I’m Not a Dragon’s Mate! by Sandra R. Neeley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the backroads and bayous of Louisiana lives a clan of mix matched shifters. Their Alpha, Kinkaid, has been kidnapped by a ruthless Dragon who thrives on torture and pain. Kaid struggles to survive against all odds. Unable to contact his clan, and weak and unable to shift from his Bear, he has given up almost all hope. 

One night a human female is brought to the Dragon’s compound against her will. Avaleigh has been chosen to be the Dragon’s Mate. She is tortured to the brink of insanity, easily overpowered by the Dragon. Gradually she realizes that she has no chance of freedom. But will she be strong enough to save Kaid’s bear? And if she does, will he be able to leave her there? 

Sitting alone in a smoke filled bar room, another Dragon waits. Stuck in this place, for no reason other than his Dragon refuses to leave here, Daniel GreyStorm watches the patrons come and go. Frustration keeps him company as he waits, wondering what fascination this Louisiana backroads bar holds for his Dragon. He has no idea he is on a collision course with fate. 

This book is the first in a new series, Avaleigh’s Boys, about a group of shifters who make their home in the backwoods and bayous of Louisiana. Their clan consists of a mix matched group of five shifters who depend on one another and are loyal to no end. These are their stories. 

I’m Not a Dragon’s Mate

Shifters in the bayou!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰😎😄😋

The heroine: Avaleigh – she was kidnapped and brought to the house of a wealthy man. The first few nights she spent chained to the wall of a basement, hurting from being beaten and kidnapped. After that, the man Lurin, kept her chained in his room trying to breed her. She was terrified of him and while raping her, he turned into a snakelike creature, though he said he was a dragon, and she was his mate. He planned on breeding her and had been keeping her drugged so much that her memories were affected. She could no longer remember her past before she was kidnapped.

The Hero: Kincaid – he was a bear shifter, “a strong, dominant, brawling, fucking Alpha Grizzly Bear” who was the leader of a small clan of mismatched shifters in the Louisiana bayou. He had also been taken by Lurin and was kept outside in an electrified cage with dragon’s fire beams, so he could not escape. He was trapped in his bear form and was often mistreated by Lurin’s servant, the smelly beaver shifter named Slatterly. Slatterly rarely gave Kincaid food or water and when he did, it was often rotten food, or he would urinate on it. He would also turn up the wattage on the electrified bars and take the hose and douse his cage to electrocute the bear.

The Story: after a while, Avaleigh was given a little more trust and she was no longer chained up. She could move freely in the house though was told that the windows and doors were electrified, and she couldn’t leave. Though she saw Slatterly coming and going through a certain door that wasn’t electrified to feed and torment the bear. Since then, she had been bringing the bear water and fresh food, so he didn’t starve. She was determined that she would free both herself and the bear.

The two of them get free, but this is definitely not your standard shifter romance. I don’t want to give things away, but the blurb does mention another man in the mix. The dragon shifter named Daniel GreyStorm. This is not a reverse harem, but things happen in this one which you usually don’t get in a standard romance. Which is one reason I really ended up liking it. I also loved it because Avaleigh immediately felt at home with all the guys in Kincaid’s clan. They all wanted to help protect her and felt like a family to her.

I was a bit worried at the beginning when I read the forward by the author Sandra Neely, it said that this was her first book, and though she went back to it years later and re-edited it and cleaned it up a bit, she didn’t change the story at all. However, this didn’t at all seem like a first book. The story was great, the characters were well defined and developed and the world building was terrific. I will definitely read the rest of this series; I want to find out how the rest of the guys meet their mates. I feel so invested in all of them already after this book. I have read a few of Sandra’s other series before and I love her characters and how they are always a mismatched group of men that are like a family.

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