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 corner of 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 is that?"

That was 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 think I was 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 been served on arrival—again, paid for by the Mortimers—had been really good. 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, some one. I elbowed Jack a little too violently in my enthusiasm. "Oh my God, have you seen him?"

He wasn't quite as 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 are not going 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."

I hadn't even seen a cleaners' cupboard in this place. I was slipping not to have hunted one out already. Probably because, apart from the two Mortimer grandsons, most of the dragons here were too old for my taste. The gathering skewed pretty heavily male, though, and I hadn't by any means seen everyone yet, so I lived in hope.

When Jack introduced himself to an older guy named Edward Vane, I knew even before hearing his accent that he came from Manchester. With only sixty dragon families in the country, dragon kids learned their names and territories alongside their alphabet. We'd never get to meet most of them, but it was important to know who they were—know thine enemy, and all that. We were uneasy allies, until we weren't.

None of us had anything interesting to say to one another, except for wondering out loud what Abimelech Mortimer was up to. Vane swiftly made his excuses and moved on.

Glancing around the room, I found the heads of family had gone off for their meeting, leaving fewer dragons present than there had been. Most were clustered in small groups, talking intently. That second Mortimer grandson was still here, and Jack wanted me to mingle. I would be very happy mingling with either of the younger Mortimers.

Except, it seemed Mortimer of the spectacular arse had a boyfriend. A dark-haired dragon beside him was glaring at me as I appreciated that arse again. Where Abimelech had been cold, the dark dragon's eyes ran hot, but there was something in them that reminded me of the older dragon. A power, an authority…

Shaking my head slightly dispelled the weird urge I was feeling to nod to him in respect. It also got rid of a sudden, unexpected longing for someone to be that possessive over me . For me to be the centre of that person's world. That wasn't what I wanted. I was having too much fun to get tied down.

But the boyfriend's reaction suggested that hooking up with anyone at this moot would be a bad idea. Jack might actually be right for once. Who was I kidding? He was almost always right, the bastard. This meeting was too important and dragon politics too murky for me to risk bringing my family into disrepute over a bit of fun.

Pity, though. A quickie would have been a nice distraction.

ARCHER

Abimelech Mortimer's summons to this gathering had given only four weeks' notice. Regardless of my annoyance at the tone of the invitation, I'd dropped everything to be here. Missing the first meeting of all the dragon families in three centuries wasn't an option.

A dragon moot was an opportunity to debate, and if a vote were to be held, all dragon families would be expected to honour the majority opinion. I couldn't imagine what might cause Mortimer to call one after so long.

At least I hadn't had far to come. Winchester to Avebury was little more than an hour's drive. I'd often brought Mia and Tim here when they were younger, back when Tim was still speaking to me.

Avebury was like Stonehenge, with arrangements of prehistoric standing stones fulfilling an unknown and mysterious purpose. The stones were smaller than those at Stonehenge, and they didn't have lintels, but the number of stones and the area they covered was much greater. They were said to have been set out in the pattern of a serpent, though so many stones were now missing that no one knew for sure. I thought it was true and that it had once been a sacred place for us—there had to be a reason Avebury was neutral ground for dragons.

Had Avebury been built by dragons? Our strength would explain how such massive stones had been carried to the site and anchored in the ground to stand upright. Perhaps dragons were responsible for Stonehenge, too. No one knew. No one would ever know, the truth being lost in pre-history.

Almost all dragon history and lore had been lost. We didn't know if the remaining fragments that had been passed verbally down the generations were myth, legend, or fact. Nothing had been put in writing, as the discovery of texts about dragons could lead to humans learning we existed. We had to be constantly vigilant. Mortimer had hired the entire hotel, conference centre and spa complex for our exclusive use but there would always be human staff around. The word dragon could never be uttered.

Mia and I arrived at the hotel in good time and, after stashing our bags, we walked around the gardens. I'd rather avoid other dragons until we knew what this was about. Small talk wasn't one of my strengths, and small talk made in ignorance could be dangerous.

My father would have circulated around the room, and by the time formal proceedings began, he would have spoken to everyone present, learned their names and their worries, and left them all thinking he was the most charming dragon they'd ever met. Unfortunately, when it came to social graces, I took after my mother.

"I wonder why he's called this meeting," Mia said, for approximately the hundredth time.

"Only another thirty minutes, and we'll find out."

" You'll find out, you mean. I suppose listening at the door isn't an option."

I glanced warningly at her. "That would be a good way to get your head ripped off. Mortimer's likely to post guards around the place to give us notice of any humans who come close while we're talking."

"Well, make sure you tell me straight away." She looked up at me, grey eyes worried. "Please?"

"You know I will." I put my arm briefly around her shoulders and squeezed. She was growing up, but she was still my little sister.

After a childhood filled with uncertainty and change, Mia was easily unsettled. Yet again, I was furious with Tim for not coming with us to keep her company while I was in the head of family meetings. Even though he wasn't speaking to me, surely he'd have some concern for his seventeen-year-old sister who was going to be left twiddling her thumbs for hours at a time. Or, if I knew Mia, scrolling on her phone for hours at a time.

Perhaps I shouldn't have brought her when Tim refused to come, but it would make our family look weak for me to be the only representative. I couldn't ask any of the other family members to come with me because I didn't know whom to trust.

"It'll be okay," I promised her, and hoped I was telling the truth.