Dragon's Prisoner: A Curvy Girl Military Romance (Dragon Blaze Ops Book 4) Read online

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  Dragon’s Prisoner

  Dragon Blaze Ops: Book Four

  A Curvy Girl Military Romance

  by Jasmine Wylder

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Also by Jasmine Wylder

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To my loved ones B & B, who encouraged me to fly toward my dream:

  Let’s soar.

  Chapter One

  Karey tried to keep herself still as her wrists were strapped in place. It was just a precaution, but the serum did have unpredictable results at times. Her heart trembled, shaking her whole body.

  After years of working on this serum, after seeing how badly it could go and finally after helping the latest doctor her father pulled into his services perfect it… Well, this whole thing was making butterflies battle in her stomach. Doubts flooded her. What if this went bad? What if this killed her?

  But this was her only chance at actually living.

  All her life, she had been an Omega. The lowest of the low in the Pack. Even as the daughter of the Alpha, she was worth nothing. Not allowed to own any property of her own. Given a strict dress code to follow. Blocked from furthering her education in any way or getting a job to earn her own money. Forbidden from taking a mate. She was allowed to be a mistress, to be kept for sex and nothing else. She would never have children, though—her weakness couldn’t be passed onto the next generation, after all.

  Unless this worked.

  Then she’d be allowed to exist without shame. She could have the things she craved most. A mate to share her life with. Children.

  Maybe she would even be permitted to go back to school and pursue her dream of being a doctor, not just a nurse. As it was, she had had to beg her father for years before he ‘wasted’ any money on her.

  Wasted. Despite the fact that she had gotten the best marks in her classes. Despite the fact that she had been solely responsible for the health of the Pack for years. Despite everything she had done to prove herself, he still said that the money spent putting her through nursing school was wasted.

  All because she was an Omega.

  Her hands clenched as her father entered the room. His lips stretched over his teeth in a terrifying grimace. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d given her a genuine smile.

  “I never thought the day would come when I was proud of you,” he said, patting her arm.

  Karey ducked her head to avoid showing him how much that hurt. She tried so hard to make him proud. Everything before had failed. But this was going to work.

  “After the observation period, I will let you retake the trials,” her father continued. “You may be able to improve your standing in the Pack. I would so very much like it if my only daughter could be a Gamma or even a Delta. I would say a Beta, but let’s not get our hopes up too high.”

  “I won’t let you down, Father. Not this time.” He was going to love her, just as soon as she proved that she was strong enough to take this. As soon as the serum coursed through her and turned her into something more than an Omega.

  The Alpha patted her arm again. “We’ll see. Don’t set yourself up for failure, Karey. But don’t worry, either. I don’t have high expectations for this. There is only so much that can be done to improve an Omega, after all.”

  Karey fought hard not to flinch. She would have loved to tell him that she was more than an Omega, and with the serum, she would be able to prove it.

  That, however, would be insubordination. The Alpha didn’t stand for insubordination and might decide not to allow her the serum at all. She was the only Omega to be allowed the trial, after all, and that was because the Alpha was her father. If this succeeded in the way she hoped it would, then perhaps other Omegas would be allowed to take the serum as well.

  Even if they weren’t, at least she wouldn’t be such a bitter disappointment anymore.

  “Are you ready?” Dr. Shane Carter asked as he sauntered around her. He looked bored, annoyed almost. Karey repressed a glare. He was a Beta, a wolf shifter like the rest of them.

  For the past decade, he’d been away from the pack, living a lavish lifestyle as he went through medical school. He’d come back to praises and congratulations. The people who mocked her medical advice fell over themselves to take his—when it was exactly what she had told them to do. More often than not, he read her notes to the patient and didn’t bother doing anything himself.

  Even if he had claimed to perfect the serum, it was only because he stood on the shoulders of the people who had worked on it previously. Not to mention he’d stolen a lot of Karey’s own research into the area. Nobody would believe that she had made any of these discoveries, though, so she didn’t even bother confronting him about it.

  Why bother fighting when she couldn’t win, and it would only leave her more bruised than she already was?

  Nerves hit her hard in the stomach as her shoulders hunched. Was this wrong? Was it all unethical, immoral?

  Of course it is. Most of this research was done on unwilling subjects. But there isn’t anything I can do about it now. If this works, though, it’ll all be used on volunteers from now on.

  The experimentation on unwilling subjects had already stopped though. The formation of the Blaze Ops had seen to that. An elite team as part of the Magnus Academy, the Blaze Ops had dealt serious blows to the Pack. More than once, they’d come in and rescued their prisoners. Eventually, the Alpha had withdrawn, using only volunteers from the Pack.

