by Amelia Jade
Dragon Blood
Cobalt Dragons Book 1
By Amelia Jade
Dragon Blood
Copyright © 2018 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: July 2018
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale 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.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Author’s Note
Hold on!
You should know that while this series can be read independently, it is part of a large world that was started with the Crimson Dragons series. You can continue through, as each book contains a full story arc with happy endings for the characters, but to get the full experience of the Outsiders Universe, you should really start at the beginning with Dragon Temptation.
I hope you enjoy!
- Amelia
Crimson Dragons
Dragon Temptation
Dragon Seduction
Dragon Devotion
Onyx Dragons
Dragon Fixation
Dragon Obsession
Dragon Addiction
Ice Dragons
Dragon Eruption
Dragon Redemption
Dragon Rebellion
Emerald Dragons
Dragon Passion
Dragon Desire
Dragon Craving
Cobalt Dragons
Dragon Blood
Dragon Blood
Chapter One
Aric
He looked down the sheer cliff face at the dozen-man team trying to catch him.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” he taunted, his powerful voice projecting down the smooth veiny rock and battering the men on their lines. The verbal barrage was easier for them to shrug off than the wind shear that whipped along the mountain edge, spinning anyone not secured around on their line until the rope groaned and their stomachs rumbled.
“That’s not fair,” the team leader called back. “You don’t play by the same rules.”
“Neither does your enemy,” he boomed back. “You’d do well to remember that.”
The leader, clad in a dark brown and tan outfit with mottled greens and grays across it, said something unprintable and stuck up a middle finger. Aric laughed in return. It was true, he thought; he didn’t play fair. Why should he though? He was a dragon. It was his job, and the job of all the dragons, to ensure that these men were the best of the best.
Their tiny mountain homeland was known across the world for its neutrality, but that didn’t mean a thing if they couldn’t actually protect it. Aric wasn’t worried about foreign world powers; they were surrounded on all sides by allies nowadays. It was the types from his world that were of biggest concern.
Other shifters were constantly coming after them. The dragon enclave had built one of the biggest and most secure banking systems the world had ever seen. Powerful people from all nations deposited money in their vaults, because they didn’t cave to outside powers. Movies had been made about it.
What nobody knew was that he and his kind were responsible for creating it. They’d cultivated the country as well, helping it from the shadows to create the exact utopia they needed to live in peace.
The other races, those more able to live among humans hated them for that, and so they often came across the borders looking to exploit any weakness they had. It was this reason he and an elite Guard team were on the mountainside in the midst of a powerful storm. To beat someone with natural gifts that the humans couldn’t hope to match, they had to form a team so tight-knit and highly trained they could take on someone much more powerful than themselves.
It was his job to help mold them into that team. Which is why he was currently hanging over the edge of nothingness in the middle of a fierce storm, his feet flat against the rock at his back. His arms stuck out behind him and into the rock itself. He tried not to call upon his dragon unless absolutely necessary, even with the tiniest of uses such as this. But with the dragon claws jammed into the rock, it allowed him to look down upon the humans with a casual ease that served to infuriate them even more.
Another gust of wind tore at the team as dark clouds swirled overhead like watchful giants. Aric watched carefully. He wasn’t there just to taunt them. He had another job as well. The distinctive crack of rock splitting abruptly reached his ears a split second before lightning erupted in the sky. A fresh cascade of tiny debris rained down the cliffside.
Don’t test me, he growled silently at the storm, feeling his dragon answering the challenge from nature. Now was not the time though, and he firmly exerted control over the beast. He had other priorities. It wasn’t raining yet, but if it did, things were going to get dangerous. More dangerous, he corrected.
Below him he watched as one of the team began to panic, realizing it was his piton giving way under the stress of a strong gust of wind.
“Stay calm!” the team leader shouted immediately, before beginning to issue other orders.
The team immediately began unfold, members moving sideways as they gave themselves a secondary set of anchors. Aric glanced back and forth between them and the member in distress. The team was reacting smoothly, which is precisely what he wanted to see. They had trained for this. They knew what to do.
Without warning the piton gave way and the member began to fall. The weight was immediately taken up by the other members via their safety ropes, but that still left him dangling twenty feet below the rest of the team. The wind picked up and he began to spin wildly. Aric watched as he smashed into the cliff face over and over again.
Johan, the team leader immediately began to bark more commands. They didn’t have much time. The rope was rubbing against the section of broken rock, and he could see it beginning to fray. Aric leaned out further. It was going to be tight. Time was short. They needed to act.
