Fate of Dragons

by Olivia Ash

  Copyrighted Material

  Fate of Dragons copyright © 2019 by Olivia Ash.

  Covert art commissioned and owned by Wispvine Publishing LLC.

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Wispvine Publishing LLC.

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

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Wispvine Publishing, L. L. C.

  www.wispvine.com

  1st Edition

  Books by Olivia Ash

  Dragon Dojo Brotherhood

  Reign of Dragons

  Fate of Dragons

  Blood of Dragons

  Age of Dragons

  The Nighthelm Guardian Series

  City of the Sleeping Gods

  City of Fractured Souls

  City of the Enchanted Queen

  Demon Queen Saga

  Princes of the Underworld

  Wars of the Underworld

  Sentinel Saga

  By Dahlia Leigh and Olivia Ash

  The Shadow Shifter

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  Fate of Dragons

  Book Two of the Dragon Dojo Brotherhood

  Olivia Ash

  Book Description

  Dragon Dojo Brotherhood Book Two: Fate of Dragons

  A dangerous and cruel dragon shifter is holding my sister hostage.

  And I am going to kill him. With my bare hands, if I have to.

  He wants to trade—Irena’s life, for mine.

  For my freedom. For the ancient and deadly dragon magic I fused with when his cronies kicked me into a pit to die.

  I came back from the dead, and I brought the fury of hell with me. Now, they’re running scared—as they should. All of them, except this guy.

  As the cherry on this toxic pie, my mentor is hunting me, too. She’s using every skill she ever taught me to track me down and lock me away.

  My mentor trained me to obey her, and she’s pissed that I won’t bow down to her anymore. Determined to drain my magic, Zurie wants to reprogram my brain with enough drugs to make me an obedient little assassin again.

  It won’t happen. And the poor fool who hurts my sister—well, he’s in for an early grave.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  You’re Missing Out…

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The hunt is on.

  I crouch in the thick underbrush, my eyes narrowing slightly as I zero in on my prey.

  Tucker Chase presses his back against a tree thirty feet away, peering around it with a grim expression as he searches for me. My eyes rove over his hard body, across his pecs as they press against his black military-issue shirt. The fabric strains against his thick biceps, the color of the threads almost a perfect match for the dark stubble on his strong jaw.

  Those green eyes of his briefly flit toward my hiding place, but he scans past me instantly.

  Good. He doesn’t see me.

  I look for the black flag tied to his belt, and sure enough, it hangs over the many pockets he usually keeps stocked with an assortment of firearms and knives.

  My gorgeous weapons expert doesn’t know he’s about to lose our little game.

  He sneaks into the shadows of the forest, and I have to admit I’m impressed. We’ve been working on his stealth, trying to hone his ability to slip silently through the night, and he’s getting much better.

  Tucker accidentally sets his foot on a twig, but he notices it this time and hesitates before the stick cracks beneath his shoe. Gently, he lifts his foot and steps aside to a clear patch of dirt before continuing.

  I smile with pride.

  Still, he’s technically my prey right now, and I’m not about to let him—or any of my men—win.

  What can I say? I’m a sore loser.

  I sprint through the forest, silent as a ghost, and I’m on him in seconds. Before he can even turn around, I kick out his knees and tackle him to the ground.

  We fall, rolling through the dirt, and I pin him to the forest floor with one arm against his chest. My legs hook around his, rendering him immobile while I wrap my hand around his flag.

  His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and before he can say a thing, I tug the flag off his belt.

  Our eyes lock. I smirk in victory and rip his flag in half with my teeth, winking as I shoot him a dashing smile.

  “Death,” he moans melodramatically. “The cold spear of Hades sails through my heart!” With one hand on his brow, he arches his back like a bad actor trying to land a leading role. “For I am betrayed by the woman I love! She has scorned me, ripped my soul in twain!”

  I chuckle and stand, stashing the torn flag in my back pocket as a victory token. “Drama queen.”

  “Betrayed,” he moans again, eyes shut as he really loses himself in his tragic little death scene.

  I laugh. “You’re such an idiot.”

  “You love it.” He grins and blows me a kiss.

  Chuckling, I jog off into the forest to find my next mark.

  Since Jace wouldn’t play our game, only Drew and Levi are left for me to find.

