Chapter 4

I jerked away from Tavis hard enough to almost fling myself off the bed. “What did you just say?”

He propped his arms behind his head on the pillow, a satisfied grin on his face, his hair fanning out like blue paint strokes behind him. “I said Your Majesty.”

“I hate to break this to you, but…” I shook my head, still puzzling out if I’d heard him correctly. “I may have just fucked your brains out.”

He laughed, a warm, pleasant sound that sparkled his blue eyes even brighter. “If that’s the case, then it was worth it. I’ve been waiting to serve my queen for almost a hundred years.”

A hundred years? Whoa. I’d heard dragon shifters lived a long time, but I wouldn’t have guessed he was that old.

“What are you talking about?” I rose from the bed, needing to put some distance between me and his rando word salad. I really had fucked his brains out. I almost felt sorry for him.

A clipped knock sounded at the bedroom door, and then in strolled Calhoun and the pale shifter, as casual as could be. I didn’t bother to dive under the covers to hide my nudity since it was a little late for that. They had to have heard everything through the paper-thin walls, but they didn’t appear to be uncomfortable. Neither was I, really, which was completely nuts because they were dragon shifters—strangers, no less—inside my bedroom while I stood naked, still basking from my orgasm with the craziest one of them. What a strange day this was turning out to be.

“He’s talking about the dragon fire you spilled at our house,” the pale shifter said.

“Sorry, who are you?” I asked. “I never did catch your name.”

“Vance.” He stuck his arm out, his light eyes aimed at my face though it felt as though he were memorizing every inch of me.

After a quick hesitation, I shook his hand, and his touch was like a song through my veins. “Yara.” Might as well tell the truth since they already knew more about me than almost everyone.

“I thought your name was Rose Witt,” Tavis deadpanned from the bed. “Next you’re going to tell us that you don’t really work for the Isbon vacuum company.”

I sighed and knelt to retrieve a sock on the floor. “I don’t really work for the Isbon vacuum company.”

The corner of Calhoun’s mouth kicked up as he smoothed back a lock of dark hair. “You had us all fooled, sweetheart. Really.”

“Well, laugh it up.” I marched around the bed to find something suitable to wear from the piles on my floor. Apartment-cleaning hadn’t been a priority for the last month with Asa gone. “Because I walked out of your house with exactly what I wanted.”

“With the help of dragon fire,” Vance said. “Did you know it came from royalty?”

I shook my head and bent to retrieve a pair of jeans. Where had my panties gone? “Usually spilling something all over myself just makes me a basic jackass. Not royalty. So why did Tavis call me ‘Your Majesty’?”

“Your particular dragon fire was taken from the most powerful dragon queen one hundred years ago and bottled in case she ever met her demise.” Vance paced toward the pocket watch on the dresser and picked it up, swinging it like a pendulum meant to hypnotize me, maybe into being with them.

But I already kind of was hypnotized with the three of them—dragon shifters or not—so the joke was on him. “I’m guessing she did meet her demise?”

“In a battle that caused a war between dragon shifters so a new queen could be chosen.” He quirked his blond eyebrows and then pocketed the watch.

I shrugged since it’d already served its purpose.

“Since then,” he continued, “there’s been a bid every month at the full-moon ritual for the dragon goddess, Léas, to choose another queen. More rituals, more sacrifices, more violence and blood, and still Léas hasn’t chosen another.”

“Okay, but…” My gaze caught on the intricately folded petals of a bouquet of paper flowers on the nightstand Asa had made when he was five and a shirt that hung above them from a lampshade. “This dragon goddess didn’t choose me either. You know that, right? I’m just a human thief who’s trying to find her brother before he dies in a ritual that he should never be a part of. That’s it.”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Calhoun crossed toward me and handed me an envelope. “I found this on your coffee table.”

I took it and immediately recognized the heavy weight of it, the slight indentations on the paper, the fancy lettering of my brother’s name on the front. This was why Asa had gone outside the day after last month’s full-moon ritual, the day when everyone locked themselves inside because the dragon shifters’ surge of power from the night before spiraled them out of control—his acceptance letter from the Mechanical Achievement Center for Kids. It had lay scattered with the other mail on the sidewalk, along with one of his shoes, where he’d been snatched up.

Mechanical Achievement Center for Kids. MACK. Oh my god. I snapped my gaze to Calhoun’s, anchoring myself into his crafty dark depths because I suddenly felt like my life was being orchestrated by someone other than me. Not cool. Not cool at all.

“What does this mean?” I demanded.

“We got a similar message, but not by mail,” Calhoun said, his brown eyes softening as if he understood everything I was thinking. “The queen used to have a harem of dragons, for protection, for company, for all of her most basic needs. Her harem included our fathers.”

