Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4)

by Kara Lockharte

  She was with another man.

  “Oh, dear,” Mills said, sitting on the couch beside him.

  “More mirrors now, Grim,” Damian demanded with a snap. The cat did his bidding and a panoply of mirrors appeared. Damian sent his magic out in a wave and now everything even vaguely reflective near Andi was reporting in. They saw pieces of her from glasses, lamp shades, the shine on some kind of ball, and from piecing together all the images, it seemed she was out at a bar.

  “Where. Is. She.”

  “Working on it. Not sure of the ethics of this whole situation though,” Jamison said, giving Mills a panicked look.

  Mills went to stand in front of the biggest mirror, blocking Damian’s view, considering. “She looks happy,” the witch announced, and Damian started a low growl.

  Then someone took pity on him and set something decently reflective nearby—an empty beer glass—and he could see it too. Andi laughing. Without him. She had a pool cue in her hand.

  He watched her bend over the table beside the strange man and he about flew through the ceiling, especially when the man leaned over and said something to her, jostling her as she took her shot. She swatted at him with what looked like affection and Damian felt his dragon rising as quickly as his temper, ready to cut its way free, when she and the man both stood as one to look over at something.

  The man wasn’t that much taller than her. And, once the mist on the beer glass had dried, the reflection crisped and he could see the resemblance between the two of them.

  “Danny,” he murmured. Even worse. His fists clenched.

  Danny whispered into her ear, and Damian saw her eyes widen. She casually grabbed her necklace and spun it so that the stone was at her back, behind her shirt and hair, just as other people showed in the reflections. They were talking to Danny. He clearly knew who they were, so Damian assumed they were other hunters.

  Damian channeled more of his energies into the mirrors and more points of reflection reported in, a veritable kaleidoscope of images, showing even fractional views of Andi.

  “You use much more power, Damian, and they’ll know,” Mills warned.

  “Jamison?” Damian asked through gritted teeth.

  “Got it! Skeeters. Dive bar downtown. Want me to get the SUV?”

  “Yes,” Damian hissed. He stood. He needed to go there now and rescue Andi, but he was also transfixed.

  “And just what will we be doing there?” Mills asked them both.

  “Saving her,” he answered.

  “Why?” Mills pointed to the largest mirror. “She’s already with another dragon.”

  The other men, wearing polo shirts and khakis, were talking with Danny—and at her. He saw one of her shoulders drop and knew she was rolling her eyes. Then her brother went to rack up a game. Damian slowly sank back down as they began to play.

  Can we not just go kill him? his dragon asked, watching the mirrors as intently as he was.

  In front of her?

  He felt his dragon thinking. Is behind her back any better?

  He made a sound of discontent as the men surrounding the pool table watched Andi play. It was unfair that they were near her, breathing her scent, within arm’s reach of her waist, and he was forced to watch her from afar.

  She cleared the table against them, much as she had the night at Rax’s, and Damian watched Danny tell the other men to pay up. It was clear that they were pissed, they hadn’t even gotten in a shot, and one of them got into Andi’s face—probably to accuse her of cheating—but Danny talked them down and Damian snorted as they handed over money.

  New terms were arranged, and this time Andi’s turn was last. She waited nearby, leaning on her cue, watching the table intently, and then, as she bent over to line up her shot, the hand of one of the men in khakis reached to goose her ass. Damian growled as Danny saw the motion and the other dragon clocked the man’s jaw without hesitation, hitting him before his fingertips managed to touch her. The struck man spun back half a turn to collapse artfully among the nearby chairs, hitting several on the way down. The other three men rushed at Danny.

  Damian felt his dragon in him straining. If he changed here and flew there, he might still reach her in time, but Andi’s brother had the situation under control. He pummeled each of them in turn while holding some of his strength back so he didn’t kill them. Damian recognized the technique. Andi had jumped to the side with her back to the wall and she looked scared—and WHY DIDN’T SHE HAVE HER PHONE ON HER—but she wasn’t running away, and she could have.

