Page 375 of Hunters and Prey

He snorted in disgust. “Enslave humanity? You sound like a Dragon Blood propaganda poster. Where is humanity now? Who has them locked up in sector eight? Who is doing the enslaving here? Not the Dreki, that’s for sure. We’re miles away on the other side of the border in the Furtherlands.”

My stomach dropped. How much of what we knew was actually true? “So, if it wasn’t humanity you wanted to enslave, then why did you come to our world?”

He walked over to his mattress and lowered himself onto it. “We had no choice. We were called here by the draw of magic when the grimoire was unlocked by human scientists.” He rolled up his sleeves, exposing strong, tanned forearms, and then lay back and tucked them behind his head. “We had to come, because we were honor-bound to do so. The opening of the grimoire began a countdown—a two-hundred-year-long period in which the true enemy awakens. Not to mention a host of other nasties that came before.”

Yes, the monsters they’d helped humanity fight off when they’d first arrived—before they’d supposedly tried to do all the enslaving, of course. I sat on the mattress parallel to his. “Two hundred years? But that would be up in—”

“In less than a year. Yes. In less than a year, the veil will crumble and the Jotunn will walk the earth.”

The word sent a shudder through me even though I had no idea what it meant. It poked at some primal memory that was just out of grasp. “Who are the Jotunn?”

He closed his eyes and his tone smoothed out into something compelling and lulling. “Monsters. Powerful, ancient beings who have tried again and again to claim the mortal world and been beaten back each time by divine magic. But the gods are long gone. New worlds beckoned them, and they left to forge fresh paths, leaving this world to the age of man. They left behind the grimoires, the final cache of magic in a world slowly being claimed by technology. They hid two grimoires away from the eyes and hands of man, to be activated at a time when the age of man would be over. When the time came, the grimoires would unlock themselves, and the gods would return to build the world anew. They also put in a failsafe in the event that only one grimoire was activated.”

I scanned his face, running my gaze along the strong curve of his jaw, down the aquiline slope of his nose, and finally coming to rest on the perfect form of his lips. His lashes were thick and cast inky shadows on his cheeks. Was there really a beast under that pretty skin?

His eyes fluttered open, and he stared at the ceiling.

I needed to jog him, to bring him back to the story. “Why was a failsafe needed?”

His chest rose and fell in a sigh. “Because the grimoires act as a lock. Two opened together summon the gods’ return, but if only one is opened, it triggers the end of days.”

“The two-hundred-year timer?”

“Exactly. But the gods didn’t leave humans unprotected. They left the Dreki behind, slumbering in a pocket of arcane magic. The Dreki are humanity’s defense. We are the dragon guard.”

And they came to help the humans when the grimoire was activated. But that didn’t explain why they’d created Skins and Bloods. His eyes were closed again, as if he was weary of telling this tale. But I wasn’t done with him yet.

“Why procreate with humans?” I nudged.

He was silent for a long time, and I shifted forward, finger out to poke him. No way was he falling asleep halfway through a story. That was just rude. But before my hand could make contact with his shoulder, he continued.

“When we came through, before we could speak to the men and women who ran the world, we were attacked by your technology. Many of us were slaughtered before our mageri were able to raise arcane shields to protect us. By the time the humans realized the truth—that we were here to aid, not harm—our numbers had dwindled. We worked with the humans to eliminate the first wave of monsters, but then we needed to replenish our ranks in time for the real war to come.”

So, the first war had been between humans and dragons—a false war born out of misunderstanding and fear.

“So, you procreated with the humans to replace your fallen Dreki?”

“Yes. We had no choice. Dragon guards are mainly male. There was only a handful of female dragon guards. Not enough for us to swell our ranks fast enough. Our queen sanctioned the move, and the human leaders agreed.”

“The dragon queen. She was killed by the Bloods.”

“Yes.” The word was a heartfelt sigh saturated with sorrow. “The dragon queen was the only being who could read the grimoires. The only one who could summon the divine gods back to this realm to aid us. The Bloods knew this.”

I was so confused. “The Bloods knew she was our only hope and killed her anyway? Why would the Bloods want us to be invaded by these giants?”

“Because they believe they can forge an alliance with the Jotunn, that they can somehow use them to claim this world once and for all. They believe they can dazzle the Jotunn with technology, subdue them, and make them their slaves. They believe their odds of ruling are better with the Jotunn as their allies. They know that if the divine gods return, even technology will not save them.”

Oh, God. The Bloods wanted absolute rule. They wanted it all, and they were arrogant enough to believe that they could control an ancient race of giants. Why not, though? They had collars that could control Dreki and Wyverns and Skins, and they were building a super race ... Fuck, if we didn’t stop them, they might just pull it off.

“You were meant to protect humans, so how did the Bloods get their hands on sector eight? How did they get their hands on all the humans?”

“Sector eight was a haven built by the Dreki to house and protect humans—a city which we planned to ward against the Jotunn arrival. It was our arc. But the Bloods claimed it when they murdered our crown and weakened us, for without a queen, our magic is but a fraction of what it once was.”

They’d brought down a dragon queen. The most powerful Dreki. “How did they kill her? I thought the queen would be uber powerful.”

He was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, his tone was tight with a mixture of anger and regret. “She could have been, would have been if she’d simply followed the lore and taken a mate, but Anara was a force unto herself, wanting to be shackled to no male. She chose to remain a sole sovereign, and although the details of her death are unknown, I believe that is the reason.”

“You don’t know how she died? Can you be sure she’s actually dead?”

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