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Dragon’s Challenge
Dragon Blaze Ops: Book Five
A Curvy Girl Military Romance
by Jasmine Wylder
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
Thank You!
Also by Jasmine Wylder
About the Author
Dedication
To my loved ones B & B, who encouraged me to fly toward my dream:
Let’s soar.
Chapter One
They looked so happy that Stephen couldn’t feel any jealousy. He sighed, quietly gathering his lunch up. He wasn’t going to just sit and stew in his own feelings of loneliness. Adam and Karey deserved to be happy after everything they’d been through. It was because of them that the Pack, a terrorist group convinced of the superiority of shifters over humans, was taken down.
Things had been quiet at the Magnus Academy since then. The Academy was a place for shifters to come and take further studies. Not that everybody who went to school at the Academy were shifters, or that teaching was the only thing they did.
Evan, Stephen’s teammate, bounded over to him with a wide smile on his face. “Hey, you want to hit the gym? Train for our next mission?”
“Maybe.”
The Magnus Academy was also a cover. Stephen and Evan belonged to a group called the Blaze Ops. They operated off the books, performing rescue and recovery missions that would have been otherwise impossible due to ropes of red tape. They weren’t the only black ops group that worked out of the Academy, but the various operations tended to not spend time with each other. They’d suffered some serious setbacks with spies in their organization. Now that the Pack was taken care of, they had some breathing room.
At least until the next big threat popped up.
Evan trotted beside him, his gaze sharp as his brow furrowed. “Maybe you want to go to the gym? I can’t remember any time when you passed up the opportunity to whip my ass. I’m the small fry, remember?”
Stephen smirked. It was true. Evan was the smallest of the dragons of the Blaze Ops. Compared to the average human or even other shifters, he wouldn’t be considered small. Tall and muscular. Just not as tall nor as muscular as the others in the Blaze Ops. He was their technology specialist, though, so his smaller size didn’t cause any troubles.
“Just don’t feel like it today.”
Evan glanced over his shoulder, frowning at Adam and Karey. “Are you still upset that Adam was able to get the drop on you and took you prisoner while you were trying to take Karey prisoner?”
Stephen dumped his leftovers and put his tray where it belonged before turning to Evan with a glare. “You talk too much, you know that?”
Evan shrugged. “It’s just not like you.”
“I’m allowed to have some days off from being the team’s sharp-witted, sexy role model, you know. Days when I’m just Stephen, not First Lieutenant Stephen Isles, stud of the Blaze Ops.” Even his jokes were falling flat. Stephen scowled and shrugged. “Guess I’m just feeling down right now.”
“And punching me repeatedly isn’t going to make you feel better?”
Stephen laughed, ruffling Evan’s hair. “You’d think it would, wouldn’t you?”
With one last look at the happy couple, Stephen left the cafeteria. Evan kept to his side, smiling and nodding at the students they passed. Stephen thought about telling him to go find something else to do, but the company felt good.
“So, what has you so down in the dumps anyway?” Evan asked as they headed across the field, toward the apartments.
“Just angry at myself, I guess. Annoyed that I’m always getting crushes on people who aren’t going to see me that way.” Stephen grimaced. He and Evan weren’t especially close, and he already knew where this would lead. He just hoped that Evan wouldn’t find it weird.
“Crushes?” Evan’s eyes widened. “You have a crush on Karey? I thought you hated her.”
“I didn’t trust her. I don’t hate her, and no, I don’t have a crush on her.”
“So then…” Evan’s brow cleared, and he nodded. “You mean Maura. I mean, Dr. Rizzoli. Hey, do you think her parents were a fan of that show?”
It took a moment for Stephen to realize what he was saying and snorted. “No. I doubt it, unless they’re time travelers from the future.”
“Would be neat if you guys got together, though. Why do you think that she doesn’t—”
“I wasn’t talking about Dr. Rizzoli.” Stephen shook his head. It was almost amusing that Evan wasn’t getting it, but at the same time, it was one of those things that grated sometimes. After all the years he’d been working with these guys, he thought it’d be easier to come out to them. It wasn’t like any of them had shown any indication that they were against the LGBT community. “I was talking about Adam. I’m bi, Evan.”
Evan stared at him for a moment before jumping and turning away, blushing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Sorry. It just... took me a moment to remember what bi meant. So… Adam?” Evan’s nose wrinkled. “I mean, I know you guys are close friends but why him? Liam’s way hotter.”
Stephen laughed, running his hand through his hair. The thing he liked most about this whole setup was that even though they were all technically part of the military still, military law was relaxed. So he could call his teammates and even his superiors by their first names and he could grow out his hair. He hated the feeling of it shaved down close to his scalp.
