His Dragon Protector

by Jill Haven

  His knot swelled and locked us together, but I was already so tingly from the little fireflies buzzing in my veins and the shocks of pleasure that kept firing deep in my body that I couldn’t tell which way was up. I gasped and clung to his arms when he slid them around my chest, and he held me even closer.

  Mason rolled us to the side and held me.

  I had trouble getting my breath back, but when it was all over, my neck stung a little, admittedly not much, but that wild energy inside me had calmed down and I felt fucking peaceful. Which, of course, was wrong on every level. I hadn’t spent an easy day in my entire life, I don’t think. The calm was so unfamiliar to me that it made me sit up out of his arms.

  “What’s… relax, no, hey, I’m….” Mason lay there on his back, catching his breath with a smile and his hazel eyes sparkling. He was so fucking handsome it made my chest ache.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “Uh,” he glanced down at his toes and wiggled them. He still had all of his fucking clothes on. The scales on his face faded out of existence until he was a smooth-skinned man again. I almost wanted them back. “If I had to guess, because I’ve never done it before, not many dragons alive have,” he added hastily, which set me on edge, “I think we just mated.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I shot out of the bed and stood there. “It’s too fast. I don’t even know if you snore or fart in your sleep. I don’t know you.”

  “You know I don’t do those things.” He bit at his lips and seemed like he was trying not to laugh, which made me livid.

  “Well, maybe you’re holding it in! Everything comes out in the long run.”

  “I’m holding farts and snores in?”

  I flipped him off. “You know what I mean.”

  That weird calmness rolled out through my body, almost like it was telling me to pull back on the yelling, and yeah, I guess I liked the idea of having some connection to Mason, something richer than the one we’d already had, but I would have been happier with just settling on that we’re maybe boyfriends for sure after a boring goddamned talk, rather than some weird mystical mojo that I had no control over.

  “Fuck,” I whispered, but he heard me and reared back like I’d given him a strong right hook.

  “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

  That fucking stung, a goddamned lot. He didn’t do it on purpose? Meaning, he didn’t want to. “Yeah, well, fuck you too.”

  Mason was on his feet so fast I didn’t really see the movement. He was flat and then he was on his feet, chest heaving, eyes flashing. He tucked himself away and I stepped back in awe. I hadn’t really seen him pissed off yet, I guess. Fear poked at me, but he didn’t make a move to smack me or anything, just stood there with his jaw hard and his focus on me, and nothing else. Slowly I came down off my mental ceiling, but I was still close to it.

  “Uh…” I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t just because he scared me a little right now, and maybe I was being unfair, but I couldn’t make myself say sorry out loud, either, so I crossed my arms. “I didn’t say I wanted you to do that to me,” I grumbled.

  “Damn it, why do you have to make everything more difficult than it has to be? I’ve gone to more trouble for you than anyone else I’ve ever encountered in my life, and I once helped with an amputation before people used soap regularly. That was a fucking mess, let me tell you. The way you keep hacking away at me every time we get close is worse. Trust me, if I could take back this mating, I would.” He smacked his chest and the hollow thud filled the room.

  No, that’s not what I want at all. I screamed the words in my head, but they didn’t make it out of my mouth. I flinched, but he didn’t come after me even though he was clearly enraged. Slowly it started to register that Mason wasn’t like the men I’d dealt with most of my life. He wasn’t going to try to force me to agree with him with his fists, or by shoving me in a little itty-bitty room with boards over the windows. I shivered with that thought. Fucking Vladimir. Mason was mad, but he still had himself under control.

  I breathed out a slow breath. My chest ached and I rubbed hard at it, a flurry of horrible emotions scraping behind my sternum and tunneling down through my gut. Mason rubbed at his own heart and dropped his head so that he was staring at the floor between us.

