Dragon's Rebel

by Anastasia Wilde

  Dragon’s Rebel

  (Wild Dragons Book 2)

  by

  Anastasia Wilde

  Dragon’s Rebel

  Copyright © 2018 by Anastasia Wilde

  Copyright © 2018 by Anastasia Wilde

  First Electronic Publication: July 2018

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, uploading, or distributing via the internet, print, or any other means, without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Cover by Melody Simmons

  Books by Anastasia Wilde

  Wild Dragons Series:

  Dragon’s Rogue

  Dragon’s Rebel

  Dragon’s Storm (Coming 2018)

  Silverlake Shifters Series:

  Fugitive Mate

  White Wolf Mate

  Tiger Mate

  Silverlake Enforcers Series:

  The Enforcers: KANE

  The Enforcers: ISRAEL

  The Enforcers: NOAH

  Bad Blood Shifters Series:

  Bad Blood Bear

  Bad Blood Wolf

  Bad Blood Leopard

  Bad Blood Panther

  Bad Blood Alpha

  Chapter 1

  Rebel Smith was trapped in a fairy tale gone wrong.

  Which was ironic, because she’d never believed in fairy tales.

  Not the kind where fairy godmothers showed up with magic wands and merry singing chipmunks and sent you off to the ball.

  Not the kind where you lived happily ever after.

  And definitely not the kind where dragons ravaged the countryside and carried unsuspecting princesses off to their lairs to wait for some meat-headed prince to rescue them.

  Because nobody ever came along and rescued you. Rebel Smith had always saved herself.

  And yet here she was, going on her fourth week stuck in a dragon’s lair. An honest-to-goodness real live fucking dragon. One who said he needed her to save the world.

  One who needed her to save him. One who wanted to hold her captive forever.

  Even worse, who was starting to make her believe that being trapped wasn’t so bad.

  But she knew it was. Being trapped led to other people having power over you. And people having power over you meant you got screwed, sooner or later.

  She just had to figure out how to save him—and the world—and get away clean.

  There was always an exit. You just had to find it.

  But right now, she couldn’t worry about Thorne Greystone. It was his so-called brothers who were trying to have their evil way with her.

  No way was that going to happen.

  “Fold, Librarian Dragon,” she said. “There’s no way you can beat me. Not with what you have showing.”

  Tyr narrowed his eyes, glaring at her from across the poker table. He hated it when she called him Librarian Dragon, even though that was pretty much what he was. She smirked at him.

  He casually tossed a handful of antique gold coins into the pot. “Call,” he said.

  Rebel still wasn’t used to the way these guys threw around fortunes in pure gold like it was pocket change. Dragons wouldn’t even get out of bed for paper money, let alone drag themselves to the poker table. There was probably enough gold on this table right now to finance the state of Rhode Island for a year. Maybe even Massachusetts.

  And in a few minutes, a large chunk of it was going to be hers. She shook her head, faking deep sorrow for him. Not. “You never learn, do you?”

  She turned to the other dragon at the table, Tyr’s brother-from-a-different-mother, Zane. “What do you say, Sky Dragon? You feeling lucky?”

  Zane contemplated his cards. He was drop-dead, fairy-tale gorgeous, with golden hair and sky-blue eyes, a perfectly sculpted face, and a body to die for. Pretty much the same as dark-haired Tyr, except a little bigger. Zane was the perfect match for his red-headed girlfriend, Blaze, who was currently distracting him by eating chocolate cake off his plate.

  “Hey! You’re taking all the frosting,” Zane complained.

  Blaze gave him a sultry look. “I think there’s a little left,” she said, raising her frosting-smeared lips to his.

  Zane’s expression got all mushy and he leaned in and kissed her, licking the frosting off her lips. The two of them started making out.

  Rebel rolled her eyes. She would have almost liked Blaze, except for her unhealthy obsession with the dragon, which Rebel suspected was induced by the gold necklace Zane had given her, and which she never took off.

  Also, she was a witch.

  Witches couldn’t be trusted.

  Tyr, taking advantage of Blaze’s distracted state, used his own magic to make some of her gold grow little legs and walk its way towards his own dwindling pile of treasure.

  Rebel shook her head, but she didn’t rat him out. That’s what you got when you stopped paying attention.

  “Any time, Sky Dragon,” she said to Zane. She shifted in her chair. She was getting antsy, and not just because Zane wouldn’t fucking put his lips away and bet.

  She was going stir-crazy, locked up in this place. Okay, sure, she wasn’t chained to the wall. There were no bars on the windows. She was drinking a cold one, sitting in a cushy chair in a comfortable air-conditioned big-ass cavern filled with computer servers and monitors, all blinking lights and scrolling screens and beeping alerts.

  Theoretically, she could leave any time she wanted. But thanks to being sucked into fairy-tale hell, she and her sister were being hunted by the spirit of an evil sorcerer named Corwyn, who was last seen possessing a dead body and walking away with it.

