by Rachel Red
MATED
TO THE
ALPHA DRAGON
A BBW Shifter Romance
RACHEL RED
Copyright ©2014 by Rachel Red
All rights reserved.
About This Book
The request is simple.
One healthy female of child-bearing years must be sacrificed to the dragon shifters in exchange for the protection of the community.
To the surprise of everyone, curvy and courageous Kate Archer volunteers to be that woman. What she does not reveal is that she has a plan up her sleeve for Victor, the Alpha Dragon King himself. Something she feels will free her people of his evil rule.
As Kate prepares herself to leave and become mated to the dragon king she is not sure what to expect. One thing she definitely does not expect is that she will be taken to new heights of sexual ecstasy that she never thought were possible.
As she begins to fall in love with Victor she begins to wonder. Is he as good as he makes himself out to be? Or is she just falling under his evil spell?
Most importantly, does she still have what it takes to execute her plan and free her people?
Table Of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
For the first time in my twenty-four years on earth, I decided to be brave. I decided to take an action that my parents, who had both died years earlier, might have been proud of. I decided to make myself proud.
I raised my hand, fingers trembling. "I'll do it. We don't even need to do the random name drawing. I'll marry one of the shifter dragons. I'll do it."
All hundred-and-some-odd people in the town meeting hall turned in their metal folding chairs to look at me, their faces masks of shock.
My best friend Callie, who sat beside me, hissed, "What are you doing?"
I ignored her. "I'll do it, Mayor Richardson. I'll marry one of the shifter dragons. I'm not afraid." I took a deep breath. "I'm not afraid... about anything that might happen."
Several twenty-something-aged girls sitting near Callie and me exhaled, clearly relieved at my offer.
Peering out at everyone seated in the dimly-lit hall, Mayor Richardson removed his hand from the black hat. It contained slips of paper on which were written the names of all our town's unmarried women between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. "Who said that?"
I cleared my throat, trying to ignore the shocked stares of nearly everyone in the town hall. "It was me. I said it. Kate Archer."
Mayor Richardson looked at me for a long moment, frowning. "Why would you volunteer to do this?"
Several people in the crowd began murmuring, echoing his thoughts. My face became a little warm, but I ignored it and raised my voice so that everyone could hear me clearly.
"I'm volunteering myself because I hate seeing the young women of this town scared every year. I hate seeing the look of terror on the chosen girl's face as her name is called out. I hate seeing that girl crying as she's pulled away from her parents and family to be taken to the mountains. But...." I took a deep breath, surveying the faces of everyone turned in their chairs, looking at me. "But I don't have parents or any family left to be pulled away from. As many of you know, my parents both died several years ago. And right now, I want to do something they might be proud of. I want to sacrifice myself so that nobody has to be scared this year. I want to sacrifice myself so that no parents have to send their daughter off to an unknown fate. I want to be brave. And I want everyone to let me do this."
Everyone began talking at once, most saying things like they certainly would let me do this, and good for me. But Callie hissed near my ear again, "Do you have any idea what you're doing? Nobody has a clue how the Keepers treat their wives!"
The Keepers was what everyone in my town, Haverbrook, a small town a little ways south of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, called the group of shifter dragons who ruled us. And maybe ruled us wasn't exactly the right term; the several thousand of us living in town ruled ourselves. We had our own democratically elected mayor and town officials; we had our own police force; we even had our own laws, court system, and jail. But the Keepers did rule us as far as that they didn't allow anyone into or out of the town, save for the one girl who was to be delivered to them yearly for a bride. They'd erected an electrified fence around Haverbrook to enforce this policy. And this had been just the way things were since the Event, nearly a hundred years earlier.
By the time I'd been born, all of the Event survivors had died from illness or old age, so everything I'd heard about the Event had been second-hand or third-hand accounts. My grandma hadn't liked to talk about the Event much, but she'd told me a brief account that she'd heard from her mother. On what had started out as a typical day in mid-June, our town had been surrounded by a group of fire-breathing dragons that had encircled the town, corralling everyone in. Most everyone in town had thought they were hallucinating or had been drugged. Soon the dragons shape-shifted into men, and they'd told the town officials not much more than everyone in town was now to be locked in. And later, they'd told the town officials that they'd be requiring one young woman to be given as a bride every year.
The town officials had no choice but to comply. And life went on, some things eerily the same as before, some things not. Movies were still shown on the big screens of our town's two-screen movie theater. Televisions and radios still functioned, because electricians and engineers in town had found a way to produce electricity using our town's old mill. But no one was able to ever pick up any television or radio stations. People learned how to farm for food. They learned how to grow cotton to make clothes. Some local businesses remained open. Our small medical clinic and hospital remained open, though with limited supplies. People slowly got used to life after the Event, though people were long mystified as to how actual shape-shifting dragons had come to exist and whether other towns and cities in America had been surrounded similarly. No one even knew if other towns and cities in America even existed anymore. If any other towns and cities in the world even existed anymore.
