Professor Dragon's Virgin (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 5) Read online

  Professor Dragon’s Virgin

  Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Series

  Brittany White

  Copyright © 2020 by Brittany White

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Nora

  2. Niall

  3. Nora

  4. Niall

  5. Nora

  6. Niall

  7. Nora

  8. Niall

  9. Nora

  10. Niall

  11. Nora

  12. Niall

  13. Nora

  14. Niall

  15. Nora

  16. Niall

  17. Nora

  18. Niall

  19. Nora

  20. Niall

  21. Nora

  22. Niall

  23. Nora

  24. Niall

  25. Nora

  Epilogue

  Bear’s Forever Love (SNEAK PEEK)

  Chapter 1

  Also by Brittany White

  About the Author

  Exclusive Offer

  Blurb

  To protect her, a dragon-shifter professor must guard a virgin witch and shield her from their shared past.

  * * *

  The Virgin Witch

  I am the daughter of a monster,

  A cruel witch who wanted me to follow in her footsteps.

  Fifteen years ago, my mother killed an entire clan of dragon shifters.

  As soon as I was able, I fled to escape her wrath,

  But another group of monsters imprisoned me.

  I was held captive for four long years.

  Now I've escaped, and I’m going to live as a human.

  At the university, my history professor is a gorgeous man,

  But he is not a human—my sexy professor is a dragon shifter.

  My mother killed his family.

  Now he’s chasing me.

  The handsome shifter says he can't let me go.

  I’m locked in his home. He watches my every move.

  I am his enemy.

  There's only one problem—I'm falling in love with him.

  * * *

  The Irish Professor

  Instead of fighting, I wanted to learn.

  I left my clan to attend university

  And broke my parents’ hearts.

  In my absence, a group of sadistic witches murdered every member of my clan.

  One of them even brainwashed me.

  Now I'm back home in Ireland, and I teach history at the university.

  Alone in the world, I live as a human, but witches are still my enemy.

  On the first day of class, there's a beautiful young woman in the front row.

  Alarms go off in my head. She should not be there.

  This pretty young woman is a witch.

  I cannot allow her to live.

  I chase her down and lock her in my home.

  Despite her potent bloodline, this petite student is generous and enchanting.

  Without permission, this witch has stolen my heart.

  * * *

  Can a dragon shifter learn to trust the witch whose mother killed his family?

  * * *

  ***

  1

  Nora

  “You will never outrun us,” a cruel voice called out. “There’s no point in trying.”

  She jumped over a log and was met with blinding pain as her face smacked into a branch. Eyes stinging, she kept going, stumbling over a fallen tree. She managed to get upright, only to slip on a patch of ice. As the sun set, the overhang of the leaves in the forest was so thick that she could barely see. Her eyesight was far better than a human’s, but it was far inferior to a werewolf’s perfect night vision.

  It was true that Nora Deacon couldn’t outrun a werewolf. She might be a powerful witch, but she wasn’t a fast runner. She swiped her arm across her forehead, and er white sleeve came away stained with blood.

  She wasn’t going to make it if she kept running from them. She crouched behind a large tree. Its gnarled branches provided a little bit of cover. She sucked in a few desperate breaths while her heart thundered. Their hearing was good too. It was certainly better than hers. They’d probably hear her gasping for air.

  She had avoided using her powers so far, and using them now would only make it easier for the pack of wolves to find her. She couldn’t risk it, not yet. If they caught her… She couldn’t bear to think about it. She’d already been their prisoner for almost four years since she turned eighteen.

  When she turned eighteen, she’d been living in Ireland with her mother’s coven. In response to her mother’s increasingly harsh behavior, Nora decided to find her father. She had no memory of him, and like so many young people who grew up without a father present, she wanted to know who he was. But unlike most eighteen-year-olds, she was the daughter of an influential witch, a witch who’d led a massacre against a well-known dragon shifter tribe and lived to brag about it. Hearing the stories made Nora’s stomach turn.

  Her mother’s gloating over their conquests and destruction was one of the main reasons that Nora left.

  There weren’t many witches in the world—they kept their numbers low on purpose. Witches didn’t mate like others who had supernatural abilities. Many witches despised their partners and left them as soon as they conceived. Most only partnered with humans so that they could control them. They never slept with Fae or with shifters because they could not tolerate being challenged. But Nora’s father was not a human. He was a wizard.

  That coupling was very rare. The result of the union between a witch and a wizard was Nora, a young witch who had quite a few abilities.

