Alpha Dragon: Alpha Bites Book 3

by Mandy Rosko

  Which was when she realized that it wasn’t an alpha. It was just an angry beta. A young one, too. A beta could take on an alpha with enough effort, but one alpha against another shouldn’t have made for such a one-sided fight.

  The betas cheered. Even if they weren’t in their wolf shapes, they were howling when the enemy beta finally stopped moving. Jax spat the creature out onto the grass to the sounds of cheering, and the wails of retreat.

  The beta shifted back into his human shape, soft brown hair in his face and matted with blood.

  Katie looked up, spotting the rogues as they made their run for it to escape something that could chew them up and spit them out so easily.

  She pointed her weapon, ready to fire, when she remembered she didn’t have any bullets left in her gun.

  She lowered the weapon, looking down at Jax, relieved to see him, except for the way he was looking at her.

  Katie tensed. What? What had she done to make him look at her like that? Because she’d pointed a weapon at those assholes when their backs were turned? So what?

  When Jax transformed, allowing his body to shift back into his man shape, Katie didn’t expect him to be covered with so much blood.

  Well, of course, he’d just mauled another shifter. What did she think was going to happen?

  She frowned when he stumbled, his body wavering.

  No. That wasn’t the blood of the beta. That was his blood. Jax’s blood. And Katie felt intense cold all over her body when Jax fell over.

  “Jax!” She jumped down from the second story, landing hard on the grass. She abandoned her weapon and ran to him. She fell to her knees at his side just as the other betas, the ones not too injured or carrying the other injured, hobbled over.

  His back. It was so badly cut up. His flesh was raw. It was a shock she couldn’t see down into the bones.

  If she did, he might well be dead.

  “Holy shit.”

  Katie thought the beta was commenting on how badly Jax looked, but then realized what they were all looking at.

  Black smoke. There were thick black clouds rising in the distance, sparks of orange and red, as though from a fire.

  Katie looked back down at Jax. She hesitated, then grabbed for his hand and clenched it tight.

  Chapter 2

  He felt like total shit.

  Jax’s entire body seriously felt like he’d been run over by a car, then a truck, and then one of those big transport trucks, and probably something that was towing a boat. All in that order.

  Every muscle ached, his back burned, and it was dark. He had to fight to do it, but he snapped his eyes open with a hard gasp for breath, pushing himself to sit up.

  Hands grabbed him, pushed at him. Dennis’ rogue pack.

  Jax didn’t think. He acted. He grabbed at the slender wrists of the person attacking him and held on tight until he heard a feminine scream.

  He released his captive, the shock of hearing a noise such as that knocking him back to reality.

  “Jax, are you okay?”

  That was Katie. The sound of her voice felt like a punch to his chest because, for one thing, Katie being here, in this room with him, at least meant she was alive.

  For a second thing, it meant he’d grabbed and hurt her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I just asked you that.”

  “Tell me,” Jax insisted. “Are you all right? What happened with those bastards that attacked us?”

  “Dead or gone,” Katie said, reaching for the lamp and turning it on. Jax blinked at the sudden light, raising his hand against it.

  “Sorry. Want me to turn it off?” She was already reaching for the lamp.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “They’re all dead?”

  Katie nodded. “Yeah. Well, no. Sorry. One of them was alive. The guy you chewed up somehow lived. Everyone else was either dead or they hobbled away.” She hesitated briefly. “The prisoner is in the basement now.”

  The cold tone in her voice made the air around Jax frigid, and he was supposed to be cold blooded, wasn’t he?

  “He’s probably locked up tight,” Jax said, having a pretty decent idea of where this closed off, frigid tone was coming from. “He won’t be able to get upstairs.”

  “I know.”

  Jax watched her. “Does it bother you? That someone from Dennis’ pack is in the house?”

  This time, she glanced down at her hands. “A bit.”

  Jax struggled against the sudden rage that bubbled inside him. He clenched his hands into fists. “Did you see him? Is he…”

  Fuck, Jax couldn’t finish. Stupid question to even think about asking. He didn’t want to remind Katie of the horrors of her brutal attack, but it was too late now, and he couldn’t take his words back.

  “I didn’t see him. I don’t want to see anyone from that pack.”

  Jax let those words stew in his head for a couple of minutes. He couldn’t figure out if that meant that Katie had clearly seen the man on the battlefield after shifting and just hadn’t gone to see him since he’d been thrown into the basement, or if she hadn’t seen his face at all.

  Jax hadn’t been part of the pack when Katie had been attacked. He often wished he could have been there to protect her. Since time travel was impossible, the best he could hope for would be to one day get his hands on one of the pricks who’d stolen her childhood from her.

  “Oh, well, good.” Jax grunted as he hooked his legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll go see him.”

  Might as well ask questions now while he could. If the man didn’t answer him, then Jax could beat the information out of him.

  Katie tensed and immediately flew into action. “Wait, no, you’re not getting out of bed. Lie down.”

  She roughly grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him down. Jax grunted at the sudden spear of pain. Not only did his vision swim, but it hurt his back a lot more than if he’d just been allowed to get to his feet.