  But there wasn’t anything I could do about it, Karey reasoned. He’d kill me if I questioned him too much. And besides, this serum will be able to help people. Wouldn’t everybody be better off if they were shifters?

  “I’m ready,” she murmured, more to stop the doubts choking her than because she really was ready.

  The doctor fitted a mask over her mouth and switched on the anesthesia. The last thought she had was that maybe, just maybe, she had a chance at earning her father’s love after all.

  ***

  The first thing she was aware of was the pain. It washed over her body in waves. Starting at her toes, working its way up her legs. Her stomach tensed and tightened. Her arms
twitched. The pain wrapped around her throat, choking her. She coughed. Agony exploded through her lungs, and she couldn’t breathe.

  Then something was pressing against her face. Another mask. She whimpered, trying to tell them not to, but the darkness pulled her back under once more.

  ***

  The light was dim, soothing. Karey’s body ached from her head to her toes, like she’d been through the trials and her father had beaten her for getting such a low score. Her lungs felt a little locked up, but she was breathing easier than she had the last time she woke. Her whole body was too warm, though. Something hot huddled in the center of her body.

  Her wolf growled and paced in her ribs, trying to get away from the uncomfortable warmth. It batted at her ribs, wanting her to shift and let it free.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she slowly lifted a hand to her chest. She’d been on the blockers to prevent her from shifting for so long that she had forgotten what her wolf even felt like. An Omega wasn’t worthy of shifting, after all, and so her wolf was suppressed, in the hopes that it would go to someone more fitting.

  But no more. Now her wolf was there. Even if it was upset, it was there.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” a voice said above her.

  Karey opened her eyes with difficulty. The room was brighter than she had realized, and she blinked several times, trying to make them adjust.

  One of her fellow nurses leaned over her. Karey didn’t know the name of this one. She was new and hadn’t spent much time with Karey. She was a Beta’s daughter and an Eta herself, too above an Omega to bother with her.

  For her to be here, tending to Karey must mean… “The serum was a success?”

  “It appears so.” The nurse smiled and nodded. “Although you have been unconscious for a week. It’s probably because you are—were—so weak that you were asleep longer than any of the others. We thought you were going to die, but it seems we were wrong.” Her eyes grew almost lustful as she leaned forward. “Well? Can you feel them? The fires?”

  Her wolf snorted. Karey pulled herself into a sitting position, probing tentatively at the heat in her belly. It pulsed with her mental touch. She found it was easy to bring it forward, to blow puffs of smoke from her nostrils and out her mouth. She even let out a flicker of flame. The nurse jerked back, eyes wide, and Karey had to laugh.

  “It appears that I can,” she crowed, giddy with excitement.

  Her wolf growled and batted at the flames but didn’t seem so aggressive now as it had been. Karey put her hand on her chest, closing her eyes. She wrapped her mental arms around her wolf, burying her face in its fur. It embraced her back. Fur sprouted along her skin and her teeth sharpened in her mouth. Her wolf yelped with joy as it stretched out in its form.

  Karey barked out a laugh as the nurse tried to tell her to shift back to her human form. She leapt from the hospital bed, letting out an experimental puff of smoke, then tore out of the room.

  She was surprised at how quickly her strength returned to her. How easy it was to possess this form, after all the many years it had been denied her. A few of the guards shouted and tried to stop her, but she easily dodged them. She even jumped on the walls, springing from one side to the other. Soon, she had burst out of the building altogether.

  The sun was so bright and warm it was as though she’d never felt it before. Karey threw back her head, letting out a howl of sheer delight. There was a strange fluttering sensation along her back and, when she concentrated on it, a pair of leathery wings burst from her sides. Her wolf yelped, but controlling the wings was as easy as moving her arms.

  As she danced and beat her wings in the sunshine, a familiar scent caught her nose. Bitter. Acid. Her wolf retreated in fright. Her wings disappeared, and she was left sitting on the ground, wrapping her arms around her naked form as she stared up at her approaching father.

  “It seems like you didn’t inherit the ability to shift without losing your clothing,” he said, frowning in disapproval. “Are you going to run around naked now, like a whore?”

  He dropped the hospital robe onto her head, and Karey quickly put it on. She held the back closed and bowed her head before the Alpha. To her surprise, though, he chuckled and kissed the top of her head. Her eyes widened as a warmth spread in her chest. When she looked up, he was smiling at her. A true smile. One she hadn’t seen for as long as she could remember.

  “You are made from tough stuff after all. I knew that you couldn’t be all Omega, not with me as your father despite what you had for a mother.”

  Karey dipped her head again. “I knew I wouldn’t let you down this time. Did you see my wings? The serum worked.”

  She was a dragon now—well, maybe not entirely. She was still a wolf. The wolf in her chest was proof of that, after all. But she had fires. She had wings. That had to mean something, right? She was a hybrid, if nothing else. More than an Omega.

