“Sorry, man.” The shifter grabbed Niall’s wrist and stared directly into his eyes. “I’m guessing you don’t know what the hell’s going on,” he said. The man’s accent was mostly American, but there was just a hint of an Irish lilt hidden in the way his words flowed.
“No, I don’t know what’s going on, not one bit,” Niall said.
The shifter tightened his grip on Niall’s wrist. “I figured you’d have to be brainwashed to help a piece of shit like this witch. Is that right?”
A witch? Bloody hell. It had been well over fifteen years since he’d been around a witch too. When he was growing up, the witches had been allies of the dragon shifter clan. Then, on one fateful day, everything changed. The witches—their trusted allies—had murdered his family. His family and every other family that he knew.
To survive, Niall left that life behind him. Until now, when he’d apparently been captured by the witches and brainwashed, of all things.
Niall had been pretending to be human for so long that he’d stopped paying attention to his surroundings. He would always be stronger than humans. He’d always be able to run faster and jump higher and hit harder. They posed no threat to him. But he’d forgotten that others existed in the world besides humans, and he’d let his guard down.
In the world Niall inhabited at the university, Fae, vampires, and witches were merely part of the traditional Irish folklore. They weren’t real. They were not a threat. Or so the humans thought. Niall knew better. He knew just how deadly all of them could be.
The shifter who was holding his arm led him to a shady spot near one of the caves. “Your skin is green. Your human skin,” he said, and as he spoke, more of his Irish accent bled into his voice. “If you need to vomit, let me know.”
Maybe he shared more of his accent as a way to calm Niall’s nerves. “I imagine it is quite green. What did I do? Did I kill anyone?” He braced himself for the answer. Many in his family had been warriors, but that had never been where Niall’s heart lay. He was a teacher. He was just as big and strong as the other male shifters, but he’d always wanted to avoid harming anyone.
“You don’t remember?” the shifter asked.
Not far from them, there were other shifters talking and shouting, at least four or five of them. Niall sank to the ground, sitting down, and the shifter let him. The shifter continued to stand over him, blocking him from whatever was going on with the rest of the group.
“No. I don’t. Everything’s hazy.” Niall closed his eyes. He had a flash of teaching summer school and walking out of the building one day to meet someone. That person had turned out to be a witch. “What day is it?”
The shifter held up his smartphone, letting Niall see the calendar application.
“That can’t be. It’s been three weeks. That’s impossible.”
“We’ll figure out how she got you. Do you remember how you knew her?”
“The witch? Is she dead?”
“Very,” the shifter snarled. “And not soon enough. She and her kind have caused a lifetime’s worth of grief for my clan.”
That was a relief in a way, he supposed. He generally thought all life was valuable, but in the case of the witches of western Ireland, the fewer there were of them, the better for everyone.
“She said she was a reporter. She wanted to interview me.” He leaned his head against the rock formation. “I’m a fool.”
“They’ve fucking tricked us all, at one time or another. It’s what they do.”
Something about the shifter’s voice was familiar. He’d heard it before. Niall pushed himself up to a standing position, with one hand still on the rock wall. “What’s your name? Are you from this area?”
“Yes. I’m Quinn. I’m from the clan that lived here on the Cliffs of Moher, destroyed fifteen years ago.”
That was Niall’s clan, his family. This shifter had been two years younger than him. They hadn’t been close, but they’d fished together on many occasions. Quinn had been sixteen or so when Niall left to study in Portugal.
“Quinn.” Niall grasped Quinn’s shoulders and held on, and Quinn didn’t try to stop him.
“Niall? Is that you?”
Niall nodded. He wasn’t going to fall apart. “I thought all of you were dead. Before he died, my father called me from one of the few phones the clan elders kept with them. I knew it was going to be bad, but I wasn’t expecting the carnage I came home to.”
“You went away to school,” Quinn said.
“Yes. I wasn’t here.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. We should have looked for you. You weren’t the only one unaccounted for.”
Niall shook his head. “It’s fine. I was an adult. How did you escape?”
Quinn told him of how he and his three close friends, Kellan, Liam, and Brennan, managed to get away. They’d fled to the United States, to Texas, and they’d been there ever since. Quinn then told him of the other encounters they’d had recently with the witches. He could tell there was more Quinn wanted to say, but he was holding back. Niall didn’t blame him. He’d just been consorting with the enemy.
“That’s stunning. All of it,” Niall said. “But I’m very glad you found your mate. Congratulations.”
As Niall made his syllabus for the upcoming semester, he was alone for the first time in two weeks. After the brainwashing, Quinn had hung around, watching him. He’d said he trusted that Niall wasn’t deliberately in league with the witches, but he wanted to make sure there were no side effects. Niall was glad—he was secretly afraid the witches had permanently broken something inside him, reprogrammed him somehow, but as each day went by where nothing went wrong, he began to relax a little.
The term was about to begin at the university, and he’d been welcomed back by the staff, who’d been told he had a family emergency in New Zealand. Quinn had finally left for home, and Niall was ready for the fresh start that a new semester would bring.
