His Dragon Protector
Page 18
“You’ve got valid points, being worried.” Mason’s grin threatened to turn into a smirk.
I glared and wished I could flip him off.
“I know you don’t like Charleston as much as you liked Carlisle’s place in the country.”
“Haiden’s place.”
He sighed. “Are you still mad at Carlisle for saying that Evan should go home? You realize that he was between a rock and a hard place there. If Vince ever found out that Carlisle knew where Evan was and learned that he didn’t attempt to—”
“It’s Haiden’s house,” I said with a sniff, and refused to have the discussion again. I didn’t give a shit about moldy old alphas who thought they knew best, and if Mason kept this up, he’d get an enlightenment he wouldn’t enjoy.
He smiled and shook his head, almost like he could hear me. “Well, would you be happy to find out there was a house nearby theirs that was now our house?” He tilted his head.
I gaped and my heart leaped. “Really?”
“Really.”
“No shit? I’d say I love that. Honest to goodness?”
He hunkered down and lay on the floor so that he could give me an upside-down kiss and then he moved so that he could prop himself up and rest his head on his hand. “Well, then I’d say let’s go tonight because this house is real.”
My gut leapt and Brant made a little growling noise and puffed some sparks toward my face. I turned my head and Mason cooed over my little Booger. They didn’t hurt yet, but I was downright scared about when the real fire would start. Mason had been shifty as fuck when I asked how long that might take to appear, but he was my man, my alpha and, “I love you, Mason.” I rested my head against his arm instead of hugging him.
“I love you more, my sweet pain in the ass.”
“That’s an acceptable pet name? Booger isn’t?”
He laughed and scooched over to give me another kiss and then he dropped one on Brant’s nose. Brant pawed at me and I realized he was trying to get to Mason, so I let him go. He climbed all over Mason and I held my breath while I waited for him to get bored and try to escape again. Eventually he’d get hungry and shift back to a much less destructive baby so he could have a bottle, but it was the in-between time that was the real killer.
It was a long wait and Mason and I were all over the house about four times before it happened, but I didn’t mind, and nothing was better than finally collapsing on the couch with a sweet-smelling, freshly bathed sleepy little baby, especially when Mason came over and wrapped me up in his arms.
“The drive might be easier while he’s asleep,” he murmured. “Oh, hell. I hadn’t even considered what it might mean to have him in a car these days.”
We rushed to get packed up, but Mason only let me bring a few of Brant’s and my things. “We can come back for the rest.” We put Brant—baby-shaped, button-nosed and beautiful—in the car seat in his diaper with a blanket over him to stay warm. I’d more or less given up on the onesies since he’d shredded more than a few already. The drive was every second as long as I remembered it, and while we were on the highway I kept nervously checking over my shoulder to make sure that Brant, my sweet little terror baby, was still asleep.
“He’s fine,” Mason soothed. “How is your anxiety? You know, postpartum anxiety is actually more common than depression. If you think—”
“Mason, do not doctor me. My son turns into a dragon and tries to run and fly away from me,” I took his hand and grinned his way. “That’s my problem. I’m okay otherwise, I swear. I’d let you know if I wasn’t.”
He was handsome in the dying light the slowly setting sun, with five o’clock shadow dark on his jaw. I wanted to crawl into his lap, steering wheel be damned, and do things with him that I hadn’t had the energy for lately. I shifted in my seat and looked over my shoulder again. Thank everything, Brant was still asleep. After a while, we turned off the highway and onto the same road that wound lazily through the hills to Haiden’s house.
“You weren’t kidding? It’s actually near their house?”
“Well…” He laughed and when I glanced at him he’d actually pinked up a little. “I may have not told you the entire truth. I had it built, so I really hope you like it because I had a few things put in, just for you.”
“You’re kidding?”
He shook his head and I could barely stand the wait. We drove past the turnoff for Haiden’s house and then, barely a quarter-mile down the two-lane, country road, he pulled into a freshly grated driveway.
“The gravel is so white!”
“It’s new,” he said, and I could hear the amusement, but I didn’t look at him. I was too busy staring at our new house as it appeared over a small rise. “Oh, wow,” I said, unable to help the hushed, awed tone of my voice. It wasn’t huge, which I’d been afraid of, but it was plenty big enough for us and our baby. It was two stories and there was a little jutted-out piece that had a chimney sticking out of it at the bottom, the bricks so new they seemed to glow.
“Oh, I loved the fireplace at Haiden’s,” I sighed, and Mason hummed out a positive sound.
The raw timber construction immediately seemed homey to me. The tin roof wasn’t fancy, but I loved that it was new and wouldn’t need to be fixed for a good long while, and gleamed red in the sunlight.
“You can either pick a color to paint the house, or we can leave it natural,” he said as I opened the door and shot out onto the lawn.
