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  DRAGON BLESSED

  An Immortal Dragons Novel

  Ophelia Bell

  Thank you for buying this book! If you enjoy it and would like to learn more about Ophelia Bell’s dragon world, simply subscribe to the mailing list. Once you subscribe, you will be entitled to receive the first installment of two exclusive free stories: “RED” and “WHITE.” These are just the first of many steamy dragon stories Ophelia plans to release for free, exclusively to her mailing list!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Description

  Dragon-blessed twins Neela and Naaz have waited nearly three thousand years for their chance to awaken their fated dragon mates. On the brink of a war with the enemy who enslaved them, their commander finally sends them to do just that.

  But the twins’ mission isn’t called “Operation Wildcard” for nothing. These dragons are unique. Zorion was sired by none other than The Void himself, and Asha is the product of an ancient union with the dragons’ former enemy, who is now their most powerful champion in the war.

  These dragons’ powers are unknown, and Neela and Naaz will be the humans to reveal them and recruit them for their cause.

  But their true enemy is ever watchful, and when Neela makes a risky decision to reveal her new lover’s powers, it will take nothing short of immortal dragon fire to save her—but neither twin will be quite the same.

  “You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.”

  - Rumi

  Chapter One

  Australian Outback, Four Days Prior to Spring Equinox

  “We should have brought a dragon with us, I’m telling you.”

  Neela gave her brother a sidelong look as she rifled through the pockets of the unconscious Hunter at her feet, finding only lint. “You keep saying that. If I’d known you were going to be such a whiner about walking, I would have invited Sterlyn and Zamirah to come.”

  Naaz frowned. “It isn’t the walking. I’m just fucking sick of getting ambushed by Ultiori every ten miles. We could’ve flown and been there weeks ago.” He finished his own inspection of another Hunter and stood, scowling around at the latest unit of mind-controlled mercenaries they’d come across on what had become the mission from hell.

  Neela toyed with the hilt of her blade. “This is the same unit that attacked us two days ago, and they’re none the worse off for it. It’d take ten minutes to make sure they don’t try again.”

  “They’re victims like us, sis. And no match for us, either. We get this mission done, we can free them from Meri’s influence once and for all.”

  Neela let out a sigh and dropped her hand to her side, hoping that their mercy didn’t come back to bite them on the ass. Again.

  She turned her gaze back to the ocher landscape of the Australian Outback. At times a desolate wasteland, it possessed its own stark beauty. Today they’d hiked down into a canyon of iron-rich stone oxidized by the harsh climate into shades of red. She was surrounded by natural formations that reminded her of Red dragons in their sanguine majesty.

  Reds weren’t her favorite, though their closest friend was mated to one, and immortal Red blood ran through her brother’s veins. The power that blood gave him was waning, as evidenced by the cut on his forearm he carefully tended now. One of the Hunters had landed a lucky blow.

  Neela’s own enhanced abilities wouldn’t last, either. She’d been granted one last infusion of Belah’s blood just before embarking on this quest, but that had been weeks ago, and while they’d managed to predict and fend off ambush after ambush on their way to the hidden dragon temple, it wouldn’t last much longer.

  Just two more days. That was all they needed.

  “We have no choice but to walk, brother, and be on our guard for the next ambush, because I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of these guys. You may as well take a breath and enjoy the journey. Doesn’t this landscape appeal to you?”

  A trickle of sweat carved a path down her brother’s temple, cutting through the layer of red dust to reveal the richer brown of his skin beneath. He was her mirror in so many ways, some identical and others her polar opposite. They could finish each other’s thoughts, knew each other’s deepest desires, and possessed the same unwavering determination to prove themselves. He was her best ally in a fight too, as their six unconscious enemies attested to.

  Naaz turned his gaze to her, vivid blue eyes as much at odds with the dusty burnish of his skin as the bright, cloudless sky was at odds with the red landscape. “I wish I had your patience. When did you turn into such a wise woman?” The corners of his eyes crinkled, pieces of red flaking away with his smile to land on the dusty kerchief tied around his neck.

  Neela couldn’t help but smile back. “One of the necessities of being female, I suppose. It’s a requirement to tolerate the men in my life.”

  Naaz’s laugh was deep and rich. “Are we that much of a trial? Perhaps he will be different.”

  A knot twisted in Neela’s gut and she shifted her gaze back to the path before them. Zorion was still an enigma, despite his occasional mental visitations that had begun not long after she’d first learned of his existence. She quickened her strides, impatient to end their journey and meet her dragon in the flesh.

  “Zorion is different, but maybe not the way you’re suggesting. He’s nothing like you, and I doubt his sister is anything like me.”

  Naaz raised a brow as though he were about to make some quip. Then he pressed his lips together, thinking better of speaking the words. He was always better at holding his tongue than she was.