  If someone gave her a choice, she’d get rid of her powers. She’d be human and have a happy life. She’d even settle for a mediocre life. Eighteen years of feeling out of place in her mother’s coven had left her living in pure despair, which led to a futile quest to find her father.

  She had not found her father. Instead, she’d wandered directly into a den of werewolves. The alpha was called Maxim when he was in his human form. He was big, burly, and vicious, but he had a small amount of charm from time to time. It quickly evaporated, and she saw his true nature.

  They had enticed her to stay at first by promising to find her father. That search had never materialized, and then they wouldn’t let her leave. They’d immediately sensed her unbridled talent for harnessing magic, and within months, she was their captive. They made her help them hunt. They made her help them steal, and they made her help them expand their commune in the woods.

  They had a few low-level mages who’d banded together to keep her from leaving. Then they’d threatened to kill her. Eventually, she’d tried to escape anyway. She’d made it out of their compound, but then they’d upped their threat—they said they’d kill every human in the nearby village if she left. She knew those villagers. She’d bought vegetables from them the few times she was allowed to go to the market. They always waved at her and greeted her with a warm smile.

  She couldn’t let them die. So she’d stayed and suffered there alone for nearly four years. The breaking point came a month ago when the werewolf pack had decided she was to be the alpha’s mate. There were no words to describe the revulsion she felt.

  “I won’t do it,” she’d told the head beta. “I will not mate with him.”
>
  Maxim was a big, nasty brute, and she was untouched. She was a virgin, and she intended to stay that way, maybe forever. She certainly would not share her body with one who didn’t value her as a living being.

  The beta had sneered at her. “You will mate with him on the winter solstice, and we don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  She had over two months to make her escape. Already, the bitter cold was creeping into their tiny compound in Sortavala, Russia. Sortavala was a tiny town near the border closest to Finland. They lived in the forest, hidden away from humans. The wolves posted guards at every exit, and they never stopped watching her.

  So, just like she had years ago, she complied with their requests. She acted like she’d given in and that she really planned to mate with Maxim. Only this time, she wasn’t going to be threatened. They really would have to kill her. She didn’t want any blood on her hands, but she just had to hope that she could get to a town fast enough to call for help. She wasn’t sure if her mother’s coven would help her or if help would come in the form of the humans that lived in Sortavala.

  She shivered in the twenty-degree night air. Without magic, she felt cold, just like a human. The wolves didn’t feel the cold much at all. They could stay out here all night, circling her, salivating at the thought of catching her.

  She would never give them the satisfaction. She would not let him have her, not her body, and not her soul.

  She pressed the palms of her hands into the rough bark of the tree, drawing on its strength. The tree understood her. When it was time, the tree would help her. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, letting all the energy pour into her body. She’d always been able to channel the elements around her, and she drew on the strength of the tree, the roots beneath, the soil, and the water that coursed deep below the surface of the ground.

  She exhaled and opened her eyes. Now she was glowing. They would see her, that was certain. She’d just have to overpower them. All these years, she’d refrained from hurting them. That ended now. She would be no one’s property. She belonged to the earth and no one else. Not to the coven where she’d been born, and certainly not the bastards who’d held her against her will for so long.

  With her heightened senses, she heard the sound of their growls as they closed in on her. She heard their steady heartbeats, which were steady because they were so certain of their mission and believed they’d be successful. They felt like she was theirs.

  A branch cracked, and she whipped her head to the side. She could see them.

  “Come on, little witch. We know you’re close by.” The alpha made a show of sniffing the air. “You aren’t getting away. You’re mine,” Maxim rumbled low in his chest.

  Every cell in her body reacted. Her skin vibrated with the force of her conviction.

  I will never be yours. I will never belong to anyone.

  She balled her hands into fists, and then she released them, unfurling her magic. She didn’t need a spell or an incantation. She only had to think about what she wanted. With an ear-shattering bang, the tree exploded. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would slow them down.

  As she crossed the border into Finland, she finally took a deep breath. The werewolves rarely left Russia. She was going home to Ireland.

  As she stepped out of the airport at the Shannon International Airport in Ireland, her stomach clenched. She was home. For some, returning home was a cause for celebration. For Nora, it was apprehension. Yet there was no denying that the land called out to her. The magic that flowed through her veins came from this land. Her ancestors had been there for thousands of years.

  The air was heavy with fog, and the lake stretched out in front of her. She couldn’t bear to crawl into a cramped taxi. She was going to walk.

