by Milana Jacks
Table of Contents
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
Cradle the Fire
About the Author
Milana’s Backlist
Copyright © 2018 Milana Jacks
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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Unless you’ve seen dragons (you must tell me!), any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Rise the Seas
Ice Age Dragon Brotherhood, #1
Milana Jacks
Contents
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
Cradle the Fire
About the Author
Milana’s Backlist
1
Selena
“I need a loan, Dad,” I said. The new fake leather sofa squeaked under my bottom as I crossed one leg over the other the way Mom had taught me.
Dad swirled the glass of warm whiskey. A single ice cube melted, and he sipped the expensive liquor his firm made. “Excellent,” he said about the drink. “Best in its class.” The dim lights from the library behind the black sofa in Dad’s study cast a soft shadow over his brown eyes, but when he locked them with mine, the anger in his gaze matched the flames in the fireplace. “Where on earth have you been?”
At least the flames warmed the room. No warmth ever came from my dad. The man could give the icebergs perched outside our habitat a run for their money. “Around.”
“Where is this around?”
“New York.” We lived in Los Angeles.
He blinked, swirled more whiskey, and added two more cubes. They played with each other like lovers before he crushed them under his teeth. He slammed the glass on the table and uncrossed his legs. The left one, a mechatronic implant—a gift from the Cy alien race living in their giant ship above us—thudded onto the floor. The black, polished, lab-made leather shoe on his human right leg reflected the dim light behind him. “I’ve had enough of your”—he waved a hand, the human one, about him—“rebellion. You’re not a teenager anymore. You’re a woman. What is it this time? A hair salon? A craft shop? Ridiculous. You’ll inherit my entire—”
I lifted a finger. “Correction. My husband will inherit your entire booze line.”
“It’s a booze line, is it?” His cheek twitched, a muscle reflex most cyborgs showed in a state of heightened stress. Dad was a level-three cyborg, meaning mechatronic Cy parts made up sixty percent of his body. The Cy parts integrated with his human parts seamlessly, with only a few minor “glitches” such as involuntary loss of muscle control.
“Your empire, Dad.” I shouldn’t have said booze line, even if it was true. Dad had worked hard to rise from the hell the volcanic eruptions had caused over a decade ago when I was nine years old and before he, Mom, and I escaped Yellowstone’s volcanic ash and we’d moved to Los Angeles, California.
“Yes, my empire. And my only child, the one who’ll inherit the wealth humans would kill for, has been missing for months. Do you think it’s appropriate for you to disappear after your little business caught fire?”
“I didn’t think you cared.”
“I care! You are Selena Salazar, the only female Salazar left on this fucking planet.”
My father only cared about my uterus and extending his cyborg Salazar line through his daughter since he didn’t have sons. “I know who I am.”
“I don’t think you do, and that’s your mother’s fault.”
“Don’t bring her into this.” Last year, Mom had committed suicide.
Dad sighed. “Your twentieth birthday is coming up.”
“It’s not today,” I said cheerfully.
Dad’s cheek twitched, but he tried to rein in his temper. “Diego has been looking for you.”
Diego was my Dad’s business partner’s son, a thirty-five-year-old, level-four cyborg with only twenty percent organic human parts, meaning he probably had a mechatronic dick. I was an only child, a woman, a perfect pure human fitting for Diego Vasquez, a perfect cyborg. When we’d moved to Los Angeles, Diego’s father loaned mine the money on which mine had built his booze empire. The families grew close, and when the Cy built the habitat, our families united to take advantage of the perks.
Cyborg families built alliances so they could rise to power and higher social status inside the habitats. In exchange for money, Diego’s father asked that I marry his son on my eighteenth birthday, thereupon which, Diego would inherit the entire liquor empire and give up his last name. I would stay Selena Salazar, and he would become Diego Salazar. The Salazar name would survive the Ice Age and beyond.
At seventeen, I convinced Mom to speak with Dad, and he agreed to extend the marriage deadline to my nineteenth birthday. When the day came, Mom jumped from our penthouse apartment. Dad and I were devastated, but it meant we couldn’t have a wedding that year. Mom had bought me another year, and I poured the inheritance she left me into a jewelry shop, hoping I could make enough to buy myself out of the marriage contract. Diego could be bought out; he’d told me so on one unforgettable occasion. If neither of us wanted to marry, the contract would be broken.
I shrugged. “Let him look. I still have three days left.”
“You should go out with him again. Be seen with him so that the Hernandez girl doesn’t take your place. You know what’s at stake.”
The family alliance kept us fed. If I broke the agreement, Dad’s pride and business would come under attack. He would need to accept more Cy parts into his body to elevate his social status; otherwise, the high society families with one or more level-four cyborgs would boycott his liquor line.
