Immortal Dragons: The First Four: Prequel + Books 1-3 Read online

  “They always do. Sometimes he succeeds in capturing a blue dragon, as well. He does the same to them, but as you know he cannot breed a dragon without being marked by her.”

  “The skulls…”

  Ked nodded and looked at her gravely. “He and his soldiers actively hunt us now. They have killed hundreds of our kind. The only way to make him stop is to return you to him, or so he claims, but we refused.”

  “You should never have taken me from him, Ked. We were in love. I trusted him.”

  “I protect what I love,” Ked said hotly. A swift surge of darkness surrounded them, blotting out the idyllic garden along with every emotion Belah was experiencing save one: her shame. Shame for being so weak in the presence of a human man, for allowing him to overpower her so often. She hated her brother in that moment for holding the mirror up to her the way he did. As much as she had loved every moment of her time with Nikhil, she had let this happen.

  “We must kill him. It’s the only way,” she said with forced conviction. As much as the idea destroyed her, Belah knew it had to be done.

  “I wish it were so simple,” Ked said. “Your fire is the only thing that has a chance of succeeding. I tried burning him the day I took you away. Our brothers and I have combined our three fires into one, but we weren’t even able to subdue him. He can’t harm us, but neither can we harm him. He’s become too strong, but that’s not the worst of it.”

  “So, I will go back there and take care of it. Now.” She stood and prepared to shift.

  “No.” Ked grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.

  Belah turned to look at her brother for the first time since they’d arrived here. Ked’s brow was knit, his lips pursed. The expression alarmed her because for the first time in her life, he looked truly worried.

  “Why not? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Because he has our children, Belah. If we kill him, we will never find them.”

  “I have no children. None of us have any living children.” Except for one son who their mother had hidden away. The son Belah wished she could find but knew better than to try searching for.

  Ked’s expression softened and he reached up to cup her cheek. He gave her a sad smile.

  “You have two children, Belah. The son we made together, and the daughter Nikhil gave you. Your blood must have acted as a mark once he ingested it, allowing you conceive his child. She was born while you slept, and Mother promised her safekeeping. We didn’t believe him when he said he’d found them, and we have no idea how it happened. I confronted Mother about it, and she confirmed his story. They were hidden away in hibernation. Mother said only a pair of Blessed humans should have been capable of discovering where they slumbered, and only twins, at that. Such a thing would be so rare as the be nonexistent.”

  Belah’s eyesight dimmed and her world spun. Blood rushed to her head, causing a steady, painful throb at her temples.

  Blessed twins. Sweet Mother, not Naaz and Neela.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced words out. “His soldiers… you said he has soldiers. They’re just humans who follow him, right?”

  “Mostly, yes, but there are two who are stronger than the others. The two are elites who are somehow able to lure any dragon and strong enough to kill them. I have never met them myself, but the tales I hear are of a brother and a sister who do Nikhil’s bidding.”

  Belah crumpled against her brother, sobbing into his shoulder. The two precious children she’d cherished had been corrupted. This was all her doing—her cravings for an escape had left them vulnerable, had left her entire race vulnerable, and the very man who had granted her that escape upon the promise that she mark him had been the one to turn on them.

  “Oh, Sweet Mother, what have I done?”

  Once upon a time, she had been burdened by the responsibility of a slew of illustrious titles. Belah the Queen. Belah the Empress. Belah the Goddess.

  She had lost the honor of any of those burdens.

  Belah the Betrayer—that was the title that fit.

  Immortal Dragons

  Book One

  DRAGON BLUES

  Ophelia Bell

  Chapter One

  “You’re no goddess. Goddesses don’t let themselves get tied up, spread-eagle, and fucked into oblivion. Spread your pussy wider, little beast. If I can find heaven in that sweet place, maybe … just maybe, you can be my goddess again.”

  Belah squirmed in her bed, her thighs clenching together while the too-real fingers in her dream teased between them. A moment later they spread her open, and the touch of a man she should hate sank into her. Nikhil’s dream-touch drove her just to the edge, taunting her with crude words, reminding her with each syllable how she was his to do with as he pleased, how her orgasms were his to control.

  She hovered between desire and disgust, hating herself for wanting him to find her worthy of his worship, for craving his touch and the dark freedom of the oblivion he offered.

  Just when she was about to leap off that precipice into rapture, the music started. The same song had been haunting her slumber more and more frequently, and always began at the same moment in her dream of Nikhil. The beautiful notes called to her, lured her attention away until he was nothing but a mist of regret evaporating into the abyss his words had offered.

  Instead of falling into the darkness with her old lover, her wings stretched wide and the music carried her higher. At the apex of her climb into the bluest sky, silken feathers caressed her skin, filling her mind with the music. In this dream, she soared and sang, the need for oblivion abandoned in favor of the attentive, winged caresses that now seemed to hold her aloft in spite of her own ability to fly.

  She rarely found release in her dreams of Nikhil anymore, as though he withheld that gift from her until she submitted to him fully. She used to want what he offered, but over the years and with the knowledge of what he’d become, she was less and less inclined to take pleasure in her dreams of him.

