Dragon Blue: A Lie That's True (The Dragonlords of Xandakar, Book1) Read online

  Dragon Blue: A Lie That's True

  The Dragonlords of Xandakar, Book 1

  by Macy Babineaux

  Copyright © 2016 Macy Babineaux. All Rights Reserved.

  Foreword

  First of all, thank you so much for picking up my book. This is the first of a 5-part series, The Dragonlords of Xandakar. This first volume was a blast to write. Xandakar is a far-away fantasy world filled with different types of shifters, though the dragons hold all the power. I hope you enjoy your visit there, and I hope when the other books come out, you'll want to come again.

  Please consider clicking here to sign up for my newsletter. Out of respect for my readers, I only send out emails for major announcements like new book releases.

  Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy Dragon Blue: A Lie That's True.

  Macy Babineaux

  August 20th, 2016

  1: Miranda

  He pushed her up against the wall of her tiny trailer home, hiking up the yellow polyester skirt of her Benny’s uniform and running his rough hand up her thigh.

  He’d been a customer at the restaurant. He’d come in by himself, a young, buff trucker in boots and jeans, a dirty sleeveless T-shirt with the head of a bald eagle on it, and a dirty red baseball cap. He’d ordered the Benny’s Deluxe Breakfast, which was four eggs however you wanted them, a pile of hash browns, a short stack, and about a pound of greasy breakfast meat. It had been going on midnight, but Benny’s served breakfast around the clock, because most of their customers were truckers and truckers didn’t live on the same clock as the rest of the world.

  After she’d brought him his food, he’d wolfed it down, all the while glancing at her while she leaned against the counter and read her book, a thriller about some serial killer who took teeth as trophies. The story wasn’t that great, but it was easy to read during the downtime at Benny’s, and at Benny's there was quite a bit of downtime.

  When she brought the check, he’d asked her when her shift ended. She told him she’d be off in about an hour and scribbled the address of her trailer home just off Route 48. Sure, this was a little dangerous. She didn’t know the guy. Hell, for all she knew he could be a serial killer who collected teeth as trophies.

  At least that would be exciting. She was so bored.

  The trucker reached up further to grab her panties. Then he yanked them down and she felt the chilly air of the AC.

  “You like that, Miranda?” he said, kissing her neck. “You want it?”

  She had her arms over his shoulders, pulling him in close as he pressed against her. He’d remembered her name. Then she felt the press of her name tag into her breast and realized it wasn’t that hard to remember if it was right there. She almost let out a little laugh, though, because for the life of her, she couldn’t remember his. Jake? Jack? It was something like that. Did it really matter?

  She looked over his shoulder at the little turquoise Formica table in the corner of the trailer, at the empty bottle of tequila, the shot glasses, and the squeezed wedges of lime. She wondered whether his question was rhetorical or not, whether she was leaving him hanging.

  “Yeah,” she finally said in a low, hoarse voice. “Give it to me.”

  She moved her hands down and unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his jeans, and unzipped the fly. He was wearing bikini briefs, which didn’t surprise her at all, and she reached in with both hands and pulled him out.

  Sex was one of the few things that had helped her get through the boredom that was her life. Once or twice a week she’d invite someone back to her trailer. Sometimes she’d just head back to their rig after her shift.

  She was worked up, sweaty and wet despite the cool air, and she wanted him inside her. That raw lust was there. But something was missing. Something always seemed to be missing.

  Miranda pushed the thought out of her mind, closing her eyes and guiding him into her with both hands. She then hugged him around the waist as he pushed up inside her. She put her lips against his ear, giving it a little bite.

  “Show me how you do it,” she said. “Fuck me like a little whore.”

  He seemed to like dirty talk, so she was happy to oblige. He slid his hands under her to cup her ass, then plunged as deep as he could. He squeezed both her cheeks, then slid halfway out and shoved deep again.

  The force rocked her against the thin wall of the trailer, and the whole thing shook around them.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, panting in his ear. “That’s it. Give it to me. Just like that.”

  He fell into a rhythm, pumping into her like a well-oiled piston, squeezing her ass so hard she knew it was going to be sore the next day. But she liked it rough. The little aches and pains the next day always reminded her of the night before.

  He was fucking her hard and steady, the trailer rocking back and forth, squeaking. The screen door swung out and clattered back against the frame.

  “You’re a monster,” Miranda said, running her hands up under the back of his shirt and raking the taut muscles with her nails. “I’ve never been fucked this hard.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but everything said in the heat of passion didn’t really need to be, did it? He had a nice enough cock, and he was fucking her well enough. A little white lie never hurt anything, did it?

  So she moaned and gasped, then put her lips on his neck to suck and bite, giving him a nice little souvenir for the road.

  His breathing became heavy and ragged, and he started to shudder. She sensed he was about to come, and while she had kept up with her pills, she didn’t particularly want him to blow inside her.

  She reached back around to his cock with both hands and pulled him out of her, feeling his reluctance. But then she slid down to the floor, eye-level with it, and began to stroke the shaft, working it under all her fingers.

