“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.” 

- Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Rurik Barinov watched the men and women dancing in his nightclub Logovo—The Lair. The dark interior was lit by flashing strobe lights and fog from the machines at the opposite ends of the dance floor. The entire club looked like a mix between a cave and a dungeon. The walls were rough stone and there were iron barred cages where dancers could show off their moves.

While Rurik’s older brother ran a sensible business, one that was built on technology in commerce, Rurik traded in pleasure: dancing, drinking and sex. He was not so buttoned up and proper like Grigori. He enjoyed wild nights with wicked women, bodies straining and yearning for that headlong rush of mutual satisfaction. It never ceased to amaze him that Grigori had walked away from sex. But he’d heard that after a thousand years a dragon tended to lose his wildness, at least in part. Only when they found their mate did he have a resurgence of that frenzied lust.

Rurik chuckled. He could not picture Grigori doing anything with a frenzy except slaughtering the competition in a boardroom. He was damned good at that. Scary as fuck too. He was always cool and controlled, yet when Rurik had shown interest in the little mortal professor, Madelyn Haynes, Grigori’s eyes had blazed and he’d growled a dark and dangerous warning that sent warning shivers to Rurik’s entire body. It was the first time he’d ever been afraid of his own brother. Dragons were possessive by nature, and as Russian Imperial dragon shifters they were more covetous than other breeds when it came to jewels and women.

Thinking about jewels always made Rurik think of his other brother Mikhail. The brother that was lost to them because he’d failed to secure a hoard of jewels from a treaty they’d made with English dragons. Mikhail had sent word that the treasure had been stolen and their father had exiled him for his failure. For one brief year their father and mother had traveled the world. While they were gone Grigori had called Mikhail home. For four brief seasons, Mikhail had been part of the family again. That was two centuries ago.

He wished Mikhail was here now. Mikhail knew Grigori better in some ways, even though he’d been exiled since the sixteenth century. Mikhail would have known how to warn Grigori against the temptations mortal females presented.

“Rurik?” A sweet voice caught his attention and dragged him out of ancient thoughts. A beautiful woman with dark hair and green eyes watched him from across the bar. His bartender, Nikita, wore silver sequined dress and killer black heels that made every man in the room assume she was a customer and not the bartender. Whenever he looked at her, the hardness in his heart always softened. But she was human and he couldn’t never be with a human.

“How are the numbers tonight?” he asked as he joined her, leaning on the bar toward her. He couldn’t help it, she pulled him in like the glint of a diamond just within reach. It made him practice his self-restraint.

She smiled warmly, a smile meant only for him, and he knew why. She was in love with him, but she was too much like him, a free spirit, unchained even by the forces of love. Any other woman he would have slept with and moved on, but he didn’t do that with Nikita. She had the potential to be a possible true mate and if he dared to even kiss her, it could destroy his family. Battle dragons couldn’t risk love, their lives were dangerous. If they dared to mate a human, the human could be used against them. A fragile mortal life would be easy for their enemies to snuff out and that would kill the battle dragon.

“Good. We are at maximum capacity, but—” her voice trailed off, her eyes widened as she stared at something over his shoulder.

“Niki?” he queried.

Her green eyes cut to his and she whispered one word.

“Drakor.”

He spun, battle instincts kicking in. Ruslan Drakor stood only a few feet away, grinning like the devil he was. As the eldest son of Dimitri Drakor, the head of the Drakor family, Ruslan was an arrogant bastard who believed he didn’t have to abide by the terms of the treaty between the Barinov and Drakor families.

“Ruslan. What the fuck do you want?” He made a grand show of leaning casually against the bar, even though every muscle in his body was tense.

He prayed that Ruslan wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack them in a club full of humans. There was a treaty in place for a reason. The Drakor family ran the eastern half of Russia while the Barinovs controlled the west. The Yenisey River acted as the formal boundary between their territories because it split Russia almost cleanly in half.

The Barinovs, having control of both Moscow and St. Petersburg had, under Rurik’s father in 1750, made a treaty which allowed the Drakors to enter and leave those two cities without incident, so long as they did not interfere with Barinov business or cause trouble.

“I’ve come for a drink and women.” Ruslan laughed, but there was a feral gleam in his eyes.

Rurik remained still, the picture of casual ease. They both knew that Rurik could knock Ruslan on his ass in three seconds.

“Good for you, Ruslan, but find another club. Not mine.” Had they been outside the city, Rurik would have attacked, but the damned treaty was keeping them on his best behavior.