  “Seth, I went too far,” he said steadily. “That’s… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

  Horror filled me as my eyes burned. No, I can’t cry. What good did crying ever do anyone? My throat got tight. “I don’t know… I don’t know what’s going on right now.” I said softly and a real sob, something I’d never let myself do, even when I knew Dad was dead, ripped free from my throat. Tears burned down my cheeks and suddenly it was all too much. A baby on the way and now this too, all in one night? Weird as it was, Dad would have been happy for me about the baby, and I couldn’t call him up. He would have been happy I’d met someone. I wished really hard for a few things to be different right now, but honestly, I couldn’t say I wanted to wish away Mason claiming me as his.

  “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said that shit to you.” I wiped at my eyes, but the tears kept coming. “It’s a lot. It’s all a lot.”

  “I know. It is for me too.”

  I took a step toward him and he let out a little groan, meeting me halfway. Carefully I put my arms around his waist, and he hugged me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re sorry together,” he murmured.

  “I… I think I want this.”

  He crushed me closer and I stayed there in his arms for a long time. Eventually he urged me into the bed, and I went. He undressed and then crawled under the covers. He pulled the soft sheets and comforter over us. I snuggled my back against his front, begging without words to be the little spoon, and either he was psychic, or what I needed wasn’t much of a question, because he curled his big body around mine and held me close.

  Yeah, okay, I could get used to this.

  There was no light filtering into the room when I woke up later, refreshed and feeling much better. Mason planted a line of little kisses along my shoulder.

  “You okay back there?”

  He grumbled out a sound that went to my stomach and trembled everything around in there in a good way. “Yep.”

  My stomach growled and he chuckled. “Breakfast?”

  “Yeah, I guess losing dinner made me get hungry earlier than usual.”

  “I should have something in the pantry. Let’s go.”

  While we ate Pop-Tarts standing over the sink in his kitchen and drank cups of coffee from his Keurig, we stared at each other. There was no other word for what we were doing, almost like we were both waiting for the other person to fuck up and ruin a good thing. Eventually I knocked my shoulder against his arm, and he chuckled, brushing crumbs from his fingers into the sink.

  “Let’s go for a walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

  “Ugh, exercise and up before the sun?” I glanced out the ink-black window. “I’m not sure about this relationship anymore.”

  He stared at me.

  “Too soon for jokes?”

  “Not too soon, you’re just too much,” he said, leaning down. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he nipped at my lip instead, a slight sting that burned oh so good.

  “Hey!”

  “I’ll drive us to the park instead of making you walk.”

  “Fine, if I gotta go, I guess that’s all right.”

  I didn’t mind walking, though. I’d gotten used to it, for the most part. The park Mason took us to was pretty, even though it was still cold out for West Virginia, with more green than there was in New York right now. The sun began to come up and I even saw a few purple flowers bursting out of the ground here and there along the highly cultivated trail. Weirdly, I already had a pang for the country.

  “I’m going to run,” Mason told me and gave me a kiss.

  “Be my guest. I get to be lazy, right? I’m gonna take advant
age.”

  He smiled at the reminder of the news we found out last night and kissed my nose. He lapped me a few times on the path, and then we went back to the car together. I had no way of knowing how far he went, but I understood why he wanted to get out so early. He moved faster than a man could, and I knew he wasn’t even trying very hard.

  By the time we were heading back to the house, I was ready for a well-deserved midmorning nap, or at least, I thought so. I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the seat while Mason drove, but he slowed down too soon. Instead of the bump right onto his driveway from the main road, he turned left. I sat up and opened my eyes.

  “Why did you turn into your neighbor’s driveway?” I asked as I leaned forward to look toward the direction he was staring. My breath caught in my throat. “Oh.”

  There, in front of his big house, sat a very familiar-looking black car, in fact, it was the same short, black limo that had rolled up on us outside the police station with a load of gunmen.

  “Look at the front door.” Mason pointed, and I squinted.

  “What’s wrong with it? I think your eyesight is better than mine.”

  “It’s kicked in,” he mumbled. “There’s an alarm on the house, so—” The sound of sirens in the distance cut in on his words. He frowned and backed out of the driveway, going back the direction we’d come from.

