Her Photographer Phoenix: A Paranormal Romance (Lone Dragons Book 2) Read online

  HER PHOTOGRAPHER PHOENIX

  Lone Dragons (Book 2)

  By ALICE SUMMERFIELD

  Books in this Series

  Her Detective Dragon

  Her Photographer Phoenix

  Her Chef Bear (Coming August 2018)

  Her Deluxe Dragon Detective (Coming Soon)

  Her Deluxe Dragon Defender (Coming Soon)

  Her Photographer Phoenix

  Copyright © 2018 by Alice Summerfield

  Her Photographer Phoenix

  Copyright 2018, Alice Summerfield

  First electronic publication: July 2018

  Published in the United States of America.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  License Statement

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Note from the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons

  (https://bookcoverscre8tive.com)

  Sign up for Alice Summerfield’s Newsletter

  If you’d like to receive sneak peeks at future releases, freebies, and more, please sign up for my mailing list at https://madmimi.com/signups/195721/join

  Summary

  Keris Island is one of the most dangerous places on Earth – and the only known nesting site of the firebird. Researcher Dr. Ellis Hale is willing to risk everything – even her life – to uncover the secret lives of the firebirds that she loves.

  Phoenix and photographer Benton Hwong has traveled the world in search of two things: memorable moments and his fated mate. He doesn’t want – or need – anything else. When he takes an assignment to film the firebirds’ breeding season on Keris Island, Benton expects to find adventure, not the love of his every life. Sparks fly, and soon it isn’t just the firebirds dancing around each other on the banks of Lake Keris.

  But danger is closing in on them, and Benton is running out of time to prove to Ellis that he can open his heart, become the man that she deserves… and prevent her from meeting a grisly end.

  A fiery paranormal adventure romance between a bold firebird researcher and the phoenix photographer that would do anything to help her survive her adventure, Her Photographer Phoenix is #2 in the Lone Dragons Series. All books in the series are standalone novels with a guaranteed happy ending, and they can be read in any order.

  If you like paranormal romance with a sprinkling of adventure, don’t miss this exciting read! Scroll up and one click today!

  Table of Contents

  Books in this Series

  Sign up for Alice Summerfield’s Newsletter

  Chapter 01 – Ellis

  Chapter 02 – Benton

  Chapter 03 – Ellis

  Chapter 04 – Benton

  Chapter 05 – Ellis

  Chapter 06 – Benton

  Chapter 07 – Ellis

  Chapter 08 – Benton

  Chapter 09 – Ellis

  Chapter 10 – Benton

  Chapter 11 – Ellis

  Chapter 12 – Benton

  Chapter 13 – Ellis

  Chapter 14 – Benton

  Chapter 15 – Ellis

  Chapter 16 – Benton

  Other Books in the Lone Dragons Series

  Upcoming Books in the Lone Dragons Series

  Similar Books by Alice Summerfield

  Chapter 01 – Ellis

  Pinpricks of refreshingly cold water fell against her upturned face, dampening her skin, and Ellis smiled, delighted. Few things were as wonderful as a rainstorm. Even gentle spring showers like this one filled her with joy.

  Although I probably ought to have better control by now, thought Ellis, feeling a slight twinge of guilt. Determinedly, she pushed it away.

  Her very minor issues with control were charming, everyone with any sense said so. And it wasn’t like she called down storms and showers every time her mood shifted. Just when she felt something very strongly, like when she was excited or happy or restless, and this morning she was all three. But she couldn’t help it! The sun was shining, the weather was great, and she was on her way back to Lake Keris!

  Lake Keris dominated the appropriately named Keris Island, which was itself part of a chain of islands that lay just south of the equator. It was one of many nearly fantastical islands that together formed the sovereign nation of Bolunda. When it was early autumn back home, it was early spring there.

  The sunny Bolundan Islands were all beautiful, and many were the basis of myths and legends that had been handed down from antiquity, but of them all, Keris Island was Ellis’ favorite. She truly loved it, and not just because Lake Keris was the only place in the world where firebirds were known to reproduce.

  And Ellis loved firebirds. She had built her entire academic career to date around firebirds and their secret lives. Dr. Ellis Hale was one of the world’s foremost authorities on firebirds, and she worked tirelessly towards their protection and preservation.

  And today was the day that she got to go back to Lake Keris and see them again!

  The only way that the morning could have been even more perfect was if she was winging her own way across the Bolundan Sea. That, however, was entirely out of the question, mostly because of the island’s native inhabitants.

  They, unlike ninety percent of the human population, could see transformed dragons as well as a wide variety of other mythical beings, magical creatures, and even some spells. Preliminary research suggested that the peoples native to the Bolundan Islands and the waters surrounding it had evolved subtly different structures in their eyes that allowed them to see – or see, register, and remember, as the case may be – what other humans overlooked. Given the nature of the creatures that lived on and around the Bolundan Islands, the natives’ magnificent eyesight had probably been a key to their survival, but for a modern storm dragon like Dr. Ellis Hale, it was a pain. It definitely cramped her style.