  If I’m being honest with myself, there’s no chance I’ll find Levi. My only hope with him is wait for him to attack and tug off his flag before he can get mine.

  Levi’s just too good—even for me, and I still don’t know how a feral dragon got to be so stealthy. He could be in the trees above me and I wouldn’t even know.

  Suspicious, I peek up into the branches, the hair on my neck standing on end as I wonder where he is.

  Nope, nothing.

  Surrounded by silence, I press my back against a trunk and listen. Eyes closed, I let my other se
nses take over as I search for Drew instead.

  The quiet rustle of leaves catches my attention—about twenty feet to my left, a large man with a slow and confident gait walks through the forest toward me.

  Drew.

  Gotcha.

  I dip around the tree to remain unseen and climb a nearby oak, perching on a thick lower limb as I wait for him to walk under me. Though I might be able to take him down like I did Tucker, I highly doubt it.

  Drew is built like a tank, and tanks don’t go down easy.

  As expected, the dragon shifter walks below me, his eyes scanning the tree where I was moments ago. As a dragon, he can probably sense me in a vague way—they all seem able to do that.

  I frown, hoping that little ability of theirs fades over time.

  Below me, Drew pauses, frowning, his brown hair and beard perfectly framing his strong face. Shoulders back, his broad chest is wide and solid. From his biceps to his neck to his thighs, he’s pretty much pure muscle.

  And the way he walks—he moves like a king.

  I wish I knew more about him, but he’s like a file full of juicy intel I can’t access. This man is brimming with secrets, and I know I’ll never coax them all out of him.

  Without a sound, I leap, angling my shoulder so that I can hit the space between his shoulder blades and take him down.

  Ideally.

  Instead of taking him to the ground, I smack against his solid body. The full force of all my strength only throws him slightly off balance.

  Ugh.

  It didn’t work.

  With a huff of annoyance, I roll across the leaves and slide, jumping to my feet as he turns to face me.

  It’s infuriating. Even with my enhanced strength from the dragon magic bubbling in my body, I can’t touch this guy.

  With a cocky smirk, he charges me.

  His shoulder hits mine, and he takes me down. I’ve never faced an adversary like Drew, and I have to confess, I’m grateful he’s on my side because almost nothing I do fazes him.

  He pins me to the earth, his hands on my wrists as he straddles me. All the while, that smirk of his remains on his face, equal parts tantalizing and maddening.

  “You’re supposed to tackle your opponent,” he says with a dark chuckle. “Not bounce off of them.”

  “Har, freaking har.” I hook my leg around his and, much to my delight, manage to flip him onto his back.

  I chuckle in victory, but my moment doesn’t last long.

  Using nothing but brute force, he pushes against my shoulders and lifts me effortlessly into the air.

  Dang it, I hate how strong he is. It’s like fighting a gorilla who specializes in witty one-liners.

  With a few deft twists of his powerful body, he pins me beneath him again. This time, he spreads my legs with his knees.

  Though it’s probably to keep me from hooking my leg around him again, it also sends shivers of warmth and delight up my thighs. I can feel a rush of heat burning along my neck, up to my cheeks, as his strong body presses against mine, nothing but muscle and dominance and control.

  “You’re blushing,” he says with a wicked little grin. “It’s cute.”

  “Shut up.” I wriggle my wrist free of his hand and reach for the flag dangling at his waist, but he angles his body out of the way. I’m a second too late as he tilts his hips, teasing me with the flag that’s just out of my reach.

  A roar cuts through the forest above us, and Levi dives seconds later. Drew rolls out of the way as Levi’s claws narrowly miss the flag at his waist, but I suspect Levi doesn’t care about winning. He was just giving me an unfair assist.

  He’s such a sweetheart. But this is a game, and there’s only one winner.

  His black flag is tied around his neck, a dark ribbon shivering in the wind as he soars. He tilts his head back as he breaks through the canopy again, winking as he breaks through the leaves.

  “Cheater,” Drew says under his breath, shooting me a knowing glance.

  I shrug, brushing off my shirt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Uh huh.” Drew charges me again, and this time, I roll out of the way before he can take me down. Relying on my own brute strength won’t work against a man like him, so I have to be clever.

  “You can move faster than that, can’t you?” I chuckle, teasing him, goading him into making a mistake.

