To Date A Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Romance (Weredragon Warriors Book 1) (5 page)

Amelia swallowed, feeling
both inspired and humbled. She couldn't let these kids down. She
had to get past her nightmares, banish her demons and live a happy,
healthy, meaningful life. She would live in the present, not in the
past. And she would hold on to her goddamn mind. No more monsters
and mythical creatures. She would not live in a horror movie of her
own making.

She could do it. She would
do it, for her parents, her students. And for herself.

Balling her fist resolutely,
Amelia held her head high and gave her students a wide, brilliant
smile. Immediately she was rewarded with a dozen happy, excited
grins. The children were all raring to go, eager to start their
school day. Learning was fun, making friends was fun, everything was
bright and colorful when you're a kid.

Amelia closed the classroom
door and did a quick headcount. She knew all the kids by name, and
she was getting to know their likes, dislikes, personalities and
quirks. Her students were little people with big personalities and
there was never a dull moment in class.

Amelia counted the children
again. Yep, one kid was absent. Amelia scanned the group of
cherubic, glowing faces and frowned.

Tessa Draek was absent today.
She hoped that Tessa hadn't caught the flu. There was a flu bug
going around, and a couple of kids had stayed home last week.

Tessa had made quite an
impression on her. Tessa was a sweet, vivacious, generous girl who
was always willing to help her classmates and share her things with
them. She also had a rather wild and wonderful imagination.

Just the day before, the
children had taken turns to come up to the front of the class and
tell their classmates about the people they admired. When it was
Tessa's turn, she had stood in front of the class and said, “The
person I admire most is my dad. My dad is awesome. He fights bad
guys and he's a dragon.”

“A dragon?”

Tessa hadn't flinched at
Amelia's question. Instead she had nodded firmly and said, “My
dad, Uncle Edriq and Uncle Zul are dragons.”

Amelia had assumed that
Tessa's dad and uncles were in the military. Maybe DRAGON was an
acronym for a military unit, like the SEALs. Amelia had promptly
looked up DRAGON on her phone to see if there was a new special-ops
unit she hadn't heard about. There wasn't.

Amelia clapped her hands
smartly to get the kids to pipe down. “All right, children.
Go to your tables now. We'll be doing some drawing today. We're
going to draw all the things we can find at the supermarket,”
Amelia announced to her bright-eyed students.

As the children started
drawing enthusiastically, Amelia walked round the tables to check on
their progress and pick stray crayons and colored pencils off the
floor.

She was just walking past the
window when something caught her eye.

Amelia gasped and staggered
back. The crayons and pencils dropped from her hand and scattered
across the floor.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

There was something outside
the window, in the sky. And it looked like...a dragon.

Amelia forced herself to
blink. Repeatedly.

Nope. She wasn't
hallucinating.

It was still there.

That...that
dragon
.
The same dragon she had seen or imagined or dreamed up last night.

The huge, magnificent dragon
was flying across the sky, past the skyscrapers and buildings and
coming closer and closer.

It was an unbelievable,
incredible, impossible sight. The dragon's shimmering blue scales
reflected the morning sun as it glided towards the school building.
The dragon tilted to the side and Amelia let out a shocked, horrified
cry.

“Tessa!”

That ferocious, fearsome
creature had Tessa in its gigantic talons!

Amelia pressed her palms to
the window and her students jumped out of their seats and crowded
round her.

“Miss Amelia?” A
few small voices called out.

She looked down at them and
saw that the children looked puzzled and scared at her reaction.

“You called Tessa's
name,” Jasmine said, looking confused and anxious. Jasmine was
Tessa's best friend and the two of them were inseparable. They did
everything together, but they never excluded anyone.

“Tessa's not here
today,” Jasmine murmured. “Is she sick, Miss Amelia?”

“I...” Amelia
shook her head and pointed to the window. The dragon was swooping
down, coming in for a landing. “Can you see that?” she
blurted out.

The children turned towards
the window and some rushed to press their noses against the glass for
a better view.

“Be careful!”
Amelia began to pull them away, but the children stared at her in
surprise.

“See what?”

“What's outside the
window, Miss Amelia?”

“We don't see
anything.”

“What's wrong, Miss
Amelia?”

Amelia winced when she saw
her students' baffled, innocent faces. Some of them looked a little
frightened.

She was scaring them. She
was the teacher, the adult in the room. Yet she was the only one
seeing strange, flying, children-snatching dragons.

But the dragon looked
terrifyingly real. She could see its deadly, serrated teeth when it
turned its humongous head in her direction.

“Tessa...” Amelia
said in a pained whisper. Tessa was in the clutches of that dragon.
She couldn't have imagined that. There was just no reason why she
would imagine her student being grabbed by a fire-breathing,
flesh-eating beast. She wasn't a sicko!

Amelia's eyes darted to the
window as she reached for a thick book on the shelf near the window.
She didn't know what she was going to do, but she knew she had to
save Tessa. Maybe she was the only one who could. No one else
seemed to be able to see what was happening right outside the window.

Her first thought was to hurl
the book out the window with all her might and try to hit the dragon.
That would slow the beast down. But...it might also cause the
dragon to drop Tessa in shock. And a fall from that height…

Amelia gulped down a curse
and swung her panicked gaze back to the window.

With a cry of dismay and
disbelief, she craned her neck and stared up at the clear blue sky.

The dragon was gone.

There was nothing out of the
ordinary. She stared and gaped but she saw only wispy white clouds
and the tips of tall buildings reaching for the sky. In the
distance, she could make out a plane. And she made doubly sure that
it was a plane. Not a dragon.

