Chapter 1
Chapter One
CONNOR
“ J essie, if you burn that sauce, I swear on my father’s grave you’ll be on tomorrow’s menu.” My new saucier came highly recommended, but as the owner and head chef of Diabolique gastropub, I have high standards. I run my kitchen like a war room. My staff are my soldiers. Every evening, I wage a battle to serve as many hungry people as possible the most absolutely showstopping meals this kitchen can pump out.
Doesn’t hurt that I’m also a dragon and can smell the sauce starting to curdle from six feet away.
Jessie lifts the pan off the burner and stirs vigorously. “Got it, Chef!”
I love nights like this. The bustle. The verve. The spark. Most of the humans working in my kitchen don’t realize they’re feeding off my dragon energy, growing as culinary artists thanks to a celestial gift the creator sent them thousands of years ago. Dragons like me coexist in secret with humans in order to inspire them, to help evolve their species to its ultimate potential. Diabolique has the reputation of being a proving ground for up-and-coming talent. The magazines and influencers think it’s because I’m some great mentor, and I’m no slouch in that department, but it has far more to do with being a dragon. The magic in my skin is working on my staff every day they’re here.
In a year, I predict Jessie will be running his own kitchen, and that’s all right by me.
The door to the front of house swings open, and a four-foot-eleven-inch fireball of a woman with curly gray hair and a neck tattoo appears in front of me. Carmen is my manager, an Army veteran and grandmother of four whom I keep around because nothing fazes her. Nothing. There could be a shootout on the floor and she’d find a way to calmly usher the customers into the alley to finish their meal Lady and the Tramp –style. She’s also one of the few humans who knows what I really am.
Tonight her fists are on her hips, her spine rigid enough to add two inches to her height, and her lip is curled the way it does when she’s seriously annoyed.
“What happened?” I plate the fish I’ve been poaching and give her my full attention.
“Table seven wants to speak with the chef.”
Everyone stops. For a heartbeat, her words hang in the air. Even the burners on the stoves seem to pause, their flames bending in her direction like they can’t believe their ears. The saucier stops whisking. My sous-chef stops dicing. My entire kitchen staff seems to hold their collective breath .
Long ago, I gave up being offended by this reaction. My temper is renowned to the humans in this kitchen. And while none of them but Carmen knows I’m a dragon, they all know I’m an Aries. What you see is what you get and I never back down from a confrontation.
“Table seven.” It’s the end of the night, but I pride myself on every dish that leaves this kitchen. And I remember every order. “What’s wrong with the steak?”
“He says it’s overcooked.” Carmen tosses her hands as if the notion is preposterous, and it is. There’s a reason I hired her despite her advanced age. She isn’t afraid of anything, including me, and she doesn’t suffer fools.
Tossing my apron onto the counter, I pass her, mumbling that I’ll take care of it, and march to table seven. I’m big. Around six foot five and ripped thanks to my dragon genetics plus warrior training regimen. The humans I meet often joke I’d make a good linebacker with my general width, which Carmen says is like two average guys standing side by side. I don’t know about that, but I make no effort to diminish my otherworldly attributes as I approach this customer. No. I plan to intimidate this asshole until he’s near wetting himself.
The man’s gaze locks on to my crossed arms first, then traces up and up and up to meet my eyes. Yeah, way the hell up here, buddy my expression conveys. You ready to tango? Because I was born knowing the steps. It’s then that I notice his date. Interesting. This guy is a four at best, but his girl is a strong eight. Her gaze travels north along my torso in the same way, but her eyes hold more than a little heat when our gazes connect. I flash her a lopsided smile. Her brows lift.
“You asked to see the chef?” I mumble, forcing my attention back toward the man.
“You’re the chef?” he asks incredulously.
“Connor Drexler,” I say by way of introduction. I don’t offer my hand. “What can I do for you?”
He swallows, puffing up his chest. “My steak is overcooked.”
I glance at the bright red middle of the piece of meat on his plate. “How rare do you want it?”
“Rare rare. This is clearly medium rare.”
I stab a finger toward his meal. “If that beef was any rarer, there would be hoofprints leading to your table.”
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair.
Across from him, his date shifts nervously, her lashes fluttering. “It looks rare to me, Richard.”
“No one asked for your opinion,” the man barks, like she’s a dog he means to redirect.
I picture my hand shooting out, cuffing his ear, and knocking him out of his chair. I know guys like this. He’s a little man in a designer suit, a modern Napoleon type, making up for his small stature by throwing money around along with his attitude.
“Oh, I’m very interested in her opinion,” I say, returning her smile with a small, lazy one of my own. My voice drops an octave as I add, “on a number of things.”