  “It appears so,” her father agreed.

  Karey straightened. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “When may I retake the trials?”

  “In a week or two. Once we know the process has stuck and is stable. It wouldn’t do for you to burst into flames and die in shrieking agony, would it?” The Alpha laughed and patted her head.

  There hadn’t been any deaths associated with this new serum, not like the old one. Karey lowered her head in agreement, though. A week would give her time to understand the new limits of her body. It would allow her to become reacquainted with her wolf.

  “If this has worked and you perform better in the trials,” her father continued, leading her back to the hospital, “then you will be given a mate at once.”

  Given? Her fires flickered. She thought she could choose her mate…

  “You’re not as young as many of the other girls and will have to start having babies at once to make up for your lack. Perhaps you’ll have multiples. It’s the only way you’ll have a dozen children before you’re thirty.”

  Karey nodded again, even though she had no intention of having that many children. She would have three, maybe four. In her time at nursing school, she learned how to ensure that. Even though she was an only child herself, she had seen the other families in the Pack, with their mothers run ragged trying to care for too many children and pregnant with more. She had seen the way the children suffered for it—the older girls forced to be little mothers to their siblings before they even knew how to take care of themselves. Taking mates of their own in their teenage years just to get away from their parents. Only to get stuck in the same cycle of never-ending pregnancies and mothering.

  She wasn’t going to put herself or her children through that.

  “You’ll be happy to know that I expect you’ll do well in the trials,” the Alpha told her quietly, chuckling. “In fact, I have already picked a mate out for you.”

  Karey turned to him, surprised and a little dreading at the same time.

  “Dr. Carter has put in a petition to have a mate,” the Alpha continued. “And wouldn’t it be wonderful, to have a doctor and a nurse mated? You could be a real support to him, then. Your children could start their medical training as soon as they are able, too. We wouldn’t have to waste resources sending them out to school when you could teach them yourselves.”

  But Karey wasn’t listening to him anymore. Her heart was stilled in her chest, the fires that heated her swept low so that goosebumps rose on her arms. Her wolf whimpered and cowered. Shane Carter? She was going to be given to Shane Carter?

  And suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have a mate after all.

  Chapter Two

  Fort Stinky Butt didn’t actually smell like a stinky butt. It didn’t smell pleasant, but that was because it was a cabin out in the woods that was rarely visited. The windows didn’t open, and the only source of heat was a wood-burning fireplace. The generator sat in a lean-to off to the side of the cabin and the gasoline that it ran on was housed in a steel drum lifted off the ground with four legs.

&nb
sp; Sergeant Major Adam Hoffman rubbed the scar on his throat from where he’d been shot just a few months ago. It had long healed, but the phantom pains were still there from time to time.

  He also found that drawing attention to the scar, unusual on a dragon shifter such as himself, tended to make his superiors listen to him a little more. He needed that right now.

  Today, though, it wasn’t having the desired effect. Dr. Maura Rizzoli watched him with her arms folded over her curvy frame, while Dr Fiona Tadfield shook her head, as though she knew what he was doing.

  Sighing, Adam dropped his hand. “I just don’t understand why I’m going to be cut off from everybody else like this. It’s a security risk. There’s no way to contact the Academy from here if something goes wrong, and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep one man as a guard over a female prisoner.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes. “We have cameras already installed. So as long as you don’t turn them off or delete their recordings, you’ll be safe from any accusations of assault.”

  “Unless you’re worried about something else?” Maura rose a brow.

  “No. But it’s not exactly acceptable, is it? Even with the recordings, if they say I tampered with them, then I could be facing some serious allegations. Who knows what she’ll accuse me of if she thinks it’s going to help her?”

  “That is why we have the cameras.”

  Adam shook his head. “When I came up with this plan, I didn’t think that I was going to be locked up here alone with only a prisoner for company.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Fiona said soothingly. “We have the utmost trust in you.”

  Maura nodded. “This is too important to mess up. Even though it looks like we have routed out all the traitors in the Academy, we can’t be too careful. Karey Fisher is the key to bringing down the Pack, you said so yourself. And, quite frankly, you are the only member of the Blaze Ops that I trust to carry out this part of the mission.”

  Adam understood that. Out of the six members of the Blaze Ops, three of them had mates. Liam and Eugene both had children that they couldn’t leave for the indefinite amount of time this guard post called for, and Patrick and Fiona were too important to the administrative side of things to take a vacation together. Stephen and Evan could have been part of it, Adam supposed, but Evan was soft-hearted and wouldn’t be able to keep Karey locked up in the basement for months at a time, while Stephen was too much of a social butterfly. He wouldn’t last a week in isolation like this.