Sheriff Dragon’s Secret Baby
Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Series
Brittany White
Copyright © 2020 by Brittany White
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Brennan
2. Fallon
3. Brennan
4. Fallon
5. Brennan
6. Fallon
7. Brennan
8. Fallon
9. Brennan
10. Fallon
11. Brennan
12. Fallon
13. Brennan
14. Fallon
15. Brennan
16. Fallon
17. Brennan
18. Fallon
19. Brennan
20. Fallon
21. Brennan
22. Fallon
23. Brennan
24. Fallon
25. Brennan
Epilogue
Lawyer Dragon’s Surrogate (SNEAK PEEK)
Chapter 1
Also by Brittany White
About the Author
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Blurb
For a bachelor dragon shifter, one night of passion led to a secret baby whose identity has now been revealed.
* * *
The Irish Mate
My father was a human.
My mother was a Fae.
I was a part of two worlds, but I truly belonged to neither.
When my mother died, my Fae tribe shunned me.
I left Ireland to escape my sister’s cruel words.
I made a new home in Florida at a university, studying to be an engineer.
I pretended to be human, and everything was easy.
Until I met a gorgeous sheriff who was in town for only one week.
We shared one passionate night.
From that night, our child was born.
But my child is not human, and that handsome sheriff is more than a man.
He’s a dragon shifter from a close-knit clan.
Terrified that he’ll want to raise my child, I keep the baby to myself. I care for him alone.
Five years later, my sexy sheriff shows up again, but this time, he knows my secret.
The little boy with me is his son.
* * *
The Irish Sheriff
Over a decade ago, my home and my family were stolen from me by a group of evil witches.
When my brothers chose to make our new home in Texas, I came to love the land.
In the small town of Cedar Lake, I work as the sheriff.
My brothers are all married with children.
But I’ve never wanted a mate. I love my bachelor’s life.
During a work conference in Florida, I feel the unexpected presence of a shifter.
I track him down.
I’m in for a shock—this isn’t a random dragon who escaped to the States.
This young shifter is my son.
Five years ago, I shared one passionate night with his beautiful mother.
She’s captivating and ethereal, unlike anyone I’ve ever met.
Terrified that I’ll take our child back to my family, she tries to run.
But there is nowhere she can run—I will always find my hatchling.
I want to be a father to my child.
But I’m also falling for his mother.
She wants to escape, but my dragon wants her as my mate.
* * *
Can an Irish dragon shifter forgive the mother of his child for concealing the truth about her identity and their son’s existence?
* * *
***
1
Brennan
Brennan Sullivan stood on the edge of his brother’s diving board. His nephew, Declan, always watched Brennan dive into their gleaming pool and gave him a score. If the dive wasn’t good, eight-year-old Declan heckled him and tried to outdo his uncle with a dive of his own.
But today, Brennan had something more pressing to talk to his family about. “Who wants to go to the beach?” he yelled to his family.
They were a boisterous group, made up of Brennan’s three brothers, their wives, and their children. Brennan was the only one of them who hadn’t paired up with a mate, and that was just fine by him. His brothers were thriving as mates and fathers, but he was happy being single. He liked human women, and they liked him back. He made no secret of that. He wouldn’t mind courting a dragon shifter female, either, but so far, the only one he knew of these days mated with his brother Liam.
Brennan was in no rush.
The summer was drawing to a close in Cedar Lake, Texas, and Brennan had been working a lot of hours as the town’s elected sheriff. He’d just found out about a national sheriff’s conference in Rosemary Beach, Florida. He’d attended the conference several years ago, and he was looking forward to going again.
This time he wanted to take his family with him. Technically, none of them were related to him by blood, but they might as well have been. He and his brothers, Kellan, Quinn, and Liam, had fled Ireland over fifteen years ago to escape a coven of brutal witches. The witches had attacked their clan and killed most of their kind in one horrific day.
Afterward, the four brothers settled in Texas, and it had been their home ever since. He and his brothers were inseparable, and now their family had expanded to include Clara, who was Kellan’s wife, and their children, Declan and his younger sister Shannon. It also included Juliana, who was Quinn’s wife and Isleen’s mother. Both Clara and Juliana were humans.
After watching both of his brothers find their mates, thoughts of finding a family of his own had consumed Brennan’s brother Liam. He’d been determined to find a shifter female, and with the help of some wily vampires in New York, he’d succeeded. After a wild courtship, he and Brynne were mated now and had a baby of their own—little Finn.
So to Brennan, his family felt complete. There were eleven of them, and they were damned lucky to all still be here. Over the last several years, they’d had more than a few close calls.
