To Wed A Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (Weredragon Warriors Book 2) (2 page)

“She's
exhausted from the excursion. She had a long day today. The kids
were so excited to visit the zoo and see all the animals we'd learned
about in class,” Amelia answered.

Edriq and Zul grinned. Now
that Tessa's kindergarten teacher was also her mom, the learning
never stopped. Amelia was always teaching Tessa something new in a
fun, interactive way. Edriq found himself paying close attention
whenever Amelia explained something to Tessa. He might be a
battle-hardened warrior, but he still had lots to learn about the
fascinating and baffling human world.

“But when we saw the
Komodo dragons—” Amelia went on with a chuckle. “Tessa
shook her head and said: 'Those are not dragons! My Daddy, Uncle
Edriq and Uncle Zul are real dragons!'”

Edriq and Zul beamed with
pride. “That's our girl!”

Amelia laughed. “The
three of you are her heroes.”

Rohan pulled his mate to him
and kissed her hair. “No,” he corrected. “You,
Amelia—you are Tessa's hero. We three are just her slaves.”

“Touche,” Zul
answered.

Edriq and Zul stepped back
discreetly as Amelia and Rohan shared a tender kiss and embrace.

“Come home to me,”
Amelia whispered to her mate.

“Always,” Rohan
promised his mate solemnly.

As Edriq, Zul and Rohan
stepped out of the mansion together, Amelia went up to Edriq and Zul.
“Be safe,” Amelia told them.

Edriq and Zul turned and
nodded once to their queen. If their queen gave them a command, they
would obey her.

Rohan and Amelia didn't want
to acknowledge their royal status, but in the hearts of all the
Dracans, Rohan and Amelia were their king and queen.

There was a whoosh followed
by the fierce beating of wings. Three dragons took off from the
sprawling lawn in front of the mansion and soared towards the clouds.

In dragon form, they were
invisible to human eyes. Edriq and Zul flew behind Rohan until they
reached the city. Then Rohan and Zul banked sharply and flew off in
opposite directions.

Each of them had different
routes and areas to patrol. They had to cover as wide an area as
possible, keeping their eye out for trouble and danger.

Edriq stared at the blinking
city lights and scanned the maze of streets below him. The Slayors
always hid in the dark and moved about in the shadows.

Making a quick descent, Edriq
shifted to human form and dropped to the ground. He landed in front
of a row of darkened shop windows.

Straightening up, he glanced
around. A couple was just rounding the corner, whispering and
giggling. They hadn't seen him materialize suddenly and just drop
out of the air.

Edriq slid a hand under his
jacket and grasped one of his throwing knives as he started down the
street.

The Slayors could look and
act like humans. But they were snakes, cold-blooded, venomous,
vicious killers.

It was time to hunt.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Nora Garcia rolled her
shoulders to ease the strain and tension from her body as she walked
home. Her job was stressful and exhausting, physically and
emotionally, but she loved every minute of it.

The stress, the urgency, the
unpredictability of every call they received kept her on her toes.
As a paramedic, every second counted and every decision mattered. It
was a high-octane, action-packed, adrenaline-driven job. It was her
dream job.

Nora knew very early on that
she wasn't cut out for a nine-to-five job in an air-conditioned
office. The mere thought of stuffing herself into pencil skirts and
tottering to work on killer heels every day made her break out in
hives. She didn't want to be chained to a desk, answering calls and
typing memos day in, day out.

She wanted to roll up her
sleeves and be on her feet. She needed to be running around,
plunging straight into the thick of things. She felt that she was
making a difference every single day in her job. She helped saved
lives, and every life mattered.

It felt good. Every night,
she went home thoroughly exhausted but feeling happy and fulfilled.
Of course there were days which weren't so happy, days when she did
everything she could yet felt she should have done more. It was
never easy to work frantically in the ambulance, fighting against
time, against death, against the inevitable. You just wanted, needed
to win this fight. Yet, despite everything you did, you lost. The
patient was dead on arrival.

Her fellow paramedic and
partner, Mario, was a cheerful, affable guy and he never let anything
get to him. “If you let the job get to you, you can't do the
job,” Mario always told her. “Take care of yourself
first. You are numero uno, kid.”

It was good advice. But
she'd never been good at taking advice.

There were some nights she
was just too tired, too drained, to even eat a proper meal. She'd
just take a quick shower, force down whatever leftovers she found in
the fridge and flop into bed.

This was her life. Her job
was her life.

And it was just the way she
liked it.

No dramas, tears and
heartache.

She didn't want to come home
after a long, stressful day to find her boyfriend rooting through her
things, hoping to grab some cash and valuables before he took off
with his new girl. Or face an insecure partner who yelled and railed
at her for coming home late, accusing her of putting her career
first, prioritizing her job over her relationship, her partner, her
life.

Her last two boyfriends had
accused her of that, and Nora didn't bother denying the accusations.
She believed that a woman shouldn't have to choose between a career
and a relationship. Definitely not in this day and age.

Dramas and heartaches were
just so...pointless. Nora just wanted to do what she loved and she
would support her partner in his chosen profession as well. She
would never demand that he drop everything and be at her beck and
call. That was simply ridiculous.

Nora smirked. Well, she'd
definitely experienced her fair share of ridiculous men. She was
taking a break from shitty, stifling relationships. Permanently.

