Page 3 of Accidentally a Dragon Daddy

“My supervisor,” I said with a shrug. “He doesn’t like the risks I take.”

“That’s because you take insane risks,” Rob said, staring down his crooked nose at me, blue eyes sparkling with both humor and relief at seeing me.

“I have to get myself out anyway,” I countered, rehashing the same argument we’d had before. “Bringing some people with me isn’t that big a burden.”

“Always children,” Rob said to the soldier with an exasperated sigh. “I heard from them about the dragon encounter. Elanya, you could have been killed.”

“Rob, I could always be killed,” I told him, patting him on the shoulder and walking past, giving a friendly wave goodbye to the soldier. “I drive a truck full of supplies over the border once a week. If the dragons spotted me, I’d be toast. Come on. Let’s go. I don’t want to argue about this again just to arrive at the same place.”

He followed along silently as we headed for his vehicle and a two-hour trip to the nearest “safe” city.

“That bad?” he asked as the doors closed.

I sagged into the seat, fighting back the tears. “Worse,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s always worse. The supplies aren’t enough, Rob. We need to be sending more. We need to be doing more.”

“Every time we try more, the dragons stop us,” he pointed out. “Just in the past week, three convoys were torched trying to bring supplies.”

“I know. But the children,” I half moaned. “There are so many people trapped there. Afraid to leave or just outright unable to.”

“You can’t help them all,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “All you can do is all you can do. There are millions of people living in there. You’re just one person. Even if there were literally no obstacles, you still couldn’t do enough on your own.”

“Maybe not,” I whispered, remembering the destruction and everything else I’d seen behind the lines. “But I could do more.”

“And if you get caught and killed, you can do nothing,” he pointed out.

Which was a very valid point.

“I need a drink,” I said, sighing and leaning my head back, resting it against the seat. “Or three. Some drinks and some rest to decompress.”

Rob nodded. “Sounds like a smart plan.”

I laughed. It was always my plan after I came back from behind the lines. Get drunk, cry until I couldn’t, and then pull myself together to get ready for the next run. It was a well-rehearsed operation between us now.

“Do you need any company?” he asked.

“Not this time,” I said. Sometimes I didn’t want to be alone after one of my runs.

It wasn’t one of those times.

Chapter Three

Damon

“Who is she?” I asked the bartender, staring across the dimly lit pub at the woman in the corner.

She sat at her table, staring at her drink. Every now and then, she lifted her gaze to run it across the bar, but her priority was the contents of her glass. I watched her more intently than I should. Light straw-blonde hair fell in unbrushed tangles on either side of her face, and she wore little to no makeup.

Whatever it was that had brought her there, she didn’t care what other people thought. Yet there was an undeniable attraction to that fresh-faced, uncovered look. Which explained why I wasn’t the only man in the bar giving her attention. She was a puzzle.

I shouldn’t want to know more. I didn’t want to know, I reminded myself more forcefully than necessary.

Yet there I was, asking about her anyway. Not because I thought it was a good idea. But because I was curious.

And because my dragon was stirring. No, not stirring. That was what it’d done as I'd crossed the street in the rain, my original intentions taking me northward into the core of the city. Stirring was what my dragon had done when it had first pushed my attention toward the neon sign and faded lettering below it.

What it was doing now was preparing to pounce, coiled fiercely in a corner of my mind, ready to strike against the cage of steel-forged willpower I kept around the beastly aspect of my nature. Letting it out that deep into human territory wouldn’t do.

I had to protect the secret of my people. The one that let us assume their form, as well as the natural scaled beast within which I was just as comfortable.

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