by Amelia Jade
The sullenness caused her to laugh. “Really? You’re angry at me that we didn’t just let you win? Come on now, have some common sense.”
The glare eased, but only slightly.
“Now tell me, who are you working for?” she asked, launching right into it.
The prisoner just rolled his eyes and put his head back down on his knees.
“I think we can make a safe assumption,” Daxxton rumbled. “Who else would have cause to hire such an elite unit besides Fenris?”
She looked over at him. “We know who he is?”
The big golden-skinned dragon shifter nodded, then stopped. “Well, I don’t know him in particular. But I recognize the mark on his wrist. He’s part of the Iron Scales.”
Miranda whistled.
“You’ve heard of them?”
She nodded. “Who hasn’t heard of the Iron Scales? They’re some serious bad-asses, and heavy hitters. Dragon mercs without any morals. They cost a fortune, but they deliver results.”
“Most of the time,” Daxxton said with a hint of pride at the fact that they’d beaten off one of the best mercenary teams in existence.
“Do we know which company?” she asked, not wanting to let them get ahead of themselves.
“C Company,” the man sitting on the floor grated out.
The Iron Scales had four companies, each formed around ten shifters. Miranda knew that much. A Company was the best of the best of the best. There wasn’t a better unit on the planet. The biggest, oldest, and most powerful dragons were in A Company.
“Shit,” she muttered. “If this idiot is telling the truth, we might have to face more.”
No one in the room was under the impression that they might actually have beaten off the mercs for good, now that they knew who they were. True, it was likely Fenris had hired only the one company, but the mercs didn’t take it so well when one of their own was manhandled the way C Company had just been decimated.
“Crommer is going to tear you apart,” the man chuckled evilly.
Arrent Crommer was the head of A Company, she knew, and one of the most ruthless dragon shifters on the planet. No task was beneath him, regardless of how much bloodletting it might take.
Some said he was next in line to command the Iron Scales, if their near-mythical leader Corbin Provaley ever stepped down.
“We’ll see about that,” Daxxton said calmly.
The lack of fear in his voice seemed to reach through to the prisoner. His head rose again and he regarded Daxxton for a long, silent moment, evaluating him and his claim. After a moment, he dropped his head once more.
“We’re not going to get anything more out of him,” Daxxton said at long last. “He’s just going to have to rot in jail now. We’ll see what the Council has to say about him assaulting our honored guests. I have a feeling they won’t be inclined to be overly kind to him. I’d guess at least two centuries.”
Miranda saw a shudder run through the prisoner’s body, but he didn’t react any more than that.
“He’s prepared to do it,” she commented.
“I know,” Daxxton agreed. “Which is why he’s useless to us. Would have been easier just to kill him.”
“Waste of energy,” she muttered, turning to leave the room.
“Waste of space now,” he argued.
“Fair point.”
The pair of them left the room, closing the door and heading back through the hallways and up the stairway to the main atrium.
“How’s security look?” she asked they began to stroll through the house side by side.
She was stalling for time, not wanting to leave his side. She felt…comfortable there.
“Good. I have squads of Guardians roaming the perimeter. Along with a quick reaction force here. I’ve put out the call for more dragons now that I know who we’re up against. I can’t rightfully ask any of the others to put themselves in the path of the Iron Scales, though I know none of them will hesitate either.”
Miranda nodded, hearing the words, but not really caring. She trusted Daxxton implicitly now. This was two scrapes that he’d bailed them out of, either directly or through shrewd planning. If he said the security arrangements that he’d made were well in hand, then she wouldn’t worry about them. He would protect her—them. He would protect them.
Keep your head screwed on straight, girl. He’s gorgeous and smart, witty. Amazing, yes. But he’s also Cadian, and you’re in a tight situation right now. You need him thinking straight, not distracted by a dalliance with you. So think with your brain, not your hormones, and you’ll get through this.
Oh, by the way, he’s staring at you now with those beautiful brown eyes, flecked so spectacularly with gold. Looking right into your soul as you talk to yourself. It probably means he’s saying something. You should listen.
Like now. Listen to Daxxton.
SNAP OUT OF IT.
“Pardon?” she said abruptly, her head tilting back ever so slightly as she looked up at him.
“I didn’t say anything,” he all but whispered.
His eyes never wavered.
“Oh,” she said weakly, his soft tone sending a flutter through her core.
They were going to kiss, weren’t they?
Shit. Did her breath smell bad? Was there anything in her teeth? What if she screwed it up?
Miranda mentally shook herself. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was over a century and a half old. This was not her first time kissing a man, though it would be ending a bit of a dry spell, if she were forced to tell the truth. Still, she hadn’t forgotten how to kiss.
He stepped slightly closer to her. “Listen, Miranda,” he said hesitantly.
“Yes?” she replied, looking up at him, eyes roaming over his lips, framed by the goatee he kept clipped short and clean.
They were definitely kissable, she decided.
“I…” Daxxton stopped.
Here it is. He’s going to do it.
