The Dragon Thief
The dragons and royals are at war. Dragons have power and the royals want it to cement their rule in their kingdoms. Rather than creating a bond between the two, the royals have been stealing dragon eggs, hoping they will bond with the dragon once it hatches, allowing the royal to become a dragon rider. However, there is a thief among them, someone who is stealing the dragon eggs and returning them to the dragons. Someone who, when found, will be put to death.
Princess Skylar is the daughter of King Augustus. Her father has been hunting dragon eggs for years. Unbeknownst to him, Skylar is the thief that he is searching for. She does not agree with stealing dragon eggs from the mothers who make their nests away from the other dragons, making themselves vulnerable to attack. Her betrothed, Prince Kenneth, also supports stealing dragon eggs in the hope of bonding with a dragon and making his kingdom stronger.
Ryuki is a dragon rider. He bonded with his dragon, Bynjym, a year ago when he stumbled across him in the wild. The bond between dragon and rider is sacred. Ryuki and other dragon riders believe that it should never be forced. The riders fight against the royals who steal dragon eggs, working to keep them from being able to access the eggs, or fighting to get the eggs back to their dragon mothers.
What will happen when Ryuki realizes that Skylar is a royal like no other? Can Skylar keep her secret from her father, continuing to work inside the palace to take the stolen eggs back to their mothers? What will happen when Skylar realizes that her feelings for Ryuki are much stronger than her feelings for Prince Kenneth? Find out in The Dragon Thief.
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Chapter 2
In elder days when flame met air,
And dragons ruled the heavens fair,
Where once they soared on wings of grace,
Now storm and sorrow take their place.
Ryuki
"Seriously? You're hungry again?" I ask.
'I am a dragon. I'm always hungry. Just be glad I don't eat you,' Bynjym, my dragon says.
I love my dragon. Ever since I bonded with him a year ago, my life has changed for the better.
It was an accident. I stumbled across him while he was eating. Imagine that. My dragon was eating.
I smile, remembering that day. I had been running from a group of people I'd stolen food from. I was starving, not just in the 'really hungry' way, but in the 'I won't survive much longer without food' way. I can find water, but food is scarce in winter. It was just a small loaf of bread, something small enough that a normal person would eat it in one sitting, but I would have made it last for days.
I'd had my head turned, looking behind me, watching to see how close they were to catching me, when I'd run into a clearing and slammed into the huge carcass that Bynjym was eating.
I hadn't immediately understood the predicament I was in. My heart was racing and I saw the enemy as the people behind me. Then I'd felt his slick saliva drip onto my shoulder, smelled the blood of the flesh he was eating in his mouth, and felt the heat of his breath as he'd breathed in my scent.
When I looked up, I'd been equally terrified and mesmerized by the beautiful silver dragon. He lowered his head and looked deep into my eyes. I thought I'd fallen into an ocean of blue. It felt like I was drowning and being rescued at the same time. I've asked the other dragon riders about it since then, but none of them can really explain it either. It feels like you're giving up everything you are while also becoming everything you were meant to be all at once.
'Who are you?" I'd heard him ask me in his deep, baritone voice.
I didn't know at the time that when a dragon bonds with you, you can hear them, speak with them in your mind. All I knew was a huge, magnificently beautiful dragon had asked me a question.
"I'm Ryuki," I said, just as my pursuers raced up behind me.
Bynjym had growled low in his chest.
'Are they friend or foe?' he asked.
"Uh, they're chasing me because I stole some bread," I said truthfully. Technically, they weren't friend or foe, they were just angry merchants.
I learned at that moment to be very careful how you answer a dragon. With three snaps of his teeth, the merchants were gone, devoured by my dragon.
"You ATE them?" I asked, mortified and disgusted.
"I'm a dragon," he said, unperturbed as he returned to the large animal he was stripping of meat. He pulled a piece of meat and dropped it in front of me. "Eat."
I stared at the strip of raw meat that was half my size.
'Too much?' he asks, snapping it up quickly before dropping a smaller amount of meat in front of me.
I didn't want to be rude and, in truth, I was starving, but I'd never eaten raw meat before.
'Human, what is the problem? I can hear your stomach. You're obviously hungry.'
'Uh, you're right. I am hungry. I just need to find a way to cook this ..."
That was as far as I got before Bynjym sent a small burst of flame at the meat, cooking it through.
"Thank you. Do you want some bread?" I'd asked.
He'd given me a look of blatant disgust. 'No.'
So, I sat in front of this dragon, not realizing that he had bonded to me, while I ate.
"Hey, thanks for helping me and thanks for the food," I said when I was done.
'Where do you think you're going?' he's asked me.
"Well, I was going to let you go about your business," I'd said.
He'd lowered his giant head and put his eye in front of me.
