Dragon’s Protected (West Coast Water Dragons Book 6)

by Kayla Wolf

  ”It was a long time ago. Before we lived here, we were a group of nomads—we rode our bikes across the country, staying wherever we could, doing what we could to make ends meet. That … well, that involved a lot of crime. I’m not proud of it,” he shrugged. “It’s part of why we’re all so glad to be making an honest living now with the resort and everything. But back then … back then, we were gangsters, honestly. We used to run with a wolf pack, too. We looked after each other. Safety in numbers, all that stuff—and they had contacts in the human police who helped keep us on the right side of the law.”

  Her heart was pounding. This was her pack he was talking about—her family. Her mother and father had been born just a few years before the events he was about to describe.

  ”There came a time when the group of us decided that enough was enough. There were more of us then,” he added, shrugging. “More dragons, I mean. It was a long conversation, but at the end of it, we decided that we wanted to give up on our criminal enterprises. We’d found this peninsula—we had a contact who could get us permission to settle at the end of it. We could live the rest of our lives in peace. No more traveling, no more dirty work to keep body and soul together. It was perfect. So we took the proposition to the wolves. There would have been room for all of us down here, but their Alpha wasn’t having a bar of it.”

  She blinked. This was a part of the story she’d never heard.

  ”It got ugly. We wanted to retire, but he didn’t want us to. Neither side could convince the other, so we agreed to part ways. It was crushing, honestly. I had good friends on the other side. We argued for weeks. We thought we’d come to a resolution—that the dragons would stay on the peninsula and not interfere with the work of the wolves on the mainland. But then …” Was he shivering? There was an odd vulnerability to the man walking beside her, his eyes fixed on the horizon as the waves washed over their feet. “They attacked us in the middle of the night. It was a bloodbath. We lost a dozen of us. I don’t even know how many they lost.”

  ”I’m so sorry,” she said softly, her voice surprisingly hoarse. Her mind was racing. Was this true? Could he be lying to her, trying to emotionally manipulate her into feeling sorry for him? But what purpose would that serve? He thought she was just some random wolf, staying for a week, and there was something about his voice that made her want to trust him. Something that told her he was telling the truth.

  Something that told her that it was her family, and not Harvey, who had been lying to her.

  Chapter 6 - Harvey

  Harvey was a little shellshocked as he said goodbye to Lori and headed back towards his cottage. It felt like he hadn’t talked for that long in years. He hadn’t meant to unload on her like that, either. It was as though something had just possessed him, and the story had poured itself out of him like sludge. And it was strange … though he usually felt awful when he thought about that day, the battle with the wolves, there was something about telling the story to Lori that was making him feel … better. More free. As though a weight had been lifted, somehow.

  But what had he been thinking? She was a near-stranger, and he’d basically unloaded his entire life on her—and she’d just listened, patient and thoughtful. He’d apologized afterward, feeling completely unhinged, tried to make a few jokes to dissipate the tension—but all she’d done was reassure him. There was something so kind in her, so caring. Something that made him feel like he could trust her with his darkest stories. God, he basically had. Did she feel okay about it, he wondered as he walked, lost in thought? They’d only just met, and he’d gone ahead and told her about the fact that one of his strongest memories was of a huge and bloody battle with a pack of wolves. She was a wolf. Hell, if her family lived in this area, it was likely that they’d known of the pack in question.

  But he’d just unloaded all that on her. And it felt … god, it felt strange to think it, but it felt good. Not to mention how good she looked in her beach clothes. The day before she’d been wearing jeans and a jacket, a pair of boots—clothes to drive in. This morning … a long skirt that swished around her bare ankles, a top that showed a little more of her skin to the early morning sun, and that long, beautiful dark hair she had was pulled back in a loose ponytail instead of the fierce braid that had kept it all out of her face the day before. She was … well, he wasn’t blind, was he? She was gorgeous.