  Since flying herself to the island was off the table, Ellis had long ago resigned herself to getting around the same way as everyone else: by boat. In fact, every year that she came to Ellis Island, she booked passage on the same boat with the same family, the Tabors. They were also the ones who brought in her periodic supply drops during her stays on the island.

  It hadn’t been her intention at the beginning, but Ellis liked the little family that took her to and from Keris Island, and she liked getting annual updates about the births, deaths, and fortunes in the extended Tabor family. It was almost like following a radio drama – one that took place almost entirely on various boats. Ellis was so into it that she even beginning to ha
ve opinions about the ships that the various Tabor families captained or came up against.

  Scattered around the deck of the small ship that was taking them to Keris Island were the ten other members of this year’s research team. It was only sprinkling rain, but the four members of the team that were fire dragons still managed to look like nothing so much as wet chickens. In Ellis’ secret opinion, nothing in this world looked as surly – or as cute – as a wet chicken, not that she would ever tell them that.

  The remaining six members of her team, who were either humans or non-dragon shifters, had their faces tilted up to the sky. They looked almost transcendently happy under the rain. Their happiness made Ellis’ heart swell. That was what it meant to be a storm dragon.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Emilio sighed, his eyes closed. His dark lashes were wet and clumped with rainwater.

  Past Emilio’s shoulder, Marissa had her face tilted up to the sky. She had her eyes closed and her mouth open, the better to catch raindrops on her tongue. Marissa looked as happy as Emilio had sounded.

  It wasn’t even noon yet, but everyone who wasn’t a fire dragon had already been damp with sweat, including the ship’s family of sailors. Now, they were all pleasantly damp with rainwater, although they would all be dry again in an hour or two. That was how hot it was, and it wasn’t even the dry season yet.

  Emilio, Marrisa, and Kris were Ellis’ official research assistants. They were graduate students that were paid a tiny stipend by the university in exchange for their work on her research project. There was supposed to have been a fourth graduate student, Ahmed, but he had fallen terribly ill at the last moment, and Ellis hadn’t had time to replace him.

  Ellis was currently three years into a ten year grant to study the mating and reproductive habits of Keris Island’s firebirds. This year, her fourth year making the journey to Keris Island, Ellis hoped to start seeing some of the young firebirds return that she had seen hatch her first year on the lake. They wouldn’t be pairing off this year – it took years for a firebird to settle on a mate – but they should start looking soon.

  Thinking of those chicks – the first she had seen laid and hatched and grown strong enough to fly – excited Ellis, and the rain whipped up. A gust of it came over the prow of thee ship, making the captain’s children laugh. Tipping her head back again, Ellis grinned.

  This year was going to be her most rewarding yet on Lake Keris. Ellis could feel it in her bones.

  Keris Island wasn’t much of an island. It was more like a fringe of land ringing a very large and very deep lake. Ringed around the main lake was a smattering of smaller pools and springs: some hot, others cold, and the very occasional one as red as blood.

  Legend had it that the center of Keris Island had once been a mountain, not a lake. The city of Ker-Is had stood on it, a shining city of wealth and wonders mysteriously lost to the sea in a single night. Legend blamed the king’s daughter, her lover, and an enraged storm dragon for the city’s destruction, but modern science believed sudden geological upheavals a more likely cause of the city’s abrupt demise.

  But for millennia, Lake Keris had been the center of Keris Island, any shining city that might once have stood on the spot long lost beneath the lake’s waters. It was also the only known nesting site of the world’s firebird population, and it was for that reason that Ellis had come to Keris Island year after year.

  Ellis’ annual campsite stood to the west of the lake. Unfortunately, there were no docks on the western side of the island. To reach the lake, Ellis and her team would be dropped on the north side of the island, and from there, they would have to make their own way to the shore of Lake Keris.

  The Tabor family dropped Ellis and her research assistants in Luel, which was the largest village on the northern side of the island. By no coincidence, it also had the best harbor and most extensive docks on that side of the island too.

  With the ease of practice, Ellis refused to notice what meat was being sold in the village’s marketplace. She didn’t like it, and it was officially illegal, anyway, but she didn’t know how to stop or change it either.

  These people were hungry. And they were poor. Importing more standard meats – pork, beef, or chicken, for example – was expensive at the best of times, and on an island like Keris, where the waters were usually shallow, it was difficult too.