“Hey, asshole, what about my steak? You gonna fix this or what?”
A low growl rumbles in my chest, and my skin grows hot with the desire to turn this fucker inside out. My bones rattle with a growing lust for his blood. They actually rattle as if I’m standing too close to an arriving train. I’m fantasizing about dismembering this guy and then bending his girlfriend over his bloody remains and giving her what I see she wants when she looks at me with those bedroom eyes.
Thank the creator, Carmen chooses that moment to deliver a swift punch to my kidney as she passes behind me. I do a double take.
“Check the date and time, Chef,” she says. “And stop making that noise.”
I glance at my watch. Past midnight.
March twenty-first.
My dragon’s alignment.
Fuck.
“Are you wearing contacts?” The woman at the table leans forward, catching my eye.
Yeah, I bet she got a show. I need to get out of here before I do something I’ll regret.
“Uh, Carmen?” I call her back over from the hostess stand.
“Chef?”
I close my eyes for a beat while I rein in my inner beast, then give her a nod. “Guy wants a rare steak,” I mumble. “Can you give him the Bones treatment?”
“It would be my pleasure.” She grins wickedly, then grabs his plate and follows me back into the kitchen.
Bones is my German shepherd. Recently he’s started getting really picky about his kibble. I’ve figured out if I put his bowl on the counter, shake it a bit to stir it up, then put it back in front of him, he eats it. It’s about the attention, not the food.
Carmen will let the guy’s steak sit under the warmer for fifteen minutes, flip it over, trim it, and rearrange it on a new plate, then bring it back out to him. By that time, I predict table seven will either eat it or bolt.
Meanwhile, I need a breather to make sure my dragon knows who’s boss. I cut left and head into my office, bracing myself on the desk and taking a deep, cleansing breath. Every dragon is born under a certain star sign. Mine is Aries. But unlike humans, when a dragon reaches the part of the year aligned with his sign, we undergo changes. It’s the only time of year when we’re fertile, and so our dragons are at their strongest and most virile during that month. But all that power comes at a price. We run hot, all our emotions razor-sharp and our needs exaggerated to a fine point. Hunger feels like starvation. Anger feels like an explosion. And lust—fuck, we have a special name for it. Appetency , mating sickness.
Every year we grow older, our appetites get stronger. For those of us lucky enough to find a mate, our alignment ceases to be a problem. But without our one and only, our need grows and grows until, around the age of a hundred, we literally go up in flames. I’m thirty-eight, and I haven’t found a mate yet. Right now my spleen feels like it’s sliding down a red-hot cheese grater, and my dragon is telling me that the only thing that will ease the pain is seeing blood or sinking deep into a pretty pink pussy.
Fuck.
I’m still doing the mindful-breathing thing when the phone rings—the old landline. I flip the handset into my palm and bark, “Connor.”
“Why aren’t you answering your cell?” Seb’s voice comes down the line, skating between anger and annoyance. He’s my best friend and a dragon warrior like me. A Taurus.
“Because I’m busy running a restaurant. The phone’s a distraction. I turn the ringer off while I’m working.” I reach for it now, noticing the screen is filled with missed calls from the Zodiac Brotherhood, the group of warrior dragons like me who’ve taken an oath to defend our kind.
“Right now you need to be distracted. Way distracted. Distract yourself immediately, feel me?”
“What’s going on?”
“Check CNN. News coming out of Paris. You’re not going to like it, bro.”
Deep dread rises like bile as I scroll to the news app on my cell. This is the worst time for something to happen that involves the brotherhood. Our Pisces brother, Solomon, has to step down for personal reasons, and my nephew Mason is taking his place. Only the transition isn’t complete because removing Solomon from his position while the wheel of the celestial year was in Pisces would have put us all at risk. We’ve scheduled an ascension ceremony to take place in one month, at the end of my alignment. The timing gives Solomon plenty of time to train his replacement and gives Mason a year to get up to speed before he’s put in a leadership position. Only problem is, the transition to my leadership literarily happened tonight at midnight. And for the next four weeks, we’ll be down a dragon in the brotherhood. Solomon is gone, but Mason hasn’t ascended. And I’m in the throes of adjusting to an influx of power that feels like it might snap me in two.
It’s a fucking terrible time to have an incident.
A story labeled Breaking News: Photographer Lucy Vale Found Murdered is at the top of my news app. I tap on the included video.
