by Zoe Chant
The Bronze Dragon’s Baby
Shifter Dads, #5
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2020
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Chapter 1: Athena
Chapter 2: Santos
Chapter 3: Athena
Chapter 4: Santos
Chapter 5: Athena
Chapter 6: Santos
Chapter 7: Athena
Chapter 8: Santos
Chapter 9: Athena
Chapter 10: Santos
Chapter 11: Athena
Chapter 12: Santos
Chapter 13: Athena
Chapter 14: Santos
Chapter 15: Athena
Chapter 16: Athena
Chapter 17: Santos
Chapter 18: Athena
Chapter 19: Santos
Chapter 20: Athena
Epilogue: Athena
A note from Zoe Chant
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Chapter 1: Athena
The sign said, Welcome to Oak Ridge.
Gotcha, Athena thought with exhausted triumph.
She’d been traveling for a full day to get here. It would’ve been so much faster if she could have shifted and flown, but that hadn’t been an option with Olivia along.
Fortunately, Olivia had had a great time, bundled up in her sling, warm and snug in a knit hat, watching the forest go by until she’d fallen asleep against Athena’s chest. Now, the baby’s warm little breaths puffed against the underside of her chin, soft and reassuring.
Athena had told Jeremiah, her clan leader, that she was going to Leosville, a human town with a small lion shifter population living in secret. She’d pretended she wanted to connect with some of the female lions in that pack, to try and strengthen their alliance now that the pack leader was in jail. Jeremiah had approved, and Athena had set off in one of the clan’s few cars.
Instead, though, she was going to Oak Ridge. The town full of enemy dragons...and one former ally.
But she couldn’t drive the whole way to Oak Ridge, because the cars all had GPS, and Jeremiah was exactly the sort of paranoid alpha dragon who’d check it to make sure that Athena was exactly where she was supposed to be.
So she’d driven to Leosville, caught a ride partway out of town with an unsuspecting, sympathetic human woman, and for this final leg, she’d walked.
And now she was here at her destination. Oak Ridge. The town of dragon shifters.
Unfortunately, it was two in the morning, and she had no way of knowing where her quarry lived.
That’s okay, she told herself. Late at night—no one will be up and around. A perfect time for reconnaissance. Hours to scout the place, see what sort of defenses they might have. Honestly, she didn’t know why not a single other red dragon had thought to do this.
Well, okay, she did know. It was because the clan was living under the thumb of a disorganized dictator, and no one was allowed to have any ideas without his consent.
So, fine. It was up to her.
Determinedly, she kept going through the forest. She was sticking to the shadows of the trees, far enough from the road that no passing car would see her in the dark. The snow was fairly deep, but not so much as to prevent her from walking at all.
She checked Olivia again. She seemed plenty warm, snug inside Athena’s jacket. It was a cold night, but her baby was safe against it. And asleep still, which was good, because nothing killed an attempt at stealth like a crying baby.
She couldn’t have left Olivia at home, though. The only person Athena might halfway trust to take care of her was her brother, and Alaric was off on some mission for Jeremiah. And time was of the essence. Any day now, Jeremiah was going to declare an all-out war.
And Athena was going to stop him.
With some help. Hopefully.
She tramped onward, hoping to see the town soon. She was getting tired. She’d do her reconnaissance, and then hopefully there would be some little nook or cranny where she could sneak in and curl up with Olivia to nap for a couple of hours before dawn. An abandoned house, perhaps.
Finally, after a long, uphill walk, she started to see the occasional house among the trees. They all looked occupied, with cars in the driveway, sometimes a light on over the porch.
How many shifters lived here? Athena realized she had no idea. Jeremiah seemed to think it was a matter of defeating five or six dragons in battle, and then the town would be theirs, but Athena was pretty sure he’d gotten that information from Victor the alpha lion, who hadn’t seemed to be the most trustworthy source even before he went to prison.
Slowly, the houses got more numerous. Athena gave up counting when she arrived at a cross street and realized that this was, in fact, an actual human-style town.
Not just a clan of shifters living in a collection of buildings in the middle of the forest. A town.
Nervously, Athena ventured down a street. It had streetlights. There were businesses along it. She saw a café, a law office, and a diner.
Maybe their intelligence was wrong? Maybe Oak Ridge wasn’t a town of shifters, but a human town where a few shifters lived, hidden among the people. That didn’t seem to mesh with what Athena had heard about open battles in the sky, about the sheriff and the mayor of Oak Ridge being shifters, but there was no way this many people were all shifters living together.
There was no way. The intra-clan fights would have torn them apart long ago. Unless the mayor ruled with an iron fist that would shame Jeremiah’s.
Maybe that was it. But then...why would Ronan have stayed here?
Maybe he was a prisoner. Maybe he couldn’t leave. Maybe Athena’s mission here was to break him out of Oak Ridge, rather than just convincing him to leave.
