Storm Rider

The Stormscale was hatched for a prince. It chose a farm boy instead.

Tarin Rook fights for everything. He fights the soil for apples, the towners for respect, and the Reeve for the right to keep his family's land. He can't read. He's never held more than a silver piece in his life. Dragons don't bond the likes of him, and most people in Vax Caldera look down on his kind.

Then he's beaten bloody on the Paythar docks, and a caged hatchling with lightning in its eyes looks straight at him.

The next day, in front of the entire kingdom, the Prince's dragon tears free of the Choosing and comes for Tarin. It happens in full view of the nobility and commoners alike. No one can deny it.

Now he's got a noble name he didn't earn, a royal sponsor who's watching his every move, and orders to report to the Vaxian Dragon Rider Academy. There the relentless drillmaster calls him a grub, the high-born heirs want him crushed, and the Masters make one promise--not every recruit walks out alive.

They have pedigree. They have training. They have centuries of tradition.

Tarin has a dragon, a chip on his shoulder, and everything the orchard taught him about reading a killing sky. It isn't much, but it's more than he's ever had. And the Vaxian Academy grants no mercy. It can't afford mercy.

When the trials throw the recruits into the high winds, the farm boy nobody listens to may be the only one who sees what's coming.

And a third Stormscale egg is already warming.

Storm Rider is Book One of the Dragon Riders of Zerath series.