Chapter One
OLLIE
Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like this.”
The low rumble vibrating through his voice revealed that his dragon was as unhappy as he was.
“It’ll be fun,” I said enthusiastically, hoping to distract him from the tension in the room. We’d been herded into a large conference hall full of dragons. All of us were out of our territory, and none of us knew why this meeting had been called. The sense of unease in the air was palpable.
I hoped it would go better than last time all the dragons in the country had assembled for a moot. Held three hundred years ago, that moot had ended in one of the Channel Island dragons being flamed to death. No wonder the Channel Island delegation was clustered tightly in a corner and glaring at the rest of us.
The murmuring that filled the room ceased abruptly, to my confusion. Jack nudged me, and I realised I was facing the wrong way. Turning, I saw an elderly man crossing the stage at the far end of the room to stand in the centre, his hands clasped in front of him as he surveyed the gathered throng with cold, assessing eyes. There was no mistaking the power in him.
To humans, Abimelech Mortimer was an extremely rich and powerful banker. To us dragons, he was our de facto leader. Dragons don’t do elections, so it wasn’t as if we had a choice in the matter. The Mortimers had long ago claimed the position of leading dragon family, and they hadn’t loosened their grip on power since.
“Thank you for coming.” He must have a microphone pinned to his lapel for his voice to carry so easily to every cornerof the room. “Although the invitation was mine, this meeting belongs to us all.”
I snorted. Couldn’t help it. Abimelech Mortimer pretending to be democratic? Unfortunately, along with Jack’s elbow in my ribs, I received the attention of the man on the stage. How the hell could he have heard me? His dragon flashed in his eyes—irises glowing gold, pupils narrowing to vertical slits—and a shiver ran down my back. Ruthless and cold, he’d tear my head off for a snack and then complain there weren’t enough brains to make it tasty. I looked away swiftly, my shoulders hunched in submission, but it seemed all the dragons in the room had followed his gaze to stare at me.
After a significant pause, during which I waited for someone to drag me out of the hall and disembowel me, he continued.
“This gathering is an opportunity to share knowledge that has recently come to light and to decide whether we wish a closer relationship between all our families in the future. That is business for the head of family sessions, the first of which commences in thirty minutes’ time.”
He looked around the room, marking each and every dragon present. “I remind you that this place is, and has always been, neutral ground. No one is to attempt to claim it, on penalty of becoming draco non grata.”
I wanted to ask Jack what that meant but, not keen to attract the old dragon’s attention again, kept my mouth shut. Whatever it meant, it obviously wasn’t going to be tea and cakes.
With a final sweeping glance around the room, Abimelech left the stage.
“What the hell, Ollie?” Jack swung round on me as a buzz of conversation filled the room. “You promised to behave like an adult, and the first thing you—”
“It was an accident,” I protested.
“It always is with you,” Jack said, but the annoyance in his eyes was clearing, replaced by his usual good humour. “What d’you think he meant by knowledge recently coming to light?”
“I have no idea, and who the hell isthat?”
Thatwas disappearing quickly out of the door. His head was down, long dark-brown hair falling like a curtain to hide his features, but I’d had a brief glimpse of a face that could have caused the fall of Troy.
Jack glanced after him disinterestedly. “One of the Mortimer grandsons.”
“How do you know?” I hadn’t expected an answer to my rhetorical, lust-fuelled question. “Do you have photos of all the other dragon families and have to memorise them or something?”
“Something like that,” Jack said.
I was dumbfounded. Jack was next in line to be head of our family, and it sounded as if he had responsibilities I didn’t know about, despite the fact we’d been friends forever. Even his marriage to Lisa Phipps hadn’t changed our friendship.
The only reason I was along as part of the Shaw family delegation was because Lisa, at seven months pregnant, had decided her backache was too all-consuming for her to mix with strange dragons without biting their heads off. Jack’s father hadn’t wanted to cause difficulties in the family by inviting a dragon from the next most senior level because, whoever he’d chosen, his choice would have caused resentment from the others. So he’d said Jack could bring me along—no one would thinkIwas jockeying for power or influence. And everyone knew how close Jack and I were.
When we’d turned up at this country house hotel that Abimelech had paid for, I was glad to have been asked. The hotel had a gym and a spa complex, and the coffee and cake we’d beenserved on arrival—again, paid for by the Mortimers—had beenreallygood. This was practically a holiday.
“Now’s our opportunity to mingle and politic while Dad gets the official version,” Jack said, dashing my hopes for a visit to the spa followed by a swim.
“I guess,” I said reluctantly, before my attention was grabbed by something much more exciting than a spa day. Or rather, someone.I elbowed Jack a little too violently in my enthusiasm. “Oh my God, have you seenhim?”
He wasn’tquiteas spectacular as the first one I’d spotted, but that arse more than made up for it.
Jack sighed. “Another Mortimer grandson.” He grasped my arm. “You arenotgoing over there to sneak a quickie in the cleaners’ cupboard while the rest of us are working. This is too important to risk messing up.”