  She knew exactly where she was going—to the National University of Ireland, Galway. She would leave her magic behind. If she didn’t use it, most of the supernatural world wouldn’t be able to detect her presence. She would remain hidden to Fae, vampires, werewolves, witches, and, most importantly, dragon shifters.

  Now that she was home, hiding from the dragon shifters was crucial for her. Once upon a time, her kind had an ancient alliance with the dragons. They’d formed a pact that vowed cooperation between their groups and protection for the witches as long as the humans were not harmed.

  It was her mother who resented humans so greatly that she violated the pact. Her actions forced the dragon shifters to withdraw from their alliance. The witches would not abide by their withdrawal. They viewed it as the ultimate betrayal. The dragon shifters maintained they were doing the right thing by not allowing humans to be slaughtered.

  For Nora, no other word besides massacre was appropriate. She’d been seven years old when the witches attacked. She would never forget the piercing screams as the witches had gathered together and combined their spells. The dragon shifter clan had been caught off-guard. The dragons had no warning that anything was coming for them.

  Now, a witch would never be welcome anywhere near a dragon shifter. She understood that and was prepared to avoid them, although she didn’t think any still called Ireland home. Most were dead. The others had scattered across the globe.

  If any still dwelled on the Cliffs of Moher, it shouldn’t be hard to avoid them because she was going to be living a human life. And if she was going to live a human life, she needed a human education. She had been well educated in math and human literature, and she could read and write in French, Spanish, and Latin. Now Russia too. But she knew nothing of current events, and she had very little formal knowledge of science.

  Her last act of magic would be to secure a human ID and birth certificate. She had neither. Her coven had always lived outside of human society. At the airport in Finland, she had relied on a spell to make herself nearly invisible so that she could sneak onto the plane and sit in an empty seat.

  In Galway’s public library, she used the internet to register for the university. She would be living in a dorm room, and once all of her paperwork was in order, she went to a department store and purchased a backpack, water bottle, and five sets of outfits that would appeal to a young woman her age. For the first semester, she was only going to be taking four classes. She imagined that four classes would provide more than enough content to overwhelm her.

  For four years, all she had done was practice spells that were meant to increase the strength of the Russian werewolf pack. She wished she could expel that particular knowledge from her brain permanently and make room for something more useful.

  When she arrived in her dorm room, she was met with a bare mattress on a metal bed frame. The conditions did not faze her. She could sleep outside on a rock if necessary, but it would look really odd for a normal college student to have absolutely no personal items in her dorm room.

  In the dorm, she stepped into the hallway and concentrated, peering into the adjoining room with her mind. She couldn’t exactly get a clear image of the room, but she had a general impression of a fluffy blue rug and a matching bedspread. Photographs decorated one entire wall, and little white lights were strung across the ceiling.

  Clearly, her standards were way too low for college life. It didn’t help matters that she’d been living in a bare-bones wooden cabin in the Russian wilderness for far too long. She went back to the store and bought a pillow, a bedspread, and a lamp. She didn’t need any of it, but it would help her blend in if anyone went into her room. She stopped by an electronics store and picked up a new laptop as well.

  In her mother’s coven, they often lived in tents made out of thick canvas material. Their only decor was blankets made of colorful textiles. They slept on pallets directly on the ground so that they could always be connected to the natural world and draw on its strength. They moved around every few months, but they always stayed in Western Ireland.

  By midnight, she was exhausted. She didn’t miss the feeling of being surrounded by werewolves, but she did miss the feeling of sleeping close to the
outdoors. She pulled the cover over her head and closed her eyes. All she wanted was to have a typical, boring, completely unremarkable first day of college.

  2

  Niall

  Niall came back to himself slowly. He blinked his eyes and looked down at his arm, where he saw skin instead of scales. He was no longer in dragon form.

  Dragon form? Why in the devil was he in dragon form? His head ached something fierce, but he’d had nothing to drink, not that he remembered. He also wasn’t in his house in the Galway countryside, grading papers for his Political and Cultural Geography course. He was standing on the Cliffs of Moher, the place where he’d been born. Below him, the waves crashed, throwing themselves against the sharp rocks. Above him, clouds drifted over a hazy gray sky. Ashes drifted in the air, and there were large black scorch marks on parts of the green grass. The smell of smoke clogged his throat.

  He lifted his arm to rub his face, but his wrists were bound together.

  Fucking hell. The curse came to mind unbidden. Niall rarely used such strong language, but right now, he felt it was warranted.

  A man appeared next to him. No, that wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t a human man. He was another dragon shifter. Niall jerked away from him. It had been well over a decade since a dragon shifter had been this close to Niall.