Hunted by the Dragon Read online

  Hunted by the Dragon

  A Paranormal Romance

  Kayla Wolf

  Copyright © 2019 by The Wolf Sisters Books.

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of the book only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form, including recording, without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Noah

  Chapter 2 – Rosaline

  Chapter 3 – Noah

  Chapter 4 – Rosaline

  Chapter 5 – Noah

  Chapter 6 – Rosaline

  Chapter 7 – Noah

  Chapter 8 – Rosaline

  Chapter 9 – Noah

  Chapter 10 – Rosaline

  Chapter 11 – Noah

  Chapter 12 – Rosaline

  Chapter 13 – Noah

  Chapter 14 – Rosaline

  Chapter 15 – Noah

  Chapter 16 – Rosaline

  Chapter 17 – Noah

  Chapter 18 – Rosaline

  About the Author

  Books by The Wolf Sisters

  Chapter 1 – Noah

  Noah hated coming to the club during the day.

  At night, it felt more glamorous, somehow. It was still just a crappy nightclub on the outskirts of Miami, but at night with the lights on and the stars overhead… well, it was probably just the fact that he couldn’t see much of the place when it got dark, he reflected with a grimace as he pulled his truck into the parking lot. And the less you saw of Metamorphosis, the better.

  There was a guy on the roof tinkering with the club’s neon sign. There was always something wrong with that thing—Noah could count on one hand the nights he’d been there to see all the letters lit up properly. It was Reed’s fault for giving the place such a long name, and for skimping so outrageously on upkeep. The dude was loaded, Noah knew that much—rich enough that he could afford way less crappy decorations. He could afford to pay his employees a lot more, too, but Noah wasn’t going to give that too much thought. It got too depressing too quickly, thinking of the lousy apartment where he spent every spare minute that he wasn’t working here.

  Not that Noah was especially good with money. It hadn’t been much of a concept, growing up in the Everglades with his family. Growing up had been about survival—the only currency he’d traded in was violence or at least the threat of it. It was why he was so good at his job, in the end, so he supposed on some level he was grateful to his older brothers and his parents for being so hard on him. But it was hard to be grateful for that kind of upbringing. Maybe that would change in the future. He’d only been out of there for a decade or so, and that was hardly any time when it came to the lifespan of a dragon.

  Did Reed know that Noah was older than him, he often wondered? His boss took a pretty condescending tone with him most of the time, but he was like that with most of his shifter staff, regardless of apparent or actual age. One of the wolves who tended bar looked to be in his seventies but was much older, and Reed was as much of a jerk to him as he was to the rest of them, so Noah tried not to take it personally. Still, it chafed to be spoken to like he was a kid when he had a couple of decades on Reed at least. At ninety, he was the baby of his family… but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a lot older than most of the humans he ran into.

  Bigger than them, too. He was yet to meet a human who matched him physically. Very rarely, he’d run into someone who was taller than him—but those guys always lacked in muscle where he absolutely did not. It was no surprise that he spent most of his nights at Metamorphosis either at the door or patrolling the dance floor, making sure nobody got into trouble. It was amazing how trouble seemed to evaporate when someone well over six foot tall with the general frame of a bodybuilder turned up. And when the trouble didn’t evaporate… well, he was yet to get into a fight with anyone, human or shifter, that could even remotely compare to the fights he’d had with his brothers growing up.

  Was that all he was good for, standing around being threatening? Honestly, it felt strange. Among his brothers, Noah was the runt—both of his older brothers were taller than him, stronger than him, faster than him. So to be among humans—and other shifters, for that matter—who looked at him like some kind of terrifying super-soldier, that was a strange feeling. It was why Reed had hired him, almost a decade ago now. He’d taken one look at the hazel-eyed young man sitting disconsolately at the Metamorphosis bar, clapped him on the shoulder and offered him a job. Hired muscle, that was what he was. But at the time, he’d been so grateful to be given a bit of direction in life that he’d have taken any job on offer.

  He might have thought a little more about it if he’d known what it was going to be like, Noah thought now, gritting his teeth as he opened the door to the club. It always stank of stale beer in here, no matter how well the place got cleaned. At least it was closed. On weekends, they opened during the day, but it was Monday now, and even the degenerate crowd that frequented the place had other places to be. Noah blinked around the empty bar, waiting for his eyesight to adjust to the gloom in here. It was a deceptively big building—there were rooms beyond and below the front bar and a complex network of doors and staircases that got you there. Each one guarded, of course. It was a few hours until opening time, but Rory was in his usual spot behind the bar, meditatively polishing a filthy glass. The old wolf’s silver eyes settled on Noah as he came in.

  “You’re early, dragon. Here to get drunk before your shift?”

  ”I’m good. Reed wanted to see me for something or other.”

  Rory raised an eyebrow. “Never a good sign. Sure you don’t want a drink? Got a new batch of moonshine in.”

  ”I’d rather keep my eyesight and my liver intact, thanks,” Noah said. The rotgut that Rory made was legendary among the staff at Metamorphosis. The story went that he’d been making it since Prohibition times—an old recipe, handed down through his pack since time immemorial. But from what Noah could tell, Rory was the last surviving member of his pack.