“Which makes you the queen’s sons?” I asked.

“That queen, yes,” Vance said, rubbing the stubble on his chin.

Come to think of it, they did have the same jawline, cheekbones, and shape to their eyes and lips, but their hair and eye colors were all different.

“Our bloodline has always been part of the queen’s harem, whoever that queen happened to be,” Vance continued. “We’re trained in battle, lovemaking, the arts, and history to please our queen. Now we just need Léas to choose one.”

“Then why hasn’t she?” I asked, taking a seat next to Tavis on the bed to throw on my jeans. “Why has it taken her a hundred years?”

Vance sat on the edge of the bed and reached between his legs for my wadded up glittery thong on the floor. A smile quirked his lips as he held it out, and I snatched it away and put it on, too caught up in my questions to feel embarrassed.

“We went to a seer about twenty-five years ago,” Vance said. “She said our mother’s dragon fire would find us and bring along our new queen. The seer’s vision was blurry, but she said the dragon fire would come by the name of Mack on a certain day in the future.”

“Today, if that wasn’t obvious,” Tavis murmured, palming my hip. “Right in the middle of dragon mating season.”

I snapped my gaze to his, and he nodded as he sat up, and then pressed a kiss to my shoulder. My heartbeat gunned at his touch, stirring my blood faster.

“The dragon fire is why you feel that hunger, that unrelenting need,” he said between kisses on my skin. “We feel it too.”

The urge to throw him back on the bed and ride him while the others joined in ignited through my body. He lifted his head from my shoulder as if sensing my thoughts, his blue eyes hooded with lust. The sheets pooled around his middle, and I knew exactly what I would find underneath. The air crackled with intensity, and two low growls that sounded like a promise hummed behind me.

But damn it, no! I had to leave here. The full-moon ritual was tonight, and Evenza was still five hundred miles away.

I shot up from the bed, yanking my jeans halfway up my thighs, to put distance between me and the three of them. “But I’m not a queen. I’m not a dragon shifter either.”

“Yet,” Tavis said gently behind me.

I whirled. “What?”

Vance picked at a loose fiber on my black-and-white-striped comforter. “The queen, our mother, wasn’t born a dragon. She was just like you, human, until our goddess Léas chose her to be queen.”

“So, what are you saying?” I asked, jamming my feet into my boots while zipping my jeans. “That I’m going to sprout some wings any second? Breathe fire down on all my enemies?” Although that would come in handy for those who had taken Asa…

Vance rose from the bed, tall and imposing and beautiful. “I think your brother’s MACK letter, your Isbon Mack vacuum—yeah, we saw the charred remains—and our seer’s vision were all Léas’s way of drawing you to your harem and then ensuring that you’re there for tonight’s full-moon ritual.”

“And then what?” I asked, shrugging as I knelt for my backpack. “Besides my rescuing Asa?”

“Léas will choose you to be queen,” Calhoun said quietly from his stance by the door.

Queen of the barbaric stovetops. Caught in a war between them that had killed the last queen so a new one could rise up. Well, sign me up for that nonsense because it sounded like a blast.

That wasn’t what I thought my place in this world would be. My place was protecting Asa. Always. And look how good I was at that? We lived in an apartment that was barely standing upright, had so little food some days that, even with thieving, I’d considered selling my body like the girls on the first floor. I wasn’t so sure I could ever do that, yet just minutes ago, I’d fucked a dragon shifter, who I was supposed to hate.

A hopeless feeling swelled in my chest, triggering a sting at the backs of my eyes.

“What if I refuse to be queen?” I asked, faking fascination with my steel-toed boots rather than show them my tears.

“Then you refuse Léas’s power she would bestow upon you,” Vance said.

Tavis folded back the sheets and stood, completely naked and not giving a flying fuck. “It’s a lot of power, Yara.”

“I don’t want power. I want my brother back.”

Calhoun jutted his chin to stare at me down his perfectly symmetrical nose. “Think about this for a second. How did you think you were going to sneak into the dragon shifter stronghold tonight and steal away your brother? No offense, but you’re a human. Did you honestly think you, all by yourself, could’ve gotten in there and successfully gone up against a legion of dragons?”

Well, he’d found me out, the gorgeous bastard. I had no plan, wouldn’t until I staked the place out. Still, his lack of faith in me was disheartening. “I got into your house just fine.”

“Only because we let you in, sweetheart,” he said.

Tavis pulled on his pineapple T-shirt, tousling his blue hair, and gazed at me with a sly grin on his face. “You were too hot to turn away. Literally melting.”

Calhoun slid him an annoyed look. “It’s not just that you’re hot. It’s mating season for dragon shifters, and you were the first person who wasn’t wearing a bathrobe, who didn’t smell like piss, and who wasn’t asking if we’d seen a pussy running around the neighborhood.”

