Captive Dragon
Authors: Ella Drake
Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal Romance, #Shifter Romance, #Dragon, #Dragon Shifter, #Seadragon, #Etrusca, #beta hero, #alpha hero
Captive Dragon:
a Wild Seas Romance
by
Ella Drake
A Paranormal Romance ebook Novella
Love is wild when your mate is a seadragon
Marine biologist Chloe Pearl has had enough of one Reef Bayard, a charismatic animal activist who’s put her job in danger. When she finds him in one of the aquarium’s tanks she knows he’s up to some publicity stunt. She’s determined to uncover his plot, just as soon as she can get that gloriously nude body of his…covered.
Reef isn’t what he appears. He’s a seadragon. And getting netted and on display for Chloe may work in his dreams, but he has to escape the aquarium. Not only doesn’t he want to face the truth, that Chloe must be his mate, but he has work to do protecting other sea creatures.
But the deep doesn’t want to let him go, and a creature from his past is out to get him and Chloe. It’s not the best time to claim a mate, but he has nowhere else to run.
Contents
Etrusca, somewhere beneath the Mediterranean
Out of sight of the great room, eighteen year-old Reef kept his back against the hallway and held his breath to disguise his presence. They expected him to appear soon. Hoping without hope that they’d for some reason change their minds, he peeked around to check.
Blonde hair reaching past her waist—a sign she didn’t need to work for a living—Calliope Kallial stood in her filigreed robe and stared down at the man at her feet. Playing with a brood of toddlers who climbed on his back, pulled his hair, and rolled over his legs, Reef’s father, Thrace, spoke with a low deference. Thrace and all of his children had the same characteristics of black hair—dark as the deepest ocean cave—and blue eyes as clear as the lagoon Calliope kept in the gardens for her young sons to play in. She didn’t allow the males under her protection to swim the vast sea.
“It might go more smoothly if you talked to Reef first.” Thrace glanced quickly at Calliope and back to the one he held sleeping on his chest. The boy, Patroclus, had been sickly since birth. They all kept an extra eye on Patroclus and ran interference when Calliope tried to shuttle him off to one of the servants—so he wouldn’t taint the other boys with is inferior constitution.
“Why should I?” Calliope put her hands on her hips, frowned, and paced between the two nearest marble columns. Reef gulped. Even if he weren’t the one to press her ire, having his name involved with her anger made him want to hunch his shoulders and find the nearest exit. But it’d do no good. One of the she-dragons would find him and haul him back. “You were given to me without our having met. Why should he meet his betrothed?”
“He’s not like me. And I love you.” Thrace said the words with surety, as if it were a basic element of life that he loved the matriarch of the Kallial family.
Calliope sighed and ran a hand through Thrace’s hair. She wouldn’t return Thrace’s sentiment. It wasn’t her way. “You didn’t know me when I claimed you. You’ve proven your own point. He will grow to love his mate.”
“She’s not a good pick for him. She’s domineering. She’ll crush his spirit.”
“I spoiled you all.” Calliope sliced a hand through the air. “He needs his spirit crushed. He has too many ideals and speaks words like
equality
and
fairness
.”
Shaking so hard, Reef struggled to draw in a choppy breath. He tucked his hands under his crossed arms. His fingers clutched the fine weave of his best tunic. The formal betrothal was set to occur before the queen in only a few hours. Anger surged through him. His parents were wrong. He’d met Deena—the woman who’d made the request for his hand after weeks of negotiating his status among her current mates. Calliope only agreed to the match if her son were named first-mate. He’d be one of four, but he’d be first in status. His mouth tasted of rotten seaweed.
If only Reef could forget that ill-fated meeting and pretend none of this had happened.
The Kallial grounds were massive. One of the grandest estates in Etrusca, the palatial mansion provided everything any seadragon could want. Any male of age would love to be mate to the matriarch Calliope, especially as she’d proven a reliable provider and had many offspring—seadragons and she-dragons alike. All from one mate. To be that treasured mate was to be cosseted and given everything his heart desired. Thrace was a giving husband, a wonderful father, and happy to remain within the grounds of the mansion.
