The Dragon Prince’s Daddy: An M/M MPreg Shifter Romance (Royal Heat Book 1)
Page 1
The Dragon Prince’s Daddy
Royal Heat #1
Lorelei M. Hart
Trisha Linde
Colbie Dunbar
Surrendered Press
Contents
1. Chance
2. Devlin
3. Chance
4. Devlin
5. Chance
6. Devlin
7. Chance
8. Devlin
9. Chance
10. Devlin
11. Chance
12. Devlin
13. Chance
14. Devlin
15. Chance
16. Devlin
17. Chance
18. Devlin
19. Chance
20. Devlin
21. Chance
22. Devlin
23. Chance
24. Devlin
25. Chance
26. Devlin
27. Chance
28. Devlin
29. Chance
30. Devlin
31. Chance
Epilogue
Newsletters
Also By These Authors
Surrendered Press
The Dragon Prince’s Daddy
Copyright © 2021 by Lorelei M. Hart, Trisha Linde & Colbie Dunbar
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
Chance
“Hey, little brother, wanna come down to the pub with us?” Aiden and his bestie Spencer had on what I called their random Joe clothing. For some reason my brother believed that if he dressed a certain way, no one would recognize him as one of the three princes of Montipan. It never worked—ever. Although every once in a while, an alpha would pretend not to recognize him to see if he could get a piece of ass, and sometimes he did.
“I’m exactly a half a day younger than you,” I reminded him. Three eggs all hatched in one day did not make for an I’m-older-and-wiser scenario. It just didn’t.
“Still younger.” Brenton, my other brother walked in. “So, are you coming, my sweet baby brother?”
“You all suck.” But of course I was going. I grabbed my wallet off my dresser.
“I didn’t say a thing.” Spencer was already heading for the door.
“Because you are the youngest of us all.” By a day, but still… although we did love to razz him about his youth. I remember meeting him in grammar school and thinking he had to be our friend because his birthday was marked on the same wall calendar as me and my brothers. Funny how kids get notions in their head like that. And also—it turned out I was right. The four of us had been inseparable since that first day.
“Aiden, since you are the big brother, drinks are on you tonight.” I side bumped him on my way out and nearly ran over our father’s advisor.
“Shit... I mean, I’m sorry, Gabriel. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here.” In my private quarters, not that anyone else gave that a second thought, either. But then again, that’s how we all were with each other. Bedrooms off-limits, the rest... open door.
“You’re requested in your father’s chambers.” He brushed himself off. “All of you, except... Spencer, your plans for this evening are cancelled.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Spencer walked around the man and down the hall, holding up his phone, letting all of us know to call him.
“Whatever he thinks we did—it was Chance.” Brenton slapped my shoulder. And honestly, he was probably right. Aiden was the perfect one, even if he was far from it outside of their sights, and Brenton was the quiet one, leaving me to be the wild child.
Which—fair enough. I’d been known to act rashly on far more occasions than I cared to admit.
“Your father awaits.” Great. It was formal time, which meant this wasn’t him finding out I bought a motorcycle to try and fix up... this was related to royal bullshit.
Gods, sometimes I hated being a prince.
We followed Gabriel to my father’s office, our dad standing at his side, both their faces far too serious for my comfort.
“Your sons,” Gabriel announced and went and sat at his desk along the far wall. Double great. He was staying.
“Fathers,” we all said in unison like the good-ish sons we were, and then one by one took a knee. If this was formal, we needed to act like it.
“Sons.” He stepped around from his desk and over to the small sitting area, our dad behind him. One by one, by age, we got up and followed, all of us taking our seats, the ones designated for us during formal gatherings. I glanced to the left, and sure enough, Gabriel was now sitting with his notepad and pencil ready to take notes old-school style, even though he would then have to transcribe them onto his computer. But it was tradition, and Gabriel loved tradition.
“We’re sorry to call you here today, but it has come to our attention that there has been a misinterpretation of the Laws of Old you must be made aware of.” The Laws of Old were never good. They were the ones responsible for having dragons stripped of their wings—actually physically stripped for things like a possible sighting by humans—or the bits about the fabulous arranged matings and other things I didn’t care to think about. Most of those ancient laws had been updated over the years with the blending of rulings to incorporate a more democratic feel to the government.
Feel, not reality.
People could vote or express their opinion all they wanted, but at the end of the day, my family was still the royal family and the buck stopped here—or rather, with my father.
“If they are Laws of Old, why do they matter?” I snapped my mouth shut as my dad gave me the look, the one that told me that cutting it out was the only option.
“Gabriel,” my father deferred to his adviser. WT actual F.
