by Jill Haven
His Dragon Protector
Divine Dragons: Book 2
Jill Haven
Contents
1. Seth
2. Mason
3. Seth
4. Mason
5. Seth
6. Mason
7. Seth
8. Mason
9. Seth
10. Mason
11. Seth
12. Mason
13. Seth
14. Mason
15. Seth
16. Mason
17. Seth
18. Mason
19. Seth
20. Seth
His Warrior Dragon
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His Dragon Protector
1
Seth
Sneaking around in the dark was smarter than doing it during the day, but it was a pain in the ass, and that was a fact.
There were a few universal truths I contemplated while my balls fought off frostbite and I stared at the guard illuminated under the light across the parking lot. The man was kitty-corner to my spot, huddled in the dark next to a chain-link fence. One thing I knew for sure—the weather was a glacial bitch tonight. The second thing I knew was that Mason Hardwick seemed like the kind of man—no scratch that, dragon—who talked a big game but gave up fast, so I never expected to see him again. The way my life was, I didn’t have time for someone who couldn’t keep up with me. The only thing I would get the good doctor was dead, even a dragon doctor. I’d been running into blowhards like Mason my whole fuckin’ life.
Third on my list of shit I knew for a damned fact: I would be in and out of this piss-poorly guarded place with the goods I wanted before Grandpa’s goons knew what hit ’em. I grinned to myself and my chest leapt with excitement. It might be stupid, but nothing got me going like pulling a job. It was probably a good thing I didn’t mind running for my life, in some ways, because what that Vladimir asshole had done was in the top three awful fucking things that had ever happened to me. If Dad hadn’t died, though, I wouldn’t exactly be weeping into my Cheerios about it. My life wasn’t ever calm.
In fact, when things were going right… that’s when I got edgy and irritable. It just wasn’t normal.
I shook my head, clearing away sad thoughts about Dad for later. I couldn’t get distracted or this easy heist would go from fun to fucked in three seconds flat.
Grandpa had a book of my mother’s in his personal vault. Dad had asked him to keep it safe, but now I wanted it, and due to a couple of hard drives I may or may not have relocated without permission because I wanted to disappear for good, I couldn’t just ask to have Mom’s book back. It came down to this, stealing my own stuff from my grandfather who I’d already stolen money from.
This situation was a mountain of mess, but my life usually was. Nothing new there.
The wind gusted past and slapped at my face like a whip. I drew my stolen jacket close around me and wished it was a real winter coat. I probably shouldn’t have taken random outwear from the pile near the front door before I ran off from Haiden’s friend Jade’s place, but this one had smelled extra fantastic.
Fucking no-account jackass Mason, sneaking in places where he shouldn’t have been, talking to me like he knew me. If he hadn’t worked a fast line, I would have clocked him and been done with him that night he snuck into my borrowed bedroom. But he seemed nice, and he acted like he cared whether I was okay or not.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Do you want someone to hold you?’
That last thing was the one that got him the riot act.
Other than Dad, and maybe Haiden, no one had ever cared about me and whether or not I was comfortable. Maybe Haiden only seemed to give a shit because we were both Divine Omegas, but I could work with that. Mason had to have an angle, or why mess around with me? Sex. That’s all he wanted.
I shifted to keep my feet from getting numb in my sneakers. The truth was, I had no idea why I didn’t send Mason away the night Haiden’s alpha, Carlisle, trounced Vladimir’s people. If Mason had slipped into my room to do anything more than stare and ask annoying questions, I probably wouldn’t have given him a chance to speak to me. The vigilant way he’d sat there with his back against a wall in the moonlight reminded me of being watched over by my Dad when we were being followed by dragons who wanted to take me, the many times that had happened off and on throughout my life. Maybe stupid nostalgia had kept me from tossing Mason out on his ear right away. My acceptance of Mason in my space still bugged me, weeks later. My stomach tingled with excitement at the thought that he might be on the hunt for me. Obviously, I’d gone nuts.
