by Denise Lynn
Succubus, slayer or soul mate?
He was a Drake, a dragon. She was a St. George, born to slay them. They were meant to be mortal enemies, yet for three days the shifter and the succubus had been insatiable lovers. From that union a secret child had been conceived. Now Caitlin St. George had to finally tell Sean Drake she’d not only borne his son, but that the baby had been kidnapped. And only Sean could save him...
The tasks in front of Sean were not easy. He’d had to give his family’s enemy all he demanded...and then become what he’d feared the most. Would this mission cost Sean the last shreds of his humanity, or could love finally tame the beast within?
“Morning, Red.”
The man’s voice was so deep, his overused, outdated greeting so easy and familiar that, for the first time in her life, Caitlin felt her face flush with embarrassment. “Where am I?”
“According to your directions, you’re home. If not, then we’ve invaded someone else’s privacy for the last three days.”
“Three days? What have I been doing?”
“If you don’t know, then I haven’t given it my all.” He sighed, then chuckled softly and drew a fingertip down her spine. “Feeding.”
For three days? She was in bed with a man who possessed the chiseled body and face of a Greek god and she couldn’t remember the feel of his body on, or in, hers?
“Who are you?”
“Ladies first.”
“Caitlin St. George.”
The man froze, his eyes widening for a split second before he moved away from her and shifted into the form of a smoky dragon before disappearing.
Denise Lynn, an award-winning author, lives in the USA with her husband, son and numerous four-legged “kids.” Between the pages of romance novels she has traveled to lands and times filled with brave knights, courageous ladies and never-ending love. Now she can share with others her dream of telling tales of adventure and romance. You can write to her at PO Box 17, Monclova, OH 43542, or visit her website, denise-lynn.com.
Books by Denise Lynn
Harlequin Nocturne
Dragon’s Lair
Dragon’s Curse
Dragon’s Promise
Harlequin Historical
Falcon’s Desire
Falcon’s Honor
Falcon’s Love
Falcon’s Heart
Commanded To His Bed
Bedded by Her Lord
Hallowe’en Husbands
Bedded by the Warrior
Pregnant by the Warrior
The Warrior’s Winter Bride
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles
DRAGON’S PROMISE
DENISE LYNN
Dear Reader,
You’ve waited patiently, and I’m hoping your wait wasn’t in vain. The time has come for baby brother Sean to come into his own—time for the nonbeliever in all things magick to discover that wizards, dragons and magick are very, very real—as real as passion and true love.
I invite you to share his discovery as he and his unexpected mate, Caitlin St. George (ah, yes, that St. George—if every arsonist needs a fireman, then every dragon needs a dragon slayer), learn the connection between the pendants, the grimoire and the puzzle box, while also learning how to love.
As always, be wary of the wizards and watch out for the swords—especially the slayer’s blade Ascalon.
Take care,
Denise Lynn
Braeden was for Brenda, Cameron for Cheryl...
And for my sister Sandy, I grant you Sean, along with all of his passion and his magick. With much love, always.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Excerpt from Canadian Wolf by Linda O. Johnston
Prologue
Ancient castle ruins on the east coast of Ireland—October 3. Two years ago
Candlelight flickered in the drafty cell, casting eerily dancing shadows on the wall behind the altar. Pacing before the altar, Nathan the Learned paused to stare into the undulating flames, before gazing down into a crystal bowl. The water filling the bowl had been blessed by the light of a full moon to lend more power to his scrying.
He scried not for hints of what the future held, because he knew that once his deeds this night were completed, his future would be secure. Instead, he wanted to see the past. Not just a hazy memory of days gone by, but a clear reckoning of what had brought him to this long-sought-after moment of greatness.
With one hand on the head of the naked, bound woman kneeling at his feet, he waved the other over the bowl. The water rippled outward from the center, as if disturbed by a falling pebble.
A wavering image of a medieval castle appeared. Mirabilus. The medieval stronghold where it all began so very long ago. The water stilled, permitting the reflection to become clearer. A cold breeze, not unlike the one he’d felt that fateful night, brushed across his cheek. The shape of an amethyst dragon formed over the image of the castle. It wavered as if trying to take flight and then it cracked, splintering into a million pieces, just as it had that fateful night. He then saw himself as a child hiding within the darkness of a curtained alcove as the High Druid, his uncle Aelthed, killed his own brother—Nathan’s father. The terror of the child flowed into the man he’d become, settling cold in his belly. He had vowed revenge that night and would soon taste the victory he’d craved for so long.
The image of childhood faded, permitting a new one to appear. Again Nathan saw himself, this time a man full grown, leaning over the High Druid Aelthed as he lay gasping his last breaths upon his bed. He cared not that the wizard suffered in his final moments. The man deserved whatever pain and agony plagued him—not just for killing Nathan’s father, but for also seeing to it that he had been laid to rest in an unhallowed grave, unable to ever attain life after death. Worse, when the time had come for Nathan to be named Dragon Lord of Mirabilus, the honor had gone to another, along with the ancient family grimoire and the two remaining dragon pendants.
