Griffith: The English Dragon ― Erotic Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  Looking at his badge, she couldn’t focus on it. When he showed her his ID, she couldn’t make it out either. But she was fading quickly and lowered her gun. It was draining what little strength she had.

  “He tried to break in. Is he dead?” The man, Officer Brooks, said that he was. “It was self-defense. He left me no choice when he fired through my door.”

  “Yes, the dispatcher could hear it all. And it’s been recorded. Did you know who it was?” Telling him that she didn’t, he told her that the medics were here, but she had to relinquish her gun. “They can’t work on you if they’re afraid of you shooting them.”

  “You’ll give it back?” He said that he would. “That man, he tried to break in. I didn’t kill him until he fired first.”

  She blurred out for a little while, and found herself on a gurney and some people with her that she didn’t know. Dalton asked one of them where she was. What they were doing.

  “You’re being life flighted to the hospital. Lady, you are one strong woman. You have three GSW to the chest—gunshot wounds—and you shouldn’t be alive, much less talking. How about you rest up and we’ll get you there to be fixed up.”

  She might have answered him but had no idea. The next time she woke, there was a man in a mask standing over her. Dalton reached for her gun and realized that the officer had taken it. She asked the man who he was.

  “I’m a surgeon that is going to try and remove the bullets. They told me that you were in and out of it, but I didn’t believe them. We’re going to give you something that will put you into a deeper sleep, Miss Mueller, so you let us—”

  “Don’t call my family. My brother and sister. I have an uncle. He’s on my contact list.” He asked her if she knew the number. “Yes. Just call my Uncle Eric. Don’t call the others.”

  “I’ll tell the officer. Now, you let this take you under and we’ll see about getting these bullets out of you. All right?”

  There was no chance to answer him. She felt the meds hit her system and she was out. All she could think about as she drifted away is that she didn’t want her family to know.

  ~*~

  Kip didn’t care for this house. The first one he’d seen, three days ago, had been perfect. There wasn’t any work to be done, except for minor things like a security system and a larger dining room, but the rest of it was just right. He looked at his realtor when the man’s phone went off. Kip could tell right away that something bad had happened.

  He wandered off to the kitchen again, to give the man privacy. He really didn’t care for the layout of this room either. It was too stifling in here. Like even if you opened the windows, you’d still feel like you were in a cave.

  Eric came into the room where he was and Kip grabbed him before he fell forward. “My niece. She’s been shot.” He asked him if she was all right. “They don’t think she’ll make it through the surgery. I told them that not only would she, but she’d be up and around soon too. They told me that one of the bullets had touched her heart, and they won’t know how close until they open her up. They made it sound like she was a can of soup that they’d be having for lunch.”

  “Where is she?” Eric told him that she lived in Columbus, that they’d life-flighted her to University Hospital. “Come on. I’ll drive you there. I’m assuming they want you to come to them.”

  “Yes. And they said that she told them not to call her brother and sister. That’s a good sign, isn’t it, Kip? That she can tell them to not call them?” He said that he didn’t know, but figured it might be. “I have to go. I’m sorry. Can we reschedule?”

  “I’m taking you to the hospital, Eric. Come on, we’ll leave the car here. And I’m buying the first house you showed me.” Eric nodded and said that he’d put an offer in for him. Kip was trying his best to keep his mind off what had happened. “Come on now. I’ll have you there as quickly as I can make it. You just sit tight.”

  They were both in the car when Eric pulled out his cell phone again. He asked Eric if he needed to have him pull over and he assured him that he was fine. He was calling Dalton’s grandparents. Kip did pull over when the man started sobbing in the phone. When he shoved the phone in his direction, Kip took it only to hear someone crying at the other end.

  “I’m sorry. I’m Kipling Newton. I’m taking Eric to the hospital now. He’s very upset.” The man told him he was as well, but he’d meet them there. “All right. I’ll tell Eric.”

