Mikhail

by Lauren Smith

  Grigori nodded. “Wise answer. A good dragon puts his mate’s needs above his own.” It was something their father had said over and over again, a code he’d lived by, except the night he’d gotten himself killed, dooming their mother in the process.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t reach out,” Mikhail said, his voice a little rough as long-buried emotions began to claw back to the surface.

  “I know,” Grigori replied. “I’m sorry too. Father put so much emphasis on duty, you never had a chance to learn that life was also about love and joy.” Mikhail had never seen his brother like this before. Grigori’s eyes were soft as he spoke. He had always been hard and strong, like their father, but now he seemed strong in a different way. More like their mother.

  “You’ve changed.” Mikhail smiled.

  “We both have.” Grigori glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Finding one’s mate is like learning to fly for the first time. Excitement, fear, joy, love, and exquisite pleasure.”

  His brother had summarized it perfectly. Finding Piper, loving her, and almost losing her had shown him just what he’d missed out on by hiding away. He’d lost Elizabeth, and that had almost destroyed him. But Piper had saved him.

  “How did you do it?” Grigori asked quietly. “How did you turn her into a dragon?”

  “I’m not sure. It all happened so fast. Piper leaped in front of Sinclair’s blade and…” The words died on his lips. It took a moment to compose himself. “She was dying in my arms, and I heard a voice that told me I needed to give her a dragon’s heart.”

  Grigori frowned. “A dragon’s heart?”

  “Yes, but not an actual heart. The Dragon Heart Stone. A fist-sized ruby that was imbued with magic.” He curled his fingers into a fist, remembering how it had felt to hold the ruby and feel the power surging through it into Piper. “I held her as she breathed her last, and then the stone exploded with power and turned to dust. There must have been a dragon’s soul sleeping in there, one that bound itself to Piper. I can’t think of any other explanation, but I’ve never heard of such a thing before, have you?”

  “The Dragon Heart Stone,” Grigori mused, his blue eyes serious. “I remember Father telling us about it, how even the Belishaw clan feared to keep it in their possession. Yet none knew what power it held. But if this is true, if it did hold a sleeping dragon’s soul, then it might not be the only stone out there with such powers. You remember our uncle, Vasili? He was searching for the Heart of Sorrows, a sapphire the size of an apple. What if it holds a similar power?”

  “Did he find the stone?”

  Grigori shook his head. “His mate died while they were exploring the Alps together, and he passed away shortly after her and failed to discover its location. We never found either of them. Father believed they were buried beneath snow after they perished.”

  For a long moment neither brother spoke as they thought of all the dragons long gone.

  Then Mikhail smiled as a new thought occurred to him. “You and Rurik never got to see the hoard I was supposed to bring home all those years ago. Do you want to see it?”

  Grigori shook his head. “Better not. I would end up spending all night counting pearls, and my lovely wife would be upset.”

  The brothers laughed, then paused when they heard their mates’ laughter coming from the kitchen.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Grigori asked. Mikhail nodded. For so long it had been just the three of them against the world. Now with mates and a drakeling on the way, the Barinovs would be a real family again. “All we need now is to find a nice dragoness for Rurik,” Grigori said.

  “Find Rurik a mate? I doubt that will ever happen.” Mikhail snorted.

  Grigori grinned. “Never say never, brother.”

  Piper sat on the edge of Mikhail’s bed, watching him undress. It was close to midnight. They’d had a wonderful dinner with Grigori and Madelyn, who at this moment were settling in for the night in a bedroom down the hall.

  “It’s time for our little talk.” Mikhail came over to stand in front of her, wearing only his jeans with the top button undone. He did that on purpose, she supposed. Something about him in just jeans made her a little crazy. She stared at his chest until he cupped her chin and tilted her head to look up at him.

  “Hmmm?”

  “We need to talk,” he repeated. His green eyes were warm. Piper couldn’t help but smile, even though there was a sudden flutter of nerves in her belly. She held her breath as she tried to stay calm.

  “Is it a good talk or a bad talk?”

  “A good talk…I hope.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips and flashed her a smile. Then he knelt down in front of her and took her hands in his.

  “So much has happened this last week. I know you still need time to adjust to being one of…my kind.” His face turned ruddy, as though he was embarrassed.

  “A dragon,” she said with a giggle. “You can say it, you know. It’s not so scary anymore. I talked to Madelyn, and she faced the same thing, becoming something she didn’t know how to be. Knowing that I’m not alone—” She paused a moment. “That makes it easier.”

  Mikhail raised her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “And you have me.” The kiss singed her skin deliciously. She wanted those lips all over the rest of her body.

  “I do,” she agreed, pulling them up so he towered over her. “Why don’t we talk later?” She trailed a finger down his chest toward his jeans.

  Mikhail’s eyes went from green to molten gold as he groaned. “If I have to tie you down to talk, little dove, I will.”

  She held out her wrists. “Yes, please.”

