Cato_House of Flames Read online

  They sprinkled dragon DNA across the world, hoping that one day their DNA would take root and mingle with the lifeforms who walked the planet at that time.

  They had gone into their stasis pods and buried their ships deep underwater, only to be awoken when the time was ripe. No one had expected to sleep for million years. But when they woke up, the House of Flames found that the seeding had worked. Dragon Souls lived among the humans, carrying with them recessive dragon DNA. Among these Dragon Souls were the fated mates of the awakened dragons.

  The first to find his mate was their leader, Kian. Then their most aggressive warrior, Dax, found his mate. Followed then by the crew’s rogue, Aidan. Cato had feared his mate would never arrive, but now that he looked on the screen and saw a photograph of Penelope Baptiste focused intently on her computer screen, he knew she was his.

  His dragon growled mercilessly inside his brain. Cato struggled to his feet, trying to shake away the roaring in his mind.

  “Mate, mate, mate!” His dragon screamed.

  “Okay, okay,” Cato said. “I hear you.”

  When the other men on his crew had found their mates, he had not fully believed the extent of the mating impulse. They all felt it upon awakening, and he had thought ‘how much worse could it be?’ But the moment his dragon saw Penelope, he knew exactly how much worse it could be.

  Cato feared he would never think straight again. His mind was fuzzy and disjointed. How could he make decisions or know how to act? His brain was a muddled mess, and he felt like a damned fool. Not a feeling Cato, the technology officer of the House of Flames, was used to feeling.

  He would have to put a stop to this one way or another.

  “Penelope Baptiste graduated with a Master’s degree in Information Technology from the University of Washington one year ago. She is the youngest head of IT the Seattle Public Library has ever hired at only twenty-six years old. Her twin sister Flora Baptiste, is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Washington in genetic engineering. They live together at 126 Green Lake Ave. in Seattle, WA. Her parents died when she was twelve and was raised by her great aunt Camilla Baptiste. It was clear from young age that the girls were quite gifted. Both received full scholarships to the university and have held the top marks ever since.

  A week ago, Flora Baptiste was reported missing to the Seattle police. The missing persons case was closed, concluding that Flora had chosen to leave her structured life and to drop out of society.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Cato mused.

  “Penelope Baptiste recently designed a new search engine for the entire Seattle Public Library system and is hard at work implementing her new design. She has been lauded as an innovator to watch, and multiple headhunters from multiple technology companies have tried to hire her.”

  “Why does she work for the library?”

  “I can’t answer that question.”

  Cato scratched his chin, staring at the girl. She was so beautiful his mouth watered. His dragon wanted to blow flames all over his laboratory. He clutched his forehead and gritted his teeth, growling.

  “She’s clearly highly intelligent. And beautiful…” He swooned.

  Where did that come from? Cato, chief technology officer of the House of Flames, did not swoon. First things first. He had to determine if this woman was in fact a Dragon Soul.

  “Bethi, I want you to find DNA information on Penelope Baptiste. Analyze anything you find and tell me if she is a Dragon Soul.”

  “DNA information located. Penelope donated blood at the university blood drive eighteen months ago. Examining sample on file…. Penelope Baptiste is a Dragon Soul.”

  “That settles that then,” Cato said, his dragon’s screams drowning out all rational thoughts. It was nearly impossible for him to organize his mind like this. He felt like he was trudging through mud as his inner dragon used every ounce of its strength to cry at him that Penelope was his mate.

  “This is ridiculous,” Cato grumbled.

  “What is ridiculous?” Kian asked, walking into the ship they had buried in their basement.

  “My dragon. I mean my mating impulse. I mean… My dragon thinks I’ve found my mate.”

  “Congratulations,” Kian said, slapping Cato on the back.

  The force of Kian’s blow made Cato stumble forward, taking him completely off guard. He felt clumsy and slow. Not only mentally but physically as well.

  “Who is she?” Kian asked.

  “A girl named Penelope Baptiste. She hacked into our databases. But I cannot be sure that this woman is my mate until I’ve done the mating analysis, just like the rest of you.”

  “Of course, of course,” Kian said.

  As the sun in the Dragonian system had begun to die over a million years ago, the female birth rate among dragons had quickly declined. Fewer female dragons were born each year as time went on. And by Cato’s generation, it was unheard of for dragons to rely on instinct to find their fated mates anymore. It was all done by computer to assure the match was scientifically accurate. When there were so few females left in the world, no one could afford liars or cheaters. Everyone had to be sure who was whose fated mate.

  And because it had been so long since dragons had relied on instinct to find their fated mates, when the dragons of the House of Flames began to find theirs, Cato and Kian had decided that they would continue to rely on mating analysis before accepting any dragon’s instinct about his mate.

  Even with a fraction of one percent of the humans being Dragon Souls, there were many tens of thousands of possible mates on the planet. But the dragons were also in hiding. They couldn’t allow humans to know they existed. They were here to protect humans from their ancient enemies, the vampires, who were now also living on the planet Earth.

  If the humans knew either existed, it could send the world into panic and chaos that could destroy society and the world as humans knew it. The dragons did not want to contribute to a social apocalypse. So, anything that would reveal a dragon to a human was frowned upon. They had to make sure that any female they dated and mated with was in fact their fated one. There was no other way.