  “Come on, baby,” she said. “Come for me.”

  She pointed the head at the top of her cleavage as she pumped his cock. She’d almost certainly get some on her uniform, but she had two of them and this one needed cleaning anyway.

  He put both hands against the wall and let out a long, inarticulate moan, his whole body tensing up. She pumped the base of his shaft as the first spurts erupted, spattering her chest with warm plops. He kept on, though, shooting out a torrent, enough to coat everything below her collarbones.

  He let out an exhausted sigh as she felt the warmth cascading down across the tops of her breasts. And yep, some had splattered on the lapel of her yellow polyester uniform, but that was fine with her. She hated working at Benny’s and hated the ugly, itchy uniforms. She had half a mind to wear it into work tomorrow just like this.

  “Oh, man,” he said, looking down at her. “That was great.”

  “Yeah,” she said, even though she hadn’t actually come. It had still been fun, though, a distraction at the very least. She tucked him away as he began to soften and helped him up with his jeans.

  Then she stood, this time cupping his ass in both her hands. She gave him a soft kiss, just one.

  “That was nice,” she said. “Listen though, I don’t want to be a bitch or anything, but I have to get up early tomorrow morning.”

  His eyes looked at her, still a little unfocused. Finally it seemed to click. She wanted him to leave. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I mean, no problem.”

  He zipped up his jeans and buckled his belt. “I need to get back on the road anyway.” He’d parked his rig out on the shoulder of the road.

  He picked up his hat, which had fallen off at some point. Then opened the screen door, which squealed on its hinges.
<
br />   “Uh,” he said. “It was nice to…you know, meet you.”

  “You too,” she said, wondering if she should ask him his name. In the end she decided she just really didn’t care that much.

  He stood in front of the trailer, looking awkwardly up at her. Oh God, she thought. He's going to treat this like a date, like it was more than just a quick fuck. She really just wanted to be done with him.

  “Well,” he said, “if I make it through here again, I’ll—”

  “Sure,” she said, giving him a strained smile. “Good night.”

  With that, she closed the trailer door.

  2: Corban

  Corban Everfrost knelt in the snow. They had been here. Hoof prints seemingly came out of nowhere and led down the sloping hill, a party of five by his count. The hooves were strange, though, much larger than any horse that he knew of in Xandakar. And the edges of the snow where they had left their impressions seemed blackened and burned.

  He reached out with a gloved hand and touched the edge of a print. The black snow curled and crumbled at his touch. Why hadn’t the snow just melted, if the hooves were hot? It was almost as if the snow had been corrupted by some decaying force or disease.

  He took a vial from within his scaled vest and uncorked it, scooping in a small amount of the black snow. He would show it to Wygard, see if the old owl had ever seen or heard of anything like it.

  Corban stood, the snow crunching beneath his blue scaly boots. He replaced the cork and slid the vial back into his vest. Looking down the slope of the hill, at the trail of tracks, he wondered how fresh they were and where they were headed. That way led to the rift, the volcanic vent that served as the de facto border between the Icelands and the mountainous deserts of the Wildfire clan.

  The Everfrosts held a fragile truce with their neighbors to the west, and part of their agreement was to stay out of each other’s territory.

  He sensed her before he heard the great beat of her giant wings on the still morning air. Corban turned and saw the silver-blue dragon high in the air. She spotted him and her long neck turned. She swooped down over the tips of the pines, brushing them so that the trees swayed gently, then dropped straight towards him, buffeting her wings to slow her descent. Billows of snow blew up in a cloud around him, but Corban didn’t bother to shield his face. He merely squinted through white haze at the massive form of his sister.

  She folded her wings across her chest and bowed her reptilian head, and as she did she began to transform, every part of her shrinking toward the place where she had landed. By the time the snow had settled, a woman stood where there had once been a dragon.

  Her hair was silver, her eyes the pale blue of every Everfrost. Her features were soft, though, her mouth small and pink. Her button nose was pink from the cold. The scales of the dragon that she had been had transformed along with her into the shiny blue skinsuit she now wore, complete with scaled gloves and boots.

  She looked at him with a gaze intended to be stern, but he could see that should couldn’t hold it, her lips finally breaking into a smile.

  “I found you, brother,” she said.

  “So you did, Astra,” he replied. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  “You can join me in the hunt,” she said. “Along with the rest of the clan. The elk are fine and stout this season, and your absence is conspicuous.”

  “Our father’s absence is conspicuous,” Corban said.

  She sighed. “Our father is dead.”

  “You cannot know that,” he said. “His body was never found.”

  “Must we go round and round on this yet again, brother? It has been over a year, with neither sightings nor signs. Except for you, everyone in the clan has acknowledged that he is dead.”

  “Everyone in the clan is wrong.” He nodded at the tracks, the blackened snow. “Look.”

  Astra clearly didn’t want to look. She wanted him to transform with her, take to the air, and fly north towards fields full of freshly fallen snow and running elk.

