Dragon's Desire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dragon’s Desire

  Also by JD Monroe

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Wings of Stone Preview

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  What Now?

  About the Author

  DRAGON’S DESIRE Copyright 2017 by J.D. Monroe.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Mighty Fine Books, LLC

  PO Box 956

  Evans, GA 30809

  Editing by Gayla Leath

  Cover Design by Rebecca Frank

  Book Design and Ebook Formatting by J.D. Monroe

  ISBN: 978-1-944142-22-3

  Second Edition: October 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  DRAGON’S

  DESIRE

  A DRAGONS OF ASCAVAR NOVELLA

  J.D. MONROE

  Also by J.D. Monroe

  Dragons of Ascavar

  Midnight Flight (prequel - free on website)

  Wings of Stone (Book 1)

  Dragon’s Desire (standalone)

  Hell’s Belles

  Dirty Laundry (prequel - free on website)

  Sweet Cherry Pie (Book 1)

  Other

  Riptide - Novella in Elementals Anthology

  Foreword

  Dragon’s Desire is a standalone story in the Dragons of Ascavar series. The series features powerful dragon shifters in a rich world of magic and might. However, you do not have to have read any of the other books to enjoy and understand this story.

  While all terms are explained in context, if you want to follow along with the language of the dragons and learn more about their culture, you can check out this link to the Kadirai glossary on my website:

  | SPEAK THE LANGUAGE |

  Chapter 1

  Sometime after the third solid punch to his ribs, Pahlin Stormcaller realized he had made a colossal mistake in coming here. He had barely conjured a memory of home—the sweeping vista of fire-orange rock and the glittering stone spires of Arvelor—when a fist slammed into his jaw and knocked him backward. Reality converged on him again as the gathered crowd roared their support for his opponent. Pain bloomed in his face as he tried to focus. Quite literally, since the blow to his head left his vision blurry and the world tilting dangerously to the side.

  He curled his toes against the arena’s cold stone floor. Grit scraped against his bare feet. The sensation grounded him, pulling him away from his introspection and back to the moment. Pahlin’s opponent, another dragon shifter named Telak, shifted nimbly on the balls of his feet. His dark eyes moved constantly, never leaving Pahlin. Blood trickled from the other man’s nose. Telak was barely an inch taller, with a more slender build. But Telak was a skilled fighter in his human form, comfortable in the more restricted ambience of the human world. Here in the human realm, magic was thinner, and Pahlin felt like all his power was just out of reach, passing through his fingers like water every time he grasped for it. Like most Kadirai, his combat training had been primarily in his powerful dragon form, teaching him every form of lethality with tooth and claw. His upbringing had not included bareknuckle brawling in this delicate, unarmored human body for profit.

  Telak had obviously adapted well to his new home. Veins shifted along his muscular arms as he clenched his fists and circled slowly. Pahlin mimicked his circular movement, eyes flitting from Telak’s face to his lower body to look for any clue of his next movement. Each heaving breath filled Pahlin’s nostrils with the sharp scents of sweat and blood. Flashing spots drifted in his vision from the blinding white lights shining from overhead.

  “Takh n’adan! Dehakre!” someone bellowed in Kadirai from the spectator seating. “Let’s go. Fight!” they demanded.

  That was easy for them to say. The simple act of breathing sent sharp stitches of pain through his right side, where Telak’s relentless fists had found their mark repeatedly. Sweat dripped into his eyes, burning with its salty sting. Pahlin had gotten in a few solid hits, but Telak didn’t seem any worse for the wear.

  As the two men circled without approaching each other, Pahlin heard another shout from behind him, this one in English. “Hit him already!”

  This would be over in a heartbeat if he could transform into his dragon form. A vicious swipe from his tail, or perhaps a shockwave of lightning, and Telak would be crumpled on the ground. Then again, half the people here were dragon shifters, including Telak. Even if it wasn’t expressly forbidden for him to transform here, it wouldn’t have been the advantage it seemed.

  Telak’s weight shifted, his dark eyes narrowing as he moved forward. His elbow drifted up in preparation for a punch, exposing the delicate ribs under his arm. The thin bones were outlined there, highlighted by the harsh light as his muscles shifted.

  There!

  Pahlin lunged, aiming for the man’s unprotected side. He caught Telak around the waist with one arm and slammed a fist into his exposed ribs. Telak groaned in pain. With all his concentration, Pahlin reached for the elemental lightning that sparked in him. It was just barely out of reach. Grasping desperately, he tried to channel it into Telak.

  The other man jolted, his body going rigid for a second as the weak current passed into him. His abdominal muscles tensed hard against Pahlin’s arm. Taking advantage of his momentary incapacitation, Pahlin pulled back and hammered a punch into Telak’s solar plexus. There was a satisfying rush of air from Telak’s lips, cool against Pahlin’s neck. But his opponent still didn’t quit. His foot swept Pahlin’s leg. As Pahlin lost his balance, Telak drove a sharp knee into Pahlin’s belly. He needed to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate.

