Page 57 of Shifter Marked and Claimed

I’m no princess, and Vidar is no prince. Yet, I was no less royally screwed the minute I asked him for help. Turns out, granting that kind of favor makes us dragon bound, and that’s something I did not sign up for.

For the last year and a half, Kelsey and her sister have been on the run from a fate worse than death. Unfortunately, their hard-won safety in a town filled with mythical creatures shatters when the world starts shaking and their past catches up to them.

In a desperate moment, Kelsey asks her angry and hot-as-sin neighbor for help. If only she’d known dragons protect for life. What the heck is she supposed to do with a surly dragon?

To my writing partners,

You ladies are the best!

Thanks for letting me “off” your fictional-selves countless times.

CHAPTERONE

“Minotaur are real,”I said.

“Is it minotaur or minotaurs?” Zoe asked in a bored tone. “I mean, I need to know what to scream when more than one of them is running at me.”

Looking up from the journal Ashlyn had loaned us, I glanced at my sister. She lay on the couch, completely relaxed and tossing a balled-up piece of paper into the air. Her brown curls trailed over the cushion, bouncing with each uncaring move, which annoyed me. She’d already had a run-in with an incubus and knew just how dangerous the creatures here could be.

“Can you please take this seriously?” I said.

“I am, Kells. Trust me. I am. What’s the point of learning all of this, though, if we never leave the house?” She lifted her head to give me a moody look.

“We haven’t even made it through all of the books yet. Don’t rush the process. Knowledge is our friend in this case.”

“Isn’t it always our friend?”

“Nope. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

She made a noise that might have sounded like agreement to some, but I knew it was just general pissiness escaping. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t like being cooped up in a house for a month straight, either. But, at least, inside this house, we were safe.

“Why don’t you go for a run on the treadmill?” I suggested, already looking back down at the book.

While I wasn’t overly fond of learning about all the things in Uttira that wanted to kill humans, I’d rather know what dangers we faced here. As two of only a handful of human residents, my sister and I needed to know how to deal with the paranormal creatures who lived here. And there were a lot. I couldn’t even imagine what Ashlyn, a fellow human, had gone through to compile so much information in her journals.

The doorbell rang, and Zoe jumped up from her reclined position on the couch.

“Don’t—”

“Open the door. I know. We’ve been doing this for weeks now.”

I swiveled in my chair just enough to keep an eye on her without making it obvious. She’d already threatened to smother me in my sleep if I didn’t give her some breathing room. Considering where we were and what we were hiding from, I knew she’d reached her limit to say something like that. Even if she had tried to make it sound like a joke.

She looked out the front door’s peephole and waited several long moments.

“Delivery guy…person…thing—” She looked at me. “What are we supposed to call them?”

“People. They’re just like us.”

“Uh, we don’t try to eat other people.”

“Technically, they don’t either,” I said. “According to Ashlyn’s notes, it’s against their law to consume human flesh. So, in theory, they won’t kill us.”

“Tell that to Ashlyn’s uncle,” Zoe said.

Ashlyn had lived here nearly her entire life. I didn’t know the whole story but knew that the creatures were somehow responsible for her uncle’s death. However, while Uttira’s governing body, known as the Council, had assured me it had been an anomaly and the creature responsible had been removed, they’d also made it clear they couldn’t guarantee our safety. Since I figured no one anywhere in the world could make that kind of promise, being locked away in this warded house was a hell of a lot better than living on the streets in the real world.

“The delivery person’s gone,” Zoe announced. “I’m going to open the door and very carefully drag the box inside without crossing the plane of protection.”

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