  Because that wasn’t creepy at all.

  She looked over at Tempest, who was sitting off to the side, drawing in her sketchbook. Or at least she had been—now she was giggling over Tyr making a golden tiara dance for her. He was looking at her with the same mushy look Zane had when he looked at Blaze.

  Tyr was clearly gaga over Tempest. He believed she was his Destined Mate, his forever and ever love. It was kind of cute—he let Tempest follow him around, asking a gazillion questions about dragons and shifters and magic. She’d gotten him to show her all over the lair, from the treasure chambers to the mechanical room to the goddamn bathrooms.

  Which had golden toilets, for fuck’s sake.

  Luckily, the lair also had the strongest magical protections known to man. It was the safest place for Tempest at the moment. But Rebel had always been a risk-taker, and she knew it wasn’t safety keeping her here. It was her own soft fucking heart.

  She felt sorry for Thorne. She wanted to help him. And God help her, she wanted to do the right thing.

  The one thing she didn’t want to do was be Thorne’s Destined Mate. According to some mystical prophecy Tyr loved to quote, she and Tempest and Blaze were the Three Destined Mates who held the keys to finding the three magical Seals that would keep the ancient Draken Lord Vyrkos from rising out of his tomb in a fiery volcanic eruption and raining fire and destruction down on Portland, Oregon, plus everything within a two-hundred-mile radius.

  That last part was true. She’d seen Vyrkos trying to bust out of his tomb a few weeks ago—an evil destructo-drag
on as big as a football field. She believed the Greystones when they talked about the fire and destruction and death. Blaze and Zane had nearly died getting the first Seal back in the tomb before that happened.

  But the protections on the tomb couldn’t hold. They needed the other two Seals. And Thorne needed her help, even if this stay-forever thing was bullshit.

  More than that, he needed a friend.

  She looked over at him now, stretched out along the whole side of the control room, aka the Batcave. He’d been stuck in dragon form ever since their battle with Lord Vyrkos, when the Draken Lord had commanded him to change to his ‘true form.’

  Apparently, that order had failed to mention anything about changing back, so Thorne was perma-dragon. They’d had to move all the computer equipment to one side so that Thorne could fit into the Batcave without wiping out half of it every time he twitched his tail.

  She knew it was wearing on him. He could barely work a keyboard with his giant dragon claws, and that meant he was severely hampered in his search for the next Seal. All they knew was it was supposed to be connected in some way to Rebel.

  How, she had no clue.

  Thorne tried to work by directing one of them to type for him, but he was used to monitoring a dozen screens at once, running multiple searches, hacking into government databases and dark websites, crunching numbers, and constantly monitoring… well, everything.

  Because Thorne Greystone was convinced that his constant efforts were the only thing holding the world together.

  The problem was, there was a good chance he was right. Millions of people, their lives depending on him, and they didn’t even know it.

  All that responsibility was enough to make anybody grumpy.

  So every time she looked at him lying in the cavern, trying his hardest to work the computers and get something—anything—done, she felt a strange feeling in her stomach. Like she should do something.

  So she found herself trying to be his hands at the keyboard. Trying cheer him up, trying to make him eat, trying to make him take breaks. Good luck with that.

  Thorne had spent years desperately hunting for the Seals. And time was running out.

  Which was why she’d put feelers out to everyone she knew in the shifter underworld, looking for a way to turn Thorne human again. And finally, someone had come up with something. A lead on a company that secretly developed shifter-specific drugs—including one that was rumored to help ‘stuck’ shifters Change.

  The drug she wanted wasn’t available by any of the channels she had access to, for any price. They’d have to break into the company’s vault and steal it.

  Luckily, she was a world-class thief. One of the best.

  She hadn’t said anything to the others. She was waiting now for the final confirmation and price for the security codes to hack the company’s systems. It had been two days now, and she was praying her contact didn’t ghost on her.

  Thorne’s voice came into her mind. Rebel, I need your fingers.

  She jumped, startled. You’d think she’d be used to it by now, but dragon mind-speech could still take her by surprise.

  “That would be a ‘no,’ Lizard,” she said. “If you need a snack, I’d recommend the cake.”

  Har har. I need to make adjustments in this search, and I need someone to type for me.

  “Come on. I’m winning this hand. Take a break and cheer for me.”

  Thorne moved his giant blue-scaled dragon head so it rested on the stone floor beside her, where he could see her cards. You’re going to lose, he informed her. Zane has a good hand. I saw the corner of his mouth twitching a few minutes ago, like he’s trying to hide a smirk. That’s his tell.

  Rebel replied carefully. This mind-talk thing was still new to her, and sometimes her ‘private’ comments to Thorne ended up not-so-private. I thought that smirk was from Blaze groping him under the table.

  Thorne gave a tiny snort, and a burst of smoke came from his nostrils. Rebel moved her beer out of the way before his fiery breath took the chill off it. She hated warm beer.

