Dragon Heir (Her Royal Guard #1)

Chapter One

Vynessa

Standing on a sidewalk three blocks from my future academy, I hold up the flyer that snagged me with a pretty picture of the place.

It has a drawing of a small yellow cottage-style house with a quaint chimney and a cute little garden in front.

Underneath the image reads the caption: Rare gem blocks away from Dragon Liaison and Scholar Academy (DLSA)!

As I lower my hand, I can’t help but notice that the house I’m standing in front of looks nothing like the picture.

The siding is cracked, the paint peeling, and the only plants growing in the front yard are scattered dandelilies, and even those are missing most of their petals.

So much for falling for a flyer pulled off the board at the marketplace back home.

Sunlight radiates off the cobblestones, sweat drips down my neck, and I want to get inside and out of the muggy heat, but I’m also wondering if I should hunt down the landlord and demand my deposit back.

I signed a lease, though, and the landlord could very well be a vampire or werewolf or something way more dangerous than my ordinary human self.

“Crap.” I groan. “First adult task you’re responsible for, and you totally bungle it.”

I’m talking to myself, but my sister Sadie comes up behind me to answer.

“Right? This rickety old shack will be where you’ll always remember losing your innocence, which is just sad.”

I point at her pretty face. “Shut it, you.”

The last thing I want is to get my parents started about how I should loosen up and have some fun.

Sadie only adjusts the box she’s carrying and leans closer, her grin wicked. “Don’t get mad at me. You’re the one who’s on a mission to lose your chastity as soon as possible.”

“I will kill you.” This threat has absolutely no effect on her—maybe because I’ve been making it our entire lives and have yet to follow through.

Or maybe because she’s bigger than my shrimpy, pixie-sized frame.

“Seriously, though. Knock it off before the spawners join in.” I nod over my shoulder at Mother and Father, who are unloading my newly-acquired, lovingly-used furniture onto the curb from the wagon while the two mule-dogs swish their tales to keep the flies away.

“They can’t hear me, Ness.” With a huff, Sadie sets the crate she’s carrying down on what was probably supposed to be the porch, making the wooden planks creak ominously. She wipes her hands on the little stretches of material between the holes on her canvas short pants.

My sister and I are nothing alike. Well, Sadie isn’t much like anyone in our small family, except in her looks, where she’s a looking glass of Mother, though she hates to be reminded.

Though I look nothing like them, I’m on the exact same nerd track as my parents: study your eyes out, train your ass off, and pray to the high priestess herself that DLSA will accept you for their exclusive scholar training program.

It’s where my parents met before they dropped out and settled down to have yours truly.

I’ve always been short and athletic, though I prefer a quiet day at the library over noisy sporting events.

My features are so sharp people often compare me to a foxalope.

Sadie has round, soft features. Unlike her dark bob, my locks are wavy and so fire-engine red that people think I dye them.

Sadie has curves. Sadly, I just got my boobs senior year of village school, and they’re barely a handful—for my small hands.

Le sigh.

She lost her chastity last year, while I’m stuck in the world of virginhood—thus leading to my very un-me new life goal. I’m going to lose my innocence in my first term at DLSA.

It’s going to happen—I don’t care if it’s in a hot sweaty night with a stranger or a pity bang from my life-long best friend.

Scratch that. My guts twist at the very idea of convincing Pax to “take mercy on me.” Anyway, the boy is probably going to be too busy sticking his schlong in every person in a ten-mile radius who will let him.

Which, annoying as it is for me, is everyone.

“You going to get the door, Ness, or are we moving you onto the lawn?” Father says on a chuckle as he carries a box labelled “even more room stuff.”

“Yeah, sorry. Just taking it all in. It’s probably too late to get a new cottage.”

Damn it.

“You thought it was a good idea to rent a dwelling from a flyer in the marketplace. At least it’s close to DLSA.”

He’s just too smug. And yes, he told me what a terrible idea renting sight-unseen is.

I argued that since I’d taken on the responsibility for renting the place that my best friend Pax and I were going to live in at DLSA, I should have it ready when Pax returns from his summer away training for his new, much more athletic avenue of study—human dragon liaison.

I paid the deposit, signed the contract, made the arrangements through post, and handled all the adulting business.

