Page 1 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 1

Rebel Smith was trapped in a fairy tale gone wrong.

Which was ironic, because she’d never believed in fairy tales.

Not the kind where fairy godmothers showed up with magic wands and merry singing chipmunks and sent you off to the ball.

Not the kind where you lived happily ever after.

And definitely not the kind where dragons ravaged the countryside and carried unsuspecting princesses off to their lairs to wait for some meat-headed prince to rescue them.

Because nobody ever came along and rescued you. Rebel Smith had always saved herself.

And yet here she was, going on her fourth week stuck in a dragon’s lair. An honest-to-goodness real live fucking dragon. One who said he needed her to save the world.

One who needed her to save him. One who wanted to hold her captive forever.

Even worse, who was starting to make her believe that being trapped wasn’t so bad.

But she knew it was. Being trapped led to other people having power over you. And people having power over you meant you got screwed, sooner or later.

She just had to figure out how to save him—and the world—and get away clean.

There was always an exit. You just had to find it.

But right now, she couldn’t worry about Thorne Greystone. It was his so-called brothers who were trying to have their evil way with her.

No way was that going to happen.

“Fold, Librarian Dragon,” she said. “There’s no way you can beat me. Not with what you have showing.”

Tyr narrowed his eyes, glaring at her from across the poker table. He hated it when she called him Librarian Dragon, even though that was pretty much what he was. She smirked at him.

He casually tossed a handful of antique gold coins into the pot. “Call,” he said.

Rebel still wasn’t used to the way these guys threw around fortunes in pure gold like it was pocket change. Dragons wouldn’t even get out of bed for paper money, let alone drag themselves to the poker table. There was probably enough gold on this table right now to finance the state of Rhode Island for a year. Maybe even Massachusetts.

And in a few minutes, a large chunk of it was going to be hers. She shook her head, faking deep sorrow for him. Not. “You never learn, do you?”

She turned to the other dragon at the table, Tyr’s brother-from-a-different-mother, Zane. “What do you say, Sky Dragon? You feeling lucky?”

Zane contemplated his cards. He was drop-dead, fairy-tale gorgeous, with golden hair and sky-blue eyes, a perfectly sculpted face, and a body to die for. Pretty much the same as dark-haired Tyr, except a little bigger. Zane was the perfect match for his red-headed girlfriend, Blaze, who was currently distracting him by eating chocolate cake off his plate.

“Hey! You’re taking all the frosting,” Zane complained.

Blaze gave him a sultry look. “I think there’s a little left,” she said, raising her frosting-smeared lips to his.

Zane’s expression got all mushy and he leaned in and kissed her, licking the frosting off her lips. The two of them started making out.

Rebel rolled her eyes. She would have almost liked Blaze, except for her unhealthy obsession with the dragon, which Rebel suspected was induced by the gold necklace Zane had given her, and which she never took off.

Also, she was a witch.

Witches couldn’t be trusted.

Tyr, taking advantage of Blaze’s distracted state, used his own magic to make some of her gold grow little legs and walk its way towards his own dwindling pile of treasure.

Rebel shook her head, but she didn’t rat him out. That’s what you got when you stopped paying attention.