4/5 Review: Burned by Darkness (Dragons of Eternity Book 1) by Alexandra Ivy

 

The Dragons of Eternity were once creatures of mist and legend. Now they’ve returned to the world, prepared to claim what’s rightfully theirs…


Tayla is desperate for a place to call home. After years on the run, the young imp impulsively buys a teahouse and is determined to build a new life. Unfortunately, she’s barely opened the doors when she’s tracked down by the dragon who purchased her from troll slave-traders. He demands she pay off her debts…in his harem.

Baine has devoted a quarter of a century to tracking down his beautiful concubine. And now that he has her in his grasp, he’s not about to let her go. But it’s soon apparent that he isn’t the only demon hunting her. He must uncover her secrets or risk losing her forever.

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Alexandra Ivy’s Burned by Darkness is a good read.  Tayla has been running for the last 25 years.  She has always felt that she needed to keep moving because she was going to get caught.  She thought she was the hapless victim of trolls and sold to the highest bidder.  What she finds out rips her apart. The only thing that keeps her together is her near desperate need to get away from Baine, the dragon who bought her.  He doesn’t realize that Tayla doesn’t know that she is payment for her father’s gambling debt.  When Baine shows her the contract that her father signed she is torn up but resigned to the fact that she going to bail him out again.  She agrees to honor the contract but keeps putting up a fight at the idea of falling in love with him.  She doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the reason she ran away was because she felt that she could fall for him and have that be a way for him to control her.  Baine bought Tayla’s contract from his father the minute he scented her.  His dragon knew that she belonged to them.  Baine had to deal with trolls chasing her, and a traitor in his mists.  Baine worried that Tayla was only with him to honor the contract.  He didn’t know why it mattered if she really wanted to be with him, but it did.  He works toward gaining her love and when he finally has a good chance she gets kidnapped.  I love that Baine sets things up so that Tayla has to admit her feelings for him and that forces him to admit his own feelings towards her.  Alexandra Ivy drew me in and kept me there!