  “We’ve all been right about our mates,” Kian reminded him.

  “Be that as it may, sir,” Cato said, addressing his captain and prince with his deserved respect. “We must maintain protocols for the safety of the dragons and the safety of the world.”

  “Quite right, Cato,” Kian said, smacking Cato’s back again. The force of Kian’s hand nearly slapped the breath right out of Cato’s lungs.

  “Are you all right?” Kian asked. “You don’t seem yourself.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just this. The mating impulse. It’s been activated. And it’s a thousand times worse now than when I stepped out of stasis. I can barely think. Just walking and talking at the same time is a challenge. I don’t know how to resolve it.”

  “In my experience,” Kian said. “The best way to resolve the mating impulse, is to mate with your fated one.”

  Cato rubbed his temples as his inner dragon roared. He could barely hear Kian’s words over the screaming. But it seemed correct. Everything Kian said seemed perfectly logical. At least something was making sense.

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t believe I let that happen,” Penelope grumbled at herself. “What am I? An amateur?”

  She’d cut the power to her entire system, unplugged every cable, and was now in the process of reconfiguring her… everything. Luckily, she had all her data partitioned into multiple password-protected drives. She installed a completely fresh operating system while off-line and changed her IP address, rerouting it through several proxies.

  That took her all night, so she was unable to search for her sister and only got one hour of sleep. She was so tired the next day that she considered calling in sick. But then she thought about Flora; what would Flora say? She knew exactly what Flora would say, so she rolled out of bed, got herself ready, chugged down some coffee and a four-hour ene
rgy drink as she made her way out the door.

  She made it to the library with five minutes to spare and climbed the stairs to her office where she walked in and closed the door behind her. Her head was spinning from lack of sleep and she couldn’t stop thinking about getting hacked.

  Pushing away from her desk, Penelope moaned and stood up. She needed more coffee. A lot more coffee. She trudged into the break room and luckily had it to herself.

  She loved Candice. She was a great friend and an amazing, intelligent, driven woman. But Penelope didn’t want to have to talk about men right now. And men seemed to be Candice’s favorite subject. Penelope is certainly didn’t begrudge Candice her fun. She wasn’t jealous or judge-y. She just couldn’t keep up. And if there was a subject that Penelope couldn’t compete in, she liked to avoid it altogether. And dating men was definitely one of those subjects.

  Penelope brewed two coffee packets into her mug, staring at the black liquid as it spurted into the white porcelain.

  “There you are,” she heard Candice’s voice behind her. “Have you seen the hotties on the construction crew today?”

  “Are there new ones?” Penelope asked, not looking up from her coffee.

  “Oh honey,” Candice said. “I don’t know if they’re new, but it’s hot outside today and they’re all wearing tank tops. Their guns are ablazin’!”

  Penelope had to laugh. Candice was nothing if not consistent. She leaned out the window fanning herself.

  “Girl, you have got to look at these studs.”

  “I’m not in the mood.” Penelope grumbled. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “You didn’t? Did you take my advice and get yourself some loving?”

  Penelope considered for a moment whether or not she should tell her coworker that she had spent the entire evening scrubbing her computer system because she had hacked into the most elegant database she had ever seen. And then was abruptly ejected, causing her to nearly suffer a stroke at the ripe old age of twenty-six. She still had no idea whose system she’d hacked into. Maybe it was the CIA. Or the Pentagon.

  “Something like that,” Penelope muttered, sipping her cream filled coffee.

  Penelope knew that any minute men in black suits were going to come and arrest her and take her away forever. She crinkled her eyebrows together and palmed her forehead. But no matter the consequences, she needed to find her sister. And that information pathway had been one of the few clues she currently had to follow.

  If you didn’t count the other insane clue she had to follow. The suggestion that her sister had been kidnapped by vampires. She wasn’t sure which was worse, accidentally hacking into some covert government database or believing in vampires.

  “I gotta go,” Penelope said, tripping on the doorjamb as she stepped out of the break room.

  She swore under her breath as she spilled coffee on her hands. The heat of the liquid stung for a moment and she licked the droplets off. Groaning and rolling her eyes, she hurried to her office and sat in front of her desk.

  The anonymous user had replied to her message.

  “This is not a hoax. Meet me in fifteen minutes in front of Pike Place Market.”

  “Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know this?”

  She grumbled and grabbed her purse and coffee cup and left her office. On the first floor, she told her branch manager she needed a quick break and hurried outside.

  She jumped on the bus and got off at the market, losing herself in the bustle of the crowd. Street performers played music and the fish mongers barked their orders. Penelope looked around for some indication of the man who’d wanted to meet her. She needed to know where her sister was. No matter how crazy the lead, she was willing to follow it.

  She stood there as people milled about on either side. She sipped her coffee, waiting for some sign that the anonymous user was there. Gritting her teeth, she checked her phone for the time. She’d been away from work for twenty minutes already. She had a secure job on salary, and being away briefly during the day wouldn’t get her fired. But she took pride in her work and she knew that taking extra time for her breaks would be frowned on.

