“WILL YOU ACCEPT this nose ring?” Verity repeated it over and over under her breath as she stood on the paving stones of the castle courtyard. Twenty-six dragon shapeshifter suitors would soon arrive. The Earth reality TV videos showed human bachelors and bachelorettes handing out roses to those who would continue on the journey towards finding mates. But roses would confuse the dragon bachelors. In dragon form, they might eat the flowers, thorns and all and then belch fire. However, gold in any form got all the dragons’ attention big time.

Verity’s curves, prized on the Dragon Planet, were on ample display as she stood in her human form. She wore a sparkling ice-blue gown that matched her eyes. Her dress artfully molded to her in front, open nearly down to her waist and cut almost as low clinging to her backside, although her long black hair covered most of the skin revealed in back. Verity didn’t shiver from the cold, despite the thin fabric. Her dragon blood ran hot. Any trembling was completely due to nerves.

“Will you accept this nose ring?” she muttered again. It was a simple enough phase but she just might mess it up.

Torches burned in the courtyard in front of the quaint old castle. It was a historic site, not a working fortress, a confection of towers and spires perched on a remote mountainside. Lights from the village at the foot of the mountain twinkled in the darkness below. Verity would stay here for the next nine weeks.

Modern lighting illuminated the center of the courtyard where Verity would greet each bachelor dragon in turn as he arrived. Cameramen, sound crew, and assistant producers circled around the edges of the courtyard. The whole planet was watching. Her every word and move were being recorded.

No pressure.

Tonight, Verity was The Dragonette, a bachelorette shapeshifter on a Journey to Love. She was also the Dragon King’s daughter. She stiffened her spine. She took a deep breath of the pine scented air carried by the breeze up from the forests below.

Each of the bachelor dragons would introduce himself as he arrived. The camera crew roamed around her, waiting for the men to arrive.

Verity’s father, King Harrenholtz, was a big fan of reality television shows from Earth. The Dragon Planet had a dwindling shapeshifter population. The ruler had decided that a television show would promote mating.

“We’re gathering together the best of the best young dragons from every corner of the planet, Verity,” the king told her. “All in one place for you to choose from. It’s one-stop-shopping as they say on Earth. You’ll be able to start nesting immediately, and I hope to see those baby dragons soon.”

Verity had no answer to this.

“We know your unusual interest in conversation and culture and—um, ideas, Verity,” The king’s tone indicated that these pursuits were useless at best, but he was willing to indulge her eccentric tastes. “So we made sure to include some men who are artistic or...well, I don’t know, clever. These dragons are the best of the best. Your hatchlings will raise the intelligence level of the whole species. So enjoy the journey and find me a son-in-law.”

Like she had a choice.

But simple, straightforward Verity, was planning her escape. Everyone knew she was pathetically bad at the basic dragon skill of planning and executing devious strategies. And she didn’t have a detailed plan. More like the ghost of a hope. This dating show had thrown everything into chaos. She needed to stay alert and look for her chance.

She had tried once before to run away from her father’s castle and the fate of being chained to a nest for a life of egg laying like a prize hen. Her escape attempt had ended in disaster. She wouldn’t let herself think about it. Her mind and body had been numb ever since.

The king was convinced that she had learned her lesson and wouldn’t try again. But Verity had grimly determined never to be in any dragon’s power ever again. She trusted no one to help. She wasn’t even sure she could do it. But Verity planned to watch for an opening to break out of her gilded cage before it was too late.

FOR YEARS, RYAN Ryan Mason had honestly only cared about three things—business, love, and dragons. The first two were gone. He sold the software company that had made him a millionaire. The woman he loved, Deborah, had left him when she realized he wasn’t staying on in Silicon Valley to chase the next big trend. Now he was back to the one thing that had always sustained him—dragons.

Ryan and his best friend Harvey had survived years of bullying with the help of dragons. Their small town of Miner’s Creek didn’t have a junior high or high school, so Ryan and Harvey were the new kids at the school in the nearest big town. They were instant targets. Ryan was tall and skinny, a growth spurt at age thirteen brought him some height, but he was lanky and clumsy—not ever a jock. Harvey was short, fat, and swarthy with glasses and dark curly hair that seemed oily no matter how often he washed it. He was built like a bulldog and he never met a sport he didn’t hate. From the first day of junior high, both of them got shoved and punched when they walked through the halls. All the other kids either ignored them or laughed at them. When everyone else excluded them, Ryan and Harvey were happiest as loners, the weird kids at school. They spent endless hours on their shared obsession with dragons and dragon lore. The power of dragons was real to them.