Pax’s much wealthier family plans to pay for the majority of our rent for the year. My parents have helped where they could, but even with that, there’s no way I could pay fifty-percent of the type of place Pax’s absentee parents would expect him to live in.

And now we’re paying Pax prices for a Vynessa-type hovel. Thanks, marketplace scammers.

I find the key under the plant, where the landlord promised, but the door sticks and I have to shove it open.

“Well, it’s a dwelling place,” Father says as we step inside.

He’s being kind. Aside from dust and some suspicious looking rags in the corner, there really isn’t much more to be said about it.

The walls are wooden, the floor a stained sandstone, and the countertops have fissures from end to end.

At least it doesn’t smell as bad as it looks.

There’s a faint scent of lemon and fresh soap, and the breeze smells like salt water and sunbaked sand.

“Looks like you get to pick between a closet with a washroom and an actual room,” Sadie calls from down the hall.

“I’m putting your stuff in the room since we both know Pax will want his own personal looking glass to get pretty.

” I start to chuckle because Sadie knows my life-long best friend so well, but then she continues, “Anyway, you’re going to need the room to move around.

” She drags the word out and gives an exaggerated wink so no one could doubt her meaning.

I really am going to kill my sister someday. Probably not today, but some dark day I will snap.

“You should have everything you need for hotcakes, honey,” Mother says as she unloads a cooking iron onto the counter like it’s made of glass.

She’s dabbing at her eyes, and when I head over to help her, tears start rolling down her cheeks.

“I hope you won’t mind me saying that even though I’m glad you got accepted, I wish it was a little closer.

Our village is so far away. I can’t believe you’re all grown up and leaving me already. ”

“It’s not like I’ll be gone forever,” I say. “I’ll be home for holidays and summer break and…”

Mother nods, tears flowing more freely now. I can’t help but feel like it’s goodbye, no matter how fiercely I promise her it’s not. Which is ridiculous. Of course it’s not goodbye. They’re my parents.

“Mother thinks you’re going to meet some guy here and get married,” Sadie says as she leans into the counter. “I’m hoping for something more along the lines a fae lord whisking you off to keep you in his sex dungeon and torture you with pleasure until you expire mid-climax.”

“Oh, Sadie.” Mother sniffs hard and swats her with a spatula. “Leave your poor sister alone.”

“Hey, it could happen,” Sadie insists. “My friend said the Wild Hunters come through here. Then she won’t even have to seduce Pax to lose her chastity belt.”

“I don’t wear a chastity belt!” I protest.

“Ignore your sister,” Mother says to me. “You’ll have that experience when you’re ready.”

“I’m so glad this is a family conversation,” I mutter. “Should I break out the board games and we can decide who I have sex with over a game of runestones?”

“Just don’t get pregnant,” Father says as he passes.

“Seriously?” I widen my eyes at Mother. “Him too?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say don’t get pregnant if you’re thinking of taking that step with Pax,” Mother says, smiling fondly at the thought of having my bestie for a son-in-law.

“Mother!” I look around. “He could be arriving at any minute. You’re worse than Sadie.”

She bats a hand in the air. “No, I’m not. Sadie is the one who told everyone. I just want grandkids with your color-changing eyes and his mischievous smile and…”

I walk away, praying to the dragon queen that my mother will stop talking about Pax and my potential babies before my lifelong platonic, best friend arrives to the dwelling that I rented for us.

Scratch that. The pile of excrement I rented for us that is somewhat shaped like a dwelling.

Knowing Pax, he won’t even notice so long as he has a bed, but if he does, he’ll give me hell for the remainder of our lives. The thought of Pax makes my chest feel a little tight, though I’m not exactly sure why.

Except for a couple short, casual letters that he took way too long to return, we haven’t talked at all this summer.

It bothered me more than it should—so much that I started worrying that I had some type of unhealthy co-dependency with my friend.

But then I realized it was more that I was mourning that fact that no matter what the future holds, we’re never going to be able to go back to the village school or be those kids again.

Pax’s distance is the first sign of that.

Unloading my furniture and crates takes shorter than I expected, and soon I’m standing with my family in front of the hovel, and they’re closing up the borrowed carriage.

“We can wait for Pax to arrive,” Father says as he rocks on his heels.