Billionaire Dragon's Mate: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Dragon Romance Nove Page 10

  “You said they want to hold a rehearsal dinner tonight, right?” Ruby asked.

  She took the cold cloth off her head and rolling her shoulders back, preparing herself both mentally and physically to put on one hell of a show.

  “Yup. Cable was actually just in here, telling me to get you up. I think he wants you all dolled up.”

  “Oh, he’s going to get just that,” Ruby said, a sly smile spreading over her lips.

  Screw this, she could handle Cable. Or at least turn the tides in her favor.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cillian

  Cillian kept high above the clouds, out of sight of any curious onlookers. Even if someone spotted him, he would just look like an oddly flying jet at that altitude. He’d been scouring the lands for days now, trying to find the slightest glimpse of his missing mate, and so far he’d had no luck. When he realized that Ruby was long gone, he could only think of one place to look for her – Chicago.

  His maw contorted in a snarl, showing his huge fangs and his serpentine tongue. It was as if his muscles were slowly icing over, his movements growing more sluggish. Each moment she spent away from him made him more apathetic towards everything other than finding her. He hadn’t slept or eaten since she disappeared; instead he’d spent his time scouring the lands in the hopes of figuring out what had happened to her.

  He couldn’t believe Ruby would just run without saying a word. From Cable, yes, but not from him. Or at least he hoped she wouldn’t. His mate thinking that he was as bad as some half-witted werewolf would really have killed him – if being without her didn’t get him first, that is. When he realized that someone else might have been behind Ruby’s disappearing act, his blood had boiled so hot he thought he would explode.

  Carrick had made himself scarce after his most recent appearance. And when his little brother had failed to reappear at the keep to throw the challenge in his face, Cillian had got the sickening feeling that the person orchestrating his worst nightmare might be another Greenmeadow. And of course, there was Cable, Ruby’s knight in shining leather. The thought of his grubby hands on her body made Cillian want to destroy everything in sight.

  Cillian had turned and headed straight for Chicago as soon as the discoveries hit him during his frantic, worried searches through the woods and mountains of Emerald Ridge. It was faster to fly than to deal with the jet and try to behave like everything was perfectly okay – nothing was fucking okay.

  Why hasn’t she used the pendant if she’s in trouble? he asked himself for the umpteenth time.

  The possibility that she just didn’t want to be near him was too much to bear, so he ignored that option completely. No, the only way to hold onto his sanity was to believe that she was in danger, and that for some reason, she couldn’t call for him.

  An angry dragon was a curse one wouldn’t even wish on his worst enemy, and right now, Cillian Greenmeadow was blind with rage, grief and worry. Anyone that got in his way would have a very bad day.

  ***

  It was nightfall when he made it to Chicago. The small bit of him that could still think rationally was grateful for the cover of darkness, making his arrival on top of one of the skyscrapers less of a newsworthy event. The tall building shuddered and creaked under his sudden weight. Cillian tucked his wings by his sides, and with thick smoke still wafting out of his flared nostrils, he turned from his dragon form for the first time in days. It was a painful experience.

  The more power he gave to the ancient being, the less it wanted to be governed by the man. But Cillian knew he would have to embrace his humanity if there was any hope of keeping a hold on his sanity. Staying in dragon from would be a quick and very bumpy road straight to madness. He wouldn’t have been the first dragon the Treasure Lane’s council has had to put out of their misery after they lost their mind with grief. It happened more often than they cared to admit.

  Sometimes, even the most steadfast and centered dragons would go insane after the death or loss of their mate. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Cillian clutched his chest, falling to his knees with gritted teeth. His heart pounded so hard he thought it would pry his ribs aside and jump out.

  “Fucking hell,” he murmured, propping himself up with one hand.

  He was back in his jeans and leather jacket, looking like any hoodlum. The gold cuffs glinted back at him under the light of the moon. He looked up at it – just one more night before the gold moon. He’d have to find Ruby now or risk being without her forever.

