Page 8 of The Forsaken Heir

Something about him gave me the impression that he wouldn’t hurt me, even though he’d just kidnapped me, and that put me strangely at ease. I should have been terrified of this huge, hulking man and his friend, but I wasn’t.

“Here you go, Brielle,” he said. “It’s safe.”

I froze. Of course they knew who I was. They’d targeted me. They probably knew everything about me. Still, hearing your name spoken by a kidnapper—albeit a remarkably polite kidnapper—was disconcerting.

“Thanks,” I mumbled as I held my hands open for the bottle. When he gave it to me, I raised my bound wrists and drank half the bottle in four quick gulps.

“Rasp, are we gonna get in trouble?” Vincent asked, glancing at his partner with a combination of fear and worry.

Rasp let out a snort of derision. “ Trouble? Dude, I told you, this is gonna make us freaking legends. He’s gonna love us for this.”

“Who’s he ?” I blurted, accidentally dribbling water down my front in my hurry to speak.

“Oh, uh…” Rasp muttered, glancing back at me. The smile faded from his lips. “Don’t worry about it.”

“We’re really sorry,” Vincent said, frowning at me apologetically as he turned. “We gotta keep that secret. You’ll see in a while though.” His eyes widened a bit as if he’d recalled something. “Shoot! Can you promise not to shift? Please? Not while we’re in the car, at least.”

I lowered the water bottle and let out a belly laugh.

I couldn’t help it. Part of me wondered if I was still asleep on my balcony and having the weirdest fucking dream of my life.

At that moment, I decided to see where this disaster of a kidnapping was going to take me.

If I died, at least it would be under hilarious circumstances.

I could tell the angel at the Pearly Gates a really funny story before heading into paradise.

“What’s so funny?” Vincent asked, his face falling in embarrassment.

The look on his face gave me the sudden and inexplicable desire to apologize. Why the hell did I want to apologize? What was wrong with me? I stopped laughing and composed myself enough to look at the guy again.

“Uh, I’m not laughing at you. It’s…oh, never mind.”

The two men went quiet, and I did my best to watch my surroundings as Rasp drove out of the grassy field onto a nearby country road.

I logged each turn and twist, as well as any landmarks, in my mind.

A neighborhood here, a farmhouse there, a river on the right, a bridge.

With every mile that slipped by, we went higher into the mountains.

Soon my brain was filled with dozens of pieces of information I could use to retrace our movements.

Those would only be useful if I escaped, though.

“Is he going to be home?” Vincent asked after ten minutes of driving.

“Yeah,” Rasp grunted. “He only stayed at the penthouse last night. He told me he was going to stay at the country house for a few days to relax after the trip.”

Country house ? Penthouse ? Who the hell were they taking me to? Fuck, was it one of the major royal families? Maybe someone was trying to curry favor with the dragon king Decimus? If that was the case, then they might be in for more of an ass-chewing than praise.

“Turn here,” Vincent said, pointing out the window.

“Dude, I know where the damn house is,” Rasp grumbled.

Rasp turned into the driveway and punched in a code on the keypad outside the gate.

It slid open silently, and drove up a long winding road lined with tall, maple trees and evergreen shrubs.

He pulled into a large, circular parking area in front of a massive house.

I stared out the window with open-mouthed shock at the size and grandeur of the place.

Whoever they’d brought me to must have had more money than God.

It was even bigger than my family’s home.

“All right, let’s get her upstairs,” Rasp said.

In the blink of an eye, he shifted to his dragon form.

He was long and lean with emerald-green scales.

I’d watched this happen hundreds of times in the past, but seeing a person become a wolf was nothing compared to becoming a huge, twenty-foot-long dragon.

The angled head that ended in a pointed snout, long razor-sharp fangs, and the strange slitted pupils looked foreign to me.

“Come on, ma’am,” Vincent said, opening the back door and helping me out.

I felt no immediate fear from these two. My instincts told me they were harmless, but that didn’t mean their master would be. Perhaps these two goofballs had been sent specifically because they were unassuming.

“Can you cut the ties on my feet?” I asked.

Vincent looked down at my feet blankly. “Crap. Uh, no.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’ll be fine. Rasp only has to get you up to the top floor. You won’t fly far.”

Turning, I eyed the dragon as he strolled around the car. Rasp looked at me with those strange dragon eyes, and I wanted to scream, but when he grabbed me in his taloned forepaws, I was too shocked and terrified to do more than let out a fearful groan.

He held me with surprising gentleness, and with several hard and powerful flaps of his wings, we were airborne.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I prayed he wouldn’t drop me.

Cool air washed across me, but he flew with a grace I hadn’t believed possible, and when he landed on the balcony, I opened my eyes and let out a heavy sigh of relief as he put me down.

After shifting back, he opened the large, ornate patio doors.

“Let’s go,” he said, scooping me up.

As he carried me into the room, Vincent appeared at the balcony in his dragon form.

Where Rasp was an astonishing emerald-green, Vincent was the brown of a desert lizard or a snake.

He also shifted and joined us in the room, closing the doors behind us.

He shrugged off a backpack and pulled a long length of rope out of it before dropping it.

“Hang on,” I said, holding up my bound hands and eyeing the rope with trepidation. “What the hell is that for?”

Vincent shrugged as Rasp set me down in a heavy wooden chair. “It’ll keep you secure. It’ll be better than the zip ties, and I can tie you up so you’ll still be restrained even if you shift.”

“Guys,” I said, doing my best to smile. “We don’t need to do this. Come on. It’s gone far enough. Why don’t you let me go? I’ll head home, and you guys can go, uh, do whatever it is you do, and we’ll forget this.”

Ignoring me, Vincent set to work with the rope.

“I think I’ll do a half hitch to secure the ends to the legs of the chair,” he explained in a monotone. “I won’t use any slipknots though. Too easy to undo. Might make a sheepshank at the back. Then I can tighten you up easier.”

The way he spoke of the knots made me think he had some sort of hobby. Sailing? Lasso-making? Did he have some sort of Shibari kink? Good lord, were they getting me ready for some rich guy gang-bang or something? Eww. Hopefully not.

If that was the case, though, I’d fight and claw my way out with every ounce of strength I had.

Vincent stood up and grinned at me. “There we go. All done.”

Rasp opened his mouth to say something, but the door of the bedroom opened before he could speak. He grinned, and Vincent looked a little sheepish. Steeling myself, I turned my head to see who had joined us.

The most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life strode through the bedroom door. His lean, muscular body moved smoothly and only stopped when he saw us. Long, strawberry-blond hair spilled across his face, obscuring one eye.

He leveled a finger at me, and looked at the other two. “What the fuck is this?”