Reign of Dragons: a dragon fantasy romance adventure series (Dragon Dojo Brotherhood Book 1) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Reign of Dragons copyright © 2019 by Olivia Ash.

  Cover and art copyright © 2019 by Sutthiwat Dechakamphu

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Olivia Ash.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Wispvine Publishing, L. L. C.

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  1st Edition

  Books by Olivia Ash

  Dragon Dojo Brotherhood

  Reign of Dragons

  Fate of Dragons

  Blood of Dragons

  Age of Dragons

  The Nighthelm Guardian Series

  City of the Sleeping Gods

  City of Fractured Souls

  City of the Enchanted Queen

  Demon Queen Saga

  Princes of the Underworld

  Wars of the Underworld

  Sentinel Saga

  By Dahlia Leigh and Olivia Ash

  The Shadow Shifter

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  Reign of Dragons

  Book One of the Dragon Dojo Brotherhood

  Olivia Ash

  Book Description

  Dragon Dojo Brotherhood Book One: Reign of Dragons

  No one screws with my family.

  My sister and I are human orphans raised by the world’s best assassin, taught to steal and kill our way through the dragonlands under her watchful eye. Grown men fear us, and no one knows we’re coming until it’s too late to run.

  Irena and I—we’re good. The best. In a dog-eat-dragon kind of world, we have to be. But someone betrayed us. Someone we trusted with our lives.

  Irena is missing. My mentor is gone. And as for me… the man responsible for this mess thought he killed me. He kicked me into a pit, and he left me to die.

  But I don’t give up that easy.

  In the darkness, facing death itself, I fused with dragons. I had no choice. This is ancient magic, and dangerous people want it. They want me, dead or alive, and they’ll start a war if that’s what it takes to control me.

  The magic I discovered—the magic these brutal people want—it’s mine, plain and simple. No one can take it from me. And I’m coming back from the dead.

  For blood. For vengeance.

  For Irena.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  You’re Missing Out…

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Tonight, I’m out for blood.

  As I press my back against the mansion wall, body tense and ready for war, the modified handgun I’m holding warms against my palm. Custom scopes and attachments lie against the barrel, ready at a moment’s notice.

  Every movement I make, every glance, is made with intention.

  Precision.

  Purpose.

  Find the vial of green liquid that can save Irena’s life, then get the hell out of here.

  Usually, I try not to slit throats unless it’s a direct order. I go in. I steal. I get out. But this is different.

  This is for family.

  Sisters stay together. Always. And these bastards tried to kill mine.

  The windows we pass show hints of a crescent moon suspended in the cold midnight sky, but I’m used to the darkness. Like the other corridors I’ve stolen through tonight, this hallway is empty, with only a thin ray of light streaming from around the corner to illuminate my path through the smuggler’s mansion.

  Some asshole named Mason Greene—a dragon shifter with a penchant for inflicting pain—owns this place.

  According to his dossier, Mason’s victims usually beg for death long before he’s done with them. But we’re here because he has one of the only known reserves of the antidote Irena needs.

  That’s all my mentor will tell me.

  Stealing from dragons. For most, it’s suicide. For Spectres like us, it’s our forte.

  Silent as a ghost, Zurie races ahead of me. I sprint to keep up with my mentor, forced to just follow regardless of how much I want to move faster, to get to the vial sooner, to save Irena’s life and find out what the hell happened that made her so sick.

  Zurie won’t tell me the truth, but Irena will once—if—she wakes up. And I have a feeling I won’t like it.

  We slow as we near an open doorway, and Zurie holds up a fist, the silent order to stop. I obey. I always have, for as long as I can remember.

  This life—the sneaking, the stealing, the stealth, the murder—it’s all I’ve ever known.

  With the subtlest of movements, Zurie peeks around the wall into the open room beyond. She holds up two fingers, another silent order.

  Two cameras. Two voids.

