Destiny Kills by Keri Arthur

Destiny McCree wakes up on the seashore next to the body of a dead man, and isn't sure how she got there. Egan Jamieson is the dead man, and has been her lover for ten years now. He's dead, and Destiny knows she has to call the powers of air and sunlight at dawn to put his spirit to rest. Apart from that, she remembers not much. Not even her own name.

When Dawn comes, she sends Egan's spirit back to the sun and air, and his body burns, leaving behind only a pool of blood from his torn-up heart and chest, and a silver ring in the form of a dragon with ruby eyes. She decides to keep the ring to remind him of her, and remembers that she needs to go see her father, who is dying in Maine. She climbs the cliffs to the top of the cliff and finds two newlyweds leaving the house. She breaks in, showers off the blood coating her own body, finds clothing, and makes herself a sandwich to eat, then watches TV, and sees a man's face who she fears and hates in equal measure. She tries to remember more of her missing memories, but is startled to see the couple who own the house returning with a cop.

It seems that someone saw her and Egan's body on the beach, and called the cops about it. She flees the house and takes refuge in a stream, stripping off her borrowed clothes and sinking to the bottom to wait out the cop looking for her. She knows someone is hunting her, and she shouldn't allow herself to be found and discovered. She also discovers that she can hold her breath for much, much longer than a normal human can, and that she has a third eyelid that allows her to see clearly underwater... even water that looks murky and impenetrable to a human. She begins to wonder what she is.

After the cop leaves, she retrieves her stolen clothing and hikes to the highway, where she is nearly run over by a man in a car. His name is Trae, and he tells her that he is Egan's half-brother, and a Thief who steals things. He calls her Destiny, and she feels that the name is right. Trae was asked by Egan, as he was dying, to help Destiny. And he will, in return for the ring she has, which he wants to get information from their father, an extremely formidable Air Dragon.

Destiny realizes that she is a Dragon as well, a Dragon of Water, and that she was imprisoned for years by a man who was a scientist "investigating" the Loch Ness Monster. They forced her and Egan to become lovers, but after a while the relationship became a true one. However, they couldn't force her to breed for a female Water Dragon chooses when to bear children, and she simply chose not to.

Along with her were imprisoned several other Dragons, including her mother, a water Dragon, and several teenaged male air dragons. The youngest one was an imprisoned female air dragon, only seven years old, but captured when she was four. Destiny has sworn an oath to free her mother and the other children, but first she must find her father, at the behest of her mother.

In return for the ring, Trae agrees to help her, but she had hidden the ring in the sea, asking the sea powers to do so for her, so she cannot retrieve it for at least a few days. In the meantime, Destiny and Trae decide to go to another enclave of the scientists to find the codes needed to break through the security surrounding the other imprisoned Dragons. What troubles her, though, is Trae. She didn't know that Egan had any brothers or sisters, and Trae is a Draman, half-air dragon, half human, born of Egan's father and a human woman.

Can Destiny trust Trae to do right by her, or is he just as mercenary as he seems at first glance? Can she trust him not to betray her to the scientists, and more to the point, can she trust the connection and tingles she feels whenever he looks at her or touches her? Will he end up being her mate, or is he only a companion on her journey and nothing more?

Wow, this book was good. Destiny's waking up on the beach was intriguing to read, as she can barely remember anything about herself of why she is there due to a wound taken in her escape. Her discovery of her own strangeness is wonderful to read, and makes the reader wonder about her even as she wonders about herself. The snake-like marking on her back, so different from that of Egan and later, Trae, makes us wonder if it is a tattoo or a birthmark. We already know that both Trae and Egan are not human, but what are they?

When he finally find out, we, the readers, are deep enough in the story that the revelation barely creates a ripple in our sense of disbelief. After the discovery of Destiny and Trae's powers, and what they are, most of the rest of the story is less about what they are and more about if the two of them can trust each other. Trae is a thief, with a mostly blithe nature, but with a hidden core of steel engendered in him by the way he was raised by his cadre, or group of air dragons. Because his father was such a bastard, Trae, shunned because of his half-human heritage, left the cadre. He couldn't piss off his father because it would hurt his mother, who still works for the cadre.

Destiny doesn't know if she can trust Trae, but mostly she is out of options. She has no money, no clothes and wo way to get to her father other than by walking, Necessity forces her to accept Trae's help, and she at first views her attraction to him as more of a hindrance than a help. Once their relationship takes off, though, the desire and attraction between the two of them is intense, and it takes an effort for them to do something besides make the bed shake over and over.

But the story is a delight, as well as the relationship between Trae and Destiny. The story seems complete in this one volume, unlike Keri Arthur's Riley Jensen stories, and yet I ended wanting to read more. Other characters for sequel-bait are few on the ground, but Trae's half-sister is a possibility in the future, and one I would look forward to, based on the excellence of Keri Arthur's books.

This is a book I definitely recommend to lovers of paranormal romance or "supernatural" romance. It could possibly cover even "Monster" romance, although both Trae and Destiny are very much like normal humans except for the "able to turn into Dragons and with Dragon Powers" part. And of course, anyone who enjoys the Riley Jensen books will love this one, too. Highly recommended.