Funny that our family’s power was all me, a one hundred percent human female, when humans were regarded as lower than cyborgs in the habitat. Other families’ women, like Lidia Hernandez, were at least level-one cyborgs, which carry higher risks of miscarriages than did human women. Dad couldn’t risk signing me up for an implant before this year, even though families with more cyborgs held more power. The Cy gave them roges, our currency, the dollar long forgotten in the years of ecological apocalypse following the massive volcanic eruptions around the world.
Not to mention, breaking the marriage agreement with Diego’s family would mean the death of the Salazars, as no other family would allow the firstborn son to take his mother’s last name. “There can never be another Salazar if you don’t settle with Diego,” my father said, drilling in the point I already knew. “We ar
gue over this every time we see each other. Hell, we haven’t had a decent conversation in years. It would disappoint your mother.”
“Mom would give me more time. She wouldn’t push me until I was ready.”
“I’ve given you two more years.”
“I want five more.” Ten, even. Mom had wanted me to marry Diego, but she’d said if I lived enough before I married him, I’d have something great to remember, something to hold on to during the days when living with a man I didn’t love and hadn’t wanted to marry got hard. I’d have something I’d done for myself before giving everything I had to my husband and kids. She gave her life so that I could experience freedom, so that later on, I wouldn’t come to resent Diego the way she probably resented Dad. Not that Mom ever spoke ill of Dad, but she smiled more than necessary, a coping mechanism, I supposed.
“There’s no more time, Selena. Diego isn’t a bad-looking kid. Not even a kid. Have you called him at all lately?”
“I haven’t.”
“You will.”
I pinched my lips, bit back a fuck you. Even if he didn’t respect me, I couldn’t say that to him. “Can you give me a loan, then?” I glanced back at my father with a smile, despite knowing his answer.
His eyes softened, and he sighed. “What for?”
“I want to open another shop. If I marry Diego, I’ll need an escape.” I had no plans to marry Diego or open a shop. I intended to run back to the East Coast, a place with a harsher climate than down here, but I didn’t care. During the months I’d spent there, I’d found a nice house outside one of the smaller cyborg habitats, and I needed money to buy supplies for the upcoming winter. Lots of outlaws roamed outside the large cities where there was a lack of habitats, and if they could survive winters, I could too.
My dad shook his head. “Even if you open one, you can’t work. A Salazar princess can’t be seen selling silly jewelry.”
“It’s not silly.” My gaze flickered to Nano, my foot-tall, chubby robot, a gift from Diego after he’d tried forcing himself on me the last time we’d gone out to dinner. If Nano wasn’t top-notch technology, I’d have gotten rid of it, but the scrap of metal had grown on me, and I’d gotten used to having it around. I pressed my palm over its round head and my thumb against its eye. Nano scanned my print and hummed to life. A quiet hum I found comforting.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a loan,” Dad said. It sounded final.
“Mom would be disappointed.” I rubbed Nano’s head as if petting an animal.
“She would be, and that’s why she isn’t here. I’m alone. Not even my daughter is around.”
I glanced at him, stupid hope perching in my chest. “I didn’t think you missed me.”
He tsked. “Arrange an outing with Diego.”
“Give me the Cy-20.” The Cy-20 was last year’s model car. Dad stashed it in the garage but wouldn’t let me use it. Some Cy cars, like the one Dad owned, slid on ice, rode over the hard terrains outside the habitats, flew, and glided over water. My car only flew and would malfunction if kept outside the habitat for an extended period. Hence, I needed a better car.
He chugged the last of the whiskey. “No.”
“A better Cy-18?”
“No.”
“Fuck your outing, then.”
“Selena,” he warned. “Language.”
“Fuck. Fuckady. Fucksy.”
A smile played over his lips, and he snickered. “I’ll arrange a dinner with Diego. Your room upstairs is ready.”
“I won’t be staying.”
That wiped the smile right off his face. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going for a ride.”
He picked up the glass, put it to his lips, thought better of it, and squeezed his mechatronic fingers around it. The glass shattered. Tiny pieces clicked on the floor. Nano spun around, glided to the mess, and hummed, vacuuming it. Dad pointed a finger at me. “Don’t make me lock you inside the house.”
“I’m not twelve. You can’t ground me. I can do what I want.”
“You are a brat!”
“Not wanting to marry Diego is not being a brat.”
“Have you shacked up with someone else?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, Dad, I’ve shacked up with so many outlaws, keeping count is a chore.”
“You little…” He clamped his mouth shut.
“Whore?”
“Brat.”
“Whore, Dad. You mean whore. When a woman sleeps with two men in two years, she is a whore. When a man sleeps with two women at the same time in the same night, he’s ‘da man.’ Isn’t that right, Daddy? Isn’t that the real reason Mom jumped on my birthday?”