  ”Get a grip,” he murmured aloud to himself, a little shocked by his own turbulent feelings. He was heading back home after his morning swim, intending to get changed before heading into reception to get some paperwork done, but running into Lori had completely turned him around. He needed to get hold of himself. He was walking along the street where a couple of his friends had their cottages, and he felt a bizarre impulse to go into someone’s house, corner them until he could sit down and talk through what he was feeling.

  Instead, he headed home and took a shower, hoping that the scorching hot water would clear his head a little. With the steam swirling around him, he tried to get his head straight. He’d met Lori only a few days ago, and she’d made an incredibly strong impression on him. Every time he saw her, it felt like that impression got stronger. He was feeling such strange things about her … odd impulses to protect her, to keep her safe, to help her, to bring her things she needed. To make that lightning-quick smile of hers linger. To figure out just what it was she was so guarded about. He’d never felt this way about anyone. He was a protective guy, sure, when it came to his closest friends, but this was different. This was unprecedented.

  Could she really be his soulmate?

  She was a wolf.

  He spent the next few days trying to keep himself busy. Trying to bury himself in work, in patrolling the forest, in anything that wasn’t thinking about Lori. But just knowing she was so close was driving him insane. Every time he went anywhere near her cabin, he found himself daydreaming about her. He ran into her a few times around the settlement, and though they only exchanged casual little pleasantries, he always left those encounters feeling utterly electrified. His dragon had never felt this awake, this agile … late one night, he even headed out into the ocean so he could shift and spend some time in his true form, diving beneath the waves of the ocean to make sure he wasn’t spotted.

  There was a kind of clarity of thought in his true form. He’d never really talked about it with other dragons, so he wasn’t sure whether it was just him that felt this way or a universal dragon experience, but his thoughts felt different in his dragon shape. Slower. More deliberate. More fully formed. He knew who he was, in his dragon form. And at the bottom of the ocean, the currents buffeting his wings and pulling his serpentine body this way and that, he finally turned his mind to Lori and accepted that what he felt for her was no accident, no coincidence, no temporary derangement.

  She was his soulmate.

  But what was he going to do about it, he wondered as he emerged from the water, shifting back to his human form and feeling the usual rush of indecision that accompanied that change? He blinked, realizing he’d emerged from the water a good distance from the place he’d entered it. The currents must have been stronger than he thought—he was about halfway up the peninsula. The moonlight was strong, which put him off shifting form to fly back home. He’d swim back. It was a nice night—he could use a bit of extra time in his dragon form. Maybe he could figure out what the hell to do about the fact that he’d fallen in love with a wolf.

  A branch broke, and his head whipped around before he could even register what had happened. His eyes widened, adrenalin surging through his body. There, in the tree line, half-lit by moonlight. There was no way he was imagining it this time. It was a wolf. A huge wolf, with luminous silver eyes that glowed in the moonlight and a shaggy gray pelt.

  ”Hey—” he started, but before he could get another word out, the wolf turned and disappeared into the trees. Harvey bit back on a growl of frustration—with no shoes on, there was no way he’d outrun a wolf. And the trees up here were fa
r too dense for his dragon form to be able to pursue the wolf. His heart was pounding … but curiously, he realized that he wasn’t feeling as panicked as he’d expected. It wasn’t Serena; he knew that—the woman had russet fur in her wolf shape, not gray, and besides, she’d be far too busy with her children to be running around the peninsula this late at night. Could it have been Lori, out for a midnight stroll? Something told him that that wasn’t the case. Her hair was jet black. Surely, her wolf shape would be the same? Then again, he’d known wolves with their hair dyed bright green—hair color in the human shape didn’t necessarily predict the wolven one.