Do it, he thought. Now! Do it now!
They were moving too slow. He slid one of his hands out from the rock, the dragon claw at the end morphing back into his real hand. He might have to act.
“Toss him the spare line!” Johan barked at the nearest Guardsman.
The man, a junior member of the team and new, missed on his first toss.
“Hurry up!” Aric barked, trying to urge them onward.
Rope frayed with a horrified swiftness.
“ARIC!” Johan bellowed.
He was already moving. The other claw slid free of the wall and Aric dove from his perch as the rope parted and the nearly limp form plummeted downward. Arms behind him, legs together, he sliced through the air toward the ground thousands of feet below.
The Guardsman he was c
hasing had enough of his wits left about him to spread his arms and legs wide to slow his descent, but that wouldn’t matter if the wind caught him and slammed him into the cliff. Again. Aric had to get to him first. It was too close for a parachute—the material would catch on the cliff and kill the human. The only way he survived was if Aric reached him in time.
“Help me!”
“Stay calm,” he rumbled, his voice projecting with the aide of his dragon power, fighting against the wind as he closed the distance.
Ten feet.
“Flip over!” he commanded. “You’ll need to grab onto me.”
After a nervous moment the military man did as he commanded.
Five feet.
Three.
“NOW!”
The Guardsman latched onto him with all four limbs around his torso. At the same time giant wings of cobalt blue erupted from Aric’s back, spreading wide. He angled them downward at first, only slowly biting into the wind to carry them away from the cliff before he angled them flat, turning their free fall into a slow-spiraling descent with less than a hundred feet to go.
“Thank you,” the Guardsman said, but Aric ignored him.
He was too busy fighting for control.
They landed amongst the rocky meadow below, the Guardsman dropping off him with five feet still to go.
Aric landed and pulled the wings tight around him as the unlucky human came over to thank him again.
“Stay away from me!” he snarled, pounding one fist into the ground so hard it drew blood. “Get back!”
His head snapped back and he screamed up into the sky. The storm answered his call, lightning reaching down from the heavens to strike the ground within eyesight. The crack of thunder slammed into both him and the soldier, sending the latter to his knees with its force.
Energy surged through him as his dragon tried to fight its way free. The wings flapped and bounced in agitation, stretching out wide as everything went taut. He knew that the safety of the humans depended on him maintaining control. His dragon was a bit of a xenophobe.
“Aric, are you—”
“Stay back.” His voice was deeper than normal, with a more melodic fluidity to it that made it very clear it didn’t belong to a human.
The soldier took one last look at him and wisely fled the area at last. One less distraction for him to worry about. He needed total silence just then. Complete concentration had to be his. Aric closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he wrestled with the other entity that lived inside him, trying to prove who was the stronger. It was a fight he’d been waging since puberty, but in recent years it had gotten worse. Much worse.
Above him the storm struck again, and his dragon lashed out. Dammit, he needed peace and quiet while he fought this mental war. He was so close. Almost there, if only the storm would just hold off he could—
In his pocket the familiar theme song to an animated movie about an ice queen started to ring.
“Just let it go,” he muttered, trying to drown out the noise.
The ringing didn’t stop. Angrily he jammed a hand into his pocket to grab the device, taking that moment to compose himself.
“This is Aric,” he said in a pleasant conversational voice that sounded nothing like him.
The words on the other end of the phone served to surprise both him and his dragon enough that he easily wrested control away from the raging beast.
“You’re serious?”
***
He sat behind his desk, tapping the manila envelope in his hand that contained the instructions for his next job.
The phone call had been brief, but to the point. It left him excited but also a little nervous about the entire thing. There was a lot riding on his shoulders to get the deal done with their new...friends? Cousins? He really wasn’t sure how to describe the situation overseas, with dragons awakened from their sleep and brought back to life. It was…unusual.
Soon enough he’d get to form his own opinion on the matter though, since he was heading to the United States. Him and one other. A two-person team, and it was completely up to him to decide who he would take.
There were plenty of options that could help him close a deal like this, people with the knowledge, the experience, and the negotiating skill. He could think of half a dozen without too much trouble. The bank employed a great deal of highly talented people, but in his mind there was only one.
Aric didn’t want any stuffy suits along. This was the USA! Land of fame, excess, and fun. He wanted to have a hell of a time while there, and not have fingers shaken at him for going out every night and overdoing it. It had been ages—literally—since he’d last had a good vacation, and he didn’t want to ruin it.
