by Riley Storm
Earth Dragon’s Kiss
High House Draconis Book 4
Riley Storm
Earth Dragon’s Kiss
Copyright© 2019 Riley Storm
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, without written permission from the author. The sole exception is for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
Edited by Annie Jenkinson, Just Copyeditors
Cover Designs by Kasmit Covers
Contents
Note from the Author
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
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35
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37
38
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40
Other Books by Riley Storm
About the Author
Note from the Author
Hi there!
Thank you so much for picking up Earth Dragon’s Kiss. While this book and series are self-contained and can be read alone, if you want to get the full experience of the Plymouth Falls world, you would be best off starting with the High House Ursa series and book one, Bearing Secrets which is linked below.
Either way, I hope you enjoy!
-Riley Storm
High House Ursa
Bearing Secrets
Furever Loyal
Mated to the Enemy
Shifting Alliances
Blood Bearon
1
Smoke and ash drifted down through the sky, blocking the sun and turning the battlefield below into a nightmarish scene straight out of one of the seven layers of hell. Bits of molten lava flowed down the side of Mount Novarupta, orange streaks that stood out in the dark against the brown earthen mountainside.
Other colors flared and faded as the forces of the shifters collided, clashed and retreated with the lines of the human mages. Magic burst into being, a multitude of colors, driving back the snarling wolves and growling bears.
Here and there, packs of roving felines moved independently of the main bulk of the shifter forces. Slipping through openings, the panthers, lions and tigers of House Panthere savaged the unlucky who were caught unaware, darting back across the lines before the mages could react.
Overhead, Jax flew with his fellow dragons, massed v-wings of his kin wheeling, diving and striking with their breath weapons in perfect coordination.
“Target. Six o’clock. By the book team!”
That was Ka’ine, one of the elder dragons, and Jax’s wing leader. As a group, the five of them dipped a wing, pivoting into a spiraling downward twist that ended with them pointed directly at the cluster of mages that was fighting off all comers. Dead shifters lay all around them, including a downed ice dragon, the left side of its lizard-like snout caved inward as a result of one of the mages.
Jax snarled and called upon his powers, feeling the earth below him respond. It reached out to him and he paired with it. A focus of his mind, and suddenly the mages began to sink, the ground turning to quicksand in the blink of an eye.
They were no novices, however, and reacted quickly. Green magic flowed out from two of them, countering Jax’s spell. Two others pivoted from their attacks on the earthbound shifters and looked for the new foe. Spotting the incoming dragons, they shouted to their comrades.
Standing up, the black-clad mages thrust one arm forward and drew back the other. Forces gathered and the magical bows they had summoned shimmered into existence, the bright blue arrows indicative of the darkest, most powerful spells.
Death Magic.
To be struck by one of those darts would be akin to a death sentence. The dragons had to act.
Ka’ine bellowed a challenge and the mighty wind dragon called upon his own powers. The mages were assaulted by hurricane-like winds, the air itself at Ka’ine’s beck and call as he made them work to steady themselves.
But then the true attack came. The three other dragons of Jax’s wing, all of them younger, fed their own powers into the strike. Fire shot from their mouths, three streams of it aimed directly at the mages.
The fire mixed with Ka’ine’s wind and a firestorm was born. The mages fighting off Jax’s spell tried to erect a shield, but his distraction had proven too effective. The screams died out shortly, and when the dragons swept past, there was little left of the mages save for their boots, still sinking rapidly into the earth.
The entire encounter had taken but seconds.
An ominous rumble caught Jax’s attention. His long neck flexed, swinging his head around to eye the nearby volcano suspiciously.
“Jax, check it out,” Ka’ine commanded.
Jax didn’t wait for further comment, but instead banked away from the fight, toward the volcano. Something was not right, and hadn’t been from the start, he knew. This volcano wasn’t ready to blow. It shouldn’t be spewing lava.
Several other of his earth dragon kin formed up with Jax, and they landed on the mountainside, talons digging deep as they quested into the earth itself, trying to determine just what was going on.
It didn’t take long.
“Magic,” one of his kin hissed in the Drakon tongue.
The mages had summoned the volcano.
“We must stop it,” he commanded, and together they reached out to the volcano, touching its heart, trying to soothe the angered beast.
But they were too late.
“Warn the others,” Jax ordered, sending away the youngest of his kin. The dragons would have to protect the others, while he and his fellows worked to block the magic, to keep the pending eruption from being catastrophic.
There was no stopping it; the mages had spent too long preparing, their spells strong. But they could mute it, prevent it from being a disaster that wiped out much of the nearby shifters, and miles beyond them, the human settlements that would suffer too.