  A year ago, he’d have already been halfway home, ringing everyone in the settlement to formulate a plan of attack, convinced that the wolf meant that they were in grave danger. But as he headed home, he just couldn’t bring himself to panic like that. Should he talk to his friends, tell them what he’d seen, get everyone on high alert? No, he decided. He’d patrol solo, see if he could find any more signs of wolf activity. Was it possible that this one was just lost, a stray? Could it be the same as the one he’d seen a few days ago, closer to the mainland? It hadn’t attacked him, he reflected. He’d certainly been in a vulnerable position—alone in the middle of the peninsula, barely any room to maneuver or shift forms. But it had just looked at him for a long moment, and then it had run away.

  For once in his life, he decided, he was going to give the wolf the benefit of the doubt. He’d keep it to himself for now, see if he could handle the problem without getting the guys involved. God, what was happening to him? Was he going soft in his old age?

  But despite his determination, he wasn’t able to find any sign of the mysterious gray wolf the next day, for all that he spent the whole day in the forest, pounding up and down every inch of the paths through the trees. He revisited the spot where he’d seen the wolf, found the branch it had broken with one unwary paw, but there was no trail to be followed from that place, no sign of the wolf, or of any others. Defeated, and more than a little hot and sweaty, he headed home when the sun finally began to set. It had been a long, warm day, even with fall well underway and the first tinges of orange beginning to appear on the leaves. He’d take a late evening swim to cool down, then decide whether he was going to report what he’d seen to the other dragons.

  But that particular idea was banished from his mind the minute he got to the beach. There, spread out on a towel like some kind of Greek goddess, was Lori. There was a broad-brimmed sunhat over her face and her chest was rising and falling rhythmically—he saw with some amusement that her phone had fallen out of her hand and was half-buried in the sand. Fast asleep. She wouldn’t be the first person to let the soothing sounds of the waves lull her to sleep. He knelt at her side to gently pull her phone out of the sand—then suppressed a laugh as she sat bolt upright, sending her hat flying.

  ”Shoot! I fell asleep!”

  ”It’s okay,” he laughed, utterly charmed by the look of panic on her face. “You’re allowed to nap. You’re on holiday.”

  ”Where’s my—oh!” She saw her phone in his hand and grabbed it from him, surprisingly fast, an oddly hunted look on her face as though he’d caught her with something shameful. She looked down at the screen for a moment, then back up at him.

  ”It was buried in the sand,” he explained. “I didn’t read your texts or anything. ”

  ”It’s okay.” She took a deep breath, an awkward smile on her face. “Sorry. I just panicked. How are you?”

  ”Good. Just thought I’d finish the day off with a swim.” He nodded towards the water. “I’ve been in the forest all day.”

  ”Why’s that?”

  ”Just patrolling.” He hesitated, not sure whether to bring up the question of the wolf. “Hey, you weren’t out for a walk last night, were you?”

  ”Last night? I hung out on the beach for a while before I headed to bed.”

  ”You weren’t … in the forest?” He glanced up and down the beach to make sure there were no humans nearby, lowered his voice despite their isolation. “In wolf shape, I mean.”

  ”Oh.” She blinked, reaching up to push her hair out of her face—it was a habit of hers, he’d noticed, something she did when she was feeling nervous. “Definitely not.”

  ”It’s okay if you did. The forest’s pretty safe, I just—”

  ”I can’t shift.” She said it quickly like it was shameful to her, and he blinked, shifting his weight in the sand beside her as he processed that.

  ”You can’t—“

  ”I have … a block or something. I don’t know what it is. It’s been a few years since I could …” She took a deep breath, and he was surprised to see tears shining in her silver eyes. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and touched her shoulder, wanting to offer comfort. She flinched a little—but then he felt her lean against him. He fought the urge to put his whole arm around her—but he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, a wordless show of support. “Since I could shift.”

  ”Do you know why?”

