Restoring The Broken (Rogue Dragons Book 3) Read online

  RESTORING THE BROKEN

  Emilia Hartley

  © Copyright 2020 by Blues Publishing. - All rights reserved.

  The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Legal Notice:

  This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Chapter One

  Bree Halstead watched another woman loop her arm around Erik Beck’s shoulders. Rage turned Bree’s cheeks red hot as she watched the woman’s manicured nails tickle Erik’s earlobe. Bree could do nothing more than duck her head and fill another cup with ice.

  She wasn’t Erik’s girlfriend. She wasn’t even sure Erik knew she existed. He leaned on the bar, his smoky sunglasses obscuring his eyes. The woman cajoled him in a clear attempt to take him home.

  Every woman in the bar wanted a night with Erik Beck, but no one knew him like Bree. She was the one who’d spent the early parts of her shift listening to him. She was the one he’d saved from a rowdy group of college-aged boys looking for rough fun. The other women had him for a night. Bree knew she would have him for the rest of her life.

  She snuck another glance at him and wondered if he was looking at her from behind those sunglasses. He almost never took them off. She’d seen his eyes, though. One blue and the other green. She didn’t understand why he felt the need to hide them. She yearned to see that mismatched gaze every day of her life.

  Her co-workers had warned her not to develop feelings for any of her patrons. They’d cautioned against even sympathy, but Bree had thrown all advice out the window the moment Erik stepped into the bar.

  The others gave him a wide berth and claimed he was a freak. They whispered about the crazy fights he and his friends had started in the bar. Others shared stories of Erik starting a fight in the streets. Bree ignored them all.

  There had to be some reason behind those incidents, something that an outsider wouldn’t understand. She knew Erik wasn’t the monster they all thought him to be.

  She pushed a frothy beer toward an older gentleman. The guy gave her a nod, but his eyes were glued to her breasts. She bit back her sigh and tucked his meager tip into her pocket. Another bartender had told her that this man would tip better if she bent and gave him a full view down her shirt, but the idea of it made her skin crawl tonight.

  She fisted her hand at her side, the other hand going to the small bump in her pocket. Her tips were awful. She’d had better nights. Since Erik had entered her life, it seemed as though her ability to withstand creeps and pervs had vanished.

  Once more, she snuck a glance at Erik. Except, he wasn’t on his stool anymore. She caught a glimpse of his back as he lurched away. Concern made her stomach roll. Before giving her decision much thought, she told her co-worker that she’d be right back and ducked out from behind the bar.

  Monty raised a brow but didn’t say anything. He went back to flirting with the closeted middle-aged men at the bar.

  Bree pushed through the crowd, keeping Erik’s jacket in her sights. Then, a door swung between them, and she came face to face with the sign for the men’s restroom. She jerked back. Chewing her lip, she debated giving up.

  You can’t stalk him into the bathroom! What’s wrong with you? Bree admonished herself.

  She stepped back. Monty needed her at the bar. Saturday evenings were busy, and the bar would only get busier. A sound like a snarl echoed in the men’s room as she turned. Bree froze and strained to hear more.

  She lifted a hand to the door, the bracelets on her wrist jangling together as they slid down her arm. The snarling stopped. She wanted to say something, but nothing would come to her. The thump of her heart filled her ears and made it difficult to hear anything through the door.

  Finally, she swallowed and managed to ask, “Is everything alright in there?”

  Either Erik didn’t answer, or she couldn’t hear over her own fear.

  Fights had broken out in the men’s room before. That wasn’t all that unusual with the weird rules men had over urinal etiquette. The snarl she’d caught could have been the beginning of an argument. If that was the case, she should have gone to get Monty.

  Instead, Bree gently pushed the door. It swung open at her touch. At first, she couldn’t see anyone. She took a step inside. A sense of wrongness overtook her, but she blamed it on being in the wrong restroom.

  Her mouth suddenly felt dry. She tried to lick her lips before calling out Erik’s name, but she couldn’t pry them apart. No one stood at the urinals. The door of the single stall was closed. She stepped up and put her ear against it.

  “You don’t need to be that close to eavesdrop in here,” Erik growled.

  Bree lunged back.

  Oh, my god. He’s taking a shit, and I totally walked in on him.

  She spun on her heel, ready to hightail it out of the bathroom, when a crash came from inside the stall. The walls of it shuddered. Bree couldn’t bring herself to leave anymore. Something was wrong.

  “You can’t break out here. Not here. Wait. Wait until we get back,” Erik whispered in the stall.

  Bree tilted her head, confident that Erik hadn’t been talking to her. She wanted to ask if he had a dog in there or maybe a kitten tucked into his pocket. Men’s pockets could hold almost anything, and it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d seen a man bring a stray kitten in so he could get more attention from the ladies at the bar.

  But a snarl ripped through the room while the stall walls shook violently. Bree didn’t stop to think. She grabbed the top of the stall door, gave it a firm wiggle and yanked it when the lock mechanism slid free. It really was the worst lock ever made.