  He hissed sharply through clenched teeth, every muscle in his body going tight despite his efforts to keep that from happening.

  “Fuck! I’m so sorry!” Katie yanked her hands back and started to wring them. He’d never seen her wring her hands before. “Are you all right? Do you need me to get anything for you?”

  Jax puffed for breath. A thin layer of sweat appeared on his skin, making him hot with pain and freezing cold at the same time. “I’m good. Just…give me a minute.” He clenched his hands into fists in the sheets, his claws coming out and puncturing them.

  This might take more than a minute.

  A soft, damp cloth pressed against his burning skin, taking away the heat and easing the chill as it slid across his chest and shoulders. “Okay, hold still. I’ll clean you up.”

  Katie’s eyes were intense on him as she worked, though her touch remained sweet and gentle, and Jax was suddenly kind of glad for the pain. So long as she kept treating him like this, he would keep himself in pain for as long as possible.

  That was kind of sick. He probably shouldn’t tell her that, but all the same, he couldn’t stop admiring her face, her skin, her eyes, and the softness of her touch.

  He’d never heard Katie sound, or even look, this panicked in a long time. She rarely showed her emotions to anyone, other than when she was annoyed with something. Sometimes, she would show them to Jax, but even that was rare. Her soft smiles and quiet laughs were the things he’d come to hold close, but now she looked like this. He must have been badly hurt.

  “How badly was I injured?”

  He felt the bandages wrapped around him. They were tight. That cat-shifting bastard had jumped on his back and tried to maul him, It hadn’t succeeded, but that didn’t mean what it had done hadn’t hurt like hell.

  “Pretty bad, but you’re healing now. I already called Garret. He’s coming back. He wasn’t happy, but he doesn’t want to risk anything happening to his mate now that he knows Dennis will attack the house even if he’s not h
ere.”

  Their eyes met briefly before Katie glanced away.

  Jax sighed. He felt for Garret. He really did. It wasn’t right that the man had to leave his sister in Dennis’ hands, even for a moment, to come here because Jax couldn’t handle himself. Jax could only hope Anna was doing all right, that she was alive, not too scared, and wouldn’t lose faith that they would find her and bring her home.

  Guilt ate away at Jax for having been unconscious at all. “How long was I out for?”

  “Not long. Since the attack earlier today. The sun just started to set.”

  Made sense if Garret wasn’t here yet, but he didn’t feel as woozy as he had when he’d collapsed.

  Then Jax realized why, and something squeezed painfully tight in his chest. “You stayed with me that whole time? You were healing me?”

  Katie pressed her lips together before she eased herself down on the bed. She wet her lips, looked away from him, then back, her eyes shining, as if she was struggling with this. “Yeah.”

  Even the hint of tears in her eyes was nearly enough to undo him. Jax wasn’t sure if it was because it was the sort of person he was, or if alphas just couldn’t bear to see their mates cry, but the need to do anything and everything in his power to take away her pain was alive and well inside him. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Her gorgeous golden eyes flew wide. “Of course I had to do it. Are you insane?”

  “You stayed with me this whole time to heal me,” Jax continued. God, he wanted to reach out and touch her hand so badly. “If I wasn’t in any threat of dying, then you didn’t have to do it. But I do appreciate it.”

  Katie nodded, then shocked the hell out of Jax when she did what he’d just been thinking about and took him by the hand.

  A pulse of electricity rushed up his arm so powerful and so sizzling hot that it nearly felt like pain. It made him sit up straight, cleared out his nostrils, and made the scent of her that much more prominent. It was nearly an overload.

  It was the best kind of pain there ever was, and in that moment, Jax was grateful for the fact that he wasn’t naked and was at least wearing a pair of joggers.

  He didn’t have pajamas, so this must have been what Katie had dressed him in when he recovered.

  The fact that she may have dressed him at all sent another vibrating shock of pleasure through him, and he pulled his hand away.

  “No,” Katie said, reaching for him again, this time lacing their fingers together. “Don’t, it’s okay.”

  Jax swallowed hard. “Honestly, if you don’t stop, I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

  Jax didn’t often feel the dragon inside him taking over. He and the dragon inside him were one being, totally entwined in everything, but there were times when it was like a totally separate creature, one he had absolutely no control over.

  It had taken over when he’d fled his clan like the coward he was, when his sister had died, and all Jax could do was let the beast take over, let it kill and raze the earth.

  It had also taken over when Katie had been in danger. He’d seen that shifter running for her, the bastard wolf creature that would have killed her. Even when the betas started jumping out of the windows to try to get to her first, Jax knew she would have been dead. So would the betas had nothing been done.

  Jax had felt…bigger at the time of his shift. That alpha had seemed so small, but Jax wasn’t going to question good luck. How could he, when it was the reason he was alive? When it was the reason his mate was alive?

  And she was still touching him. Katie still held tightly to Jax’s hands, as if he would vanish if she let him go.

  Something was off about that. He felt it in the tightness of her touch, in the way her eyes stared intently at him. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Her normally reserved, mousey bob cut appeared a little messier than normal, and longer. She looked wild and alive.

  “Katie?”