  “Fuck, you are driving me wild, love.” He captured her wrists and closed his eyes. “Just let me say what I need to say first. Then we can play.” He opened his eyes again. “I love you.”

  Piper held her breath, her heart racing like it had the first time she’d leaped into the air as a dragon.

  His face turned red. “You must understand, for me to say this might seem rushed to you, but it is different with our kind. We know, deep down, about those we choose to love. There is no doubt, because the bond couldn’t happen without it.”

  “I know,” Piper said, both confused and understanding. “I feel it too. I just…know. It’s not something I think I could have ever felt as a human. Like I can actually sense a piece of me that’s missing, and you fit it perfectly.” She said the words softly, a little afraid to admit something so intimate, so vulnerable. She’d never loved anyone before, not like this. It was terrifying, exciting, and overwhelming. But he felt the same way about her, and that made it so much better.

  “You feel the same?” Mikhail’s eyes widened.

  Her eyes stung with tears. “Of course I do.” She climbed onto her knees on the bed, putting their faces level. She curled her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his. “It’s insane to love someone so soon, I know, but I do. It’s like a part of me was missing all these years, and being with you… It’s that missing piece settling into place. I am whole.” She feathered her lips over his, and their breathing matched the steady beating of their hearts.

  “Let’s go home. To Russia,” she said before kissing him again.

  “You want to?” he asked.

  Piper nodded. “Once we get the treasure situation sorted out, I want you to take me home.”

  Mikhail smiled. “We’ll be the first dragon family to have our own private gemologist.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “The others will be jealous.”

  Piper laughed. “Just promise me I get to look at the jewels from time to time.” She was teasing, but a mischievous glint filled Mikhail’s eyes.

  “Oh, little dove, I plan to strip you naked and cover you with pearls, drape you with diamonds, torture and tease you with topaz, entice you with emeralds, show my love with lapis lazuli—”

  This time she did giggle, unable to stop. “That sounds like a wonderful dream.”

  “Which I pr
omise to make come true.” He nudged her back on the bed and covered her with kisses, each one more tender than the last. As she and Mikhail made love, she swore she heard a faint whisper of sound sighing against the windows.

  For whoever owns a dragon’s heart will know love unending.

  Epilogue

  But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

  —Ursula K. Le Guin

  Charlotte MacQueen sat in the elegantly designed lounge of the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon. The front desk was a dark matte gray, where a young woman with metallic-framed glasses stared at a computer screen. Charlotte pivoted the black leather armchair around to watch the water feature across the lounge. It was a wall of crystal with water running endlessly down its surface, and she could just make out the shadows of people through it.

  This was a world she was never supposed to be a part of. It was the world of the paranormal, full of danger and excitement. Her two older brothers—Damien, who headed the organization, and Jason—monitored those creatures that posed a threat to humans and, if need be, hunted them down. Charlotte had never been allowed to follow in their footsteps. She’d had to live a normal life and had almost finished earning her PhD in chemical engineering.

  If her brothers knew she was here right now, they would be upset. She wasn’t supposed to come here, but she’d gotten a call from her friend Meg Stratford, one of the Brotherhood’s best hunters.

  “Charlotte!” A woman exited from a door close to the front desk, grinning.

  Charlotte rushed over to embrace her friend. “Meg!”

  Meg Stratford was one of her closest friends. But they hadn’t always been friends. Meg had been a junior hunter for the Brotherhood and assigned, covertly of course, to follow Charlotte around on her dates when she was in high school. Her brothers had been real jerks when it came to trusting her to date nice guys. Meg had seen how timid Charlotte had been and given her a lot of great advice on how to deal with guys and especially how to deal with her brothers. They’d been fast friends ever since.

  “I’m so glad to see you. I just got back from London, and I swear I’m still jetlagged. But this is important.” Meg tucked Charlotte’s arm in hers and led her out of the waiting room.

  “What were you doing in London?” Charlotte asked. She and Meg walked down a hall and entered a small private conference room. It was clear Meg had been working here for several hours. A stack of Diet Coke cans lined one side of the table, and a few containers of Chinese takeout littered another part of the table. There were files everywhere and a clear plastic bag that contained a syringe, and another bag that contained ancient leather journals.

  “I was dealing with dragons, if you can believe it. Scary things. Sexy…but scary.”

  “Dragons?” Charlotte whispered the word in awe. It was one thing to know they existed, but it was another thing entirely to think of her friend being around them. “Do they really breathe fire?”

  “Umm.” Meg tilted her head. “I’ve heard so, yes. But I’ve only ever seen them in human form. They just dress in expensive suits and go about London bedding women—who, by the way, just fall at their feet, begging for it. I think it’s something to do with dragon pheromones. I’m not really sure on the science there. I try not to get too close to those guys.” Meg chuckled. “There’s nothing worse than a dominating man, right?”

