I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie (The I Like Big Dragons Series) (24 page)

Keifer’s arms finally went around me, and I closed my eyes as the tears started to flow.

“But what if she doesn’t?” I cried.

“What if she does?”

I looked up at him, offering my lips, which he took.

“Give it time, honey. You don’t know anything yet. Let’s get some sleep.”

“But what if she wakes up and I’m not here?” I asked worriedly.

Keifer nodded his head, and I turned to find Nikolai across the room.

He was sitting in a chair at the wall of computers.

A makeshift security hub of sorts.

“She has a protector.”

Indeed, she did.

Nikolai’s eyes never strayed from Brooklyn’s form.

“What’s going on there?” I asked, surprised.

Keifer smiled. “I have a feeling we’re about to see a lot more than just one royal marriage in the future.”

My mouth dropped open as I looked once again at Nikolai, but this time his eyes were narrowed on us.

I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back.

His eyes took the two of us standing together in, before nodding once, and returning to his vigil.

Protector indeed.

Author’s Note:

Hey, y’all! I hope y’all enjoyed my first ever paranormal!

As of right now, there will be three books in this series. It definitely has the potential to have more, but they won’t be a part of this series, but a series that will be branched off of this one.

If you loved it (or you thought it was just okay) I’d love for you to leave a review.

Thank you so much for reading!

Lani

Dragons Need Love, Too

10-19-2016

Prologue

Nikolai

Alright, Jean Luc. You know what to do
, I said telepathically to my spotter.

Jean Luc hit the lights and the entire surrounding area went dark.

I blinked, and then suddenly I was seeing in shades of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.

There’s a man in the back room, left corner. Gun. There’s a man in the right side of front room, in front of the television. One more on the back porch smoking a cigarette
,
I relayed to my men that were surrounding the building.

10-4,
was echoed among them, and I started to creep forward on my hands and knees.

I had no clue what kind of security they had out here, but with my ability to control my body temperature, I hoped that whatever ultra-red/thermal cameras they had out here would be rendered useless with all the power I was expending.

Slowly, we all converged at once, moving stealthily through the long grass.

Perdita was overhead, circling closer and closer, looking at her own version of a thermal heat camera.

Perdita could do wonderful things, but one of the best was her ability to manipulate her ‘energy.’

She could appear hot, cold, or even dead. Anything she wanted you to see, you saw.

I also had that gift.

It was one that not even my older brother, the badass King of the Dragon Riders, had.

I could sense heat like a…well…dragon.

My bonded dragon, Perdita, was very unique, and from all places, across ‘the pond’, as she put it.

She was from Ireland, and over eight hundred years old.

She’d never bonded to anyone but me; something that was the same for most dragons and their bonded dragon riders.

I’d not understood the depth of Perdita’s powers until we’d been bonded for four years.

She’d given me short lessons in how to harness her powers that she’d passed on to me, but I’d not been able to do so at first.

Mostly because I’d bonded with her at the young age of nineteen, instead of twenty-one.

I’d still been a boy, and hadn’t really understood the enormity of the situation until my brother had sat me down and explained that not even he’d bonded until he was twenty-one.

So it’d been a wakeup call to realize that Perdita hadn’t been completely honest with me until I’d accidentally used her gift on
her
.

Perdita was the queen of illusions, and was excellent at appearing harmless.

Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian, and Dorian stopped when I hissed out a warning the second I saw the first trip wire.

There’s explosives. Be vigilant,
I ordered.

Do you want me to disable them, Boss?
Ian asked.

Negative. If we have to leave in a hurry, I don’t want them to be able to come for us at a quick pace. It’s best if they think they’re all inactive. It might prove useful later
,
I explained to my men.

10-4,
Ian confirmed.

So we kept moving until we had about four feet in between us and the house.

Alright, Perdita. Do your thing.

Yes, S
ire. You’ve got about ten minutes until I will no longer be able to hold it,
Perdita expounded.

Perdita was so good.

All Perdita…or me for that matter, had to do was send out what was like a movie to the men in the house.

She was more selective than I was.

When I wanted to play the mind games, everyone within my immediate area saw the same thing.

The only ones’ immune were my brothers.

And they didn’t even realize things were different before, or after, Perdita and I played our mind games.

I wasn’t sure what she was showing them, but not one of them reacted as I moved into the house like I owned the place.

My limited telekinetic abilities enabled me to open the doors without breaking anything, then walk straight up to the first man and take him out with a sleeper hold.

He never even realized I was doing anything to him.

He stayed limply in my arms until he passed out from lack of oxygen.

Then, with the utmost care, I dropped him to the floor at my feet.

With the first man taken care of, I moved into the main room and started looking around.

After taking care of two more men, I came to the room where Brooklyn was being held and immediately started to sway at the horrid condition she was in.

