by Lola Gabriel
It was the reason he was so good at his job as the Keeper of the Mountain. When he’d first tried to explain his responsibilities, it confused her. His mother had given Terran power over the earth, and his father gave him his dragon-shifter genes.
Terran’s three brothers had different realms: fire, water, and wind. Earth sounded like the least impressive one, but when she learned more, she was absolutely blown away at the amazing amount of power that came with his abilities
Water? There were deserts where there wasn’t a drop. Fire? Water extinguished fire. Wind? Caves and basically anywhere indoors could block wind. But earth? It was everywhere.
Terran had the power to rip up the earth, create earthquakes, and make mountains with nothing but his mind. She hadn’t believed him the first time, but that was before he had formed a private island for her out in the middle of the Pacific.
That kind of power came with incredible amounts of jealousy. Terran’s subjects loved him. He was an excellent leader, but everyone else knew if they killed Terran, there would be a fight for all the most powerful people to take his position through power plays and coercing.
Though they wouldn’t have his power, they would still rule his realm and own the title of Keeper of the Mountain. The position hadn’t been created for Terran; he was simply the most logical representative due to his tremendous abilities and lineage. Terran hadn’t made it so long just by being tough. He was smart and resourceful, and he knew how to investigate threats.
She looked down at the ankle bracelet, which was still in her hands.
Terran believes Hale is behind the murder of the Chancellor.
She swallowed. She tried and failed to avoid thinking about that picture that Terran had showed her of Hale in the subway in New York. He was nowhere near London like he should have been. That didn’t settle quite right for her…
No! She would not turn on Hale so easily. She’d spent centuries with the sorcerer. He’d been there to protect her in her darkest time. Leaving Terran had been rough. At one time, she thought they were soulmates. Maybe she still did. He meant everything to her, but she just couldn’t forgive him.
She’d given up the ability to grow old with someone for Terran. When she became immortal, it was like she was frozen in time. She would never get old or sick. She had literally committed herself to an eternity.
When they had that last fight, she had been broken for years, decades even. Some people can forget the reason behind an argument as time passes, but even after centuries, Cassia couldn’t forget, although she eventually did forgive him.
Terran made her believe that becoming immortal would be easy because they were soulmates. He was right. The transformation wasn’t painful. When she became pregnant with Terran’s child, her body changed to be able to carry the child. She became like Terran: immortal, and she gained the ability to become a dragon.
What they didn’t plan for was losing the baby three months into the pregnancy. Tears held onto the brim of Cassia’s lashes as she remembered the fateful day. There was no pain like losing a child—even though it was a child she’d never met. Then, centuries later, they had another miscarriage.
The second miscarriage was too much for her to bear.
Maybe he was grieving, too, and needed comfort from me. The thought shocked Cassia. She had spent centuries blaming Terran for the fight that was the final straw. Maybe it was partially my fault. He needed me, and I shut him out.
The tears won and poured from her eyes. She had no idea seeing Terran would bring up such raw emotions.
When she left Terran, she’d spent months wallowing in her own sorrow, feeling alone and afraid. Eventually, Hale had been there to protect her and give her a home. At first, it was just a place to stay until she could get back on her feet, but then she didn’t leave, and it grew into something more.
Hale had given her a home. He had given her hope. He’d taken her in and made her feel special and loved. Terran loved her so passionately, but she had been furious at him. She’d ignored him and cut him out. Hurt, he did the same thing. Soon enough, he was single, and she was with Hale.
Hale wasn’t anything like Terran. Terran had Hale beat in almost every quality. But Hale was handsome and dashing—and at the time comforted Cassia when she needed it most.
She groaned. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
She spotted one of her guards wandering by the beach with an assault rifle in hand. He was one of the basic grunts, not like the ones that had silver bullets for putting down werewolves—or the ones with the copper ammo for dragons. Hale hadn’t quite ever said it, but he had made sure that everyone knew Terran was not welcome there.
“Hey!” she called at the guard. “See anything?”
“Everything’s clear, ma’am!”
She scowled. Moron.
Then again, it was unfair to expect them to catch Terran. After one of them had spent entirely too long studying her body while she was tanning, she’d asked Hale to make sure that nobody just sat and watched the beach. They had shifts, and Terran had planned it so that he could slip in between them.
Cassia was bored, but Hale put a lot of restrictions on her under the guise of keeping her safe. Cassia figured it was more about control than safety, but she lived a good life and didn’t want to complain. Hale was very successful, and Cassia wanted for nothing.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She was given every material possession she’d ever wanted, but what she didn’t have was a purpose. She had always loved children and dreamed of being a mother. Apparently, that wasn’t in the cards. She volunteered with children, but Hale asked her stop because it took up so much of her time.
