Prologue

- Mariana, stop! - Arthur's voice rang with excitement and anger, causing a crowd of fearful goosebumps to sweep down my spine. - You misunderstood everything!

- Yeah of course! I breathed softly and sped up, mentally cursing my friend who persuaded me to drop in here “only for ten minutes”, and dreaming of being anywhere, as long as it was away from him and this place.

The heavy footsteps of a man rumbled up the stairs, and my heart rumbled in time with them. I raced up the stairs and prayed desperately that there would be a lock on the guest room door, because I didn't like the direction this party was taking.

Alcohol flowed like water, dances and competitions became hotter, and laughter and excited cries of the merry crowd grew louder. The owner of this disgrace also became so bold that he tried to decompose me right in the pantry, in which I was hiding from drunken guests, and I barely managed to escape, fleeing from him.

The door I needed was right around the corner. I darted into it, clicking the desired lock, and breathed a sigh of relief, leaning my forehead against the wall. However, I was not happy for long. Exactly until the moment I realized that instead of the silence of the guest bedroom, I was enveloped in steam and the sound of water in the bathroom.

I turned around slowly, somehow spotting the artsy marble slabs and unfamiliar plumbing, and then swallowed hard and froze, afraid to even breathe, so as not to break this moment into a thousand pieces.

With his back to me, long, perfectly even muscular legs wide apart, a man stood, leaning his fists against the wall in front of him. Tight streams of water lashed him over his tense back and trickled down his swarthy skin in thin streams, skirting the relief muscles of his shoulder blades, shoulders and arms entwined with thick tourniquets-veins. Large drops broke from black, with a scarlet tint, hair and rushed down, outlining a straight line of the spine and small dimples on the lower back.

My gaze followed these streams, and I could hardly overcome the desire to collect sparkling drops with my lips, press my chest against his damp skin and run my fingers over the barely noticeable network of thin, old scars on the shoulder blades, which emphasize this perfect beauty with a bizarre, broken pattern. Some obsession!

The only thing that stopped me at that moment was the feeling that if I took a step forward, there would be no turning back.

There, under the tight jets of water, stood the real Predator. A beast lurking in ambush and paralyzing the victim with its perfection, a viscous aura of power, from which even I, who had seen many beautiful men, gave way to my knees.

"Oh my God!" - a thought flashed through my head when I fully appreciated the picture that appeared before me and tried to drive away thoughts unusual for me. And then, unable to stand it, she nevertheless extended her hand and exhaled through her teeth when her fingers touched the hot, bare skin.

A moment - and on the shoulder blade of the man, at the place of my touch, a bright tattoo bloomed, which I did not have time to see, because the Predator turned around sharply, intercepting my wrist with a wide palm, and the pupil in his eyes, black as night, suddenly stretched into a vertical scarlet thread .

- What the hell?! I screamed and twitched back, and the stranger grunted and extended it insinuatingly, squeezing my hand tighter:

“Actually, a dragon, baby. But for you, I'll be anything. Where are you from, like this?

His low, velvety voice swept through my body like a fiery flurry, reverberating with a vibration deep inside, and settled down in the lower abdomen like a nerve knot.

I twitched harder, finally yanking my wrist out of his grasp and peeling off the hot, wet skin I still wanted to touch. To pain, to itching in the fingertips. What's wrong with me?!

“From there,” I said in a trembling voice and waved at the door, and then, exhaling, I did a huge stupidity - I rushed out of the bathroom, believing that the familiar, albeit a little violent, Arthur was better than this frighteningly beautiful stranger.

The quiet laughter of the man enveloped the room with rustling rustles, and then he suddenly froze, tracking my step, growled and rushed to me, ordering me to stop, but I had already slammed the door in his face, trembling with a rush of adrenaline and wild panic.

For a moment, my eyes darkened, it sucked in my stomach, as if I had taken off sharply on some crazy ride, and then my body became light and weightless, to immediately fill with heaviness, which suddenly seemed unusual to me.

I blinked slowly, dispersing the veil before my eyes, and turned around, trying to figure out how to escape from Arthur's mansion protected by guards, but only exhaled in a dazed way, finding behind me not a corridor, but a pile of stones in the middle of a rainforest:

- Oh-fi-get out! Children do not go to Africa for a walk ... Fuck!

Huge trees intertwined with thick vines were lost somewhere in the sky. From everywhere came some rustling, rustling and champing. I backed away, but, of course, the door through which I entered was no longer there, but there was a kneeling man in some kind of robe, who, noticing my crazy look, bowed low and said:

- Welcome to Raygon, my Lady. Follow me, you are already waiting.