Dragon Lords Books 1 - 4 Box Set: Anniversary Edition (23 page)

“Loopholes?” Gus asked, understanding dawning in his voice. “You did get married, didn’t you? I was just joking about that. I never thought I would see the day you’d be leaving me, Rigan. Makes a man almost want to cry,” Gus said gruffly. He coughed, refusing to get too much more emotional. “I can tear up your news contract if that’s what you’re asking me. No need for the lawyers. You just tell me you’re happy and I’ll mail the shreds to you myself.” Another throat clearing. “That is after you get me that piece on those barbaric princes. I do have a slot to fill.”

“Damn it, Gus. Put your damned drink down and listen to me. The Galaxy Bride uploads are inaccurate. They’re tricking…they’re not right. It’s like someone just filled in the blanks with guesses, figuring that the women coming here would be too desperate or too stupid to do anything about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got married by accident. Galaxy Brides has the uploads all wrong, almost all the tiny details are inaccurate and quite a few of the really important ones.” Morrigan refused to tell him she didn’t actually use the ceremony uploads on her way down. She just assumed they were as poorly done as the rest.

“Do they now,” Gus mused. “This could be interesting. What angle are you going for with it? Poor star reporter gets trapped by primitives—an inside look into marriage by force? Or the evil greed behind intergalactic marriages—what corporations will do to make a few space credits?”

“Slow your wheels,” she broke in. It was good to hear his voice, even if he was frustrating.

“So you’re not married?”

“Only technically by their laws. That is why I need you to get my contract. Use Harcy. He’s fast at retrieval. Tell him I’ll clear his Quazer poker debt if he does this for me.”

“So, you’re not leaving the paper?”

“No,” Morrigan said, trying her best to keep the sadness out of her voice. “I am not leaving the chip.”

“I knew it,” Gus exclaimed. “I knew my top girl would never settle down. That is what makes you the best, Rigan. I’d kiss you if you were here. Now, about those princes—”

“I’ll get you a story, Gus. You just do your job and get me the hell off this forsaken planet of barbarians.”

“Will do, girl, will do!”

“Thanks.” Morrigan lifted her finger to end the transmission.

His voice stopped her. “Is he that bad?” There was a pause and a snicker. Morrigan rolled her eyes. Once she got back to the office she would never hear the end of this. “Your husband, I mean?”

“He’s not my husband, Gus. He’s just a lead to a story.” Her tone was dead and the lie left her hollow. It would be better not to think about it. “You know I’ll do anything to get you the story.”

“Damn you’re cruel hearted. I always thought so, now I know. But, for now, why don’t you send me your pictures. I’ll download them and get them ready for copy.”

Morrigan froze, hating how many lies she had to tell, “The camera’s broken. I’m trying to repair it but it might be unusable.”

“What? I should leave you there for that. Do you know how much I paid—?”

“Stow it, you owe me at least that. Besides the camera was ten years old and I bought it myself. Now come and get me you stubborn—”

“I’m on it,” he grumbled. “Call me back in two days. Can you have the story by then?”

“Sure,” she mumbled. “Oh, and Gus?”

“Sure, girl, what is it?” His words were softer.

“I’m never taking another undercover assignment like this again. I expect a hard news piece when I get back.” Morrigan hit the button, breaking the communication. A stabbing pain pierced her heart and she began to sob.

U
alan handed
the earpiece to the watching tech. He had listened to his wife’s voice in silence. He was an
inconvenience
to her, a way to get her story. What had he done to deserve this? The gods had indeed cursed him.

“She called her uncle,” he lied. “I will speak to my wife. She won’t be making unauthorized communications again.”

“Yes, my lord,” the men answered in unison, taking the prince at his word.

M
orrigan was drunk
.

No, that wasn’t true. She had hit drunk and surpassed it about an hour ago. Stumbling back to the liquor cabinet, she studied the line of remaining bottles. It was hard to see them in the dim torchlight. The overhead lights had spoiled her solitary mood, so she closed the curtains and pretended it was night. Opened containers spread about her on the floor and table. Corks and ties littered the floor. Glasses were scattered about with strangely mixed concoctions swirling beneath their rims, attesting to her hours of experimentation. They’d been abandoned on the tables, chairs and floor. A couple even led into the bathroom door.