  Erik hunched with his forehead against the stall wall. One fist rested above his head. His knuckles had gone white. As she watched, a shudder rippled down his spine.

  Bree found her voice. “What’s wrong? Do I need to call emergency services?”

  Erik didn’t answer. He clutched the sides of his head and his sunglasses clattered to the floor. Bree’s heart clenched. She reached out for him. She thought that if she could hold him while she called for help, then everything would be fine. Maybe not that instant, but soon enough. She thought she could help.

  She’d never misjudged any situation so badly before.

  Erik’s head snapped up. His mismatched eyes glowed with an inhuman light. Bree didn’t jerk back. She didn’t move. Her hand hovered in the air between them. What was probably only a second seemed like an infinity while she watched him.

  Bree saw his lips part. She saw the hint of razor-sharp teeth past them. Then, Erik’s form blurred. Pain shot from her hand up her arm. Bree wanted to cry out, but the sound stuck in her throat. The sensation turned from sharp to searing.

  She didn’t know what happened. Her vision darkened around the edges. She blinked and looked down at her hand in a daze. Blood coated her olive skin as it poured from a ring of bite marks.

  Erik’s voice sounded distant when he let out a string of expleti
ves.

  ***

  The bartender collapsed. Erik caught her before she could hit the floor. It was as if the sight of her in peril made the fight between his beasts come to a pause. He cradled the woman as his heart thundered.

  Her blood spilled on the floor, filling the tile cracks. Erik cursed again. He’d never had an episode here before. Usually the flow of whiskey kept his beasts quiet. Something about the woman that’d approached him earlier and the way the bartender had glared at him had stirred his beasts.

  He’d thought the bartender might have been mad at him for unintentionally flirting with her girlfriend, but the bartender had come to help him. She’d ripped the stall door open and reached out to him. He couldn’t get the look on her face out of his mind. It’d been a blend of concern and determination, the same way someone might look at a feral dog in need of love.

  She’d trusted him, and he didn’t even know her name. Erik was sure she’d told him before. She’d served him so many drinks that she knew what he would want the moment he stepped through the door.

  Now, she was passed out and bleeding in his arms. What the hell had come over him? He’d never lashed out like that. Not with a human woman, anyway. His monstrous half had seen something it could destroy, and Erik hadn’t been fast enough to stop it.

  He wasn’t strong enough.

  He wasn’t anything.

  Except for a failure. He hoisted the woman in his arms and wondered what he should do with her. No one was going to let him take her far, but Erik needed to sit with her to see if she was going to change. If he stepped out into the bar with her in his arms, the entire place would take one look at her condition and riot.

  He wished he could call Casey or Dillon to run interference while he found the woman’s purse, so he could take her home, but he didn’t want the clan to know how badly he’d screwed up. This woman could become a dragon shifter.

  Okay, so maybe he was overreacting. To change a human into a dragon shifter, Erik would have had to shift. Since he’d kept his beasts at bay, he figured she would wake up in an hour and need a bandage.

  Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. He took a step toward the door and his body locked up. Was it fear of being caught? Or, was it something else?

  He looked down at the woman in his arms. Her dark hair had fallen away from her face. While she usually had a glow to her cheeks, she seemed drained of all color now. He dragged in a ragged breath and felt his lungs constrict.

  He had no other choice. If he’d…changed her, then he needed to risk the riot and get her home. A shudder passed through him, but he ducked his head and shoved through the door.

  On a Saturday night, no one paid attention to Erik as he carried the bartender out. His stomach sank with disappointment, not because he’d hoped to be rid of her but because he’d expected someone to care that he was carrying an unconscious woman.

  Erik had never felt more like a monster, but maybe that was what he should have felt like all the time.

  He set the bartender in the passenger seat of his car as dread trickled down his spine. He caught the edge of her wallet peeking out of her back pocket and cringed when he tugged it out. Everything he did screamed with wrongness, but he needed to make sure she got home okay.

  That was all that mattered. He wanted…Bree Halstead to be alright.

  Chapter Two

  Darkness swirled around her.

  Bree raised a brow and looked around, but everything was dark. This had to be a dream. She thought that if she could acknowledge that, then she would be able to break free. The darkness held her tight though. It seemed to tug at her heels. It grabbed at her hands and tried to lead her deeper into the nothing.

  Don’t let go. The mystery voice echoed around Bree.

  She dug in her heels and tried to find the source of the sound. The darkness kept tugging, though. It pulled and pulled, and she was just so damn tired.

  Don’t you dare let go. We have to live.

  Bree jerked away from the darkness grasping at her. A growl started in her mind and filled her chest with a defiant sound. She stumbled back.

  Good, the voice said from inside her. We need to hold on. Death cannot have us yet. A mate waits for us.