“Leave it!” The grass was torn up in spots, where there’d clearly been equipment here, but I didn’t care. There were flowerboxes next to the sidewalk without any dirt in them and the front door still had the sales sticker on it when I bounded up the steps. I ran to it and turned the knob. On either side of the windows were honest-to-goodness shutters and they weren’t painted yet either, I loved them more than I could say.
“Wait,” Mason called. He’d stopped to unstrap Brant.
“I wanna see!” I yelled and shot forward into the house. Inside the front was a living room with one lonely couch, but it looked and smelled like new leather when I got close. There was a fireplace. The walls were still white and unfinished, and the molding was stacked up in one corner. The dining room had a table and when I walked through the kitchen, it looked most finished, which made sense. There were appliances and when I opened the fridge door, there was already food inside. I laughed and spun around to run the other direction. The stairs to the second floor were in the corner of the living room opposite the fireplace. By this time Mason was inside and he had Brant, who was still a baby, in his arms.
“Love it so far!”
“Good,” he said, but by then I was trucking up the stairs. When I got to the second floor, the first room on the right seemed like a nursery, which was amazing. I loved the crib and even better, I loved that everything inside seemed like it would work for a dragon and a baby. I flew out and stopped at the next door on the right, and that looked like our bedroom with a made-up bed already in the middle. I kept going. Bathroom. Another bedroom. And back around almost to the stairs was the last door across from the nursery. Mason made it to the top of the steps before I could shove open that door.
“If anything’s wrong, I’m sorry, but I wanted—”
Mason lunged toward me and I took him, snuggling him close. He babbled and clung to me for all the world like he was telling me about the new house too. I smiled at him and then pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“You wanted?” I prompted Mason to continue.
“I wanted you to have your own space. I work at the clinic, but you’ve been hiding out wherever we are with your laptop in random corners. I thought you might want… something that was yours.”
“That’s never been something I had.” I shrugged. “I make do.”
He brushed a hand to my jaw, and I tilted my lips up for his. He smiled and kissed me, slow, warm, and searching. He backed off and said, “I never want my omega making do. I want you to be happy.”
“Yeah,
yeah, you schmuck,” I grumbled, but I sniffed away some emotions that had gotten the better of me.
He stepped back and opened the door. I stepped inside and couldn’t breathe. Across the room, there was the type of desk that gamers and programmers salivated over in their dreams. The chair was prime, black leather and obviously made to hold an ass for hours on end. There were three freakin’ monitors parked on the desk, and a light keyboard lit up on the black work surface making me moan.
“Tell me there’s a real keyboard somewhere too.”
“There is.”
“Take your son,” I murmured, and he did, speaking a lot of words that I didn’t hear. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled over, looking at the outlets as I went. They seemed to be done correctly. The router was something I’d be replacing immediately, but the tower was what I really wanted to see.
“Who did this?” I asked when I got nose to nose with it, and it wasn’t a random, brand-name purchase.
“Work buddy.”
About an hour later, totally embarrassed by the way I’d lost myself in the bits and bobs of tech, I surfaced to find that Mason and Brant weren’t in the room anymore. I heard them on the first level, though, so I went down the stairs and found them in the kitchen where Brant was destroying a banana while sitting in the middle of the floor. Mason sat beside him drinking a cup of coffee. He gave me anxious eyes when I came into the kitchen.
“What’s the verdict?”
Smiling, I leaned against his shoulder and chuckled. “The coolant system in that computer is all wrong for what they had it clocked at and what they were trying to run, but I can fix that easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.” I turned and pressed my forehead against his shoulder and felt my throat try to stop up. “It’s perfect. It’s all perfect. Thank you. No one’s ever made me my own work room before. And you did a whole freakin’ house, all by yourself.”
He hugged me close. “No, I paid a bunch of people who know better to come do it.”
“Still.”
He held me and Brant laughed as he made a big mess. Eventually I felt like I wasn’t going to bawl like a lunatic if I spoke, so I sat up. The happiness inside me was so good, so wonderful, that I couldn’t put it to words, so I took Mason’s face in both my hands and planted a big smacking kiss on him. He laughed and bonked his forehead to mine.
“Brant can be safe here,” I whispered, “and I can work here, and our friends are close by. This is great. Thank you for loving me, even though I’m a pain in the ass.”
He dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Right back at you.”
Even though things weren’t entirely perfect, and even though I should probably stay out of New York until Nonno was no longer among the able-bodied and breathing, I’d never been happier.
Get Ready for Book 3 in the Divine Omega’s, His Warrior Dragon!
Coming Soon!
His Warrior Dragon
Get Ready for Book 3 in the Divine Omega’s, His Warrior Dragon!
Coming Soon!
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His Dragon Protector
Divine Dragons: Book 2
Jill Haven
© 2019
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).