“‘And should a time come to pass when the omega ruler-in-waiting comes into their first heat without mating, the family rule shall be forfeit and shall be passed to the next eligible dragon.’” He read it so matter-of-factly, as if he didn’t just say my brother needed to get mated. Oh well. At least it wasn’t me. Being too lazy to crack out of my shell first had its benefits.
“Sorry, bro. Sucks to be you.” I stood up to leave and was stopped by my father raising his voice to me.
He never raised his voice. The opposite. When his voice got quieter, that was when the chills ran through our bodies.
“Enough. Sit.”
I sat so fast.
“This is not about just you. I implore you to remember that. It is time you gave some thought to mating.” This wasn’t the first time we’d had this talk, but usually it started with so-and-so from such-and-such clan approached me about their son... basically his words were all a formality so he could present the offer to us as required by law. No. This was different. There was a sense of urgency and I didn’t like it. Not. One. Bit.
“Father.” Aiden spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “If this is a Law of Old, couldn’t we simply get it changed like the others?” And that was why he was born first and would be every bit the king my father was—he didn’t come at things from his heart. He thought first.
“I have explored that option and it simply will not work in this circumstance. You see, your heat makes you fertile, and without the mating bond—there could be a question of heirs.” My father and his father, and a
s far back as I knew, had all been alphas, which was probably why the law had gone unnoticed until now, and then boom—three omega sons. What were the odds of that? Lucky us.
“Father?” Brenton spoke up, which had both Aiden and I snapping our heads in his direction.
How unlike him.
“Yes, Son.”
“Isn’t that a little bit—designationist? We shouldn’t be treated as less than simply because we can procreate.”
“It is what it is.” Father stood up. “And we have some scholars looking into the full meaning, but as of now, the interpretation is that all three of you, because you are from the same clutch, will need to find your mates before your first heat.”
“Which could be anywhere from tomorrow to ten years from now? Dad was even older than that.” He nodded at my comment like the fight had been wiped out of him. How long had he known about this? Enough that he took a position of defeat. Suck.
“I will begin formal introductions with haste, with an eye to courtship and mating.” And at that, he and my dad walked out with Gabriel hot on their tail. It was my father’s office and he left, meaning he either wanted to make a statement, or he could no longer handle the conversation at hand. I feared the second.
“Fuck this.” I waited until I was sure they were out of earshot before I broke the silence, but fuck this. Who wants to be told they needed to choose between mating and losing their place in society?
No one.
Absolutely no one.
“Looks like my bachelor days are over.” Aiden ran his hand through his hair. “Dad had mentioned some alpha from one of the neighboring islands. Maybe it won’t be that bad.”
“You want to be king that badly?” Because I sure didn’t.
“Don’t you see…” Brenton pushed himself up off his seat. “This isn’t about us. If we go into heat, it’s not that we won’t get to be king, it’s that Father will lose his place as king—the family rule, not us specifically, dumbass. The entire family.”
My stomach fell.
This was too much.
Beyond too much.
I stomped out of the room, down the hallway and past our living quarters, through the kitchen and outside. I thought it would be enough to get some fresh air, but I needed to be away—far away where no one knew who I was, humans lived in ignorance, and I could figure shit out—or drink and get laid. More likely the latter.
Before I had formally made the decision to do so, I found myself at our small airfield, pounding on our pilot’s door. I’d rather take my wings, but I’d be in enough hot water going on a bender without adding risking the discovery of our kind to the mix.
“Your Highness,” he greeted me, ignoring my rudeness. “What brings you here?”
“How fast can you get me to the mainland?” I’d figure out the rest once I got there.
“Give me fifteen minutes to make some calls and we can be on our way.”
“Not calls to my father.” He looked at me as if deciding the correct answer. “He and my dad are in a meeting,” I explained. Lied. I lied.
“I need to call ahead to make sure we will be able to land and to check the weather patterns to be sure it’s as clear as it appears.”
“Then go ahead. I’ll be here.”
He was back in ten, and less than an hour later, I landed on the mainland—or as I was going to call it for the night, Denial.
2
Devlin
Oh man. This was going to be amazing.
And not just tonight, although the next few hours were already shaping up to be epic. But my life in general was about to get so much better.
“This round’s on me,” Randall said, returning from the bar with a tray of drinks. There was a whole mess of glasses and bottles on the tray, and he started dishing them out to the appropriate people. Baron got a scotch, neat; the wolf shifter’s keen senses ensured only the best malt passed his lips. Marty, on the other hand, the only human in our friend group, wasn’t picky; he got whatever beer they had on tap. Randall, barrel-chested and wiry-haired, looked almost the same human as he did in his boar form. He plunked himself down beside me, putting his beer bottle to his lips, before sliding what was left on the tray over to me. “Devlin, this is for you, sir. The man of the hour.”
