Page 2 of Capturing the Ruthless Billionaires

It helped that their family doctor was on Alexandria’s side; without her, their escape would be useless.

“You must stay alert at all times, Alexandria.” A watery voice beside her drew her out of her thoughts. “These dragons are dangerous, have always been from the beginning of time, and even chained in our cells; if given a small opportunity, they will burn us to the ground.”

Although they were not actual dragons, the way Melle, the now-retired first priestess of Swan House, referred to them would lead anyone to believe they were. On another day, Alexandria would have smiled at the tiny woman dressed in a pure white robe decked with her family’s insignia—a swan—walking beside her. But today, just keeping a neutral expression on her face and ensuring she didn’t crumble into a pathetic heap of flesh as panic punctured her nerves used up all her reserves.

Instead, she squeezed the woman’s hand, taking comfort from the priestess—the thick wrinkles around her sweet face and kind eyes familiar to Alexandria since the moment she was born. She was going to miss Melle, but she had to save Rhea from living a lie, and she had no idea what the elders of Swan House had planned for Cara now that she was twenty-two years old as well. Alexandria wasn’t going to stick around to find out, either.

Still, the men her family had kept captive for the last two weeks in their dungeon were not dragons—well, not the kind that actually breathed fire.

Her entourage beside Melle and her parents included the elders who sat on the Swan House Council, a few aunts and uncles who were quietly gleeful to witness this event in their lifetimes, and an array of junior priestesses and guards.

The fact that, despite being chained and incapacitated, they still required an army of protection confirmed what Melle had said. They were dangerous. Very dangerous. Alexandria had to play her cards right. She refused to think of the alternative.

Oil lamps sat in the small pockets carved out along the stone wall, illuminating the eerie passageway of the underground arena. Studying her family's history, an inescapable necessity, led her to understand that this was the place where Swan House's enemies, starved and then beaten to death, came to die. Alexandria wanted no part of this world. Swan House's foundation rested on greed and power, and she found it hard to comprehend their return to their harsh and antiquated practices.

She tried to calm her nerves. She had a plan. It was going to work. Again, unfortunately, her plan didn’t come without a measure of harm to them, unintentional as it was. She had to endure the ritual in its entirety before she could get Rhea and Cara to safety and, if she could, maybe help the men her family had incarcerated escape as well.

She wouldn’t have gone through with it if she had a choice. They would understand, surely.

The passage broadened into a circular arena. Fire roared from a massive pit in the center of the space. Like the murmuration of starlings, the cluster of priestesses and the guards spread out and took their respective positions around the chamber, leaving everyone else facing a thick velvet curtain-covered wall. This was the first part of the ritual, the most innocent part. The unveiling of the Dragons.

Alexandria dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She stiffened her spine, willing her body to rigidify when the alternative was trembling like a leaf. A weakness she vowed not to show.

Two young Swan House guards stood on either side of the curtain. At her father’s command, they pulled on a rope, and the fabric parted.

Alexandria couldn’t help but stagger back as she took in the sight before her. Three barred cells, each separated by a thick stone wall, housed three men. Wearing only black drawstring pants, the fabric was coarse, and their muscular torsos gleamed with insidious power in the hazy-lit stone orb structure. In the split second her eyes had fallen on them, she registered one of them had grey eyes, one green and the other blue.

Even confined, they were the tallest men in the room. They stood with their feet braced apart, ruthless power surging from their presence, while raw, sinewy strength bulged from their biceps as they clenched their fists. Murder was prevalent in their dark, stormy gazes, and now those three sets of eyes remained fixed solely on her as if no one else in the dungeon existed.

Alexandria struggled to breathe. If given a chance, they would kill her, and then they would kill everyone even remotely connected to Swan House.

She knew nothing about them. Not where they came from. Where they lived. What they did for a living. Their names. What their dreams, hopes, and fears were. It was all irrelevant to the task at hand.

A task that involved her taking the seed of these three men inside her body and making a baby out of their essences.

Not just any three men, to be precise. No. For this auspicious Swan House centenary, these men were held captive because ancient history dictated that their bloodline evolved from the mighty beasts that once roamed the earth and still ran through their veins today.

Every hundred years, Swan House offspring had to be fathered by three men with the blood of dragons in their veins.

Alexandria was going to be the bearer of their seed.

Chapter Two

Slade Whitaker kindled the feral hatred within him but kept it suppressed, displaying only enough to leave him with a silent, lethal look on his face. He knew that the two men on either side of him, Cian Henderson and Lachlan Grant, who were held in the same cell as him, separated by thick stone walls, were experiencing the same red-hot rage, but they were also containing it, keeping it simmering just beneath the surface. Hidden for when the time was right.

They were still superior to every individual in this dungeon despite being imprisoned and having their ankles shackled.

Slade, Cian, and Lachlan hadn’t known Swan House existed until two weeks ago. They knew nothing about their so-called heritage since then, either. Why the fuck would they care about things that happened hundreds of years ago? They were self-made, rising from the dumps of the world to sit on thrones of their own making. Their history started with them and no one else, past or future.

When Slade was six years old, his parents disappeared, leaving him to fend for himself in a trailer park. His uncle, who let him sleep in a tattered sleeping bag outside his trailer, fed him scrapes from his plate and nothing more—just enough to keep Slade alive.

All three of them, Slade, Cian, and Lachlan, had been born to loser parents in the same decrepit trailer park and raised themselves. Because they were the only three boys around, they developed a unique, inseparable bond from day one. They were invincible, ready to lay down their lives for each other without question.

Whatever they managed to steal was shared among them, big or small, relevant or not; one hot dog off Old Jimmy’s food stand in the small neighboring town or six, they shared it evenly.

By the age of fourteen, they were already nearing six feet tall and feared nothing. An ex-vet had taught them deadly skills with knives and coached them in hand-to-hand combat in exchange for them building him a small log cabin in the park and a ramp so his wife could move around more easily.

The education they received from going to school—most days at least—was supplemented by what they learned from an eccentric man who looked like Einstein and who walked around in the same raggedy suit every day of the year.

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