Draco, p.1
Draco, page 1
DRACO
A DRAGON RULES NOVEL
TIA DIDMON
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Cole Chapter One
Also by Tia Didmon
About the Author
Draco
Copyright © 2022 Tia Didmon
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written consent of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Dragon Rules
Legion
Bram
Conner
Thorn
Draco
Cole
Kell
Rhadan
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CHAPTER 1
Jemma rubbed her eyes, attempting to focus on the screen. When she found the location of her latest acquisition, the screen went dark. She expected that part. She was the poster child for Murphy’s Law. Everything bad can and would happen to her. The screen flicked on. The surprise was her file had been saved. Retracing her web-based steps and redoing her work was a daily task. She glanced down at the static charge arcing between her fingers.
She was about to touch the computer screen to see if that had created the strange effect, but the doorbell rang. She moved her paperwork out of the way, then stood up, bumping the table and sending her coffee splashing over her keyboard. It was the ninth one in as many months, and she had three more on order. She grabbed the roll of paper towels she kept on the old computer desk and threw a few sheets on the dark liquid before rushing to the door.
She ran a quick hand through her long red hair, but it was so tangled that her hand only made it to her chest. The long strands hadn’t been cut since she was a child, so she grabbed a scrunchy and fastened it behind her back. “I’m coming!” She pressed her eye to the peephole in her door.
The young man held a white cardboard box and a tablet in his hand. She preferred to have them drop without a signature, but the last three packages had disappeared in the time it took her to read the email that the delivery had occurred and her to walk to the door. “I have a package for Jemma Norse.”
Jemma smoothed down her gray sweatshirt. It hung to her knees as the store had sent her an extra small mens instead of a woman’s. She never returned anything. It wasn’t worth it. The replacement would be worse and the refund never actually came back. She unlatched the door, but kept the chain locked. The door opened enough to allow a small package through. “If you hold out your tablet, I will sign for the delivery.”
The young man looked at her like she was slightly nuts. That was the consensus in her apartment building. Her fellow tenants believed she was agoraphobic, and she never corrected them. She couldn’t tell them the truth because she couldn’t explain it herself. The delivery boy held out the tablet and she scribbled an unreadable signature. He nodded and dropped the package to the floor.
He strolled down the dark hallway with three broken lights and turned towards the elevator. She quickly unlatched the chain and grabbed the package, pulling it inside before she relocked and chained the door.
She grabbed the box cutter from the small table in her entryway, slicing the tape between the cardboard in one motion. It took her a moment to recognize the item. The soft jeans were the right size, but instead of black, they were a soft pink. They were pretty and one of the nicer things she’d received. Unfortunately, the pastel color would be stained in no time. Still, it had been a long time since she’d had a pair of pants that actually fit.
Jemma dropped the box to the recycle bin and took the pants to her room. Like everything else in her apartment, the bedroom was an eclectic array of colors and mismatched items. She’d become adept at mingling unconventional fabrics and color palettes into a colorful, but soothing decor.
She was returning to her computer when her landlord’s voice echoed through the apartment. “Jemma! I got the email that you had deposited your rent, but it wasn’t in my account. I am getting tired of these games. Get it to me by the end of the day or I’m giving you an eviction notice!”
“Right away, Mr. Thorton,” Jemma said, knowing that the money was gone. It wasn’t Mr. Thorton’s fault. When she hacked his account in the past, he had never received the money, but the bank documents showed the transfer from her account to his. Fighting the bank in the past had proved futile, so she would have to get him cash once again. Today.
The computer screen flicked off again, and she rubbed her eyes with a throbbing in her temples. Maybe she could just watch TV for an hour and come up with a plan to make some quick money. The project she was working on now was two weeks from completion and it wouldn’t provide the income she needed to pay the rent. She startled when the TV turned on and static echoed in the room.
She didn’t have cable and only streamed her shows from Netflix. The subscription was one of her few luxuries. It distracted her from the strange dreams when she couldn’t sleep. Concluding that it had to be a power surge, she turned off the TV and returned to her computer desk.
Her hand froze on the power button when she saw her eyes reflected on the dark screen. The yellow glow was as unnatural as she was and far eerier than when they glowed blue. She rocked back and forth, wishing the unusual phenomenon away until her eyes returned to their natural green.