“It’s easy to make Adam blush, and I like that. Don’t ask me why, I just do.”
“Nah, I get it.” Evan shrugged. “He’s got that way about him. But if you like Adam, does that mean you don’t like Maura?”
“You like Erica, does that mean you don’t like your girlfriend?”
Evan’s face turned beet red. “I don’t like Erica.”
“Yes, you do.”
Evan scowled at him. “Alright, fine, I like her. I think she’s cute. But she’s going with Cooper, and I’m not the kind of guy who gets hung up on a girl. Monica is smoking hot and I more than like her. It’s not just a crush.”
“But before Erica started dating Cooper and you started dating Monica, you liked both of them. That’s the same way I feel. Crushes. Nothing worth acting on, really. As much as I’d have liked something to happen with one of them, I knew it wasn’t going to and so, you know, I just dealt wit
h it.”
Evan opened his mouth, closed it again and then nodded. “Okay, yeah. I get it. But chin up, Lieutenant.” He patted Stephen’s shoulder. “You’ll find someone someday. Someone who is going to like you right back.”
Stephen had to smile at that. He nodded once at Evan, accepting the attempt at making him feel better. They split up once they got to the apartment, Stephen deciding that he would like some time to himself after all. Just as he was about to put on a movie and let his brain rot for a bit, though, he got a call.
His heart jumped to his throat instantly when he saw it was Maura calling. He forced himself to calm the fuck down, not getting all worked up like a schoolboy.
“Dr. Rizzoli,” he greeted, his hand going to his hair almost on its own, ruffling through the wavy brown locks. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling a meeting.” Maura’s voice was stressed, bordering on aggravated. “I haven’t been able to get hold of any of your teammates. Will you please gather them up and remind them that they’re supposed to keep their cellphones on them while they’re on call?”
Stephen hadn’t been aware that they were on call but agreed to gather his teammates anyway. Evan was easy enough to find, as he was down in the gym, but the others proved a little more difficult. Adam and Karey had left the cafeteria, Liam was out somewhere with his mate, Utopia, and their son, Aiden, while Eugene and his mate Clementine and their young son Jameson were all napping and Eugene wasn’t all too pleased with being woken. Patrick, the colonel, and leader of the Blaze Ops, came to the door with a fierce scowl on his face, panting and wearing only a pair of jeans.
“Er, sorry Colonel,” he said, resisting the urge to make a joke. He'd recently come to realize that the sexual jokes he made were overexaggerated, an attempt on his part to make up for all the crappiness he'd gone through in denying his own sexuality. “Dr. Rizzoli called me. She wants the Blaze Ops to gather together for a meeting. And she's not happy that she wasn't able to get hold of you.”
Fiona, Patrick’s mate, appeared at his shoulder. “I had my phone on. It should have gone through.”
“Hey, I’m just saying what she told me. We’re only missing Adam. Everyone else is headed for the briefing room.” Stephen jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I think he and Karey were going to the pool. Or at least, they normally go this time of day.”
After Adam’s near-death experience, his physical therapy took place at the pool at this time every day, and that was something he kept up even after he’d been declared physically fit. Something flashed in Patrick and Fiona’s gazes, like they knew it, too.
“Go get them then, and text me when you get there,” Patrick ordered.
Stephen grinned. “Sure thing, Dad.”
Patrick rolled his eyes and waved him out.
It wasn’t much longer before Stephen was in the briefing room. They sat along one edge of the table, in order of rank. Across from them, Cooper and the Shadow Ops waited nervously. Along the end were the Howling Ops. While the Shadow Ops were tasked with collecting information, for the past couple years the Howling Ops had been deep undercover as double agents in the Pack. With the Pack’s downfall, they had been recalled. Maybe this meeting was about their new placement?
But Maura wasn’t here.
Stephen checked his watch. It’d been almost an hour since Maura had phoned him. What could be taking her so long? Usually, she was so punctual. Had she been caught up with some important business from the higher-ups?
Just because they didn’t officially run inside of the military didn’t mean they had no connections, after all.
The silence became too much to handle. He turned toward the Howling Ops. All of them were rugged looking men, tough, almost angry looking. Most of them had full beards.
“So. You must have a lot of stories from your time undercover,” he said.
Their leader, Sly Yarbo, gave him a pointed glare. “If we do, they’re not the kind of stories that we like to talk about. More like things we’re trying to forget.”
Wow. Well, he was grumpy. Stephen shrugged at him, not about to start getting into a debate about it all. If he didn’t want to talk, then let him have his silence. It didn’t mean the rest of them couldn’t talk, after all.
“Coop, I heard that you’re taking Erica to the Bahamas this weekend. Very fancy.”