Every few years, someone, usually a man or teenage boy, would try to escape the confines of Haverbrook, just to see what was out there, but he was always caught soon after clearing the electrified fence that surrounded the entire town. Several of the Keepers patrolled the fence every minute of every day, usually in dragon form.
And that was it. That was pretty much all my grandmother had told me about the Event. Some people in town liked to air their own theories about what had caused it and what had created the Keepers, but most people were sick of discussing it and speculating about everything. Most people had resigned themselves to life post-Event, especially since it was all we'd ever known. We only had dusty books and magazines to tell us what life had been like before.
While everyone in the town hall continued murmuring, Callie kept on worrying at me. "I mean... they might even murder them after getting some use out of them, if you get what I'm trying to say. We have no way of knowing that they don't!"
I stared straight ahead. "I don't care. I'm not afraid."
I realized that maybe that wasn't exactly a thousand per cent true. Maybe I was just a tiny bit afraid. But I was determined that no other girl would be. Not this year.
Mayor Richardson grabbed a microphone and called for order. The hall became quiet once again.
"Ms. Archer is an adult, and I trust she knows her own mind. She has volunteered to be the bride sacrifice this year, and as a
town, we're going to honor her selfless choice. There will be no lottery this year. It's settled. Ms. Archer will be the bride sacrifice, and will be left outside the city gates at dawn tomorrow."
I'd known that Mayor Richardson would accept my choice. He had two unmarried daughters, aged twenty and twenty-one.
Every year, some girls in the twenty to twenty-five-year-old age range would get quickie marriages to men they didn't really love in order to avoid being entered in the lottery. But in post-Event Tennessee, divorces weren't easily obtained, and these girls often had to live with their hasty choices for the rest of their lives.
But with a few hundred girls within the desired age range in town, making the odds good that most girls wouldn't ever be selected to be a sacrificial bride, most girls decided to take their chances with the lottery, not get a quickie marriage, and wait for true love. I'd been one of those girls the past several years. But I'd begun to lose hope in ever finding true love. Everyone always said I was pretty, beautiful even, but not conventionally so. Maybe it was my imagination, but I’d always felt self-conscious about my size, and most of the men in Haverbrook seemed to prefer smaller, less curvy girls. So I didn't care that offering myself as the bride sacrifice would prevent me from ever finding true love. I probably wasn't going to ever find it anyway.
Mayor Richardson soon adjourned the town hall lottery meeting, and everyone rose from their seats and started filing out of the hall. Several people came over to me and said thank you before walking away. One of them was a shy twenty-year-old girl I worked with at the tiny, dusty antique book-filled public library. Scared about the possibility of being selected in the lottery, she'd been crying for pretty much two weeks straight, even while waiting on customers. I knew I'd done the right thing.
But while Callie and I walked from the town hall down main street and up a hill to the small house we shared with one other unmarried girl, Callie asked me repeatedly to rethink my choice.
"It's not too late to back out, Kate. It's really not."
I was pretty sure it was.
"We can just go see Mayor Richardson at his house, tell him you made a mistake, and he'll reschedule another lottery meeting."
"But the Keepers are expecting a bride to be delivered tomorrow morning at dawn. It's supposed to be every May first, without fail, no exceptions. And there's no way Mayor Richardson is going to incur the possible wrath of the Keepers by asking for an extension on that for the first time ever. No. No way."
Although the Keepers had never directly hurt anyone in town, at least as far as anyone knew or remembered, the Keeper guards who patrolled the electrified fence around town looked stern, fierce, and incredibly strong. And in dragon form, they were absolutely terrifying. Nobody wanted to find out if they were capable of hurting and killing.
"And anyway, it doesn't even matter. I volunteered to be the bride sacrifice, and I'm not backing out. I want to prove to myself that I can be brave, just for once in my life, because I never really have been... about anything. Anything significant, that is. I made the right decision, come what may."
"But—"
"But nothing. What do I have that's keeping me here? My part-time job at the library? A family? You and most of the other girls our age have parents and families who would be devastated if they were taken by the Keepers. I don't. So why wouldn't I volunteer myself to do this? Why wouldn't I? Even if I'm eventually killed by the Keepers, at least my life will have served some purpose. I'll have spared one other girl in our town from the same fate, but a worse one, because of the pain her family would experience. So why wouldn't I do this? In fact, I can't believe I didn't do this last year."
Her expression suddenly stony, Callie turned her gaze straight ahead, her focus on the dirt road in front of us. "You're right. Why wouldn't you do this. It's not like you have a best friend who's going to miss you or worry about your safety or anything. It's not like you have a best friend who you've said several times is like a sister to you."
I realized instantly that what she was implying was right. I hadn't considered her feelings. Hadn't considered how much she'd miss me or how much she would hurt.
