Administrative Control (Immortal Ops) by Mandy M. Roth Page A

they’re acting like she’s a delicate rare flower in need of their protection.
    She is far from a shrinking solarflower.  

      Prince Llyr of the Draig knows four things for a fact: He is the future king of the dragon shifters. He must act honorably in all ways. He absolutely, positively is meant to marry Lady Mede. And she dead set against marriage.
    Llyr’s fate rests in the hands of a woman determined not to have any man. With a new threat emerging amongst their cat shifting neighbors, a threat whose eyes are focused firmly on Mede, time may be running out. It is up to him to convince her to be his dragon queen.

    The Dragon’s Queen Excerpt
    There were three things Medellyn knew for a fact. She was special. She could kick the ass of any boy. And she did not want to marry and have babies.
    She was special.  
    Medellyn was one of the only dragon shifting females in all the universe, and definitely in all of the Draig. Only once in a thousand births was a female dragon shifter born. She was rare, or so everyone kept telling her. Her childhood was a strange contradiction. Her very proper mother tried to treat her as if she were some sacred crystal that might crack. Her warrior father tried to make her train like a boy while dressing like a girl.  
    She could kick the ass of any boy.
    Medellyn hated when boys tried to act as if she were weak and to be protected. Her dragon was just as fierce as any of theirs, probably more so. To prove her point, she’d gladly pummel any who had challenged her to the ground…and some who hadn’t.
    She absolutely, positively did not want to marry and have babies.
    Being the special, rare creature she was, in the twenty not-so-sweet girlhood years of her life she’d been claimed as the future bride to nearly three dozen boys—each one confident that when they came of the age to marry she would make their crystals glow and they hers.  
    Glowing crystals wasn’t just a metaphor. On the day she was born, her father journeyed to Crystal Lake like all the new fathers did. He dove beneath the waves, swam down to the deepest part and pulled her stone from the lakebed. Like all Draig children, she wore the stone around her neck, and would continue to wear it until the day it glowed telling her which of the dragon shifting men she was destined by the gods to marry.   Okay, technically she might be destined to marry an offworlder like most Draig men, but no one on her planet seemed to think so.  
    Gods bones, she hoped she wasn’t destined to end up with any of the idiots on her planet. They had yet to impress her.
    When it was her turn to go to the Breeding Festival, the crystal would glow signifying her curse for all to see. Well, her “blessing” as her mother called it. Lady Grace did not appreciate her daughter calling marriage a curse. Grace did not appreciate a lot of things that Medellyn liked, such as swords and bows, ceffyl riding, camping alone in the forest, hunting, sparring, smashing arrogant looks off of dragon men’s faces.
    It was a fight with her mother that sent her running through the mountain forest. Medellyn hated the woman, hated what her mother wanted her daughter to be. Grace was only a human, brought to their planet as a bartered bride. She married Medellyn’s father without question and spent most of her days completely in docile agreement with whatever her husband said. Medellyn couldn’t imagine taking anyone else’s opinions over her own.
    Her father, Axell, was a highly praised warrior in the Draig army and carried the title of Top Breeder of the ceffyls. The man’s whole life focused on four things: his wife, his only child, and mares and steeds. Her father was a very important man, but his work kept him away from home several nights a week as he slept outdoors with the herd. With a three-year gestation period and only about fifty percent live-birth rate, the animals were not a resource that could be easily renewed. His ceffyls supplied the soldiers