  “She’s our son’s child. Well, child doesn’t cover it, as she’s almost twenty-seven. I’m sorry, I’m babbling. Do you know anything more?” He said that he didn’t. “We’re leaving now. As soon as the cab gets here. We don’t live far, so we’ll be there before Eric. Tell him that, will you? Has anyone called Luann or Louis? Those are her deadbeat sister and brother. Damned fools, if you ask me.”

  “No sir. I guess just before they put her under, she told the surgeon not to call them, but to call her uncle.” He laughed. “Eric seems to think that it would be like her to delay surgery to make sure things were right.”

  He’d not said that, but close enough. When the man cried again, Kip watched Eric. And when the man said that their cab had shown up, he closed the connection between them.

  Eric was sick, throwing up in the bushes at the side of the road. Kip wondered what he might be getting himself into and had a sudden thought. She could be his mate. Leaning back on the seat, he tried to wrap his mind around that.

  He kept telling himself that it was highly unlikely that she was, but his mind was telling him to be prepared. She already sounded like someone that he’d get. Hard headed, he’d bet. She carried a gun, so there was that.

  When Eric got back in the car, Kip handed him a pack of gum. They didn’t speak the rest of the way in. Eric did receive and make several phone calls. None of them pertained to him, so he really didn’t pay attention to them. Traffic was brutal, for which he was glad. It gave him less time to think about a possibility of a mate. When they pulled into the parking lot, Eric jumped out before him and Kip made his way slowly to the right floor.

  “Hello, Mr. Newton. I’m Charley Mueller, and this is my wife Fern. We’re Dalton’s paternal grandparents. Though we did raise her from the age of twelve. Nasty business that.” Kip told him that he was sorry about all this. That he could go on home. “I’d rather you stayed, if you don’t mind. Eric is going to need a friend if she doesn’t make it.”

  He didn’t tell him that he’d only just met the man four days ago. Nor did he mention that he was looking for a house through him. None of it came up, so he sat with the family to wait with them.

  Fern came to sit by him. “You’re probably thinking that you tried to do a good man a favor and got caught up in drama. There is a great deal of it with her sister and brother. Theirs, not hers. Dalton was as much a black sheep to them as anyone would be that was as brilliant as she is. And she’s not one to suffer fools easily. Her parents, and her two siblings, didn’t give her enough when she was a little guy. So, she’s shut most people out of her life.” Kip told her that he was having issues like that himself. “Then you understand. Dalton graduated from high school when she was twelve. It might have been sooner, but her parents had been killed and it set her back a little bit. Not emotionally, but dealing with Louis and Luann. They’re not nice children either.”

  “What happened, do you know?” She told him what she knew. An officer who was first on the scene to find her had told her all that he could. “Dalton, does she normally carry a gun? I mean, she was lucky to have been armed, but I was just wondering.”

  “She used to be a police officer in another state. Came back here to live about five years ago. Dalton is a good girl, but she had it rough growing up, and it made her somewhat leery of people.” Fern laughed. “That’s certainly an understatement. She doesn’t trust many people.”

  “I don’t either except the friends that I have. They’re all I have left.” Kip thought it was nice to be able to talk to someone. A person that
wasn’t around his woes all the time. And Fern was a good listener too. “I should warn you, I’m not human. If you’d rather I wasn’t here, then I can go because of that.”

  “No. I don’t care what you are so long as you don’t hurt us. What are you, anyway?” Kip told her he was a dragon. “My goodness. I didn’t know that they were still around. Or for that matter that there even was any.”

  “Yes, there are a few of us left. Mostly we keep to ourselves as well.” She nodded, and they both watched a man wearing scrubs walk by them. He met up with the family in the next waiting room. “Dalton’s in good hands here. This is the best hospital you could be at for things like this.”

  “She’s all we have. Eric is her uncle. Dalton’s mother was his sister.” Kip nodded, not really sure why he’d need to know that, but she was stressed out. “I’m blabbing again. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right. Really it is. Eric was showing me houses when he got the call. I didn’t think that he was fit to drive, so I brought him.” She nodded and asked him if he’d found a house. “I did, as a matter of fact. It’s big and set off the road. It’s too big for one person, but I’m expecting a mate to come around someday, and we can fill it, I suppose.”