I shook my head and snorted as I hiked my backpack onto my shoulders.

Tavis’s grin grew wider. “In other words, we thought you were hot.”

“I feel so much better knowing that you judged my character on how hot I am and that I don’t smell like cat pee,” I said on my way out the bedroom door. “Really. I’m flattered.”

“We can tell that by your tone,” Calhoun said, following after me. “We speak fluent sarcasm.”

“Okay, well, do you speak car theft? Because I’m going to need one. The last time I tried, I beat the cops in a footrace, and I don’t have time to do that again.” I beelined into the kitchen and grabbed the few refrigerated vials Bad Mama January had given me and an almost empty jar of peanut butter, pretty much the only food I had here. I also snatched up a few rocks Asa had painted because… Well, I just needed them. With no idea what exactly I would be dealing with tonight, I would take everything plus the kitchen sink.

Vance leaned against the countertop, the sunlight angling in through the window giving his white-blond hair a halo. He didn’t seem to mind the food wrappers, empty cans and bottles, and Asa’s art supplies crowding much of the kitchen. “No, but we do speak fluent wants and needs. You were so closed off at our house, so secretive, that Calhoun and Tavis turned on every one of their charms, but you resisted. You wanted something from us, and it had nothing to do with selling us an Isbon Mack vacuum.”

“Yeah, I know this already,” I said, brushing past him into the living room where Calhoun and Tavis waited, watching me. “I took what I needed, and now you have it back.”

Calhoun grazed my arm as I turned to the front door, a fleeting touch that stole my breath. “Except you’ll want to have even more from us if you’re going to survive the dragon fire you spilled. You have to sleep with all of the royal harem to survive the dragon fire since the dragon it belonged to was right in the middle of mating season.”

The purr in his voice wound a hot, torturous current deep inside me, triggering my fingers to scratch involuntarily at my clothes to tear them off. But I didn’t. This was getting old as shit. I had to save Asa and stop thinking about fucking all the time. I crossed toward the door.

Vance rubbed his chin, a slight smile on his face. “We’re coming with you.”

I froze, my hand halfway to the doorknob, and turned. “Huh?”

Vance slid in next to me, his hard body pressed to my side, his breath shivering a long path up my neck, and something about the way he looked at me made me think he’d lost his halo between the kitchen and here. “If you are our queen, then as Her Majesty’s harem, we go with you for protection.”

“What about your protection?” I asked. “I was by far the nicest visitor at your house today. Who were the others?”

A grim expression tightened his features, and he pulled back some. “That seer I told you about? She wasn’t the only one who saw tonight’s full-moon ritual’s importance all those years ago. All the other dragon shifters know who we are, know who our mother was, and they don’t want us to be the royal harem anymore. Since the harem and queen are bonded for life, you take out the harem, you take out the—”

“Queen.” I nodded.

Calhoun pulled down the sleeves of his black Henley and shook the hair out of his face when he glanced up at me. “Pretty sure the cat shifter next door had something to do with giving away our location.”

“Maybe because I rubbed her fur the wrong way,” I muttered.

Tavis elbowed Calhoun in the ribs. “I knew she was a bad pussy.”

“No.” Calhoun crossed his arms and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Just no.”

“What if I’m not your queen?” I asked, addressing the three of them. “You guys seem pretty confident about what’s going to happen tonight, but what if you’re wrong about your goddess choosing me as the new dragon shifter queen?”

Tavis grimaced and shook his head. “We would never admit to being wrong. Not before the fact. These two wouldn’t anyway.”

Vance dipped his head so I could read the truth in his sincere, hypnotically beautiful eyes. “Listen, Yara, you’re going to the full-moon ritual anyway, and you need the three of us to come along to put out the dragon fire inside of you, as only the harem can do for their queen.”

Fair point. Queen or not, I was going. The three of them had given me no reason not to trust them. Even at their house, they hadn’t tried to hurt me even though I’d stolen from them. They’d protected me from the other dragons and had saved me from passing out due to the overflow of sexual hormones from the dragon fire. Besides, I’d already trusted Tavis between my legs, so it was a little late to turn back now.

With them by my side, three powerful dragon shifters, my chances of rescuing Asa topped the chart of real possibilities. Before, when it had been only me, it had bottomed out next to zero.

Besides, I wanted to live, and at least according to them, the only way not to die from dragon fire was to have sex with each of them.

I leveled my gaze at the three shifters standing in my dumpster of a living room like some brutal reminder that they didn’t fit into my life. Unless I made room for them. With the heat beginning to stir once again in my lower belly, I didn’t have much of a choice on a physical level. But it was possible it went deeper than that. They were likable, and I didn’t like anyone. Except Asa.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s go kick a little dragon ass, shall we?”