Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  Several of the wait-staff entered carrying plates that they set in front of us. As wine and water was served, I listened around the table to the many different quiet-voiced conversations people were having. My grandfather was asking about the helicopter tour that the McCormick crowd must have gone on today while Cordeliajezebel politely, if not a little snootily, answered his questions.

  The conversation the other Cordeliajezebel was having with Glenda made my stomach turn, noticing how flattering my aunt was being to her. Cordeliajezebel was telling Glenda about some sort of well-to-do party and name dropping all kinds of names that meant nothing to me but seemed to really impress my aunt.

  Ashley was trying to engage Braiden in conversation asking all kinds of questions about his business that she must have researched. Braiden would smile, answer, and then ask Clara something. I almost regretted not sitting down there, just so I could have watched and listened to the spectacle.

  Not surprisingly, Glacier said absolutely nothing to anyone.

  The dinner was a traditional dracon dish: meat with a side of meat. I focused on eating, happy that I could just sit quietly without anyone forcing me to stumble through small-talk.

  Glenda turned to Wyvern and asked politely, “How is your father?”

  “Fine,” he said, and then took a bite of meat, chewing slowly.

  “Will he be joining you for any more activities on the island?” Glenda asked, smiling.

  “He does as he pleases,” Wyvern said.

  After a silence where Glenda’s smile became strained, she asked, “Do you have any special activities planned for the rest of your trip here?”

  Wyvern smiled. “I plan on spending the rest of my trip with your niece, Dakota,” Wyvern said. “She’s agreed to spend her time with me—”

  “As his tour guide,” I said, clearing my throat. I kicked him under the table. I had to clench my hands together so I did not punch his huge smile off his face. “I’m going to show him the local places on the islands, you know?”

  Wyvern only smiled bigger and aimed that smile at my grandfather.

  Grandfather’s expression was placid enough, but his emotions reminded me of a buzzing wasp nest that Wyvern just kept poking at.

  Half the table’s attention was on us now.

  Wyvern placed an arm over the back of my chair. “I will be in charge of Dakota’s protection, under contract.”

  And…this caught the rest of the table’s attention.

  Gods! I wish I researched the whole protection thing before I threw it out there. I wish I had researched what he had meant when he mentioned the word ‘contract’ in the car too. Honestly, I had not wanted to know what it was after-the-fact, I just hoped it would mean nothing.

  I had only seen one case of my grandfather taking over the protection of a dracon before, that dracon-woman, and he had to prove he was worthy of it. However, I had heard of other leaders doing it before and I knew that more than one of my cousins had taken the protection of another dracon while they traveled. I just did not really have much to do with this political side of things. I had never travelled out of the Mabi islands either. I dealt primarily with my family and my grandfather’s underlings.

  I discerned from everyone’s expressions that it meant something to them, something big.

  “You honor my family, but Dakota is not the right…tour guide for you,” my grandfather said, his voice belying the politeness of the words. “Your contract and protection is an offer too kind for us to accept.”

  “My protection and contract is an offer she already accepted,” Wyvern said.

  I swallowed as everyone’s attention turned to me yet again. I had nothing to say. I had accepted it, even the ‘contract’ part; he had thrown the word out there, I had said ‘yes’ then he said, ‘accepted.’ I had not just asked him, I had demanded his protection and we shook on it.

  “For how long?” my grandfather said.

  “It was open-ended,” Wyvern said, “I’ll inform you when or if I choose to stop protecting her.” Wyvern reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear.

  I automatically batted his hand away from my face.

  My batting away Wyvern’s hand somehow earned me more astonished looks than when Wyvern said he offered me his protection.

  “Dakota has responsibilities,” my grandfather said.

  “I don’t mind coming along for her singing lessons,” Wyvern said, his voice full of derisive amusement.

  “I’m not going to forget my responsibilities,” I said quietly to my grandfather. “I’m just showing Wyvern around the island in addition to those responsibilities.”

  “This is not the time to discuss these things,” My grandfather said in a genial voice. “We will discuss this after dinner, you and I alone,” he said to Wyvern.

  The Cordeliajezebels both examined me very intently; as far as I could tell this was the first genuine interest they had shown in anything or anyone since they arrived here.

  Lucky me.

  One smiled, one did not.

  The unsmiling Cordeliajezebel, who also happened to be the Cordeliajezebel who broke Hunter’s arm at the beach, looked away from me and gave a small shake of her head.

  From the density of their souls my guess was they were half-dragons, nowhere near as powerful as my grandfather or even as their brother, but still they had a lot more power than me. Now that I had my dampener off, I could see that the two dracon women and Braiden had souls very similar to werewolves; werewolves had a very distinctive double soul, a wolf soul and a human soul contained by the same body. These three dracons had the same double soul, but the other ‘non-human’ soul wasn’t a wolf, it was wolf-like, and yet much bigger, denser and fiercer-looking.

  The unsmiling Cordeliajezebel said, “So Dakota,” speaking my name as though it was a question. She, like her brother, had a very nice Celti-sounding accent. “Will you be our tour-guide as well?” She looked over to Wyvern. “I thought Wyvern that we were taking this holiday together.”

