Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5) Read online

  Wyvern’s Lair

  Desert Cursed Series, Book 5

  shannon mayer

  Wyvern’s Lair

  Desert Cursed Series, Book 5

  Shannon Mayer

  Copyight

  Wyvern’s Lair

  Desert Cursed Series, #5

  Copyright © 2019 by Shannon Mayer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Photography by With Magic Photography

  Models: Bayley Russel and Parker

  Cover art by Ravven

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. Zamira

  2. Merlin

  3. Zamira

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. Merlin

  11. Zamira

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  17. Merlin

  18. Zamira

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my supervisor, Oka, for always making sure I am in my office for as many hours a day as possible. To Cougar for reminding me that the bond between a girl and her horse is worth waiting for.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

  What a shithead. I’m going to puke acid all over his stupid face.”

  Lila

  1

  Zamira

  The mauve clouds filter the dying, yet brilliant, rays of orange falling from the fiery ball lowering to its nightly death. The nearly purple glow afoot reflects in the sand beneath my paws —ethereal and full of magic, as if with each step, I would find myself transported to another plane of existence.

  No time for poetry, idiot.

  The world picked back up, reality all but spitting in my face. I dug in hard, my back feet kicking up tiny pebbles in a spray that littered out behind me, my muscles firing with all I had as I took a hard right turn in a last ditch attempt to catch what was supposed to be dinner. Teeth gritted, I made a desperate lunge, front claws extended to hook the hind end of the desert jackrabbit that currently moved like lightning in a bottle.

  Come on, come on! I stretched to my full length, reaching for all I was worth.

  The tips of my claws brushed across the thin hide and just raked his scrawny little dust-colored butt with a distinct sound—like a zipper sliding down—that made me think I had him. But just that fast, the thought was gone along with him, as if instead of pricking him with my claws, I’d hit a button that had given the little bugger the extra burst of speed I never saw coming. He was there one second and the next, not.

  I slid to a stop at the base of a sand dune as the rabbit shot across the open spaces between bush and hills, flicking his tail at me as if waving goodbye. Me? I just stood there breathing hard, my sides heaving and my whole body aching terribly as though I’d been beaten repeatedly. I licked my too-dry lips. I’d not had enough water, obviously—it was an issue out here in the desert even to those of us who knew better.

  Desert born, I might have been, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t screw up. And the last day or so, my head and heart had not been in the game, which didn’t help. I was distracted, heartbroken, and just fucking tired.

  I knew it. Lila knew it. Even Ford seemed to have known it. My companions walked around me as if I would shatter—which only irritated me more. Hence, my offer to get food, to give them a break from me more than anything.

  Maks would get it. Hell, if Maks were here, I wouldn’t be so damn irritable.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, spitting out a mouthful of sand, and shook my head to knock the sand from it. Though it was my turn to catch dinner for the three of us, I’d been at it for a couple hours with nothing to show for my pitiful efforts. I rolled my shoulders and flicked the tips of my ears, listening for something else that might show itself. Ideally not a super-speedy rabbit.

  Something slower and fat. Something even I could catch at the rate I was going. I looked around for a clue and settled on working on a better vantage point to get my bearings.

  Putting one paw in front of the other, I made the long slow climb to the top of the dune, hoping it would be what I needed. Being a shifter was supposed to be awesome and powerful and all the things that I most certainly was not. Born into a pride of lion shifters, I should have been the queen of the desert.

  My luck—or my mother’s luck, seeing as she passed it to me—was not particularly good. Thick black fur covered my whopping six-pound house cat frame instead of the golden lion that I could have been, or even the elusive black jungle cat that I’d had a taste of only a few days prior. I sighed as I climbed, the sand slipping out from under me with each step, the weariness that ate at me a sure sign I was near the end of my rope. Too much had happened to my body and my heart.

  I snorted to myself partway up and shook my head again at my own stupidity. The fatigue had nothing really to do with my body. I had been trained to run, fight, work, on nothing but an empty belly, exhaustion, and sheer stubbornness for years. This particular fatigue I was dealing with came straight from a broken heart, and I knew it.

  I’d made myself say goodbye to the one man who was meant to be at my side. Maks had called me his mate, and then had willingly sent himself into a deep sleep—disappearing, for lack of a better word—so our love couldn’t be used against me by Marsum and the Jinn masters who now resided within Maks’s body.

  A low hiss snarled out of me at the thought of just what they were making his body do—or worse, who they were making him do. Marsum wanted a child, an heir to the throne, and no doubt if he couldn’t have me and the bloodline I represented, he’d take someone else. Just to have a backup kid.