  Without a sound, I lift my shirt hem and unzip the thin bag strapped to my abdomen, fishing out two silver devices the size of my thumbnail. I hand her one and keep the other for myself. Silently, I shift the various attachments
on my gun’s scope until I get to the one I want.

  Zurie hesitates, fingers spread in warning. Two seconds later, she nods.

  The command to move.

  In unison, we roll into the empty room, pausing only to kneel and fire the voids at the camera wiring. Our silencers muffle the thundering booms of gunshots to mere pops.

  One shot each. No failure permitted.

  I’m never allowed to fail.

  And I don’t.

  The voids hit, sparking briefly before the little red light on each camera goes out.

  Dragons have magic, sure, but we humans have tech. It’s our magic, in a way. Our only means of fighting back against the supernatural creatures who have all but overtaken us as masters of the planet.

  They hide behind governments and lobbyists, sure, but we humans know the dragons rule our world from behind the curtain.

  With the red lights on the cameras out, we’re golden. Thanks to the void devices, the cameras will play back the last fifteen seconds on a loop, giving us free rein of this part of the house. The only way a guard would’ve seen us is if he’d been watching as we fired, and since most watchmen have dozens of screens to monitor, we’re in the clear.

  Probably.

  With the cams covered, I scope the room. An ornate, twenty-person dining table takes up most of the floor, stacks of cash simply sitting on the surface. I scan the piles, guessing there’s probably six hundred grand laying out in the open.

  Hmm. How trusting.

  I’m on edge. So far, we’ve snuck by every guard we’ve seen. We’re good, sure, but even we usually have to kill someone.

  Because I like not dying, I tap Zurie twice on the back of her arm, a silent request to pause and discuss.

  “What now, Rory?” she snaps, her voice a barely audible whisper.

  “I don’t like this,” I say quietly, my tone hard and wary as I ignore her annoyance so I can make my point. “It’s too easy.”

  She huffs. “No one knows we’re here. Focus.”

  I grimace, disagreeing but overruled.

  Fine.

  We carry on through the mansion, slipping from shadow to shadow, never making a noise, never leaving so much as a hair behind.

  Zurie is wrong. I know it in my bones and can feel it in every scar on my body from every lesson learned the hard way. I can almost feel the dragon eyes on the back on my head and can almost taste the lingering tension in the air as they lie in wait for us. Zurie calls this paranoia my imagination, the reason Irena was chosen as Zurie’s successor instead of me, but I don’t care what anyone calls it.

  I call it instinct. And it’s almost always right.

  It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not leaving this mansion without that green goo Irena needs, no matter who I have to kill to get it.

  No matter how many traps I set off on the way.

  Because I’m certain, now. This is a trap.

  The thing that concerns me most, though? Somehow, they know we’re coming. Spectres are feared because we steal through the night, silent as ghosts and just as easily overlooked.

  As a Spectre, no one is supposed to know I’m coming for them until it’s too late to do a damn thing about it.

  Zurie leads us down another hallway, following the stolen map on her wrist display. We pause at a set of double doors, and she gestures toward the far wall. I nod and duck around her, ready to kick it in, to finally storm this place and take what we need.

  I’ve never loved stealing, despite how often Zurie makes me do it. But this time, it’s for Irena.

  For her, I would do anything.

  Zurie presses her ear against the door, frowning as she listens. Her brown eyes shift, catching my attention, and she shakes her head once.

  Empty room.

  My jaw tenses. My whole damn body tenses. Dragon families operate like the mafia—no kings here, no common law, just one Boss and the dragons who obey him. And this mansion belongs to an underling of the Vaer family, dragons who don’t play nice even among themselves.

  Smugglers.

  Traffickers.

  Hitmen.

  They’re not going to leave a stronghold like this empty, especially not one filled to the brim with cash and probably stuffed with stolen goods.

  I grip my gun tighter, waiting for the trap to spring.

  Waiting for someone to shoot.

  Zurie stands, shoulders squared, eyes on the doorknob. To my horror, she’s going in, even though I would rather scout some more to get a feel for what’s really going on.