The bus back to Miner’s Springs stopped on the highway ten blocks from the junior high school. That was the place where the bullies showed up and started throwing rocks at them. Usually Ryan and Harvey just walked on as quickly as possible. Running was a bad idea, falling and getting kicked was the worst.

One day, a tall, skinny girl with red hair and freckles came out of an alleyway and stopped beside them. Without a word, she picked up a rock that had hit Harvey and launched it back at the boy who had thrown it. Not only did the rock hit the boy, he cried out. Before any of the four kids trailing Ryan and Harvey could react, the girl spotted another rock, bent down, picked it up and launched it at the ringleader of the bullies. It nailed him. That rock drew blood and the girl made a sound that was soft enough that only Ryan and Harvey heard it. A faint, but scary growl.

“She’s crazy, let’s go,” the head bully said. They retreated down a side street.

“Thanks for doing that,” Ryan said.

The three of them just stood there for a moment. The red-haired girl had green eyes, clear as bottle glass. Finally, she smiled.

“That was amazing,” Harvey said. “Are you like a baseball pitcher?”

The girl shook her head. “No.”

“Maybe you’re a ninja or something?” Ryan asked.

He meant it as a flattering joke, but Bridget pondered and finally said. “Don’t know what that is.”

How was that possible? Now that there were no rocks flying, the boys could tell she was about their own age.

“Ninjas are really cool,” Harvey said. “Not as cool as dragons, but close.”

The girl looked at him sharply. Then she nodded and seemed to accept it as a compliment.

They introduced themselves.

“I’m Bridget,” the girl said with an odd accent. “Bridget Green.”

Ryan and Harvey exchanged a glance. They agreed “not her real name” as plainly as if they had said it.

“What school do you go to?” Harvey asked.

“Don’t go.”

“You’re home schooled?” Ryan asked. “Wow.”

“Also cool,” Harvey said.

Bridget didn’t answer. The school bus stopped on the main road up ahead. She turned up another alley and vanished behind the houses that lined it.

After that, she showed up and walked with them after school every day. The bullies called them “The Three Stooges” and followed them from a distance yelling insults, but they didn’t throw rocks again. The three friends ignored them.

Bridget brought the boys to meet her mother where they lived in a trailer outside of town on a few acres that they had turned into a big garden where they seemed to grow most of their own food. Mrs. Green spoke no English, but welcomed them with a shy smile and offered them amazingly tasty cooked snacks.

Walking back from the first visit Harvey and Ryan agreed that Bridget and her mom must be hiding out.

“Maybe from a violent husband or something,” Harvey said thoughtfully.

“Or something even scarier,” Ryan didn’t say Immigration, but they both thought it. “They might be in real danger,” Ryan concluded.

“Maybe we can help her,” Harvey said.

Harvey’s parents ran a cafe in Miner’s Creek. They had welcomed Ryan in when his mother died of cancer and his father all but disappeared into his job. They sent Harvey over with leftovers from the cafe and food the women couldn’t grow in their garden like bags of flour and rice, roasts, ham, frozen fish.

Harvey was the one who discovered Bridget couldn’t read or write. He and Ryan set out to teach her. She learned, but she still preferred TV.

When he went off to Stanford, Ryan kept in touch and visited when he could. But dragons and friends had taken a backseat to business. Harvey went to Sonoma State and eventually opened a bookstore in Miner’s Creek. Ryan was happy to invest in it when he started to make money from his software start up. Ryan’s inventions spawned a small, thriving company in Palo Alto.

The year the three friends turned twenty, Bridget’s mother disappeared. “Gone home,” was all Bridget would say. Harvey got closer to Bridget. As soon as Harvey graduated, the same year he started the bookstore, they got married. No one was surprised. From the day, the two had a special bond.

The girlfriend Ryan found, however, surprised everyone including Ryan. Deborah was movie star beautiful. He couldn’t believe she chose him. He was six feet tall with a mop of curly light brown hair and nice enough hazel eyes, but no one as pretty as Deborah had ever sought him out. She took over his life.

“You’re a fixer-upper boyfriend, but you definitely clean up okay,” she told him. Deborah was not at all shy about taking credit for making him the most presentable nerd possible. He treated her as he envisioned a dragon would treat a princess. After his company sold and his bank account hit eight figures, he asked Deborah to marry him and move back with him to Miner’s Springs.

She was horrified.

“A few million dollars is a good start, but why not a billion dollars?” Deborah said. She moved on to a more ambitious entrepreneur. She broke his heart, but what else was new?

Ryan sold his house in Palo Alto and headed back to Miner’s Springs. He and Harvey expanded the store Dragon Lore and More. Ryan bought the building, some acreage behind it, a house nearby and a house next door for Harvey and Bridget.