  ”Suit yourself,” the old wolf shrugged, reaching under the bar. “You’ll note I’ve never gone blind. Picture of health, me.” He retrieved a bottle containing a clear liquid and took a deep draft of it. Noah wrinkled his nose.

  ”I can smell it from here, Rory.”

  ”It’s good for you. Kills off all the germs that make you sick. What’s Reed want with you?”

  ”I don’t know. He just told me to get in early.”

  “He was downstairs last I checked. Something’s going on.” Rory’s voice lowered, and Noah leaned in, intrigued. Rory had a way of knowing all the gossip around the place, among the staff and among the regular clientele—who owed money to who, who was sleeping with who, what the next big fight was going to be. How he found any of it out, Noah wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because the old guy seemed so unthreatening that nobody felt the need to keep their voices down around him. After all, what could some silver-eyed old bartender do? Quite a lot, actually. Noah knew for a fact that Rory had the inside scoop on just about every criminal organization at this side of Miami. Not that he’d ever let on—too strong a self-preservation instinct.

  “Fourth floor basement, definitely something new down there,” Rory was saying.

  ”Right down the bottom?” Noah was interested. Metamorphosis looked like a single-story building from the outside, but it actually had four floors. The one straight under the to
p bar was a dance floor—another bar, this one dealing much more in spirits and energy drinks, a DJ booth, and a lot of loud, thumping music. If you kept going down the stairs, things got even seedier—the third floor basement was home to a stage where a rotating roster of what Reed insisted on calling ‘exotic dancers’ plied their trade. There were also a half-dozen smaller rooms for private dances… but Noah had seen a lot more than just dancing going on in those spaces. He hated being put on cleaning duty for the third floor. It was even worse when the club had its monthly leather nights, though. Noah did what he could to avoid the floor entirely on those particular evenings. It was bizarre, what people did to one another in the name of pleasure.

  But the fourth level had been a mystery for a long time. For a while, Noah had assumed that Reed had an office down there or something—none of the staff had ever been allowed down there. But in the last few months, there’d been an upswing in the number of strangers coming through—builders, contractors, those kinds of people, and it became clear that some work was being done on the fourth floor. Noah had been curious despite himself, but Reed wasn’t a good man to get on the wrong side of, and he’d been extremely clear with the staff that access to the lowest floor was strictly forbidden.

  But he couldn’t stop them gossiping about it, could he?

  ”Yup,” Rory said, leaning closer with his silver eyes sparkling. “They’ve been hammering away for months down there, right? But it’s stopped, the last few days. Whatever’s being done down there? It’s done.”

  ”What is it?”

  ”No idea. But here’s a thing. We didn’t open Sunday during the day. Whole place was shut up. Reed told me personally not to come in, even for setup. You know me, where else am I gonna be? But I had to find other things to do with my time.”

  ”What happened?”

  ”Beats me. I wasn’t here, remember? I went for a swim,” the old wolf said.

  ”You hate the beach. And the heat.” Noah grinned. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why Rory had ended up in Florida. It seemed like half the reason he spent so much unpaid time at the bar was the air conditioning.

  ”Anyway, when you see Reed, if you can figure anything out about what’s happening down there I’d be grateful. It’s itching at me.”

  ”I’ll do my best,” Noah said solemnly, tipping the old wolf a wink. He’d always liked Rory. The wolf had been kind to him since he’d started here—nothing showy or over-the-top, but he’d always had time for him. Something as simple as that made a big difference, coming from a family like Noah’s. He’d been suspicious of Rory for weeks, he was so conditioned to search for ulterior motives in kindness. His brothers—or his parents—being nice to him usually meant that there was something unpleasant coming up.

  He shook himself a little. In the ten years he’d spent away from home, he’d learned that the less time he spent thinking about his family, the better he felt. Still, it was hard to stop his mind straying back there. As much time as he’d spent in his little apartment in his human shape, so much of his mind still belonged back home, in the swampy but beautiful Everglades…

  He shook himself again, harder this time. Focus on the here and now. That was how you survived. Constant vigilance… especially when there was no way of knowing when one of your brothers was going to come lunging up out of the water, covered in mud, to do his level best to drown you—

  “Noah. Thanks for coming in.”

  Just like that, Rory had disappeared up to the other end of the bar, his head lowered as he polished away at his glass. The old wolf was very good at seeming invisible, Noah thought with some amusement, but most of his attention was on the man who’d just strode through the doors of Metamorphosis.

  Reed was tall, for a human, and he accentuated his height with extremely well-tailored suits that Noah knew cost a small fortune. He was in pretty good shape for a man well into his sixties, with long silver hair he kept pulled back in a ponytail and a pair of penetrating pale blue eyes that always made Noah tense. At his best, Reed was a formidable but charismatic boss who was ruthlessly clear with his instructions and expectations. At his worst… well, at his worst, Reed reminded Noah of his father. Noah had gotten pretty good at handling Reed over the years—it helped that he had a good couple of inches on the guy and at least forty pounds more muscle—but still, he needed to keep his wits about him when he came in on the warpath like this.

