The Rogue King (Inferno Rising) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  The Dragon Clans

  Prologue

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from The Boss by Abigail Owen

  About the Author

  Also by Abigail Owen

  Check out these exciting Entangled reads!

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Abigail Owen.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Heather Howland

  Cover design by Bree Archer and Kelley Martin

  Cover images by

  Shutterstock/Satyrenko

  Getty Images/ Spondylolithesis and greenleaf123

  DepositPhotos/Photocreo

  Interior design by Heather Howland

  Print ISBN 978-1-64063-531-9

  ebook ISBN 978-1-64063-532-6

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition August 2019

  To Heather.

  For loving this series and

  believing in it as much as I do!

  The Dragon Clans

  Gold

  King: Uther Hagan

  Location: North Europe

  Based in: Store Skagastølstind, Norway

  Blue

  King: Ladon Ormarr

  Location: Western Europe

  Based in: Ben Nevis, Scotland

  Black

  King: Gorgon Ejderha

  Location: Western Asia/Northern Africa

  Based in: Mount Ararat, Turkey

  Green

  King: Fraener Luu

  Location: Eastern/Southern Asia

  Based in: Yulong Xueshan, China

  White

  King: Volos Ajdaho

  Location: Eastern Europe/Northern Asia

  Based in: Kamen, Russia

  Red

  King: Pytheios Chandali

  Location: Central Asia

  Based in: Everest, Nepal/China

  Prologue

  The scent of raw meat, tinged with putrid rot, curled around Serefina, filling her nostrils and awakening a memory she would have sooner forgotten.

  At least he’d waited to confront her until after closing, when she was the last person left in the place. Her hands shook even as they slowed in the mundane task of clearing one of the handful of linoleum-topped tables in the small, rural Kansas diner where she worked. Where she pretended to be just another human and not who and what she truly was.

  A prize sought by every creature.

  Legend held that the man who captured a phoenix would be blessed. Unable to put a foot wrong. Every choice the right one. Every action leading to greater fortune. Except legend had it wrong. The man had to capture the phoenix’s heart.

  The man who’d come for her would never have her heart. She knew who stood directly behind her, bringing that nasty smell inside with him where the rancid fumes mingled with the grease that hung heavy in the air.

  Pytheios.

  The Rotting King of the Red Dragon Clan. The man who had once deluded himself into thinking he could mate Serefina and take her parents’ throne. But she’d chosen another, a different clan’s king, and for her sins, Pytheios had murdered him.

  Zilant. Her destined mate, and her one true love.

  So she’d run.

  Disappeared.

  Pytheios had hunted her ever since, needing her at his side to legitimize his reign as High King. Thankfully, he had no idea of the secret she’d taken with her that fateful night all those centuries ago when she’d escaped, pregnant and terrified. And so alone. A secret concealed not ten miles from here. A secret she’d guard with her life.

  Pytheios would never find her daughters.

  “You didn’t think you could remain hidden forever, did you?” Pytheios’s charred voice rumbled behind her. Smug bastard.

  The skin on the back of Serefina’s neck crawled at his mere presence. She didn’t question how he’d finally tracked her down. Five centuries of hiding from him were five more than she’d expected to get.

  Now her daughters must find their own way without her there to guide them. Protect them. Teach them. Please let me have prepared them enough.

  Serefina didn’t bother trying to figure out how to save herself from the attack she knew was coming. Before Pytheios had killed them, her parents had been living proof that the dragon king who mated the phoenix would become the High King and rule wisely and well, leading to an era of prosperity.

  The Red Clan had ruled over all dragon shifters during her parents’ reign. The five other dragon kings would have no choice but to bow down to Pytheios if he brought her back as his mated prize.

  But he wasn’t destined to be her mate. Her fire would consume him, as it would any dragon shifter other than Zilant, whether she liked it or not. Zilant’s brand hadn’t yet appeared on her neck, but all that meant was that she hadn’t died with her mate. No other man could ever have her.

  Pytheios might try anyway, or at the very least take her. Imprison her. Use her.

  So yes. There was no doubt in her mind; today was the last day of her life. But could she save the fire inside her, and the magic that came with it, to perform one last desperate act to protect her daughters before the final blow came?

  Acrid bile burned her throat as it rose from the pit of her stomach. She forced it down. Now was not the time to allow fear into her heart. Fear could wait for those last precious seconds of life, when she’d fought until she could no longer move, when she’d done everything she could. Maybe not even then.

  Not fear for herself. Fear for the four precious women she’d be leaving behind.

  If not for them, death would be a welcome relief. Then she could finally join Zilant in the afterlife where he waited for her.

