Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  “When his father was there and I was out of my mind from first encountering his soul… Bobby pushed me down into a deep bow, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Clara said.

  I had just been so out of it, I had not realized.

  “Everyone bowed like that?”

  “Yes?”

  “And dracon only bow like that for the four highest kings and the High Queen of the dragons. So, Wyvern isn’t really his name is it, it’s his title?”

  “It’s both,” Glacier said. “His father is Wyvern Rex, High King of all Wyverns.”

  Wyvern was a common enough name for dracons, it was like the equivalent of Michael for a human, I did not think anything of it. Supposedly, there were as many wyvern-dragons in the Dragon Kingdoms as all the other races of dragons combined; this made the Wyvern Rex the most powerful dragon after the High Queen of all dragons.

  And the High Queen was infertile…

  “Wyvern is also titled Wyvern Rex, as his father’s newly crowned proxy in the outer world,” Glacier said.

  “Wyvern is the ‘boy rex’?” I asked.

  “I would not call him that to his face, but yes he is,” Glacier said.

  “No wonder he’s such an ass! No wonder he just goes around stealing stuff. This all makes a horrible kind of sense. I...” I paused, “I suggested he offer me his protection because I could not really refuse his offer to be his tour guide, but if I was hanging around him all the time, I would definitely draw his father’s attention. For some reason you and Grandfather were working really hard to avoid that, so I thought…if I drew the dragon’s attention Wyvern would be bound to deal with it. All I wanted to do was to avoid making myself and the rest of you guys targets,” I said, sighing.

  “We weren’t just trying to keep you from the dragon’s attention,” Glacier said. “This is my fault; I should have let Glenda teach you.”

  “I don’t think there is any disaster extreme enough for that to be true,” I said.

  “Aunt Glenda is a hard teacher,” Clara said. “But she did teach us about contracts very early in our training.”

  “Okay, I can’t handle this anymore, what is a contract?”

  “Well…” Clara hesitated, “When a dracon leader thinks that he has found a dracon that he might be interested in for a potential wife he—”

  I made a loud sound like, “Pah!”

  Clara touched my arm and continued, “—he offers her his protection. At this point, her family has the opportunity to test the dracon to see if he is a fit protector, if he is, she accepts and they enter into a contract. The woman is supposed to give the dracon leader a period of time, usually it is no longer than a year for him to prove to her and her family that he can protect her and provide for her. The man can break the contract at any time, but the woman and her family can only end the contract at the end of the chosen time period or if her family can prove that the dracon cannot protect the woman. At the end of the time period and on the specific date that she gives him that the contract ends, she and the family decide whether or not to accept the marriage.”

  “But I did not give him an end date…” I said, my head falling into my palms.

  “Which was the most irresponsible decision that you have ever made,” Glacier said. “That is why you’re going into hiding.”

  I swallowed and said, “Going into hiding? I can’t…go into hiding…”

  “There are only a specific number of ways a family can prove that a dracon leader is unfit protection, one of them is if the dracon cannot find the woman for a six hour period, he is proven an unfit protector and the contract can then be broken.”

  “Why would he do this to me? I’ve known him for like three days! I’m sixteen! What a freaking psycho!”

  Then the most horrible idea occurred to me. What if this was my fault? What if when I pushed my soul into him and his soul sank into mine, I bonded us in some irreversible way? What if now he was acting on some soul-instinct that told him that we should really be together? What if I could not fix it?

  I should have just let him eat me.

  If he was acting this way because of some soul connection, though, wouldn’t I be feeling it too? And, the tingle thing aside, I didn’t. Sure, he was amazingly hot and I could not help but react to that, but I felt that way with other guys too…one being Keanu.

  Or more likely…

  “He’s just screwing with us,” I said, bitterly. “Wyvern thinks he’s the king of the world and grandfather told him to stay away from me. He wasn’t looking at me when he was saying all those things at dinner, he was looking at grandfather. He’s just making his point: that no one can say ‘no’ to him. The moment he makes his point, he’s going to drop me like the piece of trash that he and his friends think I am and the rest of our family is.”

  Clara’s hand fell away, and I quickly amended, “Except for Braiden, thank the Gods he’s the one with a summer home. He not only doesn’t seem like a snob, he also seems to have good taste in women.”

  A little ‘sucking-up’ sounding, but I was glad I said it when I looked back to see Clara smiling into her lap.

  “Honestly Glacier, challenging Wyvern more by hiding me from him, is only going to make him fight harder to win this little game he’s playing. If you just leave it alone, he will get tired of me and drop me in a day. He’s just a bored mega-rich snob. He probably pulls this stuff all the time. He would never consider marrying me in a thousand years.”

  “You’re a more suitable match for him than you know and he’s discovered it—he’s coming,” Glacier said.

  I spun around, but did not see anything. We were on a long deserted road with cane fields on each side and it was pitch-black aside from what the headlights hit.

  “How do you know?” I said.

  Then there was a flash of something white and huge and it landed in front of us.