'You look like someone who should know something about dragons. Do you not?' he asked, as if I'd offended him.
"I know some things."
'What do you know?' he asked.
"I know that you, as a silver dragon, are one of the strongest dragons there are. Only the golden queens are stronger than you. I know that there are bronze, green, red, and blue dragons as well," I said proudly.
He'd blinked at me as if unimpressed. Now, I'd say he was on the verge of rolling his eyes at me. My dragon has an attitude.
'I do not,' he grumbles, listening to my thoughts like he always does. At first, I found it intrusive. Now, I don't know how I'd go an hour of my day without Bynjym in my mind. His constant presence is soothing, reminding me that I'm never alone.
I hear his rumbling happiness at my thoughts as I return to my memory of that day. Bynjym had explained how dragons choose their riders and I was now bonded to him.
'Not anyone can hear a dragon, human. Only a rider.'
"What does that mean? I'm a rider? I'm YOUR rider?"
'Yes, my human. You are now a dragon rider.'
"Why? Why was I given such a gift?" I asked, awed by such a gift.
He had lowered his head again, looking at me with that eye that made me feel like I was drowning in the depths of the ocean.
'Because I have looked into your soul and I have seen the truth of who you are. You are now the rider of Bynjym, the silver dragon.' And that's how I learned my dragon's name.
'That's a good memory, but I like the memory of our first flight better,' Bynjym says, giving me his dragon's version of a laugh.
I mentioned my dragon has an attitude. He also has a very sarcastic sense of humor.
'You like it because you enjoyed terrifying me,' I huff.
I was terrified. I'd never flown before and whether he was showing off, giving me a taste of what being a dragon rider was all about, or just being Bynjym, he'd had me get on his back and we'd lifted up in the air.
I'd been sliding all over his back, trying to figure out what to hold onto and where to sit that was comfortable when he'd banked hard right. I slid right off his back, free-falling into the air and screaming in terror, my arms wind-milling as if I would suddenly sprout wings and fly.
'You needed to learn to trust me. I thought that lesson taught you very well. You've never forgotten it, have you?' he asks drolly.
No, indeed. I have not, nor will I ever forget THAT particular lesson. As much as it scared me at the moment, I did learn that Bynjym would never let me fall.
'What kind of a dragon would I be if I let me rider fall to his death?' he asks offended. 'What am I, a green?'
I grin. Even among dragons there is a hierarchy. Unlike most patriarchal societies, the dragons are ruled by their queens. Even the reds and blues, the lower ranked females, are given a status that is relatively equal to a bronze dragon.
'Without them, we no longer exist. They are our future. Why wouldn't we treat them with the respect they deserve?' he asks diplomatically.
'Not all animals think like you do, Byn.'
'Not all animals are as wise as dragons.'
Very true.
I've just gotten on Bynjym's back so he can go hunting for food, when his head snaps to west. He roars angrily as he lifts into the air.
'What is it?" I ask, feeling Bynjym's fury.
'Another egg has been stolen. Tymyr is dead.'
'Tymyr? They killed a queen?' I ask, my own fury blending with my dragon's.
'Yes. Ylys is calling the Thunder to attack.'
Ylys is another golden dragon. With Tymyr dead, Ylys is one of two remaining queens.
The other was just stolen by the royals.
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8.4
I worked three double shifts at the garage just to buy a velvet-boxed cake for my wealthy girlfriend, Arleen.
But when I pushed open the VIP room door, I saw her lover kissing her bare leg.
She didn't push him away. Instead, she laughed and swirled her martini.
"I only forgot Finn because I knew he would stay. He is a poor boy from Queens who follows me around like a loyal dog."
Later that night, her lover intentionally crashed a Porsche to scare me, sending a piece of jagged metal into my skull.
Lying in a growing pool of my own blood, I watched Arleen crawl out of the wreckage.
She didn't even look at me. She threw herself at her uninjured lover, screaming for a medic.
"He just got scraped by a piece of plastic. He is faking it. Deal with Jaquez first!"
When I woke up, I wasn't free. Arleen had locked me in a private hospital wing with 24-hour security, planning to isolate me and keep me as her broken, captive toy forever.
My blind, pathetic devotion finally froze into absolute disgust.
I looked at the heart monitor next to my bed and grabbed an IV needle.
I severed the sensor wire to trigger a flatline, slipped out the fire stairs while the nurses panicked, and burned my identity to ashes.
This time, I was going to disappear to London, build my own empire, and watch hers burn.
7.5
For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer.
He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else.
When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg.
Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death.
As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career.
I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived.
I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance.
Then, I opened my eyes.
I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self.
Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power.
I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage.
"I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig."
I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.