  The hands and wings that carried her into the sky in this new dream didn’t ask for submission. All they seemed to care about was how to sing her to the heights of pleasure with every soft touch and urgent plunge into her. The mysterious lover in this dream never left her hanging, but ultimately, it was only a dream.

  Belah woke, rising reluctantly to the surface of consciousness while clinging to the last, delicious vestiges of her new dream-lover’s touch. Her body tingled and her shoulders ached pleasantly as though she’d just spent the night flying and not snuggled deep beneath the covers of her bed. She rolled over and hummed in pleasure when a similar ache twinged between her thighs. She replayed the dream in her head, working to piece together concrete images, but only able to recall impressions. Wings and music and bodies entwined. And an overwhelming sense that whoever was producing the music wanted nothing more than her happiness.

  Once upon a time, Belah had wished for oblivion. Now she just wanted to go back to sleep so she could dream of flying.

  “Did he come to you again, sister?” Aurum’s suggestive tone reached her from across the Glade, conveying her sister’s eagerness to share. Nightly visitations of the carnal variety had plagued them both ever since they’d completed the ritual with the Dragon Court to reassemble the Verdanith—the key that would allow Belah and her siblings to leave the Glade for the first time in thousands of years.

  “I don’t remember a man who ever made me feel so alive, so free,” Belah answered, sighing at the memory.

  “Did he show his face yet? Or any clue as to who he is? My dream lover is still a mystery. He smells of wild, ancient places, tastes of spring rain and flooding rivers, and he ruts like a beast, but I still have yet to see his face.”

  Belah flinched at the word “beast” and the pleasant sensations of her dream dissolved, replaced by the sting of old wounds, both physical and emotional. Even after three
thousand years, she had trouble hearing that one, small word without being reminded of what it had once meant to her.

  “I am sorry, sister,” Aurum said, a wash of her guilt flooding into Belah. Belah closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. They all had their own regrets, she knew that. But Belah’s was the only one that had created a monster that could destroy their race.

  She forgave her sibling and rose, suddenly hating the softness of the bed. It served as a reminder of what her life had been like before she and her siblings retreated from the human world almost three thousand years ago. Most days the old mistakes were far from her mind, her old lover’s atrocities becoming abstract acts of evil that bore little connection to the day-to-day reality in the Glade. Yet today she couldn’t shake the memory of Nikhil’s touch and the way it encroached on the more pleasant images from her second dream, reminding her how he still affected her life even after all this time.

  Her life… such as it was. Days ceased to have much meaning beyond her occasional observations of the scenes that played out within the small reflecting pool in her private corner of the Glade. The world had moved on without her, but at least the dragon race still thrived despite their enemy growing ever stronger.

  The Glade itself was the perfect idyllic retreat. Its deep, wide, lush valleys surrounded by cliffs were perfect for soaring through. With its temperate weather, clear skies, and steady breeze, nothing ever changed within the Glade, which made it easy for Belah to simply exist. Her old, dark cravings had all but disappeared, thanks to the reliable sameness in the sanctuary she shared with her siblings. Now her only urge was to eavesdrop on the human world from time to time, though the compulsion was, more often than not, related to her desire to seek out her old lover. Three thousand years should be enough to shed unwanted urges, but Belah was immortal and such deep desires weren’t so easy to let go.

  She left her room, heading to the reflecting pool in the garden outside, unable to stay away after the reminder of her past. Somehow she couldn’t help but poke at the old wounds whenever they twinged.

  Settling cross-legged on a cushion at the edge of the pool, she expelled a slow breath. The blue smoke swirled across the surface, ushering ripples toward the outer rim before settling into an opaque layer just above the water. Concentrating, she parted the smoke and peered beneath at the mirror-smooth surface and the small images that took shape.

  The world moved so swiftly now that only a few minutes of watching exhausted her. Humans never stopped. But she found she could focus on the slower-moving auras of the higher races, and with a small effort, use her powers to tap into their thoughts and find links to their mutual enemy, the Ultiori.

  After a few minutes, her head ached, and all she’d learned was that the higher races were finally aware of the latest dragon Ascension. The Ultiori were relatively quiet. She buried her head in her hands and groaned.

  “You won’t find him.”

  Belah’s head shot up. She stared across the pool at her dark-haired brother, Ked, and scowled. “What makes you think I’m looking for him?”

  “You always do. Whether it’s because you still love him, or because you know he’s the key to finding them, I don’t know. I think it might be a little of both.”

  She stared at the pool again, her gaze unfocused while the old conflict twisted in her gut. Her old lover, Nikhil—now the leader of their race’s most brutally powerful enemy—had somehow managed to locate a pair of treasures Belah herself had no access to. Treasures that were more dear to her than her own life. Her own son and daughter had been his prisoners for the last three thousand years and had yet to be located, in spite of constant searching.

  “There has to be another way to find them. If I can just figure it out, we can kill him and be done with it.”

  Ked sat down on the other side of the small pool, resting his forearms atop his knees.

  “I don’t believe killing him is really what you want, either,” he said.

  Belah wanted to argue. She wanted to lash out the way she’d done countless times since that day three thousand years ago when their entire world had changed.

