QSFer Cari Z. has a new MM fantasy/dystopian romance out (bi/gay), Luckless book 2: Dauntless.
Evan Luck is a dragon rider who, after years of thinking he’d never bond with another one, now has a dragon again. His empathic connection with the powerful silver dragon Ladon, known in his human form as Lee Caldwell, has made them the most valuable defenders of the city of Forge against monstrous invaders. The fact that they love each other and dote on Lee’s ten-year-old son, Jason? Those are blessings Evan never saw coming. He knows life is good…even as he realizes that the world is becoming more dangerous by the day.
With monsters leaving the mountains of the Front Range to roam the plains for food and the influx of refugees to Forge increasing by the day, Evan has his hands more than full defending the city and training new recruits to fight. When Jason, desperate to bond with a dragon of his own but continually refused by the dragons of Forge, begins to lose control of himself, Evan and Lee make plans to do the unthinkable: leave Forge to fend for itself and take their son to Chicago, the nearest human and dragon stronghold to their own city.
But Chicago has its own terrors to deal with, and their last hope for Jason’s future might be lost before they can save it.
Get It At Amazon
Excerpt
The sun hung like a ball of steaming sulphur in the sky, edged by a corona of sickly yellow and brown. The last dust storm was still making its presence felt by obscuring visibility in all directions. Evan Luck’s eyes stung from the particles, and even with the mask covering the lower half of his face, his lips and tongue felt coated with residue. He wanted to spit but forced himself to swallow instead, leaning forward so he could get a better look over Ladon’s shoulder.
They were the lowest unit to the ground, circling and hovering as close as they could to the caravan from Cheyenne while maintaining just enough distance to keep the livestock from spooking. It was a slow, tedious task, but vitally important. People from all over the Rocky Mountain region had been making the dangerous voyage to the fortress city of Forge, built out of Denver’s bones, over the past year. Word had spread that Forge wasn’t only surviving in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, it was thriving.
How did humans anywhere manage to thrive in a land filled with monsters who considered them nothing but food? The reason for that was the dragon that Evan was currently sitting astride, and Ladon—Lee Caldwell when he shifted into his human form, the rarest ability among dragonkind—had as strong a sense of responsibility as Evan did. One of the horses below bucked as Ladon’s shadow passed over it, and before Evan could say anything, the dragon was moving up again, letting the steady wind propel him higher into the air.
You were fine, Evan said to Ladon. As an empath, he was one of a select group of people who could communicate and bond with dragons. With his first dragon, Juree, it had been different—they hadn’t spoken in words so much as in feelings and impressions. When Lee was Ladon, though, words seemed to pass across their bond with ease. The rider got his mount under control again fast.
There’s no need to stress them if I don’t have to, Ladon replied. His voice was like a distant roll of thunder in Evan’s mind, booming and heavy but not overwhelming. It was completely different from how he sounded as Lee, which was good, because as much as Evan loved Ladon, his relationship with the dragon was completely different from the relationship he had with the man. Besides, we’re getting close. Only a few more miles to go.
Finally. Cheyenne was about a hundred miles north of Denver, and traveling by Highway I-25—which was still the best bet despite the broken bridges and chewed-up concrete—was slow going. They were on day five of escort duty, and Evan felt like he hadn’t slept for more than four hours at any one time since they’d started. He didn’t like being away from their home so long, and he hated leaving Jason under someone else’s care.
Especially right now.
Reflective worry flared across their bond from Ladon, and Evan reached out to soothe him with his mind even as he stroked a hand down the side of his neck. He’s all right, he said, almost believing it himself. You know he loves Charlie, and she’d never let anything bad happen to him. If things had gotten really rough, she’d have sent us a message. Forge now had a dragon to spare for that—its youngest working dragon, Merek, the slender, black-scaled beauty who had bonded with a sylph-like teenage girl named Vanessa two years ago. They weren’t built for aggression, but for speed, and had taken to their role with alacrity.
It was a blessing, a city with so many dragons, but also a burden. Dragons needed to be fed, and as monsters became scarcer in close proximity to Forge, the dragons had to feed on livestock instead. The cattle, sheep, and goats Forge already had wasn’t enough to sate the appetites of three huge adult dragons and the mated pair’s numerous hatchlings and fledglings. Even with Ladon taking most of his nourishment in human form, to spare the herds, it was still a lot of meat. That was where the trade with Cheyenne came in.
Cheyenne had lost its last dragon, an old, grizzled brawler named Friya, in a battle against a horde of rougarans this past winter. Without a dragon, the city was both too big and too small to survive on its own—packed with people who’d streamed in from the countryside as times got tougher, but without the massive fighting beasts or weaponry necessary to hold off the monsters who had made Earth their home and seemed to be steadily swallowing it still, mile by mile.
The rifts between dimensions, the rifts that had opened out of nowhere and released Armageddon on the world, had been closed for nearly a hundred years now. Humanity had been devastated, first by beasts and then by its own weapons as it turned its nukes on the biggest of the newcomers, ruining the climate. Without the bonds that had spontaneously formed between dragons and humans, they would all have been dead long ago. As it was, smaller outposts were still being overwhelmed, with not enough dragons around to defend them, or the dragons that were there unable to find a human empath to bond with and taking off, wild and dangerous, for new horizons.
Ladon sent a stream of warm, soothing affection through their bond. Don’t worry, Evan. I’ll never leave you.
Evan rested his head against Ladon’s warm, scaly skin for a moment. I know. He was grateful for it every day, for the dragon who had chosen him after Evan had thought he’d lost his chance at another bond forever. He’d wanted to die after Juree’s death. Ladon was his second chance at life, and he would do anything to keep him.
A sparking red flare shot up from one of the outriders on the ground, startling Evan out of his introspection. He looked down at the woman who’d fired it, sitting astride a steady gray mare who didn’t flinch even as Ladon’s shadow enveloped her.
“Bolters!” she shouted, and even though she was too far away for Evan to hear, he could read her lips just fine. She flung out the hand holding a pair of binoculars toward the mountains. “Bolters coming in from the west!”
Bolters. Shit.
Author Bio
Cari Z. is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal peodystopian fantasy, romance, adventureple sometimes. Cari has published short stories, novellas and novels with numerous print and e-presses, and she also offers up a tremendous amount of free content on her blog and on AO3 as CariZee. Follow her blog, join her Patreon, or sign up for her newsletter to read her serial stories! New chapters post on a weekly/monthly basis.
| Author Website | https://www.authorcariz.com |
| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/groups/carizcrew |
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/author_cariz |