She gave it up to make him happy, but soon realized it was at the expense of her own happiness. Hale encouraged her to organize fundraisers, which he suggested would bring her joy. Cassia discovered the fundraisers really just provided new networking opportunities for Hale. Besides, the fundraisers weren’t the same as working directly with the children. She gave up organizing fundraisers and took up the lifestyle of being a kept woman—laying by the beach, reading, attending parties, and going shopping. Being rich was nice, but her lifestyle left a big hole in her heart.
Hale always said, “If you own a successful business for long enough, eventually you’re going to start making money.”
In Hale’s case, he’d owned a very successful company for almost a thousand years. Of course his company changed names over the centuries. Although he was extremely wealthy, one of the richest men in the world, he had to keep a low profile. If he became well-known, people might start to question why he never aged.
On the other hand, Terran also had wealth, but he also had a literal kingdom.
She remained in her comfortable lounge chair a little longer before she decided to go inside her house. She had bought the house in the South of France thirty years prior, and although it was only her summer home when she purchased it, Cassia had made it her full-time residence because she fell in love with it.
Her home was recently remodeled by an interior designer she had seen on HGTV. It was ultra-modern, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that gave her a breathtaking view of the ocean. She had once wanted a cozy mountain getaway, but the mountains always reminded her of Terran, so she opted for an oceanfront home.
She brought her drink into the house and set it down on the counter. She could see a couple more guards wandering around outside, watching for something.
What are they looking for? Evidently not dragon princes.
She would need to talk to Hale about increasing security, but not because of Terran. That…that she would keep to herself. If Terran could get in, that meant other people could get in as well.
She grabbed some cardstock and her artist pencil and went back outdoors to sit down at the white marble table that gave her a nice view of the Atlantic and other beautiful homes along the coastline. She could hear her hot-tub bubbling pleasingly and wished for a feeling of serenity t
o come over her. She was in a beautiful location, had a slight buzz from her vodka soda, and had every material possession in the world that one could want. But she couldn’t get Terran off her mind. As long as he was in her thoughts, she would have no peace.
She put the pencil tip onto the paper. And then did nothing. She tried to get her brain to work, to get the pencil to move. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t muster up any inspiration. Normally, the creative process was easy for her. She was an excellent artist—she’d had many lifetimes to perfect it, and she spent most of her free time either drawing or gardening. She shaded nothing mindlessly.
Terran thinks Hale is a killer. The thought was innerving, and she couldn’t remove the feeling that there was some truth to his accusation.
She reached for her phone and entered her passcode. Unlike Terran, she changed her passcode regularly and would never pick numbers in a sequential order. It was habit. She had the attention span of a gnat, so she got bored with anything after a little while. Her phone was no different, except for cases. She got attached to cases and felt bad for throwing them away. She had no particular allegiance to passcodes.
She pulled up Hale’s number. It had a couple hearts off to the side. She tried to push the button and hesitated. What was she going to say?
Hey, sweetie! Hope your trip is going well! Say, you wouldn’t just happen to be behind the murder of the Chancellor, would you?
She pushed the button and turned on the speaker.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Hello?” Hale answered from the other side.
She smiled. They hadn’t talked in a while, and she missed him.
“Hey, babe! How’s the trip going?”
“Good,” he said with just the hint of unhappiness under his smooth voice. “How are you doing? Is there something you need? I’m really busy right now.”
“Well…” she looked at the ankle bracelet that she had set on the table. “No,” she said. “Not really. I just miss you. When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he replied with a slightly annoyed tone to his voice. “You know that. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah…”
“Huh.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’ll fly in first thing in the morning. I might even be there for breakfast.”
“You’re in London, right?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, you didn’t just happen to swing by New York, did you?”
There was a pause. “No. Why?”
“Oh, just curious! I thought you could swing by that macaroon place on the Upper West Side if you had some time. You know those are my favorite.” She hoped her story was convincing. “Maybe we can go there together later in the week.”
“You hate New York.”
“True. But I love macaroons,” she replied. She was not Terran. She was terrible at investigating. She was also a terrible liar. “Okay. Well, I’m tired.”
“Get some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow. Sound good?”
“I guess,” she replied. “Love you.”
“Be home tomorrow,” he told her and hung up.
She glanced at the timer. Thirty-seven seconds. That’s all it took to simultaneously comfort and panic her. Thirty-seven pathetic seconds. She tried to calm herself down. She was getting herself all worked up, probably for nothing. Hale would fly in the next day. He could explain everything.
Right?
Cassia couldn’t help remembering the first time that she had met Terran. Back then, she had been a regular young woman that thought humans were the only things out there. She had expected to have a regular life, meet a man she loved, and eventually die.
Regular life? Nope. Man she loved? She thought she’d found it with Terran. Eventually die? Not likely, unless she got killed. Immortality could be cut short.
Terran came to her village with two other men, who she later found out were leaders of his army. Cassia’s father had owned a small inn, and Terran needed a place to stay for the night.