Sensing the danger, more earth dragons peeled off from the assault on the mages and rushed to the side of the mountain, lending their strength to the efforts started by Jax and the others.
One way or another, he knew, this was the final battle of the centuries-long Shifter-Mage war. If he and his kind could just ease the explosion, they would come out victorious…
Light pierced his vision, interrupting the dream.
He could hear voices nearby, talking hurriedly. The words were familiar, yet foreign all at the same time.
“Jax Drakon.” The voice was spoken in perfect Drakon, the ancient tongue of dragons.
A shiver ran down the length of his spine, vibrating his spikes as he stirred. Faint resistance to his movements crumbled and Jax became aware of the sounds of debris hitting the ground around him, even as his body was freed from the pri
son that had held it.
Awareness came with the movement. He had been asleep. All of the dragons had entered deep sleep, passing away the years until—
Until we are needed again.
“I am needed,” he rumbled in Drakon, eyes still working to focus on the speaker before him.
“Yes,” the voice replied.
A female voice spoke up. He didn’t make out the words, but he could tell the speaker was confused just by her tone. The male, the same one who had spoken to him replied in that same language, then addressed Jax again.
“The time has come. The world needs us, now more than ever.”
Jax snarled, shaking his mighty head free of the last of the stone that would have covered his body as he entered the deep sleep of his kind. “The mages have once more struck out for us, have they?” he rumbled.
The cavern around him quivered slightly as his angered pulsed out into the very earth itself. Dust drifted down from the ceiling far overhead.
“No, my brother.”
Jax frowned, and peeled back the last of his eyelids, focusing on the speaker. He was tall, thick of muscle, with bright electric blue eyes. Next to him stood a diminutive female, short hair curled and dyed a dark red. By their stance, it was obvious they were mates. A spike of jealousy flowed through Jax at that, but he shunted the emotion aside quickly, labelling it as unneeded.
“What then, have we been awoken for?” he wondered, looking around the cavern as his vision returned.
Dragon statues lay everywhere. Some alone, others paired up. But there were a great many of them. Jax frowned. “Why are none of the others awake? What is the meaning of this?”
His eyes focused on the dragon in front of him. He was a dragon, Jax knew it immediately, despite his human form. A form that Jax often disdained, though he was forced to take it.
“The magic hasn’t awoken us as was foretold,” the dragon with blue eyes said. “I do not know why. None of us does. You are the fourth to awaken, and dare I say it, perhaps the most important.”
The dragon’s name finally came to Jax. “Valla,” he rumbled in Drakon. “What is going on?”
“The vampires have returned,” the ice dragon said quietly. “They have returned, and they have changed. They can shift now as if they have absorbed our blood into their bodies. They are back, and they mean to rule us all. If we are to defeat them, then we must unite all the shifter races as one.”
“Vampires,” he growled, his mighty form stretching wide, wings unfurling. “You are certain?”
“I have fought them,” Valla stated. “We all have.”
“Four of us, you say.” Jax was beginning to get a picture of what was going on, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Yes,” Valla agreed. “We are too few in numbers to fight them alone. That is why we have awoken you. You must forge an alliance. Before it’s too late.”
2
Ding.
Sarah frowned at the unexpected popup on her computer, notifying her of a new email. That wasn’t all that unusual. She got several dozen a day, after all. What grabbed her immediate attention, however, was who it was from.
Charles Thurminger.
A moment later, she became aware that the rest of her team was also getting an email.
“What the fuck is this shit?”
She ignored the outburst, clicking instead on her email inbox. The title of the email had read ‘Urgent – Please Read’.
So typical of corporate types. Can’t let us know what the subject is about without opening the email. Probably another non-urgent morale-boosting waste of our time.
That would be par for the course with Charles. Though he was the owner of Logi-Net Systems, he was also a useless executive, in her opinion at least.
“Wow, what an informative, urgent email,” she muttered to herself, reading the short text within.
Staff Meeting. All hands, Boardroom. Eleven.
- Charles
“Budget meeting?”
She turned to see Jane leaning back in her chair, a silly look on her face. Sarah laughed, remembering the commercial. “I doubt we’ll be lucky enough to have such delicious food. In fact, there’s probably no food. You know how big of a penny pincher Charles is.”
Jane shuddered. “Yeah. You’re right. Wonder what’s up?”
“No idea, but we don’t have to wait for long,” she pointed out, getting up. It was only ten minutes until the meeting time. “Wanna make a bet that it’s a morale booster, urging us to work even harder, for the same amount of money?”
