Dragon Tycoon's Fake Bride: A Howls Romance (Paranormal Dragon Billionaire Romance) Read online

  Galen allowed himself to stretch, the teal and dark blue scales glinting in the light of the moon, the golden horns that reached backward from his wide, flat skull arching back in a graceful curve, sharp tips seeming to gleam like the point of a knife would. His brothers did the same, the three young (at least compared to their uncle) dragons reveling in the rare possibility of being in the presence of the resting place of so many of their ancients.

  Former resting place, Galen corrected himself, folding his wide wings neatly on his back and tucking his tail in so Icarus wouldn’t stomp on it as he came down, not quite with the grace of his nephews.

  Georg and Grear, the eldest and the middle of the Calder family of dragons, were looking around thoughtfully, long necks outstretched and chests pushed out. Between the four dragons, the Central Court felt rather small, careful positioning being the only thing allowing all of them to fit.

  Come now, boys, Icarus’ voice echoed in Galen’s head, making him seek out the solid gold gaze of his uncle despite it doing nothing to extend his hearing. Dragons didn’t need to use their ears for such basics as communication. Better pack it in. We might cause a stir, otherwise.

  There was a definite tint of irony to Icarus’ tone as he delivered that – four dragons, standing in the middle of the Palace of Knossos in the dead of night? Perfectly normal! – but the brothers did as they were told, with Galen the only one who seemed to be somewhat tentative as he let the shift take him.

  He’d only been to the palace once as a dragon, when his father’s remains were sealed and buried five years ago to mingle with his ancestors. The palace was special, sacred to the dragons of Crete and not a place that would be treaded lightly. It made his scales prick to imagine the thousands of feet that trampled over the resting grounds of so many dragons every day, without knowing what hid below or showing due respect.

  To anyone not a dragon, it would feel like the wind picked up a moment and the humidity in the air, already high, seemed to spike up rapidly before dissipating again as the dragons shifted and changed, allowing their souls to fit in their human vessels once more. Though no longer in their dragon forms, the men who now stood facing one another on the wide swatch of open stone that made up the Central Court, were no less impressive.

  The Calder men shared some traits that made them as one as they were unique. All were tall and broad, of course, as any dragon was. In peak shape, they were wide-shouldered, slim-hipped and strong, even when dressed in the immaculate suits each were wearing now. Icarus had stooped a little with age, the family trademark of auburn, almost gold-streaked hair having grayed and turned white, just as the tips of his scales had lost their color too. Time controlled all, even dragons.

  Though the jury’s out on the time dragons, Galen thought idly, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  “I assume this is important,” Georg commented, rolling back his shoulders as he cast a look at Icarus.

  “You’d imagine, being here,” Grear noted as a comeback, making the oldest of the Calders snort, a thin line of smoke trailing up from his nostrils.

  Galen barely listened, his head swiveling as he looked round. There was something in the air he hadn’t felt before, a certain scent, a certain presence, maybe. He thought he heard something, a trick of the ears perhaps, and decided that it was simply his mind playing tricks on him. Or the ancient ones amusing themselves on his behalf.

  He’d like to think that after he left his mortal self, he’d be a complete nuisance in the afterlife. What was the fun of being nearly immortal, in soul at least, if he couldn’t use that time to his own advantage in one way or another?

  “You’re right,” Icarus said with a chuckle, motioning for the three broad strokes of men to follow him as he headed up toward the Throne Room, close to where they could look down on the Vat Rooms and by the Room of the Tall Pithos. “It is important.”

  “Imagine that,” Georg commented, seemingly unimpressed or untouched by the same reverence Galen felt weighing heavily on his shoulders as they marched through the grounds in procession.

  “Are we keeping you from a poker game, dearest brother?” Grear asked, amusement in his tone.

  “You’re keeping me from an asskicking, courtesy of the presence of our uncle,” Georg huffed back.

  Galen deduced that they were, indeed, keeping Georg from a poker game from that snide remark. Then again, he’d rarely known the eldest brother of the Calder sons to do much useful with his time. Certainly handling the wealth of the family and their business interests had been of little importance to him, particularly since their father had passed. Something which Galen had become intimately aware of, seeing as he was doing most of the heavy lifting those days.

  “Zip it. We’re at a sacred place,” Icarus growled over his shoulder, the words almost reverberating through their skulls, like Galen couldn’t be sure whether he spoke the comment or just thought it.

  Most dragons could only project their thoughts when in dragon form. Live a couple of centuries and there were few things your mind wasn’t capable of doing, having the time to bond and create oneness with the dragon inside. It certainly wasn’t in his skillset yet, though, nor in that of his brothers. All but whelplings, as their uncle would say.

  Incredibly rich, world-renowned shipping and logistics magnates, but whelps just the same. No pleasing some centuries old creatures.

  “I bet you were going to lose anyway,” Grear whispered to Georg’s back, Galen bringing up the rear as the youngest of the three.