  Serefina closed her eyes, reaching for the power that had lain dormant inside her for too many years, stoking an inferno, the flames licking her insides with a pleasant warmth she’d almost forgotten.

  “Turn around,” the monster behind her commanded. “Now.”

  Frustration lined the edges of Pytheios’s words, and she smiled. Even now, she could defy him. She took some small c
onsolation from the thought.

  Slowly, as if careful not to spook a wild animal, she pivoted. And blinked. The years had not been kind to her enemy. When she’d seen him last, his body had already started rotting, having passed into that age when an unmated dragon’s body broke down, becoming susceptible to disease, deterioration, or insanity. Sometimes all of the above. For Pytheios, disease had taken his body in the form of skin decay.

  The flesh hung from his bones as though gravity had dragged at him so long, the tissue lost elasticity. His eyes were sunken into his head, the reddish-brown irises, the hallmark of a red dragon, now milky and faded with age. Even the king’s brand, the symbol of Pytheios’s house, appeared faded where it marked the flesh on his hand between his thumb and forefinger.

  How was he still alive?

  Despite his now-decrepit appearance, she knew she’d never overpower him physically. She’d be willing to bet he no longer did his own fighting, though, and likely hadn’t in a while, which might make him slower, easier to surprise.

  Serefina lifted her chin, ready to buy herself time. “You look like shit.”

  His lips pulled back in what she guessed was supposed to be a smile. “How very…American. You are as lovely as ever.” He sniffed the air. “And you smell like ambrosia.”

  Again, she had to hold down the bile threatening to spew from her. Serefina focused the fire inside herself, the gathering power undulating under her skin. If she wasn’t visibly glowing yet, she would be any second. She directed a small amount of energy into a single thought that she sent to her daughters.

  The time has come.

  They knew what those words meant. They knew what they had to do. Since the day of their birth—a day of joy devoured by a despair so deep she’d hardly been able to push her babies out of her body—Serefina had been preparing them for this eventuality.

  Pytheios, still so arrogant he hadn’t yet restrained her, continued his demands. “Time to give me what you denied me more than five hundred years ago.”

  “My duty was to Zilant, my destined mate,” she spat. “You will never be my king.”

  Pytheios’s neck worked as though he were swallowing back his rage, the column of his throat moving like a serpent was trapped inside. “I no longer need your submission or your body.”

  An icy shard of terror pierced her heart at the words and the sneer curling his lip. What did he mean?

  “I’ll take your power and your life.”

  Take her power? Could he? She’d never heard of such a thing, but his threat lent urgency to her next steps.

  “I’ll die before I give you an ounce of my power,” she snarled. Fisting her hands, Serefina threw her arms wide. Her skin came alive with dancing flames, and her vision changed to one alight in a reddish glow.

  Before she could use her strongest gift—the ability to transport her body anywhere with a single thought—Pytheios leaped forward and wrapped his hands around her throat. He squeezed hard enough to cut off oxygen, but not enough to kill. As a dragon, her fire didn’t harm him…couldn’t harm him unless he tried to force her to mate.

  Serefina wouldn’t risk teleporting him with her. She needed to reach her daughters ahead of him—alone. But she’d learned a few tricks in the centuries she’d been hiding. In a simultaneous move, she brought her hands up to strike at the back of his thumbs, dislodging his grip from her neck, while at the same time kneeing him hard in the balls.

  Pytheios dropped to the ground, clutching his groin, and she sprinted for the door. She didn’t make it more than three steps before he reached out and snagged her by the ankle. Serefina went down hard, slamming her head into a tabletop as she fell. Ears ringing, she turned on her attacker like a feral animal. She kicked him in the face, not that she’d ever damage a dragon’s harder bone structure, but the move surprised him into releasing her.

  Serefina scrambled to her feet and rushed outside into the gravel parking lot. In the struggle with Pytheios, she’d lost her fire. She closed her eyes, gathering the necessary force from deep inside. She had seconds at best.

  As her enemy’s bellow of frustration sounded from inside the diner, the fire ignited, pouring out of her skin. With another small burst of power and a whisper of resolve, she disappeared.

  But not before the long blade of a hurled knife pierced through skin and bone, lodging in her spine with a sickening thud. Agony screamed through her body, even as her legs went horrifyingly numb.

  Serefina accepted the pain, let it fuel the fury whipping the blaze inside her, and pictured the small clearing behind the unassuming house where she’d kept her family for the last twenty years. The image formed clearly in her mind—rickety white siding that needed replacing, dirt-covered screens, and the field with its tall, dry grass almost silver in the light of the full moon. Her daughters would be gathering out there now. Waiting for her. Probably terrified.