The trouble wasn’t in choosing. He knew who he was going to bring. They had some experience, and had helped him close his last big deal. The problem was what had happened after that, and how that was likely to factor in to the decision to join him or not.
“I guess I’ll just have to be extra convincing.”
There was no need to delay anymore. Aric’s decision had been made; now all that was left was for him to inform the other party.
He stabbed the button on his huge, expensive wooden desk, battering it repeatedly until his secretary answered. “Janice, please have Kaitlyn Harver come to my office. Now.”
Things were about to get interesting.
Chapter Two
Kaitlyn
The phone on her desk cried shrilly.
She jumped, her right hand launching the pen she’d been twirling into the air until it clattered on the ground. Kaitlyn forced herself to swallow the sudden excess saliva in her mouth before she eyed the phone as it rang again.
A nervous flutter of her arms only served as a reminder of how wet her armpits were, the stress sweat soaking through both layers she was wearing. Stuffing toilet paper in them hadn’t helped either, and only served to create a disgusting mess she’d removed twenty minutes later.
It was a miracle that she was still hydrated, though drinking water was the one thing she’d managed to do during the day. It certainly wasn’t work. Her computer was on and she was seated in front of the screen, but that was about as far as it went. She hadn’t even typed in her password.
The phone shrieked again. Why were the rings such harsh tones? Whoever had come up with the standard telephone ring deserved a lot more hate than they were getting. Cell phones with programmable tones were the best. Even the default ringtone on modern versions was less painful on the ears.
Snatching it off the receiver before it could blare its tune yet again she spoke slowly, trying to modulate her voice so she didn’t sound stressed. “Kaitlyn Harver.”
“Kaitlyn, it’s Janice.”
Janice was Aric’s secretary. Oh no. Had he found out? Did he know? She bit her lip, terrified that somehow she’d done something to give it away. But what? How could he know? It wasn’t possible. This had to be something else.
“Hello, Janice. What can I do for you?”
“Aric wants you in his office. Now.”
The line went dead. Kaitlyn hissed at it. Janice was a bitch. Everyone knew that, except for Aric it seemed. He was oblivious to her and how she treated everyone else as if they were below her, just because she worked for Aric. Every workplace had drama though, even this one.
Standing up, she felt suddenly nauseous. The bathroom was calling, and Aric was just going to have to wait. Kaitlyn tried not to dart across the space between her office and the door, but it was tough as her stomach rebelled.
It was only a few weeks in. How was this possible? It had to be unrelated to her newfound status, didn’t it? There was just so much she didn’t know. Panic rose up and she barely got the door closed behind her in time.
This was bad. So, so bad.
She exited the washroom a few minutes later, stopping by a coworker’s desk for a piece of gum before heading down the hallway that led to Aric’s office. Janice didn’t say a word as she approached, bl
atantly ignoring her.
Fine. Kaitlyn did the same thing and just waltzed on past the snooty secretary. Hopefully Aric was in the middle of something and would be pissed that Kaitlyn wasn’t stopped.
As her fingers closed around the knob, panic set in and she struggled to force it open. There was no turning back now. She had to go in to find out what it was he wanted.
She’d not seen him since the night it had happened, going to great lengths to avoid him. The embarrassment of her actions burned fresh even now, three weeks later. One stupid decision had nearly ruined her career, and now it had changed her life dramatically. It would never be the same.
Kaitlyn knew she didn’t have to keep the child. There were plenty of services that could help her if she chose to go that route, but from the very moment her suspicious mind had told her to pee on a stick, she’d known neither were an option for her. This was going to be her child, and she was going to raise it. End of story. Anyone who told her otherwise, up to and including Aric, could go fu—
“Come in.”
Looking down, she realized her hand was still gripping the door. It must have been shaking so bad he thought she was knocking. Fresh heat infused her cheeks as she stepped into his office.
Seeing him there, sitting tall and proper at his desk, brown hair perfectly styled in modern fashion—short on the sides and pushed off to one side with product to keep it in place—she was struck by a sudden onslaught of guilt. She’d known for a full twelve hours now and hadn’t told Aric about it. He deserved to know. After all, it was half his fault.
She couldn’t tell him though. Didn’t want to tell him. It was the right thing to do, but the complications of informing her boss that she was having his child were more than she was prepared to handle. Plus, he was such an absentee boss that she figured he would just be the same as a father. Kaitlyn couldn’t have that sort of figure be a constant in her child’s life.
Her child’s life.