  When she’d closed her eyes on her wedding night, Nikhil had been her lover, her husband. But upon waking, he was their enemy. His singular goal had shifted from her pleasure to capturing her kind, and any other higher-blooded creature who happened to get in the way of his search for her. At first he only killed, but for the last several centuries, he’d started taking captives and experimenting on them. Few ever escaped, but the ones that did always expressed how they wished for death while they were in his clutches.

  As hard as it was for Belah to believe Nikhil had become that monster, she had seen enough evidence of his atrocities to break her heart ten times over. Since then, she’d spent hundreds of years alternately blaming her brother for taking her away and thanking him for the same. She had no blame left for anyone now, not even herself. What she wanted was to simply find her children.

  “He fed the darkest parts of me. I know now that it was my own fault for allowing it—I indulged in him like he was a drug, and I fostered that darkness in him just as much. But after everything he has done, how can there be anything human left of him? I was a fool to think he could be empowered to survive being my mate…”

  “We all wanted it to work,” Ked said. “Otherwise none of us would have agreed to the wedding in the first place. None of the races are exempt from that burden—we all had a hand in making him. We all wanted our combined magic to mean we could have human mates strong enough to withstand the power of immortal love.”

  He was humoring her, she knew. He’d been doing it forever… validating her mistakes. She hated when he did that. None of the others treated her that way. She’d done this. She could own the consequences.

  “And we made a monster who can’t be stopped! For all we know, he’s already picked up on the influx of magic into the world, now that the Verdanith is whole again. It could lead him straight to the Glade. If he shows up on our doorstep, I’ll have no choice but to kill him, and you know this!”

  Belah hated how frantic her tone had become. Only a few weeks had passed since they’d agreed with the Dragon Court to reassemble the Verdanith. The magical keystone that held open the door to the Glade had been in pieces for the last three thousand years. Breaking it had been required to protect their race, but it had effectively trapped Belah and her siblings inside their magic-infused sanctuary. Meanwhile, each piece of the Verdanith itself never stayed in one place for very long, a failsafe that ensured their enemy couldn’t easily pinpoint the source of the dragons’ power.

  The recently ascended Dragon Court had argued that with the new generation, they needed to increase their numbers more than ever before, and the only way to do that would be to make the Verdanith whole again and let the magic flow freely. Belah and the others had agreed, knowing their enemy’s focus had long ago shifted away from the hunt for the power source, but it was only a matter of time before the Ultiori caught wind that things had changed.

  “We’re connected to the world again for the first time in ages, Sister.” Ked tapped at the surface of the reflecting pool, sending ripples across to her side and distorting the images from the human world. “And the power flows both ways now. You’ve had the dreams as well, haven’t you?”

  Belah shook her head, prepared to deny anything of the sort. The dreams were her private escape, her secret indulgence, and they harmed no one. She’d long ago given up on the idea that she would ever have another lover, much less a mate. The dreams were all she had left.

  A shadow passed over the reflecting pool, and before her eyes the surface shimmered, then coalesced into an image. Her breath caught in her throat as her secret, unconscious wish took shape. The bodies weren’t identifiable, but one was undeniably female and writhed in ecstasy surrounded by a shining blue aura. Glowing, feathered wings fluttered around and around the female
shape in soundless rhythm. The image was silent, but Belah could hear the music that accompanied it in her mind, and though the image on the water failed to convey the erotic nature of the union, she felt it again deep in her core.

  “Ked… this isn’t fair.”

  “Just watch.”

  The image faded away and a new one took shape, similarly framed with feathered wings, but this time the central figure was male and shrouded in shadow, and the feathered shape was decidedly female.

  Belah’s gaze shot to her brother, but he was engrossed in watching the image play out. She let her eyes fall back to the water and she watched, enraptured by this secret her brother had chosen to show her. Had he been dreaming of a turul female all this time while Belah dreamed of a turul male?

  “Do you hear music when you dream of her?” she asked softly. A turul’s music was known to reveal the truth in anything. If the dream magic were real, they had to believe what the songs from their sister race of falcon shifters told them. The magic of the Four Winds the turul worshipped may be at work if she and her siblings were all having similar dreams.

  “The sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s so much pain in her songs, though. I ache to comfort her.”

  The rough, deep rhythm of Belah’s dreams sounded both anguished and deeply sexual, and resonated deep in her soul. She yearned for that male so strongly—if only he could be more than just a fantasy.

  Belah caught movement in her periphery and watched as their other four siblings joined them and settled around the pool. After a moment, Ked’s dream disappeared and Aurum’s golden breath drifted over the surface. When the cloud parted, Belah observed a visual that closely resembled her sister’s descriptions of her own dream. After that, the others shared their dreams one by one, and the true meaning of Belah’s dream became clear to her.

  Each of their dreams depicted one of their sister races as the lover—for herself and Ked, it had shown the feathered wings of turul lovers, and for the others, she’d observed the ursa and nymphaea. The revelation that they should interbreed with the other higher races went against everything Belah had believed, but could never wholly come to terms with. The four higher races each had different laws where breeding was concerned, but while they occasionally had sexual dalliances with one another, one law they all had in common was that they should not mate each other or produce offspring.