Cooper, a lion shifter, grinned. “Oh, you can be sure of that. Turns out I have a great-uncle I’ve never met who died recently. He didn’t want his money going to charity or the government, so he gave it all to me. In his will he told me to blow it all and not get caught up with money, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. Spending every last dime on a getaway for me and my girl. Erica’s been super stressed lately, being the chief physician around here and all. She deserves a nice getaway.”
Beside Stephen, Evan snorted.
“Sorry?” Cooper leered at him. “Didn’t catch that.”
Evan glared at him. “I didn’t say anything, but if you must know, Erica doesn’t like the Bahamas. She’d prefer to go on an Alaskan cruise. She doesn’t like it hot; she likes cold.”
Cooper laughed out loud. “Doesn’t like it hot? Tell that to me when I’m—”
He cut off as the door opened and Maura stepped in. She had an almost dazed look on her face as she took her spot at the head of the table.
Stephen’s fires burned low and anxiety twisted his gut. Whatever this was about, he already knew one thing—it wasn’t going to be good.
Chapter Two
This wasn’t the first group she’d told that day. The Magnus Academy had many, many operations running. These three just happened to know about each other. They didn’t know about the others. Even Patrick, Fiona, Cooper and Sly didn’t know. Fiona, having trained all three of these groups knew there was more to be known. The rest… well, what they’d managed to glean was anybody’s guess.
They all stared at her expectantly, these men and women. They’d been together for a long time. Working together, fighting together. Hell, they’d lost people and grieved together. Those bonds weren’t something to just cut up and throw away.
Yet that was exactly what was happening.
“I have received news that the Academy’s extra programs are being shut down.” Maura fought not only to keep her voice steady but to maintain any semblance of professionalism at all. She’d been the head of this Academy since before it was turned into a base for off-the-books teams to do their off-the-books missions. She would remain head of it after. Just because things were changing didn’t mean they were changing for the worse.
The shifters gave each other and her confused groups. Maura waited, hoping desperately that someone would figure it out. They had in the last groups. Even though she knew it wasn’t the best way to put it. Saying it directly, though, felt too much like an admission of guilt.
Though she hadn’t been the one to make the call, she could have fought harder against it. She had resources, after all. Hidden weapons up her sleeve that she could have used. Only, after serious consideration and after her attempts at negotiations had shut down, she had decided that it wasn’t worth revealing those weapons.
So these people, many of whom she considered to be friendly, if not friends, were going to be out of a job. The majority of them were retired from the military. What would they do now? Enlist again?
It was Fiona who spoke first. “Do you mean that our teams are being disbanded?”
Maura reluctantly met her gaze. Fiona was one of the first people to come into the Academy in its role as a facilitator for these operations. They’d been through a lot together. And Fiona had personally gone through quite a bit to see that the Blaze Ops were formed in the first place. When Maura thought about how Fiona and Patrick had been fighting too much, only to realize their true feelings for each other…
“Yes,” she murmured, hating how weak her voice sounded but at the same time unable to get her words through her numb lips. “All teams are disbanded. All o
perations are to cease immediately, and teams out in the field are to be recalled. You will all be given two months’ severance pay and thanks for your services.”
She waited for the outbursts of anger. The denial, the attempts at bargaining.
She wasn’t disappointed.
“You can’t be serious!” Cooper exclaimed. “How can they do this to us? Right after we’ve brought down the Pack?”
“Maybe if you explained to them how important this is still,” Evan put in, his eyes wide. “Maybe if you explained to them—”
Maura held up her hands as everybody started to talk at once. She understood how they felt. She really did. “I have been fighting this for weeks. I’m sorry. There’s nothing else that can be done.”
Nothing I’m willing to do, at least. She shook her head. Her ‘secret weapon’ was too risky. It had the potential to blow up in her face and put all of them in an even worse situation if she tried to employ it. This sucked. It sucked big time. But there wasn’t a single person in this room that she didn’t believe would be able to find a new place to flourish.
“I really am sorry. You’ve got three months left in the apartments here before you have to move. They’re going to be converted into student housing. Apparently, the military wants to—”
“Why?” It was Stephen who interrupted her this time.
If it was anybody else asking, she would have been able to tell them the party line. How everything was so much better now and that they didn’t think it was necessary to have these teams running. The truth of it was so… well, disgusting.
“Since the Pack has been taken down, the government doesn’t see this as a good use of funds anymore. Since the Pack was able to infiltrate our ranks and the bombings happened last year… they say that this is a failed experiment. Even though at the time they were all saying there was nothing else that could be done and—” She cut herself off as the angry feelings rose. It wasn’t going to help anybody to get sucked back into that. She had to keep control.
“Wait.” Stephen threw himself back in his chair, causing it to rock up. “Are you saying that we did too good a job and not a good enough job at the same time?”
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