  There were some small wild pigs scattered across the Bolundan Islands as well as some wild chickens, both courtesy of sea-going European explorers, but until very recently, Keris Island had possessed neither. It had been one of those tin can islands where passing ships would toss whatever needed to go to the island overboard in floating wooden barrels or, later, tin cans, and locals would go out to fetch them. With such a system in place, very little of the Europeans’ livestock had made it onto the island. It was great for local wildlife diversity, but less great for local dietary habits.

  Either way, Ellis refused to participate in the eating of bush meat, even indirectly. Bush meat was cheaper than shipping in her own supplies, but contrary to local beliefs, bush meat wasn’t actually good for people. Wild and often little known animals often carried many unexpected and little researched diseases.

  Not that all of the stalls selling animal parts were necessarily aiming to feed their customers. Some belonged to medicine men and women, who used the animal parts on display in their stalls to make traditional medicines for their customers. Some even sold their harvested animal parts and potions to dealers, who in turn would take them abroad.

  As someone in possession of many body parts that might be used in traditional medicines – more specifically, all of her body parts. Dragons of all varieties were sought after as ingredients in traditional lotions and potions – Ellis was vehemently against the entire practice and trade. Eating a sliver of her liver wasn’t going to impart any portion of her powers to the eater, and it definitely wasn’t going to heal anyone of anything either. Dragons, like all other mythical or magical creatures, had their places in the natural order, and it wasn’t as a snack or a magical healing tonic. And the same was true of exotic animals too.

  No, her group had brought their own food supplies and modern medicines too. Whatever else they needed would be shipped in later via the Tabor family. It was expensive, but it was better, and it made it easier for Ellis to sleep at night.

  From Luel, it was a roughly four day hike through lush jungles to the western side of the island. All along the way, it was stiflingly hot.

  The four fire dragons in the group – Dafina and Everett, who were two of her older sister’s many children and two of their cousins from their fathers’ side of the family, Cameron and Donovan – didn’t have the decency to feel the heat, which in no way endeared them to anyone else in the group. Fortunately for group cohesion, they felt the humidity like everyone else, which left them nearly sweaty as everyone else.

  Their only relief from the ever-present humidity lay in the daily rain shower, which Ellis may or may not have had something to do with. It was the end of the rainy season, after all.

  On the fourth day of their hike, Ellis’ group reached the shores of Lake Keris. A glance was all it took for Ellis to assure herself that they had been the first to arrive. The firebirds hadn’t returned yet from parts unknown to renew their acquaintanceships over the waters of Lake Keris. Relieved, Ellis grinned.

  It took another half day to march around the western perimeter of the lake to Ellis’ annual campgrounds. As they walked, the sand and obsidian flows were nearly cool beneath the soles of Ellis’ boots. By the time that firebirds’ eggs hatched, they would be hot enough to feel through the soles of her boots. One year, they had even melted the very bottoms of Ellis’ boots, just a little. That year, she had been a little too close to the hatching grounds.

  Every year, Ellis set up camp in more or less the same place. Roughly a half mile from Lake Keris and around a bend – out of immediate sight of the firebirds – Elli’s annual campsite was located at the trees’
edge, allowing the tents to be pitched in their ragged shade. It wasn’t much, but every little bit would help during the brutal heat of the dry season. Nearby, a deliciously cold spring of clear and fresh water bubbled out of the ground, spilling into a pool filled with bright little fish.

  Every year, it took a lot of work to set up camp and make it habitable again, but by sunset they had mostly cleaned up the camp grounds, pitched all of the sleeping tents, and pitched the large common area tent, which would also be used for cooking and food storage.

  That night, they ate supper around a crackling campfire. Ellis listened, pleased, as her various assistants traded quips and jokes. She was relieved that everyone was getting along. For desert, they made s’mores.

  Ellis’ mother had been pregnant three times, producing a total of nine children. Triplets, to Ellis’ secret dismay, ran in her mother’s family.

  The oldest set of triplets – Abigail, Beatrice, and Constance – had been twelve when Ellis, Frederica, and Grissom had been born. Beatrice and Constance were unmarried, although Constance had a set of triplets of her own, but Abigail had married young and started having children early. So far, Abigail had pushed nine dragonlets out into the world. The oldest set – Carlena, Dafina, and Everett – were only about eight years younger than Ellis herself.

  Carlena, Dafina, and Everett were closer in age to Ellis than any of her siblings, save Freddie and Grissom, and she should have been almost as close with them as she was with Freddie and Grissom. But Abigail, who had been married to her two mates for nearly as long as Ellis could remember, had let Carlena, Dafina, and Everett be packed off to boarding school at the ripe old age of ten years old. Boarding school was apparently an important tradition in their family, or so Abigail had said then and quite often afterwards.

  Ellis didn’t know about that or particularly care about it, truth be told, because it was a stupid tradition. Her family was every bit as old and as rich as theirs, and their parents had never sent any of their children away.