But his oldest son was not. Thrace had covered for Reef numerous times when he’d found a way out of the walled grounds and into the caverns that led to the sea. He couldn’t keep himself from seeking the freedom of swimming in the wide, deep waters. No she-dragon guards. No constant tutoring on how to be the best looking, most deferential mate to make any wealthy she-dragon proud.
Not two months past, he’d been caught for the first time. By a she-dragon who grinned in lust and challenge as he’d climbed out of the pool in the caverns that lead to the sea canyons.
That moment kept recurring in his nightmares, and to his shame, had kept him to the house in fear of being caught again.
“Aren’t you a sweet dragon?” Running a hand through her short hair, the sea-dragon who’d caught him had purred deep in her throat. Her height had cast shade on him and he took a step back, lifting his chin to look into her eyes. They were cold, harsh black. “Fancy being a new addition to my stable?”
His body lurched in shock and he froze except to shake his head.
“No,” he whispered.
“What’s that? I couldn’t hear you.” She glanced down his body and her gaze snagged between his legs. Unable to answer, he took a step back, until his heels splashed in the water behind him. “Out here on your own, you must be a bold fellow.”
“I’m not old enough to be chosen,” he insisted. In fact, according to custom, he was. But his father had managed to keep him at home with the excuse that he needed help with the Kallial brood of twenty children—and Calliope wanted more. Reef was truly busy all day, every day, helping to care for his brothers and sisters.
“You’re certainly old enough. Your parents would be proud to give you to me.” Her chest puffed out and his stare dropped to her large breasts pushing out a thin white robe that didn’t hide much beneath. It was short, in the style of the warriors, and only came down to mid-thigh. The robe crossed in front, opening to leave her cleavage nearly baring her entirely. She was a fantastic physical specimen, and the few times he’d allow himself to dream of a woman he might choose for his own, her type of curves had entertained him more than once, but her sneer was off-putting. “I’m General Deena Cicero. Leader of the Etruscan Armies.”
He’d heard of her, through the talk of the servants. She had three mates and only five children. She took out the frustration of that small brood on her three mates.
“As I said, I’m not on the market.” He glanced over her shoulder toward home. It was a mistake. She tensed, ready to head him off. Hoping to fool her, he leaned to one side then lunged in the opposite direction.
Larger, trained in combat, Deena darted forward, grabbed his arm and yanked him back. She wrestled him to the ground—forcing the breath from him—and leaned on his chest, pinning him. She grinned. “Just give me a taste. You’ll be off the market when I take you.”
“No,” he insisted. “It’s not done.”
Seadragons were guarded and protected until time for their betrothal.
Fear sent a hot clenching into his chest. Never had he thought someone would steal him. He’d always known he’d have to marry a woman of his mother’s choosing. But not this. Not this violation.
Her face closed in on him and he sucked in a breath. He turned away, not letting her mouth touch his. She chuckled and licked him. He flinched and she bit his neck. Moaning, her breath too hot, she wiggled, rearranging herself until she put a hand on his naked groin.
Reef panicked and bucked up. The large she-dragon fell to the side and he scrambled to put distance between them. He ran until he stumbled out of the cave. He thought he’d escaped.
Now, trying to shake off that memory, Reef shuddered in revulsion.
Never would he mate that large muscular woman who’d pawed at him like he was a piece of meat. Glancing back at his parents, sending his sorrow to his small brothers for the future they’d have arranged, he decided.
“Goodbye,” he whispered without sound. “Sorry I can’t protect you, Patroclus. I have to leave. Forever.”
Etrusca was a land of myth. Reef loved so much about it. He’d enjoyed the days they’d had school in the libraries, reading Histories and Romances. Etrusca had fallen beneath the sea, away from the eyes of man. Leagues and leagues of land had descended to nestle on the bottom of the Mediterranean. The gods gave them sun. They gave them fields of grain. It was all perfect and created to support the she-dragon’s way of life.