Nathan shook with unforgotten rage. Oh, yes, the wizard had paid dearly for those mistakes. As Aelthed’s soul had sought escape from his withered body, Nathan had trapped it in a wooden puzzle box that locked with such an intricate, complicated set of moves no one would ever be able to free his soul. For nearly nine centuries, Aelthed’s soul had remained imprisoned. And for most of those years, Nathan had kept the puzzle box close at hand, guarding it like a prized possession.
Until he’d dropped it while trying to escape death at the talons of a Drake’s magical dragon when he’d tried to destroy the eldest Drake and his wife.
Now all the items he needed—the puzzle box, the pendants and the grimoire—were together under the protection of the current Dragon Lord. From what he could discern, the Drakes had been unable to break the spell holding the wizard’s soul captive. So, just as he’d planned, Aelthed’s spirit was still confined, waiting for Nathan to set him free.
Once again the image faded. This time it was replaced by the reflection of his son, pale and cold in death. Nathan screamed i
n agony and waved the recent, too painful image away.
Tapping the handle of the braided leather whip he held against his thigh, he seethed. A few years ago he’d nearly lost his own life to the current Dragon Lord. Sorely wounded, he’d nurtured his hatred and desire for power, using that dark energy to survive. Which was more than what could be said for his son. The Dragon Lord’s twin had taken his sole remaining son—once again preventing him from reaching his goal.
He cursed the Dragon Lord and his family. They were the only obstacle in his way—the only thing that kept him from attaining supreme power.
For all these centuries, the Drakes had stood between him and his place as Hierophant, supreme ruler over all.
But no more.
This time he would gain possession of the Drake family grimoire, those accursed pendants and the ancient puzzle box—along with its spellbound occupant. Once all of the items were in his hands, he could finish the spell he’d worked on for centuries, and then the position of Hierophant would be his. And when he alone held supreme power, nothing and no one would ever again be able to repudiate his will.
Nathan laughed. And this time he wouldn’t have to lift a finger to defeat the Drakes.
They thought themselves unreachable, hiding behind a specialized security system that made breaking in to Dragon’s Lair undetected, impossible for anyone possessing more than human capabilities. And they were far too cautious, their sixth sense too well developed for him to be able to attack them away from their stronghold.
But he had another option at hand. He glanced at the woman kneeling on the stone floor before his altar. A necessary link. With her help, this time he would use a Drake to beat them.
Now that the full moon had finally risen, he was anxious to set his perfect plan into motion. He screamed at her, “Say the words!”
When she refused, he snarled and then raised his arm asking, “Do you enjoy the bite of pain?”
At her silence he flicked the whip in his hand, making it hiss and whistle as it snaked toward its victim. The crack echoed in the nearly empty chamber. The tips of the braided leather scored her naked back, adding yet another row of bloody lines to the pale flesh.
Her shoulders flinched, but she gave no other sign of giving in to the agony—yet.
Nathan narrowed his eyes and trembled with a surge of unbridled lust. This gypsy mage could give him many weeks of untold pleasure. Even after his rather ardent lovemaking last night, she was still lovely. The lingering traces of his touch on her luscious breasts and full hips only made her more desirable. He saw the bruises as his marks of ownership, and he ached to once again possess her.
Not just yet. Soon. His mind whispered for him to be patient, and Nathan drew in a long, shuddering breath.
First he needed the ancient curse against his enemies to be spoken. He had repeatedly tried activating the simple yet powerful curse himself and found only failure. He’d studied the curse’s history over and over until discovering that it was not Druid. It was of Romani origin, and he was certain this beautiful gypsy mage possessed the magic to give the curse life. He’d cloaked himself in the allure of youth then seduced her with the promise of riches and whispered of nights filled with tender, fulfilling lovemaking.
But when she’d seen his true self, discovered his lies and the reason for the curse, she’d sworn to never say the words. Her reaction made him more certain she could bring the curse alive and one way or another, he would force her to do so.
Nathan dropped the whip at his feet and grabbed a handful of her thick, raven-hued hair. Tugging on it until the hairpins he’d used to secure the luxurious tresses atop her head and away from her back slipped free.
He slid his other hand along her neck, closing his fingers one by one tightly over her windpipe. “Do you seek death out of some misguided notion that it will save those I wish to harm?” He leaned down and whispered against her ear. “It will not work. If you refuse me again, I know another mage...another gypsy mage...one much younger than you who will be more than grateful to escape your fate.”
The woman tensed beneath his touch, obviously realizing that he spoke of her younger sister.
“Perhaps we will try one more time.” He relaxed his hold around her neck slightly.
She swallowed hard and then nodded.
He released her and stepped back to retrieve the whip and send it sailing to snap loud on the floor beside her. “Say the words.”
When she bowed her head and began to whisper, Nathan lashed his weapon once again across her back, shouting, “Louder, so I can hear you!”