They often took a break to relax at the local lake, where they could shift and swim under the water. When they had more free time, they took one of Kellan’s private jets out to a remote island that had once been an active volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Those were activities for dragon shifters, not humans. And yes, they all fucking needed those days. Shifting and being able to soar off a cliff was a relief. It was what they were meant to be doing, day in and day out, not stuck on a flat, dusty road in Texas. As much as Brennan had grown to love Texas and consider it his home, the Cliffs of Moher on the western coast of Ireland were still home and always would be.
But they’d chosen a human life, and they needed to blend in. Brennan’s nephew Declan went to school with human children. He was lucky to have his cousins around him all the time, but he was the oldest. He needed to be able to go back to school and say, “Hey, I went to the beach for vacation.” He could never tell the truth of his shifter trips, so it was up to them to give him some experiences that he could use when relating to his classmates.
Brennan had first gone to Declan’s father to pitch the idea of the trip. Kellan was a billionaire, and he was a little more laid back than Quinn and Liam. Brennan showed up in his office during the middle of the workday. Even as laid-back a
s Kellan was, Brennan didn’t want Kellan to overthink it.
“I think we need to take the kids to Florida,” Brennan had told him.
“Florida? What brought that on?” Kellan asked.
“I have another work conference there.”
“Didn’t you just have a work conference there?”
“No, that was five years ago. Last year, I went to San Diego. Listen, he’s not my kid, but Declan could use a real family vacation. Think of all the stuff we could do. Kayaking, parasailing, dolphin cruises.”
Kellan chuckled. “If a dolphin smells us coming, it’s going to swim the fuck away from us.”
Brennan laughed too. “That is a good point, brother. But there’s plenty of other stuff we could do, like go-karts, mini-golf, and all you can eat ice cream shops.”
“I’m in. We can take the jet, but I’m going to let you break it to the rest of them.”
Brennan sighed. “You know how they are. Liam will be worried that the kids will get excited and blow flames all over the putt-putt course. And Quinn wants to use all of his spare time now to go out to the island.”
“You’re right. But you have a good point—even shifter hatchlings like playing in the sand and jumping in the waves. You’re also right about socializing with the other kids at school. They need an experience that compares to a normal human experience.”
“Plus, playing on the Florida beaches is just fun,” Brennan added.
Kellan got up from behind his desk and gripped Brennan in a headlock. “You’re such an overgrown kid.”
“I’m not going to deny that,” he said, and the two of them spent the next ten minutes wrestling before Kellan’s secretary knocked on the door.
Now, here they were two nights later in Kellan’s glorious backyard that had both a giant swimming pool and a lazy river, and Brennan had the attention of all six adults. Just as Brennan had expected, Quinn’s eyebrows knitted together. “How are we supposed to shift in Florida?”
“We’re not. We’re not going there to shift. We’re going there to play in the sand and swim in the ocean. As humans.”
Now it was Liam’s turn to frown. “Why would we want to do that? Thanks to Kellan, we have access to a jet, and we can go anywhere in the world that we want. Why Florida? It doesn’t seem safe.”
Brennan refrained from rolling his eyes. They were all so predictable. “Well, two of us here are human.” He smiled at Clara and Juliana. “They put up with us and our quirks all the time. Maybe they’d like a vacation geared more toward them. Have you asked your mates if they get tired of sitting on the top of an old volcano that’s now a cliff?”
Brennan rubbed his hands together with glee as both Kellan and Quinn looked properly chastised.
Now Brynne spoke up. She was the newest mate and the only dragon shifter female, and she was the most adventurous of them, besides Brennan himself. “I wouldn’t mind trying the beach either. I still love skiing, even though I get to shift now. Surfing might be the same.”
Brennan wasn’t sure the waves were big enough to surf at Rosemary Beach, but he wasn’t going to point that out. “True. And we don’t have to worry about the kids drowning. Or getting eaten by sharks. It’s a win-win situation.” Even baby shifters could swim, and if they did sink, they could hold their breath easily.
Brennan looked at Declan and spoke directly to him. He was probably a shitty uncle to bring this up without making sure it was okay with Clara first, but Kellan was her mate. If Kellan had been too worried, he could have warned her. Declan was the only kid old enough to have an opinion, and his dad was on board.
“Nothing compares to the ocean in Ireland,” Brennan said. “It’s the best. Our island is pretty great, too, but the beaches in Florida are really different. The sand is soft and white like powder, and the water is clear blue. It’s really shallow at the edge, so you can look down and see shells, stingrays, and jellyfish too.”
“Can I eat a shark?” Declan asked with great enthusiasm.
