Mating of Convenience

Chapter 2

Everyone thought dragons were the dangerous ones.

Everyone thought dragons were the dangerous ones.Everyone was wrong.

Everyone was wrong.Calla Price stared at the social media page of the latest girl to go missing. Young, beautiful, innocent. Yesterday her friends had been holding vigils and setting the Internet ablaze with urgent pleas for help in finding her. Today her parents announced she was safe, but unable to make an appearance. She was in need of a bit of time to get over a recent break-up, they had said.

On the surface, it seemed reasonable enough.

Except that this was the fifth girl to disappear in the last several months. Once was unfortunate. Twice? Probably a coincidence. Five times? That was a big fat pattern.

Calla scribbled the girl"s name in her notebook and then took a screen capture of the post her parents had written on her page. If this worked the same as the other girls, the account would be closed before the end of the week with some fleeting farewell message, supposedly from the girl, saying she was stepping away from social media to get a little perspective.

A quick Internet search only confirmed Calla"s suspicions. The girl was the daughter of a financier. The last one had been an investor. The one before, a land developer. Then, an import-export trader. And the first… well, that"s where it got really interesting. The father of the first girl was none other than Councillor Peter Quick, the chairman of the human delegation responsible for negotiating with the Dragon Council to make amendments to the Dragon Agreement.

Calla"s heart pounded. She"d only been on the council with Quick for a year, but it was long enough to know the bastard would happily sacrifice anyone and everyone if it meant he"d gain prestige, power and money. Every time she sat in a meeting with him and the other men, she came away feeling dirty.

But they wouldn"t intimidate her into quitting. She wouldn"t let them.

It"d been damned difficult to get appointed to this thankless job, but she wouldn"t give it up for the world. Negotiations with the dragon shifters were critical and the old boys who made up the rest of the council—well, with the exception of Mrs. Christian, who was so muddled that she just voted with the men without thought anyway—didn"t seem inclined to defend the rights of women.

She stretched her neck from side to side, trying to loosen the tension that"d settled between her shoulders and along her spine. The situation with the dragons was challenging. She got it.

The winged beasts were desperate. They needed energy that only human females could give. That"s what balanced the clans. Without it they were losing their minds and going rogue and causing damage and blah, blah, blah. But that didn"t justify ripping away basic human rights from 50 percent of the population.

You"re exaggerating again, a voice in her head said. Her inner critic showed up when she was being irrational and it sounded a lot like her dad"s voice.

You"re exaggerating again"Okay, fine, less than 50 percent," she conceded.

Dragons tended to want women between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. Maybe forty, if they had to. Oh, and they didn"t really like people who were married or with kids. But that was still a sizable percentage of the population.

stillAnd Quick and shits like him only made a bad situation worse.

The council needed to quit trying to play God. They still hadn"t recovered from that whole election fiasco in the fall when they had sacrificed—SACRIFICED!—a woman to the dragons. Just like some B-movie!

SACRIFICED!Calla had fought that so hard… and she"d lost. Must be done for the greater good. Blah, blah, blah. That poor woman, Jasmine Gordon, had her home destroyed when a bunch of overly eager dragons invaded it to conk her on the head and drag her to their lairs.

Must be done for the greater good. Blah, blah, blahWell, that council decision had backfired. Big time.

Of course, what happened? Those damned men like Quick got off in the court of public opinion. But her? The only freaking woman on the council with any common sense got annihilated. She received the brunt of the public"s outrage at the arrangements with the dragons. It didn"t matter that she"d tried to stop the proceedings time and again. With only one vote, she"d been outmaneuvered and vetoed at every point.

No. The public didn"t care about any of that.

Her mere presence on the board that had agreed to give human women to the dragons had been seen as a betrayal to her s*x. She"d received hundreds of angry emails and a few death threats too. In fact, she still did. Another one had just come in that morning.

She rolled her shoulders to loosen the tension gathering there. There wasn"t a thing she could do about the past, but these girls…

A bright and smiling face stared at her from the computer screen. Calla swallowed. If what she suspected was true… this was just as bad. Worse, actually.

Her gut twisted as she reviewed her notes again. She had to be sure before blowing the whistle. She read her file again. All of it. Slowly. Methodically. And hopefully, with a bit of objectivity. In the end, her head was throbbing and her hands were shaking.

No, this wasn"t all in her imagination. She knew it wasn"t. If she had to guess, it seemed these powerful human families were bargaining their daughters… selling them to desperate dragon clans in exchange for power and wealth. And if she was right, Quick was at the heart of it. He had the means to orchestrate this. Through his position on the council, he had the necessary connections to the dragon world.

She had to find proof… to save these poor women from being bartered like cattle. More girls could be at risk. She had to do something. Now.

She tucked her notes in her bag and smoothed her hair with a trembling hand. She looked out her office window in the Interspecies Council Building at the city beyond. The people out there had no idea what was going on. Someone had to take action.

Could she do it?

Going to the human council was out of the question. Hell, going to any human would be dangerous. Dragon-related complaints or queries were always directed back to the same damned council. That was if anyone took her seriously, which was doubtful. What she was suggesting sounded like a plot from one of the late night movies she liked to watch.

Which meant she had only one other avenue…

She straightened her shoulders. Before she could change her mind, she clutched the meager evidence she"d collected and made her way through the labyrinth of hallways to the only elevator that went to every floor in the building.

Sweat clung to her skin and beaded along her hairline. She fanned herself with the folder she was carrying, praying she could tamp down her anxiety before she arrived at her destination. As soon as she entered the little box, she eyed the buttons she had never used before… the ones that would take her all the way to the top of the skyscraper. To the apartments where the dragons stayed when council was in session.

This was it. She pushed the button and prayed she was doing the right thing.

The way she figured it, the only ones who could help her were the very beasts at the heart of the problem.