  Glacier slammed on the breaks. And my hands hit the dashboard, stinging my palms. Thankfully, we all had our seatbelts on; because the van broke so suddenly we each went surging forward in our seat.

  We all let out our breath as the van finally stopped sliding forward.

  The white dragon crouched in front of us. From what I’ve read, wyverns weren’t the stockiest or the physically strongest dragons, they weren’t even the most capable as they did not have arms or real hands like many of the other dragon races. Besides that, they were by far the most numerous of dragons, the reason they were the most powerful dragon race in all of the dragon kingdoms was because they were the fastest and had the sharpest claws and teeth.

  The headlight’s glare reflected off of all of the dragon’s scales, teeth and claws. The dragon was probably twenty-five feet tall, and twice that in width. It moved and suddenly the windshield was filled with the side of its giant white reptilian face. The gaze of its bulbous eye was fixed on me.

  The dragon stayed for a long minute and then it pulled its head back.

  Glacier backed up and turned the van around. He started driving back the way we came.

  Turning in my seat, I saw the dragon push off, then fly into the air.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I craned my neck to see the sky above the windshield. There was Wyvern, about twenty feet above us, flying parallel with the car.

  “Back to your grandfather’s,” Glacier said, “We lost this round.”

  “I seriously think I’m right and that if you keep playing this like a game, Wyvern will stay interested. Just let him have the time he supposedly wants to spend with me and you know he’ll be catching the next plane out of here,” I said, still watching him fly above me.

  “Oh, Dakota, don’t talk about yourself so negatively,” Clara said.

  Glacier’s soul was a tightly held coil of nerves that could snap at any moment.

  “I’ll be extra annoying to him, I promise,” I said.

  “You do that,” he said.

  “Nothing I do better,” I said.

  Chapter Seventee
n

  Glacier pulled the van to a stop outside my grandfather’s house and immediately the dragon landed beside us.

  “Is he going to attack us?” I asked, though what I meant was ‘is he going to attack you’?

  “No, the family and he are in a temporary alliance until the cancellation of the contract,” Glacier said.

  That might be good, I did not really know. Looking out the window I saw that Wyvern’s beautiful suit was strewn over the parking lot near the dragon’s feet, probably ruined.

  “Clara,” Glacier said, “You and I will reenter the house, Dakota you will stay.”

  Clara grabbed my arm.

  “I’m fine Clara. I don’t think it will be a big deal,” I lied.

  “Come, Clara, now,” Glacier said.

  Clara opened the minivan sliding door and gave me one fretful look, before they both walked quickly back up to my grandfather’s house.

  Stepping out of the van, I looked at the dragon Wyvern had turned into. So he was terrifying, I dealt with terrifying monsters all the time. This one was just a little bigger and might have some sort of psycho obsession with me. No big deal.

  Sure.

  I approached him slowly, staring at his enormous body as I did. He stayed statue still. Now that he wasn’t trying to eat me, I could believe that women had told Wyvern that his dragon form was very beautiful. With the large bone crown on his head, he looked very much the king that I guess he was.

  His entire body was covered in gleaming white scales that looked perfect in their shape and pattern.

  Encouraged by his stillness, I mustered the courage to walk the entire way up to his head, which had lowered to my level. His face was long and narrow, with sharp ridges leading up both sides of his long snout. The scales on his face were small and fleshy and I remembered how soft they had been when I had touched them.

  I reached up to touch his cheek and he ever so slightly moved his face into my hand.

  The tingles shot up my arm and I had to fight the urge to just fall into him. His emotions pushed into me as well, as if when his soul was not restrained, his emotions wanted to find me. He had quite a bit of pride going on… to be expected. But again, there was an undercurrent of possessiveness that I really hoped had nothing to do with me.

  Pulling my hand back, I turned away from him. “I’m turning away so you can turn back into a human and put your clothes on. It would be really nice to be finished with this night.” I stood there for a minute, just listening to the rustling behind me. He was quiet enough that I did not know if he was changing back or if he was just moving around.

  I said, “I may have information at home waiting for us.”

  “What sort of information?” Wyvern asked from very close behind me.

  I spoke while I turned around, “There might be some video tapes of her possible escape—whoa! Where’s your shirt?”

  “It ripped,” he said, throwing a shred of white fabric onto the pavement.

  “You look like a stripper.” He looked amazing. Marble statues would crumble in envy if they saw his chest. His long silver white hair fell around his face, making him look like the cover of one of the romance novels my mom bought, but only Clara read. “You could be king of the strippers,” I suggested. “Thanks, by the way, for telling me that you’re the Wyvern Rex.”

  Only four dracons held the Rex title worldwide. The Wyvern Rex was the Rex of all of New Anglo. He was literally my king.

  “I was having too much fun watching you make an ass out of yourself,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you were,” I said. “But I’m never bowing to you; I hope you know that right.”

  “I don’t want you to,” he said, closing the distance between us, “But you will do it if my father is around.” He tried to take my hand, but knowing that I would get all zingy and stupid-happy from his touch I stepped back.

