My dragon mate, p.1
My Dragon Mate, page 1
My Dragon Mate
Broken Souls 3
Alisa Woods
Check out all of Alisa’s bestselling Paranormal Romance...
READING ORDER
Dot Com Wolves
* * *
Claiming Mia (Book 1)
Saving Arianna (Book 2)
A Christmas Wish (Book 3)
Riverwise Private Security
* * *
Jaxson (Book 1)
Jace (Book 2)
Jared (Book 3)
Wilding Pack Wolves
* * *
Wild Game (Book 1)
Wild Love (Book 2)
Wild Heat (Book 3)
Wild One (Book 4)
Wild Fire (Book 5)
Wild Magic (Book 6)
Fallen Immortals
* * *
Kiss of a Dragon (Book 1)
Heart of a Dragon (Book 2)
Fire of a Dragon (Book 3)
Chosen by a Dragon (Book 4)
Seduced by a Dragon (Book 5)
Touched by a Dragon (Book 6)
Loved by a Dragon (Book 7)
Marked by a Dragon (Book 8)
Claimed by a Dragon (Book 9)
Of Bards and Witches: Leonidas’s Story (Book 10)
Fallen Angels
* * *
A Deadly Sin (Book 1)
Guardian of Light (Book 2)
The Sin of Wrath (Book 3)
Seraphim (Book 4)
Prince of Shadow (Book 5)
Tempted: Tajael’s Story (Book 6)
Kiss of an Angel: A Christmas Story (Book 7)
Legal Magick
* * *
Ever Strange (Book 1)
Mercy Strange (Book 2)
Verity Strange (Book 3)
Broken Souls
* * *
My Dragon Lord (Book 1)
My Dragon Keeper (Book 2)
My Dragon Mate (Book 3)
My Dragon Bodyguard (Book 4)
My Dragon Lover (Book 5)
My Dragon Master (Book 6)
Akkan (Book 7)
Get a FREE BOOK!
Subscribe to Alisa’s Newsletter
Subscribers get special new release pricing and giveaways.
My Dragon Mate (Broken Souls 3)
Copyright © October 2019 by Alisa Woods
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit: Alisa Woods
Cover by BZN Studio
My Dragon Mate (Broken Souls 3)
When dark elves corrupt the very thing you are, there’s only one path to redemption.
This is all my fault.
The fates sent them to me in a dream—the twin soul mates and the dragon man with the pale brown eyes. I knew they were key to everything. I knew I’d pay a price for it.
What I didn’t see coming was the flutter in my belly when the dragon man’s eyes were upon me.
He’s a fine thing, but that’s not important—rescuing these women from the feckin’ Elves. That’s important.
Not least because it’s my fault they’re here.
Witches are supposed to be healers. Matchmakers of dragons. My mother and her mother before her… we aren’t supposed to be destroyers.
So I’ll undo what I’ve done, but I tell myself, There’s nothing more for you, Alice.
Don’t let that dragon man wreck your head… or all your carefully laid plans.
Alice’s a witch held hostage. Constantine’s a dragon who gave up long ago… together they might save dragonkind, but it could already be too late for their broken souls.
My Dragon Mate is a steamy dragon shifter romance that’ll heat up the sheets with love and warm your heart with dragonfire.
One
Constantine
This shrunken man before me is my fate.
I know this as surely as I am dragon.
I sit by Grigore’s bedside, waiting for him to awaken. Just a few weeks ago, we were down in New York City, scouting for the fiery women who might be soul mates for a dragon somewhere. Grigore’s soul was tired of the search, even then, but that fatigue hadn’t yet manifested in the withering of his body. Now, the slow death of despair has sped up. His hair is gone. His skin is wrinkled. The artificial youth of our magic has fled. He could have only hours left, maybe days—no longer than a week.
The entire lair will take turns keeping him company until the end.
Grigore moves in his sleep, a rattle deep in his chest surfacing as a cough—but his eyes remain closed. He’s barely a hundred years old, which is alarming. If the younger dragons lose hope, there is none for any of us. Even less for me, but then I gave up two centuries ago—now I hunt only for the others, hoping to find them mates before it’s too late. Before they’re lying on a hospital bed, wheezing their last breaths.
Grigore coughs again, but this time he wakes. His bleary gaze is pinned to the ceiling.
“Hey.” I take his hand and squeeze it, letting him know I’m here. “It’s my turn to babysit your ass.”
He smiles—it’s a mockery of the panty-dropping smile he deployed with me on our hunts. “You drew the short straw, huh?” He slowly, with apparent great effort, turns his head toward me. The pristine white pillow barely dents under its weight. “Did you kill the witch?”
“No.” But relief washes through me that he still remembers—loss of memory means they’re near the end. Yet I wince inside. I’d hoped to avoid this particular topic. “I spared her. Turns out, she might be able to help us.”
“Spared her?” Grigore’s smile twists into a smirk. “Or got your ass kicked again?”
