Walking over to the dresser, I pulled out an outfit for the day – some dark blue jeans and a long-sleeved, flowy green top. I figured that the cool castle-like mansion was a good location for longer sleeves. I wouldn’t be leaving the walls of the place again until who knew when. My life was to be more or less hermit-like.
I got changed quickly, leaving my pajamas neatly folded on the bed, which I also made because I wanted something to do, and then I stepped into my sneakers, tying them up tightly. If I was going to be left alone in this house again, then I fully intended to do some exploring. There were a lot of rooms in the place, and most of them hadn’t even been glanced at once by me so far. I’d been afraid of getting into trouble for some reason, when Garen seemed like he could never be annoyed at me. Especially seeing as how he saw me as his equal. I could wait around all day, languishing in the bedroom or the den, when there was the whole rest of the mansion to explore. If it was really going to be my home, I needed to find out what every room contained.
And then, after that, I can always look through Garen’s music collection more in-depth.
I opened the door to the bedroom and looked around in case Brock or Ash was standing by to assist me or guard. They weren’t. I smiled to myself and stepped out of the room, closing it behind me because that seemed to be the general aesthetic that Garen preferred for the hallway. I passed all of the other closed doors, thinking that they probably were just a bunch of other guest rooms that looked similar to the one I’d napped in yesterday. Not to knock the bedrooms, but they weren’t as interesting as the other purposed rooms were likely to be. I hadn’t really explored the living room all that much, for example. If I got bored later, there was always the den, too. Both rooms were downstairs, so I went to the staircase and slowly took my time going down.
I still felt like pinching myself for being able to live in this mansion. In all of my wildest dreams of success, I’d never imagined this level of wealth. I’d imagined a future of laptops and deadlines, of working hard for small successes. Honestly, even though it didn’t sound like much, I still had dreams of pursuing that career. I just didn’t know how I was supposed to complete a journalism degree while staying at home one hundred percent of the time. Even if Columbia had online courses, there were likely a few lecture classes that I needed to go to in person in order to pass.
Ugh, I thought. Whatever. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I can take a year off without it being a big deal.
It was difficult to convince myself, but I was going to keep trying.
As soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I strolled into the living room. The couch and chairs there appeared to be almost completely untouched and unused. I imagined that this home would make a nice place for some type of friendly get-together, since there was more than enough space and there were plenty of spare bedrooms. I guessed that dragons just didn’t do a lot of socializing. Garen never mentioned any friends or family, apart from his late father. That made me feel sad. He had no one to share all of this with.
Well, he had me now, but I didn’t feel adequate enough for that honor. Once again, I couldn’t help feeling as though I only had confidence in my abilities when Garen was with me. Maybe that’s just his magnetism at work…? He and I had discussed magic in this castle. Was it possible that he exuded some kind of magical aura that made me feel things that I wouldn’t normally feel?
One good thing was that I no longer felt like a prisoner in this palace. Even though I disliked being left alone and to my own devices without much to do, I was starting to appreciate the place. I’d always been a fan of exploring, which was why I didn’t think it was possible for this mansion to just be sitting there in Washington Park this whole time without my noticing. I wasn’t always the most observant, but come on. The giant mansion was practically an eyesore.
Except no one who wasn’t a dragon could see it.
Apparently I fell into the ‘dragon’ category now.
I get the fancy label without any of the cool perks.
There really wasn’t much to the living room that wasn’t lived in, so I moved on. There was a large, vacant dining room, but that was standard, and then the kitchen which I’d seen. I continued on down the hallway and soon enough I found the den. That would be a good place for me to head back to as soon as I’d explored enough and felt like vegging out in front of a screen.
Near the doorway to the den there was a large wooden door that I didn’t know why I didn’t notice before. It didn’t look like anything special, but now that I’d seen enough of the mansion to know, I had a pretty good feeling that this was some sort of important, secret room. Maybe it was an even bigger man cave for the man-dragon. Or maybe it was some weird, perverted sex room full of cages and bondage equipment.
I just had to know.
I pulled at the door and was amazed by how heavy it was. The other doors that I’d encountered thus far had been normal and relatively easy to open, but this one felt like it was made of lead. I tugged and tugged at it, hurting every last one of my arm muscles in the process. Finally I managed to pry it open, but only just enough to squeeze my way through the sliver of doorway and into the darkness beyond.
Stepping down, I realized – thankfully not a moment too late – that it was a staircase that led downward. Timidly, I felt along the wall for any kind of light switch that my fingertips could find. It didn’t seem like a wise idea to go blindly ambling down a dark staircase, when I was potentially completely alone in the house at the moment. No one would even hear me scream. Oh thank god, I thought, when I finally felt a light switch. I carefully flipped it and looked down the long, black summit of wooden stairs. This staircase wasn’t stone like the other one. This room seemed like it had been tacked onto the mansion as an afterthought. And that made me wonder even more if Garen had intended this hidden room.
Do his servants ever come down these stairs? I thought as I nervously crept down them myself, hoping that I wasn’t about to bring myself hurtling face-first into a cave of horrors.
