Page 3 of Rurik
Before tonight, the idea of chasing down a man who could shift into a dragon was ludicrous. Not because she didn’t think they were real; she’d grown up her entire life knowing the truth about things that went bump in the night. Vampires, dragons, werewolves, shifters—all of it. Until now, she’d been kept safe by her overprotective older brothers, but she was done with that. She wanted to do something meaningful with her life, and tonight that meant quite literally walking into the dragon’sden.
If my brothers figure out I’m here, they’ll probably try to send me to some convent like it’s the middle ages. The thought almost made Charlotte smile, despite the dangerous situation. Her brothers, Damien and Jason, were the experts at this sort of thing—well, not the seduction part, but the infiltration. They would know exactly how to handle something like a dragon shifter. But she’d never been a part of their secret supernatural hunter lifestyle. Untiltonight.
If I bag this guy, they’ll have to admit I’m not just their kid sister anymore.Maybe then they’ll let me join theBrotherhood.
But if she were being honest with herself, coming all the way to Moscow hadn’t just been about proving her brothers wrong. It began when she saw the man from the files she’d gotten from the Brotherhood’s headquarters. The man she couldn’t get out of her head. The man she planned tocapture.
Her target was Rurik Barinov, youngest of the three remaining dragons in the Russian Imperial bloodline who controlled the western half of Russia. Pulling out her cell phone, she scanned the pictures she had of him, probably for the hundredth time. She’d been lucky enough to snap some shots of the surveillance photos they had of him onfile.
He was gorgeous in a dangerous sort of way, with a strong jaw, bright green eyes, and wavy dark hair that was a little too long, making him look a bit like a pirate from those swoon-worthy romance novels she’d devoured as a teenager. Charlotte hadn’t known men could look like that in real life, and she’d already had some seriously dirty thoughts about what he would be like in bed. He’d been her first choice out of the three brothers to try to capture, but that wasn’t because of hislooks.
Rurik tended to wear leather jackets, jeans, and biker boots, and there was a long scar down one side of his face, which only made him look that much more dangerous. Her sexy biker dragon was too much ofeverything, and she had to admit getting close to him tonight was going to be a heck of athrill.
God, there has to be something wrong with me. He’s not my sexy biker. He’s my target.But she couldn’t deny the fact that the idea of getting up close and personal with Rurik turned heron.
Keep your cool and focus on the mission. It was the tenth time she had to remind herself ofthat.
Tonight was strictly recon, though. She needed to get into Rurik’s club, survey the scene, locate and observe him. Nothing more. She’d read the notes on the Brotherhood’s dragon monitoring. These days they really just tried to keep an eye on the dragons’ activities and not interfere, but a few months ago two dragons had fought in a nightclub and a woman had died. This sparked rumors of a coming dragon war between two families in Moscow, possibly drawing in support from other countries. It could easily spiral out of control, and the Brotherhood were desperate to figure out how to stop it before it happened. And it all came down toRurik.
He’d been the dragon at the nightclub who’d survived. Her brother Damien had made a note in the file that Rurik might be the key to all this. If they could question him, they could determine how serious the situation really was and whether or not they would have tointervene.
So far no one had been able to get close to Rurik. Direct contact was useless. Shifters didn’t trust the Brotherhood and always closed ranks the moment they appeared. They’d tried incognito female agents. It seemed logical, given his background and reputation, but he never let any of them get close enough to lure him to a secure location. He always seemed to sniff them out somehow. And bringing him in by force would only justify the distrust shifters had and make it even harder to getanswers.
That’s why I’m here alone. Rurik won’t see mecoming.
She grinned a little. She wore a light perfume she’d concocted that contained a bit of enhanced pheromones, a side project she’d been working on. If it worked, she would catch his interest and then go with him rather than try to lure him somewhere with her. That had been the tipoff, she assumed. The moment the female agents had tried to get Rurik someplace he wasn’t familiar with, the warning flags wentup.
But Charlotte had a better way inmind.
Once she had him alone in a place he felt comfortable, she’d use her secret weapon on him: a drug that could incapacitate him long enough to call in the Brotherhood to help her transport him to secure facility where he could be questioned safely without anyone gettinghurt.
The cabdriver hit the brakes as a car ahead of them swerved into their lane. Charlotte winced as she jerked forward and collided with the cab’s backseat.
“Sorry!” the driver muttered in heavily accented English. Then he flashed an obscene gesture at the driver ahead of them. At this rate, it would take them forever to reach the club where Rurik was supposed tobe.
Charlotte slid back in her seat and tried to still her jittery nerves. She would have been back in her little lab in Detroit—safe and sound, instead of here dragon hunting—if it hadn’t been for her friendMeg.
Meg Stratford, a hunter for the Brotherhood, had secretly called on her to analyze a serum Meg had found in London—a drug that could subdue a dragon’s shifting abilities. Charlotte had unraveled the chemical composition in a matter of days. The product she’d synthesized essentially made them human for a period of time depending on the dose. She’d made samples that would last around twenty-four hours on an average-sizedshifter.
But the drug was potentially dangerous. Not in terms of directly harming the shifters, but because of how easily it could be misused. In the wrong hands, it would threaten the balance that existed between the various supernatural factions. Even certain members of the Brotherhood, known for their overzealous nature, couldn’t be trusted with it. As a result, Meg had sworn her to secrecy, even from her ownbrothers.
A stab of guilt cut through Charlotte. She’d told Meg she needed more information on dragons to help her solve the mystery of the serum, but that hadn’t been true. The real reason she needed to know about dragons was because she planned to prove she was a worthy hunter just like herbrothers.
She’d created a batch of the dragon-dampening serum for herself, and she had the vials tucked away safely in her hotel mini-fridge. She went over the list of what she knew about dragons in her head as the taxi drove toward Rurik’s nightclub, theLair.
Dragons could grow old—like thousands of years—but for most of their lives they resembled men and women in their mid-thirties.
There were more than a dozen breeds, such as Russian Imperials and Nordic ice dragons. Rivalries were common between many ofthem.
Dragons could breathe fire as well as controlit.
They had protective thick hides with scales. Those scales were often used in magicalspells.
Dragons could shift between human and dragon forms inseconds.
They were obsessed withjewels.
For some reason they were sensitive to pure iron. It could both injure them and bind them. While they could be wounded by normal weapons, they healed fast, and only iron weapons could do lastingdamage.
