Page 67 of Dragon Kissed

“Yes.” A cold thread of something moved down her spine, the sense of standing at the edge of a truth too large to see all at once.

“What did she teach you?”

“Russian. Stories. Old songs.”

“Which songs?” Nica looked at Demetri. His attention had sharpened to a point, and through the bond she felt the first bright edge of a suspicion he didn’t dare shape into words. She sang the first line of the lullaby Baba had used during storms, the one she’d hummed under her breath a thousand times without thinking — and the Elder Drakovich closed his eyes. A sound left him. Pain. Recognition. When he opened them, ruby light had entered their pale blue depths.

He went to a cabinet and withdrew a small velvet box. Inside lay an enameled pendant — Fabergé-era workmanship, deep blue over silver, and at the center a coiled dragon surrounding a single white flower. The Drakovich sigil. Nica’s eye knew the workshop before her heart caught up: the same hand, the same cobalt, as the pendant that hung at her own throat. “This belonged to Anastasia.”

Nica stared at it. “I don’t understand.”

“There were two pendants, identically made. My Anastasia loved very few people. Yelena Sokolov was one of them. They were inseparable. Lifelong friends. My daughter was never able to bear children. I think she hoped?—”

The elder lifted the pendant and placed it in Nica’s palm, closing her fingers around it exactly as Baba Yelena had closed her fingers around a small enamel oval one last Christmas, and said the words in old formal Russian. “The serpent’s daughter has chosen.”

The dragon inside Demetri went completely still.Was it possible?Then the beast snorted, as if Demetri were the biggest idiot on the planet for even asking.If Nica was the chosen, if not biological, daughter of Anastasia, that explains everything. The way the book responded to her. The pendant. Her grandmother teaching her the old language and the old stories, keeping thetongue alive in a child in a foreign city. Our mate is royal by decree. A princess.Mine, the dragon reminded him.

Ours, he agreed, and under the possessiveness ran something quieter and larger: she had never been as alone as she’d believed. She had come from somewhere. She had been carried, all along, by a line of women guarding a language and a name across a century of exile, so that one day a girl raised in foster homes could read a stolen book aloud and call her whole family home without knowing she was doing it.

Nica’s heartbeat quickened; Demetri felt it through the bond, felt her mind reaching for the shape of it. She glanced between him and the old man. “What does that mean? What serpent?”

The elder did not answer right away. His gaze moved to the silver mate mark visible above the back of her dress, then to Demetri, and something like wonder softened his severe face. “You have brought home more than was stolen,” he said. To Nica he bowed — an ancient dragon, bowing — and she felt the whole strange weight of her life rearrange around the gesture. “You are of her chosen blood. Her legacy. I don’t know how it’s possible, but you are a Drakovich. You will always have a home here. Many of our people will want to meet you. You are, by decree, of royal line.”

Nica’s mouth opened. Closed. All her life she had believed that no one would notice if she vanished, that she came from nothing and belonged to no one — and here stood a house full people waiting to claim her. Demetri took advantage of her speechlessness, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her until she melted against him, until the pendant in her fist and the mark on her back and the man at her mouth all became one single certainty. His mate. His wife, soon. His everything. And through the bond, beneath his joy, she felt the truest thing he had:You were never alone. You only had to be caught.

Outside, snow began to fall over St.Petersburg.

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Art dealer Sasha Montgomery is both nervous and thrilled to be invited to the Caldorian Earth Base for her best friend’s wedding to an alien warrior. One, she’s never seen an alien up close, and two, she made a promise to bethere, no matter how much the idea of being surrounded by hundreds of huge alien warriors frightens her.

Sasha thinks she’s got it all under control, until Dagan, the groom’s best friend, crashes the wedding. He’s smoking hot—way too hot to be an alien—and determined to seduce her.

Sasha gives in to passion with unexpected consequences. Ancient power rises in response to their new-found bond, and the once innocent Sasha discovers that Dagan has been keeping secrets. He’s not just another warrior, he’s a king, and the power rising between them hasn’t been seen in a millennium. Sasha must learn to control the force clawing its way through her body…or destroy them all.

CHAPTER 1

Sunday 10:00 p.m.

Dagan walked briskly downthe long, cold tunnel, hidden far beneath the banquet hall on the Caldorian Earth base. He looked over his shoulder and saw rivers of fluorescent minerals as far back as the eye could see and twenty of his most elite warriors. Lumerian Knights.They’ll go where others wouldn’t dare, which is why I left all my regular personal guard at home. The other sixty are cloaked and follow behind. Silent. Unseen. Deadly.It’s time we find out what the Council is really doing here. Cam’s binding ceremony couldn’t have come at a better time.

Dagan’s breath crystallized when he exhaled as the temperature was several degrees lower in the tunnel than the frigid winter air hundreds of meters above. He stayed warm only thanks to his black nanotech uniform; the thin silky metamaterial programmed to regulate his body temperature at all times. He should have been trying to figure out what the Council wanted with Earth, but his mind refused to stay focused, settling instead on the woman he’d seen outside less than a standard Earth hour earlier.Who was she?

He could’ve taken the shuttle directly from his ship, but his Knights wanted to investigate the tunnels. To be prepared. Alert. Ready. He planned to surprise his best friend and groom, Cam, in a large waiting room connected to the banquet area set aside for Cam’s binding ceremony to a human woman.

“Falden.” Dagan spoke quietly, knowing the leader of his Knights would hear him through the sensitive communicator.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Falden’s disembodied voice came across clearly in Dagan’s earpiece.

“Will your teams be ready to enter with us when Cam opens the door? I trust he’s still expecting someone else?”

“Cam thinks your sister is coming in your place because you had to stay on Caldor to settle a dispute between Sectors. My team is still at the port. Something is off here.” Falden’s voice was a low growl in Dagan’s ear. “Vander’s team split and half are already ahead of you, ready to enter the usual way.”

“Damn. That never gets old.” Dagan squinted, trying to make out the cloaked guards ahead, even though he knew it would be impossible to see them.

“Half-time check-ins. Understood. Try to enjoy the celebrations. We’ll take care of the rest,” agreed Falden drolly. “It’s why you brought us instead of your other guards, remember?”

Dagan’s only response was a low grunt of acknowledgement. Noises echoed down the long tunnel, forcing Dagan to refocus on his surroundings. His warriors silently closed ranks around him. They were getting close to the entrance. His best friend should be waiting on the other side, and Dagan would have preferred going alone, leaving his warriors free to do what they did best. Infiltrate. Gather intelligence. Destroy the enemy. Dagan was more than capable of taking care of himself, and was, in fact, nearly unbeatable by Caldorian standards, but his warriors never took chances with his safety.