  If Cable married her during the gold moon, he wouldn’t have many options left, other than killing the man. And he wasn’t sure if that was something he could get away with. But he had no doubt that he would do just that, if he got the slightest feeling that it would mean Ruby’s safety. He exhaled sharply. For a man, who prided himself in fixing problems, he sure wished he had a better handle on his own.

  Slowly, the ache in his chest subsided, and the unsettling sensation of his skin crawling and wanting to turn back into scales lessened until he could regain control of his own body again. Cillian stood up, his muscles protesting to being on two legs again. He’d never given the dragon such thorough and long reign before, and now he had to deal with the consequences. Still, he couldn’t fault the primal being within him.

  Cillian wasn’t sure if he could have given up searching Colorado in time to realize that where he truly needed to be was in Chicago. With his legs still shuddering a bit, he went to the door that led down into the building and disappeared into the stairwell. It was the building his apartment was in. He’d picked the highest building he could for good reason.

  When he made it to his door, he moved to unlock it, but the door was already open. A cold chill ran down his spine as he cautiously pushed it open and stepped in, fishing out his brass knuckles and slipping them over his right hand.

  “Who’s there?” he called, his deep voice tinted with just the right amount of ‘fuck with me and end up in a body bag’.

  When he caught movement in the corner of his eye, his stance went rigid. It didn’t relax an ounce when the man standing up from his black leather couch turned out to be his little brother.

  “How nice of you to join me, brother,” Carrick said softly, swirling some whiskey in one of Cillian’s tumblers.

  “Cut the bullshit. Where’s Ruby?” Cillian barked, flexing his hands experimentally.

  Getting angry only made the dragon want to lash out harder. It wasn’t an easy task to keep from shifting right in the middle of his living room. Smoke was gathering and pluming out of his nostrils like something straight out of science fiction, and he could feel the fire warming his belly and wanting to rise to a boil in him. At least he left Carrick with no doubts about his current mood – pissed, so fucking pissed.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Carrick said languidly, strolling to the window and taking a sip of his drink.

  He looked so different and yet so similar to Cillian. Both carried themselves with pride, obviously different branches of the same tree. While Carrick bore a distinct stench of Old World entitlement, Cillian was the spitting image of new age rebellion. Where Carrick was starched, buttoned up, severe and strict, Cillian was fluid, loose and ready to roll with the punches the world gave him.

  Unless those hits included taking away his mate. That he could not abide by.

  “I doubt that’s true. What are you doing here?” Cillian asked, forcing down the rage in his voice.

  He pocketed the brass knuckles, though the desire to break something, anything, still roiled inside of him. The dragon was set in its ways, and it wanted some destruction.

  “I’m here to see if you’ll stop this nonsense and act like a Greenmeadow is supposed to. What would the rest of the Council say?”

  “They’d tell me to go for it. This is not the fucking Middle Ages anymore, Carrick. We don’t carry princesses off into the sunset. And unless we get over living in the past, we’re as good as trash in the bin of history. I can�
�t understand why you won’t see that,” Cillian forced out between gritted teeth.

  He’d had the same conversation with him so many times, and still he couldn’t get through to him – like talking to a wall with a shitty attitude. And right now, he was in no mood for it. He felt his skin crawl and his intestines twist and rumble, the fire wanting to consume him inside out. While he was usually in perfect control of himself and his dragon, the dragon now wanted to take control of him. With Carrick acting the way he was, Cillian wasn’t sure he had the nerve to stop the dragon for much longer.

  Carrick looked at him, smirking. It took all of Cillian’s strength to keep from hurtling the brass knuckles right at his smug face. He was so much like his father – blind to change and ignorant to progress or any worldview other than his own. It was hard to imagine that they were brothers at all, though looking at him was like looking at a younger version of himself. The eyes were the same emerald, and his nose was just as straight and regal, his cheekbones high and jaw strong. So similar, yet completely different.

