Releasing the Dragon (Brides of the Kindred)

by Evangeline Anderson

  “Sounds like a banana split,” Sophie giggled and Liv laughed too.

  “Well, we know where the banana comes in,” she said and winked.

  “Laugh all you want—it’s not funny when your poor guys are dehydrated from giving you so much of what you need,” Kat said sternly. “We all know Kindred don’t need a recovery period during sex and they can come as often as they want but it’s been really hard on Deep and Lock. They’re practically living on protein shakes lately.”

  “And so are you!” Liv exclaimed. “Think of it Kat—you are!”

  She and Sophie began laughing again and Annie joined it. Finally Kat cracked a smile herself.

  “I’ve dropped ten pounds, you know,” she remarked. “It’s better than Atkins and the Keto diet put together.”

  This set them all off again and Annie laughed until tears came to her eyes. But finally, they sobered up.

  “It’s okay for us mated girls, you know,” Liv remarked. “But it’s the unmated girls I feel sorry for. It must have been so embarrassing for them, having to ask males they weren’t mated to, to help them.”

  “There are going to be a lot of uncomfortable looks around the family dinner table when they bring those guys to meet their parents and Mom and Dad ask, ‘So, how did you two meet?’” Kat remarked.

  “And what will they tell their kids?” Sophie shook her head. “I know nothing can happen to us that the Goddess doesn’t will, but sometimes it’s hard to understand why she lets certain things happen.”

  “She loves us though,” Liv said reassuringly. “And she can see things we can’t. This will all work out according to her will—you’ll see.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right.” Kat sighed and put down her knitting needles. “Okay, who’s tried of knitting and wants cupcakes? Lauren brought some fresh ones this morning.”

  “Lauren is our cousin—she’s also a genius baker,” Liv explained to Annie. “In fact, she was supposed to be here with us for girl’s day but unfortunately, she had a needing spell and had to run off to find her hubby.”

  “Xairn has probably got her chained to the bed even as we speak,” Kat remarked conversationally. “Oh, he’s Scourge so they’re into BDSM,” she explained to the rather shocked Annie. “But at least she brought us cupcakes first. So who wants one?”

  “I do—oh!” Sophie put a hand to the side of her head. “Sylvan just bespoke me. He said there’s a group of scientists going on an expedition to find an antidote. A special team of three.”

  “Really?” Liv frowned. “Who are they? Maybe I’ve seen them at the med center.”

  “Hang on…” Sophie concentrated for a moment, clearly bespeaking her husband, and then answered. “There’s Dr. Bron, who’s a Beast Kindred microbiologist, Dr. Sorin, a Blood Kindred virologist, and Dr. Kayla Smith, a xenobiologist and chemist.”

  “Oh, I know Kayla—she’s awesome!” Liv exclaimed. “And so smart! She’s got a genius-level IQ but she’s not one of those super-smart people you can’t relate to. She’s still down to Earth, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, it’s good to know Sylvan is putting our smartest people on it,” Kat remarked. “So which of the other two scientists is she mated to? Or is she married to someone else altogether?”

  “Oh, you know what…she’s single.” Liv put a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening. “I wonder which of them she was with when the needing started?”

  “Hang on…” Sophie concentrated, bespeaking Sylvan again, and her green eyes went wide. “Oh no! She was with…both of them.”

  “What?” A Blood Kindred and a Beast Kindred?” Kat demanded. “Those two will rip her in two like two dogs fighting over a bone! Everybody knows how territorial Beast Kindred and Blood Kindred are.”

  “That’s true—it’s not like they could share her like Twin Kindred could,” Sophie said doubtfully.

  “Oh, poor Kayla!” Liv looked distressed. “I wonder if I should go see her and say anything?”

  “According to Sylvan, she’s going to go with Dr. Bron and Dr. Sorin to try and find the antidote as soon as possible,” Sophie remarked. “So I’m guessing the situation will work itself out.”

