Page 1 of The Ruby Dragon Prince
Prologue
Tovey
Run! I had to run. If I didn’t run for all I was worth now, I might never run again.
The enchanted forest flashed past, the glitter of the cascading gems dripping from the branches blinding and confusing me. Its unique beauty had been a source of wonder and fascination when my brothers and I had first descended into the magical kingdom, but now the reaching branches and mocking shine made me feel trapped in a strange world I didn’t understand.
I was trapped, and if I didn’t run, I would be trapped forever. It wasn’t just the luminescence of the forest around me or the aubergine sky dotted with stars and a silver crescent moon above me. It wasn’t the soft emerald grass between the towering trees or the sneaky, woven vines that seemed to stretch toward my feet, attempting to dohisbidding and stop me from leaving.
It was the ferocious, hungry heat that enveloped my omega body and made every fiber of my being long for him. It was theslick that poured down my thighs, soaking my silken dancing trousers and making it nearly impossible to run. It was the need I felt so deep in my core that I moaned with each breath as I tried to escape him.
I could feel him so close behind me. I could smell his fiery scent, like embers in a hearth fire one moment and the smoldering burn of destruction another. It enticed me, making each step a thousand times more difficult than it needed to be.
I didn’t want to run. I wanted to stop, turn back to him, strip out of my clothes, and drop to my knees to present myself in mating pose. My womb demanded that I give myself to him, my alpha, my prince, and submit to whatever wickedness he wanted from me. The urge was primal, verging in irresistible.
But if I surrendered, if I became his, I would never see my brothers again. I wouldn’t be there to help them in their darkest hours. I wouldn’t be able to?—
My foot caught on one of the creeping vines along the forest floor, and with an agonized cry, I flew forward, flailing.
The ground was somehow as soft as a featherbed as it caught me. It was his doing, I knew. I could feel him speeding closer, feel his rut and my body’s reaction to it. I scrambled to my back, still trying to escape the inevitable. My body fought against me, urging me to stay, to submit fully.
And then there he was. My eyes went wide as I let out a terrified cry. He wasn’t what I expected, wasn’t what I thought him to be. His huge, iridescent, ruby-red shape came thundering down from the deep purple sky and the vibrant green treetops, leathery wings furled.
He landed hard enough to shake the ground only a few yards away from me, then stalked toward me with surprising agility for his size. I could still see the face of my prince in the dragon’s elongated muzzle. He seemed to wear a smile as his green eyes flashed.
“Did you think you could get away from me, my sweet?” he asked, his voice booming through the forest. “I can smell you for miles, my ripe omega.”
With one last, feeble attempt, I tried to scramble away from him, but he rushed over me and pinned me down. My hole ached and fluttered for him, spilling slick like a river as he lowered his muzzle to sniff me. I groaned and squirmed, begging my body to have the will to escape my fate.
“Oh, no, my gem,” the dragon purred above me. He traced one clawed finger down the front of my dancing costume, splitting it wide open as though with the finest, sharpest knife ever known. “There is no point in running. You are mine now, and I intend to thoroughly claim you.”
Chapter
One
Tovey
THREE DAYS EARLIER
Fairy tales are supposed to begin with the sweet line “once upon a time”, but for me and my brothers, it wasn’t just once upon a time, it was all the times.
“I don’t suppose we could just refuse to attend the ball,” my gentle, usually quiet brother Misha said as the six of us dressed for the night’s misery.
Our brother Leo laughed as he yanked one of his more ostentatious ball costumes from the wardrobe beside his bed. “If we refused to go, you know Father would send his guards here to fetch us,” he said.
I winced and shivered. “They’d probably drag us down the hall and into the ballroom regardless of our state of dress,” I said, shoving my legs sullenly into the too-tight, too-revealing breeches that Father insisted we all wear to his monthly balls.
“I wouldn’t mind the balls so much if there were kind, heroic, romantic princes there instead of the old sycophants andglory-seekers that Father surrounds himself with,” my youngest brother, Obi, said with a sigh.
I didn’t know if I wanted to sigh along with him or shake my head at his naïveté.
“Father would never do anything as kind as inviting alphas we might actually like to one of his balls,” Rumi, my eldest brother said as he finished tying the plain blue waistcoat of his ball costume over the flouncy silk shirt I knew he hated. “He would never do anything kind where any of us are concerned.”
I huffed a humorless laugh of agreement and stood to tuck my own silly, flounced shirt into the waist of my breeches. It was common knowledge within the palace that Father hated us all. He’d married our late, beloved papa because Papa had been the only omega in a family of strong, powerful alphas. He’d believed that in marrying Papa, he would have a string of alpha sons to carry on his name and to help him not only rule the kingdom he had with an iron fist, but to conquer the neighboring kingdoms and set up his sons as rulers in each one.
Instead, Father had had six omegas before casting Papa aside. He’d tried to get sons on other omegas, both male and female, but after Obi, his seed had never taken hold. Some said it was a curse placed on him by an omega witch he’d wronged years before. Some had said Papa was that omega witch and that when Father stole him from the alpha he’d been in love with and forced him to breed, he’d vowed that Father would never get what he wanted.
There were times when I felt like Papa’s curse extended to the six of us, even though he had loved us and we had loved him until the day he’d heard his former love had died. Papa died of a broken heart days later, and the six of us were left at Father’s mercy.