  But I wonder if Drew even makes mistakes.

  He charges again, all focused power and muscle this time, and I once more duck out of the way. This time, however, he grabs my belt. My hips are pulled toward him as he slides to a stop, his fingers hooked through my belt loops. He tugs me toward him, my heels leaving skid marks in the dirt as I writhe in his grip.

  The downside of sparring with my men is that I don’t really want to hurt them. If I’m being honest, I’m holding back a little bit.

  Okay, I’m holding back a lot.

  If it weren’t Drew, I would raise my hands and try to summon the deadly magic deep within me, the white light that has already claimed lives by burning my victims to dust. Even though I can’t control it yet, it sparks in moments of need, moments like this when my opponent has the upper hand.

  But this is Drew. I’m not going to hurt him.

  He pulls me to him, pressing my hips against his, and flurries of desire flutter through my navel as he holds me close.

  Grinning down at me, he reaches his other hand ever so slightly under my shirt, running this thumb across my skin as he slowly reaches for the flag at my belt.

  But I’m faster.

  I yank his off seconds before he reaches mine, and he closes his eyes in defeat. With a sigh, he leans his forehead against mine and chuckles, abandoning his hunt for my flag.

  Instead, he wraps his hands around my waist. The movement sends ribbons of need through my core, and it’s getting harder to ignore them.

  To ignore my desire for him.

  A surge of heat races down my thighs as I watch his face, momentarily lost in those dark eyes. They briefly flash gold—the color of his dragon’s eyes—and I wonder if he’s fighting his own flurries of longing.

  But our game isn’t over yet.

  “You going to let go?” I ask playfully, trying to ignore the fact that it would be almost impossible to wriggle out of his incredibly strong grip.

  “If I must.” He releases me and takes a step back, looking off into the forest as he tries to regain his self-control.

  Levi breaks through the canopy like a missile through the air, his claws outstretched as he aims for the flag at my waist.

  I stuff Drew’s flag in my pocket and dive out of the way as he sails past. He lands, the ground shaking beneath him, kicking up dust and soil as he slides to a stop. He turns to face me, tail flicking gleefully as he looks for another chance to spring, totally immersed in the game now that it’s just him and me.

  He’s a sweetheart, sure, but he’s no pushover. Levi’s one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen—and considering I was raised in an assassin’s guild, that’s really saying something.

  As Levi and I circle each other, Tucker jogs up and leans against a tree to watch the show.

  But someone else is behind him.

  “Are you all still out here?” Jace asks with an air of annoyance as he jogs up to us. “Rory, you need to train to control your magic, not run around the woods.”

  I groan, the thrill of my sparring match with Levi dissolving in a rush.

  Ugh. No fair.

  I gesture to Levi. “I was about to win!”

  Levi snorts in exasperation, and I know that look he’s giving me. You wish, it says.

  I’m a bit surprised that I didn’t feel Jace getting closer—with our strange connection, I can feel him almost all of the time. It’s just… fuzzy. I know he’s nearby, but not where—or how close.

  I guess I’m starting to unconsciously tune it out, and that worries me.

  I do not want to be surprised by Jace Goodwin.

&nb
sp; “Come on.” Jace nods to the towering black spires of the embassy behind him. “I finished a new training arena for you where no one will notice your power surges.”

  I rub my neck. On one hand, I’m grateful—Jace is doing everything he can to ensure I’m safe and that no one knows the true depths of my abilities.

  On the other hand, he’s a total buzzkill.

  “But Mom, we’re playing!” Tucker says in a mocking tone, adding a bit of childish whine just to get under Jace’s skin.

  It works.

  “Can it, Tucker,” the dojo master snaps. “Rory needs to master this magic, or it’s going to control her.”

  “It’s fine, guys,” I say to keep the peace.

  After all, Jace is right.

  Not that I would tell him that, but still.

  Levi snorts, a huff of frigid air escaping the ice dragon’s nose as he brushes his wing tenderly against my back. I flash him a reassuring smile, and he takes off into the canopy, breaking through the overhanging branches and showering us with leaves as he flies off to do his dragonish thing.

  He’s been heading off into the forest more often, lately, and I’m not sure what he does when he’s gone. He always comes back, though, and that’s all that matters to me.