Dragon King: A Dark Kings Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (2 page)

Rain was a part of being in Scotland, and she was pushing herself with her fear of storms to be out in it as well. It proved how far she would go to find her soul again. She needed to write, to sink into another world where she could find happiness and a love that lasted forever.

Now she was armed with her laptop and steely determination. She would find her muse again. Just as soon as she found the right place. The scenery along the highway was stunning, but the noise of the passing vehicles would be too much.

Grace needed somewhere off the beaten path. Somewhere she could pretend she was the only person left in the world.

Already three months past due on the book, she felt the pressure to write. Which wasn’t helping her creativity in the least. Her editor had already informed her if she didn’t turn the book in three weeks from now, then the contract would be canceled.

A full book in three weeks. Yeah, Grace was nothing if not optimistic. She was aiming for having at least half done by then. Perhaps her editor would take mercy on her and allow her to finish the book.

She laughed at her optimism. Based on the last e-mail from her editor, it was either the entire book or nothing. Her entire future and career was on the line.

Grace exited off the highway. She had no idea where she was going. She would know the perfect place when she found it. Narrow roads had her driving slower, which allowed her to take in the sights.

A couple of times she pulled off the road and rolled down her window, but the sounds of civilization could still be heard. So she kept driving deeper and deeper into the mountains.

She didn’t worry about getting lost. The GPS on her phone would get her back to the B&B in one piece. No, her entire focus was on finding a place to write.

When drops of rain began to land on the windshield, Grace glanced over at the passenger seat to her rain jacket. All she could hope for was that it remained sprinkling.

If there was a storm, Grace knew her fear would kick in, and she’d be done for. Astraphobia it was called, and it sucked. One wouldn’t think there were many storms any given month, right? Except when it was your fear, and it felt as if they followed you around.

No amount of research she’d done on thunder and lightning storms stopped her fear. Just hearing the rumble of thunder sent chills down to the very marrow of her bones. And lightning? She shuddered just thinking about it.

Some thought such awesome displays of nature were beautiful. All Grace could think about was hiding any time lightning zigzagged through the sky. She was in complete flight mode during those storms.

It’s why she constantly checked the weather. She rarely got caught unawares anymore, unless a storm cropped up at night. But she wasn’t in Los Angeles or Paris right now. She was in Scotland—a country known for its rainfall.

“I’m in a country with daily rainfall while trying to get past my writer’s block because of this need to have my story set in Scotland. Oh, yeah. This was a fabulous idea,” she told herself while glancing at the sky to see how dark the rainclouds were.

Grace didn’t know how long or how far she drove. Taking back roads and roads that weren’t roads at all put her further and further from human contact, just as she wanted.

Until she was driving on grass and came to a dead end at the base of a mountain. Grace was about to turn around when she paused. She stared at the jagged peaks and the grass covering the rocks. After a moment, she turned off her engine and opened her door.

The quiet was broken only by the wind and the sounds of birds. Peace. That’s what the place emanated. She looked down at her mobile and saw that the service wasn’t working.

There was a brief moment of panic when she couldn’t check the weather, but then she looked up at the sky. The sun was peaking out of the clouds.

“Just what I need. No noise from the city or constant interruptions. If I’m going to write, I’ve got to take this chance.”

Grace grabbed her laptop and raincoat and got out of the car. She hiked up the mountain about fifty feet before she found a boulder that made a perfect seat.

For several minutes, she simply sat and looked out over the area. Mountains rose up all around before giving way to breathtaking valleys—or glens, as the Scots called them.

Glens were inspiring places that were as unique as each mountain around them. Many of the glens remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Grace spotted a small waterfall that fell into a stream that wound down the mountain and into a valley. The beauty was unmistakable.

It was the first time in ages that Grace felt released, boundless. Unrestricted.

As she watched the clouds move briskly across the sky, she let her mind drift to her book. Excitement flared when she saw a scene play out in her mind.

For so very long, her characters had refused to talk to her, denied to show her anything of their story. But now they had begun to come alive once more.

Grace opened her laptop with the document waiting. She typed as fast as the words came to her. She didn’t stop to correct spelling, didn’t halt to see if what was happening would work. She simply wrote. Bad pages were easier to fix than blank ones.

The words continued to pour out of her. She became so focused on them that she didn’t know how many pages she had written. She went from one chapter to the next, her smile growing bigger and bigger as everything finally began to come together.

It was the first fat drop of water in the middle of her keyboard that halted her. Her heart seized, panic threatening to take hold. But she was finally writing!

Grace’s hands were shaking as she looked up to see a rather dark cloud settling above her. This couldn’t be happening. Not when she was writing again.

Anger mixed with her dread. She briefly thought of returning to her car. Another drop of rain landed atop her left hand.

The drops were small and coming irregularly. She could retreat as she always did with the rain, or she could try to get past her fear and keep writing.

She stood and looked around, turning in a full circle as she scanned the area for someplace that would shield her from the rain.

“Yes!” Grace said triumphantly as she spotted an overhang of rock from the mountain off to her right. It was just big enough to keep the rain off her.

Grace saved her work and closed her laptop before she began the climb, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might burst from her chest. With every step farther from her car, she knew she was pushing herself all in the name of her story.

The spot wasn’t that much higher, but the climb wasn’t nearly as smooth. It didn’t help that the spattering of rain became a drizzle. She stopped and put on her raincoat, tucking her computer inside to keep it dry.

Several minutes later and out of breath, Grace settled on the grass and opened her computer. Her hands were still shaking, but the rain hadn’t increased. She could do this. She could sit through a rain shower and write. As long as there was no thunder and lightning.

She took a deep breath and opened her mind to her characters once more. Surprisingly, it was just as easy to fall back into the story. Grace could hardly believe her luck. If only she had thought to come to Scotland months ago.