  Once all the other men were on the ground, Danny stood straight, offering her his hand, and she took it to gently step over one of the Hunter’s bodies, before they walked for the door.

  Mirrors went black as she walked out of range, and Damian fractionally relaxed. He supposed the second safest place in the city right now was at her brother’s side, even if the man had shit choice in company.

  Surely, she was going home now, and surely, she’d be messaging him shortly. His teeth ground against each other though.

  The mirrors caught up again when she and her brother were sitting down, having a spirited conversation inside of a vehicle. It looked like she was yelling at Danny.

  “Damian,” Mills said, putting a hand on his knee. “I think you’ve seen enough.”

  “Bah,” Damian said, but waved his hand, turning all of the mirrors off.

  Jamison cleared his throat. “I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but I’ve finally got his car.” The screen he’d shown her phone’s location on earlier flashed an image from a security camera of a dark green El Camino pulling out of a parking lot.

  “Let me know when he’s alone.” Damian stood up, staring at the screen. “And just so there’s no confusion, yes, I am stalking him now.”

  Andi followed Danny as they quickly made their way to the back porch and his car. “Just like old times!” he crowed.

  “Yeah, just what I’d been missing in my life—bar brawls,” Andi said, keeping a protective hand over her face in case anyone else was watching. Luckily, Skeeters didn’t seem like the type of place to draw hospital administration.

  Danny whooped, throwing himself into his car with a thump. “I wouldn’t have had to kick his ass if you’d just played along. You’re supposed to let them think they’re going to win a few times first, remember? We could’ve gotten them for so much more!”

  “You wouldn’t have had to kick his ass if he hadn’t been about to touch mine. Don’t think that I didn’t know it. Girls have radar.” She’d been thinking about sliding her cue back to knock the guy in the balls if he’d followed through, but Danny had beat her to it. “Doesn’t anyone teach Hunters manners?”

  “Jack’s crew has some top-down issues. He keeps his team all men. Feels challenged by strong women.”

  “Well, speaking of, I’m not wearing that mask again. I don’t trust you not to take me to an entirely different pool hall.” She crossed her arms.

  Danny laughed, and then gave her a meaningful look. “I just wanted one more normal night with you before I gave you these.”

  “This has been a normal night?” she asked, rolling her eyes, as he leaned over her lap and hit the button for the glove box. The thing sprang open, revealing what looked like all sixty years of car registrations tucked inside.

  “Normal enough.” He yanked the papers out and handed them over. “I’ve got my own copies transcribed, don’t worry. But I thought you might like to see the originals.”

  It took her a moment to switch gears and realize what she was holding. The papers were old and scrawled with her mother’s particularly particular handwriting, the English that she learned to write with long-long-long after learning Chinese.

  Danny started the car. The interior light went out and he drove away from the streetlight they were under before she could protest. “Danny!”

  “It’s okay. They’re yours,” he said, pulling onto the highway. Andi’s fingers reflexively tightened as he wen
t on. “I know you don’t have much of her stuff.”

  “It’s hard to get attached to stuff from Walmart.”

  Danny snorted. “Mom never did like spending money.”

  Andi looked over at her brother, his profile backlit by streetlights, and realized that he knew far more of her mother than she did, and probably had more of her belongings, too. Like the photo album he’d given her. Her uncle had managed to accrue all sorts of belongings throughout the centuries, so surely her mother had had her own talismans to give to Danny, if nothing else, and the thought made her slightly jealous. It wasn’t that Andi wanted pieces of old bone. She just wanted the chance to not want them. Even if it didn’t make any sense.

  Danny glanced over at her. “Just promise me you’ll check them out, Andi. It’s okay if we still disagree afterward. I mean, we’ve been disagreeing on things our entire lives,” he said and shrugged. “I think when you read her notes, you’ll know. Also, there’s a big one at the end that says I’m always right about everything. Just a heads-up.”

