Into The Dragon's World - Brittany White

1

Brady

“No fighting! You guys know the rules in here.” Brady Markonian stepped between a cheetah shifter and a cougar shifter and got a claw swipe along his arm for his troubles. “Am I gonna have to throw both of you out?”

The shifters quickly took on their human forms. The cheetah became a twenty-something woman with long dreadlocks and bad skin, and the cougar turned back into a forty-year-old woman who was trying way too hard. The irony was not lost on Brady.

“Come on, ladies. Shake hands and make friends again.” Brady gestured at the bartender. “Luke! Couple of cosmos over here, please.”

Once Brady was sure that the literal fur wouldn’t fly, he excused himself and jogged up the steps to his office. As owner and manager of the Paradigm nightclub, he felt like he was always putting out one kind of fire or another. Every once in a while, he fantasized about going home to his real world, where the skies were lavender and the trees were every color in the spectrum. He could relax and take on the princely duties his father had given him and live every day in supreme luxury in his dragon form.

But then he remembered that one of the duties he had to perform was to find a mate, and he was in no hurry to do that. Running Paradigm might not be the job he would have chosen for himself, but someone had to be there to give the shifters sanctuary and protect the Arch. There were only a few places around the world that held a doorway to the shifters’ dimension, and the Markonian family was tasked with protecting the Manhattan Arch. Long ago, shifters had built a great cathedral over it, hiding it away from the eyes of men. In the early 20th century, the cathedral was turned into a speakeasy. Then it became a dinner club. Then a lounge. Then a disco. And now, finally, it was one of New York’s most infamous underground nightclubs, catering to a very elite crowd of shifters. Humans weren’t exactly barred, but they weren’t particularly welcome, either.

That suited Brady just fine. In his experience, humans were wretched, weak creatures who ruined everything they touched. It wasn’t that he hated humans. He simply didn’t like them. He spent all of his time at the nightclub, surrounded by shifters like himself, every day grateful for the oasis. He knew he wasn’t the only one who needed the escape. Shifters weren’t ostracized by society, but they tended to keep their abilities to themselves. It was as if the shifters and humans had made a silent deal: you don’t acknowledge us, we won’t acknowledge you, and everything will be okay.

There was only one problem with that: shifters were not allowed to live their full lives. To live in the human world, they had to suppress their true beings. They didn’t have the freedom to shift into their other selves. They were the ones who had to sacrifice and make all the concessions. That was why the Arch was so important. It gave them a link to their real home and a way to escape the realities of this dimension.

Brady had come to this world with the sole purpose of getting away from his family. He loved them, but the whole “royalty” thing just didn’t agree with him. His sister Alix loved it, of course. She played the role of spoiled, pouty princess to perfection. As much as he occasionally missed his home, he knew he truly belonged in New York. As a dragon shifter, he could take advantage of the skyscrapers and launch himself into the night, too high for the people on the street to see. He could live comfortably between the two worlds, which was more than some shifters could say.

A gorgeous redhead in a short black dress smiled at him as he began to climb the steps leading up to the second-floor balcony, where his office overlooked the club floor. He flashed a quick smile back at her. He’d meant it to be polite, but she decided to run with it.

“Hi,” she said in a husky voice. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

It was a lie, but she didn’t know that Brady was completely aware of who she was. Her name was Lydia, and she was a fox shifter notorious for her ravenous appetite for anything that breathed. She had been a regular at the club for years. If she didn’t recognize Brady, it was probably because