I flipped up the collar of the expensive fabric over my nose and huddled, sniffing Mason’s rich, musky alpha scent—delicious, like melted sugar and wood smoke—while still watching the front door of the storage facility. Breathing in the faint whiffs of Mason that still lingered in the fabric calmed my heartbeat and slowed my mind so that I could think straight. The buildings sprawled in all directions, ugly and boxy, and each contained about thirty storage lockers. Chances were that most of the units wouldn’t have anything more high-tech than a padlock keeping bad guys like me out.
The guards were the real problem.
I tugged my phone out of my pocket, turned around so I could hide the glare from the screen, and checked the time. It was 9:47 p.m. My stomach lurched and I made sure my phone was silenced and then put it back in my pocket. In roughly two minutes this guy on duty would have a smoke and go take a walk around, presumably to keep himself from falling asleep standing up.
Sure enough, he kept to the routine I’d taken note of over the last few nights and wandered off toward the front of the lot. I ran, full tilt, for the building he’d been positioned in front of. It housed my Grandfather’s private storage units. I happened to know, thanks to my father and the work he did for Gramps, that this place was owned by our family. Grandpa hid deeds and contracts here for work that no one could ever find out about. The vault inside was also where he’d hidden the hard drives with Bitcoin stored on them that I had stashed in my old apartment. Nearly every document important to the family was here, and I knew I could get in. This wasn’t the first time I’d broken past security here, not by a long shot.
My chest heaved like I was a ten-pack-a-day smoker when I came to a stop at the entrance and hit my knees in front of the card reader to quickly check and make sure it was still the same one I’d bested previously. I took the fake keycard I had programmed with a general entry code out of my pocket and ran it through the reader. I held my breath as the light on the door went from red to green, and the snick of a lock opening sounded loud while I tried to hold my breath and act invisible. If Grandpa had wised up and hired real security, this wouldn’t have worked, but thankfully he was more reliant on old-school techniques. I ripped the door open, and then I was inside, and things seemed a lot less wild. My heart slowed and I blew out a long breath.
It was fairly warm in the gray-walled, ordinary-looking hallway, big enough for a moving cart to easily fit through, and lined with numbered doors. Cheerful bright lights were almost enough to convince me I was safe.
If Grandpa had let me have Mom’s book last year when I asked him for it, I wouldn’t have to do this right now. I’d missed about a million phone calls from him over the last week. Last Grandpa knew, Dad and I were out of town on vacation and he was trying to force me to come home and do a job for him—or maybe he had figured out it was me who lifted the hard drives with the Bitcoin stored on them. I wasn’t sure. I had no idea if Grandpa even knew they were gone yet, but the old man didn’t miss many tricks, so he probably did.
He didn’t know Dad was dead yet. That was still knowledge I had over him, and my chest ached that I thought of Dad’s passing as something to be weaponized. I didn’t want to be that kind of man.
I missed my Dad.
I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to have to tell anyone he was dead. Hell, I hadn’t even let myself think about it too much, other than the fact that Dad dying made me dust off the plans I’d made a long time ago to disappear off the map. The plan went something like this: get Mom’s book, cash in the Bitcoin on the hard drives I’d stolen, and retire early to a nice tropical beach somewhere where I could program bits and pieces of video games.
Before I left to some hidden paradise, I wanted to stop and make sure Haiden was okay and bring him with me if he wasn’t—a new part of my plan, but that was okay. I didn’t mind bringing a friend. I couldn’t stand the thought of Haiden living a life as someone’s sex slave. That’s what Dad always said would happen to me if the dragons caught us, and Vladimir had said he would do as much.
I took a deep breath and called myself a thousand horrible names because I’d thought about what it might mean to be on call for Mason Hardwick’s cock and the fantasies got me going at night when I was alone. What made that goof different? I fiddled with the collar of his coat.