  “What are you doing?” I spun backward in my seat to watch as a couple of guys ran out of Mason’s house.

  “No way am I taking you back there.”

  “My computer—”

  “I’ll get you another one.”

  Smacking the back of my seat, I sighed. “I just got that one.”

  “If they didn’t take it, I’ll get it for you next time I’m back in Charleston.”

  I didn’t miss the way he didn’t include me in this fetching of things, and I slouched into the seat and didn’t even bother asking where he was driving us. We were on the highway that would take us to Haiden’s place, where we were apparently going to spend the rest of our lives hiding, faster than you could shake a stick.

  “Did you tell someone you were in Charleston?” Mason asked abruptly.

  I turned to sit right in my seat and laughed. “Yeah, I told my seven best friends, three cousins and two partridges in a pear tree.”

  He whipped his head toward me but then went back to driving. “You’re messing with me, right?”

  “I don’t know, I also told my seven best friends that you’ve got the biggest cock I’ve ever seen in real life. They were all very interested in seeing for themselves. They’re omegas. Real hot.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, fine. Sorry.”

  The morning sunshine blinded me, and I pulled down the visor. This was a real damper on the day. “Eh, it’s disturbingly easy to track people down. Technically they found you, not me.”

  He grunted at that.

  “Did you use a credit card to pay for the hotel room when you came to get me in Buffalo?”

  “They don’t usually accept IOUs.”

  “Well, there you go.” I smacked his arm, but he was stiff as a board. “I could have hacked that hotel’s shitty recordkeeping system and found you from that, probably in under five minutes.”

  He shuddered. “Ugh. I like TV and the internet and modern medicinal advancements, but sometimes technology scares me more than dragons.”

  “Maybe you could just turn into that big gorgeous dragon you’ve got hidden in there somehow and eat them.” I wiggled my eyebrows and he laughed.

  “Yeah, no one would notice that at all.”

  “It’s an idea.”

  He made a face like he was thinking about it and we shared a good chuckle. He took my hand in his and held it while he drove us… home, ish.

  14

  Mason

  “I don’t understand the Bitcoin thing,” Carlisle said. “I mean, yes, you’ve explained it, and I’ve heard of it, but it’s baffling. There’s money missing is the gist. Over a million?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a clusterfuck.” We were crowded around the coffee pot in the kitchen for no particular reason, stainless-steel surfaces glistening all around. Seth pressed against my side while Carlisle paced in front of us, and Haiden huddled on Seth’s other side sending him very peculiar looks while he frowned.

  “I don’t like that humans were able to find you so easily.”

  “It’s not like I’m enjoying the hell out of it,” I said, and Carlisle snorted so hard I swore I saw sparks. He smelled smokier than usual, and I wasn’t sure if he was angry or scared.

  “Seth is rubbing off on you.”

  “Hey, now. I’m being perfectly good right here,” Seth said with an eyebrow wiggle that had Haiden huffing out a quiet little laugh.

  “We’ll have to do something about this,” Carlisle mumbled, his brows furrowed.

  Seth scratched at his neck, and Carlisle came to a dead halt in front of us. I tugged Seth closer to my side, working on instinct and not much else.

  “When were you going to tell us about that?” he said, stooping closer to obviously scent the air. He crept nearer to Seth and did it again. “He’s pregnant?”

  “Oh my god, the sniffing thing,” Seth dropped his head and groaned. Haiden let out gasp and turned toward him. “He’s standing right here, and yes, he is.”

  “I don’t smell anything different. You smell good, like you’re clean, though.” Haiden stuck his nose nearly into Seth’s hair, dragging in a breath, and Seth finally unwound enough to laugh. “Congratulations.”

  “I tend to shower.” Seth shrugged. “Thanks.” That one little word wasn’t very loud, but Haiden beamed at him.