Taking a particularly attractive purple bottle, she stuck it beneath her arm and grabbed an ugly red one to go with it. Stumbling back to a clearing within the field of half-drunken glasses, she slumped to the floor. Taking her last clean cup, she pulled the cork from the purple and poured. Then, tossing the cork aside because trying to aim it back into its hole was too hard, she studied the red bottle. Twisting the cap, the red soon joined the purple. It clumped like mud but she was too far gone to care.

“This should be pretty,” she mused drunkenly, swirling the mixture together and gulping it back. It wasn’t. Morrigan spit the contents back into her cup with a gag. She was surprised she could still taste after so much boozing.

“Why does my house smell like liquor? What the…? Rigan?” Ualan stopped just beyond her mess. He glanced around at the bottles before turning to where she’d nearly wiped out the hidden bar.

Morrigan blinked heavily and scowled drunkenly back. Her prince of a husband stood before her swimming eyes, dancing in and out of blurred vision. Oh, but he was handsome. Damn him. He had a great waist, a great chest, a great ass, a great smile, a great... It wasn’t fair.

Morrigan hiccupped. At least he wasn’t wearing a great smile. In fact, he looked upset. Good.

Ualan’s hands were on his hips, as he stared at her in disbelief. She snorted, picking up the last mixture and trying it again. Seeing the taste had not changed, she spit it out and cursed. “Blast, that’s wicked.”

“The red is Qurilixian rum and the purple is a cooking spirit,” he stated. “They don’t mix.”

Morrigan frowned, lifting the purple and trying to read it. She had no luck. It wasn’t her language and it wasn’t in focus.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, looking at the mess she had made of his marble floor.

“What do you care? Go back to ignoring me. I’m busy right now.”

“Some of these bottles aren’t even meant for drinking.” He scowled at her. What else was new?

She flinched and wobbled to her feet. Slurring, she said, “Doon’t worrry, your grace, I, Mooorrigan, your humble and most obedient servant will…”

She tipped over when she tried to bow, hiccupping again. Her head spun in momentary circles but she was too sloshed to really notice. Ualan started to dart forward, but stopped when she righted herself and pulled his knife from her waist. She had been using the tip of the blade to open bottles, now she pointed it at him.

She couldn’t feel the teeth in her gums and she gnashed them together violently. The knife gripped in her hands. All she knew is that her soul had a hole in it, and it was beginning to eat up her heart. She had to stop it. She had to stop the pain.

Morrigan’s head spun. The liquor only intensified her aching. She thought if she became drunk enough she would be able to block him out. But none of the bottles had worked. He was here, and he was so handsome. She just wanted him to look at her like he did the night of her coronation. She just wanted him to end the torture she felt. She just wanted him to want her again. Tears clouded her eyes, burning her nose. She wanted him to give her soul back.

“
G
ive
me that before you hurt yourself.” Ualan looked at the ceremonial knife Morrigan wielded at him. He frowned, more worried about her than his liquor collection. Her swaying became worse the longer she stood. If she fell over, she could do herself harm. His heart leapt to his throat when she again stumbled. The knife dipped low, nearly slicing through her thigh.

“No,” she answered.

“What do you think you are going to do with that?”

“I’m killing you,” she shouted.

“Rigan,” he warned, starting to take a step forward. He thought better of it when she fearfully stepped back and almost tripped over a bottle. Her foot knocked the rum over and it pooled onto the floor.

Agony filled him, intensified by the memory of her words to that man on the communicator. His gut had been rock-hard with pain ever since and now, to see her ready to kill him to be rid of him, was the ultimate betrayal. “If you are going to strike me, then strike. But you best make the blow count, wife. You’ll only get this one chance.”

Morrigan looked numbly at him. “I will.”

Ualan sensed what she was going to do, right before she turned the knife to her chest. Instinctively, he shifted. His skin hardened, turning a dark brown beneath his clothes. A line grew out from his forehead, pushed forward to make a hard plate of impermeable tissue over his nose and brow. His eye yellowed, able to see down to every microscopic movement of her tottering body. Talons grew from his nail beds and deadly fangs grew from his mouth.

With supernatural speed, he struck forward, throwing his own wrist before her heart to stop the blade. Since she was drunk her thrust was weak and the blade skidded off his armored skin, barely scratching him.

He ripped the blade from her fingers. Morrigan’s grasp weakened to such a degree that she let him take it. He threw the knife behind him, ignoring its noisy crash on a wall. His dragon senses flared to full attention as he studied her.

Ualan forced himself to be still, bracing for the scream that would come, that must come.