  The dragon inside him growled. Fire and heat ignited in his chest, but not the same as the kind he’d breathed earlier. That was another thing that was off. Jax hadn’t breathed fire since he’d left his pack.

  This was a different sort of fire from that, though. This was lust. This was desire and desperation. This was almost fifty years of not having what he so intensely craved. He’d gotten used to the distance, to the pain of not having what he and the dragon inside him needed, but there was a reason why they always kept an arm’s length apart. Jax knew it well.

  Which was why it shocked him when Katie climbed onto the bed on her knees and straddled him.

  Jax tensed. “What are you doing?”

  Katie stared down at him, her eyes blazing with desire, but also a touch of determination as she lifted her shirt over her head, exposing the plain black bra she wore, as well as her smooth, creamy skin that made Jax groan and his cock tighten. The joggers he wore suddenly seemed a little too tight in that moment. What the ever-loving hell was happening?

  He liked it. His hands instinctively moved to her hips.

  “Don’t hold back,” Katie said, her chest rising and falling, as if she was having sudden trouble catching her breath. “Do to me what you’ve wanted to do ever since you found out I was your mate. Show me what you wanted to do to me for all these years.”

  Jax’s eyes widened. His initial reaction was disbelief, but he could tell she meant it. It was in her voice and expression, and God help him, but he couldn’t stop to be bothered for anymore confirmation than that.

  She was beautiful. She was right here, not running away from him, and in that moment, her bottom lip was plump and sultry, begging to be bitten. She wanted it, so he was going to give it to her.

  Jax pushed himself up, ignoring the pulling he felt in his back, and the sting, as he wrapped his arms around her exposed skin, and pressed his lips to the warm flesh just between her breasts. Her soft moan, and the touch of her hands on the back of his neck, was absolutely everything he needed.

  Chapter 3

  Katie wasn’t quite ready for what she was asking for, but it had been so long. She was never going to be ready unless she gave herself that push she needed, and she was going to take that leap. Not just because Jax needed her touch to heal. Being close and holding his hand was doing the trick decently enough, but she wanted him out of this bed. She needed him at a hundred percent.

  Otherwise, every ache and pain he felt, every wince, would be on her.

  And now he was kissing her. His mouth was on her skin. Of the few times in their lives when Jax had ever touched her, it had never been a kiss. It had never…burned like this.

  This was amazing. This was by far the best sensation she’d ever had in her life. The touch of his hot mouth on her skin, between her breasts, moving across the mounds before he pushed the bra out of the way. She gasped for breath as he sucked on her left nipple.

  The burn intensified. Katie sucked in a hard breath, but it suddenly felt like there wasn’t nearly enough air in the room to breathe. Warmth pooled between her legs, and she nearly jumped right off Jax’s lap when his hand slid down to her sex.

  At first, his touch was above her clothes, but then he moved his hand. Katie moaned at the loss, but then realized what he was doing when he used one hand to undo her belt and slid his fingers inside her jeans.

  The touch of his fingers sent a strong shock of sensation through her. Katie almost pulled away from it, but stopped herself.

  It was pleasure. It felt good. She thrust her hips against him, desperate for more now that she had it because this was wild. This was different from the touch of her own fingers down there. Why didn’t anyone ever tell her someone else’s hand on her sex would feel good?

  Jax pulled his mouth away from her budding nipple. Katie made a tiny squeal when he pressed his teeth around her breast. It wasn’t exactly a bite because it didn’t hurt. Much. It felt good, though. It felt amazing.

  “You like this?”

  His voice sounded raspy, sexy. She’d never heard it like thi
s before. It made her breath quicken and her blood run even hotter than it already was. She was totally overheating, and she didn’t mind it in the least.

  “Tell me you like this,” Jax said, increasing the pressure of his fingers against her sex, his fingers pushing through her pubic hair to her lips, touching the warmth there before pushing inside. “I love touching you here. I’ve thought about this for so long. You have no idea.”

  Katie nodded, holding on tight because there was nothing else she could do. Almost nothing. Something inside her reacted. Maybe it was the wolf, the mated animal instincts that wanted to give her man exactly what he wanted.

  “I like it,” she panted, sounding just as out of breath as Jax did. She’d never been able to bring about a reaction like this in herself.

  If she’d known it was going to be like this with Jax, she might have gotten over her insecurities a long time ago.

  “Push them deeper inside me. I want…I want more,” she begged, still thrusting her hips forward.

  God, she did want it. She wanted it so much more than she thought she would. Desire had always been there, but it had stayed soft and simmering, always under the surface. Now, she was about to explode with it.

  All the while she felt Jax’s strength continue to grow.

  Hand holding and being next to his bedside was one thing, but the sex was definitely helping a lot more than she thought it would.

  Jax pushed his fingers deeper all right, doing it with a growl, and that made her all the more wild and desperate for more. The wolf inside her head howled.

  It had never acted as a separate entity before. She didn’t mind.

  It wasn’t enough. She needed more.

  Katie reached down to her jeans. They were tight, but Jax had still managed to get his hand beneath the waist. Katie undid the button and pulled down the zipper, sighing when he had more room to work, and his fingers slid deeper. Two of them, slick and wet as he slid forward and back.