Dragon Weyr's Omega (Nanny Shifter Service Book 7)

by Sky Winters

  After a few more seconds of driving, they arrived. Samuel pulled the truck to a stop and yanked the brakes. The crew climbed out and waited for Samuel’s orders.

  “Get the hoses hooked up!” he shouted out. “I want this building drenched!”

  They were going to need all the water they could get.

  The building was a five-story apartment complex, one of the many older, redone brick buildings in Brooklyn. Fires shot out from the windows, and it looked to Samuel like the place only had a few minutes before it was totally gutted by fire – which meant anyone inside would be done for.

  “What’s the status of the civilians in there?” barked out Samuel to one of the nearby NYPD officers.

  “Most are out!” shouted back the cop in a harsh, Brooklyn accent. “But we still got five inside!”

  “Damn,” said Jonas. “If they’re still inside, it’s only a matter of time before the fire gets them.”

  “Or the smoke,” said Samuel.

  “We need to go in,” said Jonas. “And we need to go now.”

  Samuel knew he was right, but he also understood the importance of not revealing their dragon nature to the rest of the crew, not to mention anyone with a camera phone who might be nearby.

  He glanced up and saw that the flames hadn’t yet reached the top floor.

  “Jonas and I are going in through the fire escape!” he called out to the crew. “You all get the fire from the outside!”

  “You kidding, boss?” asked one of the men. “You two will get cooked alive!”

  “Leave that to us,” he said. “I want you all keeping the area clear and making sure the fire doesn’t spread!”

  The crewmen nodded. They all knew better at this point than to try to talk any of them from running into burning buildings. Samuel and the rest had worked enough miracles.

  “Let’s do it!” shouted Jonas.

  The two men rushed up to the fire escape and pulled themselves up onto it. The metal was hot from the fire raging inside, but Samuel only recognized the heat in the way a normal person would recognize a smell – detectable, but not painful.

  Samuel and Jonas hurried up to the top floor of the building. Once there, Samuel smashed open the nearest window and climbed inside, Jonas following soon after him.

  “We got to find the civilians!” shouted Samuel, his voice loud over the roar of the fire.

  “Split up!” said Jonas. “Meet back here!”

  Samuel nodded.

  For normal, human firefighters, splitting up would be about the worst thing they could do. But for a pair of dragon shifters, it was a smart way to cover more territory. The two men hurried into the hallway, Jonas going right, Samuel left.

  The fire was raging, and Samuel’s heart raced as he searched through all of the apartments for any sign of the civilians.

  Finally, he heard a voice, a woman’s, calling out for help. He stopped in his tracks, paying attention to the source of the voice.

  He realized quickly that it was coming from the apartment just below where he stood, down where the fire burned the hardest. Samuel checked the oxygen tanks on his back. He didn’t need them, but anyone downstairs would in order to not succumb to the smoke.

  Samuel hurried down the stairs, the heat building by the moment. Fire burned in the hallways, the narrow spaces lit up with flame. He continued to listen carefully for the cries, making his way toward them.

  Finally, when he reached the apartment where the cries were coming from, he placed his hands on the door. It was hot as hell. He’d be fine, but it meant that anyone inside would be trapped.

  But he didn’t have another choice. He kicked the door down to reveal an apartment living room totally engulfed in flames.

  “Where are you?” he called out, now standing in the middle of the flames, the fire so hot he worried the rubber of his suit might melt. “I’m here to rescue you!”

  “In here!” came a voice to his right.

  There was a closed door and Samuel hurried over to it. He opened it quickly, revealing a smoke-filled bedroom that the fire hadn’t yet reached.

  But there was no way out – no window, nothing aside from the path through the flames. And in the far corner of the room was a woman with two children who looked to be about the age of his girls, the children huddled close to their mother. He realized that a couple more minutes and the smoke would make it impossible to breath in there, the fire soon after to finish the job.

  “Here!” shouted the woman.

  Samuel ran over, dropping to his knees and affixing the oxygen mask to the face of the little boy and then the girl, letting them take in deep, full breaths before attending to the mother.

  “How...,” she said, dazed from the smoke. “How did you get through the fire?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Samuel. “We need to get you three out of here.”

  Samuel scanned the room for any possible exit. But there was nothing.

  Then it hit him that the apartment next door hadn’t yet been engulfed.

  “Stay right here,” he said.

  He got up and ran over to the wall. Samuel closed his eyes, pulled his fist back, and drove it through. The wall blew back easily under the force of his blow. Quickly, he ripped the hole open big enough for the three of them to get through.

  “What the hell?” called out the mother.

  “No time!” he shouted. “Bring the oxygen and come on!”

  He helped the mother and the kids to their feet and led them through the adjacent apartment. Soon, they arrived at the stairwell, and Samuel used his body to shield them from the heat.

  Moments later, he was back on the top floor. Relief washed over him as he stepped into the room they’d entered from and saw Jonas waiting for him, a dazed couple in his arms.