  Carlisle’s evil and ecstatic face had me groaning. “I’m going to be an uncle!”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  He smiled wider and pulled me into a hug. “Come on.” He shook me around and I let him do it. “We have to at least let the family know. Mabel will want to see him. Agatha. The cousins, at least. Your sister.” He stepped back and held up his hand. Seth glared, but I couldn’t let a high-five hang. I finally let myself laugh.

  “She’s in England at the moment, and I can’t imagine her flying here for any reason that isn’t life or death. She hates planes.”

  “You have a sister?” Seth asked.

  We locked gazes. We had a lot to learn about each other.

  “I do.”

  “We’ve been looking for an excuse to show off the house,” Haiden said softly, eyes lit up. “And I’d like to meet some more of your family, Carlisle. There are so many of them.”

  That night, we were deluged by event-planning dragons, no matter how many times I said it was unnecessary. Seth spent the afternoon being violently ill in the bathroom off the guest bedroom, but by the time the small organizing party was in full swing, he was back out with everyone else and eating a piece of cake the size of his head while Agatha talked his ear off.

  “It’s scary that she took to him,” I said to Carlisle from across the big front room where we stood drinking beers by the doors that led out onto the back deck. She had her long, curly hair piled up on her head and was wearing a white, lacy dress that was just short enough to appear modern, but showed less skin than should have been possible, especially when coupled with her long matching boots.

  “What’s scarier is that he’s been talking to her for a solid five minutes, and she hasn’t stroked out from all the cursing.”

  Carlisle and I laughed and clinked beers and stopped moving suddenly when Agatha and Seth both looked our way. She leaned down and said something to Seth, who laughed and ate another piece of his ridiculous hunk of cake.

  “I think they’re all happy there will be another baby. So, the threat is from his grandfather?” Carlisle asked.

  “As far as he’s told me.”

  We drank for a while and Seth actually managed to polish off most of his cake before he slowed down. “I could pay him back the money.”

  My
heart dropped as I turned toward Carlisle. “That’s too much.”

  Carlisle’s bright blue eyes practically twinkled he was so pleased with himself. “I know you could probably scrape the cash together, but it wouldn’t be any skin off my nose. Haiden loves having Seth around.” Even as Carlisle said that, Haiden, with Jade at his side, as ever, sidled up beside Seth. Haiden touched his shoulder and Seth turned toward him without that same jumpiness other people sometimes inspired him. Agatha was in a tizzy again as she took Charlotte from Haiden and rocked her.

  “It’s a lot of money.” I glanced at Carlisle, but he was nonplussed.

  “Money for a life? I’d choose the life. I want you to be happy too, you virile bastard.”

  “Seriously, let’s start with ‘who got their omega knocked up sooner’ again. This time, let’s make sure they can hear us the whole time, so they’re royally pissed off right before bed, too.”

  He snickered and almost choked when he tried to take a swig of his beer. He coughed and got himself settled. “I’m not sure paying the old man the money will be enough to get him to back down.” I took a slug of my own beer, but the hops were too much and I hated it now in a way I hadn’t a second ago. “From the way Seth talks about it, there’s pride involved.”

  “That does make the issue more complex, doesn’t it?” Carlisle stopped talking as Mabel bustled up. For once, she wasn’t dressed in scrubs, but she wasn’t dressed up, either. In jeans and a sweatshirt, she was apple-cheeked and cheery as she tossed her arms around me, dragging me down into a hug.

  “Well done. I told Seth this, but I have an opening this week, if you’d like to come into the city for a sonogram.”

  “I’d planned to maybe try to get a machine at the clinic, but that would be easier.” My beer spilled as she hugged me again, shaking me all around.

  “Whoa there,” Carlisle said with a laugh.

  “I can’t help it. This is all just so exciting.” She beamed. “I’ll expect you.”

  “And so it begins,” Carlisle said ominously as Charlotte let out an ear-piercing wail and nearly everyone there made a sad noise with it. I laughed at Carlisle.