I brought us both to a stop and looked at her. "I'm so sorry, Cal. I didn't consider how you might feel. I'm really, really sorry. I'm going to miss you like crazy, too. But this is for a good reason. It's so some other girl with parents doesn't have to leave them heartbroken. And, look. Maybe there's some way we can stay in touch or something. Maybe you can send a letter for me with the next bride next year. And maybe there will be some way I can send a letter back."
Callie shrugged, her deep blue eyes troubled, seeming as if she wasn't convinced that I'd still be alive the next year. I wasn't a hundred per cent sure about that, either, but I had to hope.
"Cal? Maybe the shifter dragons aren't as bad as everyone thinks they are. Maybe they don't kill the brides. Maybe they even treat them well. We don't know that they don't. You know?"
Seeming to be contemplating this, she turned her gaze to a restaurant across the dirt road, where a line of happy, laughing families snaked out the door. This wasn't an unusual sight. There were only two restaurants in Haverbrook; this one's specialties were fried chicken, barbequed ribs, and deep-dish peach pie. The other restaurant in town offered lighter, fancier fare, like salads, fig-and-lemon glazed chicken, and pasta tossed with various seasonal vegetables. It was pretty popular for first dates and anniversary dinners, but the chicken-and-ribs place had a line out the door nearly every night of the week.
Callie finally pulled her gaze away from the line and looked at me. "Maybe you're right. Maybe the Keepers do treat their wives well. What do we know? Maybe they do. And I know we've gotta think positive. Because I can tell when your mind's made up for sure, and I know it's made up for sure right now. So I'm not gonna to keep trying to change it."
I nodded. "Thanks."
"But I do think I'm gonna need a slice or three of peach pie to deal with all this. How about you?"
I smiled. "Yeah. Me, too."
We got our pie and some chicken to go and took it back to our house to eat, because once in line at the restaurant, some people had started whispering, looking at me, while others gave me hugs with tears in their eyes. Word had spread. And I couldn't stand being the object of gossip or pity.
Once Callie and I had finished our meal later that evening, I packed two suitcases and set them by the front door.
"Do you think two is too many? Do you think the shifter dragons prefer that girls only bring one? And do you think I should have packed more than two light sweaters? I know the dragons live under the mountains, and I really have no idea what the climate is like under there. Do you?"
Callie surveyed my suitcases, shaking her head. "You're going off to blindly marry a shifter dragon. Honey, I think you have bigger problems than whether or not you packed appropriate clothing."
Suddenly and inexplicably a little misty, I wrapped her in a hug. "I'm really going to miss you. So much. And I'm going to try really, really hard to communicate with you. I promise. Maybe we'll even see each other again some day."
She hugged me back, hard, and when she spoke, her voice was husky. "Let's hope and pray for that. Let's hope and pray for that every day."
I nodded into her shoulder. "We will. And everything will work out. We can't be afraid of the unknown. We've just gotta be brave."
Callie nodded, and I gave her a final squeeze before pulling away.
"Cal, do you think...."
"Think what?"
"If the shifter dragons aren't cruel... if the one I marry isn't cruel... let's say he's even slightly nice... well, do you think there's any chance he might find me attractive?”
Callie snorted, giving me a little smile, even as her eyes still shone with unshed tears. "You're a pretty blonde with curves that don't quit. Of course there's a chance."
"But... you've seen that I'm not just 'curvy', right? You've seen that I'm really... bigger."
She smiled, rol
ling her eyes. "Yes. I've seen that you're a bigger girl. But you're forgetting something. Some men like that. Have you forgotten about George and Rose?"
George was a very attractive man in our town, and Rose was his very curvy wife. And after fifteen years of marriage, they still seemed very much in love. To the point that George could barely even keep his eyes off her in public. Rose always seemed to have a smile on her face.
I shook my head. "No, I didn't forget about George and Rose. But I know that men like George are rare."
"We've gotta keep thinking positive, though. Maybe your new husband will be the shifter dragon version of George."
"Yeah. Although I guess I'll settle for a shifter dragon husband not intent on my immediate murder."
Callie frowned. "No more talk like this. We're thinking positive. Hear me?"
I nodded. "I hear you. And you're right. Only positive thoughts from here on out."
My positive thoughts lasted about exactly twenty minutes, until I went to bed. I tossed and turned for at least an hour, wondering if I'd made the right decision. Wondering if it really was possible that the shifter dragons might treat their wives well. Wondering what the average shifter dragon thought about curvy girls. Eventually, I feel asleep and dreamed about being locked in some sort of stone room or underground vault, trying to unlock a stone door to get out but being unable to.
I awoke over an hour before sunrise the next morning, showered, dressed, and met Callie and our other roommate by the front door a little over a half-hour later. They both gave me great big hugs, sniffling a little and saying how they wished they could accompany me to the city gate, which was only opened once a year for the sacrificial bride. But they couldn't. Family and friends weren't allowed to accompany a bride to the gate anymore because of a few upsetting incidents where mothers and fathers had tried to chase after their daughters at the last second before the gate closed. So now, it was Mayor Richardson's job to accompany sacrificial brides to the gate.
