Review
What readers are saying:
"This was an unexpected treat. I only occasionally read paranormal romance, and typically if I read a shifter book it's wolf or bear, not dragon. Plus, this author is new to me. It was really well written and kept me anxious to read each chapter."
"One of the best paranormal romances I've read."
"It's a beautiful and heart grabbing love story. Not just romantic love but also familial love as well. You will not be disappointed!"
"Yes! Totally loved this read! Be prepared to be in the feels! Dammit I cried like 5-6 times throughout the book. Emotional ain't even the word, ugh."
"I adored this story with an entirely different look at the dragon shifter story. This one was great, especially in the close clan relationship each dragon had. They took strength and comfort from each other."
Below is an exerpt from Her Dragon Daddy!
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, my voice hard.
He chuckled. "Just some shopping. Picking up a few things for Mom."
My heart clenched at his casual mention of his mother. Losing her and the rest of his family had hurt almost as much as losing him. I sucked in a deep breath and set my jaw. Cuss words filled my mind and threatened to spill out of my mouth. The hurt I'd felt when he abandoned me had never gone away, even through my falling in and out of love with Cade. After birthing two children and eighteen years apart, the pain ripped through me like it had happened two weeks before instead of two decades.
I forced myself to speak. "I mean, what are you doing in Black Claw?"
"My family and I moved back about four years ago," he said. He moved to the left as if to come around the potatoes, but I didn't want him to come any closer. I couldn't take it, so I shifted to the right.
"How have you been?" he asked. His eyebrows were furrowed in concern and his eyes wide and worried.
I glared at him. How could I answer that without opening the biggest can of worms canned worms had ever seen?
There was no way to answer him.
He signed and his shoulders slumped. A few choice sentences sprang to mind, full of words of insult about him, but then I heard my son's voice.
No. Not yet. I wanted to introduce them in the right way. I'd imagined it for so many years, and this wasn't in any way how I wanted it to go, out of the blue at a grocery store.
"Mom?" Maddox walked out from an aisle of dry goods, several feet behind Maverick. I froze with my eyes on my son over his father's shoulder, and I knew that the instant Maverick turned around, it would all be over. They looked so much alike, I felt like I was watching a TV show that had found a doppelganger younger actor to play the scenes of the main character's past.
Please don't turn around.
Of course, Maverick didn't listen to my internal pleas. He turned, coming face to face with my son—Our son.
Maddox didn't notice at first and continued toward me, close enough that Maverick turned. I could see both of their faces now.
Hailey bounded forward, stopping her cart right beside me. "Mom, I'm up to twenty, but I want these granola bars. Granola bars are healthy, right? So, can that go in your cart?"
I didn't hear her words. I just took the box of bars from her and dropped them into my cart as I watched my son notice Maverick.
"Mom?"
"Hush, baby. In a second," I whispered.
Maverick's face had paled, and he'd put one hand on the potato display.
Maddox's face mirrored Maverick's. He paled as well, and I blinked several times. I knew they looked alike—almost identical. Maddox's sweet face had haunted me for nearly eighteen years. I didn't love him any less, just buried the pain of him looking so much like the lost love of my life.
I pretty much forgot how to breathe as neither of them said a word. Maverick looked up and down, scrutinizing Maddox. Maddox just stared at Maverick's face.
"Whoa," Hailey whispered.
I tore my gaze from Maddox and Maverick to look down at my daughter. She'd figured it out.
I put my arm around her and pulled her close. "Yeah, sweetie. Whoa is right."
_________________
That jerk hadn't even said one word about why he'd left, or how he'd left, or the fact that he'd left me pregnant. He'd just asked me why I hadn't told him. As if I wouldn't have jumped at the chance for Maddox to know his father! Up until the moment he left me, he'd been the love of my life.
He'd stayed the love of my life, even though I'd gone deep into denial.
I knew he'd been having aggression problems before he disappeared, and there had been times his affection for me had been too much, but none of the aggression had ever been focused at me. He'd never even yelled at me. And if he got to be too suffocating, I'd tell him to give me a few days to myself.
He'd done it without complaint. He'd said he knew he was intense and that he wished he could take a break from himself every once in a while.
Maverick had his issues, sure, but he seemed to have a handle on them—until he nearly beat a kid in his class to death. I was home, having dinner with my Nana, with no clue there was a little Kingston brewing inside me. Maverick had gone down to the local drive-in, a relic from our grandparents' days. It still stood, though, and I suspected the teenagers still spent every weekend hanging out in the parking lot.
The next thing I knew, my grandmother told me over breakfast the following morning that the Kingstons were gone and that Maverick had put Roman into the hospital.
Hailey interrupted my memories of the last time I'd seen Maverick. "Mom," she whispered. We watched Maddox go out for another load. We'd had to buy out most of the store since we hadn't brought a single kitchen staple with us from New Mexico.
"Hush, baby. It's a big deal, but we'll talk about it over dinner. Go get your clothes and backpack ready for school tomorrow, okay?"
She pursed her lips, dying to talk about Maverick, but she did as she was told. Thankfully.
I hadn't believed my grandmother when she'd told me the Kingstons were gone. As soon as I heard the news, I'd flown out of the house, running up the hill as I had done so many times for so many years.
The Kingstons had been a constant in my life every summer for as long as I could remember. Every summer, I stayed with my grandmother, but spent most of my childhood roaming the countryside with Maverick and sometimes his older brother, Axel. Jury, his younger brother, hadn't been born until a few months before they disappeared. He'd be about a year older than his nephew. I wondered if they'd become friends.
