Do you need something new to read right now? You can see all my books, including 5 completed series, at www.rachelaaron.net or by clicking on “Want More Book?” in your eReader’s table of contents. You can also page ahead to read a sample of the first book in my original DFZ series, Nice Dragons Finish Last!
Again, thank you so so much for going with me on this journey. You are the reason I get to write every day. Thank you for reading from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you’ll stay with me for many more books!
Yours always and sincerely,
Rachel Aaron
Need more dragons in your life? Try the book that started it all!
As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: stay quiet, don't cause trouble, and keep out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't cut it in a family of ambitious predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.
Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ—a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit—Julius has one month to prove to his mother that he can be a ruthless dragon or lose his true shape forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are seen as monsters to be exterminated, he's going to need some serious help to survive this test.
He just hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons.
Keep reading for the free sample!
Chapter 1
“Get up.”
Julius woke with a jump, toppling off the slick modern couch. He landed face down on hard white carpet, smacking his knee painfully on the corner of his sister’s abstract coffee table in the process. When he reached down to clutch his smarting joint, his sister kicked his hand away again with the pointed toe of her black leather flats.
“I have to be at the hospital in thirty minutes,” she continued as she marched across the room to yank open the hanging blinds. “That means you need to be out of here in ten. Now get moving.”
Julius rolled over and sat up, squinting against the bright ray of sunlight she’d sent stabbing across her ultra-fashionable, ultra-expensive apartment. “Good morning to you, too,” he said, furtively rubbing his injured knee, which was still throbbing.
“Try afternoon,” Jessica snapped. “Honestly, Julius, it’s nearly five. Is this when you got up at home?” She turned with a huff, walking over to the marble breakfast bar that separated her immaculately white kitchen from the other immaculately white parts of her apartment’s open floorplan. “No wonder Mother kicked you out.”
Mother had kicked him out for a whole host of reasons, but Julius didn’t feel like giving his sister any more ammunition, so he spent the energy he would have used explaining himself on standing up instead. “Where’s your bathroom?”
She stabbed one perfectly manicured nail at the hall, and he shuffled as directed, though it still took him three tries before he found the right door. The others led into beautifully furnished bedrooms, none of which looked to be in use.
Julius sighed. Two guest bedrooms, and she’d still made him sleep on the couch. But then, Jessica had always been very conscious of where she stood in the pecking order, which was usually directly on top of Julius’s head. The only reason she’d let him sleep here at all was because he was her brother, and the consequences for not helping family were dire. In any case, it wasn’t like he was in a position to complain. When you found yourself shoved off a private plane into a strange airport at dawn with nothing but the clothes on your back, you took what you could get.
He found the bathroom and showered as fast as he could only to get right back into the same faded T-shirt and jeans he’d slept in, because what else was there to wear? He didn’t even have a toothbrush, and he wasn’t about to risk Jessica’s wrath by using hers. In the end, he had to settle for mostly clean, raking his shaggy black hair into some semblance of order with his fingers and wishing he’d had a chance to get it trimmed before his life had gone down the drain. Of course, if he’d had any advanced warning of last night’s personal armageddon, he wouldn’t have wasted it on a haircut.
By the time he emerged into the living room again, Jessica was dressed for work in a pants suit, her long, blond-dyed hair pulled back in a tight French twist. She sat in the kitchen, perched on a silver barstool like a model in an interior design magazine as she sipped coffee from a minimalist white mug. Naturally, she hadn’t made any for him.
“Here,” she said when she saw him, shoving a sleek, black metal rectangle across the marble countertop. “This is for you.”
Julius’s breath caught in amazement. “You got me a phone?”
Jessica rolled her brilliant green eyes, the only family feature they shared. “Of course not. Unlike you, I know how to be a dragon, which means I don’t give out freebies just to be nice.” She hissed the last word through sharpening teeth, letting a bit of her true nature show before resuming her human mask. “It’s from Bob.”
Julius snatched back the hand he’d been reaching toward the phone. Bob was his oldest brother and their dragon clan’s seer. He was also insane. Presents from him tended to explode. But the phone looked normal enough, and Julius had already been kicked out of his home and dropped in a strange city without a dollar to his name. Really, how much worse could today get?
He picked up
