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His eyes narrow and he lets out a tiny little growl. He’s not mad at me. I instinctively know that, but he seems to be angry that I was scared or afraid.
“I stood for a long time and then I decided to just be brave. I felt stupid being scared of the dark. It’s such a silly thing, you know. It wasn’t a long walk to the car, so I started moving. I kept looking around, trying to make sure I was aware of my surroundings.”
I’m trying to prove to him that I wasn’t being stupid.
Naïve.
Dumb.
Somehow, the idea of this man thinking I’m weak or stupid bothers me. I don’t know him at all. I’ve only just met him, but I want him to like me. I want him to think that my opinion matters and that I’m not the type of person who would get into trouble just for fun.
“What happened next, Peggy?”
“The woman came.”
He stills, and I wonder if it’s a dragon he knows. Is someone missing from his clan? Does he know? Does this dragon know who Cameron is and how I can find him? Surely he must know. He has to know. He must.
And he can help me.
“She was hurt,” I whisper. “And bleeding. She had the baby. She made me promise to take the baby to Fablestone. She told me to find Cameron and tell him that Lucky is coming.”
The dragon stiffens.
“Tell me the woman’s name.”
“Ellie.”
With that, the dragon leaps from the couch and instantly shifts, morphing into his true form. The side of the cabin is torn to shreds and the roof begins to collapse. I dive across the room to get Daisy and the kittens. Somehow, I gather them all as the dragon begins to scream.
It’s a sound I’ve never heard before and a sound I never want to hear again.
It’s the sound of complete pain, of total suffering.
The sound of loss.
He knows her.
The dragon jumps, leaping into the air. His wings flap and he begins to soar higher and higher. He doesn’t leave. He doesn’t fly away. He just goes up, up, up, and then, when he’s so high I almost can’t see him, he shoots flames as far as the eye can see. The fire bursts from his body, and then he begins to come back down.
I’m still. Daisy is crying and my kittens are meowing, but somehow, I manage to stay perfectly still as the dragon comes back down. He shifts into a man right as he lands, and then he looks at me.
“What the hell?” I manage to ask.
“We have to go now,” he says.
“I thought we were going to wait until the morning.”
“That was before,” he tells me. “That was before I knew.”
“Knew what?” I ask, confused. “What did you learn that you didn’t know before? Do you understand what the message means? Do you know who Lucky is?”
“Not who,” he says. “What.”
“Okay, do you know what Lucky is?”
He seems distressed. He begins to pace back and forth. Daisy manages to find her thumb and she starts sucking on it. I wish the kittens had thumbs to suck on because they’re meowing like crazy and tearing my backpack apart. Every so often, a claw catches my back, and I know I’m going to look like hell tomorrow.
“Lucky is an evil organization that hunts and performs science experiments on dragons,” he tells me. “Last week, they took a man from our clan and his daughter.” He jerks his head toward Daisy. “His wife left the clan to go find her.”