The only way out of this land suspended in magic was through the caverns. And the Kallial matriarch safeguarded a nearly forgotten entrance that saw little use outside a few military training excursions.
Reef ran from the house to the far west corner, through the gardens, and beyond the well-tended woods. A crack in the boundary wall was just large enough for a not-quite fully grown seadragon. He slipped through. He took nothing with him. He made no goodbyes. There were no friends who could help. They were treated as chattel the same as he. There was nothing to do but run, and if he died, so be it.
He’d rather die than live in a harem—that’s what it’d be, as one of four husbands of a general. And she’d collect more, there was no doubt. He wouldn’t have what his father did. There would be no love, no respect. His legs burned as a burst of speed sent him propelling. Fear dogged his backside.
The cavern entrance was covered in moss. Ferns had grown around the path and into the mouth of the cave. He ducked inside and didn’t pause but threw off the tunic as he reached inside himself for the change, for his dragon.
“I knew you’d try to run. I’m going to enjoy spanking that fine ass of yours until you learn to heel.” The greeting came from the corner of his vision with a flash of white robe and the glint of a spearhead.
Reef jerked straight, but in that split second of surprise, he leapt into the water. Deep inside, an instinct for survival told him his reaction had surprised her, but it’d only take seconds for her to recover. That scant time was all he had to flip the tables. Deena had known he’d try to avoid her claim. She’d waited on him.
Beneath the surface, he shifted, seeking his seadragon form. It burst forth and he surged ahead. He’d learned every nook and crevice of this cavern. It’d taken him weeks to work up the nerve to make his way further out. Lunging immediately to the right, he swirled in a U and dove into a deep depression in the floor of the underwater cave. It wasn’t visible from the surface. It should give him a few crucial seconds.
The vibration of a water disturbance rushed over his scales. Deena dove deep, disturbing the waves to pound on the rock shelf. Adrenaline pumped through him. His snout reached forward and he surged. Body undulating, he swam hard and fast. Only a year ago, he’d never been in seadragon form outside the lagoon. Thankful he’d had the time to improve his swimming, he raced for freedom.
A powerful punch slammed into his side. He flew sideways. His head cracked into the stone cave. Blood clouded the water as he blinked. The she-dragon shoved him hard into the rock again, swung her head, and nearly sliced him with her razor sharp plating.
He went limp and curled in on himself to float down into the mud. The barest thump when he hit the ground jarred him and a pain streaked his spine. A bony tail wrapped his middle and tugged. The jerk made his vision blur as a wave of pain washed through his consciousness.
Deena dragged him back the way they’d come. He thrashed once, but the agony blinded him and the hold tightened. A she-dragon was stronger, faster, and so much larger when they were in the water. Deena flicked her tail and he surged out of the water to land on the rock shelf of the cave.
He gasped and in automatic response to the dry air, shifted back to his human form. Already, his wounds had started to heal and his throbbing back eased.
A dripping and nude Deena leaned over him. He slammed his eyes shut to avoid the sight.
“Don’t you dare move,” she growled.
The splash and pat of her feet led away and he did move. Grimacing, he sat and searched for the General. She’d shrugged on her short robe and grabbed his tunic. His feet slid on the stone as she stalked back toward him with a scowl. A clatter brought him around and he looked down.
A spear.
Deena had dropped it when she plunged in after him. He gripped it, and squaring his shoulders, he leapt to his feet and swung it as hard as he could. Contact rocked through his arms and jarred him. He ground his teeth as his back wrenched.
Deena dropped like a stone.
She lay there, still as death, and Reef gasped. He hadn’t meant to completely damage her. Or kill her.
Moving toward her, he reached for her wrist to check her heart beat, but she groaned. He leapt back as she rocked her head back and forth, but her eyes stayed closed. After that movement, she lay still.
“Still alive, then.” Reef glanced toward the mouth of the cave where sunlight winked then toward the dark water that led to freedom.
There was no choice.
He dove in.