An Accident Waiting to Dragon, page 1
AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO DRAGON
BRIMSTONE INC.
ABIGAIL OWEN
AN INFERNO RISING & FIRE’S EDGE CROSSOVER NOVELLA
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
An Accident Waiting to Dragon
COPYRIGHT © 2024 by Author Abigail Owen
Blue Violet Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cover Art by Blue Violet Publishing, LLC
DEDICATION
To all my fellow book dragons out there!
CONTENTS
An Accident Waiting to Dragon
Content / Trigger Warning
Prologue
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Mate
The Mate
Excerpt from The Rogue King
The Rogue King
Also by Abigail Owen
About the Author
Acknowledgments
AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO DRAGON
A BRIMSTONE INC. NOVELLA
An Inferno Rising & Fire’s Edge
dragon shifter crossover novella…
It’s not the heat...it’s the pixie dust.
The day her brother died, Gwendolyn Moonsoar fled from her veil of pixies. Grief drove her away, but a broken heart made her stay gone for good. Lucky for Gwen, Brimstone Inc. was there to break her fall. Now, as a special courier transporting the most valuable and dangerous items of the supernatural world, Gwen is good at her job. Damn good. After all, disappearing is her specialty.
Dragon shifter Asher Kato will always be haunted by his best friend Goran’s death. Although a promise he made gave him no choice, Asher will never forgive himself for the role he played…or the fallout it caused with Goran’s younger sister, Gwen. Burying himself in his role as second-in-command of the blue dragons is his only escape. Unfortunately, the peace they fought so hard for isn’t meant for a warrior like him. So, when a courier transporting a rare basilisk egg goes missing, Asher volunteers to track them down.
Except Asher’s mission ends up stranding him on a deserted island with the only woman he’s ever wanted….a pixie who would rather vanish forever than spend a single second with him.
CONTENT / TRIGGER WARNING
I write addictive, action-packed romantasy and paranormal romance stories. These books may include elements that might not be suitable for all readers, including but not limited to: violence, gore, death, explicit sexual content, swearing, supernatural or magical themes, and an irreverent sense of humor. It is my hope and personal goal that all elements have been handled sensitively and in an age-appropriate manner. I trust you to know your own age, experiences, beliefs, values, triggers and limits. Read at your own discretion.
Please take note and take care, and get ready for a helluva ride!
Under 18: Get permission from your parent or guardian to read my books.
PROLOGUE
Asher
Thirteen years ago…
Dragon steel shackles kept Asher from moving, let alone shifting—fuck. If he tried, he’d be cleaved in two.
Whoever had taken him had also covered his head in a hood, leaving only his senses of sound and smell to help him adjust. Smell not as much because the hood smelled like ball sweat and mold. Godsdamn it.
They hadn’t gone far. That much he sensed.
Best guess, they were in a remote glen somewhere near Ben Nevis, the Scottish mountain stronghold of the blue dragon shifters, which meant whoever grabbed him from his bed inside the mountain didn’t want everyone seeing what happened next.
He was so fucked.
A year as a spy in that mountain, pretending to be one of the corrupt King Thanatos’s loyal bodyguards and warriors, and he’d thought he’d covered his tracks, that he’d earned the king’s respect. How had he been caught? Or…was this a different enemy of Thanatos’s coming after one of his leaders?
Either was possible.
With a deep, unpleasant breath, Asher controlled his heartbeat through sheer will and training and remained still as he was carried farther and farther by hands, not talons. Walking, not flying.
They stopped, and even the breeze went still, the birds silent in the trees.
Then, with a tug, his hood came off and Asher blinked, his dragon shifter eyes adjusting easily to the forest darkness.
A new moon. No light to help him see.
Not that he needed it. Asher’s captor stood behind him, but he didn’t look back. Because only a few yards in front of him, also on his knees and bound in dragon steel, was…
Goran Woodshield.
The sight of his best friend’s dead serious face was like a gut punch, and it took everything in Asher to control his reaction.
Goran’s presence here answered all Asher’s questions.
His friend had been acting as Asher’s scout and go-between to get the information he gathered to Ladon Ormarr, the man fighting to usurp the throne. Asher and Goran had been friends since childhood. Long fucking time for dragons. For pixies, too.
This wasn’t Thanatos’s enemies.
This was Thanatos.
He’d come for Asher’s head. Goran’s too. That was a bigger problem because Goran had been waiting for this moment to die.
How do I get us out of this?