  ”I have no idea,” she said simply. There was something guarded in her eyes, still, and his mind was racing. Was this why he’d gotten such a strong sense from her that she was hiding something? Was this why she needed a break from her pack? He couldn’t imagine not being able to access his dragon shape. Was she ashamed of this block? “It … I don’t know. I’ve had a pretty bad few years. I was in this relationship … I thought it might have something to do with this … this awful guy I was with. Because I was with him when I first realized my shifting was gone. But even after I got away, I still …” She took a deep breath, reaching up to touch his hand, and he tried to ignore the tingle of desire that ran down his back at the feeling of her fingertips on his skin. “I still couldn’t. It’s like a part of me is just … sealed away.”

  ”I’m sure it’ll come back,” he said softly, shifting to sit a little closer to her. The sun had set, and it was getting cooler—he saw the way she was hunched in on herself, shivering a little in the night air, and without thinking about it, he draped his towel around her shoulders like a blanket. She looked up at him, and that lightning-flash smile graced him for just a moment. “The doctor here, Alice … she’s a dragon, too. She’s been doing research on shifter magic, on why we are the way we are. You could talk to her about it, maybe, ask if she’s heard of this kind of thing happening before.” He smiled, trying to reassure her. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  ”I feel like it is,” she said softly, reaching up to push her hair back. “I can’t even bring myself to tell my family about it.”

  ”They wouldn’t fault you for it, surely. Family is there to love and support you, no matter what.”

  But there was a shadow on her face that told him he might be speaking out of turn. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to make assumptions about this woman’s family. After all, he barely knew her, even if on some level it felt like he’d known her all his life. Like he’d just been waiting for her to turn up, so they could finally get started. Finally get to know each other. Finally sit here together, under the light of the full moon …

  And before he could stop himself, he realized he was leaning in to claim her lips in a kiss.

  Chapter 7 - Lori

  Harvey looked unbelievably good in the moonlight. She could barely think about anything else, even when they got onto the subject of her shifting. She was a little flabbergasted, honestly, at how easy it had been to just tell him what was going on with her. It had been such a closely guarded secret for so long. Ever since she’d figured it out, she’d had nobody to talk to about it. Dennis hadn’t even known she was a wolf, so she couldn’t talk to him—even if he had been the kind of partner she could have shared something so sensitive with. And as for her pack … well, she was in enough hot water with them as it was. She didn’t want to risk being disowned as some kind of freak, some broken doll who couldn’t even do the one thing that made them who they were.

  And not only had she been able to tel
l Harvey without a second thought … she realized, with mounting shock that he wasn’t judging her at all. He didn’t care, she realized with a dizzy shock—it didn’t make him think less of her. He didn’t think she was broken. He cared that it bothered her, though—he even had a suggestion for how to go about fixing it. But he didn’t judge her. She didn’t feel like she needed to defend herself with him. It was … god, it felt so good she hardly dared let herself breathe for fear that it was a dream or something. Here, under the moonlight with the most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on … this had to be a fantasy, right?

  And that impression didn’t fade when she realized he was leaning in to kiss her.

  Up this close, she could smell the deep, masculine musk of him—the scent of salt air and the sea as well as something underneath it that was all him, spicy and fragrant. The more she breathed it in, the more intoxicated she felt by his presence, his closeness, his warmth, and his scent ... her whole body was trembling as his lips got closer and closer to hers … and then stopped, inches away. Waiting for her. Those blue eyes, wide open, so close to hers, looking at her. What was he waiting for? Why wasn’t he kissing her?

  She realized with a wave of shock that almost knocked her out. He was waiting for her to close the gap between them. He was waiting to see if she wanted to kiss him, too.

  Lori all but threw herself into the kiss. Part of her had been wanting this for days, she realized dizzily as the heat of his lips claimed hers, washed over her like a tidal wave. Ever since she’d met him, she’d wanted him. Wanted him deeply, truly, unselfconsciously—wanted him the way her lungs wanted air, the way her eyes wanted to open in the morning, the way her limbs wanted to stretch when they’d been cramped for a long time. It was deep, primal, undeniable … and it was building in her like an explosion. Before she knew it, her hands were in his hair, and she was rising to her knees in the sand, trying to get closer to him, her whole body crying out for his touch.