3
Nora
For the first time in her life, Nora sat down at a desk in a human classroom. The room was chilly, and the desk was all hard angles. Without thinking, she chose a desk closest to the door in the front room. It meant she’d be the first one out, should she need to escape.
That wasn’t going to be necessary.
She’d been drawn to the architecture of the school. The stone archways and moss crept up the front of the building. It was old and damp, and she felt right at home. But this classroom was fairly modern, and she felt out of place. Instinctively, she was tempted to chant a quick spell, making herself less noticeable. But she didn’t. She was human now. She was done with magic.
She pulled her elbows in and kept her eyes on the front of the room as the rest of the students banged their way into the room. Most of them were chatting, recalling late nights at the pub and unfair grades in their chemistry class.
The room smelled of pencil shavings and wood polish, and a humming sound filled the air from the electricity that powered all the devices. She concentrated on the students’ voices and took deep, calming breaths.
You survived eighteen years in a coven full of merciless witches and four years in a pack of savage wolves. A room full of humans should be a breeze.
As she chastised herself, awareness prickled in her mind. She couldn’t place it, but there was something there. Something other. She shuddered, hoping no other students noticed.
Finally, the professor arrived. As soon as Nora laid eyes on him, a hot flush rushed over her body. Her cheeks flamed. Her stomach coiled. To her shame, the space between her legs heated up. She sat up straight, forcing herself not to squirm in her chair.
She had always scorned those ruled by their bodies, and here she was, filled with lust for a man she didn’t know. He was tall—he had to be close to six-foot-four—with broad shoulders. His athletic build was visible even through his dress slacks and his button-down shirt. His dark hair curled at the ends, and behind his glasses, his eyes were a vibrant blue.
�
�Hello, class,” he said. “I’m Professor Byrne. Welcome to Principles of Human Geography.”
At the sound of her professor’s deep, masculine voice, Nora sat up even straighter. The ache between her legs intensified. Under the woolen layers of her sweater, her nipples tightened. Nora had never felt any attraction to a male of any kind before. She’d left home at eighteen, and before she ran away to Russia, she’d been consumed with trying to avoid the machinations of her coven. She hadn’t had time for innocent flirtations or even crushes.
Once she was held captive by the werewolves, all traces of desire vanished. She had loathed them and their piercing gazes. The alpha had always stared at her, long before he’d declared her his future mate. Objectively, maybe some of them were handsome, but she couldn’t get past their outdated mindsets and their caveman attitudes. She understood that females were attracted to strong, decisive males. That made sense to her. But these males were violent, bloodthirsty brutes, who cared only for themselves. They didn’t want to get to know her. No doubt, the alpha had wanted her to bear his child. The child of a werewolf and a witch would help cement his position as leader of the pack.
Now, every bit of her attention was drawn to this handsome man. She couldn’t take her eyes off his strong jawline, his straight nose, or his thick brown hair. As he began his lecture on why geography was important and how it connected the past to the future, Nora was transfixed. She expected a college professor to be articulate, but his skills as a speaker went way beyond that. She glanced around the room and saw that every student, both male and female, were just as engaged as she was.
She had no experience with human school. Was it normal for a class to be so interesting? Had she lucked out and gotten the university’s best teacher on day one? Then her brain lit up. There was no luck involved. This teacher was not a man. He was not human. She sensed it when he walked in from the very first second. Now that she knew he wasn’t human, she focused her concentration a little harder. She didn’t have to use magic to recognize that he was a dragon shifter.
Fuck.
How was that possible? How had her escape from the wolf pack led her directly into the clutches of another enemy?
Run. Hide. You cannot be near him. He will not let you live.
She placed her hands on top of her desk and held on. She curled her fingers around the edges. In her head, she counted to ten, making sure to take a very deep breath as she recited each member.
Had someone arranged this trap for her? She could not imagine she was important enough to warrant that level of plotting, but if no one had arranged for her to sit five feet from a dragon shifter, then fate had dealt her a very cruel blow.
At least she had tasted freedom for a few days before her demise.
Despite her terror, she had to stay in class until he had finished lecturing. Her days might be numbered, but she wasn’t giving up yet. She was still going to do her best to make it out of this school alive, dragon-shifter professor be damned. She could do this. She could sit in this class until it was over.
She let go of her grip on the desk and picked up her syllabus. In the process, she knocked her pen off of her desk. It was likely that no one else noticed a plastic pen hit the tile floor, but the dragon shifter noticed. His head turned toward her. Their eyes met. A jolt of recognition washed over him as she watched him realize what she was. He knew. He knew what she was.
His blue eyes widened. For the first time during the lecture, he faltered, stumbling over a word. It was very clear that he had not known she would be in his class. He stepped back to the podium and gathered his papers. It only took a few seconds, but he managed to regroup. He resumed his lecture.
She retrieved her pen and began to take notes by hand. She didn’t want to bother pulling her laptop out. For the rest of the class, she kept her head down and kept her hand busy, scribbling down the words he said.