Taking in the wooded clearing, Asher tried to think. He couldn’t shift. Dragon steel was the only thing that could hold a dragon shifter, so that was out. What else? Goran was a wood pixie and didn’t have to have his hands free to use his power. Only, thanks to his heightened senses, Asher knew more than a few dragons lurked in the woods around them. He and Goran might be able to bust their way out, but they’d never make it far.
As if Goran had followed Asher’s train of thought, he gave the tiniest shake of his head.
Not a warning.
A refusal.
He wasn’t going to try to escape.
Asher’s heart dropped like a boulder to the bottom of his stomach. He knew what was coming. What Goran was going to do. The sacrifice he was planning to make.
They’d agreed on this plan. Or, more accurately, Goran had essentially forced Asher’s hand with a blood oath made through magic and bloodshed. He’d trusted Goran, swearing blindly before he knew what his friend was going to ask of him. Now he wished he hadn’t trusted so easily.
Because the possible scenario Goran had planned for, even been waiting for, was happening. Now.
Heart growing heavier by the second, Asher stared hard at Goran. Tall for a pixie, Goran’s face was a triangle with a pointed, stubborn-as-hells chin. His coloring he’d gotten from his father—a pixie who’d basically been a second father to Asher—light brown hair, hazel eyes, and, of all things, freckles.
As familiar to Asher as his own face. How was he supposed to kill Goran?
Don’t make me do this. Please, he silently begged Goran.
But the only way to salvage this was making Thanatos believe that Goran was the spy, not Asher. They both knew the king, knew the only act that would convince him of Asher’s loyalty was this. Him killing Goran.
And a slowly dying man was a desperate man. Already Goran’s lips and ears were starting to turn black with the disease slowly ravaging his body. A fact he’d hidden from everyone but Asher—including Goran’s own family, and his sister Gwen. Instead of fading away slowly, he had wanted to make his end count. This was his choice.
But it had only been a contingency plan, damn it.
They were never supposed to end up here.
“Asher Kato.” A voice like smoke came out of the darkness a beat before Thanatos himself stepped into Asher’s line of sight. “Member of my King’s Guard. My best warrior. I was thinking of appointing you as my Viceroy of Defense.” A muscle twitched in the side of the king’s jaw. “The only question I have for you is…how will you choose to die?”
Asher only had a split second to decide what to do.
The surety, the will to see this through, glittered in his friend’s eyes. Asher didn’t need his dragon’s telepathy to know that Goran was silently urging him to take this final step with him.
Fuck.
This was happening.
They were doing this. His stomach curled, souring, and turning to sludge. He gave the slightest shake of his head, one that asked Goran to stop. Not to make him do this.
Not to force his hand.
Goran tipped his chin just enough for Asher to get the message. There was no other choice. Ladon needed Asher to stay where he was, providing in
I will go to the seventh hell for this.
Gwen would never forgive him for this.
But the decision was made. The blood oath between them had made sure of that.
Time to put on a show.
“I know this man,” Asher started. And had the satisfaction of seeing Thanatos pause. The king hadn’t been expecting that admission. “Why is he here?”
Thanatos swung his piercing blue gaze from Goran to Asher, tipping his head to study him closely. “You admit you know him?”
“Yes.”
Thanatos’s lips compressed. He’d never really liked Asher’s tendency to brevity. “He’s a friend?”
“Yes.”
Across the way, Goran grunted. Pixie for irritation. In other words, start talking.
Asher unclenched his jaw. “We grew up together, north of here, near my home.” In a smaller dragon mountain near Goran’s flutter of pixies.
Thanatos rocked back on his heels, taking that in. “Then what the hells was he doing skulking through our mountain with papers containing information about our coffers? Was he there to visit you?”
Yes. But the information Goran had carried was too damning to admit it. “No. I have no clue why he was there.” He forced fire to reflect in his eyes. “What did you do, Goran?”
Goran glared at Asher like he wanted to rip his throat out, playing his part. “I did what you should have done all along.”
Asher curled his lip in a snarl.
And Thanatos drew his shoulders back. “He was bringing information from a spy and traitor in my mountain to Ladon Ormarr.”
Asher snarled at Goran, straining against his shackles. “Are you in league with that godsdamned traitor?”
Goran’s lips tipped in a characteristic lopsided grin, like he didn’t have a care in the world. “To eradicate this asshole?” He nodded at Thanatos. “Yeah.”
“You were my friend,” Asher said, his voice turning raw with the undeniability of exactly what was about to happen.
Goran’s shrug held no mercy and no regret. “Then you should have listened to me when I told you to get out of Ben Nevis. You’re going to have to kill me to stop me now, brother.”
