Dragon of Central Perk

by Sarah J. Stone

  Susan could see that he was struggling and put her hand on his arm to comfort him, but didn’t try to interrupt or ask questions. It was best just to let him tell his story in his own way, in his own time. This was what she had been waiting on. Answers to why he had done what he had done.

  “If I had found the answer. If I had just gone home again, even for a moment…”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Susan asked.

  “I did love her. I just thought that we were way too different in all the ways that mattered most. She was materialistic and wanted to be the center of every room she walked into. We bought that brownstone apartment because she wanted it. That is why I never wanted to take you there. It wasn’t because it was our place and you didn’t belong. It was because I hated it and never felt at home there. Your place was so sweet and cozy. I could sleep well there and didn’t feel like I needed to wipe everything I touched down with a cloth,” he continued.

  “Okay, I can understand that,” she told him, still trying not to say too much, for fear she would redirect his thoughts and not get the full story she so desperately needed. So much of what he was saying made no sense.

  “Anyway, when she told me about the cancer, I couldn’t leave her knowing that she was dying. I couldn’t abandon her like that. She had only me. I stayed with her until the end. I didn’t want her to feel unloved, and she would have if I had stepped back, if I had played the ‘let’s be friends’ card. She wouldn’t have understood, would have thought it was because she was sick,” he said, now in tears.

  “You feel guilty. Everyone sees you as the brokenhearted lover, and it still bothers you. You did what was right by her, Paul,” Susan offered, still not understanding why he was telling her some of this, not entirely. Perhaps he had just told her too little before and felt that he now needed to tell her everything.

  “I felt terrible. I thought I was a horrible human being and that maybe this was somehow my fault for not loving her enough. I was ashamed that I had played a role that I did not feel, that I was dishonest in a most important way to a dying woman. I know I felt I was sparing her pain, but I couldn’t help but believe that I owed her honesty instead, no matter what. I was really messed up about it all,” he confided.

  “You did the best you could…” Susan offered.

  “I’ve never told you everything, Susan. I was afraid you would run away. There was Miranda. There was the way I found you, but there is more than that. I’m an outside here. I left after my parents died and never looked back.”

  “Left where?”

  “Ireland. I’m from the Mourne Mountains there, and I left ten years ago to come here.”

  “You’re Irish? That’s absurd. You sound as American as I do.”

  “I had a voice coach help me lose my accent. It was better for building a business here. I obtained citizenship and built a life here.”

  “Okay. I’m not sure I quite understand. That hardly seems like anything that should be kept secret.”

  “No, but there is something else. Something I should show you. You’d never believe me if I just told you.”

  Susan looked at him as if he had lost his mind as he glanced around and then began to undress, standing naked before her in the dark cemetery.

  “Don’t be frightened. Remember, it is still just me,” he told her.

  Susan gasped as he shifted before her very eyes, changing from the man she had fallen in love with into something contorted in the moonlight that beamed down upon them. He was growing, expanding. She shook her head in disbelief as she found herself facing a large red dragon. The word went through her head again. Dragon. There was no such thing. Yet, here one stood in front of her. It stood watching her with huge yellow-green eyes as her heart raced, and then she did all she knew to do. She ran.

  Chapter 24

  The pain filled her head as she struck something and fell to the ground. Everything went dark, and she felt panicked as she spiraled downward into an all too familiar abyss. When she came to, she was in the hospital. It was dark, and there were bandages on her face. Her mind screamed ‘no’ repeatedly. A hand on her shoulder let her know she wasn’t just screaming it in her head.

  “Calm down, Susan. It’s okay,” her father was saying.

  “Am I blind?” were her first words.

  “For now,” he replied, his voice choking on the words.

  “Why? Why?” she screeched.

  “You ran into the corner of a concrete headstone. The blow dislodged the corneas enough to cause a loss of sight.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Until another transplant can be found.”

  Susan dissolved into tears as her father held her close. Then she could hear Peter’s voice nearby.

  “I’m sorry, Susan. I am so sorry,” he was saying. “I’m going to fix this.”

  “Fix this? Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Get out. Get out and never come back.”

  Susan had a foggy memory of him changing into something. It had to be a trick. It couldn’t have been real, but he had caused this. It was his fault.

  “Susan, please,” he began to say, but her father cut him off, telling him to leave.

  The next couple of days seemed to pass in a fog as she lay there in the darkness. Paul was nearby. She could smell his aftershave. She had so many questions for him, and yet, none she would ask. She could feel herself spiraling down into a depression as she considered a permanent return to a world of darkness. Her sight hadn’t been perfect, but it had been sight. He had caused her to lose it again with his little parlor trick in the cemetery. Why? Why would he do that?

  “Susan? My name is Dawn. How are you doing today?” a voice said to her from nearby after a few days.

  “Fine,” she replied dryly. “Are you a nurse?”

  “Me? No. I’m here to do…well, let’s call it physical therapy. I am going to remove your bandages and put my hands on your eyes. Okay?”