  “It’ll have to,” Kat said grimly. “She’s going to have to pick one of them—and odds are, the other one will end up dead.”

  “That’s terrible!” Annie exclaimed. She had been listening with wide eyes but she couldn’t hold back anymore. “What is she going to do?”

  “We don’t know, hon.” Liv patted her hand gently. “All we can do is pray for her and put her in the hands of the Goddess—it’s the safest place to be.”

  Annie hoped her friend was right. But even though she didn’t know Kayla, she couldn’t help being worried about the poor girl who was caught between two huge Kindred warriors with no way out.

  The End?

  Of course not!

  There is always more Kindred to come. I confess, I had some serious writer’s block in the middle of this book—mostly due to trouble with my son’s school. (Don’t you hate when RL gets in the way of a good story?) But I’m really pleased with how it ended because it presents so many options for new Kindred Tales, which is really becoming its own series, along with my main Brides of the Kindred line. I want to explore what happens to Kayla and Bron and Sorin, and I want to tell Lizabeth and Lone’s story as well. And then there is the dastardly Zar’ren who got the Mother Ship into this mess in the first place. What is his past and why does he hate the Kindred so much? What will he do next—something tells me we may find out at sometime in the future. And of course, I still want to tell Malik the Volt Kindred’s story in Brides of the Kindred 23. So many stories for my muse to tell and never enough time to write, it seems like! If you’d like to tell me which ones you’d like to hear next, come find me on FaceBook or drop me a line at my website www.evangelineanderson.com. I love to hear from readers!

  Hugs and Happy Reading to you All!

  Evangeline September 9, 2018

  ***If you have enjoyed Releasing the Dragon, please consider leaving a review or a rating HERE. Good reviews are like gold for an author--they let other readers know it's okay to take a chance on a new series. Plus, they give me the Warm Fuzzies. Thanks for being such an awesome reader! : ) Evangeline

  Now here's a sneak peek at the next Kindred Tales Novel--Sharing a Mate, coming November 2018

  Chapter One

  Doctor Kayla Smith wished she was dead.

  She was a renowned xenobiologist and chemist with several prestigious degrees to her name. She had a bright future, living and working on the Mother Ship, studying alien samples from the other planets the Kindred visited. As a member of an elite, three-person team, she was breaking all kinds of scientific boundaries and making amazing new discoveries every day. In short, she had everything she could want in her personal and professional life.

  And right now, she wanted to die.

  “Oh God, how could I let myself do that? How? How?” she whispered, pulling her knees up to her chest as hot water dripped down her nose. She was sitting in the shower stall in her suite in the Mother Ship, taking what had to be her twentieth shower in two days. She wished she had a bathing pool in her suite but those were only for mated couples and she most definitely was not mated.

  She didn’t want to be mated, either, Kayla told herself. She wanted to stay single and be married to her work. Unlike a lot of single women who came up to the Mother Ship from Earth, she hadn’t come with the intention of finding a husband or earning her “Mrs. degree” as her Auntie Feenie jokingly put it.

  “I’m a respected scientist,” Kayla whispered to herself, pushing one of her long black box braids behind her ear. Her hand was trembling as she did so—she hadn’t eaten in days. Not since…the incident. “Or I was a respected scientist, anyway.”

  But it wasn’t the respect of the wider scientific community she was worried about losing—it was the respect of the other two members of her team. The two Kindred warriors she
worked with.

  Bron was a huge, muscular Beast Kindred with shaggy black hair and a black mustache and goatee he wore braided and bound with a silver band—a symbol of the wild tribe he had come from on his home planet of Rageron. He had the molten gold eyes of his kind and a deep, growling voice to match. What Kayla liked most about him was his loud, funny sense of humor and his tendency to say “fuck” a lot or curse in his native dialect when he got upset. He was also one of the finest microbiologists she had ever met.

