Lord Dragon's Conquest: Dragon Lords, #1

By Sharon Ashwood

A rare discovery. A secret world. A lover beyond her dreams.

 

Archaeologist Keltie Clarke makes the find of a lifetime inside a remote mountain cave. But her ambitions are challenged by a mysterious stranger who confronts her at the site. He tries to wipe her memory of the entire event—as if she could ever forget the handsome man. But nothing can shake her conviction that she's seen the impossible.

 

Larkan is a Flameborn warrior trained to protect his shapeshifting dragon kin from the outside world. He is also one of the privileged few allowed to venture beyond the dragons' mountain home. When the kind and lovely Keltie stumbles into his territory, she puts her safety and his freedom in jeopardy—not the least because her courage inspires him to defy his beautiful but deadly queen. That puts the lives of everyone—humans and dragons—at terrible risk.

 

The stakes are high. Keltie has found a powerful secret that only a dragon can unlock. Both she and Larkan must retreat to the lives they know—or leap together into peril and legend.

 

Second edition. Previously published in 2014 by Harlequin Nocturne Cravings

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rowan & Ash Artistry
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738257300

Sharon Ashwood

Sharon Ashwood is a free-lance journalist, novelist, desk jockey and enthusiast for the weird and spooky. She has an English literature degree but works as a finance geek. Interests include growing her to-be-read pile and playing with the toy graveyard on her desk. As a vegetarian, she freely admits the whole vampire/werewolf lifestyle fantasy would never work out, so she writes paranormal romances instead. Sharon lives in the Pacific Northwest and is owned by the Demon Lord of Kitty Badness.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Along time ago, when the world was freshly born, the dragons made a rift in the air. This shimmering wheel in the sky was a doorway between worlds, and so it was that they came to our skies from the Summerland. They loved it here, for there were curious beasts and tall mountain peaks and all the new horizons they could wish for. Best of all, there were men and women—proud, curious and filled with passion—whom many of the dragons came to love as their own kin.

Time passed, humans prospered and the Age of the Dragons drew to a close. One day, the vast majority of Old Ones and their children returned home to the Summerland, their adventures done. But a few remained, including their king, and he had plans. He had grown weary of ruling a people who flew where and when they liked. He was even more bitter because his subjects were loyal to their mates first and to him only second. He decided it was time that they learned to serve at his beck and call.

And so it was that the king of the dragons abandoned the sky and convinced his people to dwell beneath the hard rock of mountains. In time, he thought, dragons would forget that they had once tasted the wind.

The king was correct. Because they had always lived with free and open hearts, the loyal dragons never once suspected treachery.

CHAPTER 1

The cave gaped as if some giant had thumbed a hole into the mountainside. Keltie Clarke shone her flashlight around the dark maw, looking for signs of animal habitation. Merkton University’s archaeological team had already been over the area and had found nothing, but she probed the darkness anyway. The team wouldn’t have checked caves this far from the dig site, and the southern Rockies had no shortage of bears and mountain cats.

The air cooled as she stepped from sun into shadow, creating an instant chill along her arms. It smelled stale and dusty in those black, black depths. Every one of these ancient sites had its own presence—call it an aura, a spirit or a personality. She could feel this one like the press of fingertips against her skin.

These were the moments she lived for, the moments when she might, just might, discover a fragment of the forgotten past. Professor Switzer and his adoring minions were over the hill and far away, wrapping up the excavation for the year. Keltie, junior professor and third in command, wrangled the newbie students, a job Switzer considered well beneath him. Keltie didn’t mind—she liked teaching—but she wasn’t needed for a few hours. This time was hers alone.

She moved steadily forward, her dark braid swinging across her shoulders. The light played against the cave walls, pooling and slithering like a live beast. She followed the curve of the wall only to find the opening widen into a second cavern. After a moment’s hesitation, she went through. This space was larger than the first, but the floor was strewn with large boulders.

Although she smelled none of the telltale odor of animal habitation, that sense of a watching presence grew thick enough to touch. Her heart speeding a little, Keltie moved the flashlight’s beam along the wall. A faint pattern on the rock made her freeze and then blink, not quite sure that her eyes were telling the truth.

The past resident of the cave wasn’t an animal, but a person. Maybe many people. They’d abandoned it long ago, and they’d left their artwork behind.

I don’t believe it, she said under her breath, drawing closer oh-so-slowly, as if the images shimmering in the play of light and shadow might suddenly disappear.

Back out in the sunlit meadow, Merkton U’s team was investigating a newly discovered settlement that was probably a few hundred years old. Even at a glance, Keltie could tell these images were older—and very different from anything else documented in these parts. She’d seen the cave paintings of the Chumash people near Santa Barbara, and she’d been to the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet in France, but these were unique.

She released a reverent sigh—half gratitude, half disbelief. The images were painted in washes of red and ochre, at once crude and beautiful. Sweeping lines and spirals showed a confident hand, as if the long-ago artist had been certain of his message. Keltie’s fingers gravitated toward the images as her breath caught on an almost painful surge of awe. Her fingertips hovered close enough to feel the coolness of the rock, but she didn’t dare touch it. Darkness had preserved those stunning hues, but the drawings were enormously fragile.

The images were at eye level. Farthest to the left was a series of squiggles, then a strange-looking bird with wings outstretched, a ribbonlike line streaming behind it. The ribbon was interrupted by bumps and more swirls before the image faded to nothing. I wonder what those squiggles mean? But interpretation would have to come later. The first task was documentation.

Excitement made her fingers clumsy as she unzipped her backpack and rummaged through it. Switzer was going to have a stroke when she, a mere junior prof, came back to camp with a find like this. The dig season hadn’t produced anything of note, and she was going to need to fight like a mountain cat to retain credit for the discovery. This could make your career. And yet part of her didn’t care. She was happy simply to find and share an amazing gift from the past. She stood, propping the flashlight on one of the large boulders. Then she positioned a ruler next to the paintings to establish scale. Then, with deep reverence, she raised the camera in her other hand and took a series of photos, the shutter loud and the flash blazing in the darkness.

The brightness was just fading when something scuffled behind her. Keltie wheeled around, blinking the brightness of the flash from her eyes. It took her a moment to find the still figure on the other side of the boulder-strewn space. She could only see him from the waist up—there were too many rocks in the way—but what she saw arrested her.

At six feet, Keltie could look most men in the eye, but she had to crane her neck to meet this one’s gaze. As she did, she noticed a set of broad shoulders in perfect proportion to his towering frame. Somewhere deep inside she felt a primitive twist of satisfaction that here, finally, was a man whose body would fit with hers, but caution quickly swept that feeling away. She was alone, he was a stranger, and there were no campgrounds this far into the mountains, to explain his presence.

Who are you? she demanded with businesslike authority.

No answer. He remained still for a long moment, camouflaged by the shadows, and then slowly began to move closer. Although he carried no light, he navigated