Firefighter Dragon's Demi-God Daughter Read online

  Firefighter Dragon’s Demi-God Daughter

  Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Series

  Brittany White

  Copyright © 2021 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. Jackson

  2. Helena

  3. Jackson

  4. Helena

  5. Jackson

  6. Helena

  7. Jackson

  8. Helena

  9. Jackson

  10. Helena

  11. Jackson

  12. Helena

  13. Jackson

  14. Helena

  15. Jackson

  16. Helena

  17. Jackson

  18. Helena

  19. Jackson

  20. Helena

  Epilogue

  Undercover Wolf Shifter (SNEAK PEEK)

  Chapter 1

  Also by Brittany White

  About the Author

  Exclusive Offer

  1

  Jackson

  “Please help me!” the woman cried out.

  As usual, Jackson Hudson was first on the scene of the accident. He could hear her clearly, even through the glass. And as a dragon shifter, he could hear her heartbeat. It was racing, but steady. He was no doctor, but as a firefighter and first responder, unfortunately, he’d learned the sounds of humans in pain.

  The good news was that he could usually help them.

  Compared to a human firefighter, he was faster, he was stronger, and most importantly, he was fireproof. That part came in very handy when your job was dealing with a blaze.

  He had to be discreet. He couldn’t allow humans to see what he could do. As he got closer, he could hear the woman’s panicked breathing. She was trapped in the car. The metal of the frame had bent in the accident, and no matter how hard she shoved at the door, she couldn’t escape.

  Her screams had faded to whimpers. “Please,” she said.

  Jackson pressed his hand against the glass. Somehow it had not broken. “Ma’am. I’ll get you out. Just close your eyes and take deep breaths, okay?”

  She nodded but didn’t close her eyes.

  “I need you to close your eyes, okay? I have some tools out here and I don’t want glass in your eyes, just in case.” He dropped a crowbar on the ground for appearances sake, although it wouldn’t have done a regular man any good. A human would have needed the Jaws of Life machine for this door.

  Another shaky nod and she did as he said. Jackson listened carefully. He couldn’t hear the sound of any humans close by. There were no cars and no drones. But even so, he unzipped his large jacket and let it hang loose. He could not risk getting caught on camera using his bare hands to bend metal.

  He pressed his body close to the car and put his hands on the spot where the metal was pinning the woman in.

  Then he pulled. The metal creaked and bent, but it worked. He got the car door off and flung it to the ground.

  The woman collapsed forward, resting her head on her airbag. With her hands still over her eyes, she sobbed.

  In the distance, sirens wailed. “The ambulance is almost here,” he said, trying to reassure her.

  He checked her pulse and her blood pressure, and then her pupils. “Did you hit your head?” he asked.

  She shook her head.“No. Not at all.” She winced. “My leg hurts.”

  He glanced down. None of the bones were visible, but her leg was at a funny angle. She could have dislocated her hip as well. “Just stay still, and we’ll get you something for the pain as soon as possible.”

  Then he smelled smoke. A smoldering smell. Shit. He was trained as an EMT, but he preferred to leave fragile humans to the medics and not move them unless he had to. But this couldn’t wait. “I’m going to lift you up. It’s not safe to be in your car right now.”

  The car did not burst into flames, but it was going to have to be dealt with. And he was the best one to do it.

  Thankfully the ambulance came roaring in. Jackson relayed all of his info to the paramedics, and they started to talk to her. Before he left, the woman grabbed his arm. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Happy to help,” he said, and he meant it. He loved his job.

  Jackson hadn’t traveled much, not like his cousin Garrett who lived down in Las Vegas. Garrett had been all over the freaking world. But even so, Jackson couldn’t imagine a better place than the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The rocky coast that stretched along Oregon was exactly what a dragon shifter needed at the end of a long day.

  His clan’s home was in Cape Meares, right at the edge of the cliffs. But the fire chief, also a shifter, had established an all-dragon shifter firehouse in Tillamook, and that’s where Jackson stayed most nights. Working with an all-shifter crew was a nice break because they didn’t have to hide. In regular firehouses, any shifter had to spend a lot of time and effort keeping up appearances when humans were around.

  So often with a commercial or residential fire, a crowd gathered to watch. That meant he and his crew couldn't be caught doing anything that a human couldn't. But when they got inside a structure, then they could really let go and do what was necessary.

  They could ditch the gear and use their senses, which made it possible for them to save lives. Their hearing was enhanced, so they could hear a human that might be wedged into a hiding spot, coughing from smoke inhalation. Or once everyone was safe, they could go in and use their enhanced sense of smell to find the cause of the fire. More than once they’d found an accelerant that a human might have missed.