“Little of both.”
He laughs, but it quickly turns into a hacking cough. I grip his hand through it, supporting him as the convulsions lift him from the bed. Finally, it settles, and I ease him back down.
“Fuck,” he wheezes. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Well, there goes all my material.”
He smiles again, but his eyes are drifting closed. “Save your material for the ladies.”
“Always.” That’s my one useful purpose—romancing women into that first True Kiss, and maybe into bed, then seducing them into running the gauntlet of my dragon brothers, on the remote chance they might find their mate. But seeing Grigore is gutting me—not just because his fate is mine, and possibly every other dragon on earth, but because there’s suddenly a glimmer of hope on the horizon, something that might save many of us… and it came too late for him.
Grigore sighs. There’s so much weariness in it. “Tell me about the witch.” His eyes are fully closed now. His breathing settles.
I could ignore his request. I could let him lapse into sleep and hope he forgets to ask the next dragon. I could spare him that knowledge. But I owe him better than that. He should at least know there’s hope for his brothers now.
“Well, as I told you before, I had every intention of killing her,” I say, softly—maybe my voice will lull him to sleep. “My venom-tipped blade was ready. No more dragons would die because of a witch betraying us. I went after her, but I was too slow. She saw me coming. Well, she saw us coming—the mated dragons were faster with their fancy teleportation tricks.”
A corner of Grigore’s mouth twitches into a smile, so I know he’s still awake.
“She’s tall. Red-haired. Beautiful like you only see in a dream. I don’t know if that’s what made me hesitate. Maybe it was the look in her eyes…” Her eyes were dark brown and somehow wild in a way that caught my breath. The first encounter I had with her was sudden and strange and brutal—and landed me on the floor by some magic I still don’t understand. But this second time… “I hesitated, and then she says, in this thick Irish accent, ‘Ah, so it’s you then.’ And I just stood there like an idiot as she stepped forward, flipped up my visor, and placed her palm on my forehead.” I pause and check Grigore’s breathing. Low. Steady. I can’t tell if he’s asleep. I lower my voice even more, but I lean forward in my chair. “She showed me images—in my mind, Grigore—and they were of other women. Ones being held by the Vardigah.” Those are the dark elves I thought the witch—Alice O’Rourke, according to Cinder—was working for. But I was wrong. “Soul mates, my brother. Dozens of them. And Alice was seeking my help to bring them home.” I wait for a reaction from him, some sign that news of our literal salvation possibly being at hand had reached him… and nothing.
He just keeps sleeping—a sleep he may never wake from.
I let him rest.
Besides, I have another visit to make.
The hospice is on the ground floor of the dormitory that’s a safehouse. It’s separate from the North Lair, on a different island in the Thousand Islands from the home lair, partly to give everyone a space to retreat. A short elevator ride takes me up to the main floor of the dormitory, and a jaunt down the hall gets me to the room of one Julia McGovern. She’s a twenty-five-year-old, dark-haired beauty, and a very popular woman given she’s possibly a Dragon Spirit, the other half to a dragon somewhere in the world… assuming the Vardigah haven’t destroyed the dragon part of her soul. There’s no way to tell other than to go through the gauntlet—a True Kiss from each dragon until a match can be found. But given the Vardigah tortured and starved her, Niko has put a strict limit on how much romancing is allowed. Dragons rotate through, so she’s kept com
There are still two dragons lined up outside her door and another inside.
I know my shift is next, so I tell Kass and Petr to beat it. Saryn is inside, but Julia seems to be ignoring him, reading a book on her kindle. He’s a younger dragon, one of Renn and Ketu’s second batch of children—mated dragons have waves of fertility, and they’re one of the oldest pairs. Saryn’s probably thirty now—real years not just appearance-wise—but he looks a little hapless on his plastic chair. I wave him off, and he seems grateful to retreat out the door. I follow him, close it, then drag the chair to Julia’s bedside, turning it backward so I can straddle it.
“You the new babysitter?” she asks without lifting her gaze from her book.
“I’ve got a few questions for you.”
She looks up, startled. “Constantine!” It’s good she remembers me from the rescue.
I smile. “Hey. How are you doing?”
“Better, actually.” She sets her kindle on the table beside her bed. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was you. It’s just been…” Her vague wave at the door says it all. A constant stream of men, all hoping she’s their soul mate, yet all forbidden from actually romancing her, so they spend their time figuring ways to cheat. And being strange about it all. Julia’s been read in on everything—usually, that’s a big deal, but the woman had already been captured by the Vardigah. Unlike Cinder, she remembered every minute. Explaining that dragon shifters had rescued her and that she might be the soul mate of one of them had little shock value.
“Sorry about that.” And I mean it. I’ve romanced thousands of women over the years. Brought hundreds through the gauntlet. Most are thrilled at first. Heady with sexing it up with one partner after another. But I see the full cycle. I know the toll it takes. And that’s for women who haven’t been traumatized recently.
