The Dragon's Warlock: A paranormal dragon shifter romance (Immortal Dragon Book 4) Read online

At an early age, he’d learned that life wasn’t fair. His mother had been a healer, and she helped everyone in the village. One night, an outsider showed up at the house. He said his wife needed help, and Gideon’s mom rushed to assist, but the outsider killed her. Gideon’s dad went looking for her and never returned. Gideon, who was five at the time, had been alone for days before a neighbor stopped by.

  “At the end of the passage, get behind me, and I’ll open the door.” He wasn’t sure if someone would be on the other side.

  “My car is in your front yard, along with my purse and phone. What are you expecting us to do?”

  “Can you shift?” He wasn’t sure if she could control her dragon, but depending on what they came in contact with, he might need her help.

  “Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “But who is after you?”

  “You really think someone is after me?”

  “Hell yes. It sounded like someone blew up your house. How many people did you piss off?”

  “Nobody is after me. I bet a hundred dollars those people are coming for you. Which means you might be close to finding your sister.”

  “But how would they know I was here?” Diem let out a huff as they came to a stop in front of the exit.

  He hadn’t opened the old stone door in years. The ward he’d put in place years before was still intact. He closed his eyes and chanted the language of his ancestors.

  “I’m pretty sure someone put a tracker on your car or in your clothes.” Gideon closed his eyes for a second. “Did the council remove the tracker from your arm?”

  She pouted. “After I was cleared, I never went back to the facility to do checkups. Lucy wanted to run tests, and I think she held a grudge against me for kidnapping Nyx. So I never went back to have the chip removed. I forgot about it until you mentioned it.”

  “Fuck.”

  “So if the people after us are actually after me, your super-secret tunnel did nothing to hide our tracks.”

  “No. We might be walking into a trap.”

  She leveled a glare at him and placed her hands on her hips. “I was a pilot before learning about this world. Don’t get snappy if I’m not used to running for my life. Like I said earlier, this world needs a Dummies manual.”

  “We need to take the tracker out.” He drew out a pocketknife.

  “Fuck no. I don’t know where that knife has been, and I want drugs.”

  “Do you not understand that they are tracking you? No matter how far we go, they will still come after you.”

  She glanced down at his knife. “Maybe going with them is a better option.”

  “You’re a dragon. The wound will heal seconds after I cut your skin and pop out the chip.”

  She raised a brow. “Will it still hurt?”

  He could hear the faint sound of a car pulling close to their exit. “It might, but we need to leave, and when we do, we’re going to have to fight our way to a car.”

  “Make it quick before I change my mind.”

  He grabbed her wrist, holding her arm still. She flinched as he cut into her forearm and popped the chip out. Diem’s eyes were tightly closed.

  “It’s out,” he said.

  “That wasn’t as bad as I expected. Now, how are we going to get past the people on the other side?”

  “Fight.”

  “Don’t we need a better plan than that?”

  Gideon’s magic was bursting at the seams, wanting to be released.

  “Stay behind me, and if things get bad, shift and fly away.”

  She glared. “I’m not going to leave you to fight alone.”

  The longer they stayed in one location, the more their enemies could organize and call in reinforcements. Gideon hadn’t grabbed his phone off his desk as they rushed to the secret passage. His only thought had been to get Diem to safety.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He reached for the door and tugged it open. It didn’t budge at first, but he pulled harder, and the stone door finally glided open. Two men stood fifty feet away, dressed in black with masks covering their faces. They bore the same red symbol Kael’s men wore. The last Gideon had heard, the council thought they’d found all the Kael’s men and the labs used to turn humans into shifters.

  Gideon’s eyes were trained on the two men as he pulled his magic.

  “Down,” Diem yelled.

  He didn’t have time to react before Diem pushed him to the ground. Gideon rolled them to the side and got behind a rock. Two more men were up in the trees with rifles pointed at them. This wouldn’t be the first fight he’d gone into outnumbered, but he had more than himself to worry about.

  He closed his eyes and used his powers to orient his sense. Two of the men were human, and two were shifters. The labs Kael had created to make super shifters had humans working at them. The council had spent years working to keep their identity a secret.

  The shifters he sensed were off. Their smell was closer to human than wolf. Diem’s smell was pure shifter, almost like she’d been born with her dragon. He didn’t remember the day she was turned, but he’d watched the video of himself giving the order to change her. The woman should hate him for what he’d done.

  Movement in the trees tore his attention from the men on the ground. The man in the tree aimed his gun at Diem. A red dot formed on her chest. Gideon called on the elements and sent a gust of wind toward the trees. Its force was so strong that they both flew backward and landed on the ground. Their voices echoed in the forest.

  Diem took her clothes off next to him. He had a hard time drawing his eyes away from her soft skin as she stripped down. Seconds later, a green dragon erupted. Most of the humans who had been changed to shifters had a difficult time shifting. She did the fast change almost as quickly as shifters who practiced it. She was ridiculous and elegant at the same time. He’d watched videos of her from when she was a captive, but now her color was a brighter green. She even seemed larger.