  Then there was Sorin, an award-winning virologist and the other member of their team. He was a Blood Kindred with sleek, silver-blonde hair and pale blue eyes that Kayla sometimes felt could see directly into her soul. She loved Sorin’s quiet, quick wit and his way of whispering sly comments to her and Bron when they were out in public that cracked them both up. He had been raised on Tranq Prime, the Blood Kindred home world, in what he dryly described as a “repressed family,” though he wouldn’t say much more about his past.

  The two of them—Sorin and Bron—were best friends and had been long before Kayla had come along. But the moment she had walked into the Mother Ship’s science department Christmas party the year before, the three of them had just “clicked.” The two big males had fit her into their life and it wasn’t even a month before the three of them were working on a group project and sharing a private lab, just big enough for three.

  That had been almost a year ago and since then, Kayla had grown closer to both Kindred. They ate meals together, went out to see movies and plays together, and of course, the weekly Wednesday night poker games at Bron’s suite were a must. They took trips to other alien worlds to collect specimens to study. Kayla had even taken the two of them back to Earth with her to give them a taste of Earth culture—and a little of her Auntie Feenie’s soul food.

  “Girl, when are you going to pick one of those fine men and get me some great-grandbabies?” her aunt had demanded, after pulling her aside to talk in the kitchen. Since Kayla’s grandmother had passed on, Auntie Feenie—who was actually Kayla’s great aunt—had stepped in to take her place.

  Kayla had shaken her head and laughed.

  “Never, Auntie Feenie. These two are a matched set—I can’t break them up. Besides, we’re all just good friends and colleagues.”

  “You might say that, Kay-kay,” but I see the way their eyes follow you around the room.” Auntie Feenie had made a two-fingered gesture towards her own eyes and nodded solemnly. “You might just be thinking of them as friends but they’re thinking a whole lot more about you than that. You better believe it.”

  Kayla had felt her cheeks get warm. It was true that she had sometimes sensed her guys, as she thought of them, were watching her in a shall-we-say less than professional way. But she also knew that neither Sorin nor Bron would ever act on any kind of attraction they might have towards her.

  Because if she started sleeping with one of them, the other would be excluded. Their perfect trio would become a duo and a single—unacceptable to any of them—especially Kayla. She respected their friendship too much to be their Yoko. But that didn’t stop her from enjoying her time with her guys.

  “I see the way the three of you are around each other,” one of her friends aboard the Mother Ship had said. “You’re always fooling around and hugging and massaging each other—if those two were Twin Kindred, you’d all be mated by now.”

  But they weren’t Twin Kindred, Kayla thought sadly. And everyone knew that Blood Kindred and most especially Beast Kindred didn’t share mates with anyone. Besides, Bron was as quick to pull Sorin into one of his crushing hugs as he was to hug Kayla and Sorin was just as willing to massage the kinks out of Bron’s thick neck and broad shoulders as he was to work his long-fingered magic on Kayla when she had a crick in her neck.

  So the attraction between them remained unspoken and anything other than friendly physical affection—bear hugs from Bron or neck rubs from Sorin—stayed strictly in the realm of her often erotic dreams.

  Until the incident.

  “Don’t think of it,” Kayla ordered herself, pushing another long, black braid out of her face. She was shivering now, even though the water pouring down on her was still hot. Shivering and sick with shame and regret over what she’d done. But it had seemed like she couldn’t help it. At the time, it had seemed like she would die if she didn’t do it…

  “Don’t think about it,” she said again…but then she went and did it anyway. She couldn’t help it.

  ***Want more? Of course you do! Be sure to look for Sharing a Mate in November 2018 and check out this Pinterest Page for pictures that inspired me while writing the two heroes, Bron and Sorin.

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  Brides of the Kindred series (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Claimed (Also available in Audio)

  Hunted (Also available in Audio)

  Sought (Also Available in Audio)

  Found (Also Available in Audio )

  Revealed (Also Available in Audio)

  Pursued (Also Available in Audio)

  Exiled (Also Available in Audio)

  Shadowed (Also Available in Audio)

  Chained (Also Available in Audio)

  Divided (Coming soon to Audio)

  Devoured

  Enhanced

  Cursed

  Enslaved

  Targeted

  Forgotten

  Switched

  Uncharted

  Unbound

  Surrendered

  Vanished

  Imprisoned

  Kindred Tales series (side stories in the Brides of the Kindred which are outside the main story arc. These can be read as STAND ALONE novels.)

