Queen of fire, p.1
Queen of Fire, page 1
Queen of Fire
Reign of Dragons
Book Four
D.N. Hoxa
Contents
Also by D.N. Hoxa
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
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Pixie Pink Series
The New York Shade Series
The New Orleans Shade Series
The Dark Shade Series
Smoke & Ashes Series
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Copyright © 2023 by D.N. Hoxa
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Also by D.N. Hoxa
The Hidden Realm Series (Completed)
Savage Ax
Damsel in Distress
Deadly Match
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Pixie Pink Series (Completed)
Werewolves Like Pink Too
Pixies Might Like Claws
Silly Sealed Fates
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The New York Shade Series (Completed)
Magic Thief
Stolen Magic
Immoral Magic
Alpha Magic
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The New Orleans Shade Series (Completed)
Pain Seeker
Death Spell
Twisted Fate
Battle of Light
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The Dark Shade Series (Completed)
Shadow Born
Broken Magic
Dark Shade
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Smoke & Ashes Series (Completed)
Firestorm
Ghost City
Witchy Business
Wings of Fire
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Winter Wayne Series (Completed)
Bone Witch
Bone Coven
Bone Magic
Bone Spell
Bone Prison
Bone Fairy
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Scarlet Jones Series (Completed)
Storm Witch
Storm Power
Storm Legacy
Storm Secrets
Storm Vengeance
Storm Dragon
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Victoria Brigham Series (Completed)
Wolf Witch
Wolf Uncovered
Wolf Unleashed
Wolf’s Rise
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The Marked Series (Completed)
Blood and Fire
Deadly Secrets
Death Marked
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Starlight Series (Completed)
Assassin
Villain
Sinner
Savior
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Morta Fox Series (Completed)
Heartbeat
Reclaimed
Unchanged
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One
The sound of water filled my head, muddying every other thought in there. It drowned the panic, too, though I could tell it was simmering just below the surface. It felt like I should have been screaming, running, hiding—but from whom?
It felt like I’d done something unspeakable, something awful, something unforgivable…and I knew exactly what.
Even my bones hurt when I became aware of my body. I seemed to be in one piece, at least. All my limbs attached to me, and there was light behind my closed lids. I tried to open them, tried to move, breathe deeply, think.
But the sound of the water falling right next to me held me under for a bit longer.
The memories slipped into my mind as if I was watching a movie on mute. My father, half buried, chained, bleeding on the side of the mountain—the image sent a shock throughout me, and my dragoness’s roar was almost as loud as the water.
I’d mated.
I’d mated to Lucien, had let out my dragoness, and my Fire.
I’d shifted, had flown, had fallen in love with Lucien’s wyvern, too, had ruined an entire forest playing with him. My dragoness had been happy for the first time in seven lives.
And she’d been furious and outraged, too, at the sight of my father.
Just as outraged as me.
The need to claw out of my own skin was so great it took my breath away. Now, I tried to cling to the sound of water, tried not to remember the way I’d hurt. The way I’d cared.
For my father—a man I knew was a monster. A man I knew didn’t care about me.
That’s my daughter.
My eyes popped open.
The sky had never been bluer, the thin clouds like paint on a canvas, the birds flying in it tiny. I chased them with my eyes for a while, trying to give myself time to come to terms with what I'd done before I fell apart. Trying to give the world time to right itself, to change.
Nothing did.
I’d taken my father away. I’d left Lucien, the twins, and Mikhaila. We were finally together, all draca, alive on the same timeline, and I’d turned my back on them for my father.
I’d never felt more despicable in my life, because even now, I didn’t regret it.
Pushing myself to sit up, I forced my mind to stop working, stop thinking, and just focus on my surroundings. Easy to do once I started understanding the shapes and colors around me.
A waterfall. I was lying on grey rocks on a large waterfall. The water poured from at least a hundred feet high, falling like a curtain in front of the landing I was on, then continuing farther down where I couldn’t see. I was soaking wet, every inch of me sprayed by the ice-cold water.
I should have been freezing. I should have been shaking. Instead, my body temperature was perfect.
That’s because I’d already unleashed my Fire.
Green around me. I was high, so high up on the rocks, and a green canvas stretched below me, trees ahead for miles and miles as far as my eye could see, and open fields to the side. The blue sky and the grey rocks and the water…a dream, I thought. It must be a dream because I’d never seen a more beautiful place in my life, and I had a hard time believing it could be real.
I stood up and spun around, completely naked and wet to my core, and I found bundled up fabrics at the edge of the rocks, the farthest away from where the water fell. The landing wasn’t wider than ten feet, and I’d been lying at the edge of it. The rocks were full of sharp edges, and I felt the pain against my bare feet, but my skin was thicker now, and all these rocks could do was scratch me.
So high.
I must have been at least a hundred feet above ground and vertigo hit me when I neared the edge of the rocks to get those fabrics.
“Just don’t look,” I whispered to myself, closing my eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply. All would make sense soon, but I needed to put something on and figure out a way to get off this rock first.
The second wave of panic was immediate—how was I going to jump a hundred feet to the ground?!
But the roar in my head reminded me: I could shift now. My dragoness was here, I wasn’t alone.
The relief almost brought a smile to my lips. Almost.
A large white sheet was bundled up on the rocks, together with two pairs of trousers—men’s—shirts and socks and a couple of rags, too. It made no sense that these things would be there, and they were large, way too big for me, so I just grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around my body
Wrapped up in the sheet, I kept searching, hoping to find something that would give me an idea of how I’d ended up here or where my father was, but there was nothing else there.