“Your mother jumped on your birthday because she wanted to give you more time. Had you married Diego at eighteen like you were supposed to, today you would have offspring, be at least a level-one cyborg, and I would still have a wife.”
I dusted off my leather boots, though they weren’t dirty. As soon as I delivered however many human babies Diego wanted, I would get fitted with my first implant, making me a level-one cyborg. A while after, I could get more implants and climb the social ladder. Families with high-level cyborgs held the power in the habitat and earned favor with the Cy race. They got new cars, money, and way more food rations than the others. In fact, we didn’t even know what rationing meant. I’d learned about it this past spring when I’d gone up north. If you weren’t powerful, you rationed, because food was scarce.
If I delivered two kids and then became a cyborg, Diego and I would rule not just this habitat, but the entire freakin’ state. We’d have money, kids, and the support of our two families. Sounded great, didn’t it? On the surface, it would be the same dream life my parents had lived. Dad had provided all the best for Mom. She’d owned more cars and jewelry than the other wives. It never made her happy, though, and not because she was hard to please. Mom missed his love. He’d forgotten all about that when he went on to create the best life he could for us. I couldn’t blame Dad. He’d provided what he thought we needed. I loved him. But I didn’t want to end up like my mother. “I’ll think about it.”
Nano and I left without ceremony. I passed our reception area and exited the fifty-story building, tipping my imaginary hat at George, a level-five cyborg security guard manning the parking garage. George was a convicted felon. In the absence of jails, the Cy took felons up to the ship and returned them to the habitats, programmed to enforce the law. It meant George did not respond to my greeting. George knew only how to do his job.
I got into my old Cy-18 fly-only car, a small, two-person vehicle made for use inside the habitats, sad that I didn’t own an all-terrain kind of a car for my trip to the East Coast. Nano settled into the passenger seat. Its hands popped out of its round belly and plugged into the dashboard in front of it. Nano did the driving, so I didn’t bother. We lifted, peeled out of the parking lot, and joined the night’s air traffic. People mingled in the designated social area right beside the main air traffic lane, and lights twinkled in the common district below me. I’d never even been down there, having spent all my life in the air inside the high-rises the Cy had built for us, the Ice Age survivors.
Low-level cyborgs could be found in the common district, in addition to those who had taken Cy implants only recently or those whose implants didn’t work properly. Some bodies rejected the implants, but that was extremely rare. Some humans lived in the habitats because the outside conditions were simply too harsh to survive, and they were at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Regardless, the Cy welcomed humans to live in the habitats even if they didn’t take Cy parts. The Cy alien race simply wanted to help us get through the Ice Age.
In the social area, numerous bars hovered in midair. People parked their cars, slid down the car roofs, and socialized. I flew outside the city center and stopped at the thin, clear plasma barrier separating the habitat from the outside. The plasma covered the habitat like a dome and regulated natural living conditions, namely the we
ather. Under it, we could cultivate plants, and the plasma warmed the humans under twenty who couldn’t yet take Cy implants. Since cyborgs ate very little, their energy gleaned from their implants, habitat conditions were maintained primarily for children and plants. I still ate, grew a cactus or two in my bedroom, and had once even seen an orange domestic cat, a rare animal since cyborgs considered them unnecessary for survival.
Nano hummed and beeped a warning, telling me we neared the plasma barrier. A screen popped up on the plasma in front of me. It flashed a warning: Habitat temperature = 73˚F / 23˚C Outside Temperature = 39˚F / 4˚C. I reached behind my seat and shrugged on my thermal jacket. Hands on my navigation panel, I tapped, unsure if I wanted to leave. Where the hell did I think I’d go? New York? I hadn’t arranged for transport, and my car couldn’t make it all the way up there. I had no food, no money to bribe the outlaws so they’d let me stay with them.
In the distance, something caught my eye.
A large bird flapped its wings.
I leaned in to see better.
No, not a bird. A dragon, one of the four Creatures of Earth. He lived on an island not too far from the shore, the island created by the massive volcanic eruption and Earth’s instability in the following years. Rumors said humans had sought refuge on his island instead of living in the habitats. They also said that the dragon was actually a man.
I smiled.
I knew what I had to do.
2
Lance
Mandy forgot to prep the fish for dinner. Again. Normally, I wouldn’t care, and I’d gotten used to the old woman forgetting shit all the time, but my friend Nentres had stopped by for a few nights, and I wanted my guest well fed and in a timely manner. Not that he was a guest. He was one of my brothers, a fire dragon. But still, I obsessed over taking good care of people who came into my home. Probably because nobody in my life ever took care of me.