  Wyvern gave Cordeliajezebel what I could only call ‘a look,’ and not an approving one.

  Since the silence just dragged on, I answered her question, “I guess that’s up to Wyvern.”

  “Let Wyvern do his own thing for a while,” Braiden said good-naturedly. “He never gets a break from all his duties and the press and paparazzi. The guy deserves a holiday,” he paused to gesture at me, “in the company of a beautiful woman.”

  I knew that Braiden meant well, at least I thought he did, but all I wanted was for him and everyone else at the table to shut-up or better yet, talk about something else.

  But Cordeliajezebel did not want to talk about anything else. “Let us guess, what will she show him in this private tour? She’s already shown him the beaches and introduced him to the locals. What was the name of that human you were…” a little cough, “with…on the beach?”

  Glancing up at my grandfather, I saw him give a small shake of his head.

  I said, “I go to the human high school, he’s a classmate.”

  “A human high school?” The other Cordeliajezebel said while furrowing her brow in a very cutesy way, making her pretty face look sweet and childish. Even her accented voice was a little high pitched and girlish, “Why would you ever want to go there?”

  “She does it because I order her to,” my grandfather said. “I have interests in the human community.”

  “How unusual,” she commented. “I did notice that the locals are quite outspoken on this little island. Why do you allow it?”

  Even though I had the exact same thought this morning, when Cordeliajezebel said it in such a brazenly rude way to my grandfather I wanted to punch her pretty face. Everyone I had ever seen interact with my grandfather had treated him with respect. By power he was superior to her, by amount of dragon blood they were equals, yet, obviously she did not think that.

  My grandfather responded, “I allow it because humans come here in droves and stay in my hotels. They can say
whatever they like about me as long as they keep piling their riches into my hoard.”

  “The hoard is always the bottom line with these small-town dracons, isn’t it?” Cordeliajezebel said to the other Cordeliajezebel.

  I could not say anything, nor do anything, like pull the Cordeliajezebels out of my grandfather’s house by their perfect hairdos. Saying something would be implying that my grandfather could not handle the situation himself; that would be a graver offense to my grandfather than the insults these girls were openly throwing at him at his own table.

  Reaching back, I placed my hand on where Wyvern’s hand rested on my chair. To my surprise instead of pulling away, he pressed his hand back against mine. Immediately, I felt that same zing, but I determinedly ignored it. Just as I did with my ring, I fed Wyvern my fury at the insult pushing it into him. Feeling much better, even after a few seconds, I considered leaving my emotions in him. However, I did not want to risk triggering him turning into a dragon with my family here, so I pulled my emotions back.

  Instead of pulling my hand away, I hooked a finger through his. It was hard to gage whether or not he understood what I was demanding of him. Basically, I communicated: ‘fix this or I will overload your system with uncomfortable emotions.’ It was not much of a threat, but if I tried to take emotions or soul from him, he had so much he might not even notice.

  “I apologize for my companions,” Wyvern said, “They often speak without thinking, and without intending to insult those they should be showing respect.”

  “Oh, no,” said the arm-breaking Cordeliajezebel. She covered her mouth with a hand. “We did not in any way mean for our comments to be insulting. How embarrassing. I simply meant that the local humans were worse by nature here than we have seen in the Mainland. But you are a strong dracon leader and have done an awe-inspiring job with the region despite these unfortunate circumstances. We have so enjoyed our holiday here.”

  When she had said ‘worse by nature’ my grandfather’s anger had spiked. I had never met my human Mabiian grandmother, but everyone in my family knew that she was the only wife that my grandfather had ever loved.

  Cordeliajezebel openly insulted my grandfather and then called my human family and friends ‘worse by nature’ than human Mainlanders. If this was what it was like to dine with high-society Mainland dracon, I hoped my grandfather never forced me to do it again.

  “No apology needed,” my grandfather waved it away, seemingly unaffected. “No insult taken. If you all are finished, let us move into my hearth room and warm by my fire.” He stood, and made his exit with a cloud of fury wreathing his soul.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the dracons around the table began to stand, I attempted to pull my hand away from Wyvern’s but he grasped my fingers. My hand again tickled with that zing feeling. It was a charge of tingles continuously shooting up my fingers and spreading throughout my body.

  It felt amazing.

  It was unwelcome.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked, leaning in.

  “No,” I said.

  He smiled. “Your line was: ‘feel what?’”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “I knew you could open your mind to me. Your anger was heady, I rather enjoyed it,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, shrugging.

  He just smirked. “You can let me taste your emotions anytime you want, but I would have stepped in regardless. I could not have them undermining me that way.”

  ‘Undermine’ him? Now I really did not know what he was talking about.

  Finally letting go of my hand, he pulled my chair from the table and then offered me his hand again.

  “I just got free of you. Do you think I’m stupid?” I asked.

  “You don’t really want me to answer that,” he said.

  “Jerk,” I said.

  My uncle Glacier moved fast, passing us and following my grandfather into the hearth room.

  Across the table, Glenda and Ashley joined the Cordeliajezebels in walking together toward the large doorway that led into the hearth room.

