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“Are you?” Synora asked gently, her voice not betraying any of her thoughts on the matter.
“Maybe?” Holly shrugged. “I wasn’t really analyzing it when I was in the air.”
“What about now?” Kieran asked. “It’s okay if you are,” he said, giving her the assurance she was looking for.
Holly looked over at Luca. He was crouched twenty paces away, his golden eyes staring intently at Holly, tail lashing behind him. “I think he may be what was pulling me,” Holly thought aloud. “The off feeling, I think that was the dark magic in him.”
Her mates exchanged looks. It seemed Synora had been added to the silent-look club. “Okay then,” Kieran said in acceptance. Holly frowned at them. There was no way it was that easy. They had to have thoughts and feelings about the matter. If something like this had happened to her papa, he would be yelling and shouting as he processed his feelings about the situation. It could not be this easy.
“Okay then?” she echoed.
“If he’s your mate, then that’s okay,” Kieran repeated. “It means he won’t hurt you.”
Kallan grumbled under his breath but didn’t say anything.
“Is he… coherent?” Synora asked hesitantly. “Can he tell us anything about the hoard or who’s behind this?”
“Maybe?” Holly didn’t sound confident to her own ears. It hadn’t worked in the air, but maybe on the ground she could get through to him. “I can try.”
She got back up to her feet. Kallan reached a hand out, and Kieran helped him up. “Are you sure you should be up?” she asked worriedly, her hands reaching out to touch him before she drew them back, not sure if her touch would be welcome.
“I’m fine. Just had the wind knocked out of me,” he said. He reached out and squeezed her hand briefly before letting it go, giving Holly a small smile. She returned it as something in her eased. This was fine. She could balance another mate, right?
She turned back to her original task and crossed the distance to Luca, who relaxed as she approached. “Hey there,” she said softly. “Can you tell me if someone has been here recently?”
She laid a hand on his dusty scales, thinking she couldn’t wait to see them shine. She was sucked into his mind as fractured images flew at her. Someone had been there. Someone who caused Luca a lot of pain. He had disturbed the hoard. Luca hated this person. He hated that they disturbed the hoard. Holly was his hoard. No, Holly was more than his hoard. He had to protect Holly. The remaining images that flashed were all of Holly, and she broke the connection when it was clear that was the dragon’s sole focus now. Fuck. She wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being an object of obsession, especially not with what had happened with Blanton. She would have to keep an eye on Luca’s feelings until they could figure out how to help heal his fractured mind.
“Someone’s already been here,” she said, coming back out of Luca’s mind with a jolt. “They’ve been here before. They took things and hurt Luca.”
“What did they take?” Kieran asked. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t see. But this person has been here before. All I could see of the person was their black outline, but it was… smoky? Blurred around the edges. I couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man. Whoever it was, they tortured Luca. So much so his mind has fractured the images.”
“Fractured?”
Holly shrugged. “I don’t know a better way to describe it, but that’s what it seems like. They’re short and choppy and don’t make a lot of sense.”
“Will he be okay if we check out the hoard?” Kallan asked, eyeing Luca warily.
Holly checked in with Luca, but his mind was still on Holly. “I think so. He seems to have a single-minded focus on protecting me right now.”
“Good,” she thought she heard Kallan say as he carefully walked past her into the cave.
Holly approached the entrance of the cave with the others but hung back with Luca as they entered.
The cave was barely large enough for a full-grown dragon. The walls were smooth at the front but narrowed down to jagged spikes in the back. Littered between the spikes of rock, piles of different-shaped items peeked out. As the others walked deeper in the cave, Holly laid a hand on Luca’s neck in case he started to get possessive about the hoard, but he ignored the others and instead leaned into her touch. She scratched his neck absentmindedly as she peered into the cave.
“I have Fortis here,” Synora said, talking about a rare healing plant from the Elven Forest. Fortis was also incredibly addictive and could be used to keep a person alive when they used dark magic, which was what Professor Storm had done for years. “It looks like some is missing, though,” she said as she examined one of the piles.
“I’ve got the rest of the Metallicum,” Kieran said. “Although, same… Some is missing.”
“I’ve got several other plants over here,” Synora called out. “I’ll need time to identify all of them, but I recognize a few. Some are deadly poisonous.”
“Be careful,” Holly couldn’t help but saying.
Synora tossed a wink over her shoulder in the dim cave. “Always.”
“I’ve got dragon scales over here,” Kallan called from the far corner. “Some green but others different colors. I’ve also found the Ligamen.” He held up several vials of the glowing light-pink liquid.