At the bottom of the stairs lay a small space with a corner that I knew I’d have to get around, if I was to see anything of import. Turning around the corner, my jaw practically fell to the floor. I didn’t need to flip a light switch to see the glint of gold. Reaching out, I turned the light on and gazed in wonder at gleaming mountains of gold. The room was an entire basement made of nothing but a gold stash.
Garen had never mentioned this before! But this was plainly where he kept his wealth. A dragon wouldn’t use a normal human bank. They were famously too greedy for that. Sure, he’d never struck me as a greedy man, but that was only because I was the Chosen One. He could’ve been a stingy asshole to everyone else, and I might not have ever known.
I didn’t linger long in the room of gold, even though I greatly wanted to. I wanted to go for a swim in the gold coins and pretend that I was Scrooge McDuck, but I held back. I didn’t want him to know that I’d come upon his treasure. At least not like this, not so close to it. Garen’s not the sort of dragon who’d kill me for being here, right?
Starting to think that this was the worst idea I’d ever had, I quickly but cautiously climbed the stairs again. Once I reached the top, I used all my strength to push the giant, heavy door closed. It made a loud boom which echoed throughout the stone mansion.
If Brock and Ash were around, they definitely heard that one.
“Maybe they’ve been flying around in territorial circles all day,” I mused out loud. “Giving their wings a good stretch.” I had a feeling that several of these dragon guys much preferred being in their dragon forms. I did think that the shifting part had to be the least appealing aspect of that lifestyle. I’d pick one form and stick with it.
I shook my head, amazed at how calm I felt.
I’d just stumbled upon millions of dollars in gold! And it belonged to my… What was he? My betrothed? We’d never discussed it in terms like that. But whatever he was and whatever we were, he owned a shitt
on of gold! I knew that, by rights, some of it was supposed to belong to me. I better not get greedy myself now, I told myself, as I made my way back upstairs to our bedchamber. He’s going to know something’s up if I’m sitting there, grinning like an idiot when he comes back home.
I opened the door to the room and there was Garen, sitting on the end of the bed as if he’d been there waiting for me the entire time. “Wha—How did you…?”
The room’s balcony was open and the wind gently blew its sheer curtain to and fro. That answered my question.
Garen was grinning at me, so I told myself – prayed to myself – that he didn’t know about my little exploration game. “I thought I might surprise you by coming back earlier today,” he said to me in a voice that was almost giddy with excitement. “I hope I didn’t startle you too much.”
I laughed a little, smiling at him. “No,” I said, rushing over to him and into his waiting arms. “I was just exploring a little as I waited for you to come back. This house is amazing.”
Something curious flashed in his green eyes. “Oh? Exploring?”
I nodded my head. “You know. I wanted to see what else I could do in this house, since I’m going to be spending so much time in here. I didn’t find much that was interesting. A lot of rooms, a lot of closed doors.”
He opened his mouth a little bit, as if he wanted to say something, but he held back. He continued to smile, but it had become a little mysterious now. As I gazed at him and hugged him close to me, I both loved him and feared him, and I knew that that was exactly the way that he liked it.
I wasn’t going to push the gold issue. Everything else had been going so well. I was sure he would tell me about the secrets of his wealth in due time.
Chapter 10: A Message From Home
“Oh,” Garen said, pulling away from the hug so he could look me in the eyes as he spoke to me. “I almost forgot to tell you. I picked a little something up for you which I think you’ll like a lot.”
I raised an eyebrow as I smiled up at him. “Really?” I asked him. “Is this what you meant when you told me you’d spoil me?”
He grinned a little and nodded. Placing a hand into a pocket of his black dress pants, he pulled out what appeared to be my cell phone. I stared at him in amazement and disbelief.
“I thought it was taken to be destroyed! That’s what Brock told me.” A smile slightly contorted the edges of my surprised expression. I probably looked half-crazed but I didn’t care. He’d rescued my phone for me! Without me even having to ask! I reached out a hand to take it and he gently handed it over, placing it almost reverently back into my grasp.
“You might be interested in checking the videos on there,” Garen said, still grinning proudly at the reaction he’d elicited. “I’m pretty sure that I saw one you might not remember.”
I threw my head back and laughed a little. “You’re not a very good liar,” I said. “That’s how I know that the prophecy must be true.”
He didn’t say anything to that; he merely chuckled.
I did as I was told and clicked the video icon on my home screen. I didn’t generally store videos on my phone so I knew that he’d recorded something for me himself. “This better not be some kind of dick pic or anything. A dick video. That’s next level.”
He cracked up. “Just look.”
I scrolled through the three videos that I knew were on there – just stupid things that my friends and I had recorded on school trips. My stomach flopped a little. My friends. I missed my friends. After I got past the known videos, I clicked on one that had been filmed the other morning. I definitely know I didn’t make this one because I didn’t even have my phone the other morning. That’s when this phoneless nightmare began. I lived for pretend drama sometimes. I was going to have plenty of real drama to suit me now that I was living amongst dragons, though.
“Hi Tatyana, it’s Mom,” my mother said, smiling into the phone’s camera with a nervous sort of smile. She’d clearly just been told by Garen that I wouldn’t be able to return home for quite some time. Her dark, dark eyes were red and puffy from crying.
