Free Queen of Dragons: Steamy Fantasy Erotic Romance (Dragon nights Book 1) by Tasha Bell Page B

could
see the disappointment etched on his brooding face. He had been expecting a
huge and battle-ready army that would thunder down the mountain like an
avalanche, sweeping all before it. Instead he barely had enough men for a game
of kick bladder. For months he had been in a terrifyingly black mood, and Viviana
had hardly dared go near him.
     Over the
course of the winter two more had joined them. Viviana had been delighted to
see her loyal page Hugh who had staggered into the camp few weeks after them on
unsteady and bleeding feet. He had said that he was going to serve his lady
whether it be at Loxley Hall or a hut in the mountains and Christian had
shouted at him and said that no one was serving anybody up here, and if they
wanted to stick to the old order they should both leave the camp at once. The
second new arrival had come as the snows began to melt in the pass, he a
brought horrible news from the village where Captain Bates and his men were
cracking down on anyone they thought might be a subversive. Apparently Matt
Tindall, drunk on power, had beaten one of the blind men from The Bull Tavern
half to death in the village square for laughing at Matt’s new title - Chief
Keeper of the Peace - and King John had levied a new flat-rate tax across the
nation, having found his coffers bare after the long war. Christian had cheered
up at each piece of bad news, reasoning that the more disheartened the people
were, the more likely they were to support his rebellion.
    Viviana had arrived
in the shabby camp with no knowledge of cooking and no intention of learning,
so she had spent the winter training in combat with the men, leaving Alexandra
to prepare mouth-watering casseroles and breads with the scant ingredients
available in the outlaws’ stores. At first Viviana had found the men in the
camp ridiculous, they were so zealous and passionate about their revolutionary
cause that they had turned the highborn class into monsters in their
imaginations, into a mythic group of people who existed only to bring pain and
suffering to the common-man. When she heard them talk about the supposed plots
of the feudal lords to further humiliate and disenfranchise the serfs Viviana
thought about her peers, about Sir Robert Herriot, and knew that the
revolutionaries were wrong. The landowners didn’t want to make their lives
worse, they just didn’t care about them. To a highborn the simple people were a
resource like livestock – better if they were healthy, but if a herd had to be
slaughtered occasionally then so be it.
    She looked down at
her forearms resting in her lap, over the course of the winter they had grown
strong and muscular from hours of wielding her axe. She knew that if she were
to look in the mirror know she would not recognise herself as the highborn lady
she had been. Her once lustrous hair was tied back in a rough plat and her face
was caked with dirt. Viviana realised that for the first time in her life she
felt strong.
    She heard a screech
echo between the high peaks and looked up in time to see the leathery wings of Vultonis
as he flashed in front of the sun. At first those in the camp were certain that
the egg would not hatch, that it was too cold in their mountain pass, but
Viviana had told them about the dragon’s nests on the high peaks and reassured
them that the egg stood a better chance than anywhere else. No one knew how
long ago the egg had been stolen, or for how long it had lain in the treasury
of the pretender king, perhaps a century or more, but the move to high altitude
once more seemed to do it good, and it had begun to vibrate.
    Viviana had watched
over it for long weeks, in turn with the others, they were all terrified that
it would be carried off by one of the large grey wolves that haunted the pass.
In the end she was the only one who had been around to witness the hatching. She
had hardly dared breathe as the shell fractured and a small sharp tipped snout
forced its way out, followed by a