.

She’s hunted for what she is. He hunts those who would hurt them.

 When Astrid is attacked by a creep calling himself a Slayer, it seems like a cruel prank the universe is pulling on her already crappy life.

Then Kaden, the most infuriating, stunning boy she’s ever met, arrives and tells her she’s a dragon-kin like him—part dragon, part human.

Then Astrid actually shifts into a dragon.

Wonderful.

It's not wonderful to Kaden, who should be busy hunting down the Slayers, a group as vicious as his methods and as dark as his past. He doesn’t have time to chaperone a girl with newly awakened dragon powers, one who’s too stubborn to stay safe. He knows he should stay away from Astrid.

Yet working together becomes vital when the Slayers hatch a new plan to destroy the dragon-kin, headed by a deadly new leader. And with Astrid as their prime target, Kaden might be the only one who can stop them…if the secrets they both carry don’t destroy them first.

Excerpt of Dragon Born

Chapter One—Kaden

The guy across the store wants to murder me.

I don’t need to be a mind reader to know. Don’t even need to use my magic. I can see the hatred in his eyes. The sixth sense of the dragon inside me picked up the stench of his deadly intentions the moment he walked in.

Also, there’s the hilt of a sword barely peeking out from beneath his jacket. That’s the main giveaway. Slayers are many things—brutal, violent, sadistic—but subtle isn’t one of them.

“On second thought, I guess I’m having mine to-go, please,” I say to the guy making my sandwich. He glowers at me like the greatest crime in the world is changing orders, before glancing across my face, over my clothes, down to the tattoo circling my wrist. I can almost see his thought process: Tall teenage dude with scuffed jeans and a leather jacket, scar on his face, and most likely gang tattoos. Just finish his stupid sandwich and get him out of here.

“No problem,” the guy says and shoves my lunch down the counter.

I step out of line to wait. I catch the Slayer’s eye. He shifts the sword closer to his hands and I can’t help smirking.

He knows.

I know.

This is going down. Hunters—especially the kind of hunter I am—don’t make a habit of giving ourselves away. My usual quarry is typically smarter than your non-magical riffraff. The Slayers must have picked up that I was coming. Which means I’ve finally found what I’m looking for.

Keeping the one Slayer in my peripheral, I scan the rest of the store for his buddies while Disgruntled Employee finishes my lunch. Slayers usually travel in pairs. I don’t see anyone else suspicious in here, which means his partner must be waiting outside.

Just down the road—beyond the gas pumps and swaying pines—I can make out the bristling building tops of the nearest city, Thornbriar. It’s a suburb of the much larger Rochester, but Thornbriar is where my search has led. That’s fine by me.

I have reasons for wanting to stay out of Rochester.

While I continue waiting, I make faces at the little boy in line. He giggles from behind his mom’s leg, his chubby cheeks spread wide in an innocent grin. The Slayer’s glower deepens. He probably doesn’t think people—sorry, creatures—like me have an ounce of humanity in us. That we’re wholly consumed by the beasts inside.

He’s not entirely wrong. He’s also not entirely right.

“Kaden?” The guy at the register calls my name. I finish crossing my eyes at the little boy, then pick up my sandwich. Pay with cash, always with cash, then walk out.

I’ve got a couple minutes, tops, to prepare.

The love of my life sits around the back of the store. To some, driving a 1966 Shelby GT is enviable. To others, impractical. To me, when I saw the muscle car sitting unused and unloved in someone’s driveway, it was a splurge in my splurge-free life. The ride’s taken me all over the country. I’m no gearhead, but the parts aren’t too hard to come by if you know the right repair shops. That’s the thing I liked most about it: Something breaks on a car, you fix it. When people break, they stay broken.

I toss the sandwich in the passenger seat and pop the trunk. Every belonging I’ve ever owned sits neatly packed in its proper place. Extra clothes and my journal are already stuffed in a quick-grab backpack. Snacks for the road strain behind mesh webbing. I click open the case that holds my two knives. Their rune-carved blades gleam up at me.

I shut the case. On second thought, I don’t feel like using my usual methods of fighting. I want to get my hands dirty.