  Andi’s hand reached for the stone around her neck and threaded it back forward again. “Even if there was, and I know there’s not, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, Danny.”

  “Nah. It will be.” He gave her a familiar wicked grin, then twisted his attention back to the road.

  Damian had an earpiece in and a balaclava in his pocket and was driving his Pagani at absurdly high rates of speed into town. Jamison wanted to send a crew with him, as did Mills, but he was worried about losing the element of surprise with too many people, and certain things, you just had to do alone.

  Like murdering your mate’s twin brother.

  “Damian, I still think you should wait,” Mills said in his ear. She’d wanted to give Danny a day, to see where he went, if they could find out more about his people and his habits.

  But Damian was fresh out of patience. He’d used it all up on Andi, and now there was no more. Danny and his so-called destiny were the only thing standing between him and his dragon’s future happiness. He and Andi were fated. All he had to do was sweep Danny off the board. And then, surely, Andi would forgive him. She’d have to, wouldn’t she?

  Yes. We are meant to be, his dragon hissed, as his hands wrung the steering wheel.

  His phone beeped. He picked it up, reading a text from Andi.

  So sorry! Just getting up from a nap. Had the strangest dream!

  Damian threw his phone down in front of his passenger seat with a growl.

  “It could be a trap,” Mills said. “And you are in the world’s most recognizable vehicle. Her brother is into cars, remember?”

  He grunted over the line. According to Jamison, they’d driven back to Andi’s, and now Danny was off driving someplace else, presumably to his own place. Damian followed a few blocks behind him, well out of sight, until Danny started twirling up into a parking garage and parked. Damian followed, parking on a lower level, trusting in Jamison to wipe the tapes.

  “Damian…whatever you’re about to do,” Mills began in warning.

  “I’ll do alone,” he told her, taking the earpiece out and setting it on his dash. He spared a glance for his phone where messages from Andi were still coming in—wondering where he was, no doubt. He pulled his mask on, got out, and slammed the gull wing door shut behind him.

  The garage’s concrete structure was too dense to see heat through, and the open walls meant that wind washed away any scent, so Damian was on high alert, especially after he spotted the empty El Camino, two flights up near the stairs. He looked up the empty staircase, and had a feeling, running up the next eight floors until he was on the garage’s roof.

  There were only two cars up there, and Danny was leaning against one of them. Actually, Damian saw, he was looking inside of it.

  Probably figuring out if there was anything inside to steal.

  Close. So close, his dragon hummed and urged him to clear the distance between them and pounce. A million and one ways he could finish Danny unfolded in his mind’s eye. He could grab the back of his head and whap him into the side of the car he was by, crushing his face before breaking his neck. He could tear him in two and throw the pieces over the side of the garage. He could eviscerate him by hand and strew his innards out over the gritty asphalt like unwound yarn. His childhood in the Realms had prepared him to consider every death imaginable, and he would give all of them to Danny if it meant finally having Andi at his side.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Danny said, standing up. He turned and looked at Damian. “You’re thinking, ‘What’s the fastest way to kill this asshole?’” Danny gave Damian a so-come-here gesture with his fingers. “Hurry up.”

  Damian paused. Mills’s warning that it might be a trap echoed in his mind. “What’s the matter?” Danny taunted. “Dragon got your tongue?”

  Damian raced up on Danny, and the other dragon didn’t twitch. He engulfed the smaller man’s throat with one hand and sent him reeling back into the car behind him, setting off its alarm, and leaving a Danny-sized dent in its door and roof.

  Danny didn’t even raise his arms to defend himself, and Damian stopped, panting, not with effort but with emotion.

  What are you waiting for? his dragon snarled. We are of the Realms!

  Damian uppercut Danny, same as Danny had the Hunter earlier in the night. Danny’s head snapped back, his entire body rising up into the air with the force of the blow. When he landed, his torso dropped. He grabbed hold of his knees, catching himself, but he didn’t raise his hands.

