Nadia's Dragon: Nadia's Dragon: A BBW Paranomal Romance (Dragon Mates Book 2)

by Serena Simpson

  The door opened, and Maceo walked back in carrying small tree branches.

  “We can use these to help stabilize your ankle.” He held up the branches so she could get a better look.

  They were more flat than round; maybe he had found a way to cut them in half. She nodded, and he went down on his knees rewrapping her ankle. A sigh of relief came from her when he was finished. The branches helped to alleviate some of the pressure she was feeling.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Now,” Zeno said answering her question. “I get to go outside and check the perimeter that Maceo set up while he was retrieving the branches. I’ll also hunt for food.” He gave them a formal bow. “Your welcome.”

  He disappeared out the door leaving Nadia with a bemused look on her face.

  “Your brother he’s different.”

  “Not really, although we do think of him as a little strange. My brothers and I have decided it’s because he is the youngest.”

  “Ahh.” She stared at the closed door a moment longer before turning her gaze back to Maceo.

  “How long can we stay here?”

  “I wish I knew. You did something unprecedented.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t just move our minds or spirits. You moved our bodies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The dragons have the ability to visit different planes. This is not something that is exclusive to our people. There are many races that can do this, but what we can’t do is take our bodies with us. Right now we should be lying on the steps in front of Alexa’s house, but we’re not. You managed to bring our bodies with us. Which solves one problem but creates a new one.”

  “So I opened a door in time and space?”

  “I don’t know about time, but you opened one in space. That means we don’t have to be worried about something happening to our bodies with no one around to protect them. It also means that leaving will be harder because we don’t have bodies on the other side to go back to.”

  “So we could be stuck here forever?”

  “No.” He shook his head giving her a small smile. “Either we go back, or we die, but we won’t be here forever.”

  “Your bedside manners suck. No wonder you never became a doctor.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry. Should I try again?”

  “No I get it, and I know your right. I guess I just didn’t like hearing it all stark. Sometimes I want pretty words with my doom and gloom.”

  The corners of his mouth quirked up. “I will remember that in the future.”

  Standing he lifted her legs and sat down on the end of the couch placing them in his lap.

  “It’s been one heck of a day.”

  “I can’t believe it’s only been a day.” She rolled her shoulders trying to loosen the tension in them.

  “It’s been more than a day for you. Want to tell me about it?”

  She looked up into his eyes and saw understanding. A dull aching thud happened in her heart. When was the last time she saw understanding? It was in her mom’s eyes when she listened to all Nadia went through. It was even in Alexa’s eyes when she complained to her, but this was different. He looked at her like he would go out and right all the wrongs done to her.

  After a long sigh that said more than words could she told him her story. Starting from when she was young just meeting Alexa and ending with the phone call to him.

  As she spoke, she felt a fire burning deep inside her. It consumed her the more she spoke until she knew she was going to go up in flames. It was Maceo’s cool hand going under her tank top to rest against her belly that calmed her down.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “It’s your power or your gift depending on what you want to call it.”

  “If it’s a gift why is it tearing me apart inside?”

  “I think because you were never meant to be alone for as long as you have been. You're powerful. I’ve never known a dragon’s mate to be as powerful as you. To be honest, Alexa is powerful, too.”

  “Explain to me what you mean by dragon’s mate.”

  His fingers splayed open on her belly as small pulses of power went through him to her calming her. She gave a small sigh as her power settled down allowing her to concentrate on the magic of his touch on her.

  “Before we battled with Mutufa and turned into humans a dragon could only create with his mate. Not that we couldn’t have fun with others.”

  “Create? Are we talking about children?”

  “Yes. We could only have little fire breathers with our mate. The one we were destined to be with for all eternity. Then we became human. As far as any of us know, there was never another dragon or dragon in human form born during all those centuries. We were able as males to have relations with human females as well as dragon females but no dragonettes were ever created from those unions. What was worse there was never a dragon mate reported in all those years.”

  Nadia’s hand went to his arm slightly stroking him. Sadness settled in her heart for the dragons; they went through so much.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He gave her a smile and rubbed his hand against her stomach.

  “We thought all was lost. Then without any warning, we were able to turn into dragons again, to fly the sky and access our hordes. Everything that we knew was back, and I couldn’t have been happier. My horde was on a tall mountain that no human had ever climbed I made my way there thinking how glorious the sky would look filled with my people once again. I was wrong. Not many of our people had survived the human years.”

  “Maceo?”

  “Imagine walking down one of your streets to see hundreds of humans pouring down it. Then waking up to find that only ten remained.”

  Nadia wiped her eyes at the tears that were falling. The sadness in his voice almost cutting her into.

  “The world had changed, and no one would accept that dragons were real. Then there were other groups of people that were huddling together hiding from the human’s that were determined to wipe them from the face of the earth. My brothers and I did the only thing we could do. We found a place that we could live separated from the humans. After all this life should have been great. Our island is a paradise. Soon we began to notice something our dragons refused to become intimate with any of the women on the island. We didn’t understand until one of the Oracles came.”