“No bet,” Jane said, shaking her head. “You’re right, I can feel it. Another huge waste of time. We actually have to work harder because of these stupid meetings, just to make up for the time wasted on them. Talk about irony.”
The two women—the only two women on the ten-person team that composed fully a quarter of Logi-Net’s personnel, headed upstairs together.
The four-story building that housed the entire network administration and technological solutions company—as Charles liked to book them to his prospective clients—had the programming and frontline personnel on the ground floor. The two middle floors housed the sales, meeting rooms and HR areas, while the entire top floor was given over to Charles and the other two executives.
Sarah had never understood why a forty-man company had so many upper-level people, but it didn’t matter to her. They gave her a computer, and let her work away doing something she genuinely enjoyed, and they paid her for it. She wasn’t earning the most money she could for her position and skills, but to do that, she would have to head to a big city. Something that wasn’t an option for her.
“How’s G-Nance doing?” Jane asked, holding open the door to the stairs for her.
“She’s good,” Sarah said, following her friend as they made their way up to the third floor.
Nancy Mingott, Sarah’s grandmother and roommate, or G-Nance as she was affectionately known to the rest of her team, was a fan favorite of the ground-floor personnel at Logi-Net. Most weeks, Sarah came to work with plenty of baked extras, and some days her grandmother showed up all on her own to make sure the team was well fed.
Needless to say, everyone always asked after her grandmother. Sarah didn’t mind. After she’d moved to Plymouth Falls to stay with her grandmother, she’d quickly come to accept the spritely older woman was going to be involved in her life no matter what. It didn’t hurt that G-Nance had a quick wit and a sharp mind for things. Sarah valued her advice greatly.
“This is…full,” Jane said as they filed into the boardroom and took a seat at the back.
Sarah looked around, her thoughts echoing her friend’s words. It looked like everyone from Logi-Net was there. Not just the IT team, but HR, corporate, the sales team. Everyone. She settled in and waited for Charles to begin his pep-talk.
It didn’t take long.
The owner of Logi-Net came in through the door, walked to the front, and waved everyone to silence.
“I’m going to make this brief,” he said.
Sarah was already growing irritated. She had little time for any rich asshole, but Charles was the epitome of all that she detested. Average height, with thinning gray hair that should have been shaved decades ago, a bristly mustache and a suit two decades out of date, he was such a non-modern CEO cliché it hurt.
“By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Drakon Outreach Center, yes?”
The assembled group shrugged as one. Of course, they had heard of the project. Everyone in Plymouth Falls had heard of it by this point. The mysterious Drakon family, one of the three founders of Plymouth Falls, had returned to the area and were investing in it massively. First and foremost was the DOC, a place where they planned to offer a vast multitude of services, all for costs low enough that most residents of the area could afford.
“Well, they’re only a few months away from opening the first phase. They’ve begun advertising it now, and for any of you who missed it, one of the prime sectors they’re
expanding into is IT, Network Administration and the like. Where we reside.”
Sarah was torn. On one hand, she hated Charles, but on the other hand, she knew that the Drakon family was likely just as bad. What little she’d heard of them or seen on the news told her they were nothing but suave, snobby rich-kids who wanted to play with Daddy’s money.
“I just received word today, that they plan to offer their services at rates far lower than what we charge.”
“There’s a shocker,” Jane muttered sarcastically.
“As a result, effective at the end of this week, I am closing Logi-Net. Permanently.”
The room went silent for a moment, and then all hell broke loose. Charles was already stepping down from the podium at the front and heading for the exit. Behind him came the other two members of the executive, and close at their heels the sales team. The rest of the mob followed or broke up into small clumps, talking among themselves.
“Merry Christmas to me,” Jane said, slumping back into her seat.
“Yeah,” Sarah echoed, still in shock. “Did he just close his entire company out of protest of what the Drakons are going to do months from now, instead of, oh I don’t know, lowering his prices to be competitive?”
“Yup,” Jane said dully. “And he gave us all of three days’ warning. Two weeks before Christmas too.”
Sarah buried her face in her hands, feeling them shaking. Oh, how she hated rich people! Charles, the Drakons, everyone from her previous life, they were all the same! They cared about nothing but their profits. Not a single moment to think about the lives that would be impacted by their actions. Not one.
“What are you going to do?” Jane asked.
Looking over at her friend, she saw the blank, vacant stare on Jane’s face. Her friend had no plans. No backup, nothing.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Not yet. I’ve got enough set aside that, combined with Grandma’s retirement, we’ll be okay for a while. Some months. Hopefully between then and now I can find a new job.”
She didn’t have much hope, however. Plymouth Falls wasn’t exactly in need of a lot of tech companies. It was a small town after all.
