Caged Warrior

Caged Warrior Dragon Kings 1 by Lindsey Piper

To MB and KL.

Thanks for Billie.

Malnefoley:

No time for formality, cousin. Forgive me.

My darling Caleb is dead. Jack and I have been imprisoned. Dr. Aster is obsessed with learning how Jack was born naturally. Endless experiments and torture. He removed one of my ovaries. My knuckles have yet to heal. He’ll cut off my hands if I fight back again, but I’m tempted every time my little boy screams.

Those who’ve been ruined are sent to the Cages. Some never return. Reed, of our own Clan Tigony, will try to escape before that fate. I hold little hope. He’s been driven insane. One leg taken. No tongue.

Please help us! You lead the Council. I know we’ve had our differences, but to keep punishing me will destroy the Dragon Kings. Aster guards the secret to our survival, but at this price?

Hurry, Mal.

In love and faith of the Dragon,

Nynn

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for my family, my friends, and my agent, and to Lauren and Kate. I held the keys to a wonderland. You encouraged me to open the door.

ONE

She wasn’t in the lab. That’s all she knew. The smells were different. Fewer sterilizing cleansers and less recycled air. More body odor. Piss and sweat. Dirt. Wet rocks.

Audrey opened her eyes and blinked. She pushed up onto her hands and knees. Pain banged at her temples—the ache of still-healing blows to the skull and her own frantic pulse. Lifting her head was an effort like swimming through wet cement.

Her fuzzy vision sharpened as she got used to the dim lighting. Just a pair of bare incandescent bulbs. A humid mist hung heavy in the cavelike room. Even when her eyes worked together, focusing, that mist ebbed away at details. She couldn’t tell where the algae-covered walls began and ended.

The bars of her four-by-four cage were a prison. Solid iron. She lifted swollen hands and grasped the cold metal. Frustration ate at her insides. Rattling the cage bars, she shrieked.

“Where is my son?”

At least in the lab, she and Jack had shared a cell. No bars. Only walls painted black. Just as disorienting. But that confinement had almost felt safe. She’d held her boy, thankful the darkness concealed the worst of their wounds.

Now she had iron bars, algae, and a black pit where her heart had been.

“Where is he? Aster! You son of a bitch!”

Footsteps.

The hair lifted on the backs of her forearms. As her heartbeat jacked, she noticed her dirty body. Her vulnerability. She wore a paper hospital gown—no underwear, no shoes. Had she been dragged straight from the lab? The last thing she remembered was being strapped to an operating table after having slipped the note to Reed. A mask had pumped anesthetic into her mouth and nose but she’d been hopeful for the first time in months.

Maybe that explained her grogginess. From surgery to a Dragon-damned cave.

Now she wore a damping collar. But why? Her powers had never manifested. Giving birth to the first natural-born Dragon King in a generation was the only remarkable thing she’d ever done.

She forced the distracting details away. Look for a way out. A way to survive. The iron bars were a lost cause, but the floor was pitted concrete.

With a crack in the corner.

Audrey picked where moisture had worn away a small crevice. Her fingertips bled. Aching knuckles stretched shadow puppets along the wall. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Her toes gripped for balance as she scraped harder, faster.

The steps echoed more loudly. Heavy. Determined. Certainly male. His footfalls hit too heavily for a lean man. A bruiser. One of the Aster cartel’s bodyguards. She didn’t stand a chance, but she kept clawing. Her breath became hot steam in her lungs.

A piece of concrete about the size of her fist gave way. One pointed end had promise. If she could strike just the right spot on the man’s temple . . .

She edged away from the bars until her spine pinched against the rock wall. After twisting her long hair, she shoved it down the back of the hospital gown. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to spring.

As a member of the Honorable Giva’s immediate family, she’d been instructed in martial training from an early age. She’d never wielded the powers of her kind, and she was seriously out of practice, but she was not helpless. The chunk of concrete rested in her palm. It was the difference between dying—and dying while fighting.

A flashlight’s beam penetrated the recess of the cave. Audrey narrowed her eyes. She watched through her lashes. The man had so many advantages. That realization should’ve cowed her. Should’ve turned her backbone to mud and left her weeping. But after having been a victim for more than a year—drugged, bound, helpless—she felt mighty. No manacles. No hallucinogens. Just a rock in her hand and a blaze of pure rage.

The man stepped into clear view.

Easily more than six foot, he was built for breaking bones and ripping off limbs. Brawn. Solid muscle. Powerful biceps. Plate metal covered his heart and vital organs, leaving his arms free. Calf-high boots were made of toughened leather. Bare, muscular thighs flexed with the slightest movement. But he didn’t seem the kind of man to make slight movements. Everything about him was overwhelming.

His jaw was fixed in an expression she’d learned to recognize: You will find no mercy here.

Audrey gave her flight instinct a hard shove. She pushed far into the shadows. Futile, really, when he aimed the beam directly at her face. She squinted and kept her right hand out of sight as the cage was unlocked.

“Disgusting,” he muttered.

“And you’re a traitor,” she spat in the language of the Dragon Kings. A language she hadn’t used for nearly a decade.

Since meeting Caleb, she hadn’t given much thought to the old ways. Her happiness as a human wife had been too easy. Too good to last. But long ago, the ways of the Dragon Kings had been her entire life—the ritual and the covert power.

No matter her ostracism from her clan.

Years of rage came rushing back. The coiled ferocity in her legs exploded. She leapt. The cage door swung