  “Fine. Are you going to drive me home or what? Tomorrow is a school day.”

  “You’re not going to go to school,” he said as if it was up to him. “And I’m taking you to my house.”

  “Yes, I am going to school and no, you’re taking me to my house,” I said, firmly.

  “Having protection over you gives me a certain amount of control—”

  “Stop that right there,” I said. “I am going home, I’m going to watch the video surveillance files and then I am going to sleep. In the morning, I will get up, ride with Glacier to school. I will spend the school day trying to get information on Honua. That is my plan and I will not change it. If you feel like you need to insinuate yourself into my life needlessly, tell me how you want to and I’ll consider it. That’s as good as you’re going to get here.”

  He reached forward and took my hand before I could stop him.

  Zing.

  “I’ll drive you home. We will talk about this in the car.”

  Because all I wanted was to go home, I did not fight him, I did not even fight off his hand. I walked over to where his sports car sat and waited for him to open my door.

  Only when we were in his Vervari, out of the complex and speeding down the road did Wyvern speak. “The contract—”

  “Yeah, thanks for shooting us both in the foot with that one,” I interrupted, snapping. “I thought you wanted me to find your sister.”

  “I want many things,” he said, smiling. The jerk.

  “Yeah well I want many things too and they don’t include a dracon Rex tricking me into a contract.”

  “Then you should not have given me the opportunity to,” he said as if it was that simple. To him, it probably was.

  My annoyance was overtaken by nervousness while I stared at him for a long moment. I almost gathered the courage to ask him why he did this whole ‘contract’ thing. Almost. I wanted to know why, but then, at the same time I really, really did not. I finally asked, “So what were you really saying when you told me that we need to pretend that we were dating?”

  “You assumed I meant that we would pretend, I never said it,” he said.

  “Well, I’m still not pretending or anything else that we’re dating, even if you do want everyone to think we’re in a contract for some reason.”

  “We are in a contract,” he said. “I offered you my protection, you accepted it—”

  “Actually, I asked for your protection and you accepted it,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, smiling, “There’s no technicality or loophole you can find that can get you out of this Dakota.”

  “Can I add an ‘end date’ then?” I asked.

  “Negotiations are over,” he said firmly.

  “So, I’m stuck in this contract until you decide it’s over?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “I believe you said that you needed me to protect you, for as long as you are in danger from anyone you attract attention from while searching for my sister.”

  Could I have made that more open-ended?

  “But you can break it at any time?” I asked.

  “By dracon law I can, but don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going to,” he ran the back of his finger down my arm.

  I had to stifle a gasp because when he touched my arm it felt so much better than when he had held my hand. I did not acknowledge the touch because I knew if I did, I would have to tell him to stop.

  “Your family made a very bold statement when they tried to break the contract within an hour of learning about it. It tells me that the moment you leave my side, they will make another attempt.”

  “Probably not,” I lied, “You found me in what, fifteen minutes?”

  He just gave me a look.

  “Well, none of my family can pass the water wards,” I said. “So going to school should not be a problem.”

  “Whatever kidnapped Honua can pass the water wards,” Wyvern said. “Do you really think you can ask me for my protection, then not let me protect you?”

  “Honua was under your protection, you let Honua go to school,” I said, sounding way too much
like I was begging.

  “Do you think I don’t regret that?” Wyvern said. “This is not a permanent arrangement but until I get a security team over here from the Mainland, you will not leave my side. I will make sure there is a human on the team so when they arrive you can go back to school.”

  “How long will it take for this security team to get here?”

  “My steward needs to assign the team, find them permanent housing, enroll the human in your school and fly them out,” Wyvern said. “The soonest I say would be about forty-eight hours from when I first called, which was directly after we spoke this morning.”

  “After you left today, I spent all day without your protection,” I protested.

  “I had someone follow you. He did not do a very good job; I won’t be offering him a permanent position,” Wyvern said, as if that wasn’t extremely icky. “I had to deal with some arrangements in person on the house I bought.”

  “You bought a house here?” I stared at him, horrified.

  He smiled wolfishly at me and tapped my nose with his finger. “Not because of you.” He laughed. “I purchased the house three months ago, my mother and sister live on this island too, remember?”

  “Sorry, I’m having a hard time determining your level of psycho,” I said mostly because I knew my cheeks were probably bright red.

  “I’m not a psycho,” he said. “I’m a dracon. You’re just so obsessed with trying to be a human that you don’t know the rules and customs of your own kind.”

  “You don’t know me,” I said. Then I turned forward to the dark road because I was finished talking with him.

  Thankfully, he stayed silent for the rest of the dark drive home. When we arrived at my house, he climbed out of the car and grabbed a duffel bag from a storage space, that was surprisingly in the hood of his car. He beeped the lock and came around to where I was standing.

  “You’re going to stay in my house…with me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you’re going in looking like that?” I asked, pointing to his bare chest.

  He grinned. “I’ll change in your driveway if you really want me to, this time you don’t even have to turn around.”