Angus Augustus Braxton-Lenox, the seventeenth King of Lektenstaten, was already awake and showered when his valet knocked and entered the bedroom, carrying his pressed attire for the day.

“Good morning, Your Majesty. It’s a lovely day.” François laid the suit on the bed and held out the pristine shirt for Angus.

Angus merely grunted at his valet’s cheerful greeting, rather than answering him with a proper greeting; his foul mood getting in the way of such pleasantries.

It was a lovely day, but Angus doubted it would be the slightest bit different than any other day in recent months: without any loveliness.

At least, in his opinion.

He would go to his estate offices in the palace, mull over the kingdom’s problems and solve them. After a lonely and swift lunch, he would go to Lekten Royal Bank offices and earn a few millions for himself and his clients.

As he always did.

He was bored and he scorned the feeling, well aware he was blessed with health, wealth, and success.

Immaculately dressed, Angus finally descended the magnificent staircase of the family palace with all the cool assurance and dignity of his forebears. He walked down the hall between the walls adorned with portraits of his predecessors—the extremely proud Lektenstaten royalty—ranging from the first King, who’d been a famous general, to his own father, a distinguished banker who’d died of old age when Angus was not yet six years old.

“Your Majesty.”

Angus nodded at his butler, Kerr Carlsten, two maids, and two footmen at the foot of the stairs.

Every morning he was greeted with much the same pomp and ceremony the first King would have enjoyed centuries before.

He entered the breakfast parlor where, as usual, the daily newspapers—including the leading financial publications—awaited him.

There was no need for him to ask for anything.

His every want and desire were carefully foreseen by a devoted staff that had been specially trained for decades. From the fresh monogrammed towels laid out daily in the bathroom for his shower, to the tailor-made business suit with a recently pressed monogrammed Egyptian cotton shirt. All the way to his favorite foods being served in the total peace that reigned while he ate—his preference for silence at breakfast was well known—everything ran smoothly.

It all bored him to death.

A phone was brought to him by his silent butler, who bowed and quiet announced, “The Dowager Princess.”

With a resigned sigh, he picked it up from the silver tray. “Good morning, Mother.”

He frowned when Catriona Cristina Braxton-Lenox, his fifty-five-year-old mother, asked if it suited him to have lunch with her at the Lektenstaten Embassy in London today.

No, it doesn’t suit me. He rolled his eyes at the absurd request. As if he would reschedule business appointments at the bank; or cancel his appearance at Parliament to fly down to London and have an impromptu lunch with his mother, of all people. “I’m sorry, Mother, I can’t.”

As he half-listened to his mother rambling about her social meetings and stuffy, royal English friends, he reviewed his agenda for the day: the same boring meetings, with the same clients, whose fortunes his family had handled for generations. Then he would stop at Parliament for the opening ceremony and his discourse, and he would visit his late wife’s grave. He was indeed flying to London, later, to attend a wedding of a far-removed cousin and prominent Lektenstaten businessman—probably another monotonous wedding, with the same tiresome people, and the same dull menu.

Uneasily aware he spent little to no time with his mother, when she asked him to stop by to have drinks before his appointment in the evening, Angus gave his reluctant assent, “I’ll be there, Mother.”

He ended the phone call, wishing he could throw it on the wall, but his manners wouldn’t allow it, so instead he just pressed the off button and laid it on the table. What I need is a new challenge.

Strikingly intelligent, and gifted in the field of asset management, Angus had been marked early as a genius at analyzing the emergent-world money market. Juggling complex figures in politically conflicted countries gave him considerable pleasure and satisfaction. As one of the financial world’s successful investment bankers, his expertise was in great demand. And, since Lektenstaten was a small country, he balanced the two things amazingly well.

Numbers, unlike people, are easy to understand and deal with. He sipped his coffee and his eyes landed on the wall at the other end of the room where a full-length portrait of his late wife and childhood friend, Innes von Furstenberg, was on the wall.

He wondered if anyone else in the family even remembered that the anniversary of Innes’s death was today.

Sentimentality was not one of Angus’s failings, and love had not been an asset in their marriage. But he had cheered Innes as a loyal friend—something he valued on top of everything else—and they enjoyed a peaceful coexistence with good chemistry in the bedroom. Her tragic passing a year earlier—a broken neck from a horse fall—had left a gaping hole in the settled fabric of his life which was slowly closing again.

Angus folded his napkin and placed it over the table, contemplating the perfect creases, before he stood and walked to the door, which was already being opened by a footman.

In the hall, he stopped and looked around.

“Kerr, please inform MacMillan I will leave earlier to London. Four o’clock instead of six.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Yes, I definitely need a new challenge.

* * *

“Happy birthday.” Jaxon Talbot pulled away the sheet covering her car and stood back from it. “What do you think?”

Wide-eyed, Siobhan Faulkner studied her 1973 Beetle. Jaxon, her best friend and foster brother, had had it repaired and repainted in a deep lavender color. She walked around the vehicle, stunned by a transformation that had caused all the rust, dents, and scratches to disappear. “It’s amazing! You’ve worked a miracle.”

“I knew that fixing your car was the best present I could give you,” he admitted with a smile.

Siobhan flung her arms around him in an exuberant hug, and he returned it, engulfing her in his arms. A stocky, blond man of six-feet, Jaxon was easily seven inches taller than her. When she stepped back, she gushed, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Jaxon shrugged. “It was no big deal, honey.”

