Soldier Dragon’s Second Chance
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. Carolina
2. Davi
3. Carolina
4. Davi
5. Carolina
6. Davi
7. Carolina
8. Davi
9. Carolina
10. Davi
11. Carolina
12. Davi
13. Carolina
14. Davi
15. Carolina
16. Davi
17. Carolina
18. Davi
19. Carolina
Epilogue
Professor Dragon’s Virgin (SNEAK PEEK)
Chapter 1
Also by Brittany White
About the Author
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1
Carolina
“Hey sweetheart, gimme another vodka tonic,” the customer slurred.
Carolina Ramires kept her face carefully blank as the man pawed at her backside and tried to grab her around the waist. He might be a customer, but in her bar, the Red Canyon, the customer was not always right. Especially not if he was going to act like a brainless jerk.
This disgusting excuse for a human man was no threat to her, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed his unwelcome touch. Making sure no one was watching, she wrapped her slender fingers around his thick wrist.
He wasn’t a regular. They all knew not to mess with her.
She bent forward to whisper in his ear. “If you ever touch me, or any other woman without permission again, I’ll dump your body in the desert, right next to a coyote den. A hungry coyote den.”
The guy blinked at her and held his free hand up. Shock was written all over his face. “Sorry lady.”
She smiled at him, baring her teeth. She shot the guy one more glare, and stepped away just as her boyfriend came stomping into the bar.
The Red Canyon Bar was twenty minutes outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. Carolina owned it, but her boyfriend liked to pretend it was his. She allowed him this small victory when the members of their motorcycle club were around. The motorcycle club was something that did belong to him—he’d founded the Red Canyon Motorcycle Club over ten years ago.
She’d named her bar after it, as a nod to the new friends who’d accepted her without asking any questions about who she was, or where she’d come from. Those were questions she’d never be able to answer.
She never would have chosen this life if her real life hadn’t been annihilated. But the bike riders had become her surrogate family. They could never replace what she’d lost, but she cared about her boyfriend, and she was fond of most of the other members.
They were up to a hundred members now, and still going strong. The riders all lived near each other on a dusty settlement a mile away from the bar. On Sundays, she closed to the public, and they used it as their clubhouse. Most of the time, the members didn’t wait for Sunday. They could usually be found hanging around the bar when they were off work.
For the most part, Carolina didn’t resent her new life. But today, she’d had an odd feeling all day. She peeked out the window. Outside the bar, the earth stretched out, an endless yellow horizon. In the distance, she could see the line of their houses.
The man who’d tried to grope her had finally paid his bill and called a taxi, thank God. She didn’t want to have to break his arm. Patrons didn’t usually mess with her because she was the owner and her boyfriend was the president of the Red Canyon Motorcycle Club. It was enough to earn her a bit of respect in these parts.
If only they knew the truth.
She didn’t need a boyfriend to protect her. She didn’t need the motorcycle club to keep her safe either, at least not from humans.
She needed them for an entirely different reason—to stay hidden from creatures they didn’t even know existed.
She wasn’t from Salinas, California. She hadn’t grown up among the almond farms there, like she’d claimed. Her name wasn’t Carrie Smith, like her boyfriend thought. And she wasn’t an American.
Hell, she wasn’t even human.
Sometimes when she lay awake at night, she wondered why she hadn't chosen a different life when she’d escaped to America. She’d only been twenty years old at the time. She could have taken her life in any direction. She could have been a college student in Florida, a factory worker in Pennsylvania, or trained to be a restaurant chef in New York. But when she’d passed through Vegas, the anonymity had seemed alluring.
In Nevada, she could disappear from her enemy. She could fade away, never to be found by a wizard or a Fae again.
The feeling was new to her. She’d never been anonymous back home; everyone in her clan had known her from birth. And she knew them too. And when they went into the small town where they went for supplies, she knew the humans as well.
So five years ago, full of fresh grief, among the members of the Red Canyon Motorcycle Club, she had found a place where no one asked questions. No one cared about her history. They all had their own secrets, and for the first time since she’d fled Portugal, she thought she might survive.
She wouldn’t be happy. But she might have a life.
Today, her boyfriend Jim greeted each of the regulars in the bar. Most of them were members of the club, and they were scheduled for a big ride the following day. “Hey baby,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.
She hid her grimace. He smelled like beer and dirt.
“Ready for our ride tomorrow?” He asked, referring to the ride they were taking to tiny Kingston, Utah, where they were planning to visit another motorcycle club.
“I’m always ready,” she said. She looked forward to their long rides. In this hollow new life, the only time she ever felt alive was when she was on her bike.