  “I don’t understand your constant need to conform to the ages. We are dragons, brother. We make the ages. The present will be whatever we want it to be. If we rise up and take what is ours, there isn’t a force strong enough to stop us.”

  For the first time in many years, Cillian saw a spark in his brother’s eye. A glaring, worrying look that made him want to knock some sense into him. Passion without direction was a dangerous thing, but passion directed at things unwise and unkind was a nightmare in the making. The man in him rebelled at the very thought that Carrick was proposing, but his dragon…

  His dragon listened. They were primal beasts after all, built to rule, to conquer and to guard. Those things had become more and more scarce now. No wonder a dragon would feel the pull for a darker time, a time when things were built with the dragon, not mankind in mind.

  “They’d slaughter us,” Cillian said, his voice low, fighting against the dragon.

  It seemed like an impossible battle, being torn between his need to find Ruby, his desire to make his brother understand that the path he was on could lead to nothing but destruction and staying in control when his dragon thought best to take it from him.

  “Who are they?” Carrick asked, emptying the glass with one gulp.

  He set it down, sneering at Cillian. A line of smoke spewed from his nostrils, wafting up in a thin pillar. It somehow gave the madness in his eyes more weight.

  “The shifters would join us, not that we need them. Wolves, bears, lions… They could all be wiped out by a single dragon. It was only because they honored us as stronger than they that we ever kept them around at all. Now, I think our forefathers should have destroyed them a long time ago. I can’t believe we’ve sunken so low – dealing with them, talking to them. Befriending them. Disgusting.”

  “It doesn’t matter who’d join us and who wouldn’t. As long as we’ve been around, we’ve worked to hide our identities, to keep all shifters out of the public eye. You are not the first to think that we should be ruling, not co-existing. And you know what we’ve done to shifters like you? We’ve made it as if they never existed at all. Is that what you want, Carrick?

  I can understand you thinking that I am not doing right by the family, that things should be different for us. But that is on us, not the rest of society. Your problem is with me, not with everyone else.”

  The moon cast a hazy glow around his brother, standing in front of the window. Carrick smirked, wrapping his fingers behind his back. He wore heavy bejeweled and crested chains around his neck. The cuffs he had on his wrists were adorned with the family crest and large emeralds. He was dressed in only the most expensive clothes. He was everything that Cillian wasn’t and never wanted to be.

  “An astute observation, brother. You are my first problem. But I feel you are a problem solving itself. Or unraveling itself, if you will.”

  He grinned, menace dripping from his words. That was all Cillian could take.

  In a flash, he had crossed the room, jumped over the couch and grabbed Carrick by the chest. Cillian slammed him against the window as if he weighed nothing at all, the reinforced glass shuddering and quaking under the weight of the two large shifters. Cillian could feel chains breaking and the gold spilling to the floor. It physically hurt him, as badly as it did Carrick, but he had more pressing matters to attend to – like shaking some fucking sense into his baby brother.

  “You know where she is, don’t you? Don’t you!? Answer me, you European slime,” Cillian hissed, pulling him back and slamming him against the glass again. He could hear it beginning to crack.

  He didn’t care. Color seeped out of Carrick’s face, and his hands grabbed at Cillian’s wrists.

  “You’re insane,” he choked, his eyes wide with surprise.

  For all his posturing, it seemed that his plans didn’t account for a man mad with worry for his mate.

  “Compared to you, I’m a poster boy for mental health. Where is she? Who has her?” he demanded again, the adrenaline pounding in his veins and making everything else disappear into the backdrop of his mind.

  A thought occurred to him, watching his little brother dangle, surprisingly helpless. He saw stunned surprise there, and despite what Carrick put forward, it became painfully obvious that it was just that – all words, no action. Cillian gritted his teeth, looking at his worm of a brother, made soft by their father’s staunch beliefs in a world that would not return. A chilling realization ran through him.