  ”I wanted to talk to you about a special assignment. Coffee?”

  ”Sure, thanks,” Noah said, shrugging. He’d need caffeine to get him through the late shift tonight. Working security on weeknights was always slow work, and he wouldn’t even have anyone else rostered on with him to talk to.

  The upstairs bar had a number of old booths behind the tables, and Reed led him to one that was tucked away in the corner behind the jukebox. The upholstery was ancient and faded, and the tables were stained with the rings left by untold beer glasses, but Reed always conducted himself like he was having lunch at the Ritz. Rory brought them a couple of cups of coffee, and Reed watched him go before he spoke in a low voice.

  ”You’ll need to take the next couple of nights off here. I’ve already organized to have your shifts covered, no problems.”

  Noah tilted his head to the side. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a night off. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  ”Noah, how long have you worked for me?”

  ”Ten years.” Noah blinked, a little thrown off by this line of conversation. Reed was usually so direct—he didn’t waste a minute. “Or close to it.”

  ”Ten years. How time flies. And you look just the same you did the day I hired you.”

  Noah tried for a smile. “So do you.”

  ”No, I don’t. Don’t do that.”

  “I just mean you’ve aged well.”

  ”For a human?”

  ”Well—” Noah hesitated, but Reed was still smiling. “Yeah. For a human.”

  ”It’s okay, Noah. You don’t have to feel guilty about what you are. Have you ever met another human who recognized you? Who knew what you were?”

  ”No humans, no.” Panthers and wolves could smell a dragon at a hundred paces—he’d learned that the hard way when he’d come to work here. But humans had no way to tell a shifter from another human. “Just you.”

  ”Did you ever wonder how I knew?”

  ”Yeah, I guess.”

  ”I met a dragon a long, long time ago. Well, not very long for your kind,” he added with a chuckle that made Noah feel uneasy. “But a long time ago, for me. He was an interesting guy. I learned a lot from him. Most of it bad, all of it useful. You ever know someone like that?”

  A flash of his father, his brothers, his family. “Yeah.”

  ”I spent the rest of my life trying to understand your kind. Not just dragons—all kinds of shifters. I’ve got a collection of artefacts, did you know that?”

  Noah blinked. “I didn’t. What kind of artefacts?”

  ”Oh, just trinkets, mostly. The prize piece of my collection is a dragon claw. Sharpest blade I’ve ever seen. But I don’t have to tell you, I suppose.”

  Noah could feel the flesh on the back of his neck crawling, but he tried to keep his body language neutral, keep his expression casual. “Interesting.”

  ”I think of it as… well, evidence, I suppose. Back when I started this place, I wasn’t as popular in the shifter community as I am now, you see? A lot of your kind didn’t take kindly to a human being who knew what I knew about shifters. There was talk of getting rid of me. Can you believe that?”

  Noah shifted in his seat, a little uncomfortable with this line of questioning. It was true that it was highly unusual for a human being to know as much about shifters as Reed did. For as long as anyone could remember, shifters had kept their existence secret from humans. Some did it by living in the wilderness—a lot of dragons opted for that particular route. Noah’s family, for example, lived deep in the Everglades in an all but inacce
ssible section of the national park where human beings rarely ventured. Wolves, Noah knew, often lived among humans, using their human shapes to blend in seamlessly with human beings while still keeping to their own pack structures. Panthers did the same—solitary creatures, they found it easy enough to blend in with humans. And it was an unspoken law among shifters to keep your true nature secret from human beings. Not that it could ever be formalized, of course—there was too much dissent between the species, too much war and bloodshed and bitterness. The law of secrecy was probably the closest thing shifters in general had to an agreement.

  But Reed, somehow, was an exception to that rule. He only hired shifters to work at his club, and word had quickly spread among the shifters of the local community that Metamorphosis was a safe place to spend time. Plenty of humans frequented the bar too, of course—there weren’t really enough shifters in the area for the bar to keep making a profit—but it was a fairly unique place, at least from what Noah could gather from the gossip he heard and the way the more widely-travelled staff of the bar talked about it.

  ”Good on you that you’re still around,” he managed to say now, giving Reed his best attempt at a smile.

  ”Hm. Well, they did their best to get rid of me. One, in particular, I’ve never quite forgiven. He was a dragon, just like you. Green eyes, like gemstones. I only saw him transform once, but it was… unbelievable. He was bigger than you. These huge wings… quite a sight to see.”

  ”And he wanted to hurt you?”

  ”He wanted me dead,” Reed said flatly. “Almost managed it, too, but I managed to escape. In the process, though, he stole something from me, and I want it back.”

  ”What did he steal?”

  ”That’s above your paygrade, for the moment. Suffice it to say… I’ve recently come across some information about the dragon in question. He has children. Three children—two daughters and a son. I know where he is and where his children are.”

  Noah didn’t like where this line of conversation was going. “So?”