2
Davi
As he sat at the wedding of his new friends, Niall and Nora, Davi Santos knew this was exactly what he wanted. He wanted a mate, and he wanted to be part of a dragon shifter clan again.
For so long, he’d been going through the motions. After five years with no memories, he’d given up on ever getting them back.
And then one day, just five months ago, these two—Niall, who was a dragon shifter, and Nora, who was a witch—had shown up while he was on duty at the Skopje train station in Macedonia.
Davi had been living for five years, just existing. He’d done his duty as a military officer.
He would owe them forever. They had been the reason he was able to recover some of his memories.
Nora knew something had happened to cause his amnesia. And because it was hard to physically hurt a shifter, she suspected it had been magic, possibly a curse. She had researched his condition, and come up with a series of spells and other methods to help clear his mind. They had worked—to an extent. But they had not been a miracle cure.
He now got flashes of his past life. He knew that his clan had been attacked, but he couldn’t see the details. And after working with Nora, he knew he’d had a very close friend when he was growing up. He couldn’t see the shifter’s face though, or remember her name. He could sense that she was female, but he wasn’t sure if she was a relative or a friend.
He was determined to find out. For five years, he’d had nothing. And he knew he’d once had a life on the coast of Portugal. If the flashes
were correct, he’d had friends, family, and a clan.
Now, he was on the road to rebuilding his life. It wasn’t the same, but it was good, and he was grateful for it.
As he sat there in the scenic castle the couple had chosen for their wedding, notes from Celtic music floated through the air.
He smiled as he watched his new friends say their vows.
It felt good to be around shifters again. There were seven dragon shifters at the wedding, including Davi. One was Niall, the groom, who was Irish. The others were a group of shifters from Cedar Lake, Texas. They had once been a part of the same Irish clan Niall was from, but after witches attacked them more than fifteen years ago at the home on the Cliffs of Moher, they’d lost the rest of their clan, and had to scatter across the globe to escape.
But they had all recovered from their upheaval, and moved forward with their lives.
Today was evidence of that. He was grateful to have met them. They’d all been through so much, but each of them had welcomed him. All of them had offered him a place in their clans. He was honored, but not ready to accept. Soon, he was going to embark on a mission—to find out the truth about his previous life. Thanks to Nora, he at least knew he should start on the coast of Portugal.
After the wedding ceremony, they all gathered in the reception hall. Brynne, the only female dragon shifter in the group, came over to him. Brynne had grown up in that close-knit clan from the Cliffs of Moher, but when it was destroyed, she had been rescued by vampires. As a result of her isolation from shifters, she had always felt alone. She’d vowed to spend her free time scouring the earth, looking for dragon shifters who needed a clan. She was determined to not let any of them feel as abandoned as she had.
She put her hand on Davi’s shoulder. “I can feel your turmoil,” she said.
“I can block it,” he said. He hadn’t meant to project his feelings. He wasn’t used to being around others like him. And here at this wedding, besides the dragon shifters, there was also one Fae, and one witch, who were both sensitive to moods.
“Don’t block it. Embrace it,” she said. “It might make others uncomfortable for a brief moment, but it will help you reclaim your memories.” She placed her hand over his. “I’ve found that it’s helpful to be honest about our feelings.”
“Honest?”
“Well. For example.” She tilted her head in and dropped her voice. “I’m still really fucking pissed off that the vampires that raised me lied to me. They told me I was the only dragon shifter left in the entire world, and they knew they were full of shit, every time they said it.”
He followed her to the banquet tables piled high with food. “And have you forgiven them?”
“Sort of. They were decent guardians, but they don’t really mind if I’m angry.” She lifted one shoulder. “It’s just not the way their minds work.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“Eh. I’m working on it. So for you, you might be really angry that you don’t have your memories, even though you don’t have a clue whom to blame. And that’s okay.” She picked up a plate, hopping sideways as two of the young shifters came whizzing by. The Texas clan had quite the brood of hatchlings now, and they were always full of energy.
“That is pretty wise advice.”
She laughed. “I don’t know about wise. And I don’t know what it’s like to have twenty years of memories vanish from my head. But I do know what it’s like to feel alone, and what it’s like to feel like you’ve been betrayed by the universe.”
He nodded. He’d gone through years of anger. Rage. Fury. But he had nowhere to direct it, no one to blame. So he’d had to start coping. His method of coping had been to make his mind go blank, and to become empty inside, existing only to fulfill his duty to the Macedonian military.
But all of that had changed when he met Niall and Nora. “I’m finally ready to start searching for the truth. I am going to look for any survivors from my clan,” Davi said.