  However, they couldn’t be too good at their jobs, or the town would get suspicious. So they always saved every life they could, even the pets, but often they let the structure burn, even if they could have stopped it. It sucked, but they couldn’t give themselves away.

  When he’d first started, it had been shocking to see how fragile humans were. They coughed and sneezed, their bones broke, their skin tore. The dragon shifters’ bodies were so indestructible that it was sometimes hard to watch the humans suffer and die. But thankfully the lady in the car today would be fine.

  Jackson drove back to the station. He cleaned his gear and put it all away. Then he flung himself on his bed. But he didn’t stay down long. He was full of restless energy.

  He found the rest of his crew in the kitchen eating spaghetti right out of the pot. They hadn’t even bothered to sit down, which was typical. They had a huge appetite.

  He picked up a wooden spoon and poked his friend Matthew in the back. “Shove over. I’m hungry too.”

  Matt had his face crammed full of meatballs. “Sure. But you had it easy. We were on forest fire duty.”

  That was another thing Jackson’s kind did well—fight forest fires. It was easy for them to get closer, and they never had to worry about getting trapped by a raging fire the way a human did. But it was still exhausting.

  “Whatever.” He shoved his spoon into the pot and scooped out as many noodles as he could. “I’m going down to the cliffs. Anyone want to come?”

  Several voices rang out, all of them agreeing. In the end, everyone who wasn’t on duty wanted to go out flying.

  After they demolished all of the food they’d cooked, seven of them headed out to the cliffs. The heavy, wet rain and the thick fog gave them plenty of cover. Jackson stripped off his clothes and left them in a neat pile.

  He tipped his head back to the sky, and let the change rip
through his body. He loved the moment he became a dragon. He didn’t consider either his human side or his dragon side to be his true self; they were blended together, so mixed up they couldn’t be separated. His cousin Garrett had once explained that he thought of his dragon as a separate entity, removed from his human self.

  In Jackson’s mind, that was really fucking weird. But Garrett was a famous rock star, and he’d apparently spent years suppressing his dragon side, not even bothering to transform and fly.

  That was some kind of bullshit, in Jackson’s opinion. If Jackson went a few days without shifting, he got restless and irritable. But thankfully, he never had to do that.

  He spread his wings and jumped, sailing out over the ocean. A spray of salt hit him in the face, and he roared, relishing the fresh ocean air. He soared down to the choppy gray waves and dove right into the frigid water. He swam under the water, watching the fish go by. Usually, he’d stop and try to catch a few, but today he was full of human food.

  About a mile out, he popped back up, resurfacing. There were no boats nearby, so he floated on the surface, bobbing along with the tide. He watched the water roll over his scales and relaxed, letting every part of his body go limp.

  Soon enough, a few of his coworkers came sailing by, dive-bombing him. They wrestled for a few minutes, first in the air, and then in the water until his clan members became just as languid as Jackson himself was.

  In the distance, he could see a surfer struggling to stand while wearing a wetsuit. He was so fucking glad he wasn’t human. It just didn’t seem fair how breakable they were. His cousin Garrett and some of his buddies from other shifter clans had married human women, but Jackson didn’t think he could do it. He couldn't be that careful. One wrong move and he’d accidentally break her ribs.

  So he stuck to the small group of dragon shifter females in his clan, although they had grown tired of waiting for him to want to settle down. Apparently, he was supposed to have already been mated by now and have a few hatchlings as well.

  The sun set behind the heavy clouds. He shifted back and swam to the shore as a human. When he hit the sand, he scaled the rocky cliff barehanded. And when he was finally back up on the cliff, he was tired and ready to relax, maybe even go to bed.

  He opened the back of the big SUV they all rode around in, and laid down, looking up at the stars. He was happy as he was. He didn’t need a mate.

  2

  Helena

  Helena Mars straightened her shoulders as she stepped into her boss’s office inside the Portland, Oregon FBI building.

  It was a nice building. It was new and modern, built in 2009, with big windows and a green space all around it. It was a far cry from the imposing gray structures in Washington D.C. But after you’d sat in the golden halls of Mount Olympus, everything felt a little small and dingy.

  She’d only been on the job for two months, from January until March. Surely that wasn’t long enough to get herself written up. In fact, she’d gained some recognition right off the bat. During her first case, she’d solved a string of crimes. It had been so remarkable that the mayor had recognized her during a press conference.

  She sat down in one of the chairs in the bland office.

  Instead of sitting behind her desk, her boss got up and leaned against the wall. “Ms. Mars. It’s no secret that you’ve done an exceptional job in your short time here.”

  “Thank you.” Hell. Maybe she needed to slow down a little. The last thing she needed was to attract too much attention. Her boss was human. It wouldn’t do for her to start wondering why such a young field agent could accomplish so much so quickly.

