Page 2 of Dragon Enchanted (Secret Kingdoms: The Draquonir #1)

CHAPTER 1

R aven MacInnes – Evening, Highland Cliffs, Scotland

The light of the Aurora Borealis stretched across the Clo Mor Cliffs , casting rippling waves of green and violet over the jagged coastline. The ocean below shimmered with an unnatural glow, the reflections of the aurora turning the waves into shifting ribbons of liquid fire.

Raven adjusted the controls on her drone, her gloved fingers steady despite the bite of the cold wind. On her phone screen, the luxury estate came into view—Drake’s Hollow, a monolith of dark stone and glass perched on the cliffs like something out of legend. Against the aurora’s glow, the estate’s massive windows mirrored the sky, making it seem as though the house itself pulsed with otherworldly energy.

Raven adjusted the controls on her drone, her gloved fingers steady despite the bite of the cold wind. On her phone screen, the luxury estate came into view—Drake’s Hollow, a monolith of dark stone and glass perched on the cliffs like something out of legend. Against the aurora’s glow, the estate’s massive windows mirrored the sky, making it seem as though the house itself pulsed with otherworldly energy.

Million-dollar home. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Private ocean access. Helipad. The kind of property that would sell itself—if anyone knew it existed.

That was where she came in.

She shifted slightly on the rocky overlook, angling the drone for the perfect aerial shot overlooking the cliffs.

The screen glitched.

A quick, sharp distortion in the live drone feed.

Raven frowned, adjusting the signal. Weird. Reception should be strong enough this high up. Maybe the cliffs were interfering? Or the aurora?

She rotated the camera toward the coastline for a few final shots—then froze.

A figure lay sprawled near the cliff’s edge.

Unmoving. Bloody.

Her stomach plummeted.

She zoomed in with the drone’s camera. Male. Large build. Clothes torn, dark with blood.

He moved.

“Oh, hell no.” She straightened, fingers tightening around the controller. Her first instinct was a warning siren in her head. Walk away. You don’t know him. Don’t get involved.

Her second instinct—the one her conscience wouldn’t let her ignore—was louder.

What if he’s dying?

It had been two years since she’d last seen a man on the ground, bleeding out. Since she’d last had to make a decision like this.

That time, she had been too late.

She cursed, forcing her legs to move.

A second glitch rattled through the drone’s feed, distorting the image of the man for a brief second—just long enough for her stomach to twist with unease.

“Shit.”

Raven yanked off her headphones, stuffed her phone into her jacket pocket, and bolted for her car. The estate’s private road was nothing more than a dirt path winding through moorland, but her Land Rover was built for this kind of terrain. She shoved the drone controller onto the passenger seat and revved the engine, tires kicking up loose gravel as she sped toward the cliffs.

She had no idea what she was doing. She wasn’t a medic, wasn’t trained for emergencies. But what was she supposed to do? Leave him there?

She barely slammed the car into park before she leapt out of the car. The wind tore at her jacket as she stumbled down a narrow, rocky path, the damp grass slippery beneath her boots. She skidded down the incline, her boots slipping on the uneven ground as she reached the man.

The closer she got, the colder the air felt—except near him.

She skidded to a stop beside him, panting. She sucked in a breath. He was huge. Even bigger than he looked through the camera lens. Broad shoulders, powerful frame, but deathly still. His hair fell across his face, obscuring his features.

She dropped to her knees and reached out, hesitating only for a second before pressing her fingers to his throat. Heat. That was the first thing she noticed. His skin wasn’t just warm—it was almost burning.

But he was alive.

Barely. And he has one hell of a fever.

He stirred then, a low rumbling sound escaping his throat, like a growl more than a breath. His head turned slightly, eyelids flickering, but his eyes never fully opened.

Her first full view of his face made her breath hitch.

Even half-dead and covered in blood, he was extraordinarily attractive. Chiseled jawline, dark auburn lashes, long and thick. Tall, broad shoulders, muscles carved from stone. He had the physique of a warrior, clearly a man in his prime, although his hair was silvery white.

She hated herself for noticing.

Not the time, MacInnes.

His breathing was too shallow. Blood pooled beneath him. His skin burned hot, but the air around him was ice-cold. Her fingers hovered over his wounds. Too much blood.

She grabbed her phone. Called the emergency number.

Nothing. The screen stayed black.

She checked the signal. Zero bars. No service.

Her stomach twisted. She turned toward the road, held her phone in the air, trying to force a connection.