  “Just come with me, brother,” she said. “Hunt and feed with the rest of your clan. You’re their leader now. You should act like one.”

  He ignored the barb, walking to the nearest tracks and kneeling in the snow. “Look," he said again, more forcefully this time.

  She sighed again, then walked to where he knelt, standing over him. “Riders,” she said. “Hunters and barbarians have always ridden throughout the edges of our land. What of it?”

  “Look more closely, Astra,” he said, feeling the agitation in his voice. How could she be so stubborn? “The tracks appear out of nowhere. Five riders, side by side. And a strange blackness forms where hooves met snow.”

  She still refused to even bend down. She thought he was crazy, obsessed. Everyone in the clan did. He loved his father. That was true enough. But others believed he had been driven mad with grief. That was simply untrue. He felt as calm and sane as he ever had. Only something gnawed at the back of his mind.

  The circumstances under which his father had disappeared made no sense. And since he had been searching on his own, long after everyone else had given up, he had gathered a growing body of evidence. In disguise, he’d spoken to villagers, who told of seeing mounted men in purple glowing armor, their horses aglow as well and nearly translucent, the animals’ bones visible in the night. And yet no one would believe him.

  Astra looked up at the sky. “Perhaps the snow covered the tracks from here,” she said. “And that blackness is probably some sort of tar, perhaps to give the horses better footing in the snow.”

  Did she realize how absurd she sounded? Now it was Corban’s turn to sigh. He stood and looked again in the direction the tracks led. Astra stepped close to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Please, brother,” she said. “If you go soaring across the rift into Wildfire lands, you’ll only make matters worse.” She reached up and turned his face to hers. “The clan is flourishing now, and we are at peace with the other dragonlords for the first time in years. Father is gone. Don’t ruin his memory by destroying everything that he worked for in a vain attempt to find him. He would not have wanted that.”

  Corban loved his sister, but she was wrong to presume what their father would have wanted. Everything else she spoke was true enough, though. With his father’s disappearance, Corban was now the leader of the clan, and the past year had been peaceful and prosperous. Why then did he feel as if there was a rotten worm at the center of this golden fruit? And why was he the only one to sense it?

  Astra looked him in the eyes. “I have other news.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Magda has spoken,” she said. “Word has been sent. Your new broodmate, our new queen, will arrive shortly. Your binding is at hand.”

  Magda was the Oracle, the ancient owl woman who lived in a giant twisted oak in the center of the five realms of the dragonlords. She saw all, took no sides, and helped broker peace between the clans. She also arranged the marriages that formed alliances. Whether she peered into the aether for her answers or simply dreamed them up herself, Corban didn’t know. But the dragonlords had followed her counsel and guidance for millennia, and he would not be the first to deviate from it.

  He had been dreading this day, though. He had plenty of consorts to fulfil his carnal needs, and the thought of dealing with a mate, especially from one of the other clans, sounded like a horrible ordeal.

  “Did she say a name?” he asked. He didn’t want to hear it, but not knowing was worse.

  “Siccora Wildfire,” Astra said.

  He furrowed his brow. It took him a moment to place the name because as far as he knew she wasn’t in the five kingdoms at all. “The one in hiding?”

  “Yes,” Astra said. “That’s the one.”

  Corban had heard the stories. Years ago, around the time he had been born, the Wildfires and Nightshadows had been at war, an ugly conflict that had very nearly crippled both clans. Karth Wildfire had feared for his
newborn daughter’s life, so he tasked his mages to open a portal to another world, to send her through for her own protection. Beyond that, Corban knew little else. Why she had not returned as soon as the conflict was over, he did not know.

  What he did know was that he was to be bound to a mate who had lived her entire life in an alien world, not among dragons. Likely they were some weaker breed. He would have something else to ask Wygard about when he returned to the keep, but so far this day was getting worse and worse.

  “Don’t fret, brother,” Astra said. “I’m sure she’s beautiful. And there’s no need to forego your consorts if you choose not to. That's your right as king.”

  Her beauty or lack of it was the least of his concerns. He wanted nothing to do with her or the binding ritual. He wanted to find those who had taken his father. He wanted to be left to his own. But glancing back over his shoulder, he now realized he could not continue the investigation. He could not encroach on Wildfire lands the day he found out he was to be bound with Karth’s daughter.

  “You say the elk are fine this year?” he asked.

  Astra smiled once again, her teeth as white as the snow, her eyes bright. “Follow me,” she said, then turned and ran. With every step she took, her form grew, her footsteps in the snow getting larger, splaying into wide claws. Wings stretched and sprouted from her shoulders, flapping as she ran. Her neck elongated, her head sprouting white horns and barbs. By the time she had taken ten steps, she had become an azure and white dragon, and with the next step she vaulted into the air, a plume of snow exploding beneath her.

  Corban took one more glance at the receding hoof prints. I will find my father, he thought. And I will find the ones who took him. Their flesh will rend beneath my claws as their screams sing to my ears. And their bones will freeze and shatter between my jaws. When I find them they will know the true feeling of cold.