M
orrigan’s heart
raced in a combination of excitement and fear. For some time she had suspected something like this, but not to such an extent. All the native Draig’s eyes glowed eerily and once she had thought to see Zoran’s skin shift slightly in color. It wasn’t as if shape-shifting was all that unusual in the galaxies. She met several species that had the ability to some degree. But this?

She blinked hard, trying to focus on his face.

Morrigan’s breathing deepened. She didn’t care that his features had shifted. She didn’t care that his skin had hardened to press even more firmly against her than his muscles usually did. He was handsome to her. He was holding her. It was all that mattered.

His eyes, though different in color, were the same eyes she had fallen in love with. His chest heaved as he held her in his embrace, arms so strong and safe, arms she wanted to spend a lifetime in. She longed for him, and it was painful, more painful than the burning wanderlust that normally consumed her.

She thought to feel a thread of fear and apprehension in him. It had to be inside him, because it wasn’t inside her.

Drunkenly, she grabbed his face and kissed him. Ualan stiffened, as if stunned she would so readily accept his shifting. At the touch of her lips, his hard skin softened as he changed back to human form.

Morrigan moaned and thrust her tongue to deepen the kiss. His skin became pliable beneath her fingers. She jumped up, winding her legs around his sturdy waist, pushing naturally into his rising erection. He wrapped his arms firmly around her and held her up by her ass to keep her tight to him. Morrigan rocked herself into him, rubbing passionately to end her torment.

“Upstairs,” she commanded. Ualan didn’t need to be told twice. He dashed up the stairs, carrying her easily in his arms.

Morrigan tore at his clothes before they even reached the top. His touch scorched her, made her lightheaded with passion. She loosened her legs and Ualan dropped her to the floor. While she excitedly dug at the front of his pants, he backed her toward the bed.

Suddenly, she froze, her hand halfway embedded on his hot erection over the rigid tip. She swayed, unable to keep the world from spinning violently around her. This was not the time to pass out.

U
alan grunted
to feel her hand reaching for his arousal. Nothing mattered, not her deceit or her lies. She was a part of him, and he a part of her. Tomorrow would be for fighting. Tonight would be for…

When her hand stopped, he pulled back in surprise just in time to see her eyes roll before her lids fluttered shut. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have dropped to the floor.

Ualan panted wildly for breath as he held her limp body against him, trying to adjust to another let down of his desires. Shaking, he worked her hand away from his arousal and laid her tenderly on the bed. He was still trembling when he pulled back to study her.

Tonight would be for…

Gods’ bones.

M
orning was
cruel and afternoon wasn’t much better. Morrigan woke up alone in Ualan’s bed instead of on his couch. Her head pounded in white-hot agony and she was lucky she remembered her medicine downstairs. She might not be suffering from butterfly poison, but according to her throbbing head, it was a poison that afflicted her.

Ualan was gone, but she saw the crumpled pillow on the couch signifying she had again slept alone. Vaguely remembering her degree of inebriation, she was surprised to find the house in order and the liquor cabinet completely locked up. Eyeing the scanner lock, she laughed, and then winced at the pain the action caused. It wasn’t as if she would be trying that failed experiment again anytime soon.

When she went back upstairs to change her clothes, she saw Ualan’s weapons were missing from his closet. She frowned, suddenly recalling the knife she had taken. Surely the whole scene in the living room had been a dream. But, wait, the kisses had been real enough. Was the other stuff real as well? She didn’t actually try to stab herself in the heart, did she? Morrigan shook her head. No, it was impossible. She would never do anything that stupid.

Refusing to move much further than the bed, Morrigan fell into it and soon was back asleep.

“
N
one of the
men will fight us,” Zoran muttered darkly to his brothers. He glanced from Ualan to Olek and then back again. “They say our mood is too black. They are frightened we will kill them.”

Ualan observed the men who carefully edged farther across the exercise field to get away from the angry princes. He couldn’t say he blamed them, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. His lips curled into a snarl. Morrigan had pushed his body to the limit and he needed release—any kind of release.

Saying what they were all thinking, Olek growled, “Well, what in all the sacred temples are we supposed to do now?”

O
lek and Nadja’s
home was filled with lush plant life that grew out from a sunroom to wind around a door and part of the trellised ceiling. A giant fish tank took up an entire two walls, one clear with a large pink sucker fish adhered to the glass, the second with dark murky waters they couldn’t see into except for hints of life that fluttered past the glass. In the center of the hall was a natural water fountain, relaxing and calm in its resplendent beauty. It too had plant life growing in its stone crevices.

