Page 14 of The Forsaken Heir
“Turn here,” Vincent said, pointing out the window.
“Dude, I know where the damn house is,” Rasp grumbled.
Rasp turned into the driveway and punched in a code on the keypad outside the gate. It slid open silently, and drove up a long winding road lined with tall, maple trees and evergreen shrubs. He pulled into a large, circular parking area in front of a massive house. I stared out the window with open-mouthed shock at the size and grandeur of the place. Whoever they’d brought me to must have had more money than God. It was even bigger than my family’s home.
“All right, let’s get her upstairs,” Rasp said.
In the blink of an eye, he shifted to his dragon form. He was long and lean with emerald-green scales. I’d watched this happen hundreds of times in the past, but seeing a person become a wolf was nothing compared to becoming a huge, twenty-foot-long dragon. The angled head that ended in a pointed snout, long razor-sharp fangs, and the strange slitted pupils looked foreign to me.
“Come on, ma’am,” Vincent said, opening the back door and helping me out.
I felt no immediate fear from these two. My instincts told me they were harmless, but that didn’t mean their master would be. Perhaps these two goofballs had been sentspecificallybecause they were unassuming.
“Can you cut the ties on my feet?” I asked.
Vincent looked down at my feet blankly. “Crap. Uh, no.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’ll be fine. Rasp only has to get you up to the top floor. You won’t fly far.”
Turning, I eyed the dragon as he strolled around the car. Rasp looked at me with those strange dragon eyes, and I wanted to scream, but when he grabbed me in his taloned forepaws, I was too shocked and terrified to do more than let out a fearful groan.
He held me with surprising gentleness, and with several hard and powerful flaps of his wings, we were airborne. Squeezing my eyes shut, I prayed he wouldn’t drop me. Cool air washed across me, but he flew with a grace I hadn’t believed possible, and when he landed on the balcony, I opened my eyes and let out a heavy sigh of relief as he put me down. After shifting back, he opened the large, ornate patio doors.
“Let’s go,” he said, scooping me up.
As he carried me into the room, Vincent appeared at the balcony in his dragon form. Where Rasp was an astonishing emerald-green, Vincent was the brown of a desert lizard or a snake. He also shifted and joined us in the room, closing the doors behind us. He shrugged off a backpack and pulled a long length of rope out of it before dropping it.
“Hang on,” I said, holding up my bound hands and eyeing the rope with trepidation. “What the hell is that for?”
Vincent shrugged as Rasp set me down in a heavy wooden chair. “It’ll keep you secure. It’ll be better than the zip ties, and I can tie you up so you’ll still be restrained even if you shift.”
“Guys,” I said, doing my best to smile. “We don’t need to do this. Come on. It’s gone far enough. Why don’t you let me go? I’ll head home, and you guys can go, uh, do whatever it is you do, and we’ll forget this.”
Ignoring me, Vincent set to work with the rope.
“I think I’ll do a half hitch to secure the ends to the legs of the chair,” he explained in a monotone. “I won’t use any slipknots though. Too easy to undo. Might make a sheepshank at the back. Then I can tighten you up easier.”
The way he spoke of the knots made me think he had some sort of hobby. Sailing? Lasso-making? Did he have some sort of Shibari kink? Good lord, were they getting me ready for some rich guy gang-bang or something? Eww. Hopefully not.
If that was the case, though, I’d fight and claw my way out with every ounce of strength I had.
Vincent stood up and grinned at me. “There we go. All done.”
Rasp opened his mouth to say something, but the door of the bedroom opened before he could speak. He grinned, and Vincent looked a little sheepish. Steeling myself, I turned my head to see who had joined us.
The most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life strode through the bedroom door. His lean, muscular body moved smoothly and only stopped when he saw us. Long, strawberry-blond hair spilled across his face, obscuring one eye.
He leveled a finger at me, and looked at the other two. “What the fuck is this?”
4
AURELIUS
Slapping down the file, I leaned back and sighed. I couldn’t focus. I’d been pouring over the reports, memos, and emails since returning from my diplomatic mission to the Hikshil tribe. It was shocking how much had piled up in less than a week.
Most of the paperwork involved the magical products our companies sold. As of now, the biggest seller was a wrinkle cream the humans were eating up like mad. As far as they knew, it was a combination of minerals, vitamins, and proprietary collagen peptides. In reality, it was a watered-down magic-infused potion. It did the job well enough to make us millions, but not so well that the humans would get suspicious. That was all well and good, but the council was right. The Laurents and the wolves beholden to them were encroaching on our supply lines.
I was in no mood to go over the information, but I had a meeting with my father and needed to be on point. He was relying on me to be his right hand now that his time as king was growing short. Even the few hours I’d spent drinking and chatting with Raspand Vince the night before now looked like an ill-advised waste of time. But I’d needed to blow off steam.
“Your Highness?”
