Page 1 of The Dragons' Healing Mate

Rowan

My head was pounding.

It wasn’t a mild, passing headache, either; it was a deep, throbbing ache that made me think I’d either drunk far too much the night before or I’d been hit by a bus.

Potentially both.

Turning over, I reached for my blanket, desperate to get a few more hours’ sleep, in the hope that the pain would ebb, or at least I wouldn’t notice it because I was unconscious.

Only, there were no blankets.

Reality crept in, and my exhaustion quickly evaporated, replaced by a sinking feeling in my stomach that sent alarm bells flaring in my aching head.

One moment, I had been in my clinic, organizing a mountain of paperwork. The next moment, darkness. Opening my eyes, I sat up, wincing at the dim light and pinching the bridge of my nose.

I was in a log cabin, but it wasn’t familiar. The furniture was ancient and crumbling, and the wallpaper was peeling, the curling edges revealing the yellowed glue. The smell wasn’t exactly fresh, either. The windows had been opened so thebreeze could trickle through the small structure, but there was no concealing the deep, dingy, damp scent.

“You’re awake,” a male voice said to my left.

Whipping around, I jumped off the bed and stood up, instantly regretting it as the room spun, sinking back down.

Sitting on a chair next to the bed was a dragon I hadn’t met before. He had scraggly blond hair that fell to his chin and bone-weary eyes, with dark bags underneath them. It was easy for me to identify him as a dragon. His eyes had an almost metallic glint, and there was an animalistic nature to his movements that most definitely weren’t human.

I should have been scared—Iwasscared. But that wasn’t my only emotion.

I waspissed.

“Who the fuck are you?” I snarled.

I should have been terrified of this stranger, but his expression was hollow. Desperate. Nothing about him screamedthreat.

He eyed me cautiously, but also slightly fearful. “I’m sorry for grabbing you the way I did. But I had no other choice. She needs help.”

He jerked his chin toward the other side of the room. Reluctantly, I took my eyes off him, turning toward where a woman lay on a sofa.

Her face was red and contorted as she clutched her stomach—her verypregnantstomach.

“My mate is suffering. We need your help,” he begged, his tone fraught and hollowed out.

I didn’t have all the information, but it was obvious the woman wasn’t doing well, and the man looked like he was starting to crumple in on himself.

“I’ll help,” I whispered, staggering to my feet.

As I walked over to her, I forgot what was happening for a moment, focused entirely on the woman who was clearly in a lot of pain, my every instinct humming.

My healer brain took over, and I ignored that I was in a very scary situation, having been kidnapped. The only thing I cared about was making sure that the pregnant woman was okay.

I probably should have had more self-preservation instincts, but they were something I definitely lacked. Blame the fact that I was raised by dragons for as far back as my memory went.

“Hi, my name is Rowan. What’s going on here?” I asked, keeping my voice steady and low.

She was wearing a dress that had seen better days, and her hair was pulled back into a messy, sandy-blonde braid.

The pleading look she gave me made my heart ache for her. “I’m so sorry. We needed someone to help us. They wouldn’t let us go to the horde to ask. I didn’t know what else to do.” Her face was red and blotchy, eyes puffy.

She was ready to babble on, but I held my hand up to silence her, shaking my head. “That doesn’t matter. What’s important right now is that you’re in agony. Please, can you tell me what’s going on?”

She swallowed, calming herself down somewhat before speaking. “I went into labor two days ago. For a while, everything felt fine. I read all the books on it and felt like I was progressing well, but recently it’s just… It’s gottenreallypainful, and I’m not sure what to do. My name is Allison, by the way. That’s Colin,” she said, jerking her head toward the Alpha who was now pacing in the back of the room.