Multiple pairs of footsteps approach behind me. “Turn around,” a man says. “I want to see your face when we kill you, abomination.”

I close the trunk with a chuckle. “Can’t you guys come up with more creative insults? Must have heard that one at least five times.”

I turn to find myself semi-circled by five of them. More than I thought. I must have hit the jackpot.

I pin the leader as the sneering one in the back. Sandwich shop sword man flanks him. The other three look like your run-of-the-mill Slayer grunts.

“We know who you are, hunter.” Their leader spits the term out like a piece of rancid meat. Which is pretty hilarious coming from them.

“I’m not sure you guys have the moral high ground here,” I say. “That kid in Oregon you left a bloody mess? I didn’t forget that. Or the Convocation some of your buddies torched outside Atlanta. Killed three people.”

As I talk, the darkness inside me starts straining against my control. A couple of the Slayers take a nervous step back. They can’t see my magic yet, but they feel a dangerous change in the air and that makes them scared. Good. Let them have a taste of what I am.

But not yet.

“Those beasts deserved to die,” their leader says.

“Those people,” I correct.

“Ha!” Their leader spits in disdain. The other Slayers close in. I step away from my car. I don’t want to dent it when things get messy. Already the Slayers are pulling out more collapsible swords and drawing knives. The air crackles with runic magic and I see the ancient symbols floating in the air around the woman on my left. They’ve brought a magic user.

They’ll need it.

The leader points the tip of one of his knives at me. “Kill hi—”

“Wait.”

The authority in my command causes the first eager Slayer to stumble in confusion. I hold my finger up, waiting.

Behind them, the little boy has just emerged from the gas station with his mother. She helps him into his car seat—thankfully neither one glancing our way—then hops in herself and drives off. My last view of him is his confused face catching sight of us before they’re both gone.

“Now go,” I say.

I take the magic user by surprise, darting close and sinking a fist viciously into her stomach. Her eyes nearly pop out of her skull as she wheezes and drops like a dumbbell. I don’t feel the slightest bit bad about the cheap shot. Or hitting a woman. When it comes to Slayers, I’m an equal opportunity bringer of pain.

With the most dangerous of their group taken out, I turn to the others. “Who’s next?”

The way they attack me has no order. It’s pathetic, really. I may be an unorthodox fighter, but I’ve got some tact.

I duck beneath a roundhouse and kick out the man’s knee. He drops with a scream and I’m already slipping past the slashing blades of his friends. The second man is more skilled, but after evading his sloppy swing I incapacitate him with a blow to the back of the neck. None of them are well-trained. Or wearing the usual Slayer body armor. It’s clear they didn’t send their A-Team to face me.

Advantage: mine.

I swivel in time to take a swift punch across the jaw. I stumble back and taste blood. My head spins and I have to shake it a couple times to clear my vision.

Okay, maybe I’ve gotten a little cocky.

“Die!” Sword man tries to deliver an overhead strike. I step aside and the blade swishes past and bites concrete. I deliver a crushing blow to his ribs and step over his collapsing body. His buddy behind trembles, too frightened to move. “You…You…”

“Easy way or hard way?” I ask him.

He yells and brings his own sword up.

Hard way it is.

I jab at his throat before he can swing. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he drops, unconscious. Easy. So, so easy—

A flash of steel out of the corner of my eye. I’ve gotten complacent. Forgot about the leader and his knives. It’s already too late to dodge as he slashes down at me. I bring my arm up to block.

Clang.

The daggers’ razor-sharp edges cut cleanly through the sleeve of my jacket but stop cold against the solid resistance beneath.

“No!” their leader grits out.

I twist my arm and the blades fly out of his hands. I didn’t feel the blow. I’m not even bleeding. As their leader stumbles back, I hold up my hand and show him the reason why.

Dragon scales, black as the deepest depths of space, crawl up my arm. I pull my sleeve back to inspect the damage. There is none, of course. I’m far from invulnerable, but it’ll take a lot more than a paltry attack like that to hurt me.

I flex my dragon claws a few times and shift back to my normal tan human skin.

“Close. Maybe next time.”