  “Why?” Susan asked, not sure how that was supposed to help blindness.

  “I just need to assess the damage and see what we can do. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Susan had no idea what it was the woman intended to do or why, but if it got the bandages off so she could determine how much – if anything – she could see, then she was willing to allow it. She waited impatiently as the bandages were slowly removed and then reached up with her own hands to see if there were metal covers there preventing the light from coming in. There weren’t. She was just in darkness again. Tears flowed down her face.

  “Don’t cry, Susan,” the woman told her. “Just keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes,” Susan replied, not sure what was happening but feeling impossibly calmer. There was something about the woman’s voice. It was soothing and kind. She felt small hands on either side of her head now, softly touching her. Around them, there was silence. Paul was still there. She heard him shuffle, but he said nothing. After what seemed like an eternity, the young woman spoke again.

  “Okay, Susan. Open your eyes,” she said, her voice cracking a bit as she spoke.

  Susan opened her eyes to see Paul standing at the foot of the bed. To one side stood a young woman and man that she didn’t know. The man helped the woman to a nearby chair and sat her down in it, tending to her as if she was not feeling very well herself. Susan felt completely confused as she looked around the room, realizing that not only could she see, but her sight was clearer than before. In fact, it was clearer than she could ever remember.

  “Can you see me?” Paul asked.

  “Yes,” she said unsteadily. “How?”

  “It is a long story that I will tell you when we get you out of here. For now, just know that you owe Dawn a great debt of gratitude,” he said.

  “Thank you, Dawn,” Susan said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be fine. Just a bit weakened. Liam will take care of me. We’re going to go and let you and Paul
sort this out.”

  The young woman nodded toward the man with her, and they left the room quietly. Susan turned back toward Paul, who explained the rest of his story – one that was quite unbelievable and that Susan would have never believed if not for the recent events.

  “You’re a dragon shifter? I don’t even know what to do with that,” she replied.

  “Hopefully, you can find a way to accept it.”

  “And the woman? The woman that healed me?”

  “She is a half human, half dragon shifter. It creates mutations when you mix our DNA, and hers is the ability to heal. No one else is known to have it. When I found out that your collision in the cemetery had once again lost you your sight, I contacted her and made arrangements for her and her husband to come here. She is the one that healed my sister and could have possibly healed Miranda if I had known about her, but maybe not. Miranda was too far gone.”

  “You never finished telling me about Miranda,” Susan told him, climbing from the bed to find her clothes. She slipped in to them as he began to speak.

  “I found her again in her illness, Susan. It is sad, but in her weakened state, she became the sweet woman I had fallen in love with again instead of the social climber determined to make a name for herself in society. I felt love for her again, though I still wasn’t sure if it was the kind of love she deserved. You know?”

  “Yes, I know,” Susan said, not knowing what else to say.

  “After she was gone, I realized that I did love her so much. Maybe it wasn’t in the way that one should love a woman he was supposed to marry, or maybe it was, but she was a part of me and she was gone. I was there when the doctors told her she could donate her eyes, and she said yes, so when she passed, I had to know where they were going. I hung out in the surgery wing to see who they took in, and you were the only one. So, I waited to see you when you came out, to see where they took you,” he said, looking embarrassed that he had stalked her as he did.

  “I understand. You were in pain,” Susan told him.

  “I kept hanging around. I came back to the hospital again and again and watched you sleep through your blinds when they were open or I just sat in the waiting area. I saw you when you left, but I couldn’t see your eyes, and I wanted to see them. It wasn’t because I thought they would look like hers. It was because I hoped that the blue would return to them and that Mirandas gift would change your life. So, I followed you home and after that, I watched you from afar. I was obsessed with seeing your eyes, but I never could. The glasses were too dark. I tried to keep my distance, but that damned bike nearly ran you over. I couldn’t let you get hurt,” he said, looking at her solemnly.

  “I’m glad you did,” she said. “I would have been flattened by that guy.”

  “Then you spoke, and your voice was so familiar to me. I couldn’t place it at first, but then I went home and lay in my bed thinking about things. When Miranda died, I wanted to kill myself. I saw a pamphlet as I was leaving Miranda’s room after they pronounced her dead. I called the number, and I spoke to a woman on the phone as I stood looking out a window in an empty waiting room. She saved me from ending my own life just because I didn’t know what else to do after all the pain and guilt. It was you, Susan. You were the woman on the other end of the line. You’re wrong to think I love you because you have her eyes. I love you because you gave me another reason to live. I loved you more when that reason became you,” he finished.

  Susan stood looking at him in disbelief. It all came back to her. The day of her surgery, the call from a man who just lost his fiancée. He had a dog and a sister. There were bits and pieces, but yes, it was Paul she had talked to that day right before her surgery. No wonder he had seemed so familiar to her from time to time. It was his voice and seeing him around the hospital. She looked at him with tears in her eyes, and then his mouth was on hers, hungry and searching hers for salvation. They stood there, intertwined in a passionate kiss until he finally pulled free, looking down at her with tears streaming down her face.

