Chapter One

 

 

Oh hell, not again, was Ben Keegan's first thought when he pulled into his condo's parking lot  to find a long black limo parked in his spot.

Dad was here for a visit.

Yay.

It'd been a long goddamn night. Every day as a cop was a long goddamn day, and night shifts were the worst—and he didn't want to deal with this shit at home too. Nevertheless, here it was, in the form of a massive, armored black limo, parked in his space.

With a certain amount of vindictive glee, Ben parked his truck behind the limo. He ignored the glare from his dad's driver, a six-and-a-half-foot slab of muscle with a buzz cut and a visible gun bulge under his jacket, leaning on the door of the limo. "Subtle" was not in Darius Keegan's vocabulary.

Neither was "calling ahead."

"You know you're parked in a resident space, right?" Ben asked mildly as he got out of his car. Too bad he was a plainclothes detective; a patrol car and uniform would've come in handy right about now. "Visitor parking's around at the front."

Muscles ignored him.

"Hey," Ben said, letting a hint of threat slip into his calm voice. "I'm talking to you. Got a permit for that gun, buddy?"

Muscles turned to look down at him. He was huge. Ben couldn't help wondering where his dad had scraped this guy up from, and what, if anything, he shifted into. The spiky top of what looked like a jail tattoo was visible under the edge of his collar on his bull-thick neck, and he wore a nose ring for that extra air of class.

Ben was just a shade over six feet tall, he wasn't that powerfully built, and he was used to people underestimating how strong he really was. From Muscles' look of disdain, that was happening here.

"Look, buddy," Muscles said at last, in a voice that was surprisingly soft for someone so huge. "I know you're the boss's kid, so I won't rough you up too bad. But he ain't here. And just between you, me, and the wall, having a cop around is bad for business. I've been itching to put a fist in that pretty-boy face of yours."

"Go ahead, give me a reason to arrest you. Assaulting an officer is a pretty good one."

"Yeah, let's see you arrest me while you're picking up your teeth off the ground," Muscles growled, and swung a punch with a massive fist that was probably capable of knocking out a full-grown cow.

He looked really startled when Ben wasn't where he had been a split second ago.

Ben sidestepped casually, hooked his foot behind Muscles' ankle, and yanked. As he did so, he dodged Muscles' backswing, caught the other man's arm, and used Muscles' own momentum to swing him around and slam him into the side of the limo, doubling him up over the hood as Ben twisted his arm behind him.

"I said you're under arrest."

"Gonna fuckin' knock your teeth out," Muscles growled.

"Maddox."

The quiet voice came from the building's side entrance. Ben couldn't help noticing that his dad was using the exact same tone of mild disapproval, with an underlying hint of threat, that Ben had used on Muscles earlier.

Except when Darius Keegan did that, it got results in a way Ben had never quite managed to get for himself. Muscles—Maddox—instantly went still and quit trying to free himself as Darius strolled out into the sunlight.

Ben had taken after his mother's slighter build. Although there was still a family resemblance, especially in their sharp, defined facial features, Darius was huge, bigger than Maddox. Every crease in his charcoal-gray suit was crisp. Twin wings of white hair swooped from his temples, but otherwise he showed little sign of age—unsurprising, since he hadn't aged much in the last two hundred years.

He looked at Ben with eyes the color of polished steel.

"Son, what have I told you about beating up the help?"

"Probably similar to what you've told me about arresting the help, which is the other thing I'm gonna be doing in a minute." Ben snapped handcuffs on a now-unresisting Maddox. "You have the right to remain silent—"

Darius ticked his tongue against the back of his teeth. "I'd rather you didn't. It's such a legal hassle getting them out."

"Yeah, well, teach them not to swing punches at cops, then. Anything you do or say can be held against you in a court of law—"

"But that's what I hire them for." A slight smile tugged at the corner of his father's mouth.

Damn it. Having a dragon mobster for a father would've been so much less complicated if he could have just earnestly hated the guy. "You have the right to an attorney," he continued doggedly.

"When you're done playing your charade of enforcing human law," his father said, "I'll be upstairs having a drink. We need to talk about your sister."

Ben's head swiveled to follow Darius as he turned to walk away. "Wait, what?"

 

***

 

A few minutes later, Ben was pouring drinks for both of them in the living room of his condo. A recently un-arrested Maddox was downstairs moving the limo to a legal parking space. Ben decided to consider that a small victory, which were few and far between when dealing with his dad.