  Telak struck him with a vicious elbow to the soft place at the base of Pahlin’s skull, then flung him aside. Pahlin’s limbs were heavy and useless. Grit scraped his palms as he tried to recover. Telak pounced on him, slinging his muscular arm around Pahlin’s throat. Panic surged through him as his air was cut off. Pahlin tried to flip him off, but Telak bore him down onto his side, keeping that choking grip on him. Black pressed in around his vision.

  The shouts of the crowd receded as blood roared in Pahlin’s ears. The metallic sound of a gong pierced the haze, and suddenly, the pressure was gone. He was jostled as Telak extricated himself, and the world slowly came back. Through fuzzy vision, he watched the other man stand and pump his arms overhead. The crowd shouted in approval.

  What the hell was he thinking?

  One of the Pinnacle officials bent over Pahlin. Her pitying expression only added to the pain of his injuries. “You all right?” she asked in English. “Can you walk out, or do you need—”

  “I can walk,” Pahlin blurted. He squinted and got to his feet. Despite his loss, a handful of people clapped when he rose. With the heat of humiliation spreading through his aching chest, Pahlin couldn’t bring himself to look up at the faces in the crowd.

  “Follow me,” the official said. Pahlin kept his head down as he followed the woman through the same doorway from
which he’d entered the arena a few minutes earlier. “First time, huh?”

  “Mm,” Pahlin said. His body ached more with each step as the adrenaline from the fight melted away. The back halls of the Pinnacle were dark and austere. The first door they passed was the small anteroom where Pahlin had waited for his first bout. Sitting there just minutes before, he’d foolishly thought that victory was a given. He was Kadirai, after all, and he had been good enough to beat even his older siblings in training back home. Clearly, things hadn’t gone as planned.

  Matching the plain décor of the Pinnacle, the smooth gray walls were broken only by a handful of darker gray doors. Small speakers on the ceiling piped in audio from the arena. The crowd was noisy under the voice of an announcer telling them to place their bets on the next match.

  “You been here long?” the woman asked.

  “A few months,” Pahlin said. Here was the human realm, in the humid place they called Georgia. Until two months earlier, Pahlin had lived in Ascavar, a world of magic where dragons reigned. Some of the Pinnacle spectators were probably born here, but their parents had come here from Ascavar like he had.

  “Magic is different here. Everyone says it takes a while to get used to it,” the official said. “Don’t be too frustrated.”

  “Thank you,” he said flatly. That was easy to say when she wasn’t the one who’d just had her face and pride pounded flat.

  The crowd roared again as the next bout began. At least they’d have something else to think about other than the royal ass-kicking he’d gotten.

  The official stopped at an open door that spilled a wedge of bright light into the dim hallway. Low voices came from inside. The official paused and handed him a small white envelope. Pahlin’s name was written on it in the angular script of his native language. The familiar symbols sent a wistful pang through him. “Your payment, as agreed.”

  He took the envelope and thumbed it open. It hadn’t taken long for him to develop the urgent hunger for those thin green papers that operated everything here in the human world. He’d been paid fifty dollars for the fight. His friend, Ariv, had told him he could earn easy money by fighting at the Pinnacle but he hadn’t mentioned a caveat that should have been obvious in retrospect; Pahlin had to win. At least they’d offered a small consolation for giving Telak something to sink his fists into.

  The official gestured to the door, clearly finished with him. “They’ll take care of you.”

  The room beyond the doorway was lined in cabinets and shelves. The shelves were packed with a combination of plain white boxes and plastic-bagged items alongside more familiar jars of herbs and ointments labeled in his native tongue. He wasn’t entirely familiar with the human world yet, but he recognized the healer’s workplace when he saw it.

  A woman in a long white jacket stood over a cot against the wall. With a small flashlight, she examined the eyes of the fighter lying on the cot. The harsh white light reflected off the sheen of blood trickling from a cut under his eye. At the sound of Pahlin’s entrance, she turned around. Her thin eyebrows arched as she looked him over. “Are you dying?” she asked in English.

  “No.”

  “Then sit, and I will be with you in a moment,” she said, turning her attention back to the man lying on the cot. She spoke quietly, moving her finger in front of his face. Her frame was small, which told him she probably wasn’t Kadirai. If she was working here, she was probably from his home world of Ascavar, but was most likely Edra, a less powerful race of shapeshifters. Their grasp on magic was weaker than the dragons’, but they were far from being human.

  Pahlin sat on the cot on the opposite side of the room. The scratchy sheet covering the cot instantly stuck to his sweat-soaked skin. This was certainly not how he had dreamed life would be when he passed through Gate from his home and into the human world.

  With crystal clarity, he pictured the imperious expression upon his parents’ faces, not to mention that of his eldest sister who was a queen in her own mind. All three of them had discouraged him from taking this journey into the human realm, but it was his right. The khalle t’aradan, the Wandering, was permitted for young dragons like himself.

  “You will see, an’kadi,” his mother said. The childish term had made his skin crawl in irritation. “You will be home, where you belong, soon enough.”