  “You never planned to challenge me at all, did you? You’d never win… You’re smaller, slower, weaker…This is how you wanted me. Half out of my mind with rage and worry, bringing me down so you could take my place. You fucking runt, that’s what this is, isn’t it!? Who put you up to this? I know you can’t be this smart on your own. You never bothered to learn a useful thing in your entitled life.” Cillian hissed, one hand clenching around Carrick’s throat and slamming him against the window time and time again.

  Fear brimmed in the younger Greenmeadow’s eyes. It broke something inside Cillian, but he didn’t care. There was no room for that now.

  “Fine! Fuck, let me down, Cillian!” Carrick croaked, his hands clawing at Cillian’s face.

  Cillian loosened his grip, but only a little. He trembled with fury – a time bomb that could go off at any second. Somewhere out there, Ruby was in trouble, and it was all because a spoiled brat thought he could do a job reserved for men. Right then and there, Cillian vowed to himself that if he got Ruby back, he would do his damndest to end up nothing like the last few generations of elders.

  He’d work for their name. He’d make it worth something again, so that wretched, spineless lizards like Carrick wouldn’t be the ones carrying their legacy.

  “It was Romulus. He… he suggested I… that. Fuck. Okay, I don’t think you should be the elder. I don’t like how you’re handling our name, working like we’re some common lizards. Romulus got rid of Remington, so I thought I could do the same. Please, Cillian, let me the fuck down.”

  Cillian’s face hardened. That’s what he, along with Devon and the Goldplains hadn’t been able to figure out. Remington Redblade had attacked Devon Bluewing, stealing his bride, challenging him for Treasure Lane’s Head of Council, a position his family had never held. It had seemed odd to Cillian that the hot-blooded but calculating Remington would take such a risk, but it all made sense if there was a snake like Romulus whispering into his ear, ready to strike when he was at his weakest, making him think that he had to fight for his position as elder.

  Just like Carrick had tried to do to him. For a moment, he almost felt sad for Remington – an emotion that quickly passed when he looked at Carrick. Violence only understood violence.

  “No,” Cillian said simply.

  He pulled Carrick back one more time and with a roar, slammed him into the cracking windowpane, letting go just as the window shattered into a million little pieces. As if in slow motion, Cillian watched his
little brother flail for a few moments, eyes wide with fear and surprise, before his instincts kicked in and he shifted mid-fall. The emerald green dragon pulled himself up at the last moment, careening over the sidewalks for a second before speeding upwards and disappearing into the clouds like a bullet from a gun.

  As the last flick of his tail disappeared into the clouds, so did Cillian from the apartment. The door slammed behind him, leaving no trace that he had been there at all, other than the shattered window and the cool night air now blowing through the living room. He was perfectly certain that he wasn’t going to regret what he’d done. What’s more, he was certain who had his bride.

  And they weren’t going to be happy to see him when he found them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ruby

  Ruby’s red dress fit her as if it had been sewn right on her body. She knew it hugged her curves perfectly, showing off her assets in their tastiest form, and she worked it for all it was worth. Just like she’d expected, Trident had come for her a little after she woke up, and he had the good fortune of getting the first look at her. All long tan legs in high pumps and a body that shifters would kill for – she was a dame to behold.

  Her lips were as red as her name, and on the outside, she was cool and collected. On the inside, though, her stomach jumped with butterflies with every step she took, and her palms were sweating like she was about to risk her life. Though, she wasn’t entirely sure whether that wasn’t the case. She was playing with wolves, and the wolves had big teeth.

  Ruby put on her most dazzling smile as she entered the common room, now turned into some makeshift hall complete with plastic tables and chairs, and she could even spy a tablecloth or two. It all felt very tongue in cheek, but if Cable wanted to put on a show, hell, she could play along. She took a deep breath, ignoring the thump of metal music in the background as she locked eyes with her ‘betrothed’, dressed in his finest leathers. She’d spent far too much time being a pawn for others. This time, she was going to be in control.