I can’t believe it’s been almost six years. Six years of living as a prisoner and yet appearing to the world as a rich debutante. Such a lucky girl. After all, not all nieces got plucked from poverty and adopted as daughters.

How Sue-Ellen wished she could go back in time and turn back the clocks. Never hide in her uncle’s car.

But if she’d done that, then she would have never met him. The man who would control the rest of her life.

And she didn’t mean her uncle.

The first time she met Samael—because yes, the boy in the bed had a name—she’d woken to find herself in her bed, dressed in her nightclothes as if she’d never gone exploring. She remembered what happened next vividly…

Ma didn’t raise no fool. Sue-Ellen had immediately marched to her uncle’s office to yank on the books, only nothing she did triggered the secret doorway.

Auntie heard Sue-Ellen’s ranting—the words quite epic in their colorful and vulgar nature. She wrung her hands, exclaiming, “Is she on drugs, Theo? I won’t have her doing drugs in my house.”

Auntie was the one who liked to pop a little something or other in the evenings, “to calm her nerves,” she claimed. More like catch butterflies and slur her words, especially when chased with a glass of wine—or four.

“Open this up,” Sue-Ellen demanded.

“Open what, dear niece?” Uncle Theo replied.

“The door. The one that goes to your secret lab in the basement.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Said with utmost conviction.

He could have been a Mercer he lied so well. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“Language,” Aunt Hattie gasped.

“He knows what I’m talking about. That place I saw last night. Don’t deny it. You were there. You drugged me to get me away from that boy.”

“None of that happened.” Uncle Theo shook his head. “I was in bed all night with Hattie. I think perhaps you might have had a vivid dream. Perhaps the mushrooms at dinner were to blame. A bad one in the mix. I’ll have to speak to our cook.”

But she knew it wasn’t a dream or magic ’shrooms. Nothing that vivid and emotionally wrenching could be a fabrication. Besides, she had that cold inner voice of her gator telling her something had happened.

That boy is still down there somewhere. I have to find him.

Rescuing him was part of the reason she hadn’t left that same day and run back to the bayou. Not that she could leave. Uncle made it clear Sue-Ellen couldn’t go anywhere.

She could still hear him claim he kept her, “Because I promised your brothers I’d take care of you.” More like he used her as a bargaining tool to keep them in line. Them and a certain boy.

Weeks after that first nocturnal adventure, right around graduation time, Uncle had commanded her presence in his office. She recalled every moment of that incident, as well.

She’d expected a gift. It was what the other kids at her rich prep school got. For hitting the honor roll, Sue-Ellen got a brand-new car, but that wasn’t the reason for her requested presence.

Uncle Theo had other plans for her. When he slid the bookcase aside, the control hidden on his phone, she screeched, “Liar! I knew that was there.”

“If you want to live long enough to graduate college, then you’ll pretend you don’t,” Uncle Theo warned.

Sue-Ellen didn’t doubt he’d kill her. Uncle Theo, she’d learned, wasn’t one to let laws and common decency get in his way.

“I want to see him,” she demanded.

“Be my guest.” Uncle Theo swept a hand, and she skipped down the stairs.

It took but a second to notice the place had changed since her last visit. The seam of light along the wall was gone. The hook when pulled revealed a touch pad that required her uncle’s palm print. The scanner for the next door took a retina scan.

Someone had tightened security. But Sue-Ellen wouldn’t let that stop her from saving the boy.

I’ll find a way.

The room with all the medical equipment hadn’t changed much, but the bed had turned into a cage. And in that cage, paced the boy.

He whirled at hearing them enter and snarled at Parker, only to gasp a moment later. “Angel.”

She ran to him, only stopping at his sharply barked, “Don’t touch the bars; they’re electrified.”

She had to content herself with staring, noting he was much too gaunt and still so very handsome.

“How can I help you?” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks. It hurt her to see him in the cage.

“You’re safe? No one has harmed you?”

What an odd question. He was the one in a cage.

“The girl hasn’t come to harm. And now that you’ve seen her, you’ll do what Dr. Michaels says.”

The boy’s lips pulled into a tight line, but he nodded.

What did Parker mean? What did the doctor want from him?

She reached out to touch him, careful of the bars, and their fingertips met, a brief touch that jolted her with awareness.

And then she was taken away.

But she saw him again. Every few weeks or so. Never more than a few weeks, a month or so apart. She began to understand that Uncle Theo used Sue-Ellen as a reward for good behavior.

And in time, that had paid off. The boy became a man, and less than two years after their first meeting, Parker let him out of his cage.

The boy was no longer a prisoner. The boy also had a name—Samael.

Nowadays, instead of being subjected to a battery of tests, Samael lived in plain sight. He attended the best college and went into the strangest field. Archeology.

Parker was quite excited by it. Sue-Ellen wasn’t crazy about all the girls that flocked to him, fawning over his blond hair, good looks, and easy smile.

“You’re like a hot and young version of Professor Jones,” she grumbled during one of their stolen moments. Those kisses were exchanged in hiding, hot and heavy. The zap of recognition they’d shared as they managed fleeting touches while he’d been held prisoner had long ago stopped, but the pitter-patter of her heart still happened whenever he was in the room.

That pitter-patter was why she’d never left her uncle’s care. She didn’t give a whit about her uncle’s threats. If Sue-Ellen had wanted to leave, she could have. It would have been so simple.

Her brother, Brandon, had tried to rescue her at one point, and it just about broke her heart to send him away. But it was for the best. She couldn’t leave her dear uncle until she could help Samael escape.

Although, more and more, she wondered if he wanted to get away. Samael certainly didn’t act like a man bound. As a matter of fact, just recently, he had been allowed to travel halfway across the world on some kind of archeological dig.

Samael claimed he stuck around to keep her safe. But she had to wonder because, more and more, she noted him giving the orders—and others jumping to obey.

Did that have to do with the fact that Samael was the heir to a long-lost throne? She knew he was a very special kind of dragon.

He’s an imposter.

The voice came to her as usual without notice. She’d begun to think of it as her conscience. A conscience that sounded an awful lot like the old Samael.

Don’t tell me I preferred it when he was an unwilling patient?

How awful of her. And yet, at times, she really missed the other him.

He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to miss her as much. She’d barely seen him since he’d struck it famous on that dig he’d taken over when that professor went missing.

The excavation Samael had headed was considered the find of the century. Historians were calling it a treasure unlike any they’d seen.

Rumor had it Samael had found a dragon hoard. Because, guess what, dragons did exist.

And Samael was one of them.