“Think,” I urged myself as the water sprayed me all over, soaking the sheet on my body within seconds. I tried to get into my dragoness’s head, to see where she’d brought me, where she’d left my father.
Fear gripped me by the throat again—where was he? He’d been wounded, bleeding out for days, locked under so much magic it was a miracle he’d survived for as long as he did. And my dragoness had been so intent on saving him, so where was he? Did he make it?
Was he—
The roar that filled my head this time didn’t come from inside me. It came from somewhere out there, and it was louder than the sound of the waterfall.
My legs shook as I moved closer to the edge again, heart fluttering with every new painful step. I lowered to my knees, afraid I’d slip and fall off—still not used to the thought that I could sprout wings at any given second now. But I leaned closer and closer to the edge, holding onto the rough surface of the rocks, until I could see the ground.
The pool in which the waterfall poured was huge, the water a brilliant blue.
The dragon inside it blood red.
Every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps when he turned his head to the sky and roared again. His piercing green eyes met mine and I stopped breathing.
My father was definitely alive.
Two
Once a month, Father’s dragon had to be let out no matter what.
As a kid and teenager in most of my lives, I used to sneak out of my room, hide in the hallway balcony of the second floor and watch him when he shifted and flew away from the manor at night. I used to be fascinated by that creature, so big and red and fierce, powerful wings beating the air, his roar shaking the whole world—and I’d always waited for him to come back, too. The sight of my father’s dragon had always calmed me. I’d never admitted it out loud, but I’d adored him ever since I could remember myself. I’d adored those strong wings, those talons, his long tail.
It had been easy to separate my father from his animal then.
Now, not so much. Because I knew exactly what it felt like to be a dragoness, and we were so much more closely connected than I’d remembered, she and I. Just like my father was with his dragon.
Even so, I couldn’t help but be in awe, watching him spinning in the water like he was playing, like my dragoness and Lucien’s wyvern had played in that forest. He then disappeared under the water’s surface completely for a moment, and when he came out, his wings were spread wide. He flew up, parallel to the water falling down, holding his body pin straight, head raised, eyes still on me. He came closer and closer, becoming so big that instinct took over and I fell back against the rocks, terrified.
He flew past the landing and higher up into the sky, reaching the top of the waterfall, then stopped to the side of it.
My gods, he was magnificent. The colors on him, a bloody red that slowly deepened into a rich burgundy toward his paws, the edges of his wings, seemed unreal. His claws and spikes, his long tail, his beautiful, terrifying head—all of him was like a drawing, just a figure that had come out of an artist’s imagination.
I held my breath as he roared, then dipped down toward the ground again, wings folded on his back. He dove headfirst, straight for the landing.
A scream built up in me—my human mind kept forgetting that he was a dragon until he was less than ten feet from the rocks and his wings spread to the sides like a parachute, slowing him down instantly.
The dragon became smaller and smaller, flying back until he disappeared on the other side of the landing, the pouring water between us shielding him from my view.
My eyes closed, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. My father was shifting back to human.
And now, I had no choice but to face him.
The height no longer scared me. I sat at the edge of the rocks as far away from the waterfall as I could get—the water that continuously sprayed me was distracting. The sound no longer bothered me, at least. I’d gotten used to it.
It was a matter of minutes now until Father found me, until I had to look him in the eye—and I was terrified of what I might do.
Terrified of how he’d look—was he still bleeding? Was he still weak?
Would there be color in his eyes?
Would I ever stop torturing myself when it came to him?
I didn’t get it. To know that man, to understand that he and all that he came from ruined shifters all over the world, and to still care about him was beyond me. Why? I didn’t understand. What did my instincts know that I didn’t, that they were so strong I couldn’t fight them even when I tried with all my being?
I’d fucked up. I’d left Lucien—my mate. I’d left my friends. I had given them my Fire, and I hoped that they’d been able to summon the Ether by themselves, but regardless of that, I’d left them.
And I still didn’t know how I was going to live with that.
When I felt the presence of my father behind me, I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. Nowhere to go now. My time was up.
I felt him like I never had before, like my entire being was perfectly aware of him looking at me. Different from what it felt like with Lucien because this wasn’t me. It was my dragoness and his dragon—whatever connection they were sharing right now, it was foreign to me still.
When I turned, I found him near the rocks, wearing a pair of trousers, watching me as he put on one of the shirts that had been bundled up with the sheet I had wrapped around me. His hair was wet, same as mine, and so was his skin. The bruises and scars crisscrossing his stomach and the sides of his waist brought bile up my throat until he covered them with the shirt. He’d had five swords in his body, constantly bleeding on them for two days, and the scars remained even though he’d shifted. The bags under his eyes were still blue. His skin so pale, just like mine.
He held my eyes, jaws clenched, and hands fisted to the sides, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill me on the spot or let me live a little while longer. I raised my chin though it was shaking because I hated how relieved I was to see him standing, conscious, the color returned to his eyes.
If he wanted to kill me now, so be it. I meant what I said to him when he was chained to that mountain—I was tired. So, so tired. I just wanted this to end already.
But Father didn’t kill me. Instead, he nodded his head to the side, toward the water falling near him, and said, come with me.
I couldn’t hear his voice through the sound of the water, but I read the words on his lips. Then, he turned around and went straight for the falling water like it wasn’t even there, and he disappeared behind it once more.