Nora adjusted her bag on her
shoulder and blew into her hands to warm them up. It was a cold
night, and the wind was picking up. Tightening her hold on her bag,
she turned the corner and hurried past the narrow, dark alleys. She
lived within walking distance of the hospital, and it was a
relatively safe part of the city but still, she always felt uneasy
when she walked past those dark, secluded alleys.

There were nights when she
thought she heard footsteps and saw strange, slitted eyes glowing
from the shadowy depths of an alley. She told herself they were
probably just rats or stray cats wandering around the dumpsters.
But—those eyes didn't look like cat eyes.

Nora was hurrying past a
small alley when she heard a soft whimper. She stopped in her tracks
and tensed.

Did she imagine the sound?

She was about to walk away
when she heard it again. This time it was louder and clearer.

It was unmistakably a woman's
cry.

CHAPTER
FIVE

Nora gasped and took a step
towards the dark alley.

God, was someone hurt in
there?

Maybe the woman had come out
to the back to throw out the trash and slipped. She could have had a
very nasty fall. The poor woman could have broken something, her
wrist, her hip, her head…

And there was no one to hear
her and help her. God knows how long she had been lying there in the
dark, in pain.

Nora was a health
professional and a born healer. If she hadn't become a paramedic,
she would have trained to become a nurse or a therapist. Her heart
constricted at the thought of a helpless woman lying all alone in the
alley, paralyzed and terrified.

“Hello?” Nora
called out, moving briskly towards the mouth of the alley.

The cry was muffled but
frenzied. She heard movement, and it sounded like the person was
struggling.

“Are you hurt? Don't
worry, I'll help you. I'm a paramedic. I'll call for an ambulance.”
She rooted around her bag for a small torchlight. It was much too
dark to see. “Just relax, don't move around too much. It
would aggravate...”

Just as she snapped on the
torchlight, a hand clamped over her mouth.

The torch skittered away from
her and someone stomped on the torch and killed the light.

As Nora was being dragged
deeper into the alley, she reached into her bag even as she kicked
and struggled fiercely. Her fingers tightened around her can of
pepper spray.

If this punk thought he could
just grab her and mug her blind, well, she had a surprise for him.
Not only was she armed with her trusty pepper spray, she had a mean
right hook and she was not afraid to use it.

That huge, cold hand was
still covering her mouth. The light from the street lamp opposite
the street cast long shadows into the alley and when the moon slid
out from behind the clouds, the silvery moonlight enabled Nora to see
well enough.

And what she saw chilled her
to the bone.

A lanky, bald thug was
holding an elderly lady at knifepoint. He was slowly pushing the
sharp edge of the knife into the old woman's shoulder, deepening the
cut and causing the woman extreme agony and terror.

“Don't make a
ssssssound,” someone hissed in Nora's ear. Nora shivered
involuntarily. The voice sounded more like a snake hissing than
someone talking.

“Let her go,”
Nora wheezed. “You...you...”

Nora was thrown forward and
she righted herself quickly. She spun round to glare into the faces
of the two thugs. And promptly forgot what she wanted to say.

The two males wore jeans and
hoodies but they didn't look like common thugs and hooligans.

In fact, they didn't even
look...human.

Well, their shape was human
and they were standing upright on two legs, but Nora thought these
men looked more like...snakes.

Their eyes glowed yellow and
their pupils were nothing but thin, black slits. Their tongues kept
flicking out as if to taste the air, and she noticed, to her horror
and disbelief, that the tips of their tongues were forked.

She had to be hallucinating.

Nora shook her head hard.
She looked again, her eyes moving from their hideous faces to their
hands. At first she thought they were wearing gloves. There were
strange, scaly patterns on their hands. But when one of the men
raised his hand towards her, Nora saw that their large, bare hands
were actually covered with scales.

Shit, what was happening to
her? She hadn't taken a single drop of alcohol. She would never
drink on the job and she wasn't on any medication. Why was she not
seeing right?

Gulping, Nora shook her head
again but she still saw those eerie yellow eyes and forked tongues.

And there was still a knife
at the old lady's throat.

CHAPTER
SIX

The old woman turned her head
slightly to lock her gaze on Nora. “Leave, while you can,”
the woman begged. “Please...just run. This doesn't concern
you.”

Nora's eyes bugged. “What?”
Shock and outrage made her find her tongue in a hurry. “You're
asking me to leave you? With them? Not on your life, M'am!”
Bad choice of words but who had time to choose pretty words when you
were facing two snake-men in a dark alley?

The old woman gave a small
smile that was more of a wince and addressed her next words to the
two men.

“Let her leave. She's
human.”

Strange words, Nora thought.
In an even stranger but undoubtedly dangerous situation.

What did the woman mean by
She's human
? Weren't they all? The old woman certainly
looked human even if the two males looked more reptilian than human.
But maybe that was just a trick of the light. Or maybe her fear was
making her see things.

“She won't tell anyone
what she has seen,” the old woman went on. “Even if she
did, no one would believe her. Just let her go.”

Turning to Nora, the woman
said, “Run, child. You'll be safe.”

“But you won't,”
Nora cried, appalled, alarmed and angry. Did this sweet grandmother
really think that Nora would just run off and leave her with these
two monsters? Did Nora look like such a useless coward to her?

One of the males spared Nora
a dismissive glance and jerked his head towards the entrance of the
alley. Then he elbowed her out of the way and advanced towards the
old woman.

Nora staggered back,
swallowing convulsively.

In not so many words, they
were telling her to get the fuck out of here.