Dragon Fated: A Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds)

by Kara Lockharte

  Klaxons rang out. She stiffened, as did he, and then he said, “Fuuuuuuck,” slowly thumping his head against her chest as he stopped thrusting.

  “What is it?”

  “Rift warning. If this is a drill, though, I will be shooting Jamison later.” He moaned and pulled out of her. “I cannot believe the timing. I’ve got to go…I’m sorry….”

  Andi moved to sitting as he made his way to the edge of the bed and dismounted. “If there’s anything a nurse understands, it’s an overly strong sense of duty. And hey, at least you still have most of your clothes on?”

  “True.” He set his hard-on into his pants and refastened them, tucking his shirt in and latching his belt back on. As she watched him work, she felt she could see his responsibilities settle onto him like a mantle, in the way he set his shoulders, bracing for whatever would come next. So, she wasn’t surprised when he gave her a cold look shortly thereafter; it was how he had to be for the outside world. Then the corners of his lips ticked up, chipping away at the ice and warming her. “I like the look of you in my bed, Andi.”

  She felt herself flush. “Thank you,” she said shyly and hopped off the side of the bed to retrieve her jeans.

  Damian had his belt buckled and was pulling on his shoes. “There’s a hidden door on that wall to my bedroom,” he gestured with his chin. “You’ve been there before. Help yourself to the bar or bathroom. Take a bath or shower; I’ve got extra robes there if you’d like. You can even swim in my dragon’s bathing pool if you want. Just don’t touch any of the mirrors.” He fixed her with a stare. “I mean that. They’re magical objects. It’s not safe.”

  By then, she had her jeans on. “Wait…can’t I come with you?”

  He snapped a hand through his hair, whipping it back into place before straightening his tie. He looked almost pulled together, with the exception of all the new wrinkles on his previously crisp suit. But the ice had returned all the way now. “Absolutely not. I can’t be fighting monsters and be worried about your safety.”

  Andi gawked. “So, it’s okay for me to be worried about yours, here? Can your magic cat make me a fainting couch?” The klaxon went off again, and she jumped.

  He put his hand on her shoulders. “This is a fight we will have to have later,” he informed her, and she was tempted to say rambunctious just so that he would take her seriously because this was kind of bullshit. Then his expression softened, and he lifted her chin. “I don’t need a safeword with you, Andi. But when I call you princess, know that I mean it.”

  She squinted up at him. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

  “Among other things, princess,” he promised, then let her go and turned on his heel to walk out the door.

  Andi watched him leave with a pout, then wandered the room, collecting the rest of her clothing. She didn’t bother to put it on, just scooped it to her chest as she walked over to the wall he’d pointed at to find the door. She traced her hand along the green velvet wallpaper until her fingertips felt a small gap and then pressed, sending a well-balanced door swinging open. She passed through and watched it twirl shut behind her, finding herself just past the wall of mirrors on the other side, in Damian’s barely familiar bedroom—and everything smelled like smoke.

  Not cigarette or cigars, but campfire smoke, and worse—like burning hair. She put a hand to her mouth to cover it before running across the room to the window and found it barred by metal shutters.

  “And what was that about serial killers?” she muttered, looking back the way she’d come. All the mirrors on the wall were black, like doorways into deep caves, and that was far creepier than the fog she remembered from last time. She realized belatedly she’d left the photo album and her coat behind in the green room, but she couldn’t see the edge of that particular door anymore against the mirrored wall, and Damian’s warning not to touch any of them was only amplified by the scent of recent fire. Andi chewed on her lip. Without him in the room, all the black frames looked like so many empty eye sockets.

  She trailed along the far wall, opening doors until she found the bathroom and let herself inside. She’d had every intention of just cleaning herself up a little until she looked around.

  Damian’s bathroom was larger than her and Sammy’s entire apartment. There was a massive claw-foot tub on a dais off to her right, a shower that could’ve fit ten people at once with the kind of sprayer bars that blasted you from all sides on her left, and in front of her, over a wide granite counter with the kind of sink basins that cost more than her annual salary, was a massive mirror that didn’t currently look angry. Everything was in a gorgeous red stone, and she was one hundred percent going to take a bath in that tub.

  “You are not going to believe this, Sammy,” she said, wedging herself into a corner so she wouldn’t show in the mirror. She pulled out her phone to take photos to share and saw that she’d already missed a series of frantic texts from her roommate.

  Where are you?

  That crazy lady is here again!

  She’s still outside!

  Elsa, her uncle’s secretary. Andi groaned and felt like an asshole, she should’ve warned Sammy. I’m so sorry! she texted back quickly. I went out this morning, and I dodged her. I should’ve told you.

  Are you all right? What the hell, Andi!

  I’m super, super sorry, S! Did she go away?

  No! She’s in the parking lot like a stalker! Sammy sent her a string of frowning emojis after that. Like why can’t she call you? Jesus.

  Probably because she knows I wouldn’t pick up.

  Where are you? Are you safe?

  Andi’s fingers twitched to share everything and send Sammy her recent photos, but she held back. I’m totally safe.