  “You got them!” he said. “We were just about to leave without you!”

  “We need to move, now!” shouted Samuel.

  The two men brought the civilians to the window. Down below, he saw the crew blasting water on the fire, some of the men extending the truck ladder to reach them. Once the ladder was at their height, the two men helped the civilians into the arms of the firemen on the end of it. After the civilians were safe, Samuel and Jonas followed.

  Back on the ground, Samuel took in a breath of sweet, fresh air, relief filling him knowing that they’d done their job.

  An hour later, the fire was extinguished. The building had been gutted my flames, and drifts of steam and smoke wafted into the night air.

  “I don’t know how the hell you two do it,” said one of the firemen. “You two should’ve melted like freaking wax in there.”

  “Just doing our jobs,” said Jonas.

  “I want to check out the inside of that place,” said Samuel.

  “Why?” asked Jonas. “Not our job.”

  “Right, but look at this building – it’s a brand new remodel. No reason why it should’ve gone up like this.”

  “What do you think you’re going to find in there?” asked Jonas.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” said Samuel. “But I want to take a look.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Jonas.

  Samuel started toward the building, stepping over the rubble at the front door and entering the lobby. At first, it didn’t seem to him like there was anything out of the ordinary – looked like any other fire.

  But when he made his way further into the building, back toward the storage areas on the first floor, he noticed something peculiar about the burn marks on the walls.

  They weren’t simply singes, like what one would expect from a regular fire. They were deep, as if something had carved into the walls as the flames cut into them.

  He stepped forward and placed his hands on the burn marks.

  “Ah, fuck!” he cried out, pain shooting through his hand as he touched them.

  Then it struck him instantly that there was something amiss. He wasn’t supposed to be hurt by fire – not regular flames, anyway.
<
br />   But he remembered that there was a type of flame that could hurt him, one that could burn him as though he was any other human.

  Dragon fire.

  Samuel gasped as he realized that this fire wasn’t at all an accident. It was an arson, and one caused by someone just like him.

  CHAPTER 13

  JESSIE

  The next week seemed to rush by. Jessie spent every minute she could with the girls, and when the triplets were with their tutors or the other fathers, Jessie and Rick couldn’t help but sneak off and have their fun whenever they could.

  The apartment was certainly big enough, and with the other guys busy with their time at the station throughout the week, and the girls with their lessons during the day, Rick and Jessie had more than enough time alone to really get to know one another.

  Rick was like no man she’d ever been with before – which made sense, considering he wasn’t a man. The way he made love to her, the way he made her cum, it was like nothing she’d ever experienced. She was obsessed with his cock. It was the last thing she thought about before bed, and the first thing she thought about when she woke up.

  She craved him in a way that she didn’t think possible.

  But in spite of this, in spite of the way she desired Rick, and the way he desired her, she still found herself drawn back to her fantasy, the one she’d had her first day on the job – the one about all three of them.

  She knew it was an alpha’s duty to claim an omega. And when Jessie started here, she’d assumed that this process had already been complete for the three men. After all, the three girls were proof that they’d all claimed the same omega. Part of Jessie wondered if their need to claim an omega had been already satisfied.

  But Rick showed her that this wasn’t the case at all.

  “You’re gonna be without me for a little while,” he said as they got dressed in his room one afternoon, the girls out on a trip to the Natural History Museum with one of their tutors, and the other guys on duty at the station.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Got a long few days on at the station,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head and covering his gorgeous muscles, to Jessie’s disappointment. “So, it’ll be you and Jonas for the next five days or so. And the girls, of course.”

  Jonas. Jessie hadn’t really had the time to get to know the other guys. She’d learned all about Rick these last few days – his love for heavy metal and whiskey, his years in his biker clan, and his fierce love for his little girls− but the other men were still mysteries.

  Samuel struck her as a classic dragon alpha – refined, composed, and well put together. His attitude seemed calm and in control, and she could easily picture him as the CEO of a massive international banking firm or some other powerful company. The more she thought about it, the stranger it was that he was a fireman.

  Jonas was the same way – odd that he’d chosen the career he had. She imagined him as some kind of Bohemian artist, traveling through Europe and making all the girls he passed crazy about him and his work. Indeed, a quick glance at his room revealed that he had plenty of art supplies in there.

  But he was a fireman, just like the other alphas. She couldn’t imagine a stranger job for a man like him.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Rick, checking his phone. “The guys are on the way back.”

  “You don’t want them finding out what’s going on?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s better for the girls,” he said. “Not getting them confused with what you’re doing here.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Makes sense.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, stepping into his boots. “Those girls are really crazy about you.”

  Jessie blushed. She’d only known the girls for a week, but she already loved them to death.

  “I’m crazy about them too,” she said.

  Then a thoughtful expression crossed her face.