When the enormous Kingston manor came into view, I knew Nana had told me the truth. The windows, always open to let in light, were shuttered. I'd pulled my key from my pocket, but it hadn't worked.
How had they pulled off a move, even changing the locks, overnight? I'd looked until I found a window they'd forgotten to lock, and climbed into the library. It had been empty. The furniture had all been there, but the books were gone.
Running out of the room, I took the stairs two at a time and stopped in Maverick's bedroom doorway. The bed was stripped, sheets gone. His closet door had stood wide open with nothing inside. I staggered into the room and noticed a stray t-shirt behind the bed. When I picked it up, I realized it was one I'd given him. White with a silly saying on it, "If you think I'm hot, you should see my girlfriend".
He'd thought it was hilarious and wore it all the time.
I'd collapsed onto his bed, holding the shirt, and sobbed. It smelled like him. In fact, it continued to smell like him for almost a year. Once I had Maddox, I wrapped him in it and took a bunch of pictures. Every year after that, once a year, I put him in the shirt and took a picture.
I had no idea why. It felt right. When he was nine, I explained everything about his father to him and told him the significance of the shirt. He'd kept it in his room ever since. As far as I knew, he only brought it out to take the pictures now.
Maddox brought in the last of the groceries and set in helping me put it away. "That's good," I said. "I'll put it away. Organizing the cabinets is something I enjoy doing. Just help me grab the cold stuff and then I'll do the rest."
He grunted and grabbed the milk. He hadn't said a word since we left the grocery store. When the cold stuff was put away, he walked out of the kitchen. I tiptoed to the hallway to see where he went, but he went to the living room and launched himself onto the sofa by flipping over the back of it—he'd always loved doing that.
Scrounging in the cabinets for my skillet, I put ground beef on to brown and grabbed a jar of spaghetti sauce. I preferred to make it from scratch, but I wouldn't have time or energy for real cooking for a while yet, so I'd bought a few jars of premade. Spaghetti was Maddox's favorite if it had double meat.
The kid loved meat. Every time I made him food that was heavy with beef or chicken, I thought about his father. He'd eaten a carnivorous diet as well. Growing up, Madd's routine well-checks, any bloodwork, weight, and growth charts, had always came back normal and healthy as a horse, so the doctor cautioned against a large amount of red meat. He did encourage me to find ways to make more chicken, but said let him eat all the fresh, lean meats he wanted for the most part.
For his spaghetti, I used two pounds of ground beef where I would've used one if I'd made it just for me and Hailey.
For a treat, I included a pound of ground sausage. He loved that, but Hailey and I preferred it without the sausage, so I didn't make it that way often. I figured a kid who met his dad for the first time today deserved dinner the way he wanted it.
As soon as the pasta and garlic bread were done, I called the kids to the kitchen.
Maddox opened the fridge and took out three waters while I dished up the plates.
Hailey grabbed paper towels without being asked. I looked at her out of the corner of my eyes. She was bouncing on her toes as she placed the napkins in front of our chairs.
All the time they'd spent resting as I cooked dinner had done for her was key her up more. She was fit to bursting with curiosity.
Maddox noticed me giving her a rueful look and smiled at me. "It's okay," he whispered.
It looked like he'd spent the time I cooked dinner coming to terms with our situation. I wouldn't push him, though. He'd come to me and talk about it when he was ready, whether that was tonight or in three years—I hoped it was sooner than three years.
We sat at the table and I stared at my food without a clue in the world at what to say. I didn't want to bring up the subject and pressure him, but it was a massive elephant in the room.
"Okay, Hales." I looked up to see Maddox grinning at his little sister. "You can say what's on your mind."
Oh, gosh. That wasn't the best thing to say to an eight-year-old little girl. She always had a lot on her mind.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it rip. "Holy crap! Madd, that man looked just like you! And he stared at you like you were a ghost or something. How is that possible? I thought your dad was gone. Mom, did you know his dad was here? How did he know we'd be at the grocery store? It's so exciting you got to meet your dad, aren't you so excited?" She ran out of steam and sucked in another deep breath, but Maddox spoke before she could go on another tangent.
"Mom, why was he there?" He looked at me with confusion all over his face.
"I swear, I had no idea. If I'd known he was here, I would've told you the minute I found out." Why, why hadn't I double-checked? "When we moved back, I just assumed that he hadn't moved back as well. He left before I found out about you, as you know." Maddox nodded. "And I stayed until you were four. And, I asked Nana every time we came to visit. After she died, nothing held me here and I had no reason to think he'd ever come back."
"So why did we move here?" He left the unspoken reason for why we'd had to move hanging in the air. If he hadn't done what he did, we'd still be in New Mexico and he wouldn't have met his father. It remained to be seen if that was a good thing or not.
"Because I didn't have anywhere else to go. If it doesn't work out, we'll sell this place and move anywhere you want to. I can get a large sum for this wonderful cabin, and we own over a hundred acres of forest."
He nodded. "Okay. Thank you."
I held out my hand, spaghetti forgotten. "I've got your back, Madd. This will be difficult to go through, but you always come first to me. Always."
He took my hand and squeezed, but then dug into his dinner. "So," he said around a mouth full of pasta. "What do you think I should do?"
![Her Dragon Daddy: A Dragon Shifter Romance (Black Claw Dragons Book 1) by [Roxie Ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51-6uLn+m8L._SY346_.jpg)
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“I’m pretty sure you harmed her eighteen years ago, but sure. I believe you won’t cause her any physical harm. Come on, Hailey.”Highlighted by 267 Kindle readers