Right now Darius was strolling around the condo, investigating the art objects displayed on shelves and hanging on the walls. Ben had brought them back from the various parts of the world he'd visited through the years. Most were weapons of some kind, or otherwise related to battle.

"This is not a particularly valuable hoard, son, but it is an intriguing one," Darius remarked, tapping the blade of a Revolutionary War-era Hessian cavalry sword. "I like it."

"It's not a hoard," Ben said, capping the bottle of brandy—his dad's preferred drink. He'd already gotten a beer for himself. "You have a hoard. I have an art collection."

"Call it what you like. I know a hoard when I see one." Darius's eye fell on one of the few truly sentimental touches in the room, a framed photo of Derek and Gaby's wedding. Gaby was visibly pregnant, and Ben's cabin could be glimpsed in the background.

Darius picked it up. "Bringing others to your lair? I taught you better, son."

Ben snatched the photo away. "It's not a lair. It's a cabin. And it's none of your damn business. I'm not a dragon, Dad."

"Which is actually why I'm here, Benedict. For a change, my failure to breed a true heir is an advantage."

Darius's words were nearly drowned out by the low growl of the panther in Ben's chest. Ben soothed his animal with an effort. He'd had a lifetime to get used to the way his father felt about him. The most annoying thing about it was that Darius always framed it as a failure in himself as much as in Ben. The air of disappointment that permeated every conversation with his father was primarily self-directed. Which paradoxically made it feel even more like his fault as if Darius had openly blamed Ben for it.

Well, that's what you get for being such a self-absorbed asshole that you view your children as extensions of yourself, he thought in Darius's direction.

"How is it an advantage?" Ben asked, as his animal calmed inside him, though it remained on edge, as it always was around his father.

"Because you can do things I cannot." Darius tapped his fingertips on the edge of a Maasai shield. Ben couldn't help imagining phantom dragon's claws clattering thoughtfully on the wood. "This is a dragon matter. I am honor-bound not to interfere. You, on the other hand ..."

Ben snorted. He leaned a hip against the arm of his couch and took a sip of his beer. Darius hadn't touched his drink—probably considered bourbon too cheap for his palate. "Yeah, we all know that's how you feel about lesser shifters, even your own kid. We're beneath your notice unless you find a use for us." He sighed and took another drink, rolled the beer around on his tongue, tried to let it go. "You said earlier that this has to do with my sister. With Melody."

With the dragon daughter you've always preferred to your panther-shifter son.

Darius hesitated for a moment before he said. "It's actually to do with a friend of hers. A human friend." Disdain curled around his words. "This friend went and got herself dragon-marked."

There was a brief silence as Ben looked flatly at his father, waiting for an explanation that never came. Finally he said, "And?"

Darius heaved a sigh. "You don't know what that means, do you."

"I was raised by Mom. I know nothing about dragon culture."

"It means she has a dragon assassin after her. They can't be stopped, will stop at nothing, until they kill their target."

"Wait, what? This target—you said she's a human, right?" He forced himself to think about it objectively, engaging his inner cop, not thinking about the human who probably didn't even know about dragons, who would never understand the danger bearing down on her until it was too late ... "Sending a dragon to kill a human is like using a bazooka to kill a fly. It's total overkill. What did she do?"

"I don't know," Darius said.

He's lying, Ben's panther said immediately.

Cats were highly alert to nuance, and Ben's panther could pick up on minute changes in people's breathing, heart rate, even the smell of their skin. It wasn't foolproof, but he figured his panther was about as good as your average lie detector. Better, maybe, around people he knew well.

But admitting it would give away one of the few advantages he had in dealing with dragons, not to mention that he knew full well his dad, when caught in a lie, merely doubled down on it.

"So this dragon is after this woman for no reason at all," he said dryly.

"It's no concern of mine," Darius said. Another lie. "One thing I know for certain: when the dragon assassin catches up with her, she has no chance at all. Whether you want to help her or not is up to you."

"And here you are, not interfering."

Darius lifted a shoulder in the tiniest of shrugs. "Merely bringing a situation to your attention. What you do from here is up to you."

Manipulative jerk. Unfortunately, he wasn't wrong. Ben wasn't going to let a dragon hurt an innocent human woman and Darius knew it. He might not understand it, but he knew it.

"Where is she?" Ben asked, pouring his beer down the sink. No more than a sip for him, since apparently he had to work off the clock now too. And no sleep, either.

Darius waved a hand. "Some frivolous human business establishment. Something to do with animals. Maddox has the address."