  “Oracles? Really?”

  “Yeah, they’re triplets. They never just say what they mean, so it took us years to unravel the clues, but eventually we got it. There would come a time in our lives when our dragons matured enough to want his mate. Once that happened, we would not be able to find mindless release with another. In fact, we would not find any release until we mated with her.”

  “So you can’t…?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “I bet that made you mad.”

  “Quite the contrary. It confirmed what I already knew. I was ready for a mate, my mate. The sadness was that I knew like Javon, my older brother I would turn to stone before I met her. Then you called, and your husky voice on the phone called to me.”

  “Look at me!” She sat up and pulled herself to the side of the couch. “I’m nobodies mate. Don’t you understand, I wanted to be, but no one was interested.”

  A small tear tracked down her face before he leaned over her and pressed his lips to hers.

  Chapter Eight

  He pulled her into his lap and deepened the kiss knowing exactly who she was to him. Her mouth opened, and he swept inside allowing his tongue to mingle with hers as they caressed each getting to know the taste and feel of each other.

  Nadia pulled back and sighed, it was like she was living in some dream and any minute her alarm would ring, and she’d wake up ready to drag herself out of bed.

  “Maceo?” Her voice was high-pitched as if she was scared to say his name.

  “I’m here, and I’m real.”

  “You can’t be th
is is a dream and when I wake up I’m going to my restaurant and my life.”

  “I wish it could be that way for you but your restaurant is gone, and you're stuck on the demon plane with Zeno and me.”

  She knew that it made sense to her in some twisted sort of way. Still, she wanted to hang onto the things she’d worked for her whole life. To admit that it was gone, that her dream for tomorrow was shattered did something inside of her that she didn’t like. Maybe it simply made her feel more unstable.

  “How can everything be gone?” She checked herself she wasn’t whining or even complaining. She just didn’t understand how overnight you could lose everything.

  “It’s life and not the part we like. One minute everything is stable and seems like it will go on forever and in the next minute, a simple blink of the eye and everything we’ve ever had becomes dust and once again we have to remake ourselves from the rubble of our lives.”

  “Why me? So many people I know have nice steady lives that drone on without the drama. Why me?” Her voice sounded confused as she looked back over a life that challenged her with every move she made.

  “Because some people were meant for greatness.”

  She nodded her head not sure she believed that line of thought but for now with Mutufa and demon dogs and the whole plane after her. It was nice to have someone’s special opinion of her to hold on to.

  “I hope we can stay here for a while because I need sleep.”

  She snuggled closer to him marveling at the lightness of his skin compared to the darkness of hers. With that thought, she closed her eyes and slept.

  Maceo stood with her in his arms and took her to one of the bedrooms lying her down on the bed. For a moment he thought of lying beside her before he backed out of the room. She wasn’t ready to find him in bed beside her, and his dragon wouldn’t be able to handle being that close to his mate. For both their sakes he left.

  He walked to the front door to look for signs of Zeno. Being in the demon plane wasn’t what his brother had signed up for, but he showed Maceo just how mature he was by doing what needed to be done. Both he and Syn had a bad habit of thinking of Zeno like he was twelve but he wasn’t. He was thousands of years old and maybe it was time they treated him that way.

  Javon would have their hides if he were around at the way they treated Zeno. In his defense, he simply didn’t want to lose another brother. Losing Javon had hit them all hard. He stepped outside closing the door behind him. Now that Nadia was asleep he wanted to do a much more thorough search of the land they were occupying.

  He started by clearing out the trees close to the cabin they were in earlier. Fighting trees hadn’t been fun, but he knew they would not only give their position away but fight against them. Zeno had finished what he started. Now they had a large area with nothing protecting the cabin, but it would make blindsiding them nearly impossible. Nearly—because who knew what demons could do?

  Zeno stepped into the clearing dragging a carcass behind him. He was cut up but smiling, so Maceo took that as a good sign.

  “What’s that?”

  Zeno gave him a grin, “Dinner. Do you think Nadia will clean it for us?”

  “You’re crazy right?”

  Zeno lifted it up and dropped it at Maceo’s feet. “I think it’s a demon deer. You should see the teeth on it. Unless you know how to clean a deer because I don’t we need help from somebody that knows what they’re doing.”

  “She’s a chef, not a hunter. We’ll have to figure this out on our own.” Maceo looked at him. Maybe he was only twelve.

  “Or you could let me show you how.” Her voice came from the open door.

  He turned to find her leaning against the door. Why wasn’t she sleep?

  “I put you to bed.”

  “I know, but without the heat of your body I got restless, so I got up. And I do know how to clean the demon deer.”

  “How’d you learn that?”