  Bree had a whole lot of questions, but the only word that resonated with her was death. She swallowed and shook herself. The darkness no longer tried to drag her down. Without its weight at her ankles and wrists, she felt impossibly strong.

  The voice inside Bree told her to turn around. Time was of importance, so she didn’t ask why. She just ran. Away from the nothingness, away from death.

  ***

  Bree groaned. Fragments of a strange dream clung to her. She tried to hold onto them, onto the voice and what it’d told her, but it all slipped through her fingers like water until she was left with the vague notion that something important had happened.

  Her head throbbed like she’d spent all weekend drinking, but she hadn’t. She rolled onto her side as her memories came rushing back. No drinks had been involved. Not that she could recall. She’d been working. Erik had rushed away from the bar, and she’d gone to check on him.

  She shot upright. She wasn’t at the bar anymore.

  The four walls around her were familiar. Her ugly dresser with a second-hand television perched atop it sat at the end of the bed. She kicked off her own blankets and peered around. She wondered how she’d gone from the bar to her own apartment as the rest of the night caught up with her.

  Erik had bitten her.

  Heart pounding, she looked at her hand. A white bandage covered where the marks would have been. If she took it off, she knew she would see a row of punctures where teeth had broken her skin. She held her hand to her chest and scowled.

  Who’d brought her home? If Monty had driven her home, he wouldn’t have taken the time to patch her up. She couldn’t remember doing it herself. She couldn’t even remember leaving the bar.

  Bree stood and swayed. She had to brace herself against the headboard to keep from falling back onto the bed. Her head spun, but the worst part was the smells. An army of scents assaulted her senses and made her forehead throb. For a moment, she thought someone had spilled a perfume collection in her room, but there was no evidence of a mess.

  She’d never owned a perfume collection to begin with. But as she took a wobbling step forward, the scents changed. The smell of wax, oil, chemical vanilla, and char slammed into her. Her gaze slid sideways until she glimpsed a candle on the desk near the door. At no point since she’d bought the candle had it ever smelled so strongly.

  Bree panicked, recalling that pregnant women often experienced heightened olfactory senses, then realized she hadn’t slept with anyone for weeks. The missing hours bothered her, but there was no way that she would be experiencing pregnancy symptoms if…

  Her stomach lurched. She glanced back at the bed she’d crawled out of. It bore no evidence of anything other than kindness. Someone had bandaged her and tucked her in. Surely, that meant nothing bad had happened.

  “I don’t drink on the job for a reason,” she groaned.

  A faint shuffle in the other room reached her ears. She froze, suddenly aware that she wasn’t alone. Backtracking, she pulled a pink baseball bat out from behind her headboard. She hefted it in her hand as if to remind herself that she wasn’t unarmed. A baseball bat couldn’t fight off a bullet, but there was a chance she could knock out the intruder before they even noticed her.

  She slipped out into the hall, quietly advancing toward the source of the sound. Someone moved around her kitchen. She didn’t wait to find out what they were after. She darted out of the hall, lifted the bat, and swung.

  The intruder spun, faster than should have been possible, and threw up a hand. Her shoulder reverberated from the impact.

  Erik glared up at her before his gaze slid to his hand. Bree dropped the bat and threw her hands over her mouth. His fingers should have been wrecked, but he seemed fine. Still, he stared at his hand
as if she had hurt him. He shook his fingers as he looked her up and down.

  “Well, you’re up.”

  His sunglasses were gone, revealing a genuinely concerned expression. She’d never seen so much emotion on his face before. Her lips parted as words failed her.

  Erik pressed his lips together, nodded, and turned. “I should probably go. Glad to see you’re alright.”

  Before he could step out of sight, Bree blurted out, “What the hell happened?”

  He paused.

  “Did you bring me home?” She cocked her head, trying to understand the man she’d thought she knew.

  The Erik she knew would never bite a person. He wouldn’t kidnap her and take her back to her own apartment. But she didn’t know Erik at all. She’d had a vision of him in her head, a fairytale knight that would rescue her from her shitty bartending job. In her daydream, they would have ridden off into the sunset on his motorcycle.

  “You don’t even own a motorcycle. Do you?” Her voice became accusing.

  Erik stepped back, eyes wide. “Uh, no.”

  “I should have known!” Bree threw her hands in the air.

  “What does that have to do with anything? I never told you I had a motorcycle.”

  Her cheeks heated. She paused and turned her face away from him. A new energy pulsed in her chest and filled her limbs with the excess. She couldn’t shake it off, couldn’t calm it down.

  “Bree?” Erik asked from near the door.

  “Hm?” She wanted to turn to him and beg him to stay, but she could tell, now, that she’d developed a vision of him that wasn’t real. If Erik stayed and fell short of the version of him that lived in her head, she would have to face the fact that no one would ever be right for her.

  “Are you alright?”

  No. Hell, no.

  Her body felt all sorts of wrong. She could smell absolutely everything, including him. She felt something in her chest that had never been there before.