  Good, her roommate texted back. I’m still a little pissed, though. I mean, if you were going to get up this early, you could’ve gone out to brunch with me and listened to more about my date.

  Andi smiled at her phone, knowing all was forgiven. I’ll be back later, all right? Just don’t tell Evil Elsa that.

  Now that I know you’re alive, your secret is safe with me, Sammy sent back, with an emoji sticking its tongue out and then a kiss. Andi smiled at the phone then set it down on the counter, pulling off her jeans to advance on the bath.

  Damian’s plumbing was fantastic—in more ways than one—but the bath really didn’t help things. Andi sat up to her armpits in exquisitely scented bubbles that smelled like some combination of lavender and snow. She should be indulgently relaxing, but her brain just wouldn’t stop.

  What was he off doing? Was he safe? Would anyone else die? Would he? Hell, for all she knew, could he?

  Andi bunned her hair up to keep it dry and save the blue streak in it from fading, then sank in the hot water down to her chin. She didn’t want to be one of those women who just thought about a man, but knowing he was out there putting himself in danger, it was awfully hard not to be thinking about him. How did people with spouses or children in the military survive?

  She gave up on the tub and got out to dry herself off—his towels put any towel she’d ever touched before in her life to shame—and found his robes made of the exact same stuff. She cozied into one, folded her clothes up nicely, and tried to decide what to do.

  She didn’t want to lounge in here forever…she wasn’t a mermaid. Did Damian know mermaids? Were they really a thing? But she also didn’t want to hang out in his smoke-scented bedroom, which left making her way through the rest of the house.

  She had been here before, technically, and while she knew the rooms could move on you without warning, she had a feeling she belonged here now. Maybe. So, she darted through the bedroom, holding her breath against the acrid smell until she reached the door.

  The hallway she remembered—no green dragon blood on it this time, though, so that was good—and she went down the front stairs.

  “Hello?” she asked aloud as she reached their bottom. Was she truly alone? Maybe she could find the kitchen and make herself an
other sandwich. “Is anyone home?”

  Andi wound her way through the mansion, which was substantially less maze-like than when she’d last been here, and accidentally walked to where she’d had a patient last. She knew that Zach was better now since she’d officially met him as a human last night—which was why she was surprised to see another patient in the hospital bed, Grimalkin curled up at their feet. Austin was sitting, apparently half-awake, in a chair nearby.

  He turned to see her, taking her robed state in with a wolfish grin. “Well, hello again.”

  “Hi.” She gave him a small wave. “I, uh….”

  “I know,” he said, turning back to the bed behind him.

  She could’ve minded her own business and walked away, but when had that ever stopped her? Andi snorted at herself and walked up to the bed like she belonged there and gasped.

  The woman lying peacefully on the bed appeared to have wings. Actual wings. They’d been splinted and bandaged, but there was no mistaking the struts on the linen or the way their dark green leather splayed out from each shoulder.

  “She has—” Andi gasped, and Austin cut in.

  “Wings. Yeah.” Andi couldn’t help but stare. Beneath the sheets, Andi could see the outline of generous curves. The woman’s face looked like she’d been beaten up. Her eyes were swollen shut and dark, and her hair was cut raggedly short, and the same worrisome smell she’d scented up in Damian’s room was here. She knew Austin had done the best he could cleaning her, but she also knew from her own time at work that there was no getting rid of certain funks, not without a real bath. “Princess Ryana, meet Nurse Andi,” he said. “Nurse Andi, meet Princess Ryana.”

  Andi wavered, once more experiencing the increasingly familiar feeling of being blindsided. She clenched her hands into nervous fists in the robe’s pockets. “She’s a princess? A real one?”

  “Well, yeah,” Austin said. “She’s Damian’s sister.”

  “Oh.” Andi definitively put two and two together. “Which means…he’s a….”

  “Prince. Of the Realms. Although we’re currently uncertain what’s going on back at the ol’ homestead.” Austin scrunched his face thoughtfully and rubbed the golden shadow of a beard on his chin. “Do titles follow you forever? I can’t remember if those British people gave them up or had to turn them in. I mean, would they still be royalty if Britain didn’t exist?”

  Andi fought a rising tide of panic, swallowing it down. “So, uh, what does being a prince—or princess—of the Realms typically entail?”

  “Fuck if I know. Damian hated it there,” Austin said and shrugged, then looked intently at the woman on the bed. His voice turned low and menacing. “And if they treated someone like her like this, it can fucking stay burned, for all I care.”

  Andi stared at the woman and bit her lips. So, the man-dragon who wanted to date her was also a prince. This was all intensely normal!

  Not.

  She inhaled and exhaled and pulled her nursing persona on. “So…what’s her neuro status?”

  “She doesn’t wake up, but she withdraws to pain.”

  “Can you even check her pupils like that?” Andi asked, leaning in. A small red bird popped out from in between Grimalkin’s front paws and chittered a warning at her.

  “I’d step back if I were you,” Austin advised. “And, no, not really. She could have orbital fractures for all I know. I don’t really want to get in there.”