  “What a dick,” I muttered. No one to hear me, but I felt a little better anyway, just saying it out loud.

  The reality was I knew without a shadow of a doubt that with Marsum now in control of Maks’s body, he would do anything he could to hurt me, if for nothing else because I’d turned him down. Though to be fair, the last time I’d seen said body, it had been in the clutches of an oversized desert falcon winging to the west away from us. Which was good that he was far from me, where I didn’t have to see his pretty blue eyes staring at me with a Jinn master’s soul coming through instead of his own.

  So yeah, it was good that Marsum and Maks were far away from me, far away from where they could hurt me.

  Wasn’t it?

  A very large part of me whispered it wasn’t the way my story was meant to go. Maks was meant to be with me. Not trapped, not taken away.

  I frowned and pinched my eyes shut tightly as I took the last few steps to the top of the dune and sat my furry ass down with another sigh. I was at the top of one of the highest dunes and my view was nothing short of spectacular, despite my emotional upheaval. I found myself staring at the beauty of the land instead of looking for dinner. For just those few moments, I let myself sink into the present, ignoring the past and not thinking about the future an
d what it might hold.

  The smell of water in the distance, the cry of a hunting bird with no doubt better luck than me at finding dinner, the residual heat in the sand underneath me. This was where I had been raised, and there was a comfort and familiarity to it even though it had its dangers. Things like sand wraiths, gorcs, Jinn, and ophidians. You know, the usual plethora of deadly creatures.

  My breathing took a long time to normalize and a pang in my chest made me put a paw to it as if that would stop the pain. Was this true heart pain, or some leftover bruise from all the fighting? I suspected the former.

  I’d said goodbye to Maks, and even toasted him as I’d poured out a drink of țuică to make it official, a proper send-off. A proper goodbye.

  But even with that, I couldn’t stop thinking about him; something I truly needed to do if I was going to move on. I found myself glancing back in the direction where my camp with Lila and Ford was set up. Three miles away, and even at this distance, there was a tiny wisp of smoke, the smallest glimmer of a fire. I narrowed my eyes and could just make out something flitting through the air around that smoke.

  Lila, I was sure of it even at this distance, even though I couldn’t really see her.

  A tiny dragon almost the exact size of my house cat form, Lila was as much an outcast for her size and shape as I was. Only, her family had tried to kill her because she was so small and considered not even worth keeping alive.

  Corvalis, the leader of the dragons, who also happened to be her father, was legendary in his violence. He was still out there possibly looking for her. To exact revenge for the thumping she’d given him in front of the other dragons. For a short time, the curse on her had been lifted and she’d been the dragon she’d always been meant to be—huge, powerful, and more than enough of a match for her asshole father.

  I looked past Lila’s flickering shape in the smoke but couldn’t see Ford. He’d be there at the campfire, too, waiting for me to come back with dinner. My throat tightened with the thought of Ford and what he offered me.

  With what I was trying and failing to make work with him already. What my uncle Shem wanted me to try to make happen with him. What Lila wanted for me with him. What Ford wanted with me.

  To have a new mate, a new love, and to forget Maks ever had been in my life. Two days in to trying to move on, and I knew the answer to me and Ford.

  “I can’t,” I whispered to myself, then bit down on the words.

  That was the real reason I was out here alone without even Lila for company. She’d been pushing me hard to make it official with Ford for the last two days. To make him my mate and put Maks behind me once and for all. Not because she didn’t love Maks, but because he was gone.

  No one but me had any belief that Maks was still there, that there was still a chance.

  Lila had decided she was going to help get us together by pushing Ford on me. And by pushing, I mean stealing our clothes and hiding them right before bed. Trying to get us drunk on a bottle of whiskey she found god knew where by slipping it into the stew. Flat out telling us she was leaving for one hour, so please get to it because she was ready for some cubs to play with.

  The look on Ford’s face with that last line had been nothing short of hilarious, and even now, it made me smile to recall the horror in his dark gold eyes. No one—not him and surely not me—was looking for cubs, not with the Emperor, Ishtar, and Marsum on the loose. Well, Marsum and Ishtar anyway. The Emperor was still technically bound in his prison as far as I knew.

  Goddess, help us keep it that way.

  I shook my head. Lila meant well, and no doubt she thought if I slept with Ford, I’d finally truly let go of Maks. But I wasn’t there yet, three days was hardly long enough to turn my heart off. I didn’t know when I would be there. No, that wasn’t entirely true—I didn’t believe I’d ever get there.

  The good part? Ford took all the pushing from Lila in stride. He wanted me as his mate, but he wasn’t pushing me.

  He was easy on the eyes, and a big powerful lion shifter that my father would have loved for me to have as a mate.