“Horror in Paris,” the news anchor announces. “Award-winning photographer Lucy Vale was found dead in front of the Fontaine Saint-Michel in the early-morning hours by a passing tourist, her body brutally mutilated. Police suspect cult activity as sections of her back were flayed and stretched to look like wings. Amateur video shows an inscription, ‘ Astra inclinant, sed non obligant ,’ written in her blood at the crime scene. Experts tell us it’s Latin for the stars incline us, they do not bind us . French police are seeking any eyewitnesses to this very public murder.”
“Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.” Every dragon knows that phrase. It’s the motto of the Saint’s Order, the organization of wealthy humans who are sworn to kill us. They all have it engraved on their rings, a historical slap to dragonkind who come from the stars and are guided by celestial energy. It’s basically the Order’s way of saying fuck direction from the universe and the connection between all living creatures; we are the gods here and we’ll take what we want when we want it.
“Yeah,” Seb growls. “If an Order member didn’t do this, it’s a great fucking copycat.”
“Her wings weren’t even developed. She wasn’t a dragon.” My inner beast rages .
“Her dad is half. I met the man once. He couldn’t shift, which means Lucy was a dormant.”
“Did she even know about her heritage? The Order?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Why the fuck would they do this?”
“I’ll tell you why. It’s an act of war, that’s what it is! Carving up one of our civilians on public soil? It’s egregious.” The smoky timbre of Seb’s dragon rises with his anger. There’s a reason the sign for Taurus is a bull. He’s as hardheaded as they come. Once he places the blame, no one can convince him otherwise. Honestly, in this case I agree with him.
I brace myself on the desk, everything in me wanting to avenge Lucy’s death. Bite. Shred. Kill, my dragon growls from inside, wanting control. “Someone’s got to pay for this.”
Rustling comes down the line, and I picture Seb smoothing the arms of his suit jacket. I know that sound. He’s wrangling his dragon into submission. “As much as I’d love to get behind immediate retaliation, you know we can’t do anything rash. We’ll have our day, but we need to be patient. Follow the process. The sun is in Aries, Connor.”
“You think I don’t know where the wheel is?” I snap. “For fuck’s sake, I almost took off a customer’s head today so I could fuck his girlfriend in a pool of his blood. Believe me, I know it’s on me.” Normally Solomon would gradually transition the reins to me acting as a consultant as the wheel turned from Pisces to Aries, but because the Oracle directed him to step down immediately and focus on training Mason, he’s unreachable. I’m going to have to jump into this headfirst.
“Okay, then you know it’s your duty to summon the four.”
By the four , Seb’s referring to the next three Zodiac Brothers in the wheel as well as me. It’s been a long-standing tradition in the brotherhood. We’re at our strongest during our alignment. The brotherhood is composed of one warrior dragon born in each of the twelve sun signs so that we always have one brother with exceptional power to lead. But because that power wanes with the passage of time, the Oracle requires the next three positions in the wheel to be in agreement on any major decisions. That means that while I am technically calling the shots at the moment, Seb as our Taurus, Remus as our Gemini, and Ellison as our Cancer have to agree for me to pull the trigger on any major response. Seb and I are close. Remus is easily swayed. But Ellison?
“Fuck. I know technically I’m supposed to, but you know Ellison will drag his feet. That asshole has never met a risk he’s willing to take.”
Seb grunts in agreement. “He only gets one vote. As long as we can sway Remus, we’re good. But that would be easier if we had additional evidence. Do you think you can reach Donovan?”
Donovan is the reason we have the peace accord to begin with. Fifty years ago, the Libra brother sacrificed himself in exchange for the Order’s promise to stop hunting and trapping dragons on land that isn’t owned by the Order. Now he serves as the grandmaster’s personal good-luck charm, the Order’s own dragon prisoner, and the source of the blood used in the spell to make their weapons. He communicates with us rarely and only under great risk to himself.
“I’ll try his burner. He was able to get a message through a few weeks ago. He might know what’s going on.”
“It’s a start. We need confirmation that the Order is behind the murder before we retaliate, or we could be throwing the peace accord and everything Donovan has worked for out the window.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. I’m on it.”
“Only trying to help. Believe me, all I want to do is track the killer down and show him what happens to Order members who touch our civilians. I recommend starting at his toes and seeing how many parts we can tear off before he dies.”
My dragon twists in my torso, loving that idea. I rub the back of my neck. “Consider yourself called, Seb.”
“Where and when?”
“My place. We need to stay on-world or I won’t get Donovan’s response to my message. Be there tomorrow night. Eight sharp.”
“I’ll call my pilot and tell him to ready the jet.”
I brace myself on the desk, images of Lucy Vale’s desecrated body burning in my mind. “Tell me we’re going to kill the fucker who did this.”
Seb answers with a growl. “Fuck, yeah. I swear it to the creator.”