  The problem was that he didn’t feel as though he belonged at home in Arvelor, either. His eldest sister Amira was destined for a powerful position in Queen Ferruli’s court, and his other sister Ravah had been called to be a healer. One of his brothers wanted nothing more than to serve as a soldier in the Storm Legion, and the other was a skilled craftsman who created breathtaking glass sculptures. As the youngest of five siblings, Pahlin had no claim to power nor a great talent like his sister or brother. There was little for him to do but to become a soldier, which had never felt like the proper fit for him. Even as a youngster, barely able to fly in a straight line, he’d dreamed of exploring the world beyond home, hoping to find the place where things made sense.

  His future had seemed dim when Amira and Ravah had let their forty-ninth birthdays pass without so much as a glance toward the human world. Pahlin would have never broken ranks and been the first of his family to Wander. However, his brothers, Agdin and Iban, had surprised him by choosing the khalle t’aradan. When Pahlin turned forty-nine, he chose to follow in their footsteps by exploring the human world before making his decision about where he would remain for the rest of his life.

  Wandering was not exile. Some of the larger dragonflights in Ascavar, such as the rigid warriors of the Stoneflight and Ironflight to the northwest, did not formally permit their people to leave for the human world. Kadirai who chose to leave those lands did it without sanction. Pahlin’s people, the dragons of the Stormflight, were permitted to leave their homeland when they turned forty-nine. Some chose to explore other parts of their home world, though most chose to enter the human world through the Gate, a portal that granted passage between the two worlds. They were given seven years to Wander, living life in another world. Most returned, telling stories of the wondrous technology and the sheer bustle of the human world. If they chose to return, they would be welcomed home without question, returning to whatever station they held before leaving. Pahlin’s mother assumed he would return well within the time limit, just like his brothers had done. Tired of his lot and captivated by the allure of the mysterious human world, Pahlin wasn’t sure he would return at all, let alone two years early like Agdin had.

  But when Pahlin had imagined the human world, he’d pictured something far more enjoyable than getting used as a punching bag. He had only been here a few months, and already he had begun to wonder if his family hadn’t been right.

  Back home he had been a skilled fighter, at least in his dragon form. He’d also managed to best all but his eldest sister in human form on the occasions when they’d fought. But his performance tonight had been nothing short of embarrassing. His body hurt all over. The skin over his knuckles on both hands was split and oozing blood. His jaw ached, and it would likely be worse in the morning. His dragon nature helped him to heal quickly, but not so quickly that he was looking forward to waking up.

  The healer finally left the other cot and approached Pahlin. “Let’s see you, then,” she said. Though she spoke English, her voice carried the familiar clip of his native tongue. She smelled familiar; as he’d suspected, she wasn’t a dragon, but was definitely magic-touched. He was curious about her other form, but it was poor manners to ask someone he had barely met about something so personal. It was a sign of trust when the Edra revealed their other nature. As she examined him, she didn’t seem particularly impressed with him, though he was stripped to the waist.

  Her hands were warm as she gripped each side of his face, tilting it either way. Her pale gray eyes searched him. “Any dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “Nausea?” she asked as she pried up one eyelid and shone the flashlight into it.
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  He winced at the bright light.

  “Nau…” His English was good, but not flawless.

  She shone the light into his other eye, then released his face. “Rovezhedh,” she interrupted. “Are you sick to your stomach?”

  The feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t from the blows to his face. It was the sinking sense that he’d made a mistake. “No,” he said.

  She continued her examination, prodding him gently. He bit back a yelp when her hands traced down his side and found the bruised ribs from Telak’s blows. “I have a jar of thelveran from Ascavar if you would like it,” she said. “But it’s expensive. One-fifty for enough to heal this overnight.”

  “One hundred and fifty?” The ointment numbed pain to the point of being undetectable and aided healing.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s more than I earned,” he murmured.

  She shrugged and stepped back, folding her arms over her chest. “Sorry. My advice? Don’t get hit so much next time. Besides, you’re Kadirai. The worst will heal in a day or two.” The way she said Kadirai made it sound like an accusation.

  His cheeks flushed at her admonishment. “Okay.”

  After offering him two small blue tablets and a cup of water to wash them down, Pahlin followed the dark hallway around to the front of the Pinnacle. There was a small lobby walled in dark glass. Two large men guarded the front door to ensure that no unwelcome guests—or curious humans—entered. His friend Ariv was already waiting there with Pahlin’s street clothes folded neatly under one arm.

  Ariv was Kadirai like him, but had been here in the human world for over two years. Like Pahlin, Ariv came from the massive Stormflight city of Arvelor. Their shared homeland and dialect had been a source of instant kinship when they first met. As soon as Pahlin had come through the Gate, he was greeted by the Gatekeepers, the sentinels who protected the passage. The Gatekeepers monitored all traffic coming through the Gates and policed the surrounding area. Somehow, he’d expected a festive occasion that matched his own excitement, but he’d emerged from the blinding light of the portal and found himself at the end of an unwavering sword.