Nothing. The air felt wrong; thick, like something unseen was pressing down on her, dampening the world.

A low sound rumbled from his throat.

His fingers twitched. A sharp inhalation lifted his chest.

She leaned in. “Hey, can you hear me?”

His lips parted slightly, voice a rasp. “…king…”

Raven frowned. “King? What king?”

His fingers flexed against the dirt. “…no more time…”

A chill rippled down her spine.

The way he said it—like it wasn’t just an observation. Like it was a truth. A sentence.

“Okay, look,” she said, forcing calm into her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need help. My phone isn’t working, so I’m taking you to a hospital.”

His eyelids flickered again. A faint crease appeared between his brows as if he didn’t like that idea. He seemed to be waking up, at least a little. That was a good sign, right?

She ignored his scowl. He was lying on the ground dying. He didn’t get a vote. She had wasted enough time already.

Raven swallowed hard. He was too big for her to carry. Dragging him would be her only option.

She hooked her hands under his arms and heaved, gritting her teeth as she tried to pull him up the incline. Deadweight. He was ridiculously heavy, and she barely managed to move him a few inches before her legs trembled from the effort.

“Leave me. You should not be here.”

“Well, I am.”

“Go. It’s not safe.” His deep voice rolled through her like thunder. A warning.

She looked around in alarm, wondered if maybe whoever had done this to him was still around waiting to finish the job. She pulled harder. “Come on, dammit,” she ordered him to move, to help her. She adjusted her grip and tried again.

“Leave me.” As if speaking those two words had taken the last of his strength, he lost consciousness again.

“Great. Boss me around and then pass out.” Dragging a half-conscious, six-foot-something man to her Land Rover was not something Raven had ever trained for. “Jesus, you’re heavy.”

It took her full body weight to leverage him off the ground. His arm hooked around her shoulder. His head dipped forward; breath hot against her skin. She ignored the way it made her shiver.

The wind howled through the cliffs, whipping past them like a warning. She ignored it. Focused on the impossible task in front of her. Inch by inch, she dragged him away from the cliff’s edge, her muscles screaming with effort.

Focus.

One step at a time.

By the time she reached the vehicle, her lungs burned, and her hands were raw from gripping his jacket. She yanked open the back door, maneuvered him as best she could, and—through sheer, adrenaline-fueled desperation—shoved the seat back as far as it would go and hauled him inside.

His head lolled, his chest rising and falling too slowly. A gust of wind slammed into her, forcing her to grab the car door for balance. Raven glanced back toward the cliffs, something cold curling in her chest.

The aurora had shifted again, its colors pulsing brighter, almost like they were watching.

She shuddered, jumped into the driver’s seat, and threw the car into gear.

She needed to get to the hospital near Durness.

Now.

A fresh wave of unease crawled over her skin. Something wasn’t right.

She shook it off and gripped the wheel. Of course something wasn’t right. She was dragging a dying man into her nice, clean car.

The tires kicked up dust and gravel as she took the winding road down from the cliffs at dangerous speeds. If she hurried, she could make it there in less than thirty minutes. Fuck. Will he bleed out before then?

He shifted in the seat, a quiet sound leaving him—half groan, half breath.

Her fingers tightened around the wheel. He was dying. Based on the amount of blood covering every part of his gorgeous, naked body, the slashes and cuts on his back and shoulder, the grievous wounds on his neck… He should be dead already. Why wasn’t he dead? He had to be one tough as nails, hardcore son-of-a-bitch. That’s how.

She’d met guys like that before, too. Didn’t want anything to do with any of them ever again. No matter how sexy he was. How unbelievably strong the pull she felt to care for him. Protect him.

Save him. She had to save him. Maybe, if she saved his life, she could stop feeling guilty about Billy. Forgive herself, and him. And maybe she just had a knack for being in the wrong damn place at the wrong damn time.

God had a fucking mean sense of humor.

Her passenger groaned—moaned—something, and it sounded like pure, raw agony.

“It’s okay,” she said, unsure why she was trying to comfort him. “Just hang on, all right? You’re gonna be fine. I’ve got you. I’m taking you to the hospital. You’ll be okay, just stay with me.”

A harsh groan left him, so soft she almost thought she imagined it. Until he spoke, his voice a deep, somber rumble that should be narrating an erotic audiobook. “You should have left me.”

Her stomach clenched. He was probably right. “Yeah, well, lucky for you, I have a bad habit of helping bad people.”