  He hadn’t meant to say it that way, but she patted him on the cheek and he didn’t feel quite so embarrassed. When another man in scrubs walked by them again, he talked to both Charley and Eric when Fern went to get her a soda.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mueller?” Charley stood up and so did he and Eric. Fern was just getting off the elevator when the man started to tell them who he was. Charley held onto his wife’s hand and said that he was ready. “Dalton is in grave condition. The bullet that touched her heart did a little more damage than we’d hoped. But she’s young and fit, so she has a better chance than most. We removed three bullets from her chest and another in her arm. But for now, we’re only concentrating on the one that did the most damage.”

  “How long before she’s out of the woods, Doc? I mean, I know you said grave, and I’m an old enough man to know what that means. But you do have some kind of goal for her, don’t you?” Charley wiped at his tears as he continued. “She’s a fighter, my Dalton.”

  “She is at that. And to answer your question, sir, all I can tell you is that every hour that she lives, that only makes her stronger. Dalton lost a great deal of blood, which we’re working to get to her.”

  He looked at Kip and asked if he could speak to him alone. When he stepped away from the family, he knew that the doctor was a tiger, and that he also knew what Kip was. Kip already knew what he was going to ask of him.

  “I’m mated to a wonderful woman. And if I were to help this young woman along by giving her my blood, no matter the circumstances, I’d be needing my own transfusion when she was finished with me. Are you mated?” Kip told him that he wasn’t, but if he was going to ask him to help her along, they had to tell her family. “I can do that. I’m assuming that since you’re here with them, they know that you’re not human.”

  “The grandmother does. I’m sure that she’s told her husband. Her uncle knows as well.” He nodded and asked if he could talk to them with him. “I can do that. Easily. I’m very old and extremely powerful, Doc, so you should be prepared to tell them what that will mean as well.”

  “Thank you. You might be the difference she needs to pull through this.”

  They both sat with the three of them. Eric was all for it, saying that he wanted her to live no matter how it happened. But the grandparents had questions.

  “What if your mate comes along, young man? What will happen between the two of you?” He started to answer Charley when he had another question. “Just how powerful are you? I mean, with age, I’m to understand comes more. Unlike me, who just loses it every year.”

  It had been a joke—it failed, but he didn’t seem to mind. Kip thought about how to answer him when he just put out his hand and blew fire onto it. The flame burned for some time before he put his hands together to put it out.

  “I’m very old. Well before people were plentiful around here. I’m a dragon of good standing. And if my mate does come along, and it’s not Dalton, she won’t be upset because this happened before her.” Fern asked if Dalton was his mate. “I don’t know. I’ve never met her before. But I can tell you that if you agree for me to help her along, my blood will heal her a hundred times faster and better than if she doesn’t have it.”

  They gave him permission and he was suited up in scrubs. They didn’t want him to bring in germs because this might not work—they weren’t taking any chances.

  As soon as he entered the room where she was, all he could smell was death. It was all over the young woman like a blanket. Walking to the bed, he saw several machines around her, blood dripping into her IV, as well as a tube down her throat. That was going to be removed first.

  As soon as it was free of her lungs, he stood over the bed and leaned to her throat. She was his. This woman was his mate.

  Opening a vein to give her the most of himself via the fastest route, Kip thought of what Dalton was going to say to him when she woke. Giving her more than the few drops that the doctor had asked for, he had to laugh to himself. His mate was going to pissed, he knew it. And Kip was actually looking forward to her taming him.

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  Kathi Barton , winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement award as well as a best-selling author on Amazon and All Romance books, lives in Nashport, Ohio with her husband Paul. When not creating new worlds and romance, Kathi and her husband enjoy camping and going to auctions. She can also be seen at county fairs with her husband who is an artist and potter.

  Her muse, a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Hugh Jackman, brings her stories to life for her readers in a way that has them coming back time and again for more. Her favorite genre is paranormal romance with a great deal of spice. You can visit Kathi online and drop her an email if you’d like. She loves hearing from her fans. aaronskiss@gmail.com.

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