“Where is it?”
she muttered. “It was right there! I saw it. I know I did.”

She couldn't have dreamed the
whole thing up. She just couldn't.

Amelia gave herself a hard
pinch on the arm just to make sure. Biting down her yelp, she rubbed
her arm and scowled.

Some of the children had
grown bored and were chasing one another round the classroom.

Hold yourself together,
Amelia. Hold your mind together! Don't lose it…

Taking a long, shuddering
breath, Amelia snapped her eyes open and swallowed.

““Go back to your
seats now, children.” Amelia cleared her throat and managed to
hide the tremor in her voice. “No running! Let's finish
drawing before story time, shall we?”

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

“Fly faster, Daddy!”
Tessa shouted as Rohan took off from their long driveway and soared
towards the clouds. Tessa had no trouble seeing him in his dragon
form. She had his blood in her. She might or might not be a dragon
shifter, but it didn't matter to Rohan. As long as she was safe and
happy, his little girl could be human, dragon, fairy princess,
anything she wanted to be.

“Wheeee!” Tessa
squealed happily as they flew towards the city. Driving her to
school would take about an hour, and most of that hour would be spent
stuck in traffic. Flying was faster, way faster, and Tessa was
already late for school.

Her French braid was perfect
though.

Tessa was used to flying.
Rohan, Edriq and Zul frequently took her on joyrides. She had been
flying since she was a tiny tot. The girl was a daredevil. She
loved it when they executed aerial stunts and dived at death-defying
speeds from a great height. She knew that her dad and uncles would
never let anything happen to her. They always held her securely but
gently in their powerful talons.

Rohan held his daughter very
carefully so as not to wrinkle her dress and mess up her pretty hair.
He glided smoothly past the skyscrapers and looked down at the
snarling traffic on the roads. It was a good thing Edriq had stopped
him from taking the car. And flying was a lot more fun than driving,
according to Zul.

Catching sight of the neat
little schoolhouse at the corner of Fifth Street, Rohan began to make
his descent. He was invisible to the city folks, but he still had to
find a suitable place to land. He couldn't just land anywhere he
liked and risk toppling a building with his tail or crushing some
parked cars underfoot.

The sprawling park opposite
Tessa's kindergarten looked big enough. Rohan swooped down and
circled the schoolhouse a few times. As he turned and headed
towards the park, Tessa let out a squeal. “I can see Miss
Amelia at the window, Daddy! I think she saw us! She can see you,
Daddy!” Tessa began to wave excitedly. “Miss Amelia,
Miss Amelia!”

Rohan chuffed as he held his
squirming daughter. There was no way Miss Amelia could see them.
Tessa was just delighted to see her teacher at the window.

Keep still, Tessa,
he
thought sternly.

“Okay, okay. Just
hurry, Daddy,” Tessa urged.

Rohan flew to the park and
landed soundlessly behind some trees. The few people in the park
didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Only an elderly
woman walking her dog looked up and frowned when she felt the gust of
wind from his wings.

Tessa straightened up from
her crouch and grabbed her bag. Quickly, Rohan shifted to human
form and materialized. Taking Tessa's hand, Rohan had to jog to keep
up with her.

As they passed the elderly
woman with the dog, the dog sniffed at Rohan and began to bark
agitatedly.

“Down, boy! Pepe,
what's gotten into you?” The woman smiled apologetically at
Rohan and Tessa. “He's not usually like that,” she said.

“He's a good dog, real
smart,” Rohan commented, smiling back.
He can scent my
dragon.

“Oh he is.” The
lady beamed. “Pepe! Stop barking at the nice gentleman.
You're scaring the little girl!”

“I'm not scared of
him,” Tessa said. “I would love to play with him. But I
have to go to school now. I think I'm late!”

“You'd better run along
then. Bye, dear!” The woman waved them off.

“Bye! Bye, Pepe!”
Tessa called out, skipping backwards.

They hurried across the road
and ran towards the schoolhouse. Rohan walked Tessa to the door of
her classroom and was about to ruffle her hair out of habit but he
stopped himself just in time. He had nearly ruined his masterpiece.
He had sweated blood to finish that hairdo.

“Have a good day,
sweetheart. I love you!”

“I love you too,
Daddy.” She kissed him on the cheek and scrambled away. The
door to her classroom opened and Tessa grinned up at her teacher.
“Miss Amelia!”

Rohan's eyes rounded. It was
her!

That sweet, flame-haired
woman from last night.

He kept telling himself that
he would swing by her apartment tonight, just to make sure she was
all right. That was what he told himself. But the truth was, he
wanted to see her. He
needed
to see her again.

And here she was.

Holding the door open and
smiling at Tessa.

She was Miss Amelia.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Rohan saw Amelia gasp and
jerk back sharply when she saw him. But she managed to compose
herself and turn her attention to Tessa.

She placed a hand on Tessa's
shoulder and looked searchingly into the girl's face. “Are
you...okay, Tessa?”

Tessa nodded and shifted her
weight from one foot to the other. “Can I go in now, Miss
Amelia?”

“Of course, of course
Tessa.” Miss Amelia gave her head a quick shake and forced a
smile. “Come on in. I was just worried when I didn't see you
this morning. I thought you'd gotten the flu from Rachel and Max.”

As Tessa scrambled past her,
she gulped audibly as she turned to Rohan. “You...you must be
Tessa's dad.”

When he nodded, she rushed
on, “I'm Amelia Hawkins, Tessa's new teacher.” She stuck
her hand out and stammered, “I...I saw you last night. Right?
Y-you...”