Treasure Lane Dragons: Complete Series (BBW Paranormal Dragon Shapeshifter Romance) (3 page)

Nothing mattered more to a dragon than his possessions, and for Devon, those possessions began and ended with his hoard.

Devon took a sip of whiskey, feeling the alcohol trickle down his throat. It didn’t burn. Few things struck a note with a man, who could breathe fire when he felt like it. Still, the conversation he had had with his fellow council members had left him feeling a bit scorched. Reluctantly, he had to admit that he had known the day would come.

The last council session, held more than a decade ago, had been between the elders of all four houses, and then, the men that had shared the rooftop with him now had been but the eldest sons, one day to wear the heavy crowns of their fathers but not really ready to take over yet.

It felt uncomfortably foreboding that all of the elders had died in quick succession, as they were ought to. The generations tended to wane quickly when their time came, even with the longevity of dragons and their mates. It was always a sign of sad times to come when a dragon died of old age, or a broken heart as several of the old council members had after losing their mates.

The thought brought grim memories to Devon, snapshots of his parents and how their love had made the halls echo with laughter, and how everything had grown cold and dark when Gabriella, his mother, had died.

The chilliness was still in the hallways, even after his father’s passing. It seemed that bringing light to his home was not something Devon alone could do. Then again, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to bring joy into the house at the very moment. Having it stark and dreary worked just fine for him.

The musty air of the mansion tickled his nose, and his expression remained stony. The eldest of the Bluewing brothers, it had become his job as head of the family to take on any and all responsibilities his father had had. While his brothers partied in Monaco and guarded their vast family fortunes in Costa Rica, here he was, looking out at an unassuming little village in Colorado, tasked with having to find a wife.

How the mighty have fallen,
he mused grimly, swishing the liquid around in the glass.

He heard a small crackling noise, and looking down, he cursed under his breath. He’d squeezed the glass so hard that it had cracked. Downsides of countless eons of dragon magic – it was hard to control, no matter the form it took. That, and he was just damn aggravated. Devon set the glass down, raising his hand to his neck and letting his fingertips trace the slim, tasteful gold chains around it.

Like any dragon, he liked keeping a part of his hoard close to him. Unlike the dragons in Asia and Africa, though, he wasn’t completely ostentatious about it. Little good could come from letting everyone know of his wealth in the land of cutthroats and thieves – though most of them were kept out by the dragon magic that protected Treasure Lane. Still, as the dragons grew fewer in the lands, so did the magic grow weaker, and Devon had the grim feeling that one day, his magic wouldn’t be enough to protect what was his.

Just days before his father’s passing, he had been partying in LA, drinking until he couldn’t see straight, buying any business, property and woman he fancied and generally living the dream. And now, here he was, without anything to amuse him and no chance of leaving for longer than a few days. One had to protect the hoard, that he couldn’t deny – even if he wanted to stray further, his dragon would bring him back. There was no rest when his gold was not near or under the scrutiny of someone he trusted.

And these days, he wasn’t even sure if he could trust his younger brothers, Donovan and Demetrius. If one of them had been tasked with the burden now set on Devon, he wasn’t so sure if they’d answer the call. While he was a partying letch, the twins were in a class all of their own. It was best to keep them in Monaco and Costa Rica, where the worst foes they would have to battle were a sunburn and a hangover. At least until they grew up, anyway.

So, what is a dragon to do when faced with boredom in a place with little to do?

He had already done all he could think of. The remodeling of the mansion was well under way and the hoard had been carefully counted and cataloged as soon as the dragon royals had left after the funeral. The passing of a dragon was never a sad time – it signified that they had been given a chance to move on as elders and allowed to guard the Great Hoard. Knowing his father, Devon was sure the old grouch was glad to be back with his mother.

