AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stopped dead when I found Riley pacing back and forth in the apartment. She rounded on me in a heartbeat. “How could you hide this from me?!” she roared. “How long have you been keeping this secret? You’re a…..”
She pointed at me and words failed her. She opened and closed her mouth a few times trying to actually say the word.
I took one step into the room and she recoiled from me. She would have backed away even farther if she didn’t bump into the bed.
“I didn’t know until I came back here,” I told her. “Cason Dane….that blue dragon you saw just now….”
“Dragon!” she bellowed. “DRAGON!! Dragons don’t exist!! Dragons are fantasy creatures!! They’re fiction!! This is impossible!! You can’t be a dragon!! All those people…..YOUR PEOPLE…..”
“Yes, my people,” I replied. The more hysterically irate she got, the calmer I became. “This is who I am. It’s who we all are. I didn’t ask for this. I couldn’t tell you before because I didn’t know. Then, after I found out about you and Connor…..”
“He’s one of them, isn’t he?” She choked and her wild eyes darted toward the door. Her expression went through a wild flurry of confused emotions. “He’s one of those….”
“He won’t be able to shift until he becomes a teenager…but yes, he is one. He’ll be green like me…..”
“GREEN!!” she shrieked.
“Riley…..” I took another step and held out my hand to her.
She leapt away so fast she skidded past me to the door before I could stop her. “Don’t you ever touch me again!! Don’t you ever come near me or my son ever again!!”
She charged out of the apartment and took off. I didn’t know where she would go, but it didn’t really matter. I just had to make sure she didn’t take Connor out of the stronghold. The Danes would kill him for sure if they caught him unguarded.
I changed my clothes as quickly as I could and left the apartment. I found Karim waiting for me on the landing. He fell in next to me on the way downstairs. “Where’s Riley?” I asked.
“She went back to the guest apartment—the one you assigned to her originally. She’s still in there.”
“Leave her there. Are the battalions in place?”
“Yep. We got the whole state covered. The Danes are long gone.”
“Chickenshit cowards,” I growled. “I’m going to see my boy. Gather everyone together downstairs. I’ll be down there in a few minutes.”
“You got it.”
I turned off toward the kids’ playroom and he kept going the rest of the way to the main hall.
I stopped on the threshold of the kids’ playroom. Connor and Wilcox were in there alone. They stood in a corner talking in whispers.
Wilcox spun around and his eyes widened when he saw me, but Connor didn’t look up. He stared straight in front of him, too stunned to move.
Wilcox gulped when I walked over to them. “Are you boys all right?” I asked. “Did you get hurt?”
Wilcox shook his head. “She……she saved us. She saved our lives. That dragon….would have killed her…..”
“Yeah. She saved you. Now I need you to go home and find your parents, Wilcox. They’ll be worried about you and I need to talk to Connor alone.”
Wilcox nodded fast and raced out of the room. Connor still didn’t look at me, so I sat down on the couch in front of him. His clear green eyes stared at nothing, but I didn’t have to wonder what he was seeing.
“Connor…..” I began. “Look at me.”
Those eyes snapped to mine and the world stopped. The deep green of his eyes flickered with shimmering veins and radial lines. He had a dragon’s eyes. The dragon lay sleeping inside him. It would come to life in a few short years. I owed it to him to prepare him for that day.
“That…..that dragon……” he whispered. “That was you.”
“Yeah. It was me and all the people you’ve been eating breakfast with and playing with and talking to are all dragons, too. Everyone you see here is one and all those kids you’ve been playing with will grow up to be dragons…..just like you will.”
He gulped. “Will I…..will I be able to fly like that?”