“It’s okay.” Her smile is forced. “I know it’s important. I’m just, you know…”
“Still recovering? Because those bastard elves tried to break you? I can imagine that might take more than a few days.” It’s been exactly three and a half since the raid. I’m counting the minutes. Alice-the-witch promised she’d help liberate the rest of the soul mates but insisted we had to wait until she contacted us. Only I’ve been waiting my whole damn life, and I wasn’t a patient dragon to begin with. “But you look great,” I say with real enthusiasm. “Are you sleeping okay?” Word had it nightmares plagued her at first. But now there’s a shine in her eyes, and her cheeks aren’t so sunken as when we found her.
“Yeah, sleeping well.” She tucks her long, dark hair back. “And I’m able to eat solid food again. I don’t know who you have for a chef, but damn, the food’s good. Or maybe I’ve just been starving for three weeks.”
“It’s actually that good.” I smile, but that part hurts. Three weeks. And who knows how long the others have been tortured and starving. And still are. “Look, I know you don’t know anything about the other soul mates, but I have some questions about Alice. If you’re up for it.”
“Sure.” She folds up her legs and sits straighter.
“Do you know how she came to be working with the Vardigah?”
“No, sorry.”
“Did she say anything about how she would get you and the others free?”
She shrugs. “Just that she was working on it. Honestly, most of the time I saw her, I was in pretty bad shape. She came in after the sessions. My mind was… scrambled. She’d do her magic thing, and that would help, but usually, I was zonked after.”
I pull in a breath. “Is there anything you can tell me about her?” I’m desperate for any read on this.
She frowns, thinking. “She’s kind of… intense? Or maybe just awkward? I mean, it was such a weird situation, right? But it seemed like there was something off about her.”
That plays havoc with every nerve I have. “Like she’s keeping a secret? Or lying about something?” This is my terrible fear. The thing keeping me up at night. A witch put her hand to my forehead and convinced me to go along with her plans. Aleks and Niko are still halfway convinced she put a hex on me. Only the hope of so many soul mates to be rescued keeps them open to this being real.
Julia’s shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. She’s great. Sweet but in an intense kind of way. That doesn’t make much sense.” She bites her lip, thinking harder.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” I already understand the intensity part—I experienced that first hand.
Julia snaps her fingers then points one at me. “It’s like she’s a little… feral.” Then she puts up her hands as if to stop me from reacting, but it’s too late—my heart lurches with that word. “That sounds bad,” she hastily adds. “I mean she’s like a wild kitten. You know how they’re skittish when you first approach them, but they’re really just hungry and scared? She was like that. Only powerful because she could do all this crazy magic. But I always had the sense that she was kind of… lost.”
Now my chest is squeezing for an entirely different reason. “Like maybe she was a prisoner, too.”
Julia’s eyes go wide. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
I rub a hand across my face, trying to wipe away a sudden torrent of emotion. In all my scouring of the world for dragon-spirited women, I’ve stumbled across plenty who’ve been held captive—trafficked—by men worse than beasts. These men do not fare well when I find them. The women—and often they are barely more than girls—I bring back to the safehouse. They have a refuge here in the dormitory, as long as they like. If the Vardigah are holding Alice against her will, forcing her to use her magic to destroy rather than heal… I can all too easily believe that story. But it could still be an illusion. She could be playing me for a fool, and all my brother dragons would pay the price.
Julia’s peering at me. “You okay?”
I laugh a little. “I’m the one who’s supposed to ask that question.” I shake my head. “She said to wait for her. That she would tell me how to rescue the rest of the women. But it’s been three days—how long am I supposed to wait?”
She shrugs. “Do you still have the mirror she gave you?”
I reach into my light jacket and pull it out. It’s edged in gold carvings, and its black surface is as reflective as a true mirror. “I keep it with me constantly.”
She nods. “That seems like a good plan.”
I shake my head at my own reflection in the black glass. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with this.”
“It’s better than wondering when the guy babysitting me is going to work up the nerve to kiss me.”
I look up and grin. “That obvious, are they?”
But she’s not laughing. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are you going to try to kiss me, too?” She’s holding her breath.
I only hesitate a fraction of a second, all my instincts kicking in. “Do you want me to?”
“No, I was just wondering…” She flushes and drops her gaze. “This whole thing is weird.”
“It is.” I rise up from the plastic chair and ease onto the bed next to her.
“Oh, my God, please don’t.” She’s waving me off like I might try to plant a kiss on her in her hospital bed.
“They’re putting pressure on you.” I keep my voice calm, but I’m already tallying up names of asses to kick.
“No, they’re really not.” She won’t look at me.
“Then what’s wrong?” I soften my voice even more.
“Nothing’s wrong.” Her arms are folded up now, capturing her legs. “I’m just embarrassed. What a stupid thing to say.”
“What’s stupid is this situation we’ve put you in.” I dip my head to catch her gaze. “You are a beautiful dragon spirit who’s been through hell and come out the other side.”