  She looked around, turning clockwise and then back again, scanning the crowd for faces that might be looking for someone just like her. She checked her phone again, it had been half an hour. Her coffee was gone and her head was hazy. Penelope swore and rolled her eyes, charging away from Pike Place Market.

  Whoever had told her to meet him wasn’t there and was probably never coming. It was probably just someone messing with her. And that made her so angry she could spit. She jumped on the bus headed back to her branch and returned to her desk a full hour after she’d left.

  Now she would have to work through lunch to make up the time. Penelope was not pleased. She lost an entire night’s sleep, would have to skip a meal, and was no closer to finding her sister. She rubbed her temples, the coffee not doing nearly enough to keep her awake, and got back to work.

  By the time the day was over, Penelope was exhausted and starving. She signed out and headed to the bus stop. When she made it back to her neighborhood, she stopped at the supermarket and stared at the ice cream freezer. She knew if she bought a pint of ice cream, there would be nothing left but bits of chocolate on the bottom of the container by morning.

  She growled at herself and reached inside, taking her favorite flavor. She dropped it in her basket along with a bundle of bananas, a frozen pizza, and a pound of coffee. Only the essentials.

  At home, the silence and emptiness clawed at her chest. She missed Flora so badly it hurt. A tear of anger slid down her cheek. Penelope dropped her paper bag on the counter in the kitchen and wiped the tear away.

  “I’ll find you Flora,” she said, turning on the oven and throwing her pepperoni pizza inside. She put everything else away and grabbed the pint of ice cream and a spoon before going to her computers. She checked her security, making sure no one had found her after the reconstruction of her system.

  It all seemed secure. She breathed a sigh of relief as she shoved her spoon into her Cherry Garcia. She took a big bite of cherries and chocolate and opened up the Internet forum where she’d met the anonymous user who’d stood her up today.

  “I’m sorry about today,” his message said.

  It was from fifteen minutes ago, while she was at the grocery store. “I think they found me. I’m going to have to lay low. If you’re reading this message, that means they haven’t found you yet. If you pursue your sister, you are in danger of being taken yourself. Choose carefully before you decide if you want to accept that danger. I lost my girlfriend. I wouldn’t give up trying to find her. But now they’re after me too. Take care of yourself. And if you can, don’t ever give up fighting.”

  “Greeeeat,” Penelope said, her mouth full of ice cream. “This guy’s a lunatic. I can’t believe I went to go meet him during work.”

  Her pizza finished cooking and she slid half the pie onto a plate and devoured it. She was starving and exhausted and needed to eat and sleep. That was all she could think about right now. As much as she wanted to follow any possible lead to find her sister, she had to get some rest. The last thing she did before climbing into bed was hack the anonymous user’s account on the forum.

  Chapter 4

  “I have to find her,” Cato said, brushing past Kian. “I can’t just sit here while my dragon tears me apart.”

  “By all means,” Kian said. “Go find her.”

  Cato charged through the living room past Aiden and Winnifred, Dax and Aria. Aiden played his guitar while Aria sang, and Winnifred and Dax listened. Cato felt the buzz of Aria’s magical tune filling his heart. But it did him no good. It didn’t lessen the torment his dragon was subjecting him to.

  As he passed from the living room into the hallway, he tripped on the carpet and nearly fell on his face. He heard Dax laughing behind him as he fell on his palms. Cato grumbled, lifting himself up and brushing himself off. He charged out t
he front door without a word and heard Aiden asking Kian what had gotten into Cato.

  Cato didn’t stick around to listen to the explanation. He didn’t want to know what Kian said, and he didn’t care. He’d never felt so frustrated, incompetent and clumsy in his life. Cato was not the fastest or the strongest dragon in the House of Flames, but he was surely the most intelligent. And even his mind was now betraying him.

  He jumped into the Lamborghini, pulled out of the garage, and sped down the driveway. Leaving the mansion behind.

  “Are you going to find her?” Kian asked him through their mental link.

  “Yes,” Cato answered.

  “When you think you’ll be back?”

  “When I’ve made her mine,” Cato growled.

  “But the mating analysis,” Kian asked.

  “I will perform the analysis as soon as I get some fresh DNA material.” Cato said, before shutting off the mental link.

  He didn’t want to hear any more. His mind was a mess of roaring and growling and scratching, flapping wings and biting fangs. He rubbed his hand over his face as he steered the car with the other. Pushing his foot into the accelerator, he sped down the road. He drifted into the other lane and almost ran into a farm truck coming the other direction.

  Cato swore in Dragonian as he wove back into his lane. Things were not going his way. He needed to find this woman, prove she was his, and then mate with her. He couldn’t live like this.

  He growled at himself, knowing that he had lectured the other dragons about their mating impulses. He’d told Kian to take things slowly. He’d told Dax to be less aggressive. He’d told Aiden to be less secretive. But now, in the midst of his own mating impulse, he felt like a blind idiot.

  He had to get into the city as quickly as he could to begin wooing Penelope immediately. He had watched all the romantic movies and studied them relentlessly as he had told the others to do. But now that it was his turn, he was at a complete loss.