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I’d fight whole armies by myself to keep him smiling like that.
“Lost Fang, huh? You guys don’t have much contact with the outside world,” Blithe said.
“I wouldn’t know. Well, maybe I would, but I don’t remember,” I shrugged one shoulder and wrapped my other arm around Scott.
“And there’s a reason for that,” Liam said as the basement door creaked open. “Is it okay for us to come down? It’s me and Dara. Sam stayed out to make sure the twins went somewhere else. We locked up, though.”
Blithe and Duke shared a look that involved a lot of eyebrow twitching before they nodded at each other and Duke told them they could come on down.
Dara was a giant of a man whose expression was akin to someone who just won the lottery or had the most fantastic secret.
“What you so cheerful for?” Duke asked him.
“The more we know about things like this, the more we can help people,” Dara said.
“I told you, this is more magic than medicine, but I wanted you here to look at him anyway, because no one should show up covered in their own blood and not see a doctor,” Liam sighed.
“Magic and medicine aren’t that far apart, Liam,” Dara said as if he were merely reminding him.
Liam let out a long, slow breath.
“Before I say anything,” he said, sitting down in an armchair while Dara hovered behind him, a tiny black notebook in hand and at the ready. “You all should know that if I sound frustrated, I am, but not at any of you. Trista and Travis --- well, they’ve just pissed me off. I try not to get mad at idiots, but I draw the line at bullying.”
“What did they do?” Blithe asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Liam said. “We have more important things to talk about than their antics.”
“Something bad enough that their parents cut them off from the money,” I chimed in to let Blithe know how serious the situation was.
“Are you okay, Scott?” Blithe asked, as he tensed to get out of the nest.
“They’ll be plenty of time to talk about it later,” Scott shrugged. “It can’t be undone, and I don’t want them to overshadow this. I’ve met my true-mate and my head is spinning.”
“There is a lot of lore that we aren’t sure about,” Liam said, changing the subject and dragging us all back on track, “but the more we live the more I’ve come to believe most of it can be believed. I had the honor of being in and out of the Temple of Juda back in the GGB Territory a lot while I was a teenager. That gave me the chance to read a lot of stuff most people would never know about. One of the things I read was what at the time my mentor, Sincla, and I thought was just a story. It was an odd ball one, but it stuck with me. I’m going to tell you that story and then we’ll brainstorm. Dara, you might want to sit down, because this could take awhile.”
“I’m used to standing,” he said. “My dragon’s on edge too. If one of those igits hit Sam, well, you’ll see.”
“Okay, your feet, not mine,” Liam shrugged and rolled his shoulders before leaning back into the armchair. “I don’t remember the guy’s name from the story. So, there’s that already, but the rest of it I remember pretty well. There was this dude. He was a human who didn’t shift and he was in a human army that did some pretty shitty things. By this time, Frost and Juda had already taken their younger kids and fled to the Other World. But some of their children like Syra and Cyrus, their firstborns, were already grown and had a lot of descendants. Well, this guy was the true-mate of one of those descendants. Well, as armies go around doing bad shit, a lot of people die in said army. Dude was dying on the battle field and the story goes that Juda was so distraught at the idea of one of their descendants never meeting his true-mate that he begged Frost to save him. Well, Frost was born in the Other World like a lot of the wild dragons back in the day and probably still to this day. So, he was a well-connected man and years of surviving Earthside taught how to think on his claws. So, he went and paid a visit to the Cerebus Territory. None of the three headed dogs agreed to go with him. None of them could agree with their other heads. There was one born, though, with only one head. He had these big glowing eyes and a couple of tails. At one point in the story, it was three and then another time they said four, but the dog had more than one. We can probably safely assume that much.
So anyway, Frost crafts up this spell, to put the dog inside this guy. He’d live for as long as the dog would’ve, but Frost is the Teacher of Lessons. That’s why he has the Pit and all that. So, part of the spell said, dude had to remember who he was but also figure out he shouldn’t spend his precious life doing shitty things. If the spell worked by the next moon, the man would live out his remaining years as a Pit hound shifter. If he didn’t figure things out he’d die and go to the Pit. Well, he figured it out and supposedly they lived happily ever after.
But after the first ‘odd dog out’ got to leave with Frost a lot of those like him started migrating over and hanging out with him. No one likes to feel out of place and like Frost and Juda did with most folks, they made the dogs feel welcomed too. They hung around the Pit so much that they came to be known as Pit hounds. They do help him out and I guess occasionally he does this spell.”
“You think this guy named Frost cursed me?” I blinked when the dragon shifter stopped speaking.
“No,” Liam said, meeting my gaze. “I think he saved your ass or at least gave you the chance to save yourself.”
“Don’t you think the angry woman would’ve said something if I was a soldier or something?” I asked, swallowing down frustration.
“No one is saying you’re bad,” Scott said, frowning at Liam and the others. “Maybe Frost just wanted to save you. He and Juda did start our whole family.”
“Maybe we should call Marcus to mediate,” Dara chimed in.
“We’re not fighting,” Scott said. “We’re just discussing.”
Dara picked up the frazzled edges of the tension dancing through the room better than my mate. Just because I had amnesia and some long dead dragon had given me a pit hound didn’t mean I was a murderer or even an asshole. It wasn’t like the dead dragon was around to tell us what was going on.
“I just think emotions will run high today and having the village therapist around might prevent some misunderstandings,” Dara said.