That kid had been pushing the limits from day one, just like his dad. “We can rent a boat and go out. But on the shore, human rules apply.” Brennan saw Quinn making a face and held up a hand. “Before you all object, just think about it.”
Brennan smiled to himself. Declan was excited, which meant the others would be too. Good. Brennan had been working his ass off lately. He loved Cedar Lake, but this summer, there had been a heavy heat wave that spurred a lot of shoplifting, vandalism, and public intoxication. He was fortunate that he didn’t deal with the more serious crimes found in larger cities, but he’d spent several nights escorting violently ill drunk people home during July.
Now, as summer was wrapping up, he was ready for a break.
2
Fallon
Fallon Ryan sprayed the countertop down and started scrubbing. Her client today had the biggest kitchen island she’d ever seen in her life.
On the other side of the room, Rowan, her four-year-old son, played with a set of toy dinosaurs. He was roaring and making other dinosaur noises as he pushed the toys around, something that always made Fallon smile. Thankfully, none of the homeowners were home that day. Having Rowan with her while she worked was nerve-wracking. He was a great kid—if talkative, imaginative, and rambunctious—but he was not human.
Rowan was part dragon shifter. His father was a shifter who had passed through town five years ago. She’d learned his first name was Brennan, but she’d never gotten his last name from him. Fallon could have tried to find him, even without the name. He’d had pale skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. He’d also had a faded Irish accent, just like hers.
“You’re Irish,” she’d said to him on the night they met at a bar on the beach.
“I am,” he’d said.
For the rest of the night, he let the lilting cadence of their shared heritage spill over into his speech. They’d grabbed a few neon glowing necklaces and a bucket of beer, and they’d danced on the beach. They shared a few shots of Irish Car Bombs for a laugh at midnight, and then she’d followed him back to his hotel room.
The night with him had been better than any she’d ever shared with a human. Of course, he didn’t reveal his secret to her, but that was okay. She didn’t reveal hers either. It was clear that they understood each other on a level beyond what connection two humans would share. After that one night was over, she’d walked away, and so had he. Neither of them wanted a long-distance entanglement, and she sure didn’t want to be involved with a dragon shifter.
She was doing her best to live a human life, leaving the past behind. She’d even enrolled in college and had a part-time job at a bakery. If Brennan stuck around, maintaining that life would be impossible.
They said goodbye, and he left, and she didn’t think about him again until one month later, when she threw up all over her environmental engineering homework. It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was pregnant and that she was going to have a baby dragon shifter.
She’d known a few dragon shifters in the life she’d left behind, but she didn’t remember what they were like as hatchlings. After the baby was born, she tried to keep going to college, but soon it was clear that she would have to quit. Her chemical engineering degree required a rigorous workload, and she couldn’t leave him alone with anyone. Sometimes, his eyes glowed yellow, and by the time he was one year old, he was strong enough to overpower a small adult female.
She could have gone back home to Ireland and asked her family for help, but she doubted that they’d agree, and even if they did, they’d be hateful and cruel. She would never subject her son to the kind of treatment she’d endured.
When Rowan was eighteen months old, she worked up the nerve to call her sister, just to see if maybe her family had softened toward her. It hadn’t gone well. Well, it had gone okay at first. Then, once Fallon confessed that she had a beautiful baby boy, her sister had sneered. Then her sister berated her for sleeping with a dragon shifter, and Fallon hung up the phone.
<
br /> How dare she judge me, Fallon had thought. My kid is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I will never fucking speak to her again.
Yes, Rowan was a little dragon shifter hatchling. Rowan was also the light of her life. If her family didn’t want to get to know him, that was their loss.
So Fallon made a life for herself and her son in Florida. She took jobs where she could take him with her. She worked in bakeries and preschools and daycares, and she cleaned houses. She never took a job where she had to depend on someone else to watch him.
It was clear to everyone who met Rowan that he was a healthy and robust little boy, one who’d be well-suited to a rigorous preschool program. When people asked her why she didn’t leave him at a childcare center, she claimed that she was into attachment parenting. She did think highly of the philosophy, but her decision was made out of necessity and not by choice.
She did take him on playdates, but they were always highly supervised. The other moms laughed at her, but they didn’t know any better. The truth was that Rowan could snap their kids’ arms with very little effort, even by accident. He could snap all the mothers’ arms, too, in the blink of an eye.
She tried teaching him self control, and it worked to an extent. But she wasn’t a shifter. Her ways were vastly different. Her kind didn’t rely on brute strength. In those moments of despair, she thought of searching for Brennan. Eventually, she would have to. Rowan would need other shifters. She didn’t want him to grow up, not understanding who he was.
Sheriff Dragon's Secret Baby (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 4) Page 1