Legion: Alpha Dragon Shifter Romance (Dragon Rules Series Book 1)

brute even when he was a child. He was rude and unmanageable, but he was a skilled fighter, like his father. We fought for three hours before Dakon, ran me through.”
“Ran you through?”
“Stabbed me with a steel blade. It clipped my heart. Had my dragon not shifted, I would have died.”
“You shifted,” she said.
“I did, but so did Dakon. He hissed when my gold scales formed. He attacked me, but my dragon has no equal in battle. I extended my scythes, something an adolescent dragon should not be able to do, and pinned him to the earth. My blades rested on his throat. He had no choice but to submit.”
“He attacked you when you’re the size of a mountain? Was he nuts?”
“I was no larger than a small cottage. Magnus still held the magic of our clan. I was simply the chosen vessel when Magnus sought his eternal rest with his mate.”
“Magnus died with his mate and you became leader, but how did the elder dragons die.”
“A month later, someone betrayed us. I never found out who, but I was traveling with my parents....” He trailed off. His eyes searching the clouds.
“Legion?”
“My mother was so proud of me. As was my father. She was kissing my forehead, telling me she always knew I was destined for greatness. That she had suspected I was special.”
“How did she know?”
“She said the plants told her. That mother nature herself chose me. I never got that answer. Twenty dark mages attacked us. They placed my parents in an immobilization spell and held them captive to keep me in line.”
Mara put her hands to her lips. “Where did they take you?”
“They took me to a castle in Scotland. It was the Mage stronghold, and no creature that had entered, ever returned.”
“How did you break free?”
Legion closed his eyes. The pain etched in every fiber of his being. “I didn’t. Magnus was at the end of his reign. His death would infuse me with the power of the Rule clan. They warned all dragons of the transition, and its cost. The druids united with us, giving us the means to destroy the dark mage, and his minions. That too had an unspeakable price.”
Mara swallowed dry air. “What was it?”
“A druid bomb.”
She shivered. “What is a druid bomb?”
“The druids combined the magic of all the mated dragons and every mature druid. They infused my parents with that magic.”
“How did they do that? What did it do to them?”
Legion’s eyes faded to black. “They glowed. I tore at my chains until blood ran down my arms, but I could not break free. My mother knelt down and told me she loved me. That they were proud of me and were sorry they wouldn’t be there to help me through the dark days ahead.”
Mara’s voice wavered. “The power killed them?”
“The power coursed through them, but magic has a price. And the one for killing an entire race was the virtual extinction of another. But sacrifice alone is not enough to create a druid bomb.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“My parents had the power of both races, but to save me, one had to kill the other.” A golden tear slipped from his eyes and ran down his cheek. “My father held the knife. He tried, but he couldn’t plunge the knife into my mother’s chest, even at her encouragement. The druids and dragons had agreed what needed to happen to save their future, but when the time came, he couldn’t kill her.”
Mara sniffled as she wiped the tears from her cheek with her palm. “How did they save you?”
“My mother took the knife from my father. She hugged, him and told him how much she loved him. That she was grateful for every moment of their life together. But that the future belonged to their son. She stabbed him in the heart as she kissed him.”
Mara wept into her hands, unable to process the depth of Legion’s sorrow.
“I felt the magic build inside me. Magnus had his second-in-command kill him when the knife hit my father’s heart. Though I burst through my chains, it was too late for my parents. The bomb exploded around me in a white haze. Nothing survived, except me. The druids and dragons tethered to the spell; all fell.”
She sniffled. “They all died.”
“Most of the druids did. The few left, sequestered themselves in the last temple, until performing the spell that distributed their magic into the human world. The mated dragons died with their women. The rest fell into stasis, some have been able to wake for short periods, some awoke and turned dark. Most haven’t moved since that fateful day.”
She wiped a tear with the back of her hand. “And you?”
“I stood in the middle of a crater, four times my original size. My dragon was powerful, gold, and weeping for the two people who loved him more than their own lives.”
Her speech came is stunted gasps. “I’m so sorry, Legion. That is unfathomable.”
He rubbed his chest. “Never doubt my feelings about a druid’s heart, or her strength. My father was a thousand times more powerful than my mother, yet her heart, her sacrifice and her love for me, were more powerful than any magic.”
“What did you do?”
“I was leader of the dragons and infused with the magic of our species, but the adult dragons were in stasis, so I had only the young to lead. I turned to the few druids still alive. They helped us, guided us... loved us.”
“Adara was one of those druids.”
Legion’s eyes flared with an eternal flame. “She was.”
Legion tracked the tear as it rolled down Mara’s face. Her compassion burned a hole in his heart, only to be filled with the need to touch her. The instinct to claim her had been building since the moment he saw her. Now it was a driving force that begged him to give in to the primal urge.
He was on the bed in seconds,