  “I looked into your file again, and I see that you’ve got a high IQ. So many people think of the FBI as law enforcement that uses blunt force. But they forget what that ‘I’ stands for—intelligence. You didn’t solve those cases by shooting or hitting or making things explode. You solved those cases by looking at the data.”

  Helena sighed in relief. They thought she was a genius, not a freak to be watched with suspicion. And she was a genius, by human standards. The Gods had brains that could do things humans couldn’t fathom. And even though her blood was watered down, diluted by her human parent, her IQ was higher than most, even among the ranks of the FBI.

  In the world of the Gods, she was nothing special. Which is why she was here now. Many times, human problems were the same problems Olympus shared. If she could get the right case, then she'd actually have some information that Zeus could use.

  She nodded. “I’m happy to serve. What do you need from me?”

  Often, her stilted speech attracted attention. But they dismissed her as a geek or a nerd who was never properly socialized. Many of the children of the demi-Gods grew up around humans and they didn’t have to try so hard to blend in.

  But not her. No, she’d been raised by her grandfather, Ares, the god of war. When people her age heard the title grandfather, they thought of a kindly old man or a crotchety geezer. But her grandfather was timeless and immortal. He looked like he was twenty-five, at the most. Introducing him to anyone was a pain. They had to say he was her brother, which amused him and horrified her.

  To her, he was the strict authoritarian figure that raised her. To the rest of the world, he was a gorgeous young man. It could be pretty revolting to deal with. Luckily, he was not usually swayed by such attention. He reserved his affection for women he saw as fellow warriors, like himself.

  “We have a situation in Rockaway Beach,” Helena’s boss said.

  Helena listened as her boss described the string of crimes that had cropped up in the small town. She pulled out her tablet and took notes as well, although she probably wouldn't need them. Her recall wasn’t perfect, like her father’s and her grandfather’s, but it was pretty close. She would remember every word her boss said.

  The bureau would cover a hotel room and her food. She was to stay there until she made some headway on the case.

  “I’ll do my best,” she assured her boss.

  “We know that you will.”

  She left her boss’s office. On the way out, one of her colleagues stared at her openly. She had naively believed that once she was in the FBI, she’d no longer be ostracized. But even here, at this high-level institution, she didn’t fit in with her coworkers. If she’d been raised among humans, as a human, as so many of the other children of demi-gods were, then she wouldn’t have this problem.

  But Ares had thought blending in was of little importance. He’d spent a thousand years on Mount Olympus once, only coming down during the Second World War.

  She nodded at the woman. “Hello,” she said.

  The agent nodded back and then went back to her computer. Helena finished up her paperwork and then left. When she got to her apartment, Ares was waiting inside.

  “There is a grave problem here in this area,” he declared.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m going to need your help. I arranged for your supervisor to send you to Rockaway Beach. I trust she followed through?”

  Christ. Could she have nothing without his interference? She had earned her achievements in school and in the agency without his aid. She’d persevered, even when he and some of her relatives insisted that she didn’t need a human degree or a human job. They wanted her to come back and live in Greece, with them.

  But her genes were seventy-five percent human, which meant she had some human desires. Desires they didn’t understand.

  And she didn’t want her grandfather meddling in her business. “She did. I’m going tomorrow. Why? What’s the problem?”

  “The demons are back.”

  Helena prided herself on being tough. She liked to think she could handle bad news. But when her grandfather broke the news that the demons were back, her knees locked up. Her skin flushed hot and then cold.

  Demons.

  They were the only things on this planet that she hated. And they didn’t even belong here on earth. They’d come in
through a portal. And they’d ruined her life when she was only a child.

  She dug her fingernails into her skin. She would not think about the past right now.

  “Damn,” she whispered. She rarely cursed, finding no use for it. But this moment called for it. Demons were the one thing that could hurt a God. And they could harm demi-Gods and their children even more. In fact, they could kill them.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Ares said. “They are damned. And they need to stay where they belong in the underworld, but somehow they have managed to escape. Now they are on the surface, wreaking havoc.”

  “Are they killing humans?” Helena asked.

  “Not yet. Instead, they seem to be working with them.”

  “Working with humans? I didn’t think a demon would lower itself like that.”

  “These appear to be a new breed.”

  She forced her knees to unlock and sat down on one of her dining chairs.

  “That’s not all,” he said.

  “What else?”

  “There’s a witches’ coven not too far from that town.”

  She nodded. Witches could be a stable influence on any supernatural community. But the key word was “could.” So often they fell victim to outside influences, and some were corrupted by the quest for raw power. Once they began to seek power, they were dangerous. Very dangerous.

  In the United States, where Helena had lived most of her life, they had kidnapped humans to enchant them and then let the humans commit crimes in the witches’ names. The humans then paid the price for their crimes.