Stretching her arms over her head, Morrigan yawned. She felt better, though her body ached when she moved and her head wasn’t quite right. Nadja and the other two princesses, Pia and Olena, were nice enough not to mention her unusually pale face and red eyes.

“Heinrich is now training as a soldier. I released him from his duty to us,” Pia said in answer to a question about the boy.

“So, have any of your husbands lied to you about who they are?” Olena asked. Her red hair was pulled back into a bun and her green eyes flashed with continuous mischief, even when she wasn’t up to something. She looked none the worse for wear from her ordeal with the kidnappers, but she also wasn’t speaking of it.

“I thought mine was a prison guard.” Pia chuckled.

“I used to call mine a barbarian.” Morrigan tucked her hand beneath her head on the high-backed chair. “And a caveman.”

The women laughed lightly. Nadja just blushed shyly, and admitted, “I call mine a dragon.”

“They’re all dragons, if you ask me,” Morrigan winked at Nadja.

Nadja giggled as she rose to answer a summons from the door. Morrigan lifted her head. She wasn’t really surprised to see the queen. No matter where they were in the palace, the woman seemed to appear.

Queen Mede stepped into the circle of women and nodded. “I heard you all were hiding out here.”

“How’s Yusef?” Olena asked, blushing slightly and refusing to meet anyone’s gaze.

“Still awake,” the queen answered. “And still with his brothers. They speak of fighting, and fighting always makes warriors happy, for it is something they know how to do.”

Olena leaned back in her chair and tried to pretend like she didn’t care either way. No one was fooled.

Queen Mede glanced at the hung over Morrigan and lifted a delicate brow. Morrigan turned her face away. There was too much knowledge in that look. However, to her credit, the queen said nothing about it.

Nadja offered to get the ladies drinks. Morrigan recoiled and instantly declined. The reaction elicited laughs from the others.

“No, dear, we’re fine,” the queen said. Silence followed. Their mother-by-marriage seemed disappointed that they weren’t going to continue to talk freely in her presence. With a long sigh, she said, “My sons are great men, but they are sometimes too stubborn for their own good.”

The princesses looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue. The queen took a seat.

“Enough of this wallowing. This planet is in desperate need of more women and I intend to see that each one of you explores the powers you possess. Your husbands are warriors. I expect each of you has a clear idea now of what that means. But just because they made the rules, doesn’t mean you can’t use them. You have more power than you think.” The queen studied each one of them, before continuing, “I’m going to tell you something my mother said to me before I married the king. I never forgot it. She said, ‘Medellyn, men like to be men. Let them think they are in charge of everything. It’s a happy delusion. If you act like they do, you will only have male tools at your disposal—and let’s face facts, men’s natural abilities do not rest in their common sense. They need women to help them. They don’t always admit it, especially these alpha dragon types, but in many ways a woman’s gifts are so much more powerful than brute strength.’”

“I like your mother,” Olena said.

“She was an amazing mother and I was such a hardheaded daughter,” the queen said. “I used to think she was so weak for never standing up to anyone, until the day she manipulated me into going to the wedding ceremony. That’s when I knew her real strength came in her gentle ways.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Morrigan said, “but is there any chance you have more of those sugar cookie biscuit things lying around? I ate all of the ones you left with me.”

Queen Mede gave a small chuckle. “That was my mother’s recipe.”

Morrigan nestled her head against her arm. “Mmm, I like your mother, too.”

“Will we meet her?” Nadja asked.

The queen shook her head in denial. “No. She has long passed.”

“I’m sorry,” Nadja said.

“So, daughters,” the queen paused, eyeing each one, “tell me your problems with my sons and I will give you the Qurilixian solution. I think it’s time that the royal women had the upper hand for once. I have waited too many years to see my sons married to let them ruin my plans now.”

Slowly, one by one, the princesses smiled.

The queen nodded, happy. Looking pointedly at the closest woman, she said, “Pia, why don’t you go first?”

M
orrigan couldn’t believe it
, but she did indeed feel three hundred percent better after the afternoon chat. The queen was a great source of information and had been only too happy to tell her daughters how to gain the upper hand. The talk made the women closer too—like family. Morrigan smiled. A girl really could use a family. Now, all she had to do was get her husband in line. But, first things first—it was time to ease their marital tension.