AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Once they were all inside her bedroom, Percy crouched until she was at eye level with the little human boy. She looked from him to the dragon girl and back again. “Now, listen carefully. I need you two to stay in this room and not open that door to anyone until I say it’s okay. Understand?”
Ava asked, “But what if it’s my—”
“If your uncle shows up, then of course. But if the guards say to open it, even if they threaten me, you keep it locked and put a chair under the door handle. If they start banging against it, then use these.” Percy went to the attached bath, pried open the tile where she stashed things she’d stolen over the years, and returned to the kids. She put the phone in Joey’s hand and held out a stun gun to Ava. “You press that trigger, and this will fire a little wire thing that will shock whoever it attaches to. Got it?”
Ava stared at the stun gun, speechless.
Percy gently placed a finger under the girl’s chin and made her look up. “It’s scary—and hard—but the people here are monsters. It’s better to fight them, even if it means you die trying. Don’t let them take you away, Ava. I mean it. It’ll be hell.”
The dragon girl blinked, her pupils flashing, and nodded.
Joey just stared at her with his mouth open.
Maybe normal people would have felt bad or guilty or some shite like that. But Percy didn’t. Survival was everything, and feelings only ever got in the way.
She nodded. “Right, then I’m going to stand watch in the kitchen. Lock the door after me, okay?”
Joey blurted, “Will you be okay or get hurt, Percy?”
Considering how young he was—she couldn’t judge ages well since she hadn’t seen a young child in years, but he was maybe six or seven—he would still care about others, even strangers like her.
Something flared in her heart, but she ignored it.
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I have experience, and I need you two alive if I’m to escape this place.”
Ava hugged Joey close to her side, her eyes frightened. Good. The formerly pampered princess needed to learn that life was fucking unfair and awful, nothing like the fairy tales.
Percy rose and stopped inside the doorway. “I mean it—lock the door and put a chair under the handle.”
Only after Ava nodded did Percy shut the door. As soon as the lock clicked and she could make out the scraping sound of the chair being put into place, she went to the kitchen. The knives provided to her were dull, but she’d stolen a few switchblades from the guards over the years—she’d learned to steal early on—and retrieved them from her second hiding place inside one of the cupboards.
With the blades extended, she crouched behind the little kitchen island to wait.
The roars were probably from dragons. And the male shouting and grunts in the hallway probably meant there was some kind of battle going on.
Maybe, just maybe, Ava’s uncle had come to rescue his niece after all.
Percy’s heart pounded at the thought. On the one hand, Percy wanted to leave this hellhole and all the rape, torture, and humiliation she’d suffered. However, if Ava’s uncle held up his end of the bargain, it meant she would set foot into the territory of her first dragon clan.
A place where they’d hate someone like her—a half-human, half-dragon female with a silent dragon.
One of the first things she’d learned as a kid in the orphanage, before being sold to this prison, was that dragon-shifters hated mixed children, to such a degree that they often refused any children with human blood and sent them to the only orphanage in the UK that took in such bastards.
Percy had spent her first thirteen years there.
Buck up, Percy.She’d dealt with hatred for years, not to mention ridicule for being a freak with a massive birthmark on her neck and shoulder. After all the shite she’d endured, she could take a few sneers or jeers if it meant she could do the one thing she wanted to accomplish before she died—learn to talk to her dragon again and then fly. She didn’t give a fuck what happened after that. But she was going to fly, damn it, no matter what it took to accomplish her only dream.
Suddenly, there was shouting right outside her door. However, the light soundproofing made it so she couldn’t hear the words, not even with her supersensitive hearing.
Tightening her grip on her knives, she waited. She wasn’t all altruistic, determined to save children for the sake of it. But it was definitely a bonus if she could fight any of the guards and doctors. Pissing them off and ruining their plans gave her life.
The lock on the front door turned, and it swung open hard enough to smack against the wall. Then her least favorite guard, Denny Browne, strode in and shut the door behind him. “Percy, get your arse out here. Don’t bloody make me find you, or you won’t like it.”
She rolled her eyes. As if his threats were going to be any worse than some of the things that had been done to her inside this place.
Denny walked a few steps closer, and she rose, making sure to keep her hands with the knives hidden behind the kitchen island. “What the fuck do you want?”
The guard strode toward her. “We’re evacuating, and you and that dragon girl are coming with me. If I have to punch you unconscious and carry you over my shoulder, I will.” Lust flared in his eyes, and Percy willed herself not to gag. “But the boss said to try to keep you conscious first. Some plan of his I didn’t question.”
