Best of all, he held the aura of a savage, bloodthirsty warrior. A barbarian warlord. A fact the dragon sword on the table next to his hand had borne testament to. Had she not been in the throes of her spawning cycle, she might have resisted him.
Instead, she’d walked up with full Amazon temerity, pushed him back in his chair, and boldly straddled that long, muscular body.
As she slid herself up his thighs and into his lap, he’d gasped audibly and she’d taken advantage of that to ravage his open mouth. To sink her hands into his lush, soft, feather-laced hair and taste every bit of those amazing lips and skilled tongue. Now fully vested in her embrace and attention, Maxis had only broken from her kiss long enough to pay the kapeleia owner for his drink and to rent one of their oikemata – small rooms – for privacy.
That had been the most amazing night of her life. She should have known by his stamina, dexterity, skills, and scars that he wasn’t human. But truthfully, she’d been too grateful to find a male who could finally satiate the aching hunger inside her to question it.
Naked, breathing raggedly, and still entwined, they’d finally paused for a small repast just after dawn. Right as the room began to lighten, both of them had pulled back as the burning in their palms began and their mating marks appeared.
Shocked and horrified, she’d looked from her hand to his to verify her worst fear. “You’re a Were-Hunter?”
He’d hesitated before he responded. “Not exactly.”
She’d frowned and prayed silently that they were at least the same branch of her species and that that was what he’d meant by his cryptic response. Because they were born humans who learned to shapeshift during puberty, many of her breed disavowed their animal natures. “Arcadian?”
“No.”
Her fear had tripled with that simple denial. Dear gods, don’t let it be true. She’d almost choked on the next, bitterly despised word. “Katagaria?”
“No.”
No? Even sicker to her stomach, she could only think of one other grisly possibility. “Human?” she’d tried again.
He’d shaken his head.
What the hell was left? He didn’t have fangs so there was no way he could be a Daimon or Apollite.
No Were-Hunter had ever mated to a god or demon to her knowledge…
Even more terrified, she’d stared at him. “I don’t understand.” She compared their marks again and they were identical. Neither one had been there earlier. They were definitely the unique mating marks of the Draki. “If you’re not Arcadian, Katagari, or human, what are you? How are we mated together?”
“By a trio of vicious bitches who hate us both and begrudge the very air we breathe.”
It was then he’d explained that he was a rare, true-born dragon who’d been captured and deformed by an ancient god and the king who’d begun her race to save his sons so that they wouldn’t die horribly as his wife had done.
That he was the very first dragon Were-Hunter ever made of man and beast. And that he knew exactly what the mark meant.
They either accepted the mating they’d had no say in, or he’d be left impotent, and both would be sterile for the rest of their lives.
Which was no choice at all since he was an immortal drakomas born from the forbidden and cursed union of a demon and an arel.
Now here, centuries later, they stood as eternal bitter enemies.
He a natural-born drakomas.
She a born Arcadian dragonswan who was pledged to hunt down and kill all the Katagaria Draki she could find.
That was just the beginning of their differences – with the largest being that he was the dragon who’d founded her race. The Dragonbane – the one creature every Were-Hunter would sell their soul to kill.
Another mark on his body she hadn’t seen until after they’d consummated their mating, and Maxis was dressing. The moment her eyes had fallen to the branded shape of a dragon crawling from its egg that was hidden beneath the hairs on his left thigh, she’d known its significance instantly.
Maxis was the branded Drakos – the first of their breed who had killed another Were-Hunter in cold-blooded savagery. Killed, it was rumored, for no reason whatsoever.
The one beast all Were-Hunters wanted to skin alive and claim the bounty for. His life had been the first one the Omegrion – the council that governed her people – had come together to denounce and demand a death sentence for.
And he was her mate.
The father of her children.
The originator of her race.
Wincing over the cruelty of the Fates who’d seriously screwed her, Seraphina swallowed before she spoke again. “I know that while it is the nature of my species to congregate and stay together, to fight as a group, that your kind is solitary. But —”
A sudden knock at the door interrupted her.
She growled in frustration as Maxis moved to answer it.
He opened the door to show her the wolf from downstairs. “Given what you said earlier when you left to sequester yourself with your mate, I wanted to make sure you were still alive, and…” He stepped aside to show the last thing she’d ever thought to see.
A ghostly pale and rare mandrake.
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