  Ford held me at night when I was cold.

  He gave me the room I needed during the day.

  And he listened to me as the alpha I was and didn’t try to make his ego a part of the package.

  I should have been falling over happy as a camel in an oasis that he was into me, that he cared for me enough to wait for me to figure my shit out. A sharp stab went through my head, right behind my eyes, cutting my train of thought off in a damn hurry. I let my lids flutter closed as I breathed through the pulse of pain that beat at me.

  I was sure it had nothing to do with my heart, or my emotional state. I really needed to drink more water before I went out on a hunt. I knew better.

  The pain receded and my thoughts drifted back to Ford. If I were being honest with myself, and Ford had been the one I met first instead of Maks, I would be happy with him. I would think myself lucky to not be with a cheating sheep humper like my ex-husband, Steve.

  But I hadn’t met him first.

  I’d met and fallen for Maks, and that love was not something I was having an easy time walking away from.

  Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you shouldn’t.

  My thoughts, or something from outside of me?

  A soft exhale slid out of me and I opened my eyes. There was no one around, but those words just kept slipping through me. Maybe I didn’t have to say goodbye to him. But which him?

  “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Shakespeare’s words tumbled out of me and seemed to hover in the air. Talking to myself was probably a sign I was going crazy. Even so, nine little words took away the anxiety riding me hard the last few days. I’d been unable to sleep, barely ate, and hadn’t been drinking enough water as my heart wouldn’t let go of him. Let him go.

  “I have to let him go.” The words were whispered, and I breathed out the last of my fears, the last of my worries about this particular issue.

  Because I didn’t mean to let go of Maks.

  I had to let Ford go. There was no fairness in keeping him on the hook when I wasn’t sure that even years from now, I could love him the way he deserved. When I wasn’t sure I could ever let Maks go, no matter how far he was taken from me. Ford deserved to be loved. He was a good man, and some woman was going to be happy with him.

  Part of me screamed I was a fool, that Ford would never hurt me, that he would be loyal and give me beautiful strong cubs that would face this world far better than any other mate. He would never care that my heart was still tied to his adopted brother.

  The other part of me continued to ride a wave of calm. The anxiety and stress I’d been dodging since I’d told myself I had to let Maks go slid away like untangling my hands from weights I had no idea I’d grabbed hold of.

  The course of true love never did run smooth. Why did I think it would? Certainly not with my luck.

  I would wait for him. A smile tripped across my lips, spreading wide as I embraced Shakespeare’s words. As I let myself trust my heart, truly trust it even if I didn’t know what the future held.

  No matter how long, no matter if he never came back to me, I would wait. There was no other way for my heart and soul to accept this part of my life. I sat up a little straighter and drew in a breath that filled my lungs as I nodded to myself. My father had been alone a long time after my mother had died, and he’d been an amazing alpha to our pride. I would follow in his footsteps and whatever happened, happened. I would not force myself into the arms of another man when the one I loved was trapped.

  When the one I loved was not truly lost. I knew my friends would think me crazy, but I couldn’t help but believe that there was a way to bring him back.

  The sun dipped as my thoughts settled, my decision made and my heart lighter for it.

  Of course, with that one good thing to come of my hunt, I needed to move and find some food for the three of us. And maybe find the courage to tell Ford the ha
rd truth.

  Gah, I didn’t want to hurt him.

  Around me, a gust of wind rushed across the sand, through my fur, and tickled at my nose. I turned my head slowly, trying to track where the breeze had come from. An icy cold edge to it had me on my feet and the fur along my spine and tail puffing up. The wind smelled like the cold north, like the land of ice and snow and magic that had tried to kill me repeatedly.

  “Seriously?” The word slipped out a moment before a noise turned me around to look behind me, which was wrong. Not behind.

  Above.

  The whoosh of feathered wings snapped my head up as a dragon-sized white raven dropped from the sky.

  “Son of a camel’s rotten hump!” I bolted forward, slipping and tumbling down the dune as the bird’s talons skimmed the sand where I’d sat only a split second before.

  Gravity helped me out, tugging my feet down the steep hill, pulling me faster and faster until I could barely keep my balance, rolling the last few feet but still managing to land upright at the end. I hit the bottom of the dune and shot across the open landscape, heading away from the campsite where Lila and Ford were.

  I had my flail with me—like my clothing it became a part of the chain around my neck, though it seemed to also give me extra strength and damage done by my claws and teeth—and I’d used the weapon before against the White Raven. Sure, the last time I’d seen the Raven and her mistress our meeting had gone okay, but I’d been warned not to trust them again, and I was no fool.