  Using more energy than she’d wanted to expend, she accessed her gift of teleportation and pulled her body from the diner parking lot through the silent darkness of empty space, to appear in that familiar field in less than a heartbeat.

  She hit the ground hard, crumpling to her knees, which no longer functioned. The knife had done its job, severing nerves and removing control over her own body. No matter. She could do what she had to do from the ground.

  “Mother!” Her daughter Kasia’s voice pierced the sweltering night air.

  Serefina raised her head to find all four of her daughters gathered about twenty feet away, their faces pale and stricken.

  There wasn’t enough time.

  The house where they lived was located only ten miles from the diner. Pytheios would eventually see the fire she was about to unleash, and not be far behind. She had only a few minutes to complete her task, if that.

  Serefina focused on her children—grown women now, each as different from the other as the moon from the sun, each a reflection of both their darkly exotic mother, born of the red dragon king and a phoenix, and their blond-haired, pale-blue-eyed white dragon king father.

  A cry of agony burst from her lips as she forced the crackling energy inside her to manifest. All around her, the grass burned, tinder to her flames, catching quickly. Her body began to shift, long, gloriously soft feathers bursting from her arms for the first time in her life. It was a bittersweet sight—the one time a phoenix ever turned into the bird was when she passed her powers to her daughter—or daughters, in Serefina’s case—either in death or by choice.

  She couldn’t send her babies away without a final message, so she spared another precious ounce of her energy. “I love you all, and I am so proud of you. You are women worthy of our phoenix legacy, but don’t let history control you. Find your own way in this world.”

  A colossal roar reverberated across the land behind her. Her daughters ducked, covering their ears. Pytheios, in his true form, lured by the flames, was coming for her.

  No time.

  She ignored the anguish racking her body, focusing on what she had to do with all her might. Her last act as a mother was the most important thing she’d ever do on this earth.

  Picturing each of the four separate locations she’d predetermined ages ago, Serefina directed her gaze to the youngest of her quadruplets.

  Tears streamed down Angelika’s heart-shaped face. Her pale blond hair whipped in the wind. “I love you,” her sweet daughter mouthed. And then, she was gone. Forced to another place, a safer place, by her mother’s will alone.

  Serefina’s core trembled, her power depleting exponentially, but she pushed through, focusing next on Meira. More angular and serious, with her bouncy strawberry blonde curls at odds with her personality, she held her body rigidly, dark eyes closed as though unable to watch her mother’s last moments. Another burst of power, another push, and Meira was gone.

  Her strength faltering, breath coming in panting bursts, Serefina
felt smaller now, lighter, as her bones became hollow. Most of her had completed the shift, but she didn’t care about that. She refused to succumb to the dark spots dancing before her eyes.

  Skylar came next. Her midnight hair, so like Serefina’s own, hung in a long braid over her shoulder. Even from here, those glacial blue eyes, her father’s eyes, so filled with defiance, pierced Serefina’s heart. Again, she focused her resolve and her waning control, and Skylar disappeared.

  Flames poured off Serefina’s body, raising her dark curls around her head and eating up every inch of the land around her. The one tree in their yard exploded with a thunderous clash of sound and light as it ignited. Divergent with the blaze, a deep cold ached in Serefina’s bones, spreading insidiously through her body from within.

  Did she have enough fire left in her? Enough for one final act?

  Kasia stood before her, calm and steady. Dark red hair waved around her, lit with gold from the flames that crept nearer and nearer to her, but not yet licking at her feet.

  Serefina looked closer. Was that fire in her child’s eyes? Was the power of the phoenix already passing from mother to child? Serefina knew she had mere moments until her body would be consumed by her own flames. She had to get Kasia away before that happened, or Pytheios would take her.

  The blistering flames around her swayed and danced as a draft of wind pushed down from above, and the shadow of a massive beast high overhead loomed.

  Pytheios.

  Had he seen all four of her daughters? A crimson claw reached for Kasia, who dove for the ground. Her brave girl didn’t even scream, instead looking to her mother, waiting for the deliverance she trusted would come.

  Serefina reached out to Kasia, her hand now a wing of deep red and gold feathers, and shoved every last ounce of the raging storm inside her at her daughter, and with iron will forged in fire and pain, she sent her child far away from the monster above her, to a safer place.

  Finally, she could let go. Let death consume her, sending her home. To rest. To peace. To Zilant.

  The furious roar of the dragon was the last thing Serefina heard as her body disintegrated to ash, starting at the tips of her wings and working toward her center, the fine powder drifting away in the wind.