“Not a dragon born—” she paused, gasping as if the words burned her throat more than the lashes across her flesh “—yet a dragon you shall be.”
Nathan tossed a pinch of dark reddish powder into the flickering candle atop the altar. When the flames danced around the dragon blood, he nudged the woman, ordering, “Finish it.”
“Once this beast has taken form, it will answer only to thee.”
Nathan dropped clippings of his own hair into the candle. As the stench of burning hair filled the air, and the flames of the candle sparked, he proclaimed, “I am thee.”
He stared down at the woman. Now that the curse had been given voice, his lust vanished. While there was no way to know how long it would take for the curse to work, her task had been completed. The time had come to end their partnership. “I fear I have no further use for you, my dear.”
He let the whip fly again and again, chuckling as it cracked loudly across her shoulder. Disappointed that she didn’t beg for mercy, or so much as raise a hand in her own defense, he worked the deadly weapon until her ragged breaths were nothing more than a few mewling gasps.
Drenched in sweat and gasping for breath himself, Nathan let the whip fall from his hand and leaned over the dying woman now curled in a ball on the floor. She opened one swollen eye and whispered, “St. George will set you free.”
He growled at her and then shrieked, “You bitch!” before drawing what little life force she had left from her body.
With her last choked breath, she once again whispered, “St. George will set you free.”
Chapter 1
Outskirts of Detroit—One year ago
“Man, now that is one fine-looking piece.”
“Yeah, how’d you like to have a taste of that?”
Inwardly seething, Sean Drake’s only physical display of disgust was a slight tightening of his grip around the beer bottle in his hand at the juvenile comments the thugs in the booth behind him were making about the woman who’d just taken a seat at the bar. Their antics and crude behavior were starting to chafe at his last nerve.
These men were petty thieves and thugs. One was a large, hard-drinking bully, and the other his smaller, junkie buddy. Both low-life slugs.
He’d run into them a few weeks ago when they were casing the neighborhood around his current apartment. They’d been looking for their next target, and he’d made certain to accidentally bump into them that night to thwart their plans.
He should have killed them instead.
Had he followed his gut instinct, they wouldn’t be here tonight, intent on harassing someone weaker and smaller than themselves. He wasn’t about to let that happen. He didn’t care what trouble they brought on themselves, but they wouldn’t be permitted to hurt anyone else.
Sean tossed back the bottle of beer he’d been nursing and realized with a start that it was time to go home. Not to his sparsely furnished, one-bedroom apartment at the edge of the city, but home to the forested mountains and Dragon’s Lair. He choked back a laugh at that thought. Barely eight months had passed since he’d left the Lair, but it felt like years. Actually, he hadn’t simply left. Confused, half-dead and afraid for his life, he’d run away in the middle of the night.
It had taken him most of this time alone to come to the conclusion that he’d deserved the beating the Dragon Lord had given him. After all, his unwillingness to control his new, and unwanted
, powers had put not just himself at risk, but he’d also become a danger to his brothers and their families. As the Dragon Lord, Braeden had been forced to choose between knocking some sense into the new changeling, or killing him.
Thankfully, even though it would have been within his rights as the lord, his brother hadn’t chosen to take his life. Sean knew he should have been grateful, but at the time, the boulder-sized chip on his shoulder hadn’t allowed him to see reason. Instead, he’d convinced his sorry self that everyone hated him, that nobody understood him—basically, he’d reacted like a spoiled, self-centered child.
But he hadn’t been a child. He’d been a relatively normal twenty-six-year-old adult with a college degree, and more wealth and opportunities than most people would see in a lifetime. He had a good position in the family business and a family who’d cared about him.
Until just over a year ago, when he had been torn from a dark dream by the sounds of a striking whip and an evil cackle, followed by what sounded like a raggedly chanted curse. He hadn’t been able to make sense of the breathless words, just snippets of a woman’s pain-filled voice. A demonic urge to change into a dragon had filled him. With it came an unrelenting need to seek Drake blood. Since he wasn’t a changeling, he had chalked it up to being nothing more than remnants of a nightmare.
His shape-shifting into a dragon would have been fine as far as Braeden or Cameron were concerned. Since both of his older brothers were changeling wizards and possessed dragon blood from birth, they would have welcomed his newfound ability. But it wasn’t fine with him. He had always been the normal one, the human brother without any power to read minds, transfer thoughts, slide into dreams, shift into a dragon or materialize someplace on a whim.
For many long weeks after the nightmare, he’d been edgy, moody, confused and unreasonable. As the next month passed, instead of fading away, the troubling urges from that dark dream grew. At the time, he’d thought he was losing his mind. But then, when the dream turned real and he had shifted to dragon form, he’d felt invincible and driven with only one purpose in mind—to kill his brothers. Aunt Danielle had been convinced that he’d been cursed—and since he had heard bits of a chanted curse in his nightmare, he agreed with her assessment, but could do nothing to break whatever spell had been cast over him, except wonder who had cast the spell and why.