  Charlotte blushed, not wanting to admit she’d give anything for a boyfriend with a bit of a dominant streak. “Right…” It had been ages since she’d even had a date, and thanks to her overprotective brothers, who saw threats around every corner, she was still a virgin. It was not a good thing.

  “So here’s the thing. I need your help. I know how Damien wants you kept in the dark when it comes to this stuff, but you’re the only one I can trust with this.” Meg picked up the bag with the syringe in it.

  “What’s that?” Charlotte leaned forward, nudging her chair closer to the table.

  “This is a drug that I believe subdues the dragon part of a shifter. I’ve been poring over these journals written by a man named John Dee. He was Queen Elizabeth’s court magician and advisor way back. It seems that he researched dragons for some time and came to some interesting conclusions about their physiology. He came up with a means to affect the shifting ability of a dragon, and another drug which ‘both loosens their tongue and makes them stay on the path of truth,’ as he put it. We found this sample, or what’s left of it, and these books at Conrad Sinclair’s house, a member of British Parliament, who it turns out was a dragon himself. He refined Dee’s formulas and seemed to be using them against his enemies. Unfortunately, his notes aren’t completely readable, and some of the ingredients we can’t identify. We believe Sinclair had firsthand knowledge of the formulas and was able to fill in the gaps, but we’re lacking that advantage. I want you to analyze the sample I recovered from his residence and see if you can replicate it. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Sure, but…” Charlotte bit her lip before continuing. “Doesn’t the Brotherhood have top-notch labs that can handle this?”

  Meg nodded, but her expression made Charlotte’s stomach churn. That was her “bad news” face.

  “I’m worried that in the wrong hands, this could be used poorly. It might even be weaponized. This version seems to dampen a dragon for only about a day. The oath of the Brotherhood is to watch first and hunt only if we must, but not everyone sees that oath the same way. Some believe in a more ‘proactive’ approach. Remember what happened with Serena? A large minority of the Brotherhood voted for an all-out war against all vamps after she was killed.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes. God, she wished Meg hadn’t brought her up.

  Serena had been eighteen, fearless and beautiful, and more importantly, the love of Charlotte’s oldest brother’s life. Damien hadn’t voted for war on the vampires, but the vote by the hunters had come dangerously close. If the majority had voted death, then the Brotherhood would have been obligated to kill all vampires they encountered, and Charlotte knew Damien couldn’t stand for that. He knew many vampires who were good men and women who never killed or hurt humans.

  “I want to make sure we know what this is before anyone starts using it.”

  The syringe’s tip was covered in a green liquid that almost seemed to glow.

  “Okay, I’ll check it out,” said Charlotte. “But Damien and Jason can’t know.”

  “That’s the plan.” Meg handed the bagged syringe to Charlotte, who tucked it into her purse.

  “I want to know everything about that drug,” Meg said. “It might help us stop a dragon war from breaking out.”

  Charlotte nodded. A dragon war? That sounded like a really bad thing, but it almost faded from her mind in importance. The only thing that mattered right now was that she finally had a chance to make a real difference alongside her brothers—even if they couldn’t know about it.

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  Rurik: A Royal Dragon Romance

  Prologue

  “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”

  - Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

  Rurik Barinov watched the men and women dancing in his nightclub Logovo—The Lair. The dark interior was lit by flashing strobe lights and fog from the machines at the opposite ends of the dance floor. The entire club looked like a mix between a cave and a dungeon. The walls were rough stone and there were iron barred cages where dancers could show off their moves.

  While Rurik’s older brother ran a sensible business, one that was built on technology in commerce, Rurik traded in pleasure: dancing, drinking and sex. He was not so buttoned up and proper like Grigori. He enjoyed wild nights with wicked women, bodies straining and yearning for that headlong rush of mutual satisfaction. It never ceased to amaze him that Grigori had walked away from sex. But he’d heard that after a thousand years a dragon tended to lose his wildness, at least in part. Only when they found their mate did he have a resurgence of that frenzied lust.

  Rurik chuckled. He could not picture Grigori doing anything with a frenzy except slaughtering the competition in a boardroom. He was damned good at that. Scary as fuck too. He was always cool and controlled, yet when Rurik had shown interest in the little mortal professor, Madelyn Haynes, Grigori’s eyes had blazed and he’d growled a dark and dangerous warning that sent warning shivers to Rurik’s entire body. It was the first time he’d ever been afraid of his own brother. Dragons were possessive by nature, and as Russian Imperial dragon shifters they were more covetous than other breeds when it came to jewels and women.

  Thinking about jewels always made Rurik think of his other brother Mikhail. The brother that was lost to them because he’d failed to secure a hoard of jewels from a treaty they’d made with English dragons. Mikhail had sent word that the treasure had been stolen and their father had exiled him for his failure. For one brief year their father and mother had traveled the world. While they were gone Grigori had called Mikhail home. For four brief seasons, Mikhail had been part of the family again. That was two centuries ago.