CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Steph
Guards stepped up and released Ryan from his handcuffs and shackles. Steph turned to Mr. Watins as he stepped away from the Kaurs and beckoned her with his hand. She followed as far as the courtroom doors and stopped. With her fist clenched by her sides she asked, “What do you want?”
“Come along with me, Ms. Brooks,” said Mr. Watins. “And I’ll explain it all to you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll wait for Ryan.”
“You know the types of documents I turned in? I can just as easily turn in quite another version, one not so favorable to the Kaurs. Come with me now.”
Ryan’s attention was on the guards letting him loose and the elder Kaur was standing behind his son. Steph followed Mr. Watins reluctantly out of the courtroom and out of the building.
Immediately two beefy security types were behind her and each took one of her arms.
“Get her into my limo.”
“Stop this, Mr. Watins. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes, you are, if you want to protect your dragon. And since you are a seneschal you most certainly do.”
Steph was taught to overcome overwhelming odds, but even she knew that she couldn’t take on two men that each had a hundred pounds on her. And Watins knew the truth, every bit of it about Ryan, and could undo everything he did to get Ryan free.
“What do you want from me?” said Steph.
“Stop stalling and get into the limo,” growled Watins.
Steph looked over her shoulder but didn’t see either Kaur, father or son. She walked down the courthouse steps trying to figure out a way to get out of this, but for the life of her Steph couldn’t see how.
She slid into the limo every thought in her brain screaming at her not to do this. The two security men followed her taking up residence on the seat opposite her. Then Watins got in and sat next to her.
Steph narrowed her eyes as Watins, that rat, go into the car. “What do you want?” she said scooting as far from him as she could.
“Actually,” he said pulling a syringe from his pocket. “I want you to go to sleep.”
Steph struggled but the security men held down her arms and Watins jammed the needle painfully in her arm.
Ryan, help!
Steph had no idea how long she was out or where she was. When she woke, it was in a room of whitewashed limestone. Pillars of gold rose on each side of the room and through the center of it and met gold arches in an interlaced pattern on the high ceiling. She supposed all that gold was gold leaf painstakingly applied. She moved and found she lay on a metal framed couch like one she saw in a museum at a Roman Antiquities exhibit. The mattress under her was thick, but it was hard as well, and her bones ached from laying on it.
There were no windows in this room. The light came from skylights that ran along the edge of ceiling. She stood and took in her surroundings.
She found that her street clothes were gone. In their place, she wore a long linen robe that reached to the floor. There was a heavy wood door to her left-hand side, but when she pulled at the door ring that served as a handle it wouldn’t budge.
Apparently, Steph was a prisoner. But who’s prisoner and why?
The door creaked open and a golden-haired woman wearing a robe much like hers entered bearing a tray.
“Hello,” she said. “I’ve brought you some food.”
“Where am I?” demanded Steph.
The woman serenely walked to the only table in the room, a heavy looking thing also made of metal and set the tray down.
“Come eat,” the woman said.
“Not until I get some answers.”
The woman sighed. “Humans, so stubborn. Come. Sit. Eat. I will tell you what I can.”
She pulled the cover off the plate and sat on a chair.
“Please,” she said indicating the chair at spot she placed the food.
Steph sat and looked at the food. The woman arched her eyebrow and Steph took a bit of a vegetable.
“That’s a start, I suppose,” she said. “I am Reanne, daughter of the queen of the dragons.”
Steph stopped eating and stared at Reanne.
“The queen of the dragons? Ryan told me about her.” Steph thought it wasn’t politic to add that Ryan called her scary. And she couldn’t imagine being brought to this place, though she had no idea where in the world it would be.
“Yes. I met Ryan,” said Reanne with a gentle smile. “I liked him very much even if he angered our mother.”
Steph felt a stab of jealously as she absorbed this bit of information. What did this woman have to do with Ryan? She didn’t like the thought at all of this buxom blonde haired beauty anywhere near Ryan. But then the force of Reanne’s words hit her. “Our? Ryan is her son?”