When the ceremonies had been taken care of, Devon had become painfully aware of how little there was to do at his family home. In a fit of desperation, he’d surveyed the bounty that Gold Valley paid the Bluewings each year, and upped it by more than a third after seeing that his father had neglected to do so for a decade. It was only just, he thought, seeing as those people only had jobs and incomes because of the Bluewings.

Gold Valley was one of the premiere goldsmith towns in the whole world, a feat managed thanks to centuries of careful development and coaxing by the dragons, who lived there. After all, every dragon loved gold, and it was only sensible to keep the masters, who could provide it close by.

They owe us as much,
he thought.

Night grew near, and Devon was anticipating another stretch of darkness with nothing to do but curl up and wait for the sun. He’d customarily take a short flight along the borders of his lands before he attempted sleep, though seeing as he hardly needed it when things were as calm as they were now, it provided him with little distraction. So when there was a knock at his study door, he let out a sigh of relief.

He almost hoped that one of the servants had done something horrible, blundering in one way or another. He could use the opportunity to concentrate on something other than his current problem – finding a wife where there was no wife to be found.

“Yes,” he called, spinning around to face the door.

“Sir,” the servant said, a lizard shifter whose family had been in the service of the Bluewings for generations. “There is someone here to see you.”

Who the hell would come see me now?

“It’s a woman, sir. A human.”

Well that got his attention.

Still, that didn’t give Devon much to do or help solve his single greatest problem – how to find a wife when the last thing he wanted to do was to settle down with anyone?

I need another drink
, he concluded, stalking out of the study to retrieve the bottle he had left much too far.

CHAPTER TWO

Gemma

Gemma’s eyes narrowed as she trudged up the stone path that led to the dark, foreboding castle of a mansion. As it was suspect to happen when she was planning something that required extensive hiking, the weather was gloomy and shadowed by clouds, the sky muddled and cast with the deep, ruby red color of the setting sun. Poetic really that the only time they had shitty weather was when she had to go talk to a Bluewing. The walk up from Gold Valley was quite the trek and one she had been putting off for far too long now, but it was a trip she had to make.

Enough was enough. Things were getting far beyond ridiculous and close to unbearable, and it was obvious that no one but Gemma was willing to do a damn thing about it. She huffed under her breath, feeling the pebbles and earth crunch under her hiking boots as she continued her trek with long, determined strides. She wasn’t going to turn around and go back. Not this time.

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and Gemma looked up, brushing her blonde locks from her face. It wasn’t even really past dinner yet, but the sun was disappearing awfully fast tonight, and the sky was foreboding, threatening with a storm. It was all very cliché, she though, but a little bit of drama went well with the nonsense she had to discuss with Devon Bluewing, the last of the Bluewings to live in the area.

Just keep walking,
she reminded herself, putting one foot in front of the other.
Its fine. He’s just a dragon. Nothing unusual about that. I’m sure he can be reasoned with,
Gemma told herself, trying to suppress the grin that wanted to come to her lips at the thought of that. Sure, nothing odd about dragons or expecting a Bluewing to listen to reason. She realized how ridiculous that would sound to just about anyone else. But the inhabitants of the secluded Colorado town of Gold Valley hadn’t thought anything weird about dragons for as many centuries as they had been there.

After all, one learns to appreciate the creatures that bring them their wealth. However, she was fairly certain that not a single person, who had gone to a Bluewing dragon before, trying to get them to lessen the financial burden they set on Gold Valley, had lived to tell the tale.

I’ll just be the first, then. This is the 21
^st
century for god’s sake, the dragons can’t just push ancient traditions on us like that and expect us to do whatever they want,
she thought confidently.

Just as she had calmed herself down enough to ignore the knotting in her stomach, a deafening roar sounded from up ahead. It shook the very foundation of the mountains, and Gemma stopped, frozen in place for a second. Instinctively, her eyes went up to the mansion, scanning it for the familiar form of the mythical blue-black beasts that sometimes cast a shadow over the entire village.