Frankly, that might be easier. She’d just have to find a way to keep Olivia safe in the process.
Well, that was why she was on reconnaissance to start. She couldn’t complete her mission without proper intel.
Slowly, she made her way around the streets. The place was almost entirely silent, the windows in the houses and the business all dark.
There was a light on in the sheriff’s office. Athena gave that building a wide berth.
By three-thirty AM, she had to admit that she’d learned everything she could from simply walking around town. She was going to have to observe it in the daytime, overhear people talking to each other, to get any more information than she already had. Maybe she could go to the diner or the café and pretend to just be a human passing through town on her way somewhere else, and gather information that way. People liked babies, and a mother alone with her baby was never seen as a threat.
Foolishly.
Athena stifled a yawn. In the meantime, she was absolutely exhausted. She hadn’t slept much the previous night either, because Olivia had been up and crying, and now she’d been traveling for almost twenty hours, the last six on foot. Even dragons needed to rest sometimes.
She’d circled around in her exploration, and now she was back on the street with the diner and the law office. She hadn’t seen any buildings that were obviously empty, so that was out. An office might be a good place to settle in—after all, no one would be there until it opened.
Then she saw something even better.
A furniture store, of all things.
It boggled her mind that there were enough people here to even need a furniture store. Athena was pretty sure that none of the furniture she’d ever used i
n her life had been purchased from a store. It had all been scavenged or taken from other people.
But the sign out front said it was a furniture store, so that’s what it had to be. And as Athena peeked through the window, she saw a room full of chairs, tables, dressers, shelves, all sorts of furniture—and there, tucked in the corner, out of direct view from the street, was a bed.
It even had a mattress. For display purposes, she supposed.
Olivia stirred against her chest, making an unhappy noise. Quickly, Athena dropped back from the window, and slipped around back behind the building.
Olivia turned out to be hungry, grabbing at Athena’s shirt and starting to whine. Athena got her shirt open and started feeding the baby, awkward underneath the jacket. She wanted to make sure Olivia had enough space to breathe, but oh the air was bitingly cold.
By the time Olivia’s midnight snack was done, Athena was shivering. She’d kept her daughter warm with her jacket, at least, but having her shirt open in the frigid air had taken its toll.
Time to get inside.
The posted hours on the front of the shop said that it opened at nine AM. Plenty of time. Athena would just curl up on the bed with Olivia, nap for a couple of hours, and then be out and away before anyone showed up to open the place, with no one the wiser.
She scanned the door with a carefully professional eye, but it didn’t look like it was alarmed. The lock was ridiculously simple to pick. She wondered who owned the place, and why they were foolish or trusting enough that they felt like they didn’t need even the most basic security.
Slipping inside, she felt the air like a warm blast in her face, even though it couldn’t have been heated too aggressively in the middle of the night when no one was there. Unless nice wooden furniture needed to be kept at a certain temperature for some reason.
Athena sure would have no way of knowing, but it felt good to be in out of the cold.
Quickly, she made her way around the maze of shelves and tables to the bed in the corner. The mattress was surprisingly soft, and she carefully spread her jacket out and laid Olivia on it, closest to the wall—the baby was already dozing off, full and happy. Athena stretched out next to her and set an alarm on her phone. She’d be up and out of here by six AM.
Letting out her breath, she pushed away the anxieties about how she was going to accomplish her goals. She’d gotten to her destination, and that was all that mattered for now.
Closing her eyes, she let exhaustion wash over her, and fell asleep instantly.
Chapter 2: Santos
Santos’ eyes snapped open.
His dragon was alert in his chest. Get up!
Blinking, he checked the clock on the nightstand. Four AM.
Danger? he thought, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, ready to go out the window and shift midair if necessary. Is someone attacking?
His dragon hesitated. No attack, it said finally, and Santos relaxed. Then frowned. If not an attack, then what?
At the far corner, Humphrey lifted his head, blinking at Santos as if to say, What the heck are you doing? It’s not time to get up yet.
When Santos didn’t provide any explanation, the cat twitched his whiskers disdainfully and curled back up, closing his eyes against this nonsense. Santos couldn’t blame him.
But his dragon remained insistent. Get up!
So Santos got up, because there’d been enough dangerous surprises in Oak Ridge in the last few months. He wasn’t about to increase the number by ignoring his instincts.
He did a quick pace around the apartment without seeing anything out of the ordinary.
Downstairs.
The rumble was his dragon’s, but it was funny, there was also an almost physical pull directing him down towards the shop. Santos padded silently out of the apartment and down the stairs, keeping the lights off and listening closely.
No one was in the workshop, and everything looked to be exactly as he’d left it last night. He turned the knob towards the storefront area as soundlessly as he could.
As the door opened, he could hear breathing.
He stilled, trying to figure out where the person was from the sound. But as he listened, he realized that the breathing was slow and soft, with a hint of a little snort at the beginning of each breath.