  The pillar of smoke wafting over Georg’s head confirmed that he’d heard, and not appreciated it. Still, Galen found himself distracted by something else, something in the air, causing him to not pay sufficient attention to his bickering brothers. It was a wonder the three of them had gotten through adolescence mostly unscathed (“Fighting is a natural part of growing up. They need to do it, lest they get beaten up when they’re grown,” their father had said sagely, the irony of the possibility of three fully grown dragons getting their asses handed to themselves by anyone being one that was not lost on Galen).

  Galen paused on the steps, falling behind, a frown crinkling his forehead as he stopped to listen, to reach out along the palace to feel the presence that bothered him. Before he could find it, Icarus was back to his old tricks, telling him to get his ass in gear.

  “We don’t have all night,” he grumbled, this time audibly.

  Caught up, Galen took his place in the circle of four, arms crossed over his chest. There was a marked uneasiness in the group, mostly from the three brothers. Icarus as was unflappable as usual.

  “Boys,” he started. “We haven’t been here in a while.”

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Grear corrected.

  Before the middle brother could launch into a tirade about sacred grounds needing to remain sacred, Icarus held up his hand. Galen agreed with both sides, for what it was worth. They weren’t supposed to be at the Knossos for anything but burials, and to his knowledge, no one had passed. The dragon wake and funeral process was something that took months, it wouldn’t be easily missed by even the least attentive of dragons.

  “There are clauses in our rules that allow us to step foot in the sacred place for more than just burials,” Icarus corrected, getting Grear to cock his head to the side in interest.

  Galen, however, still felt himself uneasily distracted, feeling like he should be going somewhere and finding something. Where and what, he couldn’t say.

  “Like when?” Georg intercepted.

  “Like when Knossos is about to fall. Or when the Calder family is about to disintegrate around its very pillars,” Icarus growled, deep and throaty, more dragon than man.

  For all their huffing and puffing, the three brothers all snapped their attention back immediately on their uncle. It almost never happened that all three of the Calders would leave the family fortune and their hilltop villa above it, so it was no surprise that they were antsy, but any threat to their gold, or the res
ting place of their elders, was something that would make them all stand at attention.

  “What do you mean?” Grear demanded, tossing a quick glance at Georg, one that Galen didn’t miss.

  It was no secret that the elder son of the Calder name had not exactly… well, lived up to it for most of his life. It was not a stretch of the imagination to assume that any danger befalling them would be of Georg’s making.

  “What?” Georg grunted back.

  “It’s been five years since your father passed,” Icarus started, his tone tired, maybe even placating. “Five years since the family has been without a head.”

  “You’re the head of the family,” Grear said, shrugging.

  “I’m the appointed head, a head both too heavy and too old to be held up straight,” Icarus chuckled, little humor in his words. “It was an agreement between me and your father. One that he knew you would all accept. One that would give you precious years to understand who you were as men, as dragons.”

  Icarus’ gaze moved between all three of them. Late twenties, all of them, with Galen the youngest at twenty-seven, Galen had to imagine that Icarus saw but children as he looked at them. Something that the word would not believe, but the dragon in Galen reluctantly agreed with. Compared to centuries, decades were nothing.

  “It is time for me to step back. Not because I think you’re ready, any of you, to be head of the family, but because change is necessary. We stand here, on the resting place of our ancients, and we smell the stench of disrespect in the air. Do you know why that is, boys?”

  “Humans,” Georg scoffs.

  “Not just humans,” Icarus corrects. “Greedy humans. For centuries, we’ve had an agreement with the local governments. They allow us our worship, we allow them our sacred lands, with an understanding that lower levels are never excavated again, never opened. That Davies character breached the tombs of too many of our kin for it to ever be allowed to happen again.”

  “I’ve always thought there was more we could do,” Georg commented idly, tossing a lazy glance around himself. “We don’t need to allow the humans here. This ground is ours.”

  “Technically, it isn’t,” Grear corrected.

  “By human rules only.”

  The disdain in Georg’s tone is all too obvious.

  “We live by human rules now,” Galen interjected, getting a raised brow from Georg and a nod from Icarus.

  “As Galen says, we live by their rules now. We stood by, controlling our rage when the palace was first violated, and now, with your father gone, they expect us to do it again. There’s an effort underway to reconstruct areas of the palace, as well as fill in some of the mid-layers of the palace above the tombs, but I’m almost certain they’d breach lower in the process. Or worse yet, destroy something through negligence.

  “Your father held them at bay for longer than I thought possible, a combination of statesmanship and simple bribery, but it’s no longer working. At least, I cannot make it work. As such, it’s time for me to trust the mantle with one of you, expecting my failures to be your triumphs.”

  There was a very certain sourness in Icarus’ tone. Galen was perhaps the only one to notice, his deep, azure eyes finding those of this uncle, sharing a moment between the two. It wasn’t often that a dragon admitted to defeat. Though, if Galen knew his brothers, Georg would simply try to set whoever the offending party was on fire, and Grear would be too distracted by something else to remember that there was a problem to begin with.

  “How long do we have?”

  “A couple of weeks, maybe a month at best,” Icarus answered.

  Galen stilled, his muscles tensing, the dragons of the brothers all roiling within them, anxious and irritated.

  “A couple of weeks?” Grear echoed. “That’s not enough time to foil an election, let alone become the head of a family.”