  Damian held his fist in midair as Danny slowly stood. The other dragon rubbed his chin and spit out a wad of green blood. “Fuck, man, you’re real.”

  Damian didn’t respond. Kill him! Now! his dragon howled. His blood rushed like static in his ears. He wanted to. He wanted to see this small human’s blood spattered over the next three parking spots, as he wiped Danny’s smile out on the cement wall behind him, but at the thought of actually doing those things, all he could see was Andi’s tearful face.

  “You know you can’t kill me,” Danny went on.

  “That’s a lie,” Damian snarled.

  Danny chuckled nastily. “You’re pretty strong. So, yeah, maybe you could. But you won’t, not tonight.”

  “And why is that?” Damian asked, voice low.

  “Because Andi and I haven’t had our destiny yet,” he said. Damian made an inhumane sound without thinking, twisted and tortured and true, and Danny fell to chuckling even more. “You hate it, don’t you? The fact that she and I share a past and have a future.” Danny stepped up to him and poked a finger at his chest—Damian only barely resisted the temptation to snap it off. “I know her better than you ever will; it doesn’t matter what jewelry you give her.” Damian growled and kept growling as Danny went on. “I know you have feelings for her. Otherwise, I’d already be dead, or we’d be giving downtown a kaiju show.”

  “Then you know I’ll never give her up. Leave town, and I won’t follow you.”

  “Fuck no,” Danny spat. “How about this, instead, you let me win?”

  Damian laughed harshly. “At the expense of what? The lives of all of my friends and my own hide?”

  “Guess we can’t help each other then.” Danny shrugged and shook himself like a dancer about to go on stage, like he was finally fully inhabiting his body. “It’s my job to save the world, asshole. And I’m not going to let you—or my sister—get in the way of that. You can take a few more shots if you want, but it’s not going to change anything. You don’t have the balls to kill me and Andi and I are bound by fate.”

  Damian took a menacing step forward, his dragon trying to take control of him, burning in every single cell of his body. All he’d have to do was lose control, his dragon was waiting right there singing a song of violence to him, coiling around his bones, spewing venom into his blood.

  He and Andi had their own fate. Their future was guaranteed and fuck this smug punk sideways. Damian brought his fist back
and shifted his weight, preparing to punch Danny into next week.

  Find out if his heart is crystal, his dragon hissed.

  Danny laughed at Damian’s anger. “See, man? We’re just the same!”

  Damian reversed his arm’s course and swept it up instead, catching Danny beneath his chin, yanking him up in midair. “No,” he said. “The difference between you and me is I know I don’t deserve her. So, take my name out of your goddamned mouth.”

  He dropped Danny, who landed with preternatural grace and then gawked up at him. “I don’t even know your name,” he said, sounding pissed for the first time that night.

  “Keep it that way,” Damian said, and turned around.

  Damian raced home on empty streets. He could hear Mills asking him questions periodically, via the earpiece on his dash that he did not put back in, and he could see his phone flash in his wheel well with occasional messages from Andi. He wanted nothing to do with either of them right now; he was too pissed.

  Why? his dragon asked, as they drove away. It only asked once—unlike the women, it was sure he’d heard it.

  Because he’d snarled back. Because he couldn’t face Andi knowing he’d taken her brother down. She was right, and that hesitation was going to cost him or his friends someday. The problem was no longer about her choosing between the two dragons. It had ramifications beyond that. If something happened to him, what would become of Ryana? If the Hunters murdered one of his crew, what would that do to their group? Michael’s death had been hard enough, but at least his dying at the hands of an unearthly that’d come through a rift felt like an Act of God. Horrific, but plausible.

  Not like losing someone because their boyfriend couldn’t bring himself to act quickly enough.

  And there was no way he could get Danny to stand down. He’d sounded like a true believer. Who the hell tells their child they’re going to grow up to save the world?

  Ruling the world, like he himself was raised…that’s one thing. It’s a doable task, given the right firepower and magic.