Ruslan brushed his dark hair out of his eyes and walked to the other end of the bar, his expression changed to one of hunger as he spied Nikita.

“You, female, bring me the best vodka in the house.” He slapped his palm on the counter hard enough that the expensive glass layer over the wood fractured, tiny cracks in the glass fanned out around his hand like spider webs.

Son of a dog ... Rurik growled softly, the dragon inside him stirring. He could feel the tattoo move on his back. He’d never been very good at restraining the beast within him. His father had said it was because he was built for battle.

“Ruslan, leave now,” he warned.

The other man made a show of getting comfortable. Then he looked over at Nikita and licked his lips. That was it.

“Nikita, the alarm if you please.” Rurik tried to stay calm, but he could feel the dragon surging to the surface.

His bartender ducked beneath the bar and slapped a red button. An alarm siren blared, cutting the music off. Dancers scrambled out of the cages and off the dance floors, rushing toward the exit in varying degrees of panic.

It was a shame to lose a good night of business, but better to have an empty club than risk human casualties. There was nothing like a spike in mortality rates to draw the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon into their business. They had no offices in Moscow that he knew of, but there were always agents about, and they could mobilize more from St. Petersburg in short order. The last thing either he or the Drakor family needed were supernatural hunters swarming the city looking to take down dragon shifters.

“One last chance, Ruslan. Walk away and I leave your pretty face intact.”

The other man laughed. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”

Rurik sensed Nikita close behind him. Not everyone had left when the alarm went off. “Nikita, get out of here.”

“But—”

“Go!” he roared. The sound reached a low pitch as his vocal cords started to transform to that of a dragon’s.

Nikita tried to flee, but Ruslan threw up a hand. Fire shot out of his palm and a blazing beam, cutting off her escape. Ruslan’s eyes morphed into red irises with slitted pupils. A hint of smoke puffed from his nostrils. Both Rurik and Ruslan were fighting to stay in control and not fully transform. The club wouldn’t be able to hold two full-grown dragons, let alone one.

“You would break your father’s treaty?” Rurik bellowed, raising his own palm. He unleashed a spray of fiery sparks toward the other dragon. It was the closest thing to a warning shot he could manage without starting a fire in his club.

“I am not bound by his word!” Ruslan balled his other fist and slammed it down on the bar. The glass counter shattered, thousands of pieces in the wood beneath exploded in a burst of massive splinters.

A six-inch piece of wood buried itself in Rurik’s lower belly. Fuck! Pain set in like a dull ache and he knew that was bad…

“Rurik!” Nikita screamed and ran toward him. He gripped the splinter and ripped it out. Hot blood streamed down his shirt and his wound throbbed. He would heal fine, but the sight of it must have scared her. When Nikita reached him, he waved her away.

“You have to get out.” He panted. “I can’t fight him and worry about you.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Be safe,” she said. She kissed his forehead and fled, but never reached the door. Ruslan raised his hand aimed a jet of fire straight at Nikita. She was knocked into the wall against a massive mirror just feet from the exit. The mirror shattered and her limp body fell to the ground. Blood dripped from Nikita’s lips and the light in her green eyes faded like the light of a dying star a thousand miles away. Something inside him broke, a piece of his heart fractured.

A cold, harsh laugh escaped Ruslan’s lips. “What’s one more human, more or less?”

Shock and grief raged inside Rurik. His Nikita, his Niki was gone. A red mist descended over his vision. He didn’t care about the club, the treaty, or the Brotherhood right now. He cared only of vengeance.

With a deafening roar, Rurik’s clothes shredded to the floor as his body transformed into a fifteen-foot-tall black scaled dragon. His frill fanned out around his neck as he opened his jaws and a stream of fire shot out that was so hot it was nearly blue.

Ruslan tried to morph into his own beast but. Rurik’s jaws caught Ruslan’s elongated neck mid-change and snapped shut. The heavy crack echoed in the room as Ruslan went limp beneath him. Rurik released him, and the body transformed back fully into a man, laying broken and bleeding at Rurik’s feet. Rurik’s eyes darted around the room, seeking out more threats, then he saw Nikita’s body. The beast recognized the loss of a woman he cared about and he let out a mournful sound.

Rurik let go of the dragon side of him and his body shrank back to its mortal shell. Rurik fell to his knees.

Nikita was dead, Ruslan was dead, and a three-century old treaty was broken.

He dug his hands through his hair, trying to stop them from shaking as emotions rolled through them like violent riptides. How was he going to tell Grigori that he killed Dimitri Drakor’s eldest son?

I’ve just started a war…