Ruby Beyond Compare: Wyvern Chronicles, #3.5

By Nix Whittaker

Dear Santa, 
All I want this year is some new caltrops and explosive crossbow bolts. Oh, and a Dragon Prince all tied up with a ribbon. 
From Charani, Dragon Hunter for the Wyvern Empire

Charani didn't expect a routine job to take out a couple of rogue dragon hunters would lead her to a Dragon Prince, not tied up in a bow, but rather in chains and starving. She understood the chains as it was never a good thing to starve a dragon who had been around before the signing of the treaty between men and dragons. If ever freed he was likely to see any human near by, not as a friend, but rather as a light snack.

Dimitri has been a prisoner for hundreds of years. The dragon hunter who frees him is little more than a morsel but he doesn't want to eat her as a snack but he does want to devour her. Awkward after so many years enslaved he has to find his voice to ask Charani be more than just the woman who freed him.

This is a sweet steampunk inspired novelette set around Christmas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nix Whittaker
• Release date: Nov 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386135487

Book preview

Other books by Nix Whittaker

Glyph Warrior series

Hero is a man

You can run

Sorrow also sings

Blind Leading

Wyvern Chronicles

Blazing Blunderbuss

The Mechanicals

The Jade Dragon

Wyvern’s trim and other stories

Model Humans

Model: Serenity

Chapter One

With one leg hanging down, Charani perched in the pine tree. It gave her the perfect view of the camp without being spotted herself, as the rich foliage obscured her. The tree was also coated with a decent cover of snow which made moving through the branches tricky as she didn’t want those in the camp to be aware that she was spying on them. Her father would be disappointed if she gave her position away so easily. He had trained her since she was a little girl how to best use her Dragon Hunter abilities. Abilities that made her sharper and deadlier to humans and dragons alike.

She was unimpressed with them as the camp was rough. They hadn’t bothered with anything but the basics. No one had dug a latrine, and their gear was piled up to one side. There was a small fire with a rude spit over the top. The single rabbit would barely feed one person let alone those in the camp. Four men argued over a chest of gold. One knelt by the chest and fondled the coins one by one as the others decided what they would spend it on first. They were loud enough that Charani was pretty sure women would beat out booze before the end of the argument.

There was one other in the camp, but he was no man. Bent over the fire, he slowly turned a spit. Emaciated with a collar wrapped around his throat. Charani already knew the collar would have ebony, quartz and ivory embedded in it to enslave the dragon in his human shape. He stared at the fire with dead eyes. The effort to cook the meager meal had taken all his energy. Bruises painted his skin like watercolors of a stormy sea. Purples and greys the most dominant of colors but there were also hints of yellow and green. These were not new bruises.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Dragons had exceptional healing abilities. They were practically immortal. The only dragons to have died since arriving on earth 1500 years before was from war and murder. But unfortunately, those abilities were linked with their ability to change into a dragon. For him to not even be able to heal a bruise meant he had been trapped as a slave for a very long time. It could even be decades or centuries.

When Charani had seen the brigands in the village, she had seen their slave’s red eyes. It was what told her that he was a dragon in the first place. Only Roshian dragons had red eyes and they had been hunted to extinction almost a six hundred years before. For a Roshian dragon to be here was impossible. For a group of scraggly brigands to have him as a slave was beyond impossible.

One of the men broke off from the others and approached the fire pit, heading towards the pile of their gear. As he walked past the dragon, he shoved him, so the dragon sprawled into the hot coals, scattering coals. The others roared with laughter as the dragon dragged himself out and flicked burning ash and coal off his rags to keep them from catching fire. Red welts littered his arms where he had caught himself in the fire to save his face. He didn’t heal them. The dead look was still in his eyes despite the pain of the burns.

Charani had seen enough.