  I stepped back to where my sister was sitting. “I am so sorry to interrupt,” I said. I really was sorry, because Clara and Braiden were still sitting, seemingly locked in conversation but I really had to. “Can I borrow my sister for a second?” I gave Braiden all the smile I could muster.

  “Oh, of course,” he said, standing. He pulled out Clara’s chair and then helped her up by giving her his hand. “I’ll take this fellow and we’ll see you by the fire.”

  Thank the human gods. Wyvern was just standing there waiting for me.

  “Dakota, what is going on with you?” Clara asked; she petted my head soothingly as she talked.

  “I have no idea. Obviously being offered someone’s protection means something I don’t know…I don’t know what it means. What did I agree to?”

  Her sunshine soul crackled with nervousness and she looked away from me. “Well ,you know when—”

  “Clara,” Glacier said as he reentered the room, “Your grandfather would like a word with you.”

  “Give me a second Dakota and then I’ll tell you,” Clara said. She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the now empty dining room.

  As Clara, Glacier and my grandfather were nowhere to be seen, I went and stood beside Braiden and Wyvern rather than the alternative.

  Braiden smiled at me and said, “You know, I have never seen such a large hearth-room.”

  “My grandfather never does anything in halves,” I said, smiling. “This is one of my favorite places in the world.”

  “I could believe it. Does your family spend most holidays here?”

  “All of them,” I said. “Where you’re from on the Mainland is very warm too, right?”

  “About like this in the summer, not too much cooler in the winters. No volcanoes, though,” Braiden gave me a wistful smile, “It’s not like this.”

  “So you like the islands?” I said.

  “I was not the one who picked this place, but now that I have experienced it, I would not have picked any other place in the world for my vacation home.”

  “I’ve never left the islands, but—”

  “Excuse the interruption,” Clara said, she joined the group, then bowed to Wyvern.

  “Clara stop bowing to Wyvern, his ego really doesn’t need any help from you,” I said in a low voice.

  Both Braiden and Clara looked at me shocked.

  “Um…” Clara said, looking at Wyvern, then at me.

  “Wait—Wait,” Braiden said, he gestured between Wyvern and me, “You don’t know who he is?”

  I looked at Wyvern to see another huge smile spreading across the jerk’s face.

  Braiden continued, “You mean to tell me that you’ve entered into a contract with this guy and you don’t even know who he is?”

  “I don’t even know what a contract is,” I said. I wanted to throw up. Half of me wanted to know who Wyvern was and what a contract was and whatever else life wanted to hit me over the head with tonight, but the other half did not want to know at all.

  “Speaking of that contract,” Clara said, “My grandfather asks if you are free to speak with him now, Mr. Manderson?”

  Wyvern’s smile did not drop from his face, “Yes, I am.”

  “Would you mind very much meeting him in the private hearth room?” Clara said, pointing to the door beside the large fireplace.

  Wyvern paused to lean into me, “I’ll drive you home, we will talk then,” he paused, “Baby.”

  “Just go away,” I said which made him laugh. And he did go away and darn me if I did not glance at his butt when he did.

  “Braiden,” Clara said, “I am going to take my sister to a quiet place where I can explain to her what is happening before Wyvern gets back. We’ll only be about fifteen minutes.”

  He smiled supportively. “Of course,” he said.

  Clara led m
e through the hearth room all the way to the servant’s entrance that we had entered through when we first came in.

  I asked no questions. Basically, from the direction Clara led me I knew there were orders from my grandfather and they did not need to be spelled out.

  The moment we stepped out of the hearth room area, we rushed down the stairs. Though we were both wearing heels, Clara had wife training and I ran from monsters in heels for a living, we were pros. Glacier held the side door open and we rushed out of it and jumped into the running minivan. Glacier, using his super speed was around the van before we even were in.

  He did not hesitate, he just hit the accelerator.

  I climbed into the front seat, somewhat awkwardly.

  “What have you done?” Glacier asked, fuming with anger.

  “I don’t know! Someone please tell me what I agreed to!” I practically shouted.

  We passed the first gate and when I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was following, I saw the gate sliding shut behind us.

  “You’re closing them in?” I asked.

  Glacier did not respond. We drove passed the next gate and it too closed behind us, as did the next.

  “Tell me your exact conversation with him,” Glacier said, as we passed through the last gate and then it too closed.

  “Okay, it was earlier today,” I said, “He said he wanted me to work for him, I told him that I had terms… so I asked for his protection from anyone or anything that I drew the attention of during the time I was working for him. Then he said something about a contract, but I told him I did not know what that was. He said, ‘It means you want me to offer you my protection?’ I said ‘yes.’ Then he asked, ‘for how long?’ I said, ‘For as long as I am in danger from them.’ Then he said, ‘Accepted.’”

  They stayed in a tense silence, and I realized the side of me that did not want to know what it all meant was much bigger than the side that did.

  I said, “I think I’ve figured out who Wyvern is, I just need you to confirm a few things for me…”

  “Of course,” Clara said after a silence, maybe knowing I needed to talk it out rather than be told.