Page 9 of Hadley

“There is.” Milo sat down when Imp appeared with them. “Will you ever be able to be around me without being afraid, Milo? I’d never harm you. Any of you. I love you like my own brother, and you know how much I love him.”

“You’re scary.” As soon as he said that, Milo’s face turned a bright red. “I’m sorry. Sometimes my head thinks of something, and my mouth just spills it out. However, what do you mean by saying there is more to their relationship than what I’ve been seeing?”

Chapter 3

“You would be correct in saying that the two of them were bound to meet up and be mates. I don’t mean this Colby in this timeline but one of them. I’m so happy that it’s this woman. She’s perfect, and yes, I did mean to use the word perfect for—let me start from the beginning.”

As she wove them the story, Imp was able to use her considerable magic and show them images from long ago. So long ago, Milo had been right in saying that Colby had been meant for Hadley from the beginning. Not that Imp knew that much, but more. However, more things were coming to her as the days had been moving forward around the farm and family.

“I didn’t create the first Colby. I did have a hand in her name. One that she told me would be used throughout her generations after I gave it to her. What she said then hadn’t occurred to me until I saw you and her descendant together, Hadley.” Hadley asked her why she’d not been able to see that they were bound for each other. “I wasn’t supposed to, I guess. Colby showed me things about herself, too, that I was intrigued by. Things that now, after all these years, I think I was meant to see for the purpose of making my dragons. The tears, for one thing. Gems being used to create them. Little things that we talked about so long ago that I’m only just now realizing she meant for me to know. Also, for me to remember. She even told me how the waters would need to be replenished more often than they were. At the time, I only thought she meant it for her family when they came. But now…well, I’m sure she had other ideas in mind. Trees and grass would need to be fortified and replenished when they were felled. Just small things that she somehow knew were going to make a difference in the life of my dragons.”

“So you used her ideas to create what you wanted to see.” Imp said that it was something like that but never did they speak of creations. “This first Colby, why isn’t she immortal as the rest of us are?”

“I did offer it to her. But she refused me. Said that she didn’t want that. She wished to live a long time, but not forever. However, she’d take a mate. That’s what she called him too, a mate.” Imp laughed a little. “I guess I never thought of her being lonely when she left me to find her way, I guess. Then when she returned, Dawn and I created her a mate. One that would live a long time, be a companion to her as well as a father to all the children that she wished to have. I’d not thought of her in years. Oh, I’d go and check on the couple now and then back then. Never going to talk to them, though. I think I would have been welcomed. When the earth told me she had passed away, I went to the service to pay my respects. It was then that I noticed that her firstborn, a daughter was as white-haired as she had been the day that she had left me.”

“Why?” Imp asked Hadley what he meant. “Why didn’t you go to her more often? What did her hair being white have to do with anything? I have so many questions, Imp, that I’m not sure how to put them in any kind of order.”

“White hair. All right. Her hair was as dark as yours when I met her. She told me that I was feeding from her energy—now I know it was her magic—when I was fixing the things that she pointed out to me on our walk. I was stronger than her, but for some reason, and I believe she was feeding me her magic, I used it to fix things that would better all our lives. Like what you and Colby are doing now with his farm.” She watched as what she was saying to Hadley seemed to sink in. “The reason that I didn’t see her more often in her lifetime is because not long after she came to see me that last time, I had to go into a deep sleep. To rest after the mountain came down upon us when my sister and brother were with me. As for your other questions, I’m sure, Hadley, once you start thinking about them, you’ll see that you have all the answers that you want. It’s all right there, in your head as well as your wonderful mate, Colby.”

Imp looked in the direction that she knew that Colby would be coming. The beaten golf cart was looking worse daily, but it ran like a song. Imp would bet anything that the faeries were enjoying the newly restored engine on the thing when no one was about. She’d seen them on the goats enough to know that they were enjoying the daredevil kind of fun that the elder Colbys enjoyed too.

This time instead of sitting on the ground to enjoy their lunch, she made a table and chairs. And simply because she could, Imp put a pretty tablecloth on it as well as changed out the plastic ware, which she detested—for fine silver. Also, there was a small vase of flowers on the table that she thought would be a nice addition to the food they were enjoying.

Once she was full, her belly as stuffed as she thought it had ever been, Imp leaned back in her chair and regarded the new addition to this family. Her observations of the younger woman didn’t go unnoticed by any of them. Colby asked her what she was seeing.

“How much you look like your first relative. She had the most beautiful eyes. None of the other Colbys, I’m betting, had the green eyes that you shared with her.” Colby told her that everyone else’s eyes were blue or a version of it. “I thought as much. They’re the color of the first gem that I found. The first jade that I made Ava, the first dragon shifter’s mother with. It’s the same color with even the streaks of gold in them.”

“Thank you. I’ve never seen a picture of her. A lot of the past relatives are a mystery to me.” Imp said that they were to her as well, but she could show her an image of her friend. That was when it hit Imp that Colby had been her friend. “I’d like that. I do a little painting. Perhaps if I can get a good look at her, I can paint her for the new house.”