Finally, the class was over. She stuffed her belongings into her backpack and flung it over her shoulder. But before she could step away from her desk, Dr. Byrne’s clear voice rang out. “Miss, please stay after class.”
No freaking way.
He was speaking to her. No longer worried about blending in, she elbowed the guy next to her out of the way so that she could get to the door. She raced down a semi-crowded hallway and soon found an empty corridor. She made a sharp turn and took off running.
She could bring the whole building down if she wanted to. Not that she would ever do that, not in a million years. There were other less harmful, offensive tactics she could use, but she had promised herself she wasn’t going to rely on magic. University students didn’t run down hallways at full speed. They weren’t chased by professors. If there was any way out of this, she didn’t want to be kicked out of the university.
“Miss! Please stop. I just want to talk to you.”
She highly doubted that. Damn it. He was gaining on her. Of course he was. He was a hot, young dragon shifter. He was lightyears ahead of her in physical capabilities. She lowered her shield. She would speak to him via telepathy. Just this once. She formed the words in her mind and projected them outward, knowing that the dragon would hear them in his own head.
Communicating via telepathy wasn’t something witches did easily. When they did do it, they usually sent simple pictures or basic impressions of an idea. She could send exact sentences, and he should be able to receive them.
“I want to be human,” she said to him, without speaking aloud. “I have left my life as a witch behind me. I want to get an education, but if you don’t want me in your territory, I understand why. I’ll leave the university tonight if you promise not to pursue me.”
From what she remembered as a child, dragon shifters did not break promises easily. They did not allow any sort of betrayal or backstabbing. They viewed it as treachery. So if she could get Professor Byrne to agree to leave her alone, he was likely to honor it.
“Slow down,” he said. “I don’t know if I can communicate like this. Stop and we’ll talk.”
Despite his words, she couldn’t stop running. Painting from exertion, she hit a dead end and smacked into a wall. She could have softened her crash, but she did not. Dazed, she dropped her backpack. Her knees buckled. She slid to the floor in a heap.
The gorgeous professor stood over her, but he didn’t touch her or come any closer.
“Are you all right? Are you injured?” he asked.
She blinked up at him. “Please, don’t kill me.”
4
Niall
Kill her?
He wasn’t going to kill her, and if someone else tried to harm her, they’d have to fucking deal with him. He could not allow her to go free, though. She wasn’t supposed to be here. As far as he knew, there were no more witches on the west coast of Ireland.
This was no beginner mage who would be able to light a candle as the full extent of her power. No, this was an accomplished witch with barely-harnessed power. Physically, she was tiny, but otherwise? She was a force to be reckoned with. Her magic radiated from her pores.
He had noticed her as soon as he walked through the door. At first, he thought it was just her striking beauty. He could tell she was small, even while she was seated at a desk. She must have been around five-foot-two. She was thin but toned. Her black hair touched her shoulders, and her dark eyes sparkled with interest. He found himself drawn to her.
He never thought about students as being attractive. They were always off-limits to him. But there was something different about this young woman. As he spoke about the crucial role geography played in the modern world, he felt an awareness between them, and it grew, even as he stood in front of the classroom. He should have noticed what she was. The only explanation was that she was able to mute her presence somehow.
For some reason, when she dropped her pen, his awareness came to life. The shock had set in first, then panic. At the moment that he recognized her true self, he realized that she recognized him too.
Was
she a spy? Was she a test? He had no clue.
He looked down at the trembling witch who was huddled in the corridor. He reached his hand out. “Can you stand up?” He was not going to be caught on video, grabbing her or yanking her around.
After a long pause, she placed her hand in his. A jolt surged through his body. Bloody hell. Touching her skin only intensified his feelings. Irrelevant. She was skilled enough to send full messages with her mind. He never heard of telepathy that worked that well. She would be even better at brainwashing than the one who’d tricked him.
He was not going to play the fool again.
Now she was standing, but he was still holding on to her hand. Quickly, he released her fingers. “I’d like for you to come to my office with me.”
“I’d like to leave,” she said in a clear voice.
“I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that.” He crouched down and lifted her backpack, placing it over his arm. “We’re going into my office.”
Before they reached the main hallway, he handed her backpack over. He didn’t mind carrying it at all. In fact, he liked how the canvas smelled of her. But it was inappropriate, and he could not afford to be distracted, not when dealing with a clever witch.
Inside his office, he pointed her to an armchair. “Sit.”
She sat down without protest. He was under no illusion that he could hold her in his office successfully. But if she ran again, he would chase her until he caught her.
Once he’d gotten to the bottom of her story, he would have to call Quinn. If Quinn, any of his brothers, or his sister-in-law, Brynne, found out that he ignored the presence of a witch, they would likely eviscerate him.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
She laid her backpack across her lap and clutched the straps like they’d protect her. “I want to get an undergraduate degree in geography.”
Professor Dragon's Virgin (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 5) Page 2