“Uhhhh… I can’t drink all that.” The tray had at least a dozen shots of an amber liquor. I gave a sniff and cringed. It gave off fumes reminiscent of gasoline.
“Oh, please,” Marty slurred, already half in the bag. “As if the big bad dragon can’t handle a little fire water.”
“Dude!” Baron scolded, punching Marty’s arm. “I know you think you’re whispering, but I’m pretty sure half the bar just heard you. Don’t you know what being discreet means? We never should’ve let you in on the secret.”
Marty rubbed at his bicep. “First of all… ow, that hurt. Second, you didn’t let me in on the secret; you got fall-down drunk, said ‘here, hold my beer,’ and then proceeded to change into a wolf. That’s on you. Besides, you give humans way more credit than you should. It wouldn’t matter if Devlin shifted right here in the bar. They would swear they were hallucinating, blame the alcohol or a gas leak or something.”
Randall and I traded glances. Here we go again. These two could bicker for hours—and they probably would. And then, they would spend all night making up. Ugh. I seriously had no interest in subjecting myself to their budding romance tonight. We’d all been friends since college, but there’d always been something extra between Marty and Baron, a certain physical chemistry. One night, like a dam breaking, they just crashed into each other, and the rest was history. They say friends make the best life partners… I hoped it was true, because otherwise, this had the potential of breaking our group of friends apart.
The clinking of glass brought me back out of my thoughts. Randall forced a shot glass into my hand and tapped a second one against it. “To you, man. You deserve it.”
“Thanks.” I felt the goofy smile pull on my lips. “I still can’t believe I got the job.”
“When do you start?” he asked, tossing back his shot and giving a wince.
I followed suit and felt the liquor scorch its way down my esophagus. I flipped the glass upside down and plunked it back down on the tray. “Next week. I guess I’ll start packing tomorrow. I can’t believe this is really happening.” The alcohol mixing with my excitement was making me heady.
“Yeah, man. This is massive. You’re living the dream.”
Yep. I was hired by the freaking royal family of Montipan! Seriously. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Like winning the lottery. A prestigious, vital job that I had worked my ass off to get, and it certainly didn’t hurt that it included room and board, and paid a buttload of cash on top of that. Yep, living the dream.
Except… it was only half my dream. And while sharing my excitement with my friends was great, it wasn’t the same as sharing it with that one special omega. I looked across at Baron as he nuzzled into Marty’s neck.
Dammit.
I choked down that grain of disappointment. Tonight was about celebrating my successes, not languishing in my loneliness. I turned my eyes to my surroundings. The pub was packed tonight, wall-to-wall boisterous crowd, and to a dragon like me, it was like being pummeled over the head with a stick of smells and sounds. Unwashed bodies, pounding heartbeats, everyone shouting to be heard over the din. I did my best to tone down my awareness in a place like this.
But then… the pub door opened and a breeze was drawn in, gently brushing across my face. Like a knife slicing through it all, a single scent pushed everything else away.
Cranberries and lime; tangy, sour, and oh so delicious. I searched out the source of the aroma, and ohhhhh shit. I was in trouble. The omega was just as yummy to look at. Broad-shouldered, long hair with an undercut, scruffy and swaggering.
He headed straight to the bar like a man on a mission.
Randall followed where I was looking. “Oh, so that’s how it is?”
“What? That’s how what is?”
His sly smile said it all. “You’re totally about to leave me alone with these two.” Baron and Marty who were currently halfway down each other’s throats. “It’s fine, I get it. The man does have a certain appeal.”
A certain appeal? The omega was hot beyond belief. I shifted in my seat to adjust myself. How was it possible for a man to make me hard from across the room, without even trying? I pushed my desire aside, painful as it was. “Nah, man. I came here to celebrate with my friends. It’s all good.”
He blew out a breath and gave a low chuckle. “You can’t even take your eyes off him as you say that. Seriously, you don’t leave for Montipan until next week. We can hang out another day. Go get your rocks off.”
I hesitated for all of .27 seconds. “Are you sure?” I was already sliding out of my seat, but I still maintained the pretense that I would stay if he asked me to. Seriously, though, I so wouldn’t. There was no stopping me at this point.
“Yeah, give me a call tomorrow.”
His voice was already in the distance, no longer my primary focus. All I could see was this omega. As if sensing my approach, he turned and our eyes locked. It was like a shot of electricity. Or more like a lit match, lighting a fuse and burning through me. I couldn’t wait for this to ignite.
I worked my way through the crowd, never breaking eye contact. I closed the distance until I was standing directly at his side. “Devlin,” I said, offering my hand.