Frost Dragon: Dragons of Cadia, #1

By Amelia Jade

When Asher arrives at the prestigious Top Scale Academy, he's ready to fight for the right to become a Dragon Guardian. Nothing will stop him from proving that he's capable of defending his realm from humans. But when he catches a sexy woman sneaking into his world, he does the unthinkable and decides to harbor the human fugitive. Although he's unable to resist the magnetic attraction between them, he won't let her steal his heart. Training at the Academy is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and he's not willing to risk it all for love.

Quinn's obsession with capturing photos of shifters in their native habitat nearly gets her killed. But when a mysterious Frost Dragon rescues her, she's ready to risk more than just her life. The ruggedly handsome shifter has captured her heart, but they can never be together. If he ever discovers the secret she's been hiding, it will destroy his trust and she'll have to sacrifice everything to save the love of a lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amelia Jade
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386392750

Book preview

Chapter One

Asher

What a waste of time.

Asher Owens practically stormed from the small ranch-style house his parents called home and moved to the large circle of inlaid stone in their front yard. He knelt in the middle, noting how it stretched out thirty or more feet to all sides. It was big enough. Barely.

There were no intricate patterns, no runes or markings on the stones. It was not laid in any particular fashion, nor was it any special stone. It simply was not earth, and that was the thing that mattered. It wouldn’t do to be damaging the ground every time someone came to visit. Especially their son.

He reached into his core, and touched the spark of ice that was permanently a part of him. It burned brightly in him, a strong and powerful light, despite being completely devoid of heat. The effects of him touching it with his mind were both immediate, and startling.

A swirl of fog, like breath on a cool winter’s day, swept up and around him, enveloping him within its touch. The shroud grew larger, and little shards of ice formed and fell to the ground around him in a clatter that reminded him of just how ungainly his transition was. Inside the fog, the changes were taking place.

Asher’s legs abruptly grew to several times their normal proportion, throwing his torso into the air and then flopping him forward. He concentrated on his front legs, and just in time they began to change as well, preventing him from face-planting into the ground. The muscles on his back rippled and he felt the telltale bulges of new muscle and tendon alike.

His body seemed to suddenly be far away, as if he were having an out-of-body experience, but the way it bobbed and weaved, Asher knew it was simply his neck assuming the proportions of his other half. His flattened face jutted forward, becoming a muzzle, and then a snout. Icicles appeared across his skin and then shattered, falling to the ground to reveal scales covering every inch of him. Brilliant white, they reflected the faltering light of the night as the sun fell below the mountains to the west.

At the last moment, massive wings sprouted from his back—huge, powerful membranes that instead of jutting up and out in a display of prowess, simply flopped over and dragged at his sides until he mentally took control of them and forced them to do as he commanded.

As a final touch, a layer of frost an inch thick exploded out from his feet, covering the circle of stone, falling short a few inches from the edge.

Asher shook his head. The process of shifting was certainly far more awkward and unimpressive than every story he had read before. But now that it was done, he stood there for a moment, knowing how resplendent he looked in the evening light. He practically glowed, scales bigger than a knight’s shield twinkling as the sun’s rays glanced off his natural armor.

Over fifty feet from snout to tail, he was a magnificent specimen, and of that he was aware. Asher was a Frost Dragon, one of the rarer of the dragon species. Impressively armored, muscled, and with a snout full of razor-sharp teeth, he was undoubtedly one of the most lethal predators on the planet.

Nobody would know it by what’s about to happen though.

Asher flexed his wings, sweeping them out to the side, back, and then finally up, before he thrust them down with an incredible amount of force.

The wind picked up some of the loose frost and it swirled around violently. Asher was oblivious, but anyone standing nearby would have been hit by a mini hail storm. His wings continued to pound at the ground, until he coiled his legs and sprung himself into the air. The membranes flexed and pushed, and he rose several feet from the ground, before touching back down. His legs moved him forward and he again tried to thrust himself up into the air. This time he rose a solid five feet before touching ground again, his feet continuing to race him toward the edge of the stone circle.

With one last push and sweep of his wings, he launched himself into the air, beating frantically as he tried to gain height, the tips of the crops from the nearby field dragging against his claws as they hung below his body. Realizing that he was staying aloft for good now, Asher pulled his legs up tight to his body like the landing gear on one of the humans’ aircraft.

Then suddenly he found a thermal, a plume of heat rising from the earth, and he spiraled upward with much less effort than before, reaching fifty, one hundred, then two hundred feet above the ground as his wings worked tirelessly to keep him aloft. Within several minutes he was over a thousand feet in the air and still ascending, the landscape below becoming smaller with every beat of his wings.

It wasn’t pretty, but I can still get up here.

The land below, from the mountains to the west, and the desert in the south or the forests to the east, was all his to explore.

And right then, it felt far too small. Although Asher did not live with his parents and had been on his own for over a decade since he was a teenager, he still tried to visit them as often as he could stomach the idea.

These days, that was not very often.

Perhaps they should greet me with a Hello, instead of No grandkids with you yet? Followed by the inevitable questions about That nice fire dragon, or that shy little frost girl. You should go talk to her. Always in his mother’s condescending voice.

They meant well, he knew that. But he was sick of it. Sick of their expectations, and sick of the expectations placed upon him by his own kind.