After rebooting her computer and checking her emails, she scrolled back to the one she’d been avoiding. While they were her best paying client, she hated working for the Dark Arts Gallery. Though she had never met him, her conversations with Devlin had given her the creeps. While he had never said anything inappropriate, his voice sent shivers down her spine.
The latest email introduced a new project manager and several new acquisitions the gallery was interested in. She scrolled through the list and chose a few that would pay the rent and were less nefarious in nature.
She had helped the Dark Arts Gallery track down hundreds of rare items over the years. As a private contractor, she found the artifact she was looking for and brokered the deal between the current owner and the gallery. If the owner was unwilling to sell, she was paid anyway and simply provided the gallery with their contact information.
Her finger paused above the business contact number on her phone before she hit call. He picked up on the second ring. “Miss Norse, it is a pleasure to finally speak with you. I have sent you several emails,” Movar Dark said.
Movar had signed his name at the bottom of the email and the gallery had her phone number in its contact information. “I’m sorry for the late reply. I contract for several companies and was finishing up a few other projects. Your former manager required my undivided attention when I took on one of your acquisitions.”
“Yes, Devlin was passionate about acquiring the rarest items. He will be sadly missed.”
Her chair squeaked when she sat back. “Was he transferred?”
“Devlin passed,” Movar said with little emotion.
“I’m sorry, what happened?” She regretted the question as soon as she asked it. Curiosity was in her nature, but she never involved herself in personal affairs. She had learned the hard way. No friends and no acquaintances. Only work-based interactions were permitted, and those could go sideways if she wasn’t careful.
“He died in a fire. It’s quite tragic.” Though he said the right words, he could have been explaining the weather or grabbing a coffee order.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Dark. I know Devlin was related to you. He mentioned it was a family business. How can I help you today?”
“Devlin relayed your talents to the rest of the family. Specifically, your ability to find rare items that no one else can. I’m looking for a stone tablet. It’s over two thousand years old and has appeared in Nordic, Malaysian, and various other cultures, though it belongs to none of them.”
“It’s rare for a singular artifact to cross cultures. Are you positive it’s the same tablet?” Jemma asked.
“Yes, the tablet is simply a means of finding the piece I’m truly after. The scripture in the stone describes the location of an amulet I seek.”
While Movar exuded the similar creepy vibe she’d felt from Devlin, her curiosity was piqued. She loved finding things thought lost. The hunt and acquisition were so much more rewarding than her real life. Even if she sought to find a rare treasure for herself, it would not remain in her hands. Fa te had a way of relieving her of anything she held dear. “If you send me all the information you have on the stone tablet, I will get to work on it right away.”
Movar cleared his throat. “This item is far more sensitive than anything you have acquired for the gallery in the past. I require a meeting in person to discuss the current owner of the tablet. Or at least, who I suspect is in current possession of it.”
“I prefer to have a hands-off approach to these acquisitions. I was never required to meet Devlin in the past and don’t feel a face-to-face meeting is required now. You have the routing numbers for my offshore account. I have never requested payment upfront, as your company has proven trustworthy in compensating me for my work.”
“This is different. As for compensation; I will pay you three times your usual fee for both the tablet and the amulet. If you agree to meet me today, then I will give you a five-thousand-dollar deposit,” Movar said.
She scrunched her eyes closed. While it was a simple deposit to Movar, it was rent to her. The money was insane compared to her previous dealings. She tried to tell herself this was a onetime thing. “Who do you suspect has the tablet?”
“Legion Rule,” Movar hissed.
“The owner of Rule Industries?” Though Movar appeared not to like the conglomerate owner, she had come across the company in relation to several previous acquisitions. Everything she’d seen had been aboveboard. Many of the companies she dealt with were far less reputable.
“Yes.”
A female voice in her head screamed not to agree to Movar’s request, but that voice wouldn’t pay her bills. “I will meet in a public location.”
“We can meet at the Gallery. I have an office by the entrance and we can meet during our showing this evening. There will be upward of fifty guests. You can come by anytime between seven and ten,” Movar said.
Even when speaking on the phone, she’d been able to tell if someone was lying to her. Movar was telling the truth, which she confirmed by pulling up the gallery’s website and the event listed for tonight. “I will take a look into Rule Enterprises and see if this tablet is listed in inventory at one of their subsidiary companies. I will meet you at the gallery and let you know what I find. Have the deposit in cash.”
“Agreed.” Movar hung up without saying goodbye.