A flicker of something passed through his face. Like he understood exactly what she meant. Like he knew what it meant to help the wrong people. Like he definitely was the wrong sort of person.

She swallowed. Focused on the road. Her GPS said she was only twenty-seven minutes from the hospital.

Just a little longer.

She managed to get a call through once she hit the edge of town. The man was unresponsive. She told the operator her ETA and tried to answer their questions.

She didn’t know much about him or the situation. He was big. He was bleeding, everywhere. He’d been conscious when she found him, but now? Not so much. And she had no idea who he was, where he came from, or why he was out there naked and exposed, staring up at the Northern Lights, dying on the side of a cliff.

The emergency operator insisted she stay on the phone until help arrived. The emergency room doors slid open before she could even turn off the engine.

A wave of blue scrubs and white coats rushed toward the vehicle. A middle aged man who looked like he knew what he was doing leaned in to assess the unconscious, bleeding man in her passenger seat. He looked like a doctor. She hoped he was a doctor.

“Sir, can you hear me?” The doctor pressed two fingers to his pulse point. “He’s burning up.” The doctor pushed and poked and lifted one of her passenger’s eyelids, shined his flashy light into blank, sightless eyes.

Was he dead? God, please don’t let him be dead.

“I can’t find a pulse. We need to move—now.”

Raven barely had time to register the doctor’s words before they pulled him from the car, loading him onto a gurney.

She should wait out here for the police. The emergency operator told her they would want to talk to her, would come by the hospital to take her statement. They had her name and number, knew where to find her.

The kinds of wounds her naked man was covered in screamed of violence. Not a random stabbing or mugging, but something vicious. Criminal. Ruthless. She should just get back in her car and wait for the police. Tell them what she knew—which was nothing—and go home, take a hot shower, burn her blood-stained clothes and forget this ever happened. She did not need to get involved. She’d seen this kind of violence before. Knew the type of people who could hurt someone like that. She should freaking run—not walk—as far away from the injured man as she could get.

Instead, she hesitated. Then—against every bit of common sense and all logic—she followed him inside.

Two hours later, the hospital lights buzzed softly, the smell of antiseptic thick in the air. Raven sat on the edge of a plastic chair, gripping a half-empty paper cup of coffee that had gone cold in her hands. She’d talked to the police, given her statement. They’d confiscated her drone footage. Of course they had. She’d have to go back out there tomorrow and start over. The officers had been professional, but not unkind. They’d kept her number and told her she was free to go.

“So why am I still here?” Raven muttered and forced a gulp of tepid coffee down her throat. She didn’t even like coffee. Damn it. She just needed something to do with her hands, to settle her nerves. She told herself she didn’t need to know anything at all about the man. She told herself she just needed to know if he was going to survive. That was all. She would stay until she knew he was going to be all right. That was it.

Then she’d leave.

The doors to the trauma room remained closed.

She exhaled, shifting in her seat. Something about him nagged at her. The way his body had burned with fever but the air around him had been freezing. The way his voice had carried something final. Truth. Conviction. The way she’d found him in the middle of nowhere, bleeding like he’d fought a damn war.

Coffee slid down her throat like cold sludge, her gaze flicking toward the hallway where they had taken him.

She just needed to know if he was going to make it, if she’d gotten him to the hospital in time, if he was going to survive. Something inside her demanded the knowledge, literally nailed her feet to the floor any time she tried to get up and leave. She couldn’t abandon him, not when her instincts screamed that he needed someone to protect him.

Laughable, really, when she considered the size of him. The heat. The muscles. The raw masculine strength. Everything about him called to her. Seduced her. Intrigued her. Made her want to touch. Explore. Ask questions.

Even the goddamn mystery of who he was and how he ended up where he did.

Don’t be stupid, woman. He’s trouble with a capital T.

She’d left the city—and the crime, mystery, suspense, murder and violence—behind. Moved as far away as she could get. Left her past behind, too. Convinced herself she didn’t miss anything about that old life. Not the blood. Not the intimidation. Not the criminals and their twisted codes of honor. She couldn’t go back to that kind of life no matter how sexy the stranger was. It had cost her too much.

But something about this man drew her like a moth to a flame. A lamb to the lion’s den. A horny wench to a hot piece of man meat. She’d tried not to look— down there— of course she tried. Was it her fault he was hung like a horse and built like a piece of art? No one could not look at him. Not even Mother freaking Theresa. He was just that perfect. Not looking would be an insult to God Himself.

Enough.

She would make sure he was alive, that he was going to survive. Then she would go and never look back.