His eyes kept flicking back to the Quicksilver mountain range to the west. Beyond them, he knew, was the large human city of Cloud Lake, a bustling metropolis of over a million people that he did not know.

And never will. You know you aren’t allowed to leave.

It wasn’t like he was in prison. Technically. After all, the laws were made by shifters for their own benefit. But he hadn’t been around when they were made, and so Asher felt constrained by them. The thoughts were nothing new to him; it was far from the first time they had crossed his mind, even as he banked through the air, his wings catching the currents and redirecting his motion toward the mountains.

Maybe this time.

Asher flexed muscles that even after all these years still felt strange to him, and the ground began to shrink once again, until even with his eyesight details became impossible to make out. Now it was just one vast carpet of trees, or grass, sand, or rocks. Distinguishing individual items from one another ended as they blurred, and still he rose. Five thousand feet. Six. The air was getting harder to breathe, and his massive lungs worked hard to power him with the oxygen he needed to expend on such a flight.

The mountains grew as he winged closer. He couldn’t see the far side of them, but he knew Cloud Lake was there. They were Cadia’s biggest trade partner. But between them was the border.

The sun’s light was fading from his height by the time he crossed by the first snow-capped peak, the mountain moving by to his right as he continued his attempt to see the outside world for the first time.

The snap of wings as they were suddenly thrust out was the only warning he had.

Asher was no aerial fighter. He did the only thing he knew, and pulled his wings in tight. He dropped like a stone, hurtling toward the ground at incredible speed. Craning his head around, he saw his pursuer flash by in a blur of red.

Fire Dragon. Not good.

Moments later fire singed him as the other dragon unleashed its breath.

Asher gritted his teeth, wishing he could retaliate. But he couldn’t.

This was a Guardian, one of the border protectors, and one of the most fearsome dragons on the planet. He stood no chance as the other dragon shadowed him down.

Asher glanced around, looking for some inspiration as the earth rushed up to meet him.

There!

He looked over his shoulder once more, seeing the blazing silver eyes of his pursuer as he closed the gap.

Now all he had to do was shake him off his back for a second, and his plan might actually work. Without warning Asher stuck one wing out, pulling himself to the side, and then he flashed the second out. Despite the scream of pain that shot through him, he began to pump his muscles, arresting his fall. Moments later he was gaining ground on his pursuer.

That was the easy part. Now all he had to do was dive beneath the giant Vallenwood trees over the river, and lose his pursuer amongst their oversized boughs. Closing his eyes in pain, he banked sharply and dropped again, aiming for what looked like a possible hole through the trees. The magnificent species rose more than two hundred feet in the air, an offshoot of the great red oaks that used to grow along the western coast. These had been carefully tended to by the shifters for ages.

Behind him there was a roar of anger. Irritating one of the Guardians was not ideal, but he had no choice if he was to elude him. Bracing himself, Asher once more folded his wings in and dropped through the upper canopy of the trees.

Small branches, twigs, and leaves scratched against his sides, but he barely felt it through his tough scales.

Something big slammed into his midsection and flipped him over. Stunned, Asher fell the final hundred and fifty feet to the ground, where he landed in the water, a massive splash erupting and soaking the ground on either side of him.

His stomach felt like it was on fire as pain lanced up through his body. Looking up, trying to push aside the stars, he saw the massive limb of one of the trees sticking across the river. It was the only one for fifty feet on either side, and he’d had the bad luck to run into it.

Above, there was a much more controlled crashing, and the big red dragon emerged from the tree cover and descended. She landed on the shore a short way away, her massive talons digging deep into the loam on the banks of the river. It was only now, as things slowed down, that Asher realized it was, in fact, a she.

What are you doing here, Initiate? she said, her snout contorting to form the words, though there was a distinct sibilant hiss to them. Not as bad as snakes, but it was there.

He didn’t respond. To call him an Initiate was a low insult indeed. It implied he was no more than a fledgling, just out of the nest.

I am no Initiate, he ground out after a moment as the Guardian looked on, awaiting his response.

Her eyes blinked rapidly as she laughed, a deep-throated sound that boomed out under the colossal trees.

Then why do you behave like one?

He glared at her, but this time he didn’t respond at all, waiting her out.

Go back to Cadia, Asher, the Guardian said, though this time there was no malice in her voice, just a simple command. And next time you try such an advanced maneuver, think it all the way through. Dropping below the Vallenwoods, while bold, is far more likely to result in this than a successful escape.

He frowned, the eyes on his face becoming lidded. He gathered himself and spread his wings, letting them buoy him up in the water, the current beginning to carry him back toward town. The tendons that powered his wings ached with a terrible pain, and he knew it would be several hours before flying no longer hurt.

The Guardian watched him go, and Asher couldn’t help but shake the feeling that she was watching him, evaluating him in some way. It was an unsettling feeling. When he floated around a turn in the river, he breathed a vast sigh of relief as the Guardian launched herself back into the air.

The relief became envy as he realized she had only needed one push of her legs, and no running start either.

One day he would be that good, he promised himself.

One day.

***

He landed on one of the stone circles surrounding town, and in a flash of frosty air and ice underfoot resumed his human form. The sun was beating down, and it quickly melted the residue from his arrival, but not before the next dragon descended, landing on the platform.

Asher jogged out of the way, wondering why the hell