  “I’d like to say they taught me that in school but they didn’t. I had a couple of friends in school that were from West Virginia and they liked to hunt deer. But they didn’t like to share the meat. So I had to learn to cut and gut the deer if I wanted some. They called it earning my share. Although knowing how to do that has made for some interesting items on my menu’s.” The smile on her face faltered as she remembered she no longer had a restaurant.

  “I’m willing to teach if you’re interested in learning.”

  “I’m in,” Zeno said walking into the house. He came out later cleaned up with a stool for her to sit on and knives he found in the kitchen.

  She looked around before saying, “No gloves?”

  “This is the demon plane the more blood and guts the better.”

  She shivered and turned the deer over on its back before showing them how to make the first cut around it’s lower section.

  “You want to be careful of the colon. We don’t want to cut that it’s a nice way of making sure the meat we want stays clean enough to eat.

  “I want a mate that doesn’t know how to skin a deer,” Zeno said. “I’ll feel safer that way.”

  “Hey be happy I know what I’m doing at least we’ll eat tonight.” She gave them some simple instructions, and they helped her finish cleaning the deer before she decided they should cook it outside.

  “I’m going to go clean up and look for spices.”

  Maceo stood to help her. She put out a hand to stop him.

  “I’ve got this.” Her progress was agonizingly slow as she made her way across the flat land to the cabin.

  She needed the time alone. Knowing how to clean a dead animal and being okay with it were two different things. It was part of life, and she understood that. Her meat didn’t come in nice little packages that you got from the stores, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about the deer every time she cleaned one. Even the demon deer that was equipped to tear her apart made her think about what she was doing.

  Limping to the sink, she turned the water on and gave thanks for the animal that would provide for them so they could continue to live; then she turned her mind to a way of escape. All right body, she said to herself in a stern manner. I need you to take the three of us back to the human plane so that we can go back to our lives.

  Nothing. She didn’t even feel her unstable power twitch. They were going to be here for a while if they were looking for her to find a way to get them home. Moving to the cabinets, she wondered if demons used spices; she opened it up, and there had to be at least twenty different spices there. Taking them out of the cabinet she found a bag and decided to take them outside so they could all look at them.

  “What’s in the bag?” Maceo asked her.

  “I found all these different spices in the cabinets, but I don’t think they’re all spices. In fact, I’m willing to bet most of them are some kind of poison.”

  “What makes you think that?” Zeno asked eyeing the bag.

  “There’s no ice in the freezer, but demons care so much about their food that they stock extra spices.” She wrinkled her nose and looked at him.

  “I’m with you on this one.” He gave her a smile.

  They opened the spices one by one and threw them away. A few of them let out a noxious smell. A couple more were filled with something living. She refused to look at those. Maceo had to get rid of them. Then there were the ones that ate into the ground in front of them when poured out.

  “That’s my kind of spice. You can put it on your food and then eat it, so you watch yourself, and your food disappear.”

  “You are not funny Zeno,” she said chuckling.

  Finally, they were down to one spice that seemed like it was a spice.

  “Do we risk it? It does smell like a spice, and it looks like a spice. If we were back home, I wouldn’t think twice about using it. Do we need to spice the meat that badly?”

  They stood around looking at the jar before Maceo finally took it from her hand. Acting like a pitcher he flexed his arm then d
id a round up before he threw it far away.

  She was impressed…It hit the ground and caused an explosion. The ground shook like they were in an earthquake before they each fell.

  “That’s certainly a unique way to see if the seasoning is lethal. I’ll remember to use that method when we get home.” Zeno said pulling himself up.

  “You saved our lives,” Nadia said as Maceo helped her up. Her hand ran down his arm, and she smiled at him.

  “Disgusting,” Zeno muttered. Maceo reached out and tripped him with his foot.

  “Zeno!” Nadia called out. “Are you okay?”

  “Never been better,” he said standing again glaring at his brother.

  “Well let’s check on the meat because I’m starting to get hungry. Do you think there could be any vegetable around here?”

  “You’re stuck on vegetables aren’t you?” Maceo asked as he helped her over to the fire with the meat slowly cooking over it.

  “My mom always stressed a balanced diet and when I would say look at me, mom. Do I look like I eat a balanced diet? She would say yes you do. You’re the size you were always meant to be, so eat those vegetable’s young lady.”

  “I think I would have liked your mom.”

  “You would have,” she gave him a bright smile. “Everybody that met her loved her. She simply loved life and enjoyed spreading that love around.”

  He smiled back at her, and together they checked the meat.

  “It’s just about done. I’m going to cook it a little longer than I normally would because it’s demon meat and I just want to be a little more cautious.”

  “Good thinking,” Maceo said before they all took a seat around the fire waiting for the meat to be done.

  They spent a long time talking about their different worlds and some of the challenges they faced in the past.

  “Maceo, have you noticed anything?” Zeno was looking around them.

  “It’s getting quiet.”

  “Too quiet, it doesn’t have that ‘it’s night now’ feel and everything’s just going to sleep.”