Chapter 1: Ancalagon

**This is Book 5 of the Elemental Dragon Series. While this book can be read as a standalone, it is recommended that you read the first four books in the series, starting with The Arena. References to other story lines and past situations will not be reiterated in this story.**

I'm standing here in the arena once again, staring at this arrogant asshole who thinks that he can claim me and make me his dragon. This time, it’s an elf prince.

My Aunt Kaylani says it's not an arena. Call it what you want - an Arena, a Colosseum, or a claiming ground. It's all the same to me. It's a place where idiot assholes like this guy in front of me come to try and enslave me to their will.

I had hoped after the Alpha werewolf had tried to claim me and I had made a point of nearly killing him, that the claims on me would stop. And they did, for a couple of months. But now here I am again, with yet another high-ranking supernatural who thinks that the Alpha of Alphas belongs to him.

I glare at the elf as he begins pulling on his earth element. How do any of them think that they can defeat me? Not only am I the Alpha of Alphas, but I can control all four elements. Who do they think they are? Even if they can control one, what does that matter to me?

They are nothing. I am Ancalagon.

I wait to see what he's going to do, how he thinks he can claim me with his earth element. It's bad enough that he only has one element, but I come by my earth element genetically from my father Avani, the last Earth dragon.

He and my mother, Zephyr, the last air dragon, decided to have a child together. Now that all four elemental dragons have found their mates, I am the only pure dragon left. And while everyone else seems to want me, my mate wants nothing to do with me.

I think back to that time when I found her with my brother, the brother who should never have lived. Snow, she calls him, probably because of the color of his scales. He's white like my mother, only he's much smaller than a dragon. I told my mother he's a wyvern. He doesn't have four legs like a dragon should, only two back legs, using his wings as his front two legs when he moves around. And yet she had protected him, and he had laid claim to her as if she belonged to him. But she is mine. My Sunshine.

I feel the earth begin rumbling under my feet and I bring my thoughts back to the arena, the battleground where I'm fighting. The elf prince seems to have pulled some of the earth in front of him trying to create a barrier between me and him. I'm not sure what he's expecting it to do. I could use my air to blow it out of the way, I could use my own earth element to pull it back down into the earth, or I could use my fire and hold him in his self-imposed cage until he begins to burn alive.

As I watch, he begins throwing tree branches and tree trunks at me. I think he's planning to pin me down with them, but I can't be sure. Elves can be tricky, they're intelligent, and Earth goddess knows that at least two of them are mated to dragons. My father being mated to Merethyl, an elf princess, and Kenna, the daughter of Tana the fire dragon, and Cedric, the Lycan, is mated to Merethyl’s brother, King Yhendorn, although Kenna is too young to claim yet.

As he begins flinging the branches toward me like arrows on the wind, I decide to take a lesson that I've learned from Merethyl. I haven't actually taken her Earth class, but I've watched it from the sky above. She has the ability to take objects in the air, grab them, loop them around herself and others, and send them back in the direction they came.

I smile, a vicious smile as flames flicker from my lips. I wait until the branches and the tree trunks are close enough, then I grab them with my earth element, arcing them around my body, and slinging them back toward the elf prince.

I hear him cry out as the branches slam through his earth barrier. I don't smell blood, so I'm pretty sure I didn't hit him, but his barrier comes tumbling to the ground. However, now he really is trapped, inside the trunks and branches that are wedged into the ground around him.

I lift up onto my back feet, leaning my head over the area where he's pinned in, and I take a deep breath before I blow my fire on him. I blow fire until the air is out of my lungs and then I slam my feet back to the ground, waiting to see if he's dead. I'm not supposed to kill them, but then, he's the stupid one who came after me.

When the smoke from my fire clears. I see him lying on the ground. He's covered himself with the earth trying to protect himself from the heat of my fire. But I can see that he's covered in blisters. I begin walking towards him, pulling on the air element that I got from my mother. I add water to it, and I make it rain over top of the elf lying on the ground.

Instantly the ground begins to sizzle and steam, going from melting hot to freezing cold much too quickly. I hear the elf prince cry out again, but I don't stop.

I can hear the prince sputtering, and when the steam finally clears, I can see that he's nearly drowning in the water that I've been pouring on him. Some of the blisters on his body have burst, with the intense shift from hot to cold. His skin is a bright red color, very different from the typical pale skin of an elf. In some places, the skin on his body has started sloughing from the heat and extreme cold.

I take another step, caging him inside my talons as I put my paw around him.

“How dare you?” A hiss at him. “How dare you think that you were worthy of claiming me? I am an Alpha. I am the last pure dragon. You are nothing compared to me,” I say to him, and I begin to lower my paw down on top of him, pressing my talons into the earth.

“I concede,” he yells, but I don't stop. I continue to push my paw down on top of him.

“He conceded, Ancalagon. Stop,” my father says.

All four elemental dragons monitor the claimings, not only to make sure that there is no cheating, but in my case, to make sure that I stop when my claimants concede.

I ignore my father and continue to press my paw down until I hear the elf’s bones snapping.

“Ancalagon,” my mother pleads.

There are very few people who I will listen to in this world. Two really, well, three if you count my mate who wants nothing to do with me. So, I guess she doesn't count. And one of the other two is still a toddler, my sister, Cyrene, so, she doesn't count either. But my mother nearly went mad trying to save me. She was willing to give her life for mine, and nearly did. So, of everyone in this world, I owe her the most. I owe her my life, and I owe her my love.

I turn and look at her. She's in her dragon form, but she's still considerably smaller than I am. She leans her head towards me, gently touching her snout to mine.

“Please Ancalagon. Let him go. He conceded.”

I wait a minute longer, then pull my paw off of the prince, leaning my face close to him, letting my fire flicker between my teeth.

“Come for me again, and I will smash you into the ground,” I say before leaping into the air and screaming my defiance over all of these shifters who think it's so easy to claim a dragon, so simple to have a dragon for themselves. We are not pets to be trained. We are not creatures to be tamed. We are dragons, and I am the fiercest of them all.

As I fly off, the unclaimed dragons leap into the air, joining me. They bellow their agreement that we are far above being claimed by measly supernaturals.

I take my dragon horde, flying far away from the school, these claiming grounds, and everything that I hate in this world.