  But my mentor isn’t stupid. If she’s seriously considering this despite the red flags, despite the danger I know she sees, then she must be more desperate than I realized.

  Zurie saw what happened to Irena. I didn’t. And whatever it was, this entire situation must be so much worse than I thought.

  She nods, the silent order to go. As always, I obey.

  In unison, we kick the door in and roll. I scope the room, gun drawn, and the first thing I see is the clear bottle on a table by the windows, the vial filled with glowing green liquid.

  I have a fleeting moment of joy at finding the antidote before the lights go out, and my body immediately floods with cold dread.

  In the darkness, time seems to slow as my other senses kick into high gear. Boots scuffle over the floor. Eight—no, nine—men. Their heavy breath, the swish of their clothes. The clink of their handguns at their waists, jostling in the holsters.

  These men walk with purpose. Direction. No stumbling, no cussing under their breath.

  Great, they have night vision goggles. And I don’t.

  But I’ve been in way worse situations than this. Hell, my training was worse than this. These men won’t shift indoors and risk destroying their precious master’s pretty house, so that gives me an advantage.

  My ear twitches at the ever-nearing thumps of their boots on the floor, and I aim into the shadows. I fire three rounds. Two hit. One smashes through a window.

  Damn. A wasted bullet.

  My victims fall with heavy thuds to the hardwood, and the others don’t take their time anymore. The rest run toward me at full speed.

  Idiots.

  Zurie fires two shots as I take my next aim. I get another bullet in before the thundering boots get too close. The air around me shifts, and as my eyes strain in the utter darkness, I tap into the instinct and muscle memory that has helped me survive all these years of Zurie’s brutal training.

  A man grabs my hand. I twist back his fingers, breaking them. He yells out in pain. Another man’s arm goes around my neck. I coil in his grip, using his own body weight against him as I fling him off of me.

  One by one, they grab my arms, my neck, my waist. Quick as lightning, I throw them off, breaking bones any chance I can. A broken man can’t fight back.

  Rule 37 of the Spectres—always deal the first and final blow.

  A Spectre never leaves home without weapons, and my body is covered with them. I’m finally able to reach the knife in my boot, and I dig it into the side of the nearest attacker. He yells in agony. I twist the blade, and he falls to his knees.

  But then I hear Zurie scream.

  It’s short. Quick. Shattering. It’s a scream of deep agony, the kind of scream that would escape my mouth during training when she broke too many bones to prove a point. The kind that got me additional punishment for revealing weakness.

  A scream like that is punishable. Unpermitted. Absolutely not allowed.

  If she screams, we’re in deep shit.

  I spin and bury the knife in the nearest man. He gargles, and I think I’ve hit his throat. I don’t care.

  I bolt toward Zurie, but now there are more boots thundering over the hardwood. Ten more men run in from both ahead and behind us. Great. They must have been stationed throughout the house, not entirely sure which of their traps would spring on us first.

  But now they know exactly where we are.

  Secret doors hidden in the walls burst open, thei
r hinges barely squeaking as they give way to more and more soldiers.

  Twenty men.

  Thirty.

  This entire mission is crumbling apart.

  Rule 12 of the Spectres—always know when and how to escape.

  The how is easy. I saw it the moment we kicked in the door. Two windows on the far wall, easy enough to break through, most likely with thick grass to soften my landing. Hell, my bullet already shattered one, which might make the escape even easier.

  But the when—that’s what I’ve always had trouble with. Zurie calls it stupidity. Irena calls it courage.

  I call it… well, I haven’t figured out what it really is, yet.

  The boots rumble closer. More and more shifters funnel into the room.

  There are only seconds left.

  I have to think fast.

  I have four choices: save Irena, save Zurie, save both, or save myself and get the hell out of here.

  Both. Both is good.

  I only need two things: the green vial and my mentor. They’re both in this room. They’re both within an arm’s reach, but as more and more dragon shifters funnel in, my odds are getting worse by the second.