enough times in his life to know you never stop and you never look back. Even if you feel their breath on your neck, you never look back.
Several floors up, Ailean dived right through the window, bracing his human body for impact and rolling when he felt the ground beneath him. By the time he pulled himself back to his feet, the soldiers were on the first floor, barreling through the door.
Ailean took off running through the city of Kyffin. An ancient city many leagues away from Dark Plains and Devanallt Mountain, the seat of power for the dragons of Dark Plains. Winding and congested with people, it was easy to disappear in Kyffin.
Unless, of course, you were a completely naked male with dark blue hair. Humans had a tendency to notice that sort of thing.
But he wouldn’t be caught. He should have known the woman wanted more from him than a simple tumble for the night. It had happened before. He goes to bed with a woman who promises no commitments and wakes up to a lass whose father wants Ailean dead for “deflowering” his daughter. A daughter the man had planned to sell off to the wealthiest lord looking for a wife.
After all these years there were still some things about humans Ailean would never understand.
And, clearly, they’d never understand him. For Ailean lived life on his own terms. He answered to no one. Not the human lords of this land, nor the dragon lords of his own. He lived as he wanted, fucked who he wanted, and never had a moment of regret about it.
As the years had passed, he’d collected many names. Ailean the Beautiful. Ailean the Killer. Ailean the Bold. Ailean the Wicked, which was still his personal favorite. And, over the last thirty years specifically, Ailean the Whore. Brutal but honest, depending on who you spoke to.
What he didn’t plan to take on for a name anytime this millennium was Ailean the Captured by Some Female Who’ll Try and Tie Me Down.
No, that name would have to wait for another four or five hundred years. With so many females to taste and enjoy, he had no desire to lock himself in. Why waste all his talents on just one?
Ailean felt the soldiers move closer. He could shift to his true form and destroy them where they stood, but what fun would that be? Besides, he’d kill other humans who happened to be standing around. He had no desire to do that. Not when he enjoyed humans so thoroughly. They had their many flaws, but that was to be expected of any lower creature.
Picking up his pace, Ailean lost the soldiers, at least for a time, when he dashed down a busy street filled with sellers and buyers. He kept moving, charging up a set of steps and inside a building. He immediately recognized it as a school. Perhaps a training ground for sorcerers or those who simply enjoyed learning. He considered himself a “learner,” but what he learned he never got out of a simple book. The world taught him all he needed to know.
His dragon hearing picked up the sound of the soldiers heading down the street, so Ailean went up many flights of stairs until he ended in an enormous room filled with books. They were everywhere. On bookshelves, piled on the floor, and on the tables. Students kept their heads down, not even noticing him. Perfect. Nothing had become more tedious than explaining his blue hair. After so many years, simply telling people his poor mother had been cursed while he slept in the womb seemed to quickly end the conversation and had many women going out of their way to prove it didn’t matter—which he never minded.
Moving among the stacks, Ailean slid to a stop in the very back, near an exit and another window—in case he needed that as well. Then he caught a scent. It was deliciously familiar. He sniffed the air again. A dragoness. He grinned. Oh…he knew that scent quite well.
After more than three decades, he’d never forgotten the owner of that scent. How could he? She’d thrown his own battle ax at his head. Among his kin, that was merely a declaration of never-ending love.
No longer thinking of the soldiers searching for him, he let his nose lead him. The library went deeper than he realized, the scent luring him into near darkness among old, dusty tomes he’d never give up a second of his life reading. When he finally stopped, he stared at the human form sitting on the floor. She had her back against the bookshelf and wore the robes of a human acolyte, the brownish-red tint of the cloth suggesting alchemy as the area of study.
Ailean stared at the top of her head, the hood of the robe slipping off a bit to reveal golden hair.
He’d never expected to see her living as human. Fascinated, he crouched down in front of her and stared, waiting for her to lift her head up. He wanted to see her face again.
It took her a bit to pull herself out of her book, but eventually she looked up at him. Ailean took in a sharp breath at the sight of her.
Gods of hellfire…she really is gorgeous.
She had a pretty enough face and those always-intense gold eyes. But it was those spots splattered across the bridge of her pug nose and onto her cheeks that fascinated him most. Freckles, the humans called them.
And below that…he almost sighed. Those lips. They were ridiculously full and the softest pink. He could spend hours enjoying those lips. Hours.
Breaking into a wide grin, knowing he was the last being on the planet she’d ever wanted to see again, Ailean said with glee, “By all the gods of blood and death—if it isn’t Shalin the Innocent! Did you miss me?”
Oh, gods. Not him!
Anyone but him.
The one dragon she’d give anything to have in her cave, in her bed—anywhere she could get him.
But even now, just having him here in the library put her at risk. Especially with him naked.
Ahh, but what a beautiful naked he was.
No. No. She couldn’t think like that. Ever. First off, what exactly would she do with him? She’d had lovers before. Well…she’d had two. But two nice, quiet, well-schooled ones. But Ailean the Slag…well, he was the stuff fantasies were made of. So very tall and wide, all of it sturdy strength and powerful muscle. Whether as dragon or human, he stood much taller than those around him. Then there was that hair. A silky mass of midnight blue she could easily imagine sliding through her fingers, draping over her body. It was long and luxurious and simply…och! She was doing it again.
But how could she not? Especially with those bright silver eyes watching her and that adorable grin on those decadently full lips. Even his nose, which clearly had taken considerable abuse as human, made her think all sorts of distracting, I’ll-never-be-an-Elder-if-I-keep-this-up thoughts.
Fool, Shalin!
And she was a fool. The one dragon she could never again go near, the one dragon she could never even think of talking to, was Ailean the Wicked. Also known as Ailean the Whore, Ailean the Slag, and a host of other names, depending on who you talked to.
Why? Why did she have to deny herself the one thing every other dragoness and human female seemed able to enjoy since Ailean had been no more than twenty winters?
Because of that night. That one damn night when he’d become the absolute obsession of Princess Adienna. The dragoness spoke of him constantly. Obsessed over every move she’d heard he’d made. Although she’d never demean herself by tracking him down herself, Adienna still waited for him to return. And every female who had graced his bed before or since—and there had been so very many—became the enemy of this one irrational female.