Jemma’s hands flew over the keyword. Her typing skills were legendary and she could hack a firewall in seconds. She could’ve made millions as a black hat hacker, but her conscience wouldn’t allow it. Her inquiries into companies and people owning artifacts her clients wished to possess were highly questionable, but she didn’t steal from them.
She brokered deals and passed on information when a deal wasn’t reached. She set up a tracing system to monitor all acquisitions made by Rule Industries that fit her parameters, then continued her search.
She flicked a glance at the picture of her parents on the coffee table. Shame was a useless emotion and her parents hadn’t been around to see how far she fell. Despite her ideals, the majority of her acquisitions were found on the dark web. Several more windows popped up on her computer screen until an invoice for a new building caught her attention.
Inn Plain Sight was an occult store. She had been drawn to it several times and had looked around before it burned down. Rule Industries’ connection to the place surprised her, as the small shop had a homey feel. It reminded Jemma of her mother. She assumed it was the handmade soaps, as her mother had a talent for creating amazing scents with her homemade products. They had sold them at the local fair until her mother’s death.
She paused her search into Rule Industries and hacked into the owner’s information on Inn Plain Sight. Mara Krane had inherited the store from her mother. A name change was pending. She opened a new window. Mara Krane’s marriage certificate to Legion Rule.
The store would make an excellent location to hide an artifact of this nature. Whether they showed it in the books was another matter. She was searching the store’s listed inventory when a red light flashed on her screen. She pulled the plug on her computer as her screen went dead.
She was hacked, and that had never happened before. Who possessed the skills to back-trace her?
CHAPTER 2
Draco strolled through the new store at Inn Plain Sight. The rebuild was complete, and the shop was more than double its original size. The custom-built white shelves with inlaid glass were expensive and modern, but the girls had chosen to keep the brown string and hand written tags.
The lavender couches were a darker shade than the pastel walls, but the modern style fit with the new coffee nook and was full of customers drinking hot beverages while reading books from the in-store library. While the books were for sale in another part of the store, the library was open to all, and Mara encouraged her patrons to peruse the library before committing to a purchase.
He smiled at several ladies that looked up from their reading material to glance his way. All dragons were attractive to humans, especially the females. He scented their interest, but his dragon remained uninterested in any of them. A cold loneliness that had endured for centuries and was unlikely to end.
There were almost a thousand dragons asleep in the caves, and only a handful of druids. Of those precious few, none were his mate. The odds were not in his favor. It was a reminder that immortality was a curse when you had nobody to share your life with.
The clicking noise echoed from the small office at the back of the store. Natalie had called him to come over and her urgency had concerned him. Mara’s best friend and store manager was easy going in nature, so the irritation in her voice surprised him. It wasn’t a magical dilemma, or she would have called Legion. He knocked on the open door before entering. “Do you need help unloading the supply truck?”
Nat’s fingers flew over the computer. Windows opened and closed several times before she pushed the keyboard away in anger. “The store website was hacked.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “That is the way of the world, but why the concern? There is no damning information attached to the store’s files.”
As usual, Nat’s blond hair was pulled into a ponytail. Her long-sleeve white cotton shirt and long navy skirt were a size too big. She was tiny and never brought attention to her figure. Draco hoped she was a mate to one of the sleeping dragons. When her power emerged, and he was certain it would, that her mate would show her what a truly exceptional person she was. The person she only allowed Mara and possibly Tempest to see.
Nat was kind to everyone around her but there remained a level of trust she only accepted from her best friend and ward. Draco wasn’t sure what had happened in Natalie’s past to create the wall she hid behind, but he hoped to gain her trust. He already possessed her friendship.
“I wasn’t worried at first, but I found a tracing program embedded in Rule Industries computer. It’s set to alert the hacker to certain criteria.”
Draco rolled his shoulders. “That is concerning. What is this hacker looking for?”
Nat wet her lips. “Artifacts acquired or owned by Legion. The trace to the store originated from the hack on Rule Industries.”
Draco growled. “Do you know who this hacker is? There is little doubt who hired him.”
Nat shook her head. “I got the IP address and narrowed down the apartment, but the person registered to that suite died a month ago in hospice care. It must have been re-rented, but the utilities are in the landlord’s name, so I can’t confirm who lives in the apartment now. If the previous renter hadn’t died, I would be accusing the wrong person of this hack.”
Draco nodded. “Hackers are very proficient at covering their tracks. Give me the address. Cole and I will check it out.”
