Dragon's Fire [PUP Squad Alpha 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

PUP Squad Alpha 3

Dragon’s Fire

Ava Seeton was just an ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill high school teacher. Fighting assassins in her living room wasn't supposed to be a skill she would need.

Nathan Hindle and Brody Carmichael have known each other for years. When they're assigned to protect the same young human, Nathan is sure that between the two of them they will succeed. What he hadn't planned on was for them both to fall for the pretty teacher.

Brody comes from a long line of bigots. He doesn't subscribe to the family belief, but he knows getting involved with anyone outside his species is probably a bad idea. Of course, with his family being estranged, it shouldn't matter what they think.

But with unstoppable assassins on one side, growing love on the other, and an unexpected surprise in the middle, it may take far more than Brody and Nathan imagined to keep their woman safe.

Genre:
Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length:
22,591 words
 

PUP Squad Alpha 3

Abby Blake

MENAGE EVERLASTING

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

DRAGON’S FIRE

Copyright © 2012 by Abby Blake

E-book ISBN:
978-1-61926-707-7

First E-book Publication: June 2012

Cover design by Les Byerley

All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

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Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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Dragon’s Fire
by Abby Blake from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

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PUP Squad Alpha 3

ABBY BLAKE

Copyright © 2012

Ava Seeton dropped into the chair closest to her and tiredly waited for the kettle to boil. It had been a very, very long day of teaching youngsters who didn’t want to be taught. The worst part was that she had at least three hours grading term papers ahead of her. Just the thought of trying to decipher the badly spelled, poorly worded, low-on-imagination, barely legible essays from a bunch of ninth graders who didn’t care if they passed or failed just made her feel even more tired.

She was sure there had been a time that she’d truly enjoyed teaching, but with more and more children coming into high school without the basic reading and writing skills required to complete the course she was supposed to teach, much of her time was spent dealing with kids too angry to learn anything. After years in a system that ignored their failures and removed incentives for them to even try, was it any wonder more kids than ever seemed unprepared for the challenge of high school?

The kettle finally boiled, and she levered herself out of the chair to make the cup of instant coffee that she so desperately needed.

The young blonde girl standing between her and her caffeine was an unwelcome surprise. She seemed to be about seven years old.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Ava probably should have been nicer, but the kid was trespassing and, judging by the smartass expression, didn’t seem to be lost.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” the child said in a voice that suggested way more maturity than her appearance suggested.

“Get out,” Ava said through clenched teeth. Normally she would be more sympathetic to a young child being somewhere unexpected, but there was something about this girl that seemed off, maybe even dangerous.

“But I came all this way just to see you.” The words sent a wave of dread over Ava’s skin, but it was the confident way the child walked toward her that had Ava lifting her hand in a signal for the girl to stop moving. Predictably the brat smirked and continued to stalk closer.

“Get the hell out of my house!”

The child grinned maliciously and leapt into the air. She would have landed in Ava’s arms if she hadn’t moved away, but when the girl went flying out of control in the other direction Ava just stood there with her mouth open.

“Bitch,” the girl said as she picked herself up off the floor and headed for Ava once more.

But it happened again. As soon as she lifted off the ground some unseen force threw her backward. This time she hit the concrete fireplace quite hard.

Her eyes on the child, Ava barely registered her front door being kicked open. What the hell now?

“Police! Don’t move.”

The child seemed to lift back onto her feet with very little effort and absolutely no sign of injury from a thud that should have at least broken a few bones. She simply smirked at the police officer who was, rather ironically, pointing his gun at Ava, and laughed in a high-pitched giggle. “I’ll be back for you later,” she said with a wink. “Enjoy the few hours you have left.”

And then right in front of Ava, and a stunned police officer, the child seemed to disappear.

“What the fuck was that?” the officer asked her as if Ava should know. She was pretty sure she managed to shrug a moment before her knees gave out and she landed hard on her ass.

Suddenly grading term papers seemed the least of her problems.

Brody Carmichael watched the pretty blonde while she read yet another book on her e-reader. He’d watched over her for four days now, and she’d barely put the electronic gizmo down. Thankfully there had been no sign of her attacker since Ava had met the assassin and had somehow held her off.

It had seemed incredible that a human could successfully hold off a pixie, but that’s what the woman had done. Unfortunately, four days after the fact Brody was no closer to understanding how she’d done it.

The only thing he knew for certain, thanks to his better-than-human sense of smell, was that the woman was reading books that she found rather inspiring. She gave no outward signs of arousal, but Brody knew what the woman was feeling. He just hoped it wasn’t some stuffy, older-than-dirt poetry or religious text that roused the woman’s libido. She was an English teacher after all.

“Any news?” Nathan asked as he wandered out of the bedroom and made a beeline for the coffee machine. It was the one thing he and Nathan had in common. They both liked to start their day with a strong, hot boost of caffeine. Judging by Ava’s happy smile when she’d seen the machine, it was something she shared with them also. Hell, he hoped it wasn’t coffee that got her all hot and bothered. He kind of liked his theory that she was reading erotic romance, and that under the prim and proper schoolteacher was a sexy vixen just waiting to rock his world.

That of course was wishful thinking. His own species might be short of females, but nobody had taken a human woman as their mate.

“Go get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a couple hours,” his mission partner suggested quietly.

“Maybe later,” Brody said as he glanced at Nathan before turning his attention back to Ava. His missions for PUP Squad Alpha didn’t usually involve being a bodyguard to a human, but with a pixie assassin trying to kill her it was wise to have someone close who could transport her long distances via dimensional jumping. Of course, Ava knew nothing about that. As far as she was concerned, he and Nathan were just bodyguards protecting her. He didn’t even think she’d related the experience with the pixie assassin, who would have looked like a child to her, with the official police warning that she was potentially a serial killer’s next victim.

“Whoa, did you see that?” Nathan whispered, sounding quite excited. For a human the guy was rather unusual. “That may explain how she survived a pixie attack.”

“What?” Brody asked, feeling grumpy that he’d missed something that seemed important.

“She reached for her coffee and the cup slid into her hand.”

“As in actually slid? Like it moved by itself?”

“Yep,” Nathan said with a broad smile. “Maybe our adorable, softly spoken schoolteacher isn’t quite as human as we thought.”

Brody shook his head. “I don’t think she even realizes she can do that.”

“How could she not realize?”

Brody shook his head again and resisted the urge to rub his eyes. Nathan might have been an experienced bodyguard—and from what Brody had seen, very handy in a fight—but it didn’t stop him from coming off as an overenthusiastic puppy at times. Brody dropped his head into his hands, despite his best intentions not to, and wondered for the hundredth time in the past few days if he was just getting old. He’d laughed at his squadmate’s early midlife crisis, but it was quite possible karma might just be ready to bite him on the ass. Even he couldn’t deny the cosmic justice of it all.

Shit. As soon as this assignment was over, he was going to apologize to Darian.