“I can help you with that, Colby. You need only to think of her, and she’ll become an image in your mind that you can use. I should have thought of that for you all. That you’d not have any kind of ways to see what she looked like.” Imp was glad that she could do this for them. “I’ve also come here on a mission. Milo wants to have Hadley shift into his dragon. For a theory. I have the same as a matter of fact and would love to see if it’s true or not.”

In only a few minutes, the meal and all their things were put away. The basket, worn and frayed, looked so out of place sitting on the ground that she hated to think that it wouldn’t be there for children of Hadley’s. Touching her fingers to it, she made sure that it didn’t change the appearance but only made it more sturdy for the coming years. Imp could see the children of her brother-in-law racing ahead of their parents with the basket in his hands. It made her somewhat jealous that she had no such thing to pass to her own children.

Every time she saw Hadley’s dragon, she was amazed by his size. He was larger than his brothers by a great deal but only slightly smaller than Copper, who was the king of them all. Imp was also aware that Hadley was larger than his own grandfather as well but hadn’t brought it up in all the time she’d known him. But seeing him now, lying on the grassy land, she could also see that there had been changes to his body, as Milo had guessed.

“You’re no longer a shiny diamond color. You have streaks of dark in you. Not that it takes away from your ability to blend into things around you, but you are different.” He asked her what she meant by the streaks. “They’re dark. All in good places that blend into your surroundings. Also, I think too that you’re better at that as well. When you move, even when your tail moves ever so slightly, it doesn’t show you as it had before when you weren’t mated.”

There were other things, too, that she noticed. His teeth, the sharper ones in the front, were larger than before. Sharper, too, she thought. As she moved around him, sometimes flying over him to get a good view of his body, Imp could see too that there were sparks of light coming off his body. As if he’d had a camera pointed at him with the flash on. That was when she noticed that he had a harness on him.

She asked him about it.“I’ve never had one before. It’s never been my desire to have someone riding on my back, so I never gave it a thought to have one made for me.”Imp told him that she thought there was only one person who could ride him, and that would be Colby. He asked his mate if she’d like to have a ride on his dragon.“I won’t harm you. And you don’t have to should you not want to take a ride.”

“Are you kidding? It’s all I’ve been able to think about since you shifted. You’re so big, though. How would I get up on you?”Imp nearly went to help the younger woman when all of a sudden, wings appeared at her back. Not commenting on them other than to say that she was glad for the wings, Colby flew to the back of Hadley and got up on the seat. Like she’d been doing it all her life.

“Once you’re buckled in, please let me know.”Hadley looked at her, his one eye taking in more than she thought she could, flying around in the open sky.“You’ll watch out for her, won’t you, Imp? I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

Of course, she would, Imp told him. Not that she thought she’d need it, but she would watch over her for the first few minutes. As the two of them lifted off the ground, Hadley’s great wings making the earth shake and trees bend in response, she could only stare at them as they seemingly disappeared in the sky. Their combined magic, she thought, making it so that they’d be able to fly around the world, and no one would be the wiser. Going to where Milo was sitting, she asked him if he was all right.

“Yes. I mean, I think I am. Did you see it?” She shook her head, wondering what he meant. “Once she was on his back, it was as if they became one. From where I’m sitting right now, I couldn’t see either of them once she was there on his back. Not even to see them go to the sky. I’m thinking that should the need arise, Colby could be a dragon as well. A bit smaller one, but she’d be one if he needed her to be. Or, and this one, now that I think on it, is more true. If she needed to hide. Her and her children. Because they’ll have dragon children, too, I believe.”

It was something to think about. Imp knew that the creations of the dragons were her own, but there had been so many things that she’d put into them that she’d gotten from her friend Colby. Not information nor her telling her what she needed to do but just parts of the woman that she’d thought of while she’d been creating the creatures. When Milo said he was going to head home, Imp decided that she’d go home as well. She needed to talk to her mate, George.

However, instead of finding him at their home, she went to Finn’s home, where they were all gathered. Carson and Cooper would be leaving to return home soon, and she wanted to talk to the two of them before they left. Imp had a great many questions of her own that she thought Cooper might be able to answer for her.

The first thing she asked him was if he knew anything about the eggs that he’d given to his brothers for them to hatch. Particularly the ones that Xavier and Cindi had raised. He said that off the top of his head, he didn’t, but he did have a book at home that he could refer to. Imp put out her hand and handed him the book when it landed in her hand.

Cooper stared at her for a few minutes but said nothing. Instead, he opened the Book of Dragons up and looked for the entry that he needed. Once he found it, he frowned before looking at her.

“There’s been a change in the book. Not anything to do with Hadley’s parents but with him. I’m assuming that’s who you were thinking of, correct? Colby has been added, of course, as she would have been. But she’s named as a silver dragon and fae.” He handed her the book when she asked for it. “Hadley’s biological parents were both diamonds. Thus the reason for him being a pureblood. If Colby is indeed a dragon, though, I haven’t any idea how that has come about, then their children would be pure as well with a bit of fae—I’m so confused right now.”

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