spat.

  “Jace. Courtesy.” The woman sighed, then spread her hands and gave Alexander a look that was almost apologetic. “But basically – yeah.”

  Chapter 2 – Lisa

  “Men are shit, Lisa.”

  “They make it hard sometimes, don't they?”

  Lisa smiled and leaned forward a little towards the plush couch that had taken up most of the design budget for her office. It had been worth it. At least three-quarters of her clients remarked on it, and she'd never had to indicate where she wanted anyone to sit. And the fashionable dark brown didn't show tear stains.

  “Just shit. God knows if it were a choice, I'd be a lesbian, you know? Can you imagine? Dating women? Incredible.”

  “You've had some pretty bad experiences,” Lisa murmured, putting as much sympathy into her voice as she could without tipping the balance into condescension. “I don't blame you for feeling jaded.”

  “I try to be a good person, you know? I try to be honest. I try to be clear about what I want. This is me, this is my career, this is the amount of time I have spare for you. Boundaries and expectations, like you always say. And they always act like it's fine, and then two months in I'm getting passive-aggressive little messages about how it'd be 'nice to see me.'”

  “I got the screenshots, yeah.”

  “Sorry.” The woman on her couch straightened her back and used two perfect French tips to brush at her lower eyelids. Jacqui was one of Lisa's favorites, for all that she could talk the ear off an elephant. One of her most frequent visitors, too. They joked that she just came for the tea, but Lisa had a suspicion Jacqui needed these weekly venting sessions more than she let on.

  Well, she wasn't a counsellor any more – that path had burned her out in just under a year. A dating coach, that was her official title. No professional psychological connotations there, and she had a watertight disclaimer on her website and all her socials. Lisa Harrison was not interested in getting sued, thank you very much.

  “Give Ben a shot.” Lisa was usually a little more circumspect in setting her clients up with one another – it wasn't out of the question, but she generally didn't operate like a dating agency – but she liked Jacqui. And more to the point, she liked Ben. The guy could use the practice, even if it wasn't a love connection.

  “This is the musician?”

  “Session musician,” Lisa qualified quickly. “Jazz piano. Freelancer. Very driven, very independent.” And helplessly shy, she added to herself – but if anyone could draw him out, it was Jacqui.

  “Alright. Friday's fine. Drinks.”

  “Jazz bar?” It'd make Ben more comfortable to be in familiar surroundings, and Jacqui could make herself at home on a sinking ship.

  “Fine. But if there's word before then of some kind of – lesbian therapy that'll help me change teams, I want to be your first call, got me?” Jacqui tilted her elegant head, earrings that probably cost more than Lisa's apartment swinging. “Are you gay? We've never talked about it.”

  “No.”

  “Married?”

  “To my job.”

  Jacqui toasted her with her half-empty teacup, a smile twinkling in her cool gray eyes. She w
as some kind of extremely high-up executive – Lisa suspected she was purposefully vague about where it was exactly that she worked. She'd glanced at the woman's LinkedIn profile and found an absolutely exquisite headshot – and a lot of information available only by request. She didn't even have a Facebook profile.

  “Have fun with Ben.”

  “I'll try not to bat him around too much. See you next week, darling.”

  Lisa kicked her heels off once Jacqui had gone, stretching her calves with a grimace. Her legs were aching from hip to heel. She'd started running as stress management when she started her business – that had been three years ago, and her joints and ligaments didn't seem to be keeping pace as well as she needed them to. Could she get away with an extra physio appointment this week? Business wasn't exactly bad – especially since she suspected Jacqui had started sending along some of her friends and colleagues – but money was always tight. Always a little closer to the disaster area than she was happy with.

  Lisa stood, stretching her arms above her head, and crossed to the window in her office wall. The view probably accounted for about three-quarters of the (frankly exorbitant) rent she paid for the place, but God, it was worth it. The sun was up, and the city was sparkling in that semi-filthy, semi-divine way it had, and she was glad, not for the first time, glad down to her bones that she'd moved to this stupid place. It never quite wore off, that feeling. She'd had it the first time she came down from Colorado to visit when she was still a kid at high school, and she had it now, looking out at the sun shining on the city that never slept.

  Alright, enough self-indulgence. Work to do. It was still early – Jacqui paid her a little extra to open early on Tuesday mornings, presumably so she could stop in before work. Lisa was happy to do it. She was the kind of person who woke up early and went to bed at about 8pm if she could get away with it, and if she wrangled it right, she could usually fit in a midday run up to Central Park and back. Running was a treat, though – an indulgence only afforded to those young women (well, late twenties was still young, right? Not in this city, it seemed sometimes) who got through their bloody emails.