  “They are ours, regardless,” Naaz said. “I doubt they are like anything that exists in the world …” His throat rippled with his effort to swallow. “Asha is …” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “She’s your mate.”

  He nodded and gave Neela a small smile that betrayed his helplessness. She had the same feeling of desperation clawing at her, the same driving need to get there as soon as possible. Only part of it was due to the conflict raging between their allies and their enemies. The repeated attacks she and Naaz had endured during their journey didn’t help. The dragons she and her brother were seeking could turn the tide of this war, but that prospect did nothing to diminish her and her brother’s need to finally be with their mates.

  They’d been forced to wait nearly three thousand years for this. Barring any more ambushes, they were only two days out from the temple where their dragons lay in hibernation. But two more days felt like two days too many. Marveling at the scenery was the only way Neela managed to pace herself on this trek through an unforgiving landscape.

  The dreams didn’t help ease her agitation. Zorion had been in her head ever since she and Naaz had come across their ancient temple long ago during a quest for their master. She’d been drawn to the chamber on some remote, desolate island in the middle of the ocean, and she and Naaz had drifted there, answering a call they’d both heard. But they’d barely had the chance to
set eyes on the pair of statues—barely dared to touch them—before Nikhil had tightened the vise of his control on their minds and forced them to stand down.

  That had been the beginning of the end of their loyalty to their Sayid, and their subsequent rebellion ultimately forced their master to imprison Neela just to keep Naaz under control. It had taken centuries before they understood that the man they saw as a second father to them was being influenced by something much stronger and more insidious than they could ever understand. It was only within the last year that they’d discovered the true identity of the creature who had kept them imprisoned and conducted vile experiments on them.

  She and her brother were still complicit in Nikhil’s vicious acts, though. They’d been his tools at the beginning, killing out of loyalty to him long before their minds were affected by the monster who controlled him. Dragons had died at their hands, though far more were imprisoned and tortured after Neela and Naaz had become slaves themselves, rather than soldiers.

  There was a fine line between the two, she realized. That line was choice, and the moment Nikhil had hidden their mates away from them was the moment their choice had been removed.

  Now that their beloved Sayid had his mind back, he had released them. And having their freedom restored, they had both chosen to remain at his side, despite that ever-present need to find their mates. Neela had managed to hone her self-control during her thousands of years of imprisonment. The urge to bloody her fists on the doors of an impervious prison never went away, but she learned not to act on those urges after discovering it did no good. Their true jailer was far too powerful a creature to fight alone.

  Chapter Two

  Neela’s dreams of Zorion were nebulous things. At first she thought they were only reflections of her own frustrations of being locked away, until after the first time she’d been taken to a lab and used as one of the Ultiori’s breeding specimens. It was only a simple medical procedure, the technician clinical and detached while completing her task. She hadn’t known at the time, but the woman performing the procedure had been the vessel of the enemy—the creature that had hold of Nikhil’s mind—and her goal was to use Neela to create a hybrid offspring for her own contemptible purposes.

  Something changed that night, and ever since, the dreams that came were of a creature who knew nothing of itself, yet knew Neela had been used for some inhuman purpose. He spoke to the part of her mind that had been broken by the invasion, showed her a reflection of her own self-hatred, took it into himself, and made her whole again.

  And every time after that, when she was forced to take the seed of a stranger against her will, her visitor would wrap her in the comfort of his velvet oblivion and make the pain and despair go away. Each time, he vowed to avenge the wrongs done to her when he was released from his prison.

  That night, when she and her brother made camp, she lay gazing into the fire, acutely aware of the pull of Zorion’s magic. That same velvet oblivion beckoned from somewhere in the night, deep inside the temple where Zorion and his sister had been relocated only a few months ago. But this time when she reached him, she’d actually get to see him, to touch him in the flesh.

  “I feel you near me, adara,” he rumbled into her mind as she drifted off. “The stars tell me you are but another day away.”

  “Will you show yourself to me in dreams tonight?” Neela asked, hoping for a hint of his desire. His use of the pet name he’d given her ages ago warmed her, but she was disappointed by his evasive answer.

  “You see my soul more clearly than any but my sister. I am ready for you to find me.”

  “We’re traveling as quickly as we can.”

  A hush crept over their connection, and Neela’s gut tightened.

  “The temple is perilous and dark. Be careful when you enter,” he replied before receding from her consciousness.

  His absence left her confused, wondering what she might have said to make him withdraw. Normally he would have lingered through the night as though standing watch over her slumber. Not once had he made more overt advances, though she’d always sensed a deep curiosity.

  In her dreams, he barely ever touched her, only venturing as far as a brush of a shadowy fingertip down her cheek. The dreams themselves were as dark as an abyss, the only thing differentiating them from deeper sleep being the awareness she had of his presence within that void. Sometimes she could almost make out a shape, big and dark. She’d begun to fill in the blanks in her mind, and he became an ebony guardian, his black skin shot through with veins of opalescent color, his eyes prismatic fire.

