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

beneath her face, she then rested her cheek against the surprisingly hard surface. She wasn’t sure if he could feel her touch, but she was very glad to be pressed between her men once more—even if it was several hundred feet in the air.
    Nathan held her securely, his arms and legs bracketing her in such a way that even if she wasn’t holding on she wouldn’t fall. But curiosity won over fear and she opened her eyes to see what was happening below. The safe house was well and truly alight. A few minutes more, and she and Nathan may not have made it out alive. Without Thomas’s timely interference they may even have been on the front porch when it had exploded into flames. She shuddered at the memory of just how close she’d come to dying.
    “Take us down,” Nathan yelled to Brody as they circled once more over the area where the fighting had been. “Benjamin has six dragons in custody,” he told Ava in a quieter voice. “Trying to kill a PUP squad member carries a rather hefty punishment. Hopefully that will be the end of it—at least for the next thirty or forty years.”
    Brody slowly circled to the ground and landed a safe distance from the burning safe house. Thomas sauntered over to them casually, acting somehow as if they were having a grand adventure rather than a fight for their lives, and handed her a pair of Brody’s jeans. The dragon behind her huffed a sound that she figured was a thank-you, and then changed back into one of the men she loved. She handed Brody his jeans, and he somehow managed to drag them on and pull her into his embrace at the same time.
    “Are you all right, sweetheart? Is the baby okay?” he asked as he hugged her almost too tightly.
    “I’m fine,” she said as she tried not to shake with reaction. It wasn’t really working, but she tried anyway. She took a steadying breath and concentrated on the life growing inside her. The emotions she felt were of only warmth and security. She smiled. “I’m pretty sure the baby is fine, too.”
    “Thank the goddess.” Brody held her close as Nathan and the rest of the teams cleaned up the area, brought the fire under control, and dragged the unconscious dragons now in human form through something that looked like invisible doorways. “Slip travel,” Brody said when he noticed the direction of her gaze. “Kind of like a vortex jump, but apparently more nauseating for humans.”
    “More nauseating?” She couldn’t imagine feeling worse than she did after a “jump” with Brody and fervently hoped she could avoid both forms of travel whenever possible. Although, considering how little the last one had affected her, maybe they wouldn’t be so bad while she was pregnant.
    But as two of the soldiers lifted an unconscious, handcuffed woman onto a stretcher, the woman woke up and started shouting abuse. Brody sighed, kissed Ava’s forehead, and signaled for Nathan to take over. Once she was safely ensconced in Nathan’s embrace, Brody headed over to the injured woman.
    Ava wasn’t all that surprised to hear him address the woman as “mother.”
    “The handcuffs work in a similar way to the protection wards in the house,” Nathan whispered when he felt her tense up. “Brody’s mother can’t change into her dragon form. Too bad it doesn’t muzzle the hate-filled words as well.”
    A stream of curses, threats, and angry ranting filled the air as Brody’s mother threatened every vile, horrible kind of death to him, his whore, and his offspring. Brody calmly spoke to the woman who’d given birth to him and then nodded to a man holding what looked like a video camera, spoke a few words to his commanding officer, and then turned away from his mother.
    “Will it be enough?” Nathan asked as Brody reached them.
    He nodded. “Benjamin is going to push it through the Ruling Body as a matter of urgency. Thank the goddess we thought to add a paranormal ancestor to Ava’s new identity.”
    “Paranormal ancestor?” Ava asked,