Page 1 of Rurik
Prologue
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale. —Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Moscow,Russia
Rurik Barinov watched the men and women dance in his nightclub, Logovo—the Lair. Its dark interior was lit by flashing strobe lights and fog from the machines at the opposite ends of the dance floor. The entire club looked like a cross between a cave and a dungeon. The walls were rough stone, and dancers were showing off their moves in iron-barredcages.
While Rurik’s older brother ran a sensible business, one that was built on technology in commerce, Rurik traded in something far older: pleasure. Dancing, drinking, and sex never went out of style. He was not buttoned-up and proper like Grigori. He enjoyed wild nights with wicked women, bodies straining and yearning for that headlong rush of mutual satisfaction. It never ceased to amaze him that Grigori had walked away from such things. But he’d heard that after a thousand years a dragon tended to lose his wildness, at least in part. Only when they found their mate did they experience a resurgence of that frenziedlust.
Rurik chuckled. He could not picture Grigori doinganythingwith a frenzy except slaughtering the competition in a boardroom. He was damned good at that. Scary as fuck too, always cool and controlled. Yet when Rurik had shown interest in the little mortal professor, Madelyn Haynes, Grigori’s eyes had blazed and he’d growled a dark and dangerous warning. It was the first time he’d ever been afraid of his own brother. Dragons were possessive by nature, and as Russian Imperial shifters they were more covetous than others when it came to jewels andwomen.
Thinking about jewels reminded Rurik of his other brother, Mikhail. The brother who was lost to them. He’d failed to secure a hoard of jewels from a treaty they’d made with English dragons and had been exiled for his failure by their father. For one brief year when their father and mother had traveled the world, Grigori had called Mikhail home. For four seasons, Mikhail had been part of the family again. That had been two centuriesago.
He wished Mikhail were here now. Mikhail knew Grigori better in some ways, even though he hadn’t been home since the nineteenth century. Mikhail would have known how to warn Grigori against the temptations mortal femalespresented.
“Rurik?” A sweet voice caught his attention and dragged him out of his ancient thoughts. A beautiful French woman with dark hair and green eyes watched him from across the bar. His best bartender, Nikita, wore a silver sequined dress and killer black heels that made every man in the room assume she was a customer and not the bartender. Whenever he looked at her, the hardness in his heart always softened. But she was human, and he could never be with a human. Not forlong.
“How are the numbers tonight?” he asked as he joined her, leaning on the bar toward her. He couldn’t help it—she pulled him in like the glint of a diamond just within reach. It made him practice his self-restraint.
She smiled warmly, a smile meant only for him, and he knew why. She was in love with him, but she was too much like him, a free spirit, unchained even by the forces of love. Any other woman he would have slept with and moved on, but he couldn’t do that with Nikita. She had the potential to be a true mate. If he even dared to kiss her, it could destroy his family. Battle dragons couldn’t risk love; their lives were dangerous. If they dared to mate a human, that human could be used against them. A fragile mortal life was easy to snuff out, and that would kill the dragon because mated dragons always died shortly after theirmates.
“Good. We are at maximum capacity, but—” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes widened as she stared at something over hisshoulder.
“Niki?” hequeried.
Her green eyes cut to his, and she whispered oneword.
“Drakor.”
He spun, instincts kicking in. Ruslan Drakor stood only a few feet away, grinning like the devil he was. As the eldest son of Dimitri Drakor, the head of the Drakor family, Ruslan was an arrogant bastard who believed he didn’t have to abide by the terms of the treaty between the Barinov and Drakorfamilies.
“Ruslan. What the fuck do you want?” Rurik made a grand show of leaning casually against the bar, even though every muscle in his body wastense.
He prayed that Ruslan wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack him in a club full of humans. The Drakor family ran the eastern half of Russia, while the Barinovs controlled the west. The Yenisey River acted as the formal boundary between their territories because it split Russia almost cleanly inhalf.
The Barinovs had control of both Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and under Rurik’s father in 1750, they had made a treaty that allowed the Drakors to enter and leave those two cities without incident so long as they did not interfere with Barinov business or cause trouble. This protected both of their families. Conflict between supernatural houses tended to attract the wrong kind of attention, such as the Brotherhood of the BloodMoon.
“I’ve come for a drink and women.” Ruslan laughed, but there was a feral gleam in hiseyes.
Rurik remained still, the picture of casual ease. They both knew that Rurik could knock Ruslan on his ass without breaking asweat.
“Good for you, Ruslan, but find another club.Not mine.” Had they been outside the city, Rurik would have attacked, but the damned treaty kept him on his bestbehavior.
Ruslan brushed his dark hair out of his eyes and walked to the other end of the bar. His expression changed to one of hunger as he spiedNikita.
“You, female, bring me the best vodka in the house.” He slapped his palm on the counter hard enough that the expensive glass layer over the wood fractured, tiny cracks fanning out around his hand likespiderwebs.
Son of a dog… Rurik growled softly, the dragon inside him stirring. He could feel the tattoo moving on his back. He’d never been very good at restraining the beast within him, even at the best of times. His father had said it was because he was built forbattle.
“Ruslan, leave now,” hewarned.
The other man made a show of getting comfortable. Then he looked over at Nikita and licked his lips. That wasit.
“Nikita, the alarm if you please.” Rurik tried to stay calm, but he could feel the dragon surging to thesurface.
His bartender ducked beneath the bar and slapped a red button. An alarm blared, cutting the music off. Dancers scrambled out of the cages and off the dance floors, rushing toward the exits in varying degrees ofpanic.
It was a shame to lose a good night of business, but better to have an empty club than risk human casualties. There was nothing like a spike in mortality rates to draw the Brotherhood into their business. They had no offices in Moscow that he knew of, but there were always agents about, and they could mobilize from Saint Petersburg in short order. The last thing either he or the Drakor family needed were supernatural hunters swarming thecity.