  Mastering the Mistress

  Bonding with the Beast (Also available in Audio)

  Seeing with the Heart

  Freeing the Prisoner

  Healing the Broken (a Kindred Christmas novel)

  Taming the Giant

  Bridging the Distance

  Loving a Stranger

  Finding the Jewel

  Bonded by Accident

  Releasing the Dragon

  Sharing a Mate

  Born to Darkness series (Paranormal/Action-Adventure/Romance)

  Crimson Debt (Also available in Audio)

  Scarlet Heat (Also available in Audio)

  Ruby Shadows (Also available in Audio)

  Cardinal Sins (Coming Soon)

  Dessert (short novella following Scarlet Heat) (Also in Audio)

  Alien Mate Index series (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Abducted (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Protected (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Descended (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Severed (Also available in Print and Audio )

  The Cougarville Series

  (Paranormal/Action-Adventure/Romance/)

  (Older woman/Younger Man)

  Buck Naked (Also available in Audio)

  Cougar Bait (Also available in Audio)

  Stone Cold Fox (Also available in Audio)

  Big Bad Wolf (coming soon)

  The Institute series (Daddy-Dom/Age Play Romance)

  The Institute: Daddy Issues(Also available in Audio)

  The Institute: Mishka's Spanking

  The CyBRG Files with Mina Carter

  (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Unit 77: Broken

  Unit 78: Bred

  The Swann Sisters Chronicles

  (Contemporary Fairy/Funny/ Fantasy/Romance)

  Wishful Thinking (Also available in Audio)

  Be Careful What You Wish For (Also available in Audio)

  Compendiums and Box Sets

  Brides of the Kindred Volume One

  Contains Claimed, Hunted, Sought and Found

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Two

  Contains Revealed, Pursued, and Exiled

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Three

  Contains Shadowed, Chained
, and Divided

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Four

  Contains Devoured, Enhanced, and Cursed

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Five

  Contains Enslaved, Targeted, and Forgotten

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Six

  Contains Switched, Uncharted, and Unbound

  Born to Darkness Box Set

  Contains Crimson Debt, Scarlet Heat, and Ruby Shadows

  Stand Alone Novels

  (Sci-fi OR Paranormal Action-Adventure/Romance)

  Purity (Now available in Audio)

  Stress Relief

  The Last Man on Earth

  Anyone U Want

  Shadow Dreams

  Hunger Moon Rising

  Cougar Christmas

  Planet X (Also available in Audio)

  Deal with the Devil (Also available in Audio)

  The Sacrifice (Also available in Audio)

  Blood Kiss

  Take Two

  The Pleasure Palace

  Defiled

  Ceremony of Three

  The Last Man on Earth

  Blind Date with a Vampire

  Eyes Like a Wolf (Foster Brother romance)

  Str8te Boys (M/M romance)

  Naughty Tales (Short Reads to get you Hot and Bothered)

  Sin Eater

  Confessions of a Lingerie Model

  When Mr. Black Comes Home

  Speeding Ticket

  YA Novels

  The Academy(Now available in Audio)

  *1. All Kindred novels are now available in PRINT just follow the links below to find both e-book and print formats on Amazon.

  *2. Also, all Kindred and Kindred Tales novels are on their way to Audio, join my Audiobook Newsletter to be notified when they come out.

  *3. Please note--these are Amazon/Kindle links. If you have a Nook or other reading device, please check my website for links to all other formats

  *4. The books without links are exclusive to my own webstore--I can't put the links here or I'll get in trouble with the big A but if you go to my website http://evangelineanderson.com/you can find the webstore link where the exclusive books are kept. Just look for the logo! : )