  Despite the lack of contact, her body burned hot whenever he was present within her consciousness. She longed for his touch disconnected from the violent acts he’d always guarded her mind from. He may have never made love to her, but he’d been even closer than a lover countless times during all those vile experiments she’d been subjected to.

  For decades, Neela had endured the invasion of the clinical procedures—the impersonal injections of some anonymous donor’s seed into her womb on the days when Meri believed she was fertile. None of those sessions bore fruit.

  Then one day she found herself hauled into the lab and strapped down to the table, feet stuck in cold stirrups and knees spread. But the doctor didn’t sit between her legs with the usual instruments. Instead, a pair of burly Hunters hauled a struggling, naked male through the door, his face screwed up in rage and fear. She didn’t recognize him, but knew from the sparking storm in his eyes that he must have been a turul captive.

  “This won’t work!” she yelled, cold rage seeping into her bones when she realized what they intended. Before she could protest further, a gag was shoved in her mouth and fastened at the back of her head.

  “Cover her face,” the doctor commanded, and panic set in when they shoved a cloth sack over her head.

  She groaned and struggled against her bindings, forcing a muffled scream through her gag when the cold lubricant was squirted on her nethers. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks when the other captive entered her, his movements jerky and without rhythm until he let out an agonized grunt and his cock fully hardened. Whispered apologies fluttered around her ears like tiny moths, repeated over and over in the air between his hot breaths gusting over her throat.

  Nausea threatened to purge her belly of its contents, her entire being rejecting the experience. Then in the midst of her despair, Zorion’s comfort enveloped her, driving away all sensation of the room she was in and the horror of the forced breeding she endured. His whispers eased her, calmed her, and she drifted away into the escape he offered.

  “I would become him if I could,” he had said. “Make love to you the way you deserve.”

  “No. I never want to associate these moments with what I wish you were to me. When I’m with you, it will be different.”

  “When we are together, you may not wish so hard for my touch. You do not know me in the flesh, Neela. I am not like you—not small and beautiful. I am a monster.”

  “Anything you do would be better than this.”

  He’d maintained his distance from the physical ordeal of those experiences, but kept his promise to block them from her mind. He became her soul’s protector from the things she had to endure, and kept her sane for the endless days of her imprisonment.

  It had been the touch of another who she loved that finally lit the spark of longing in her to feel Zorion’s touch. Barely five months had passed since Meri had sent Nikhil to her. Neela wondered if it was because she trusted Nikhil and knew Neela did too.

  Neela had immediately seen the struggle in her Sayid’s dark eyes when he first entered her cell in the Alexandria Institute’s Canadian facility. While she couldn’t hear what went on inside his head, his gritted teeth and clenching fists made it clear he was at war with the creature who controlled his mind.

  Finally, he had let out a long sigh and opened his eyes.
They were clear of the inky influence of their captor, and he gave her a tortured look. “We have no choice, goddaughter. I will be gentle, but if you need to escape as you do in the lab, I understand.”

  Looking at him that day, she knew she couldn’t hide from the experience. “Do you know you are as much a prisoner as I am?” she’d asked.

  Nikhil raised a finger to his lips and shook his head. “There are secrets that the blue sky cannot see, but the darkness reaches everywhere eventually, and sometimes overstays its welcome. Let us both have this moment of light while the darkness is distracted.”

  When Zorion’s presence hovered at the back of her mind, ready to shield her from another horrific encounter, she silently communicated her willingness to remain present—the Nikhil in the room with her was the one she remembered from childhood, not the sadistic puppet who did their master’s bidding.

  Nikhil waited for her answer with a patient, silent plea, unwilling say more, lest the darkness hear him. If he were willing to be here in this moment with her to carry out this act neither of them wished for, she would at least share the ordeal with him. He may not have been the man she wanted to be with, but he was someone she loved, and that counted for something.

  She couldn’t interpret the shadowy fluctuations of Zorion’s presence once he understood her decision, but he stayed where he was, a silent observer while Nikhil made love to her.

  Afterward, she’d lain alone in the pitch dark of her cell, and Zorion spoke to her once more. “Someday I will be the one to touch you as he did, to give you those feelings you felt for him. Someday I will be the one you love, adara.”

  Neela had taken a deep breath, rolling over and reaching into the darkness, imagining she could brush her palm over his dark cheek. “His touch pales in comparison to how you make me feel with just a thought.”

  His shadow warmed and grew heavy beside her, her palm tingling with the contact of what felt like smooth skin instead of empty air. Vivid colors sparked like tiny bolts of lightning, arcing over his face to give hints of the contours and lines of a straight nose, strong jaw, and full lips.