Biting my tongue to force myself to pay attention, I inched along the hallway, one ear cocked for anyone patrolling inside the building. I crept along a wall. The hallway hit a T at the end, and I knew I needed to go left because Grandpa’s vault was in the very center of the building, so that it couldn’t be accessed from the outside by taking out a wall. I found door number thirteen and sighed and laughed; the number was an old inside joke of Grandpa’s. Aces were thirteen in a deck of cards, and aces always won you a game, or so he claimed.
A card reader had been installed since I was here last time. I swore under my breath and my stomach lurched. I only had the one entry card with me, and I’d figured I could kick in this door, but the new tech changed things. The plain door had been switched out for a fancy steel number with what looked like reinforced plating on the top, bottom, and around the door lock. The card reader was exactly like the one on the front of the building, so I decided I didn’t have much to lose. My heart hammered frantically as I slid the card into the reader.
I crossed my fingers and held my breath. The light didn’t switch from red to green, it stayed red, and worse, the lights began to blink overhead.
“Shit, this was fuckin’ dumb,” I mumbled and grabbed a handful of the short hair on top of my head. My heart climbed into the back of my throat and hopped up and down there. I kicked at the door and only succeeded in making my knee ache. “Fuck,” I snarled.
Shouts echoed along the hallway from the direction I’d entered. Rolling my eyes at myself, I decided to let this go and ran. I knew Mom was a Sun dragon. That would have to be enough. Maybe someday I could track down her clan if I wanted to know more about them. The outside hallways should circle around, so I hoped that the guards were all taking the shortest route to this spot instead of going the long way.
I pelted toward the end of the far end of the hall and stopped short when someone came around the corner. The black police uniform and shiny gold badge on the man’s chest had me stumbling to a halt.
“Stop! Hands up!” The cop drew his weapon and pointed it in my face.
“Seriously? I was only in here three minutes!” Carefully I wiggled my fingers and raised my hands over my head.
The cop lowered his gun toward the floor and glared. “Are you admitting to breaking and entering?”
“I ain’t admitting to nothin’. Why don’t you fuck off?”
The cop’s face flooded red and a hateful gleam in his eyes made it clear I had a new enemy for life.
Behind me, three large men in cheap security suits came around the corner and they seemed shocked to see the police. “We flipped the switch a half hour ago. You waited until he was in the damned building to show?”
There was some arguing that went on around me, and it became obvious I hadn’t been as sneaky as I thought these past few nights, but of the two groups, the cops were safest to get stuck with. I walked toward the cop I’d insulted slowly with my hands held way out.
“Take me to jail. I was totally doing B and E.”
“What?” the cop asked, his voice all squeaky and suspicious now.
Grandpa’s men behind me were having some sort of fast discussion, so I guessed I’d been recognized. “Never mind. We didn’t realize it was our boss’s grandson. He won’t want to press charges.”
“You wanted me arrested.” I turned to shake a finger at the men who worked for Grandpa, but they didn’t seem amused, and neither did the cops.
“Come on,” the cop said. “You’re going. I don’t care what they say.”
Finally, having infuriated someone worked out in my favor. The cop stormed forward and jerked my arm behind my back. It hurt, but not as much as getting shot would have, so I happily went with the cops. This was going to end badly for me, no matter what, but at least I’d probably still be alive in the morning if I went to jail. The cop searched me for weapons, a lot less handsy than Vladimir and his men had been because my ass didn’t get groped, and then he jammed me into the back of a police cruiser and took me down to the police station. As the cop was tossing me into a holding cell, I noticed the name on his chest plate was Peach and laughed as the door slid shut. “You sure aren’t a peach at all.”
“Screw you, kid,” the cop barked. “You’re a little young to be in this mess, aren’t you? You get one call in twenty minutes. You better make it good. Lawyer up.” His eyes were a little bit worried, for me of all people, as he turned to leave.
