Chapter Twenty-Two
Lilly
Angrily she shoved the front door open.
After Torran had taken off to God knew where after God knew who, Lilly had been left by herself in the field. In the cold. After a few minutes’ time she stormed back to the house in the shadows of dusk, thoroughly unhappy with everything.
“Hello?” she growled.
“Lilly?” Palin emerged from the side room where they were all still gathered around one of the three fireplaces in the house. “Is everything okay? Where’s Torran?’
“Torran went chasing after someone who was spying on us in the field,” she said, speaking loudly and angrily. “He was determined not to let them get away, since they’d seen him in his—” she clamped her mouth shut. “Nothing.”
But Palin knew something was up. She tried to move around him but he blocked her path and shuffled her into the empty kitchen. Then he called for Sandy to join him. Lilly hoped her friend would help get her free, but she took one look at Palin and nodded solemnly.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, looking back and forth between the couple, her friend and her friend’s boyfriend, neither of whom seemed ready to let her go.
“Sandy knows everything,” Palin said softly. “About me...and about Torran.”
She blinked. That was not what she’d expected from the confrontation. It seemed like he was trying to let her know he knew. “So…are you, um, like Torran as well?” she stumbled over the words, trying to choose the right ones that wouldn’t explicitly give it away if she were wrong.
“Yes,” Palin said quietly.
“Right. Well, what color is his?”
Palin answered immediately, and with a solid confidence she couldn’t doubt. “Green. Emerald, really. I am more viridian.”
Well, that just about sealed it.
“Damien was in the field,” she said softly. “I think he said something about filming Torran while he was in his other form. I think that’s why he went after him. To destroy any evidence of what he was.”
Palin looked away unhappily.
“Are you not going to go help him?” she asked, astonished. “Your secret could get out!”
The big man ran a hand over his smooth head, but declined to answer.
“That means no.”
“Torran won’t need his help, is what I think he’s getting at,” Sandy said, intervening for the first time. “He can handle it on his own.”
“Handle it? What the hell does that mean? What are you not telling me?”
Sandy looked at Palin purposefully, and the big man huffed unhappily and walked away. Then she rested one hand on Lilly’s shoulder and pushed her into a small side room. An office it looked like. Then she sat and indicated Lilly should too. “They have to protect their secret, Lil. No matter what. Could you imagine what governments would do with that sort of information? The things they would go to, to try and recreate dragons of their own? That they could control?”
Lilly nodded, because she understood. Sandy was making it clear, because she understood too.
“Wait a minute.” Her head snapped upright, blue-green eyes glaring. “You knew? All this time that you knew and you didn’t tell me? Did you not think this might have been a good thing to tell me when I first started indicating something was going on between Torran and me?”
“Oh come on,” Sandy groaned. “You know I couldn’t do that!”
“Why the hell not? You’re my best friend, Dee!”
“Lilly, use your head. What were we just talking about? Keeping their secret! Torran had to be the one to tell you, because only he knew if you were his mate or not.”
Right. His mate. Torran had used that word too.
“That sounds rather permanent, that word. Mate.”
“It is,” Sandy said calmly. “Dragons mate once, and they mate for life.”
“So you’re saying Torran and I…”
“If you choose to, yes. If you don’t, then he’ll let you go, and live forever alone.”
“No pressure,” she muttered. “They really do take keeping this secret safe stuff seriously.”
“Yes. They’ve learned that it must be stopped at all costs.”
Lilly’s stomach dropped. “At all costs? What does that mean? What are you trying to tell me, Dee?”
Someone entered the room behind them. She turned to see Torran, his face ashen and sickly.
“She’s trying to tell you I’m a murderer.”