Moscow, Russia

Rurik Barinov watched the men and women dance in his nightclub, Logovo—the Lair. Its 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 cross between a cave and a dungeon. The walls were rough stone, and dancers were showing off their moves in iron-barred cages.

While Rurik’s older brother ran a sensible business, one that was built on technology in commerce, Rurik traded in something far older: pleasure. Dancing, drinking, and sex never went out of style. He was not 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 such things. 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 they experience 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, 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. It was the first time he’d ever been afraid of his own brother. Dragons were possessive by nature, and as Russian Imperial shifters they were more covetous than others when it came to jewels and women.

Thinking about jewels reminded Rurik of his other brother, Mikhail. The brother who was lost to them. He’d failed to secure a hoard of jewels from a treaty they’d made with English dragons and had been exiled for his failure by their father. For one brief year when their father and mother had traveled the world, Grigori had called Mikhail home. For four seasons, Mikhail had been part of the family again. That had been two centuries ago.

He wished Mikhail were here now. Mikhail knew Grigori better in some ways, even though he hadn’t been home since the nineteenth 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 his ancient thoughts. A beautiful French woman with dark hair and green eyes watched him from across the bar. His best bartender, Nikita, wore a 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 could never be with a human. Not for long.

“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 couldn’t do that with Nikita. She had the potential to be a true mate. If he even dared to kiss her, it could destroy his family. Battle dragons couldn’t risk love; their lives were dangerous. If they dared to mate a human, that human could be used against them. A fragile mortal life was easy to snuff out, and that would kill the dragon because mated dragons always died shortly after their mates.

“Good. We are at maximum capacity, but—” Her voice trailed off, and 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, 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?” Rurik 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 him in a club full of humans. 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 had control of both Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and under Rurik’s father in 1750, they had made a treaty that 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. This protected both of their families. Conflict between supernatural houses tended to attract the wrong kind of attention, such as the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon.

“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 without breaking a sweat.

“Good for you, Ruslan, but find another club. Not mine.” Had they been outside the city, Rurik would have attacked, but the damned treaty kept him 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 fanning out around his hand like spiderwebs.

Son of a dog… Rurik growled softly, the dragon inside him stirring. He could feel the tattoo moving on his back. He’d never been very good at restraining the beast within him, even at the best of times. 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 blared, cutting the music off. Dancers scrambled out of the cages and off the dance floors, rushing toward the exits 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 into their business. They had no offices in Moscow that he knew of, but there were always agents about, and they could mobilize from Saint Petersburg in short order. The last thing either he or the Drakor family needed were supernatural hunters swarming the city.

“Such hostility,” Ruslan said. “I was just here to talk business. I like your bar. I was thinking about buying it. How about…one ruble?”

Rurik growled. “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, his voice dropping to a low pitch as his vocal cords started to transform.

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

“You would break your father’s treaty?” Rurik bellowed, raising his own palm, unleashing a spray of fiery sparks. 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 into thousands of pieces, and 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 it was bad.

“Rurik!” Nikita screamed and ran toward him. He gripped the shard and ripped it out. Hot blood streamed down his shirt, and his belly throbbed. He would heal fine—the wound was already clotting—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 she never reached the door. Ruslan raised his hand and aimed a jet of fire 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.

Something inside Rurik broke, a piece of his heart.

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 for vengeance.

With a deafening roar, Rurik’s clothes shredded 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, so hot it was nearly blue.

Ruslan tried to change 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. The battle was over before it even began.

Rurik released him, and the body changed back to a man, lying broken and bleeding at Rurik’s feet. Rurik’s eyes darted around the room, seeking out more threats, and 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 had been broken.

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

I’ve just started a war.