To live so close to the very place she set her book and not visit. It was ridiculous, really.

Grace forgot about the past few months as the words flew from her fingers onto the page. Before she knew it, she had written forty-five pages. In one sitting!

She shivered in the cool air and looked up from the screen to see that the rain was beginning to taper off to almost nothing. The overhang kept the water off her, but the steep decline down to her car looked treacherous.

And it wasn’t as if Grace had worn the best shoes. Her tennis shoes were adequate for a short stroll, but not for a walk down a rain-soaked mountain.

Grace went back to writing, intending to reach the fifty-page mark. She was on a roll, and nothing was going to stop her now.

* * * *

Arian paced the cavern in his mountain in agitation and a wee bit of anxiety. He was shaking off the dragon sleep from the past six hundred years. Not only had it been six centuries since he had been in human form, but there was a war the Dragon Kings were involved in.

Con and the others were waiting for him to join in the war. Every King had been woken to take part. After all the wars they had been involved in, Arian wasn’t happy to be woken to join another.

Because of Ulrik. The banished and disgraced Dragon King hadn’t just made a nuisance of himself, but he somehow managed to get his magic returned.

Which meant the Kings needed to put extra magic into keeping the four silver dragons sleeping undisturbed deep within the mountain. They were Ulrik’s dragons, and he would want to wake them soon.

But it wasn’t just Ulrik that was causing mischief. The Dark Fae were as well. It infuriated Arian that they were once more fighting the Dark. Hadn’t the Fae Wars killed enough Fae and dragons?

Then again, as a Dragon King as old as time itself, they were targets for others who wanted to defeat them.

For Ulrik, he just wanted revenge. Arian hated him for it, but he could understand. Mostly because Arian had briefly joined Ulrik in his quest to rid the realm of humans.

Thoughts of Ulrik were pushed aside as Arian found himself thinking about why he had taken to his mountain. When he came here six hundred years earlier, it was to remain there for many thousands of years.

The Dragon Kings sought their mountains for many reasons. Some were just tired of dealing with mortals, but others had something they wished to forget for a while. Arian was one of the latter.

There were many things he did in his past when the King of Kings, Constantine, asked. Not all of them Arian was proud of. The one that sent him to his mountain still preyed upon him.

He didn’t remember her name, but he remembered her tears. Because of the spell to prevent any of the Dragon Kings from falling in love with mortals, Arian had easily walked away from the female.

Six centuries later, he could still hear her begging him to stay with her, still see the tears coursing down her face. Though he hadn’t felt anything, it bothered him that he had so easily walked away. Because Con had demanded it.

Loyalty—above all else.

The Dragon Kings were his family, and Dreagan his home. There was never any question if he were needed that Arian would do whatever it took to help his brethren in any capacity asked of him.

Arian wasn’t angry at himself for choosing loyalty for Dreagan. It was expected. What he had grown tired of was the monotony of his existence.

He halted, a shiver of awareness overtaking him. With his mountain being one of those closest to the border, Arian was attuned to anything that crossed through their dragon magic barrier.

And something significant just crossed onto Dreagan.

Arian shifted into human form. He flexed his fingers several times before fisting his hand. Then he rotated his shoulders. Next he dropped his chin to his chest and rolled his head from one side to the other, stretching muscles that hadn’t been used in centuries.

He had no clothes, but then again there wasn’t a need for any. Con visited each King who was sleeping every ten years and passed on everything that was going on in the world.

And a lot had happened.

When Darius , another Dragon King, woke him, he informed Arian of the recent happenings regarding the Dark Fae and Ulrik. It could be a Dark Fae out there, or it could be an MI5 agent.

No way was Arian going to let anyone onto Dreagan—mortal or immortal. They were going to die before they could go a step further.

Arian strode from the cavern through the tunnels in his mountain until he came to the entrance. Before him stood a large pool of water that was as still as glass.

Stalactites hung from the ceiling in various sizes. Only a paltry scrap of light penetrated the thick darkness from the cave entrance.

Arian eyed the opening that was large enough for him to fit through in dragon form. He made his way around the body of water, his feet making nary a sound. Then he paused at the cave entrance.

The world was cast in a gray sheen that made him blink several times for his eyes to adjust. A light smattering of rain fell, wetting everything.

He kept to the shadows of the cave and peered outside where he felt the intruder. Arian spotted a bright orange shoe. What had Con called them when he visited a few years ago? Aye. Tennis shoes.

Arian closed his eyes and used his dragon magic to sense who he would be fighting. Instantly he felt the human. His eyes snapped open. It was going to be an easy fight.

Just as he was about to step outside, the rain began to fall harder. He heard a curse from what sounded like a female. Arian frowned. He didn’t like fighting females, but he would do what he had to do.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shitttttttttt,” said the distinctly feminine voice with a slight accent to it he couldn’t quite place.

There was fear in her tone that stopped him. He stilled as she stood and clumsily began to come closer to the entrance, an entrance she wasn’t supposed to be able to see because it was cloaked in dragon magic.

So she had found his cave. It made no difference. She would get no farther than where he was. And…he was going to learn how she was able to see through the magic.

She barreled past him, her back to him as she shook out her blonde locks that stopped at her chin. She raked her hand through her wet hair and sighed loudly, her gaze never leaving the rain.

Visibly shaking, he wasn’t sure if it was due to the cold or if she was filled with terror. By the pallor of her skin, he was beginning to think she was frightened.

After several moments, the female relaxed a fraction. It was almost as if she had been waiting for something.

“It’s just rain. Only rain.” She briefly closed her eyes. “I was making such progress too.” She held up a thin rectangle object and spoke to it. “You better not have gotten wet. I need you.”

Arian raised a brow. Was she daft? Or was it some trick to keep him off guard.