  But she liked making the grumpy-ass dragon laugh, though she would never have admitted it out loud.

  Zane had peeled his lips off Blaze’s and was staring at his cards with a punch-drunk look on his face. Rebel was surprised to feel a hint of wistfulness. Nobody had ever looked like that after kissing her.

  Suddenly she wished someone would.

  She shoved her chair back and walked over to the workstation Thorne had been using. He moved his head to follow her.

  She hadn’t realized a magical, practically immortal, fire-breathing dragon could look exhausted, but he did.

  You work too hard, she said. You should chill out for a while and play poker with us.

  Sure, Thorne said acerbically. Let’s all play poker until Vyrkos bursts out of his tomb and burns the entire city to ashes. Good plan.

  She ignored his sarcasm, glancing at the monitor that showed the feed from the tomb interior. All was quiet.

  “He’s not going to burst out tonight. And we needed a break. We’ve been working sixteen-hour days.”

  Welcome to my world, Thorne said. The tomb is weakening. We have no idea where the next Seal is. All this work, and not a fucking thing to show for it. He lashed his tail, just missing taking out a filing cabinet.

  “Hey,” Rebel said. She put her hand on his head, absently rubbing just above his eye ridge. That usually seemed to calm him down. “We’re doing everything we can. We’ll find the Seals.”

  I can’t do it if I’m not human. This body is too limiting.

  Rebel’s phone buzzed and she yanked it out of her pocket, swiping her thumb across the screen.

  Intel acquired. Price $100,000, two payments. This number goes dark in 30 minutes.

  A smile spread over her face. Well, Lizard, she said into Thorne’s mind, it looks like I can save your ass. And possibly even the world.

  Chapter 2

  Thorne stared at Rebel. Or he would have, if he could have turned his head far enough in this cramped space.

  What are you talking about?

  She glanced over at the others, wrangling over how much gold Tyr had stolen from Blaze’s stack while she and Zane were kissing.

  She shook her head. We need to talk alone.

  It was still strange, hearing her voice in his mind. Thorne had only ever conversed with other dragons in mind-speech, though he could make himself heard by anyone, even humans. Which was a lucky thing, considering his current state.

  It was bad enough being unable to vent his frustrations by yelling at people. Trying to coordinate their research without being able to talk to anyone would have made this whole thing even more of a nightmare than it already was.

  But he couldn’t hear the other women reply. Only her.

  He loved Rebel’s mind-voice. Dark and husky, like her speaking voice, but with a velvety richness that soothed his battered soul.

  Her presence made his dragon happy. He didn’t quite know how that had happened. The first time he’d seen her he’d simply been intrigued.

  The second time he’d been furious—in the throes of treasure fever, obsessed with the desire to make her tell him where the second Seal was.

  And also to carry her back to his lair and ravish her until she told him.

  The force of his dragon’s feelings had taken him by surprise. Sometimes it still did. Especially when she was treating them with the casual friendliness she’d adopted since he’d become stuck in dragon form.

  Friendliness tinged with pity, for a dragon shifter who couldn’t even shift.

  But she was up to something now, quivering with suppressed excitement. Curious, he said, We’ll go to my lair.

  He began to make his way out of the control room, a slow and complicated maneuver that involved a lot of twisting and backing up. He gritted his teeth against the wild desire to just go bonkers and destroy everything out of sheer frustration.

  It would feel so good.

>   “Where you going, big guy?” Zane called out.

  What business was it of his? Everyone hovered over him now that he was afflicted, like he was going to implode at any moment.

  I have to pee, Thorne snapped.

  He heard Rebel’s faint giggle.

  Tyr called out, “Why’s Rebel going? Are you guys going to make out? Or do you need her to hold your dick for you?”

  “Hell, no,” Rebel yelled back. “That thing’s as big as a fire hydrant. He’s on his own.”

  Tyr started laughing, almost snorting his beer through his nose. “Hydrant Dick,” he said, when he stopped coughing. “New nickname. I like it.”

  Don’t make me go down to your lair and flame your hoard into a puddle of golden slag, Thorne said.

  The sound of laughter still followed him out the door. Assholes.

  Thorne breathed a sigh of relief when he made it out to the atrium—a huge vaulted space where several stone corridors came together. It had been built to hold a large number of dragons, so he finally didn’t feel confined.

  They walked down the hallway toward his lair. Several full Draken, larger even than Thorne, could have walked side by side.

  Improbably, he was instead accompanied by a human thief, a lithe and slender woman with dark, unruly hair and eyes that told him she’d seen too much, and had carried too much responsibility for too long.

  Just like him.

  His Destined Mate, if the stories were true. But he didn’t believe in stories. He believed in facts and reason.

  All the same, part of him couldn’t help wishing it were true. She would make an amazing mate.

  his dragon pointed out.

  Thorne didn’t have the heart to tell him that a huge blue dragon dick was almost certainly not going to fill any human woman with lust. Horror was more like it.