She looked like death warmed over, and I wasn’t sure she’d even be alive long enough for Keifer’s mate to see her best friend again.

Her hair was in dark clumps of brown around her dirty face.

She was in a bra and bike shorts that accentuated how skinny she’d gotten since Blythe and her had graduated from nursing school only a few weeks before.

Bruises ran the length of her arms and legs.

A cut above her eye looked like it could’ve used stitches when she’d gotten it.

Now the only thing that would fix it was plastic surgery of some sort.

The icing on the cake, however, was the tear streaks that ran the length of her cheeks.

All of that added up didn’t stop me from picking her up as carefully as I could into my arms and walking with her out of the house.

“Let’s go,” I said quietly once I reached the front door.

“You want me to take her?” Alaric asked softly.

I shook my head, trying to fight down the irrational surge of rage that shot through me at the mere mention of him the woman for me.

“Alaric and Jean Luc, follow us home. The rest of you need to stay to make sure we make a clean exit. If I don’t get her to my sister soon, she won’t make it,” I said hurriedly as Perdita hovered above us.

The moment Perdita and I made it within a mile away, they would no longer be under her spell.

And that could possibly spell trouble for us getting away, unless the rest of them stayed to make sure nothing followed.

Seven days later

“She had something in her stomach.”

I watched as Skylar held the USB drive out to Keifer, a sick ball of fear knotting my stomach.

Taking it like it was a poisonous snake about to attack, Keifer plugged it into the computer and winced when a file popped up.

“Fuck,” he said, clicking on it.

It was a sound file.

Short. Sweet. And to the point.

“I know you, Vassago. I know you better than you know me. I knew you’d come for her. You can’t resist
helping the innocent,” Joseph
hissed. “Which was why I put a GPS tracker in her. You doomed yourself by your big old heart.”

Fear clogged my throat as I looked at the woman on the exam table.

The beaten and broken woman that would never have a normal life again.

“Find the GPS,” Keifer said to Skylar. “I’m going to be with my wife.”

I looked over at him, then back to the computer screen as I read the words that would haunt me.

Which was why I put a GPS tracker in her.

Goddammit. Why had I not thought of that?

I forced myself to watch as Skylar started to x-ray Brooklyn’s body, searching for the elusive GPS tracker.

“You’ll need to leave…I think I’ve found it,” Skylar said thirty minutes later.

“Where is it?” I asked, coming closer to the table.

I wouldn’t comment yet about how all of her injuries had healed so fast…or why my body ached in the very same places she’d been bruised at earlier.

I also wouldn’t comment on the itching on my side where I could see faint lines and swirls appearing.

Something was off here.

I felt something for Brooklyn…a woman I barely knew.

A woman that was just that…a woman.

I’d met her a week ago when I’d saved her form that hell hole…and hadn’t even spoken to her yet.

I had an irrational fear, though.

I didn’t want anyone to get close to her.

I hated being away from her.

It drove me nuts when Carrick, the night nurse who worked alongside Skylar, was responsible for her.

And I was just plain agitated by…
everything
.

“Right here,” Skylar said, pointing to a spot just above Brooklyn’s hip.

I moved closer, trying to see if I could find any scars, but there were none.

“What are you going to have to do?” I asked worriedly.

Skylar glanced at me with concern.

“Hopefully a small incision…why?” she asked, snapping on gloves.

I shook my head.

“You mind if I stay?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“No,” she added. “But you’ll need to not go all gray in the face when you see the blood.”

I hated that she was right.

But I had a phobia of blood.

My blood. Keifer’s blood. Anybody’s blood, and I was close to losing it.

It was a deep urge inside of me that pushed at me anytime I saw it.

It wasn’t so much as getting sick, as much as my body craved it.

And not in the ‘I want to drink it’ kind of way. More like ‘I want to touch it’ kind of way.

Which freaked me the fuck out, and explained the grayness to my face as I thought about how much I wanted to touch it.

But Skylar didn’t know that…nor did Keifer.

They just thought I had a phobia…a nice, normal phobia.

Oh, how wrong they were.

“I’ll be fine,” I hedged.

And I was.

All the way up until she removed the tracking device.

The moment it was removed, my hand found Brooklyn’s unconsciously, and I willed the wound to seal.

I hated seeing her in pain, even if she wasn’t actually ‘feeling’ it.

And, before my eyes, it did heal.

My hip, though, burned.

And I hissed in response, jerking slightly and pulling my shirt up.

Skylar had frozen at my inhalation, and she watched in awe as blood started to drip down my hip with a precise incision in the exact same spot as Brooklyn’s had been only moments before.

Then, as if it was magic, the wound sealed…and the tattoo appeared.

Not just on me, but on Brooklyn, too.