  “Why, do you think there’s a competition?” Georg asked, dry and cutting.

  Galen didn’t bother to glance at his brothers, his attention far more taken with his uncle, who similarly was studying him. While the two elder Calder brothers bickered, Galen pondered.

  Becoming Alpha was usually the right of the eldest son of any dragon family, but rules had shifted and changed since dragons became more attuned with the life of humans. While the traditions still held fast – the would-be Alpha needed a mate, and a child within a year of their union – it was not something that was given as much as taken. There’d been challenges before, in fact Galen’s father, Ion, was the younger between Icarus and himself, but in a fair fight, it was decided that Ion was the stronger and more capable of the two.

  With the distant sound of his brothers arguing among themselves in the most sacred of the Calder family grounds, Galen’s dragon and himself were deep in discussion. To save Knossos, or to attempt to save it, he’d have to have pull. To get that, he would need more than his family’s name and the de facto control that came with managing its assets, he needed the full weight of them behind him. For that, he’d need to be Alpha.

  And to become Alpha, he’d need a bride.

  Problematic.

  “Enough,” Icarus roared, silencing the fighting twosome and rousing Galen from his quiet pondering. “I did not bring you here to fight like wolf pups over a bone. This is the resting place of your kin. If it is defiled, all our souls are at jeopardy. And no, before you say it, Georg, we’re not murdering anyone. Those days are behind us.

  “I brought you here to show you that there’s a choice. One of you must step up and become the dragon your father always expected you to be and sort out the problem set before us. If not, then all is lost, including, if you believe some of the books on the matter, your father’s immortal soul. Do you understand?”

  “We understand,” Grear said, eyes narrowing as he shared one more poisonous look with Georg.

  Galen could practically hear Grear’s dragon begging to be let out.

  “Good. We meet in a week to discuss the matter. For now, get home. Who has watch?”

  “I do,” Grear commented. “Sabine took it up for me. Special circumstances and all.”

  Icarus nodded, as did Galen. Dragons were not comfortable with leaving their hoard unattended, the treasure they’d spent generations on gathering, but they were all close enough. If something were to happen, they’d sense it and within minutes, the full force of the Calder family’s rage would descend upon anyone seeking to mess with their riches.

  “Go home. And you two,” Icarus said, pointing at Georg and then Galen, pausing to keep eye contact with the latter. “Go wherever the hell you need to go to think long and hard. Spirits above, this is not something that should be news to you, one of you three needs to become Alpha. The fact that you haven’t spent the last five years worrying about it and working toward it is a sin in its own right.”

  Sufficiently admonished, the Calders shuffled behind their uncle, one by one shifting and taking flight from the Central Court once more.

  Are you coming? Grear’s voice echoed in Galen’s head, as the dragon of his brother stretched its wings, Georg and Icarus having already taken flight.

  “Soon. I want to pay my respects,” he answered out loud, strong hands shoved back in his pockets, if only to hide the fact that he wanted to ball them into fists.

  Though there was obvious tension in the air, Galen couldn’t help but think that his brothers were being far too blasé about the whole thing. But that was something to be pondered later.

  Just don’t miss your watch, Grear echoed, before his powerful wings took air and made wind sprawl around Galen’s standing form.

  He watched as Grear rose to the sky, becoming almost invisible in the dark bluish black that seemed to seep into his scales. Galen could feel his uncle still close, but perhaps that was simply because the older dragon had decided to take his time, paying his own respects.

  Galen rubbed his temples with one hand, feeling a kind of exhaustion that usually came after endless meetings and negotiations,
trying to do things the right way, the human way, then Georg’s approach would have been so much easier. This time, he felt, he’d be in for a hell of a ride. If there was anything he could do at all.

  When he heard a soft yelp and the tumbling of rocks, though, he knew he hadn’t been imagining things before. There was someone here.

  A growl rose in the back of his throat. This was not the time to piss off a dragon.

  Three

  Alexis

  Fingers scrabbling for a hold, Alexis held her breath, her head spinning. She was clinging precariously over the edge of the southern side of the Vat Room deposits, having come up from the lower levels to grab something from her locker when she’d been met with the sight of dragons descending from the heavens.

  Dragons!

  While it was known that they existed (and controlled most of the wealth of the whole world between themselves), no one ever saw dragons in their shifted form. It was a topic of gleeful speculation, why the mythical creatures were so shy with their animal side while many of them were known party hounds and public figures otherwise, but coming face to face with one (well, four!) had Alexis forgetting all about the intricacies of their inner lives and descending straight into good old sensible panic.

  Frankly, she didn’t currently possess the breath or the nerves to be sufficiently in awe of them. The only reasonable thing she could think of doing when she’d seen them descending was to jump out of their way, which had her almost crashing into the priceless urns below. Between that, and the absolutely ludicrous conversation the men had, she was sort of preoccupied.

  It was only when the first of them took back to the skies that Alexis dared take a breath, though relaxation wasn’t in the cards yet. The slight moment of distraction afforded her a slipped toe, almost falling once more and at the very least producing an indignant screech.

  When a strong hand suddenly reached down and then unceremoniously yanked her up from her precarious position, her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she thought it would pop right out.