  “Please find a way to forgive me for my shortcomings, Susan. I know I’ve gone about this all wrong, but I love you so much. You’re my destiny. It’s you. It was always you,” he told her, brushing away her tears.

  “I love you too, Paul. There is nothing to forgive. I just needed to understand, and now I do,” she told him, pulling him close to her once again. Everything finally made complete sense, and she wondered why it had been so hard for them to get to this point.

  They stood there in one another’s arms, just holding on to one another like there was no one else in the world…and in that moment, it might as well have been true.

  Witch Academy Box Set (1-5)

  Sarah J. Stone

  Book 1: The Missing Queen

  Chapter 1

  Desmond awoke with a start, his body tensing up. It took him a moment to figure out exactly what the problem was, his magic finding its way up to his brain.

  He realized after a moment that it was a crash from his kitchen that had woken him. However, the presence that he sensed was not anything that would cause him harm. His dishes and food supply might be in danger, but he was not.

  Running a hand over his face, he tried to pull the sleep from his eyes, glancing at the time piece. He was planning to get up now anyway; the alarm would beep after a moment or two. It was later than he normally got up, but he didn't have anywhere to be for another hour.

  “Nathaniel,” he said as the door to his chambers whooshed open at his touch. “What are you doing?”

  His former Tiro looked up at him, a piece of toast in his mouth.

  “You're awake.”

  Desmond raised an eyebrow, leaning against the doorframe.

  “You think I can't still sense when you are causing chaos? Eleven years of training you, Nathaniel. I promise that the bond is not broken yet.”

  Nathaniel smirked as he searched for more bread, and Desmond decided it was a losing battle. Besides, he was meeting Mariah for breakfast anyway, so he didn't need food here.

  He had trained Nathaniel for eleven years as his third Tiro, readying him as a full-fledged witch; the guardians of the galaxy. Magic was dangerous and destructive if not controlled and well trained, and those born with it often didn't survive it unless they were taken from their families and devoted their life to its control. Witches, who were taken to the academies around the galaxy and trained by Maestros, became warriors, guardians, peacemakers, and healers. They were well respected, strong, and completely devoted to keeping the galaxy safe.

  It came at a price, of course. They rarely, if ever, saw their families again. They were not supposed to form attachments or have families of their own. They were completely devoted to their craft and their quests. When they were young, they were usually devoted to their Maestros. When they came of age, they were put through a series of rigorous tests that determined whether they could go off on their own and become a new generation of Maestros.

  There were exceptions to every rule, of course. Tiros were supposed to be in the academy from the time they started walking, and they needed to be with a Maestro by the time they were thirteen if they wanted to be able to take the tests. Otherwise, they remained at school until eighteen and could work in a minor role. Any time after eighteen, they could take the tests and become a full-fledged witch.

  Desmond knew that he and Nathaniel had broken almost every single one of those rules in their years together. It wasn't necessarily on purpose, because he didn't always believe in everything the Jurors dictated. But Nathaniel had been almost fourteen when Desmond finally took him on after a disastrous last Tiro. Nathaniel was stubborn, mouthy, and more interested in fun half the time. Desmond knew Nathaniel would never be the serious, quiet, thoughtful Witch that was expected. Nathaniel was twenty-four when he finally took the tests, passing with flying colors in everything except his attitude.

  Now, nearly two years later, they remained at the academy. Nathaniel was teaching some of the classes, an
d Desmond sat on the Jurors part time, dealing with the intergalactic issues that came their way. Both of them were expected at some point soon to take on a Tiro. But after a bumpy eleven years, Nathaniel didn't seem quite ready to be self-sufficient

  Desmond, despite being technically free of a Tiro, found it hard to find time for himself and Mariah – not that he publicly wished for it.

  The first day Desmond saw Mariah was nearly thirty years ago. They had both been young witches on their first Tiros. They had locked eyes across the room, and Desmond knew that he was in trouble.

  Neither of them had broken any rules, at least in public. But as they started to age toward retirement with a quiet life of advising only in their near future, he found it harder to make sure they were in line and not just existing in a grey area that the Jurors raised their eyebrows at.

  He knew Nathaniel was aware of the fine line he walked and took it as challenge. No matter how much Desmond tried and scolded, Nathaniel had always had eyes for women. He wasn't discreet either, and more than once, he had been called in front of the Jurors for disobedience.

  Desmond's only solace was that, as Nathaniel got older, he seemed to be settling down and focusing his attention on the one woman he came back to again, and again. A quest on Jeffro – a border planet – had introduced the fifteen-year-old Nathaniel to the seventeen-year-old orphaned ruler, Queen Eliza. She was just as head strong, stubborn, and in control of her emotions as he was. Desmond pretended to not hear the late-night hologram fights they had over the years, and pretended not to hear Nathaniel's thoughts when they were doing well. As long as he was focused on his duties, Desmond could turn a blind eye. And, he noticed, no matter how hard they fought, they always returned to each other. They fought in a way that acknowledged that ending their relationship was never an option.