Chapter Eighteen
Long after they’d seen Dr. Kovak treated at the clinic in Balan, Ashlyn returned to the haven to check on the eggs. Sigurd had taken flight to ensure Margaret nor any other dragons remained close by.
She hated leaving her foster father, but Sigurd had called Blake and he and Emily would arrive in a few hours. She promised to check on the eggs, update Quintin so he could explain Dr. Kovak’s absence. She’d tell him there had been an accident and her father’s ribs were broken. She wouldn’t go into the details or the true extent of his injuries. While those in their employ knew of the haven for dragons and swore to the code of the Keepers, Ashlyn didn’t know who she could trust anymore.
Call it her new heightened dragon senses, she could feel the unease in the Aviary, in the hatchery, and the haven. They would have to add security. Margaret had to have known about the eggs. Had Sigurd been followed?
How long before she came back? They would have to find another place. A place Margaret could never go.
And now she knew the Keeper mistress’s secret.
Satisfied the eggs remained safe and nestled in the hidden nest inside the volcanic mountain, Ashlyn retraced her steps from earlier in the day. She no longer itched. She left her hair flow around her face, soft wisps tickled her cheek. Inside the cavern, her eyes adjusted to the dim. She caught the glimmer of something blue, bent down and retrieved the fallen scale amongst the tattered shreds of her dress.
She couldn’t help smiling, holding onto her mate’s heart scale. She glanced at the tattoo on her wrist. Dark and bold, the dragon symbols a permanent part of her. Just like her dragon side. Just like her mate.
“All is well and good?” Sigurd sauntered into the cavern, naked as the day he’d been born. He grinned, and her cheeks warmed. She couldn’t help admiring him. Those hard-chiseled abs. No flab on her man. No, not an ounce. Those cool blue eyes assessed her, gave her a tingle.
He’d talked her through the shifting, helped her transition back to her human form. His voice like a balm on her burning soul. He calmed her, reassured her, and they’d made the shift together before he’d taken Dr. Kovak to get help.
The haven remained safe, tucked away from the outside world’s knowledge. She intended to keep it that way. “For now. But I can’t help feeling this is all my doing.”
“How so?”
She walked with him outside of the cavern, too many scents, too hard to differentiate one from the other. “If I had answered her text she wouldn’t have come.”
Sigurd stood, planted his hands on those lean hips while she explained. Since the day she’d come to stay with the Kovaks she did her duty and sent reports to Margaret on what went on at the hatchery.
Sigurd shook his head and swore. “She’s had you spying. She had no right to ask that of you. Not a child. Not anyone. You owe that silver back vermin nothing.”
“She’s determined to take Emily’s egg. When she sent Emily and Jacques to retrieve it, she told Emily it would pay our families debt forever.”
“Forever? What did she do? Make a deal with the gods?” Sigurd’s brow furrowed.
“Is that even possible?” Ashlyn’s heart sank. Weren’t dragon’s gifts from the gods to protect human kind? They abused the gifts, or had it been the dragons who took advantage of their position? Either way, she didn’t want to be a dragon. She never did. Especially, the one she’d turned out to be.
“I don’t know.” He touched her face, leaned in—forehead to forehead. “Silver dragons are amongst the eldest of our kind. If any dragon could converse with the gods, it would be them.”
“Are there many silver dragons? I thought, like the gold scaled Oroyalis, they are few.”
“I know of only one silver in my lifetime, baby, and I iced her a few hours ago.”
“She’ll be upset.”
“Pissed, I reckon.” Sigurd twisted a piece of her hair in his fingers.
“Do you think this is where she’s been hiding? Or did she follow you from the states?” She rubbed noses with him, tilting her face up to search his eyes, waiting for an answer.
“Both,” he said, after he’d had a few moments of thought on it.
“Then she’ll come back? Not for the eggs, but for me. She’ll have a score to settle like she had with Jacques, like she has with Emily.”
“She can’t touch Emily, and Jacques is far from her reach, believe me.”
“Then it’s me she’ll come for. She’ll be back. And the eggs? What of them?” Her heart nearly broke thinking of the pain she’d caused her foster father. He laid in a hospital bed in the clinic. Lucky for them all, Margaret’s claws grazed him, his cuts would heal with a few stitches here and there. His ribs would take the longest and his lungs would burn to breath a bit while they did. She trembled, cold, and he yanked her to him. Held her as the shock hit, hours later, and she clung to him for support.
“She’s too smart to come back here. We’re on to her now. Got her spooked. Soon there won’t be a place in the world she can go and hide without us finding her.”
She rested her head on his strong shoulder, breathing in scents of pine and a bit of antiseptic she figured he picked up at the clinic. She turned her head, kissed his bare shoulder, and rested her head back against him.
“Still, I find it hard to believe her a dragon, had I not seen it with my own eyes. How could I have not known? I’ve always been able to distinguish the difference.”
“She fooled a good many of us, but we’ve got her scent now. I imagine she’ll retreat a bit, need to heal for that acid she spews is a real stinger, and then she’ll come out again. She’ll face the dragon counsel and the Keepers to answer for the ploy she’s had going between our two kinds. She can’t escape forever.”
“And until then?”
Sigurd chuckled, a deep sound that vibrated from his chest. She pressed her hand, the one with the blue scale against his heart. “Practice making a few fiú of our own. With Blake and Emily here, we can go to the island. I’ll fetch Father Armand and we’ll make it official in both cultures of saying ‘I do’ and after Stonehenge, we’ll go anywhere you want for the honeymoon.”
She pulled away from him. Looked down at his scale in her hand, tried to push back the sadness filling her. “I can’t.”
“What? Why can’t you?”
She sighed. Her foster mother, Mrs. Kovak, always told her there would be choices in love. She fingered the smooth scale in her hand. “Every time, Laurel, Dr. Kovak’s wife, left for an assignment by the Keepers, it scared me. I’d lost my mum and dad, the Sullivan’s, and I was afraid I’d lose her, too. And every time she left, I promised to watch over Emily and Father until she returned.
I’m sorry, but my place is here. Father’s in the hospital and he’s going to need someone to help him until he is healed. With Emily back with Blake, one of us has to stay at the hatchery. This is my home, Sigurd. I have to protect it, protect my family, and the dragons who will one-day hatch or seek shelter in this very haven.”
“You’re my mate, Ashlyn. I’m not going anywhere. My place is alongside you.”
“And what of Stonehenge?”
“It looks as if Blake had it right. Canceled.”
“But the island?”
He silenced her with a light brushing of his lips. “My home is where you are. I told you. I’m not going anywhere.”
She kissed him back, a loud smacking sound of a kiss. “Good because there is something I want to give you.”
“Oh, and what is that?” He wiggled his eyes playfully.
“Now that you’ve seen my dragon...” she walked her fingers up his chest, used his scale to cover part of her face and peered at him through lowered lashes. “Don’t you think it’s time you teach me another lesson?”
“With pleasure.” He grabbed her wristed hand with the scale, brought that piece of him over his heart and claimed her lips with his.
THE END
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in my Dragons of Giresun series, Her Intended Dragon.