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“Is the fire going to spread?” Nicole asks, watching the flames lick at the building.
“No,” I tell her. “We’re far enough from town that no one is going to notice the flames. They might see the smoke, but it’s dark, so they won’t be able to pinpoint where it’s coming from. We’ll stay until the flames die down, and then we’ll put the rest out.”
We watch for a long time. The cabin was surrounded by dirt, so the flames aren’t able to jump to the nearby grass or trees. I had been planning on planting a garden this spring, but now I’m glad that there was the empty mud and dirt to block the flames from leaping across to the grass.
I pull Nicole closer to me as we sit there together. By the time the cabin is finished burning, it’s pitch black out, and I realize we should get back to Fablestone. The clan is going to wonder where we went, although I’m sure Marta and Jeremy were able to cover for me for awhile.
“Time to go,” I say, standing. I get up and start tossing all of Bernie’s things into the bag.
“What are you going to do with it?” Nicole asks. “Are you going to take it back to Fablestone?”
“No,” I shake my head. “Look,” I point to the phone. “It might be a burner, but someone could still track her with it.”
“Just take the SIM out,” Nicole offers helpfully.
“I don’t know if any of her other stuff is bugged,” I tell her. “We’ll leave it for now. Jeremy can come out tomorrow and sweep it. He may be able to pull data off the phone before we have to toss it.”
“Better yet,” Nicole says. “We might be able to keep whoever is communicating with her talking.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she says carefully, thoughtfully. “I know the lingo. I mean, I only worked with Lucky for a short time, but I know Bernie fairly well, so I know how to text and sound like her. Our voices are pretty similar, too, so I could probably fake my way through a phone call.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We need to know how to bring this organization down, Lee. I’m saying, let’s not burn any more bridges than we have to. Keep the phone. Maybe don’t bring it to Fablestone, even if it does come back clean, but keep it. We can use it to get more information. We can use it to find them. We can use it to make sure no other dragons are hurt.”
“All right, my little spy,” I kiss her on the forehead. “That’s actually an incredible idea. That’s fine. We’ll do it.”
She squeals, jumping up and down, and I grab her and spin her around, kissing her. Then we carefully set all of Bernie’s things beneath a particularly large pine tree, note it’s distance from the remains of the cabin, and head back to Fablestone. Jeremy can come back tomorrow and we’ll see what he can dig up.
As we fly back with the cover of darkness on our side, I’m a little more willing to fly high. I soar up and down and even do a spinning roll once or twice just to hear her squeal and laugh and sigh with contentment.
Mates.
It’s been forever since I thought about finding a mate.
I’ve dated since Nicole, but somehow, nothing ever made sense the way it did when she and I were together. No matter what we’ve been through, she really is, and always will be, the one for me.
And I count myself the luckiest dragon in the world that today I had a muffin craving and wandered to her bakery. It’s amazing how your life can change in a matter of hours, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Nicole and I are going to be together for always, and if that’s not magical, I don’t know what is.
Epilogue
; Nicole
We all make mistakes, but we often feel that we don’t deserve forgiveness or a second chance. We typically believe that we aren’t worthy of compassion or caring or love. In life, we tend to assume that the people around us just don’t know how bad we are. If they did, they wouldn’t love us anymore.
That’s not true with Lee.
With him, things are different.
When he walked away, I didn’t dare to dream that we’d be able to get back together to make things work. I didn’t think there was a chance we’d somehow manage to find each other and make our worlds work once more. The idea of us somehow meshing back together and managing to have a relationship with each other seemed foreign, but now?
Now I can’t imagine my life without him.