  Rawr. She spewed fire across the grass.

  “Don’t kill them!” he growled. There was no doubt in his mind that they were after Diem, but he wanted to know who was calling the shots.

  He had to hold back a chuckle as the dragon glared at him. The fire clicker in Diem’s throat clicked a couple of times. The two shifters transformed into wolves. If their smell hadn’t told him that they’d been created, their size would have. Both wolves were double the size of standard shifters. Unlike Diem’s smooth transmission, they howled in pain as their bones broke and they transformed.

  “Don’t move,” Gideon called to the vines that had crept up the wolves’ feet. His ability to control the elements and plants was rare for a warlock. Most used dark magic to fight, but at a young age, his mother had taught him how to work with nature and how to control the things around him.

  The two wolves gnawed at their feet, trying to stop the vines from holding them in place.

  The air changed next to him as Diem shifted back into human form. She stood unclothed with her hands on her hips. “You’re supposed to let me help.”

  A very naked Diem was distracting and making it hard for him to concentrate on the surrounding elements. “Can you get dressed.” His words came out more as a demand than a question.

  “Only if I can help kill them.”

  He rolled his eyes. “We need them to shift first, and then we’ll ask questions.”

  Diem pulled her shirt over her head, not bothering with a bra. He couldn’t help but stare at her nipples as they poked through the thin white material.

  “Let me go check on the others.” She marched past him. The wolves growled and nipped at her but couldn’t move out of the vine cuffs. “They're dead,” she said as she walked back.

  He’d known they were dead the second they hit the ground.

  “How are we going to get them to talk?” Diem pointed to the two wolves. “I don’t have any doggy treats.”

  The wolf on the right bared his teeth and growled.

&
nbsp; Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Doggie treats won’t work, but Kirin has a shot we can give to force them to shift.” It would be painful.

  “And you have no phone,” she snapped.

  “Watch them, and I’ll walk to the garage and call from the burner phone.”

  “I don’t see a garage.”

  “Because I use magic to keep a few places hidden from the world. If you hadn’t had the tracker, they never would’ve found us.” He turned to walk down the wooded path.

  She reached out and grabbed his arm. “What happens when the vines let go or the shifters chew their way through?”

  “If you’re in danger, shift and eat them.” He drew his arm from her grasp and took a few steps, but he stopped when the air shifted.

  One of the wolves had transformed back. Gideon used his powers to bind the man’s legs and arms with the vines. He paused and watched the collar around the man’s neck start to blink red. When the man was in wolf form, his black fur had covered the device.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  They barely made it out of the way before the man’s body exploded, killing the wolf next to him. An arm fell from the sky and hit the ground in front of them.

  “Now what?” Diem stared at the man’s arm.

  “We head to Kirin’s house and ask for his advice.”

  “They don’t like me.”

  “Kirin’s protective of his family.”

  She tapped her foot on the ground. “He has no reason to want to help me.”

  “Kirin will help us. If he doesn’t, Talia will, but they are our only options.”

  Diem looked off into the sky. “What happens if they won’t let me go?”

  He would fight to keep her out of harm's way. Taking on three dragons wouldn’t be easy, but he would do everything in his power to keep her safe. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “So, this magical garage…” She arched her brow. “Do you say a word three times and it appears?”

  “This way.” He turned away from her and continued down the path he’d planned to go on earlier.

  “You can’t go that way,” Diem yelled as he walked into a tree. The tree was an illusion. On the other side was his garage.

  Seconds later, she appeared next to him. “Wow.”

  She followed him over to the garage, and he typed his code into the panel next to the door. Once inside, he grabbed a set of keys from the shelf and pulled her to his sports car. “You ready to go see Kirin?”

  “No, but if you think it’s the best option…” She let out a breath. “Let’s go.”

  3

  Diem

  Diem watched out the window as they twisted through the mountainside. She didn’t know for sure if Gideon was taking her to Kirin’s house or planning to drop her in the woods. Her heart was still racing from the attack.

  The past couple of weeks flashed through her mind. She couldn’t imagine what she’d done to make those men come after her. Diem had covered her tracks as she looked for her sister.

  Someone wanted her dead, and she’d left the tracker in her arm. How could I be so dumb as to not remove the device? Whoever was still running Kael’s labs would know her movements and every place she went. And now she had to rely on the family who hated her.

  “You know, I was happy sitting in my study, reading ancient books about history,” Gideon grumbled as he made a left turn.

  “Maybe if you’d contacted me a few days ago, we wouldn’t be heading to Kirin’s house.”

  “I figured you would’ve given up and enjoyed your new creature.”

  She didn’t even know how to reply to that statement.

  He continued. “No matter if you’d come the other day or today, we would still need Kirin’s help.”

  “I thought you would have enough connections to help get my sister back.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not only about connections. He’s worked the case since he took over the West Virginia council. Kirin and his brothers are up-to-date on everything. They also have Alida.”

