Dragon Breeder 3 by Dante King (e novels to read online .TXT) 📕

The moment stretched.

Then, Hana nodded. “I can tell you where more crystals can be found,” she said quietly, her eyes still glued to mine.

I let out a silent breath of relief. I was glad. The pretty shaven headed woman did not strike me as evil, or as an enemy. She just came from the other side of some invisible line that some egomaniacal emperor or empress had drawn on a map a thousand years ago. From what I could tell, she intended us no harm. Unless she showed herself to be an enemy, she did not deserve to die.

I turned to face General Shiloh.

The woman was staring at me with the sort of shrewdness that made me think she could read my thoughts. She snorted. Reached for the jug of Hangman’s.

“Now, Mike Noctis,” General Shiloh said, “you have a job to do. There is one more crystal left in your possession—one more of these Etherstones. I believe you know what ought to be done.”

“I understand, General,” I said.

She was speaking with an incredible amount of seriousness about a mission that amounted to selecting a woman to implant with a dragonling. It was almost enough to make a grin form on my face. But I kept my cool and managed only to smile a little.

“When the dragonmancer you select gives birth, I want you to bind the dragonling to this remaining Etherstone. Once we have confirmed the dragonling has successfully reached dragonhood, and that both the stones you took from the prisoner were the genuine article, we will see what we can do about finding more of the damned things.”

Chapter 17

I didn’t need telling twice, and I couldn’t see that there’d be anything gained by me messing around. The sooner I appeased General Shiloh, the sooner we could head out in search of more Etherstones. With that in mind, I excused myself with as much military dignity as a man with sex on the brain could and left General Shiloh’s tent.

I walked hurriedly past the two guards standing outside. I set off down the path leading from the section of the camp where the dragonmancers and upper echelon officers were based to the private piece of land where the General’s tent had been erected.

Saya and Elenari had mentioned that they wanted more children with me, and while they were my wives, I had other women who was also eager to bear dragonlings.

I had thought that finding one of my female dragonmancer colleagues that I had not already impregnated would have been a straightforward task but, as Murphy’s Law would have it, I couldn’t find either Penelope, Renji, or—

“You look like you’re hunting for something,” a sensual, predatory voice said from my right.

I halted in my tracks, barely avoiding leaving skid marks in the dirt of the road.

“Tamsin,” I said. “Just the hobgoblin I was hunting for. Man, is it me or are you looking particularly dangerous and alluring?”

Tamsin leaned with devastatingly sexy casualness against one of the ramshackle buildings on the edge of the encampment proper.

“Are you trying to blow my skirt up with ham-fisted flattery?” Tamsin asked as she stepped out from the building. She sauntered over to me until she was standing pressed against me. “Because let me tell you something: it’s working.” Her spicy, rum-scented breath tickled my cheek.

I grinned. “You’re not wearing a skirt,” I pointed out.

“I don’t have to be wearing these breeches either,” came the soft reply.

I cleared my throat. “Now that we’ve found our way rather neatly onto the subject of clothing and the removal of it,” I said, “maybe you could help me with a little… mission.”

“I’m all ears,” the hobgoblin said.

As quickly as I could, I told her what General Shiloh had tasked me with doing. The more I talked, the wider Tamsin’s smile stretched.

“So, you—and the Empire, of course—need my help right away?” she asked.

I glanced around casually and saw, not thirty yards a few tents. Two guards were stationed outside each of them, so I guessed that they were supply tents. Ashrin was walking purposefully down the street. She gleamed in her insectile black armor and exchanged salutes with those soldiers ballsy enough to hail her. At her belt was fastened the pouch of dragondust.

She must have received an order from General Shiloh to deliver it to me. Good thing I didn’t have to search the camp for her before Tamsin and I could get done to business.

“You see those tents,” I said to Tamsin. “I have to grab a little dragondust from Ashrin first.”

Tamsin nodded.

“Think you can commandeer us one?” I asked her.

The hobgoblin gave me a theatrically affronted look. “I can hold my own in a pitched battle against a horde of murderous ratfolk. Intimidating a guardsman of the Mystocean Empire should only be a little trickier.”

“Excellent,” I replied.

“I expect a prize for this favor I’m doing you, naturally,” Tamsin said mischievously.

“Anything.”

“Just what I wanted to hear.”

Without waiting for me to say another word, Tamsin strolled nonchalantly away. She approached one of the guards standing in a pair outside a tent. She exchanged brief words with the woman, and the guard wilted a little under Tamsin’s incandescent attention. Then, the guard saluted, and she and her partner marched off.

Grinning, I turned away and walked quickly up to Ashrin, intercepting her just as she was about to pass me, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Just the man I was looking for,” she said after she turned around.

“Uh, that’s right,” I said. “You got some of that dragondust for me? Just a couple of pinches,” I said, doing my level best to keep the tremor of excited anticipation out of my voice.

Ashrin nodded, a smirk playing across her face and her cat-like