Free Desired by Dragons: BBW Paranormal Romance (Dragons of New York Book 2) by Terry Bolryder Page B

gone? No one else could put up with me, Quill. No one,” he said. “I can’t think of a better partner, if you would just stop leaving.”
    “I want to use my power,” Quill said in a broken voice. “I want to fulfill my purpose.”
    Drake put up a hand, running his fingers lightly through Quill’s hair and tilting his face up to look at him. “You have a good heart, far better than mine. But maybe it’s time to accept you have to pull back and work with me, together. You can’t just keep running. There are wyverns involved now. Did you hear that part?”
    Quill shook out of Drake’s grasp, looking slightly flushed by the contact. It had been oddly tender. The dragons seemed to communicate better through touch than they did with words sometimes.
    “What are wyverns?” she asked curiously.
    Drake let out a long sigh and sat in a chair across from her. “When a shifter mixes their blood with a dragon, a new kind of creature can be formed. Something like a dragon, but not a full dragon. Smaller than dragons, with no powers and a vicious, poisonous bite. If a human mates with a dragon and shares blood, this doesn’t happen. That’s because dragons were meant to mate with humans. There is a clean slate there for our blood. But when it mingles with shifters…”
    “How do they get the blood?”
    Drake sent Quill a look and then continued warily. “That’s why Quill was kidnapped recently. And why dragons work in pairs. Dragons are the enforcers of the shifter world. A lot of the rule breakers hate us, want to find any way to get leverage against us. The attempts to steal blood to create wyverns is part of that. But wyverns don’t live long, and they aren’t very strong. The main danger is wyverns may be able to pass over barriers only dragons are supposed to be able to pass through. But it hasn’t been tested.”
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
    “Like our apartments,” Drake said, gesturing to the door. “There’s a spell on the entryway. Only us or someone with us, like you, can enter.”
    She nodded in relief. “So my ex couldn’t get in. Wait, Gentry said my ex was involved with your enemies. Did he mean wyverns?”
    “Or wolves,” Quill said. “Gentry is usually pretty cryptic about his visions. I’m not sure how clear they are, and obviously, he has to be careful about how it influences people to act.”
    “It makes sense,” she said, feeling nervous. If this all came back to her ex, she’d have to talk about him. And she didn’t want to.
    “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Quill said, running a hand through his long hair and brushing it off his face. “But we need to know about your ex.”
    She nodded and stood up to get her phone. She’d left it on the kitchen table this morning when the other dragons had taken her.
    “I’m sorry for rushing out like that, by the way,” Quill said, looking guilty. “If I had known.”
    “You should have known,” Drake said tersely. “Anything can happen when you go out like that.”
    “I’m learning, okay?” Quill said. But he did seem slightly more relaxed in general, now that he knew Drake needed him. She saw Quill’s dilemma. It would suck to have such a wonderful power and not be able to use it.
    “Well, excuse me for being durable,” Drake said.
    “That’s the thing,” she said. “You’re not. You’re actually quite fragile, emotionally. Aren’t you?”
    Drake took a step back. “What?” 
    Quill leaned in, listening intently. 
    “You freak out about the smallest things in regard to me or Quill, whether it’s eating, safety, etc. You’re high strung. That’s why you need Quill.”
    Quill looked down at his hands, but she could see her words meant something to him.
    “Fine,” Drake said, folding his hands. “Yes, I’m a mess inside. But if the people I cared for weren’t disappearing on me all the time, I think I’d be fine.”
    “Drake,” Quill said sardonically. “You do care.”
    Drake turned