  “You forgot to mention the human scientist they have. She doesn’t like me.”

  “Kirin and his family are good people. Even if they don’t like you, they will help, especially if you think another lab is still open. Last time I talked to Kirin, he was sure they’d found them all.”

  “Do you believe me?” she replied with an arched brow. “Because if you don’t, you can pull over, and I’ll figure this out on my own.”

  “Stop being so dramatic. You weren’t the one pulled away from lying around the house.”

  “Are you going to spend this whole mission grumbling about not wanting to leave your house?” she asked, feeling defeated. It wasn’t only that she wanted his help—her dragon wanted to be around him.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure why you want my help. But since I might not have a house or books anymore, the mission to find your sister is all I’ve got at the moment.” He glanced in her direction.

  She’d forgotten about the explosion. “I didn’t know someone would try to blow up your house.” She let out a sigh.

  “It was just a house. Your dragon was beautiful, and your shift was quick. Why are you having struggles with your dragon?”

  “The dragon demands things in my head and tries to push forward.”

  “I need more of an example. What does your dragon push for?” He turned down a gravel road.

  “The dragon wanted to demand that you leave the bar with me that night. When you didn’t, she pushed, and I shifted every night, and we flew over your house. I wanted to wait a couple more days to ask for your help, but I couldn’t deny my dragon any longer. My skin began to burn.”

  “Did you have this pull before the bar?” he asked. When she nodded, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

  She wondered if he’d seen her flying over his house at night. “Does this pull mean anything?” Once again, shifting-for-Dummies books—or someone to explain everything to her—would have been helpful.

  “It could.” His lips turned down. “Lucy can tell us more.”

  “The pint-sized human loves to poke me with needles,” she huffed. “If someone would tell me why my dragon is so crazy, it might help.” And why I feel so calm when I sit next to Gideon. Her dragon practically purred in her head.

  He cast her a glance as he stopped in front of a mountain. “I have an idea, but I think your dragon is confused.”

  “You think my dragon is confused, but you’re the one who pulled up to a dead end.”

  “It’s not a dead end.”

  “So, you think the mountain is magically going to move for you?” She wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision asking the old warlock to help her. Maybe he hadn’t recovered from what Kael had done to him.

  After a few seconds of staring at the mountain, Gideon went forward. In seconds, they would run into the rocks.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  “It’s just an illusion. They opened up the cave so I could get in.”

  “How do you know it was opened for us?”

  “I reached out to Kirin. He made sure Kia opened it.”

  “You can telepathically talk to Kirin?” She laughed.

  “Yes. We worked out a spell so we could talk when needed, partially for my benefit because I was worried I might change. He checks my moods every so often. The spell will dissipate in a few more weeks, unless I redo it. It also only works if we’re close.” He sighed.

  “I didn’t mean to laugh. Honestly, I thought you were joking. There are so many things in this world I don’t understand.”

  “You will learn in time, but Kirin and his family are protective of Alida. Her powers are beyond what anyone knows. She can read your mind, so if there’s something you don’t want out in the open, don’t think about it.”

  As if keeping my mind clear is something I know how to do. “I don’t want to be rude, but do you think they might have food?” she asked shyly. “I’m always hungry, and I was nervous to see
you, so I skipped breakfast and lunch. Now I feel like I might pass out.”

  “You need to keep your dragon fed.”

  “Easy for you to say. My grocery bill has gone up threefold, and my savings are running low. And didn’t you hear the part where I said I was nervous?”

  “Kia will have food.” Gideon pressed his foot to the gas and went straight through the wall of rocks.

  She closed her eyes and braced for impact. It never came. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Gideon had parked in front of a rustic cabin. With the high-tech mountain, she’d expected something more sophisticated.

  “Not everything is as it seems,” Gideon said as he climbed out of the sports car. He rounded the side and opened her door.

  Before she got out, she asked him, “Are you sure they aren’t going to kill me?”

  “I’ll protect you.”

  She was stunned by his words. It was the first time he’d acted like he genuinely cared about not letting her die. Earlier, he’d protected her when they fought, but now she could almost feel his emotions.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  As she stepped out of the car, Kirin stood at the top of the stairs with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. She stumbled, but Gideon kept his hand on her back, moving her forward toward the unknown.

  “How come you didn’t tell me earlier there might be more labs still?” Kirin asked.

  “Really?” Gideon arched a brow. “I asked you three times if you were sure. You said there was no doubt you found them all. But Diem doesn’t think you did.”

  “How do I know this isn’t a trap where she is going to try to take Nyx or Talia?”

  “I told you he hated me,” Diem said.

  Gideon ignored her and pushed her forward another step until they were directly in front of Kirin. Her dragon whined in her head. Kirin set off a wave of dominance, and her dragon wanted to bow down to him. Her human side didn’t understand what was happening.

  She ground her teeth. “I need your help, but if you don’t stop whatever it is you’re doing, I’m leaving and finding my sister another way.”

  “She needs us, Dad.” A young girl magically appeared on the front steps.