Ryan’s started to collect every scrap of information he could find on the subject of dragons. The fact that dragons were mythical creatures didn’t bother him in the slightest.

Bridget was as passionate about reality TV dating shows as Harvey and Ryan were about dragons. She was the one who found The Dragonette footage and brought it to the men’s attention.

Harvey stuck his head around the door to Ryan’s basement lair, where he spent hours every day building the Dragon Library.

“Ryan, you have got to see this. Bridget found it,” Harvey said. “Rare footage of Dragon mating rituals, dude.”

“Harvey, is this one of those ‘too much information about your marriage’ things? If that’s the case, I’m afraid to look.”

“No, seriously, it’s like those reality TV shows Bridget loves, except with dragons. I was kidding about the mating rituals, it’s not X-rated or anything. Hey, it’s got a dragon princess, Ryan, need I say more?”

“If it’s got dragons, you know I want to see it now.” Ryan said. A little embarrassed by the thrill of longing that the words “Dragon Princess” aroused in him. “Send me the link.”

Alone in the store basement, half the galaxy away from wherever it was that dragons really did rule, Ryan watched footage of most beautiful woman he had ever seen being courted by giant reptiles.

Ryan closed his mouth, it kept falling open. Harvey was kidding about the mating angle. The video was G rated. Or maybe PG 13, considering that the dragon princess wore a dress that took Ryan’s breath away.

The videos showed the princess, her name was Verity, meeting and talking to men who sometimes shifted into dragon form. The dragon shifting special effects were outstanding. Ryan was thrilled by the quality of the CGI that morphed her suitors from flying dragons to beefy bodybuilder types in a flash of light.

What completely captivated Ryan the dragon princess, Verity. She must be an actress. She was tall and full figured, voluptuous enough to tickle his fantasies, unlike the usual starving film actresses. The ice blue gown she wore left little to the imagination. At the same time Ryan’s fantasies started working overtime. He froze the video several times to let his eyes explore her curves and contemplate the few areas the dress didn’t cover.

The storyline suggested that Verity was herself a shapeshifter, but so far she stayed in human form. He had no complaints, he enjoyed looking at her human form. Her face was heart-shaped, her lips inviting. The sheet of jet black hair down her back seemed to invite stroking. Most amazing were her pale blue eyes, lit with a fire of intelligence. When the camera moved in close, something in her eyes seemed to reach out of the screen into his heart and beg him to rescue her from the mumbling platitudes of the hyper-muscular dragon men who stood in front of her and told her she was beautiful. Most of them said they wanted to get to know her better.

As absurd as it sounded, Ryan wanted to get to know her better. He knew that a beautiful actress in a strange little science fiction video parody would be unlikely to be hot to meet a small bookstore owner. His only claim to fame was once inventing some software and getting paid well for it. Not exactly knight in shining armor credentials, as his experience with Deborah had taught him.

Still, when the footage was done and he had played it back two or three times—okay, five or ten times—he looked for the credits. There were none. He called Harvey.

“Where did Bridget find this?”

“She won’t say,” Harvey said. “I’ll ask her, but she’s not saying. She’s in one of her cat-that-swallowed-the-cream moods. I never argue when Bridget gets it into her head to surprise me.”

“I never argue with Bridget about anything. Do you think she’d tell me if I begged?”

“That’s my usual tactic with Bridget. I’m just happy she married me. After the number Deborah did on you, I wish we could find a good woman like that for you.”

“I’m holding out for a dragon princess,” Ryan said with a laugh. “Seriously, dude, I’ve got to find the rest of it. I’m kind of hooked already.” Ryan but he wasn’t about to give up because there was no instant answer. He kept searching all over the web and couldn’t find any trace of the video. None of his connections in the world of dragon lore had heard of it at all.

Harvey called back and told him. “Bridget’s still teasing me, but she said this is just part of week one, of a nine-week show broadcast on DPN, the Dragon Planet Network.”

“What? If there’s a Dragon Planet Network how come we haven’t heard of it? I’d pay a lot to subscribe to that, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely, but you know Bridget. She’ll tell me when she’s ready.”

“Well. If she finds a way to get tickets to the Dragon Planet, tell her I’m ready to go any time. Seriously, if you find anything about it, anything at all, let me know,” Ryan told him. “I need to see the whole thing.”

“Sure thing, dude, Dragons Rule,” Harvey said.

“Dragons Forever,” Ryan replied automatically. What he really wanted was to meet the woman in the film. True, she was an indie film actress, not a real dragon shifter. He couldn’t explain why he felt he had to meet her.

All he could do was sit sad, alone, and obsessed with dragons. Okay, he could add “horny” to that list. What else was new?