Page 1 of An Accident Waiting to Dragon

PROLOGUE

Asher

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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.

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