Origin Exposed: Descended of Dragons, Book 2 Read Online Free

his eyes were languid. So confident, so satisfied. So male .
    We didn’t say anything. There was no need. We simply lay there, enjoying the moment and each other.

Chapter 3
    “ W ow . When I pursued you as a suite mate I had no idea you’d be famous,” Timbra said, her wide eyes blinking innocently.
    “Oh. Shut. Up.”
    Timbra Redfern was not only my suite mate at Radix Citadel for Supernatural Learning, she was a valued friend. My best friend. That she had adorable furry ears and knobby knees was of no consequence. We all have our little issues. Mine, of course, was that I didn’t just turn furry; I also grew scales. Tough, armored scales of auburn and copper covered my body when in one of my new-found animal forms. In my other, I became a massive red wolf.
    I only knew one other person who had more than one physical form, and that was my…lover, Rowan Gresham. ‘Boyfriend’ wasn’t a good descriptor. Gresham was decidedly not a boy. We hadn’t known each other long enough to be partners. Lover would have to do.
    Timbra’s black eyes eyes were alight with mischief, her long lashes fanning across her cheeks with each blink. “I’m serious! Look around. Every person in this place either wants to be you or to do you . And I’m definitely going to have to change panties when I get back to my room.”
    My burst of laughter was accompanied by an involuntary snort.
    “Never mind. Not everyone. No way I’m screwing a snorter.”
    Timbra Redfern was witty and hilarious, but very few people knew it. On the outside she was stunning. Her willowy body looked flawless in any outfit, and she walked with grace. Her presence was always known, and she didn’t even try. But on the inside she was quite shy. She preferred blending in. The most striking thing about Timbra, though, was her ears. The velvety pointed things always protruded from the top of her dark honey hair and twitched whenever she was nervous or upset.
    Grins were still pasted on our faces as we made our way to the back of On a Roll sushi bar where Boone, Ewan, Layla, and Mari were toasting tiny cups of saki.
    Timbra was right; gazes darted and eyes widened as I passed, and my keen hearing picked up fragments of whispers. “That’s her!” and “You think it’s all true?”
    There were a few comments on my appearance that set my spine a little straighter “I’d give a canine for an ass like that,” or “That hair; that skin. So exotic.”
    I caught the end of one “…scrawny whore” and wheeled around, my gut clenching and face reddening as my temper flared at the insult.
    Livia. Dean Livia Miles, head of Radix’s Department of Craft and Ritual. Not my biggest fan. It had been Livia, a talented clairvoyant, who’d alerted Gresham to my existence in the first place. Her visions of me in his bed had been the cause of much contention between the two of them. That Rowan Gresham’s bed is exactly where I had ended up lent her psychic abilities real credit. Not that she lacked credibility—she was dean of one of Radix’s most important departments, after all. A fact she’d made miserably clear to me at every opportunity.
    When I first met her, I thought Livia Miles sophisticated and lovely. Now, heartache and bitterness pinched her features and she looked thinner, older. I did feel some regret for the way things had ended between she and Gresham. On the night of their breakup she found me in Gresham’s home dressed in nothing but his white button-down shirt. The circumstances had been innocent enough, but Gresham let her believe we’d been intimate. I thought this a fairly callous move on his part, but Livia Miles was nothing if not calloused already. She could handle it.
    In fact, it looked as if she was on a date. With none other than the sandy-haired Sabre Bar playboy and bartender Knox Mahon. Livia made a big show of rubbing her fingers playfully over his and then focusing her undivided attention on his every brogue and burr. Message received,