I chewed my lip and thought over the possibilities. They were more or less call Grandpa, who probably wanted me dead, or… call Haiden. I hung my head. “I’ll be ready.”
Another cop wandered along, this one a friendly faced older man who seemed familiar. “Haven’t seen you in here in a while,” he said cheerfully.
I squinted at the cop and realized he’d picked me up on some petty theft charges a few years ago, so I settled in to bullshit with him, asked him about his family, stuff like that. Officer Peach snorted like a bull and left.
The nice cop let me use the phone at the front desk rather than sticking me with the grungy ones in the interrogation rooms. For some reason I wasn’t allowed to use my personal phone or Facebook, so that left me spinning my wheels. I contacted most people online, including Haiden. The internet was my friend, a side effect from having a computer science degree.
“Uh…” I cringed, but the only person I knew with a last name who I could look up in a regular way and contact for help was Mason Hardwick. I gave them Mason’s name and they found a number for him that was part of a medical practice in Charleston, West Virginia. The cop gave me the phone when the line started ringing through, but I was sent to an answering service.
“How may I help you?” a bored-sounding woman asked me.
“Um…” I almost hung up on her but took a deep breath. It was this or wait for Grandpa to bail me out and do something horrible. “I’m looking for Dr. Mason Hardwick. I need to talk to him. It’s an emergency.” I gritted my teeth. He was supposed to be chasing me, not the other way around. Some primal part of me liked that idea of him on my trail, and I didn’t stop to examine why too closely.
“If you have a medical emergency, hang up and dial 911.”
I growled. “No, I need to talk to him now.”
“We don’t disturb the doctors this late.”
“He won’t mind.”
She made a noncommittal noise. “Stay on the line. I’ll connect you. You may have to leave a message.”
The phone buzzed and it did go to messages. “So… you may not believe this.” I chuckled nervously, pissed off to the max that I had to do this and that he made me feel so off-kilter. I barely knew Mason. How could I feel any sort of way
at all around him? “I got arrested. I’m in upstate New York, in Buffalo… in jail. I’m in a tight spot. What’s the number here?” The cop told me, and I rattled it off as my stomach wound itself up into a crazy tangle. “I suppose if you’re really lookin’ to find me, you’ll come here. If not, I’ll know when you don’t show up, right?”
I hung up, not having much faith that he’d get this random message from his office and be here anytime soon. I chatted with the cop who took my wallet and phone for safekeeping and I had to sign away my life before he led me back to my cell.
“Depending on what happens with the charges, you’ll either be let go or have to go the courthouse tomorrow,” the cop said, and I smiled at him.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Take care,” he said with a friendly wave, as if he was dropping me off at my house instead of the holding tank.
There was no sleeping for me. I was riding the high from the job going pear-shaped. I paced and worried. People in the cells around me yelled and talked to each other. Sometime after the sun came up outside the window of my cell, Officer Peach stopped back, looking tired with dark circles hanging under his eyes.
“Someone’s here for you.” He opened the cell and yanked me out by the arm, hard. I stumbled against the cell door and hissed with the pain to my shoulder. He smirked. I guess this was my punishment for mouthing off.
I counted the steps from my cell to a well-lit room with a shitty plastic table and chairs in it while ignoring the pain in my arm from Peach’s too tight grip, but my stomach clenched when I got through the door and, lo and behold, it wasn’t Grandpa or his goon squad, but Mason Hardwick, looking refreshed with snow-damp black hair, a clean-shaven jaw, and nice clothes. He had a man with him who looked like he could eat most of Grandpa’s goons for breakfast—he was bigger than any of them—who was decked out in leather and a skin-tight black Henley. He had short cropped hair and a scowl that would freeze over hell, all made extra badass by a reddish scar that ran from over one eyebrow, down over the bridge of his nose and stopped on the other cheek. I swallowed hard and my stomach tingled when Mason’s hazel gaze stuck to my face. His satisfied smirk teased something good into my groin and I was far too aware of a certain body part of mine.