Free Dragon's Pride: BBW Paranormal Dragon Romance by Ruby Glass Page A

emerged from behind the door frame. This woman was even scarier from up close. She looked more like a witch than like a dragon, and every part of me was screaming to get away from her.
     
    As much as I was evaluating her, she was also taking stock of me. And she seemed to be able to pinpoint me immediately. “So this is who you’re dating now, is it?” she asked her son. “One human wasn’t enough? You had to go back and make the same mistake all over again? I thought the first one broke your little heart too badly for that to ever happen.”
     
    “This one isn’t like Deedee,” Cerul said stiffly.
     
    “She’s not different,” his mother snapped. “They’re never different. All of them are exactly the same. They want our money, or else they want to slay us. I swear I don’t know how any child of mine can think something else. That isn’t the way I raised you!”
     
    I opened my mouth, but without any words to say, I closed it. Protesting would have gotten me nowhere, and I knew I didn’t want to be victim to the dragon woman’s wrath.
     
    “All I want is my powers,” Cerul said again. “I just want to shift.”
     
    His mother raked one nail across my cheek. “She’s not as pretty as the last one. Must be a good fuck if you’re serious about her.”
     
    “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’m very serious about her,” Cerul growled. After yanking Arabella’s arm away from me, he grabbed mine. “Let’s go, Kale. I’ll live without shifting. Better to live as a human than to be like her.”
     
    My feet moving only grudgingly, my mind in a daze, I followed him back out to the hall. Silence hung heavily over us. I couldn’t begin to think about what could be going through his mind right now. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would feel after being treated like that by his own mother.
     
    Even after we got in the car, Cerul refused to speak. He never exactly looked cheery, but now his expression was darker than I’d ever seen it. After being told he wouldn’t be able to shift ever again, I couldn’t blame him. I still didn’t really understand this whole “dragon” thing, but after seeing his whole family discuss it, I knew it was real. And being able to shift was clearly important to him.
     
    Despite everything, his comment about me made me feel a little bit warm inside. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And he was very serious about me. Did he mean those things, or was he just saying them out of anger? I tried not to think about it, tried not to hope.
     
    Cerul had just turned the key in the ignition when a sound made us both look up. In the heavy quiet of the night, the footsteps thumping outside were impossible to ignore. It wasn’t the clacking of heels, but the wallop of a man’s solid weight hitting the ground.
     
    It wasn’t Arabella running after us, but her husband.
     
    Cerul turned the car on. He rolled down the window, looking ready to drive away at any moment. “What is it?” he asked coldly. “Receiving my fate from my mother wasn’t bad enough? You’ve come to rub salt into my wounds, too?”
     
    “No,” the man gasped. He twitched a little as he spoke, clearly nervous. I suspected he didn’t get to do much talking when Arabella was around, and perhaps not even when she wasn’t.
     
    “Cerul, let him speak,” I said gently. “What is it, sir?”
     
    He nodded to me. “This one is respectful. I like her, even for a human.”
     
    “I don’t require your approval anymore, Father! What do you want?”
     
    “It’s about the spell that your mother used.”
     
    “Do you know it?”
     
    Cerul’s excitement was clear, but the shake of his father’s head killed it – for a moment. “No. I don’t know the spell, but I can tell you this much. You don’t need it.”
     
    Stepping out of the car, Cerul took his father by the collar and shook him violently. “What are you saying, old man? I’ve read all the dragon lore