Dragonsworn (Dark-Hunter #28)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
For Tish, who will read this and know instantly why. Thank you so much for being my friend and a well-needed voice of reason. To Sheri, Kim Burdette, and Kim Turner for all the decades you’ve been my touchstones. To LaShon and Leisha for too many reasons to name. To Laura, Kerrie, Paco, Parker, Jacs, Alethea, Leanna, and Carl for coming to my aid when I needed you! I love you guys so much and am forever in your debt! And as always for my boys, who are ever my heartstones. I love you all!
I loved you at your most wicked.
—Rev. Oscar C. Allred
Acknowledgments
To Adam Ezra for allowing me to use the words from his song “Home Again Soon” off the View from the Root album. If you ever get a chance, make sure to check out his music. It’s been my pleasure and honor to know him for years and to have featured his music in the Nick and Dark-Hunter videos, and at book signings. He is a great musician and a wonderful man!
PROLOGUE
In the year of Our Lord 417
May the fifth
Glastonbury Tor
Betrayal.
Cold and brutal, it always took the shape and form of the closest friend and ally. And stung so deep to the soul that it left you bleeding and weak, wondering if you’d ever find your way to trust again.
Left you adrift in misery and heartache. Unable to breathe for the pain of it.
Worse than that, the treacherous bastard always came when least expected. And at the worst fucking time.
Given the brutal circumstances of his birth, Falcyn Drago had never considered himself immune from its fetid claws. Far from it. Indeed, he’d been nursed on its most foul and bitter taste. He’d learned to anticipate it from everyone around him, at all times. And sadly, no one had ever disappointed him by being above it.
Never once.
Rather, they seemed to glory in stabbing him through his wounded heart as ruthlessly and viciously as possible.
And none more so than his own brother, who now stood before him in all of Max’s sanctimonious and smug glory. Something that would have been galling had his brother been in his real and true dragon’s body, but like this, in the guise of a man, the betrayal burned twice as deep.
And hurt all the more.
“Damn you, Maxis! Was it not enough you left Hadyn alone to die amongst the humans? Now you take my son, too!”
Maxis’s hazel green eyes flared to gold, then to red as his anger ignited. “That’s not fair! I did everything I could to save our brother. How dare you throw that in my face! I’d have given my life for his!”
“Bullshit! I should have strangled you the moment you crawled from your egg!”
Grabbing him by the throat, Max shoved him back against the wall of the stone room where Falcyn had thought to meet his son, but now instead found himself barred forever from the realm his child called home.
Because of Max! The flesh of his flesh.
His worst nightmare.
Max’s eyes showed the depths of his own despair. “I wish you had, brother. I wish you had.”
His brother’s agony scorched Falcyn, but not as much as his own misery that ate him whole and left him bereft of anything save utter despair. Damn him for caring about Max’s feelings when it was obvious that his brother didn’t give one shit for his. Tears blinded him. “Maddor was all I had in this world. How could you!”
A tic started in Max’s jaw as he stepped away. “I had no choice. Dammit, Falcyn! Be reasonable. The Adoni plan to use you as a tool. Nothing more. They bred a hybrid child with you, without your knowledge or consent, and you’re fine with this?”
“Igraine was to be my wife!”
“Igraine is a faithless whore. An Adoni sorceress who has killed two husbands before you … think you that she’d spare you her treachery?”
“As you have?”
Max drew back as if he’d hit him, but he must have rethought that stupidity. Because they both knew that Max would never survive a real fight with Falcyn. “If she truly loved you, brother, my spell on your child wouldn’t have mattered to her, would it?”
Nay, it wouldn’t. The truth was an even more bitter pill to swallow.
And for that, he hated Max most of all. Because now he knew for an indisputable fact that he was every bit as unlovable as his dearest mother had proclaimed him to be upon his arrival into this hateful existence.
Max drew a ragged breath. “We were cursed from our births, and well you know it. The gods spurned us and our mothers abandoned us. The only hope your son has is that if he is more man than drake, he won’t come under their fire … or notice. Or control.”
“That wasn’t for you to decide!”
“And you should have never allowed yourself to be used by the Adoni. You know the laws of magick the same as I. For this … some debt will be collected.”
Falcyn winced at another truth he didn’t want to face. “I was to protect him from it. Now…” He gestured at the veil that separated this world from the one where Igraine had taken their child to raise him out of his reach and care. There was nothing he could do for his son. So long as Maddor lived in his mother’s fey realm, Falcyn couldn’t get to him. Not even his powers were that great. “Never, ever speak to me again, Maxis. I’m done with you.”
Returning to his dragon’s body, he spread his wings, intending to fly.
“Careful of your ultimatums, brother. Like magick, they come with a terrible bite.”
Falcyn shot a burst of flame toward him. “And so do I, Max! So do I!”
1
“Remi! You can’t kill Daimons at the front door!” Dev Peltier shot across the main bar floor of Sanctuary at a dead run, with his wolfwere brother-in-law Fang Kattalakis hot on his heels.
“Sure I can,” his identical brother snarled in his earpiece. “Watch me!”
Dreading the scene of his shapeshifting lookalike ripping the heart out of a demon on the busy streets of New Orleans underneath a closed-circuit police camera, Dev considered teleporting to stop the coming disaster, but that would only worsen this fiasco.
And guarantee them both some special quality time in a high-security government lab someplace where they’d never be seen or heard from again.
He and Fang barely reached the open front door in time to grab the tall, muscled mountain that sometimes passed as a human being before Remi ate the petite blonde standing nonchalantly under the outside streetlight.
And that bastard fought them with everything he had as they pulled him back from his would-be victim. A victim who didn’t appear the least bit concerned that she’d narrowly escaped certain death at the hands of a savage bear-human-beast.
Remi even bit Dev in the shoulder as he struggled against them.
“Dammit!” Dev snarled. “You better have had your rabies shot, boy!”