Her tongue flicked out, dampening her lips in preparation.
A wave of heat pulsed out from Daxxton, washing over her, raising goosebumps along her arms as the moment built. The world around her swam out of focus, leaving only him clear. Right then, she was his.
“I need to get some rest,” Daxxton said at last, his voice heavy and full of regret. “You should too.”
And then, just like that, it was over. Her eyes could practically see his defenses fall back into place. The fire in his eyes quenched itself as he stood up straight, pulling himself away from her. His golden-brown eyes wrenched themselves from her gaze, staring at some point on the wall behind her as he visibly took a deep, calming breath.
“We’ll reconvene in the morning,” he said hoarsely, and then to her surprise, he nodded politely and strode from the room.
She let him go. Her assigned room was right next to the princess’s.
It was also right across the hall from him. So she let him go, running fingers through her hair to calm herself as she walked in an aimless circle around the room just to kill time. The last thing she wanted just then was to be following him down the hallway headed for the same destination, but not walking there together.
How awkward would that be?
Not as awkward as what just happened.
“What the hell did just happen?” she asked herself aloud, still trying to make sense of it.
She knew he’d been ready to kiss her. Miranda had been ready to let him. They had been alone, with no one around to witness it.
But something had stopped him.
And whatever that something was, it was not his sense of duty to Cadia.
She knew what that sort of reluctance looked like, and felt like. It did not correlate with the haunted, guilty look that she’d seen in his eyes not once, but twice now.
“What are you hiding?” She spoke softly into the empty room, turning to stare at the arched doorway through which he’d left.
What aren’t you telling me, Daxxton Ryker, Aurum Dragon
and ruler of Top Scale Academy? What has got such a powerful person as you willing to run from me?
There was something else going on.
Was he mated?
Miranda didn’t think so. There was no easy indicator without either asking or searching his entire body for another dragon’s scale, but something about him told her that no, he wasn’t mated.
So what the hell was holding him back?
Unless…
No, there’s no way he could know. Daxxton would have said something if that were true, she knew it. He wouldn’t be able to resist asking her questions, at a minimum.
Her brain began to hurt as she ran through reason after reason he would not only refrain from kissing her, but fight so hard to stop a moment once it had already occurred.
“Stop it,” she said, vocalizing the words to give them more effect. “There is nothing you can do. Whatever it is, you have a mission to complete. Focus on that, not getting a little hanky panky.”
Miranda took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and strode down the hallway, hoping desperately Daxxton had gone straight to his room and wasn’t standing outside hers.
Although if he was…
Chapter Six
Daxxton
His shoulders were so tense as he walked away from her that Daxxton thought they were going to explode.
What the hell had he been thinking?!
Almost kissing the head of the Princess of Tanith’s security team?
No, he corrected. It wasn’t the head of the security team he’d almost kissed. It was Miranda Pyke. That was who he’d almost kissed. Who he’d wanted desperately to kiss.
Still desperately wanted to kiss, if he were being honest with himself.
But he hadn’t, and he couldn’t.
Oh, physically he was ready and willing. She was tall, gorgeous, funny, witty, and intelligent beyond measure. In every way he knew of, she was his equal, except, perhaps, on the battlefield.
She was competent there too, he did not deny her that. But Miranda couldn’t be more than two centuries old. He had over half a millennia on her in sheer experience, including some of the worst battles shifters had ever fought in recent memory.
Daxxton snorted softly, the sound echoing down the hallway as he made his way to the suite of rooms that had been set aside for him. To think of five hundred years as “recent memory” was rather amusing to him, even if it was considered recent to dragon shifters.
Yet even that attempted diversion couldn’t last for long, and his memory drifted back to Miranda. She was interested in him too. He’d seen her eyes, she’d known what was about to happen, and she’d gone with the flow, never once stopping him or trying to slow him down. She’d been waiting for him to kiss her.
He couldn’t though.
Not without betraying Kyra. She doesn’t deserve this from me. I need to be better.
Guilt racked his soul as the thick door to his suite flew open and slammed closed behind him. He was careful not to slam it with his dragon strength. The last thing he needed was to wreck the door.
Boots came off as he walked across the floor, followed by his shirt and pants, leaving him clad only in his boxers. Looking down, past his thick chest and chiseled abs, he eyed the massive bulge straining against his boxers.
Yet another side effect of his intimate moment with Miranda.
With a sigh he fell back into the bed, covers flopping around wildly upon impact.
“What am I getting myself into?”
The answer was trouble, and he knew it. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to be intimate with another woman. Daxxton knew Kyra wouldn’t begrudge him that much. But he’d never allowed himself to have feelings for the woman. It had usually been humans as well. He would venture out to nearby Cloud Lake, or one of the other human settlements within a short flying distance, and there he would select a woman for the evening. And only the evening.
Never the same one, and they weren’t allowed to stay the night. Those were his rules. It was easy, and clean, and prevented him from developing any feelings for them.