She looked for the familiar dark blue glint of scales and the blaze of golden eyes, but found herself staring at a dragon just as similar to what she expected as it was different. Its scales were red and its wings narrower than the Bluewings she was used to seeing, and it swooped down from the flat roof of the mansion with another one of those roars that seemed to curdle her blood. Her mouth agape, she stared at the slender, elegant beast, though it was hard to refer to something as elegant when it was the size of a modest skyscraper.

Her eyes went wide with surprise as she saw it change course and head straight for her. She caught sight of its ruby red eyes, slanted and brimming with what she could only define as menace. Blood curdled in her veins. For a frantic moment, she was sure it would open its powerful jaws and breathe fire on her, leaving her as little more than a scorched pile of dust on the stone pathway.

Gemma ducked with a yelp, her hands covering her head, and she could feel the rush of wind sweeping past her as the dragon flew over her, only a few feet higher than where she had just been standing.

“Fucking bottoms of hell,” she murmured softly, looking behind her to see the dragon disappear into the clouds above the town, heading southward. “What the hell was that?” she asked no one in particular, gasping for breath. When she turned her attention back to the mansion, it was just in time to see another dragon take flight, and then another.

Mossy green and wheaten-gold scales caught the last rays of light as the beasts headed in opposite directions, east and west, paying her no heed whatsoever. Gemma’s heart was pounding in her throat, and for a moment, she thought she might just turn around and head back as she’d done several times before – and those times there hadn’t even been any dragons trying to casually throw her off the path and into the rocky ravines to either sides of it.

Perhaps she should have been more surprised than she was, but dragons had become a more common sight around Gold Valley lately.

When Dayton Bluewing – the last of the old generation Bluewings – died, the town had got to enjoy what could only be described as the who’s who of dragon royalty flying over their modest little houses and making the earth tremble and quake with their roars. It was enough to make a girl somewhat unimpressed by the meager gathering now, though the three dragons she just witnessed were certainly bigger than most of the dragons, who had been in the area last time.
Almost as big as Devon Bluewing himself
, she thought.

It had been months since the burial ceremonies concluded and the last of the dragons had left, other than Devon himself of course. One night, the air had turned cold and crisp, and the sky had been without a single cloud, the air trembling with the most beautiful music anyone in town had ever heard. Gemma remembered one of the older locals, who had been around when Dayton’s wife Gabriella died, saying that it was the dragons saying their last goodbyes to a fallen brother.

The stark gloominess of the skies now seemed like a violent departure from the serenity of that day. Idly, Gemma wondered what could have brought the dragons back to the keep now.

Despite the recent crowds, it had been a long time since dragons came to Gold Valley with any kind of regularity. There was always a Bluewing to guard over it, but none of the others could be seen, except for rare glimpses once a decade or so, when the council gathered. Sometimes, more than one Bluewing roamed the sky briefly, but that too was something to remark upon and gasp at, not just shrug off and forget about. Dragons had made themselves scarce in those parts, and Gemma wasn’t entirely convinced it was only because there were fewer and fewer of them to fill the skies.

Her palms had crashed into the dirt as she came tumbling down, and the jagged earth prickled at her skin. One would never imagine that there was gold hidden in Gold Valley by the looks of the place (though the name should have been hint enough!)

The tale went that dragons had found Gold Valley and the rest of Treasure Lane long before humans came to be. The beasts had guarded and protected the mountains and rivers plush with gold, but it was only when humans came to the areas that the dragons could really reap their bounty. And so they did. The lands were divided up between the most powerful dragon families, and alliances were formed when tensions rose between different factions.

There were many pockets of wealth like Treasure Lane dotted all over the world, but few as rich and inviting as this. So, the dragons made a pact to protect it and avoid slaying one another over petty rivalries – as dragons were prone to doing – and formed a council where only the wisest of dragons could represent the needs and desires of their kin. Under that guidance, Gold Valley had been formed, forever indebted to the Bluewing dragons and set to serve them, if the humans wished to remain in the lands.