“To me, it is.”

“Okay. But there’s a smaller deal inside.”

She opened the car’s door and bent inside to retrieve a box which was on the passenger seat.

Through its transparent cover, she could see it was a cake and written in icing, it read: Happy Birthday, Chevonne.

He saw her quizzical look and explained, “I called it in over the phone and when I went to pick it up and saw the English spelling, it was too late to change it. Sorry about that.”

“No biggie. I’m sure I’ll still enjoy every bite,” she smiled, and took a step back to appreciate the complete transformation of what had been her beat up old Volkswagen.

Siobhan knew the full value of his generosity and it touched her heart he had sacrificed so much of his free time—and his money, even though he was no pauper—to fix up her car.

But then, Jaxon knew she needed the vehicle to get around the craft shops and fairs where she sold her hand-crafted necklaces and bracelets on weekends. It was her dream to craft exclusive jewels and one day have a small shop of her own.

Success, however, had so far eluded Siobhan. But it was her stubbornness, more than the lack of talent. When she finished Birmingham School of Jewelry, she’d had her share of job placement opportunities, but none had appealed to her highly creative streak. So, she went back to her foster parents’ house and worked every hour she could for a catering company, saving every penny, with high hopes of a better future. She struggled to pay her bills and be independent since she was still a server, and had yet to have her talent recognized.

“I wish we could go out and celebrate” Jaxon said.

“I wish too, but you know I can’t. I begged for an extra shift, so I can’t very well say I changed my mind. Besides, I think they let me have the extra hours sort of as a birthday gift.”

“I know. Don’t forget I’m staying over at Aunt Moira’s,” Jaxon reminded her.

At the mention of her foster aunt, who had Alzheimer’s, Siobhan stopped admiring her car and looked up. “How is she?”

“About as well as can be expected. It’s not like she’s going to get any better.” Jaxon kissed her cheek. “I’ll bring your cake inside and wait for you to come home before I steal a slice. Now go, or you’ll be late, honey. And find yourself a nice, rich, single young man tonight, huh?”

Siobhan laughed and shook her head at him.

Her mother’s volatile relationships with a long line of men who had treated both of them badly had left their mark on Siobhan even at a young age. She had known even then she wanted something different for herself, something more than casual sex with men who didn’t want to commit, contribute to the home, or play any real part in a child’s upbringing. And she didn’t want to be hurt, either. With the exception of Jaxon, the sort of men Siobhan had met in the years that took her to adulthood had merely increased her wariness and distrust of the opposite sex.

When her mother died, her grandmother had put her up for adoption. The nine-year-old Siobhan had never quite recovered from the simple fact her own flesh and blood had handed her over to social services simply because she was illegitimate and, even worse, she was the embarrassing proof of her mother’s affair with a married man.

Siobhan had lived a tumultuous young life with constant change, broken relationships, and plenty of insecurity until she moved in with the Talbots at fourteen.

When Jaxon’s parents died, one quickly following the other in the space of a single week, he had invited her to continue living with him, and even offered the servant’s quarters in the back garden for her to have more privacy, which she’d readily accepted with glee. After some refurbishment, it turned into a one-bedroom apartment, with just enough space for a bed, an armchair with a side table, and a special desk with multiple mini-drawers; where she kept her materials, and crafted her jewels.

Now, at the ripe age of twenty-two, the sheer hurt of that unapologetic rejection by her grandmother had still kept Siobhan from seeking contact with her birth relations again. She had blocked out the memories of the early years of her life. Not wanting to think about it, she cleared her mind of such thoughts. There’s no point in dwelling on these recollections.

Still though, as she hummed a song under her breath while she got ready for work, there was a sense of loss that had settled in her chest.

* * *

When she chased the dragon, she had no dreams. Or nightmares.

In the hazy twilight of opium, the pain in her body ebbed, and the one in her mind quieted, she could no longer see the faces of her dead parents, or hear the screams of her wounded relatives and friends.

Chasing the dragon was an appropriate phrase to describe the habit—and her life.

With a weary exhalation, she stared at the chipped paint across the ceiling of the loft.

In the past, the smoke had quelled the rage in her heart, but now her need for revenge overpowered even opium’s sweet pull.

She rose in stages from her sweat-dampened bed, then crossed to the bathroom for a shower.

In the mirror, she studied her naked body. Three bullet wound scars riddled her tanned chest; a constant reminder of the attempt on her life.

Though decades had passed, she could remember perfectly the order in which she’d taken each bullet from the Lektenstaten soldiers.

But revenge was close at hand.

And then, after the enemy was driven out, Lektenstaten would be restored to its former traditions and glory and placed in the hands of those to whom the land really belonged.

Hot water rinsed the sickly-sweet sweat from her body, slowly bringing her back to life. Alertness brought with it a deep twinge of dark desire, sweeping through her body, making her weary muscles quake. Not much longer now.

Once clean and dressed, her reflection betrayed no hint of the darkness writhing within her. With a sharp nod of satisfaction, she abandoned the illusion of safety for the streets.

There, hanging twenty feet tall on the bank before her, was the dragon. It wriggled and flapped at her threateningly, as if the very cloth of the flag knew her mind.

She bared her teeth at the symbol of Lektenstaten royalty, her entire existence reduced to a single thought: You’re mine.