“Yes.”
“So that makes you his sister?”
“If you prefer human terms, yes. We don’t use familial terms like that. To Rhea I am one of her many subjects, useful upon occasion.”
“It doesn’t sound like you two have a great relationship.”
“She is the leader of the dragons. That is what she is to me. Rhea didn’t have much to do with me after I hatched.
Steph coughed on her food.
“Hatched? You hatch from eggs?”
Reanne shrugged. “The ones where eggs are laid, yes. We have multiple methods of reproduction. Some young are gestated internally. It just depends on the circumstance of conception.”
“And Ryan? Did he hatch like you?”
“Yes. Our mother only lays eggs. That is her preferred method, though the failure rate is higher than gestating internally.”
Steph rocked back in shock, first from learning that Ryan hatched from an egg to learning that dragons had a choice in how to reproduce.
“Each method has their pros and cons,” finished Reanne with a gentle smile. Stephanie found that she liked this dragon and she had to work hard to remember that she was a prisoner here.
But she was bursting with curiosity about dragons too and this might be her only opportunity to question such a talkative tutor.
“Tell me. Why do dragons look like humans so much of the time?”
Reanne dipped her head. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“You look like us. We were here first, before your primitive ancestors. We were few on this vast planet and we needed a labor force. We took the primitives and manipulated their DNA to be more like ours, without the dragon component, of course.”
“But everything we know, humans evolved over a long course of time.”
“Yes, you did. It took many, many generations to evolve the genome toward usefulness. We almost gave up.”
“So dragons created humans?”
“You can say that. But there also came a point where you took hold of your own evolvement and grew past being our servants. The one job that survived was that of seneschal, the bridge between dragons and humans. Seneschals have a little bit of dragon DNA in them to help them communicate with dragons. But it did something else too, something we did not foresee. Seneschals became irresistible to some of our dragons. Seneschals and dragons mated mixing their DNA. That was not supposed to happen. This angered my mother greatly to have hybrids among us. She killed whole generations of seneschals. We have not had them in the human population for six hundred years.
Steph swallowed hard.
“She brought me here to kill me?”
“Yes,” said Reanne sadly. “That is her purpose. And to lure Ryan here. She will not let go of the idea of Ryan joining the ranks of the dragons and running Kaur industries for our benefit.”
“Well, he won’t do it.”
“I know. Our mother does not. But she may be persuaded to see reason. When she sees that Ryan will not cooperate if you are dead, she might relent. She is always focused on her goals.”
“That sounds wonderful,” said Steph sarcastically. “Well, I don’t want Ryan coming here. It’s dangerous for him.”
“But he will. He mated you and he’ll be looking for his mate. And he’ll find you. Mated males are very good at doing that.”
Reanne looked at Steph’s dinner plate.
“I can see you don’t have much of an appetite.”
“The dinner conversation isn’t conducive to digestion.”
“We have to go now, anyway. Mother expects us in the courtyard.”
Steph pushed away the tray. She thought it was an excellent idea to get out of this room. If Steph got out in the open, she might be able to plan some sort of way out of here. She was taught to escape and evade, and damn it, she was going to do that if she could.
Reanne gave her a look over her shoulder as if she could read Steph’s thoughts. She shook her head but continued down long hallways with gilt columns and arches. There were also murals of different scenes on the walls, but they were moving too quick to examine them.
Soon Reanne led them out of the caverns and into an oval of grass that was surrounded by broken walls and turrets. A large stone table sat in the center and Steph recognized this place from the dream she had. She looked at Reanne and realized she was the woman from the dream as well.
As she stood staring at the scene a long line of people filed from the dark entrances to the cavern on either side of the grassy oval. They stood in a semi-circle around the stone table.
And then one woman came out, followed by a dark-skinned man and she walked straight to Steph.
She snorted, as she looked Steph up and down.
“This is what my son chose to mate with.” The look of disgust on her face made Steph want to smash her fists into the queen of the dragons.