  “What’s on your mind?” Rick asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s weird. The girls are amazing and I love spending time with them, but I can’t shake how it feels like I’ve known them for longer than a week. Same with you and the guys. It feels more like I’ve been here for a year than just a little over a week.”

  She shook her head.

  “Stupid, I know,” she said. “But I can’t shake it.”

  Jessie was half-expecting Rick to laugh at her. But he didn’t. Instead, he stared at her with those gorgeous green eyes of his as if trying to figure her out.

  “What?” she asked, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Just thinking about how I feel the same way. You coming here has really made this place feel more like a home. I really know what we’d been missing with just us and the girls.”

  Before either of them could say anything else, a chime sounded through the apartment letting them know that the girls were back.

  “Shit,” said Rick. “We need to move.”

  The two of them hurried out of Rick’s bedroom and back into the living room just in time to see the girls pour out of the elevator, their tutor close behind. The girls ran up to Rick and Jessie, throwing their arms around the pair’s legs.

  Rick and Jessie shared a look, one that made Jessie tingle with happiness. She felt, for the first time in as long as she could remember, like she belonged.

  “All right, ladies,” said Rick. “Let me go talk with Miss White and see how you all did today.”

  “We did fine!” said Lucy.

  “Then tell Jessie all about it!”

  “Yeah,” said Jessie. “I want to hear all about the museum!”

  She and the three girls plopped down on the massive living room couch and cuddled up, each of the girls telling Jessie about their favorite parts of the museum. As they did, the tutor left, the elevator doors opening up to reveal Jonas and Samuel.

  By this point, the girls were done with their recounting of the museum. They leapt off the couch and ran over to their other dads, ready to tell their stories again.

  “Hey, ladies,” said Samuel. “I want to hear all about what you did today, but right now, Papa Sam needs to talk to Papa Rick about something really important.”

  “Huh?” asked Rick. “What’s up?”

  “Just...come with me,” said Samuel.

  With that, the two men left the room. Jessie watched them depart, wondering what it was that they were concerned about. From their tone, it sounded serious.

  But before she could think too much about it, Jonas plopped onto the couch next to her.

  “So,” he said. “You and me and the girls tonight, and for the next few days.”

  “That’s right,” said Jessie.

  Jonas was close to her, and just like with Rick, his scent drifted over to Jessie and wrapped itself around her like a scarf made of cashmere. She let herself get taken away by it as she tried to figure out the way it was different than Rick.

  Less rich, whiskey scent and more...something lighter, more urban, like the scent of the leather interiors of the luxury cars that Boyd would take her around the city in.

  “You cool over there?” he asked.

  Jonas’ words snapped her out of her daze.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Fine.” She shook her head, doing her best to come back to the present moment.

  “So, since it is just us and the girls tonight, I was thinking the three of us could make some dinner, have a quiet night in.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jessie.

  “But tomorrow, on the other hand....”

  Jessie raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, the girls are going to be having a playdate with some of the other kids in the building. So, I was thinking that we could celebrate your first week here with a night out on the town.”

  “A night out?” asked Jessie, intrigued by the idea.

  “Sure,” he said. “A friend of mine –a bear shift
er who lives in the West Village− is having an art opening at one of the local galleries. And I hate going to events like that by myself.”

  “You want me to be your....”

  The word “date” came to mind, but Jessie didn’t want to come out and say it.

  “Companion,” he quickly said. “I know that you’ve been out of the shifter scene in the city for...well, for as long as you’ve been here. I figured that it’d be a good way for you to meet some other shifters in a friendly atmosphere.”

  “That actually...sounds kind of nice.”

  “It will be,” he said. “I can take you out during the day while the girls are with their tutor and we can get you some clothes for the evening. Then we’ll come back, see the girls to their playdate, and head out.”

  “Great,” said Jessie with a smile.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out in the city for anything like this. Boyd had money, but he was beyond stingy with it. And he was such a workaholic that taking a day off for fun wasn’t in his vocabulary.

  “But for now,” he said, “let’s worry about dinner.”

  “Good call,” said Jessie.

  She turned her attention to the girls.

  “What do you munchkins feel in for mood for tonight?”

  “Pizza!” said Alice.

  “Hamburgers!” said Lucy.

  “Meatballs!” called out Sarah.

  Jessie and Jonas shared a look.

  “So, ah,” he said. “Pizza with hamburgers and meatballs on it – easy enough.”

  “How about lasagna?” asked Jessie. “That’s kind of like pizza. And it’s got all that stuff in it. Sort of.”

  The girls’ eyes went wide at the idea.

  “Yeah!” said Alice. “And we can use the pasta maker we got for Christmas!”

  “I think that’s a winner,” said Jonas.

  “Then let’s do it,” said Jessie.

  The five of them got to it. Jessie got all of the ingredients out of the fridge and pantry, both of which were fully stocked. Once all the ingredients were assembled, Jessie assigned tasks.

  When it came to Jonas, however, she wasn’t sure just what to do with him.