Asleep. Someone was asleep out in his shop.
Santos opened the door all the way, still braced for an attack, but nothing came, and as he padded out onto the show floor, he could finally see what was going on.
A woman was asleep on the bed in the corner of the room. He could barely see her face around the tangle of red hair, but he didn’t think it was anyone he knew.
Silently, he made his way closer, trying to get a better look at her without waking her up. Halfway there, he froze.
There was a baby asleep next to her.
His eyes darted to her face again, but he’d been right: he’d never seen this woman before in his life.
What had driven a strange woman to break into his store at night with her baby? What was she doing out alone on a cold winter’s night with her baby?
Well, the first question was fairly easy, if he thought about it for a second. A woman with a baby alone at night was probably looking for a bed to sleep in. Santos had a bed on display. That made sense.
The rest of it, though...
Oak Ridge was a small town, isolated in the middle of the woods. Strangers didn’t come here too often, and rarely by accident. Santos knew pretty much everyone in town, and he was sure that there weren’t any families with little babies that he’d never met.
If nothing else, his mother delighted in informing him whenever someone he’d grown up with became a father or stepfather, usually with a wistful look in her eyes. Santos knew exactly when every baby in town had been born, because Rita Ramirez wasn’t about to let an opportunity like that slip by her.
So this woman wasn’t a local. How had she ended up here, then? Was she another refugee from Victor’s lion pack? But then why hadn’t she gone to Elizabeth or Lila, people who would know her?
He wasn’t going to get any answers just standing here while she slept. But he didn’t want to wake her up. She must have been desperate to break into a store in the middle of the night to sleep.
And on that note...Santos went around checking the windows—they were all locked, and the door was, too. Nothing had been broken. He never left anything unlocked overnight, just out of habit—didn’t want anyone thinking the store was open when it was closed. So how had she even gotten in?
Suddenly wondering something, he put his hand on the doorknob—and then hesitated, looking back at her. He didn’t want to wake her up.
So instead, he went back into the workshop, closing the door silently behind him, and then outside through the back door, so the noise and the cold air would be less likely to stir her.
Then he started looking at the cars.
Then he went a little further afield, keeping an ear out for the sound of a door opening back at the shop.
Nothing. Not for a few blocks around. All the cars he could see were familiar, cars that belonged to the people who lived here.
So how had she gotten here, then? Had someone dropped her off? If she was a shifter, had she somehow managed to shift and carry her baby with her in her other form?
He had so many damn questions.
Santos went back to the shop, slipping inside again as quietly as he could manage. He checked quickly to make sure she was still there in the bed, and then padded back upstairs.
If he wasn’t going to wake her up, he could at least make sure he was ready to meet her when she did wake up. He got dressed, had a quick early breakfast—it was four-thirty now, late enough to conceivably be morning, if you were a baker or a paper delivery boy or something.
Humphrey apparently agreed, because he appeared, twining himself around Santos’ ankles and meowing loudly.
“Okay,” Santos murmured, “okay, you can have some food, as lon
g as you stay quiet. Early breakfast for both of us.”
Placated by kibble, Humphrey quieted down, and Santos ran a hand along his back. Then he picked up a book—The Iliad, which he was determined to finish reading in his lifetime, somehow—and went back downstairs as quietly as possible.
The mother and baby were still there, thank God. Santos settled himself into one of his chairs, back in a corner where the light from the streetlight outside shone in through the window, and opened up the book. The Greeks and the Trojans were still at it, so he settled in to see if he could get through another battle before morning.
Chapter 3: Athena
Athena woke up with a start.
Her eyes went immediately to Olivia, who was breathing quietly next to her. On the bed in the furniture shop, her mind reminded her. Right.
Her phone was next to her, but the alarm hadn’t gone off yet. Checking it, she saw that it was ten minutes to six. Close enough. She turned it off and sat up—and froze.
She wasn’t alone.
There was a man sitting in the opposite corner of the room, leaning back in a chair with a book in his lap.
The sight was so incongruous that Athena couldn’t parse it for a long minute. Man. Chair. Book. Lap. What?
But the moment went on for long enough that eventually she had to acknowledge that yes, she’d gone to sleep in an empty room, and woken up in a room with a man reading in a chair in the corner. An incredibly handsome man, her brain decided to inform her—sculpted features, long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, thoughtful dark eyes—
Wow, that was irrelevant. She shook her head, trying to get her brain in gear. She needed to figure out what she was dealing with.
“Who are you?” she asked, going for the direct approach.
“My name is Santos Ramirez,” he said. His voice was quiet and deep, but he didn’t sound angry or aggressive at all. “I own this store.”
Athena stilled. “Oh.” Her mind raced. How to get out of this? Had he already called—whoever? His clan leader, or the human police? He wasn’t between her and the door, but if she grabbed Olivia and ran, she thought he could probably intercept her before she got there—and if he was a dragon, all bets were off.