Brother. Asher had hoped that maybe Goran would become that not just in words.
“Well, well… This is a turn of events I did not foresee,” Thanatos murmured, crossing his arms as he took in the scene.
And from the glint in his eyes, he didn’t believe it, either.
He moved to stand before Asher, producing a key from his pocket. And with each click of a lock, each release of one of the bindings, more blue dragons in their human forms stepped out of the darkness and into the clearing. Thanatos’s lackies. Witnesses.
Or killers, if Asher and Goran tried to run.
“You want to prove yourself loyal to me?” Thanatos asked in a low voice. “Execute this man. Here and now.” This was it.
No choice.
There is no other choice.
Asher’s dragon, warily silent until this moment, gave a small huffing whine.
But he didn’t dare allow the emotion to show on his face. Not for a second.
Closing his eyes, Asher took a deep breath, and called forth the dragon from within, shifting and giving the animal side of him control. In a silent rush, his body changed. His soul stayed in place as his physical form shifted around his essence—everything human about him, including his clothes, absorbed into his new shape. The trees flew past as his perspective rose, higher and higher, until he towered above, his deep navy scales closer to black in the darkness.
As he shifted, Asher’s senses sharpened, his sight able to pick up the rapid pulse at Goran’s neck. His friend wasn’t as brave as he was letting on.
Who would be when facing death by dragon fire?
Bile churned in Asher’s stomach, mixing toxically with fire, while he looked his friend in the eyes, never looking away, trying to…
He didn’t even know what.
Offer some sort of comfort? Be there for him? Soak in these last moments of Goran’s life? Come up with some desperate last-ditch attempt to fix this a different way? To flee? To take his friend and run?
He was a seasoned, hardened warrior. He’d gutted opponents. He’d ordered his own men into battle and fought beside them every step of the way. Violence and bloodshed were a part of his life, and he’d never once flinched from it. But now…
Every part of him was protesting so brutally, he had to clamp down hard on his muscles to keep from visibly shaking, to keep from vomiting.
The first words Goran had said to him rattled around in Asher’s head. “Want to see what I can do?”
Goran had found him tucked between rocks on the side of the mountain the day his parents had died, when Asher had realized he had no one. Despite his illustrious blood lines, he’d had no family, no friends. He’d been a loner. So had his parents.
Goran hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t tried to cajole. Instead he’d ignored the tears on Asher’s face, focusing instead on using his magic to grow a tree where none had been before.
He’d only been six years old.
They’d been inseparable after that.
And then there was Gwen…
“You can’t do it, can you?” Goran taunted now. “I always knew you were a coward.”
Asher growled deep in his throat. A warning. At the same time, he sent his friend a single thought. “I will take care of them for you.”
Goran’s family. Especially Gwen.
If she ever forgave him…
Eyes glittering with what might be tears but looked like anger, Goran sneered. “Come on,” the challenge rang through the clearing.
His friend was ready for this death. Asking for it. Begging even.
Without warning, his friend lashed out with all the power a wood pixie could muster. Roots of trees burst from the ground, twining together to form a massive sword. He slammed it down on Asher’s back, striking his tail.
Agony ripped through Asher in a searing trail which threatened to obliterate him right there.
Blue flames erupted from his maw on a roar of fury and pain and regret, hitting Goran dead on.
Asher held the fire for longer than he had to. Held it even as his body wavered, swaying like a reed in a hurricane as his own injury shrieked at him. He held it until the trees all around them exploded in flames, and the men watching had to shift themselves to be safe from the conflagration.
The fire cut off abruptly as Asher swayed wildly, then the world tipped over sideways.
The last thing he saw was the pile of ashes on the ground.
Ashes that only seconds ago had been his best friend.
CHAPTER ONE
Asher
Present day…
As far as Asher was concerned, there was nothing more teeth grindingly frustrating than sitting in a conference room, choked by the fancy suit and tie he’d been forced to wear. He listened intently to another unending debate the bureaucratic types were currently having about the state of dragon shifter kind. Problems that seemed small after five-hundred years of fighting.
But the war was over, the corrupt kings removed, and new leaders installed. And, with the rise of the phoenix, they had peace at last.
Which basically puts me out of a fucking job.
Not really. His position as beta of the blue dragons made him second-in-command and next in line to rule, at least until Ladon and Skylar Ormarr—the Blue Clan’s king and queen—spawned little fire breathers of their own. Problem was, Asher was a warrior, not a diplomat. Talking—unless it involved giving orders—wasn’t exactly his thing.