7.2
Allie Patterson poured fifteen years into her husband Grayson’s tech startup, living in a cramped San Jose apartment. Every penny, every late night coding session, was for their shared future, built on his constant claims the company struggled, always on the verge of its big break.
Then, a grant deed arrived: a stunning $4.2 million Atherton villa, paid in full, listing Grayson and an unknown Kacey Schmidt as joint tenants.
Her coffee mug shattered as Allie’s world imploded. Driving to the mansion, she found Kacey in silk pajamas, flaunting a massive pink diamond and, beneath it, Grayson’s grandmother’s heirloom ring – the one he’d tearfully claimed to have lost years ago.
Kacey purred, "He's in the shower. We were so tired last night."
The words were a serrated knife, twisting, confirming years of lies.
Humiliation and rage burned out, leaving a terrifying, absolute silence. All her sacrifice and trust were a cruel, elaborate joke, orchestrated by the man she loved.
Allie calmly took photos, then gave herself one minute in her beat-up car to mourn. When it passed, her tears stopped, replaced by cold, calculated murder in her eyes. She typed a text to Grayson:
"Come home early tonight. I have a surprise for you."
8.7
I was dying in a cold hospital bed, listening to the monitor count down my final seconds.
As a ghost, I watched my own funeral. My popular friends and wealthy family soon moved on, but one person stayed.
Cas Riley. The invisible outcast from the back of my history class.
He brought a white rose to my grave every single day, withering away until he collapsed on the frozen ground, dying of a broken heart for a girl who barely knew his name.
Opening my eyes again, the hospital smell was gone. I was reborn back in my high school classroom.
I immediately tracked him down, only to witness the brutal hell he was trapped in.
He was humiliated by a cruel foreman for pennies, violently slapped by his uncle over his sick mother's medical money, and forced into bloody street fights.
He was starving, covered in bruises, and completely alone.
When I tried to buy him medicine and step into his life to protect him, he violently pushed me away in the pouring rain.
"Stay out of my life! To protect you, I have to fight, and when I fight, I lose everything!"
He wasn't rejecting me out of hate. He was terrified that his dark, violent reality would drag me down with him.
Standing soaked in the rain, my resolve hardened like steel.
Gentle kindness wasn't going to save him from this hell.
To protect the boy who died for me, I had to become ruthless enough to tear down his entire rotten world and build him a new one.
9.8
Three women, three brothers, a single, crumpled dollar bill.
Alina's world shatters the moment she's auctioned off-and claimed by the powerful Hawthorne brothers.
Thrown into Adrian Hawthorne's cold, dangerous world, she becomes his to control... his to protect... and, terrifyingly, his to desire. He's ruthless, possessive, and hiding secrets that could destroy them both. But the deeper she falls into his world, the harder it becomes to tell if she's his prisoner-or something far more dangerous.
Because the Hawthorne brothers don't just take.
They keep.
Viviane has spent her life surviving, so when Julian Hawthorne "buys" her freedom, she knows better than to trust it. Men like him don't save people-they collect them. But Julian isn't as simple as he pretends to be, and the deeper she's pulled into his world, the more dangerous it becomes to walk away.
Especially when she realizes she might be the only thing he's ever been willing to fight for.
Lena doesn't belong to anyone-and she intends to keep it that way. Brilliant, guarded, and hiding more than anyone suspects, she enters Lucien Hawthorne's world on her own terms. But Lucien doesn't play fair, and he doesn't let go.
When her past comes crashing back, Lena is forced to face the one thing she's been running from: trusting someone who could destroy her... or save her.
Three women. Three choices.Stay. Fight.
Or burn it all down.
Because being sold was only the beginning.
8.8
My little boy died on the operating table during a minor, routine surgery.
That exact same night, my billionaire husband bought out the Hudson River for a massive, million-dollar fireworks show.
It wasn't to mourn our child. It was to celebrate his first love's son being discharged from the hospital.
When I confronted him with our son's death certificate, he sneered and accused me of hiding the boy to get his attention.
He held his mistress in our home, watched her fake a panic attack, and threatened to bankrupt my family if I didn't get on my knees and apologize to her.
But the most horrifying truth came from a terrified hospital nurse.
My son's anesthesia was deliberately kept low during the procedure to keep his tissue viable to save the mistress's child.
He was awake and in agonizing pain while his own father planned a grand celebration for another man's son.
I couldn't understand how a father could be so completely heartless.
How could he sacrifice his own flesh and blood just to please a woman who constantly manipulated him?
Looking at the ashes on my son's favorite toy, my paralyzing grief evaporated, replaced by a cold, unyielding rage.
I arranged my little boy's funeral alone in the freezing rain, left my wedding ring on the counter, and walked straight into the private hotel suite of my husband's most ruthless business rival.
"Let's take him down," I said.