  Andi put her hands on her hips. “What about taking her to a real hospital for a CT scan?”

  “Oh, you mean the same hospital where we found Hunters? That one?” he said. “Fuck, no.”

  “Austin—”

  “She has freaking wings.”

  “So? Don’t y’all have freaking magic?”

  “Even if we could hide those things with magic, we can’t just wedge her into a CT machine. It would hurt them even worse, and what would we do with the data besides? Who’re we gonna show her scan to who’d believe it? On what planet would it make sense? And then we give her over to someone else to do surgery on? Hell no.”

  Andi crossed her arms and frowned, scanning the numbers on the screen over the bed. They were normal, for a human, for now. But that didn’t mean the woman didn’t have fractures or a slow, oozing bleed.

  Austin reached out to stroke a charred lock of hair away from the woman’s face, and Andi saw the red bird eyeing him closely. She got the impression that if he moved wrong, it’d attack, and at the thought of a cardinal haranguing a werewolf, she snorted. “I’m not happy about this.”

  “Neither am I,” Austin agreed. “But she’s got some dragon in her, just like Damian. They’re tough motherfuckers, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  She glanced at the monitor screen again and noticed the time in the corner; it was late afternoon now. How long had Damian been gone? “How tough?” she asked Austin.

  He turned toward her, clearly ready to wisecrack, she could see it in his eyes, but he caught himself in time. Instead, he gave her a compassionate nod. “Very. And he’s got Zach and the others with him besides.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Always. But my brother can handle himself. So can D.”

  Andi sighed and leaned against one of the bookcases on the wall. “How do you deal with the not knowing?”

  Austin contemplated this, then shrugged. “Same way you do with patients, I suppose.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not attached to them.”

  “Like hell. I saw you take on Damian to save my brother, which, thank you, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome…but it’s not the same.” The truth was, caring about patients sucked in an entirely different way. Sometimes you worked your shift and went home and came back in a few days, and the person you’d poured hours of your life into saving was gone. Dead, discharged or transported to another floor. Being a nurse was like reading random chapters in a novel or only watching a third of any movie. Sure, you got some in a report, you could read some notes, and listen in to gossip and hearsay, but unless you were with that patient from beginning to end—almost an utter impossibility—it felt like you never knew the whole story.

  Whereas with Damian, she might actually get to read the entire book.

  Which was also, apparently, a fucking fairy tale. Andi stared at his sleeping princess sister and thought, are you kidding me?

  “Help me turn her, will you?” Austin asked. “I’m trying to logroll her in case her spine’s injured, but the wings make it hard.”

  Andi moved over to the side of the bed. “You should have your magic cat install a ceiling lift,” she said, and one of the cat’s ears perked up.

  Austin snorted. “The magic cat doesn’t like me very much,” he said, reaching over to use the sheets beneath Ryana to pull her gently on her side. Andi took pillows and shoved them carefully, evenly, beneath her, and Austin set her back down. “Thanks.” Then his phone chirped, and he pulled it out quickly, reading a message with a smile, before flashing her his screen. “They’re on their way back already. Told you.”

  Andi’s hands went into the robe’s pockets again and found her own phone, which while on, hadn’t beeped or buzzed. “Thanks for telling me.” Unlike some people. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

  “Will do,” Austin said, sitting down and kicking his feet up onto the end of the bed to tip his chair back in repose.

  Andi wound her way back up to Damian’s bedroom. The metal shutters in the window had come up sometime during her adventure downstairs, so she opened it up and squinted at the road outside. She thought if his car drove up right now, and he saw her staring out the window in a robe forlornly, like some kind of Asian Rapunzel, she might die.

  This was not her.

  She was not a girl who waited.

  She turned and went back into the bathroom to quickly pull her clothes on, rescuing her phone from the robe’s pocket before she put it back on its hook. Definitely no calls. She shov
ed her feet into her shoes and stomped back into his bedroom. The windy weather outside hadn’t died down, so the smoky scent was quickly dissipating—except for where it wasn’t.

  Andi walked as close as she was comfortable to the mirrors, rounding the bed, and saw a leather bag on the floor. That was where part of the smell was coming from, and she realized it wasn’t like a bag you could get at the mall. It was more like if someone did their shopping at the renaissance fair. She walked over to it, nudged it with her toe, then squatted down, grabbing part of the nearby sheets so she wouldn’t be touching it with her own hands when she opened it up.

  Inside was an imposing stone box about the size of a hardback Stephen King novel. She shimmied the bag off of it so that it sat flat on the room’s low pile carpet. There were intricate designs carved on the sides, inlaid with opalescent metals. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that you should never, ever, open strange boxes.

  And yet.

  Andi reached for the edge of the box with a fabric-covered finger, and to her surprise, it opened.

  * * *

  “This had better be a legitimate emergency,” Damian announced as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He felt flustered, flushed, and fucking alive. Andi, his Andi, was here with him, upstairs, like it was meant to be. God, how good was it going to be to go out and wrestle down some Unearthly monster and then come back here to fuck her in triumph?