Yet he’d been with Miranda for less than twenty-four hours, and already he could barely resist the call of her thick, pink lips. He wanted to cover them in kisses, to run his hands across her thick, powerful body.
He wanted to feel her next to him at all moments.
His boxers grew tighter.
With a sigh, he pushed a hand down his firm stomach and under the waistband.
Maybe he would think more clearly if he was doing so with only one head.
Guiltily his hand began to move up and down, even as images of a woman flashed in his head.
A woman with hair blacker than night, and not the blonde of his long-dead mate.
***
He woke in the morning, banishing the ghosts of his past back into the depths of his subconscious, where he hoped they would remain.
Blearily rubbing sleep from his eyes, he stumbled into the bathroom, an elaborate setup nearly the size of the sleeping chambers, and turned the water on in the shower. Maybe the scalding water would do more than just wash away the physical evidence of his guilt-laden evening.
His skin screamed as the blistering water rolled over him. Daxxton was instantly awake, flinching in surprise at just how hot the water got. It wasn’t that he was in danger of being hurt, but he could still be jolted awake by temperature change, like any other being. As he grabbed the bottle of thoughtfully provided body wash and began to clean himself up from the night before, washing sweat and other dried fluids away, he tried to send his stress with it.
He wished desperately that he had someone to talk to. Being the age he was, and of his power status, there were very few people he felt comfortable opening up to. Most of those who thought they were as powerful as him were people like Klara Nova.
And there was no way he was going to talk to her. The idea of that actually made him laugh, his body heaving with laughter, sending water flying as he shook.
Some of the tension left him then, making him breathe a little easier.
He contemplated the few people he could talk to. Unfortunately, most of them were unavailable, and would be for decades, if not centuries more. Even as powerful as he was, Daxxton was not going to get in the habit of waking one of the Great Ones, dragons of the Old Blood.
Most of them spent their time sleeping, hibernating away for several decades or even a century at a time. Nearly fifteen hundred years before, a mutation had occurred in the dragon gene. One that had spread fast and wide, like a virus. All dragons born with it were inherently weaker, and their lives spanned perhaps half that of their parents and grandparents.
By now most of the Great Ones had passed on, but Daxxton knew of several still alive, though he was positive most of them were currently sleeping. So, he was on his own then.
Lingering in the shower wasn’t going to help that, so he killed the water and toweled off swiftly, pulling on a fresh set of clothes which had been dropped off overnight, it seemed.
Klara’s staff certainly were efficient, he had to give them that.
Feeling refreshed from the shower, but still exhausted after a mostly sleepless night, he exited his room. There was no response after a swift knock on the princess’s door, so he instead headed for the kitchen. It was still plenty early in the morning that he doubted they would have gone much farther than that.
The princess and Nolan were just leaving as he arrived, the pair almost colliding with him as they rounded the corner, completely engrossed in their own conversation.
“Oh, morning, Daxxton!” Nolan said as they split around him like flowing water around a boulder and kept walking.
“Morning,” he said, looking at the pair oddly.
There was something off about their body language. Something that…
His eyebrows rose a fraction.
Was the princess having a dalliance with one of her security team?
He watched the young woman laugh at something Nolan
said. Her eyes focused on him even as he prattled on some more.
Yes, she was.
“Hi, Daxxton,” a soft, velvety-smooth female voice said from his right.
He froze.
“Hello, Miranda,” he said stiffly, hating himself for how formal he sounded.
The beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes so brown they were almost black smiled at him. A kind, disarming smile, completely unlike the seductive, sultry gaze she’d turned on him the night before. It was as if she knew he would be on edge, and she was doing her best not to make things worse.
Of course, she didn’t need to do anything to make it worse. Daxxton was perfectly capable of doing that on his own. Oh yes he was. It wasn’t often he was made to look like an idiot. But when he was, it was almost always his own doing.
Like now, as he stood in the doorway, blocking it so that neither could Miranda leave, nor he enter. So they were forced to stand there and look at each other, each unsure of what to say to the other.
“Can I get by?” she asked at last, gesturing past him to indicate she wished to leave.
“Oh, um, yes, of course,” he muttered, his face burning with embarrassment.
Daxxton backed out into the hallway, letting her pass before he all but fled inside the kitchen, hoping that he could get some breakfast into him before he had to interact with her for the rest of the day.
“Can I ask you something?”
He froze, halfway to the buffet table that had been set up in the middle of the room. The smell of eggs and bacon, sausage, hash browns, and pancakes tantalized his nose. Someone had had waffles loaded with syrup he realized a moment later as he caught yet another whiff of deliciousness.
It wasn’t fair. He wanted all of it.
“That depends,” he said, a sliver of his confidence returning, hoping the change in his voice and body language would let Miranda know that she was treading dangerous waters.
But he had to give her credit. She was strong, and even as he slowly rotated back to face the doorway, he noticed there was no give in her expression. It wasn’t a hard look she turned his way; no anger or other negative emotion present. Yet for all that, she wasn’t backing down either.