“That’s great news,” Brynne said. She smiled over at her own husband, Liam, who was holding Finn, their young son.
Davi took a moment to wave at Finn, who gave him a big toothy grin in return. “I don’t know where to begin.”
Brynne grabbed a glass of champagne. It didn’t make them drunk, but they all enjoyed the taste. “I came over here to tell you this. You know I’ve been all over the world looking for shifters?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I felt one in Vegas recently. I couldn’t tell if it was a male or a female. I only felt it for a brief time, as if he or she was passing through,” she said. “But the feeling was strong. I know there’s something there. It’s a good starting place.”
“Las Vegas, Nevada? I thought I should start in Portugal.”
“I can’t tell you what to do. But I’ve been all over the cliffs of Portugal. I’ve felt nothing.”
“Las Vegas,” he murmured. “You felt a shifter’s presence?”
“Yes. If you want to go, Kellan has a jet set aside for this. And he has an account with the Bellagio Hotel for work, so you’ll always have a room.” She shook her head. “Before you argue about the money, this is for him too. He lost his clan when he was seventeen, and for better or worse, he remembers every second of it. It’s always with him. He looks pretty chilled out, but it haunts him. So he’s been pretty vocal about wanting to help.”
“Alright. I can accept that.”
“Do you need any money? We’re all in this together. I know humans get prickly about money, but our clan wasn’t. We all shared what we had.”
He didn’t know what his clan had been like in that regard. That memory had not come to mind. “No. At this point I have five years of savings. So I have plenty of money for incidentals.”
Brynne leaned forward and hugged him. “Please keep in touch. We’re all rooting for you.” When she pulled back, her eyes were misty with unshed tears.
He took one of her hands into his. “I will. Your help has been invaluable.”
He would begin his journey soon. For now, he was going to enjoy his new friends and celebrate their matrimony.
3
Carolina
While Jim slept soundly in their bed, Carolina hit the road. On her bike, she rode all the way back into Vegas.
This was her routine, most nights. Once Jim was asleep, she’d leave, ride through the desert under the night sky, and go back into the city.
It was midnight, and the city was still going strong. Neon lights flashed, gamblers ambled in and out of casinos, and drunk partiers staggered down the sidewalk. For thirty minutes, she rode her bike up and down the strip, enjoying the rumble of the engine’s motor.
Then she heard a scream—a cry for help. Outside the Venetian Hotel, she saw a man holding another man at gunpoint. She stopped to listen as the man threatened to kill his victim. This was no robbery. As she listened more closely, she learned that the two men worked together as Blackjack dealers in a casino, and the man with the gun was blackmailing his prey.
As she eavesdropped, it became clear that the victim was much younger than the man who was blackmailing him. The victim was probably around her age, twenty-five, and the man holding him hostage was twice that. To add to her ire, the victim had done nothing wrong. In fact, he had caught the older man cheating, and he was going to report him.
The older man had the barrel of the gun pointed right at the younger man's temple. “You think you're doing the right thing? These casino owners are richer than God,” he snarled.
The younger man’s voice trembled. “That may be true, but if there are missing chips and missing money, or if the stats don't add up for the day, then all of us get blamed. We could all get fired. Or arrested.”
“You think I give a fuck about that?”
Scum, Carolina’s dragon said. Make him pay. Her dragon was happiest when she was hunting in the streets, looking for vermin who needed to learn a lesson or two.
She agreed, and she would not allow this older man to terrorize
the younger.
Las Vegas might not be her home, but she would do her best to keep the streets clean and safe. Without making a sound, Carolina crept up behind the man. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder. “If I were you, I’d walk away.”
The man sized her up, and when he saw her, he sneered. He spat at her, but she was able to dodge it.
“Shut up, bitch,” he said over his shoulder.
“Excuse you. That’s no way to talk to anyone.” She twisted his arm behind his back, careful to make it seem like she was just skilled in martial arts, and not that she was quite a bit stronger than him.
The glow of the streetlamp illuminated his stupid, smug face. He wouldn’t be smug for too long.
She had been doing this for two years now. Desperate to find a purpose beyond taking care of the bar and the members of the motorcycle club, she had started intervening in human problems. She was one of them now, so she might as well use her strength for good. Her hearing was much better than human hearing. Her sight was better than human sight. There was no reason for her not to help out. She kept herself hidden. She had no costume, no domino mask, and there were no stories of a caped vigilante.
She just got tired of watching the humans harm each other. Her dragon shifter clan had been loyal to each other. They had never turned on each other, especially not over petty disagreements. She missed that kind of connection.
Of course, there had been one who had turned on her. A Fae. But that memory was best left alone. Forever.
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