Dragon Blue: A Lie That's True

By Macy Babineaux

Did you ever wonder if your life wasn’t meant for something else?

Miranda Betts works as a waitress in a roadside diner in Oklahoma. Her life will change when a mysterious female customer leaves an ornate necklace in lieu of paying her check. Later, alone in her trailer, she tries on the necklace and is transported to a strange land full of people who can shift into other creatures, including fearsome dragons. And everyone thinks she's someone she's not.

Corban Everfrost leads the clan of blue dragons and rules the Icelands after the mysterious disappearance of his father. While investigating the appearance of strange interlopers from another world, his sister informs him that he is to be wed to the daughter of the Wildfire clan who has been in exile on Earth since she was an infant. Corban wants nothing to do with a new bride or the Wildfires. But when he sees the dark, fiery woman brought to his world via a magic necklace, she stirs something within him.

At first, Miranda thinks Corban is a jerk. He thinks she's an outcast from a clan he despises. But soon they will learn each other's secrets, and as they learn to love each other their relationship may be the key to saving all of Xandakar.

Dragon Blue is the first book in a planned 5-book series, The Dragonlords of Xandakar. It contains lots of fast-paced action, steamy love scenes, and a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macy Babineaux
• Release date: Nov 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370360871

Macy Babineaux

I'm a romance writer living in Louisiana.

Book preview

1

CORBAN

Ornament

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 she 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.

Then he turned, looked up at his sister, already aloft, and folded his arms across his chest. His scaled armor stretched, becoming the armor of the dragon. Bones stretched and grew with cracking noises, but Corban closed his eyes and remained calm and quiet. The blue leather of his wings unfurled from his shoulder blades, stretching outward to either side. Claws jutted from his gloved fingertips, wicked, icy talons a foot long. He grew to ten times his former size, then twenty, his new weight crunching the ice and snow beneath him.

When he was fully transformed, he felt the power surge through him, the ripple of reptilian muscle and the icy core at the base of his neck, ready to unleash a storm of freezing breath. His mind worked differently in dragon form as well, less concerned with the politics and pressures of ruling a kingdom, and more with the needs of the flesh. He was ravenous, his thoughts now only focused on the elk his sister had spoken of. 

She had already reached the top of the trees, heading north, her great wings beating against the cold sky. But Corban was bigger than her, so that when he launched skyward, the ground shook. The trees trembled, snow falling from their branches. He vaulted upwards, feeling the cold air across his snout and the leather of his wings. For a moment, his worldly cares were whisked away.

He flapped his mighty wings, turning north to follow Astra. He was faster than her as well, so he caught up with her with little effort, falling in to glide alongside her. 

Within minutes, he saw the swarm of black dots below, like ants moving along in a line. But these were no ants. They were giant elk, their legs as tall as a man. 

Astra moved low, swooping above the herd, and Corban overtook her. The weakest and slowest animals were in the back. He wanted the strongest and fastest. He set his keen eyes on a male at the head of the stampede. The elk were running full out now, already having been attacked from above by dozens of other dragons. 

Corban’s prey had a massive rack of antlers, and its body was huge, larger than any of its brothers. Corban flapped his wings, his shadow falling over the terrified herd below. Their hooves threw up snow as they charged ahead, but there was nowhere else for them to run. 

He flattened his wings alongside his body and dove for the big one, his claws sinking into the meat of the elk’s shoulders as he struck. The elk bellowed as Corban hauled it aloft, beating his wings hard. The elk was heavy and strong, thrusting his head backward in an attempt to gorge Corban with his antlers.

But it was no use. Corban flew high, carrying his prey up to the top of an ice-capped peak, tilting its head downward to avoid the swing of its head. Twice he almost lost his grip. He had almost been too greedy in choosing the strongest of the herd, but with the clan watching, he had to make a statement.

Near the top of the mountain, the elk’s strength began to flag. Corban flapped his wings hard, eyeing an outcropping with a nice, flat place to land. He flew high above it, dropping the elk so that it broke its neck as it landed.

Then he descended on his prey, his claws slamming down onto the body. He craned his neck down, opened his jaws, and began to feed.

Hunting again felt good. But something in the back of his mind nagged at him. Something told him that dragons were actually the ones being hunted.

2

MIRANDA

Ornament

Miranda sat at her tiny kitchen table, sipping at her cup and looking down at her crumpled uniform on the floor. She sighed. Was this really what her life had become?

The trucker from last night had flashed her a bright white smile, and she'd written her number on his ticket and slid it under his plate with a wink. But he'd been nothing special, just another in a long string of casual encounters. Just like her dad had been to her mom.

He'd skipped out on them when Miranda was only five, leaving her mom to raise her. Except, it was actually the other way around. Since her mom had been a drunk, Miranda actually had to take care of her most of the time. Miranda had cleaned the house, bought the groceries, cooked the food, and damn near everything else all the way up until two years ago, when her mom had died. Ironically, it wasn’t the drinking that had done her in, or even the smoking. She had a tumor at the base of her spine. It was whatever stage was the worst by the time they caught it. 

Miranda had missed out on college, even though her grades and her test scores were good enough. She’d missed out on her childhood. Hell, she’d missed out on life. 

And now she was a twenty-six year old waitress at the truck stop Benny’s just outside of Norman, Oklahoma, and she felt like the whole world had just passed her by.

I’ve had enough of this shit, she said out loud