“Ay, Mami,” I said under my breath, holding the phone closer to my face so I could see her face more clearly.
“We’ve just been told by this gentleman – Garen – that you’re the chosen one for this dragon prophecy. I just wanted to say that we love you very much. We always knew that you were special. And we’re so proud of you.”
A cool tear etched its way down my cheek. The camera moved and suddenly my dad was in view. “Hi Taty,” he said with a smile that seemed a bit more genuine than my mother’s. “I just wanna say, um, be safe. Be smart. We miss you so much already. Hopefully we can see you again soon and you can tell us all about it. Knock ‘em dead.”
I giggled a little bit through my tears. My parents made it seem as though all I was doing was moving west to pursue an acting career or something like that. One would never know that they were talking to me about my new life as a dragon shifter’s lover. Or mate. I still didn’t quite know what we were calling our particular situation.
The video ended after that. Garen was regarding me with a look of sympathy and concern. “Are you all right?” he asked me. “I thought you would like it.”
“No, I do,” I said, nodding and wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand. I carefully pocketed my phone in my jeans’ back pocket and then moved in for another hug with him. “I never thought I’d be able to see them again. Thank you so much.”
Garen petted my hair and kissed my cheek. He gingerly brushed his fingertips against the tears that continued to fall there. “I don’t like to see you crying,” he said.
“This is happy crying, though. It’s a good thing.” I smiled up at him and then kissed him on the pointy chin. “You’re so handsome and so kind to me, even when I misjudged you and was afraid of you.”
“You’ve never seemed afraid of me.”
“Well, I was,” I told him honestly. “When I first came to you, I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I thought there was a real distinct possibility that you and your lackeys were going to just eat me. You cleaned me before we… I was scared and confused.”
Garen smiled down at me in his arms. “And now?”
“Now I only ever really feel safe with you,” I confided. “I don’t know if it’s one of the powers that you have or what, but whenever you’re not around, I start to doubt myself. I still don’t know if I’m the right person for this position that the prophecy has put me in. I’m still not convinced that I’m the one you need. But I will do my best. Because I think that there’s a real possibility that I could—”
He cut me off by kissing me. I melted into the kiss.
“—love you,” I completed as soon as I was able to breathe again. I didn’t understand how it could be that I was having the most terrifying and stressful time of my life while simultaneously having the most romantic time of my life. With a man who turned into a dragon at will, no less.
Reaching down, he found my hand with his own. He brought it to his lips and kissed the back of it and then my palm. “I had another good idea. Are you hungry?”
I hadn’t had breakfast that morning. I’d slept in and then I’d been so wrapped up in looking around the place, so I was fairly ravenous. “Yes,” I replied. “Eating somehow slipped my mind this morning.”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress, which is partially my fault,” Garen said to me kindly as we stepped out of the bedroom together, hand in hand, and made our way down the long, stone staircase. “I thought we might have a nice, take-out lunch since I’m here early and I’ve got you alone without nosy servants waiting nearby.”
“Oh yeah,” I said with a sly, knowing grin. “Where did those nosy servants run off to? I might’ve needed them today.”
Garen smiled at me and pointed upwards. “They’ve been surveying the area and keeping watch on things from above. Sometimes it’s better when they look out for us by doing that.”
> I nodded my head. “That makes perfect sense. I’ve been imagining them up there, circling around like vultures.”
“Our enemies are the ones who are really vultures,” Garen pointed out.
“Fair enough.”
He led me into the kitchen and then stopped, turning to face me. “What kind of food are you in the mood for? I know the best delivery places around here – the safest ones, too.”
He probably has all of the Believing dragon businesses on his speed dial, I thought. “Pizza?” I asked him, the word alone causing my stomach to grumble rather loudly. One could never go wrong with pizza.
Garen grinned and nodded. “Excellent choice,” he said. He went to the wall near the pantry and I realized then that there was a black landline phone hanging up against the black wall there.
There’d been a phone in here this whole time. I could’ve called my parents my own damn self if I’d known that. I opened my mouth to protest, but then thought better of it. It was past that point now. The way he’d remedied my phone issues was the sweetest thing that anyone had ever done for me, so I decided to leave it. “That is such a sneaky way of hiding a phone,” I said teasingly instead. “You’re so covert, Mr. Karn.”
“I try to be,” he said with a laugh. “I try to be.”
He held the phone to his ear and patiently made the call, ordering us two extra-large pizzas because he was clearly a big spender. I know where he gets his money from, I couldn’t help but think. I wondered how he converted the gold into spendable, credit card money. And then I remembered that the dragon businesses likely didn’t make this King of Dragons pay for petty things like pizza. Garen didn’t need the gold for payments. He needed it for status. And it was likely something that had trickled down to him from his father’s goldmine dungeon, which had trickled down to him from his father’s dungeon, and on and on for as long as this particular strain of dragon shifters had been in power.
“I just thought of another question for you,” I said as soon as he’d finished placing the pizza order. “How old are you?”
Abducted By The Dragons: The Complete Series Page 8