He was there to unwind from the pressures of being Keeper of the Mountain and asked for a simple meal. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. She felt an immediate—almost supernatural—attraction to him, and she later found out the feeling was mutual.
The men he traveled with stared at her intimidatingly and made it difficult to get close to him until his meal was ready. She swallowed hard and sauntered over to him, all without taking her eyes off his taut body and emerald-green eyes.
She couldn’t be blamed that she wasn’t paying attention. Or that she caught her foot on the rug that she had insisted was going to trip someone someday. Or that she lost her balance. It might, however, have been her fault that she accidentally tossed the entire contents of his meal, and his drink, onto his chest.
“Oh no!” she cried “I am so sorry!”
Terran stood up, accidentally hitting a picture on the wall and knocking it off. In a moment, the men he was with grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall, bending her arm behind her back painfully.
“Ow!” she yelped. “Ow! Please let me go. It was an accident.”
Terran pulled his guards off. His shirt was soaked, letting off steam. “Let her go,” he ordered. “Now!”
The hulking guards moved away from her like buildings, like her tiny frame stood any sort of threat towards Terran. “I am so sorry,” she told him. “I tripped. I did not see the rug and—”
“It is fine,” Terran replied.
He scowled, understandably, then looked at her with a reassuring smile, as if telling her she was forgiven.
“Please allow me to clean your shirt.”
“Do not worry, miss. I am fine,” he assured.
The next morning, Terran asked her father for her hand in marriage. Cassia did not know his true nature at the time. All she knew was that she felt drawn to him and could not resist his proposal. Terran had given her family a comfortable life for the remainder of their years. For that, she would be forever grateful.
In the present, Cassia smiled. Back then, everything had been so simple. That was before their great loss. Terran had been everything a girl could want. She truly thought everything would be perfect for all of eternity.
She still wasn’t sure why she didn’t give Terran another chance. He tried, hard, to get her back. He’d apologized and begged for her forgiveness. She had probably been stupid to ignore him. She tried to shut off all feelings for Terran, who she deemed responsible for her pain.
She slipped the anklet around her ankle and latched it tight.
Why not? Just because she wore it didn’t mean she was turning her back on Hale; it just meant she was keeping her options open. Even if a danger wasn’t related to Hale, it was nice to have Terran on call. He was a tremendous ally, and it comforted her to know he was nearby.
But that didn’t mean she was interested in pursuing a relationship with him! She was happy with Hale. The dream of living with Terran, as sweet as it was, lived in the past with a more naïve, younger version of herself.
If she had a box of dreams that had never come true, the box would be empty except for that one life…
She was rich. She was beautiful. She’d been skydiving, scuba diving, and had been in the deepest depths of the earth with Terran in his palace. She traveled around the world and even had several homes that spanned the globe. She’d met famous people throughout her lifetime and knew many secretes that would never make it to the history books.
She was living the dream. At least, that is what she kept telling herself.
She sighed. She’d keep the anklet just in case she needed it for whatever reason, not necessarily against Hale. He’d be flying in the next morning. When he came in, she could get to the bottom of the whole mess with the Chancellor’s death. She wouldn’t dare tell him that Terran had shown up.
Was it bad that she was hiding things from her boyfriend to protect Terran?
3
The next morning came entirely too soon.
She
had slept like a log. The funny thing about Cassia was that she slept very soundly, but she flopped around like a beached marlin while doing it. She didn’t feel herself stir, but she did stir. Back when she was first with Hale, she had awoken to find out that she’d whacked him across the face accidentally in one of her movements in the night. It had been funny because he wasn’t hurt. Every time she thought of it, she laughed out loud.
He, however, did not find it so humorous.
Her phone alarm woke her up. She was lying in her king-sized bed in her expansive bedroom with the cool sea just outside the windows. She couldn’t see any guards, but she knew they were there. They always were.
She tried in vain to maneuver from the middle of the bed to one side and attempted to slap the snooze button. Her hand hit something, all right, but it turned out to be a glass. The glass fell off and shattered.
“Ugh,” she groaned, lurching up. “No… Why? I want to sleep at least another hour,” she said out loud to no one in particular.
Her phone kept screaming at her until she shut it up. The broken glass lined her wooden floor where she would normally step out onto with her bare feet. She grimaced. No chance of that now. Part dragon? Yes. Glass-proof? Nope.
She crawled out the other side of the bed to avoid the glass. She was a tiny little thing. Part of her had expected that when she became pregnant and gained the power to shift into a dragon, she would somehow get taller so she’d look less adorable and more dragon-like.
As it was, she stayed petite and nowhere near intimidating. She’d found almost no difference in her old human self and her halfling self, other than that her fingernails grew like crazy. She had to trim them every couple days just to avoid ripping holes in all the furniture. That and her skin was strangely warm all the time.
Terran had told her it was because of the heat inside, but she had no idea. Once, she’d had a car crash and went in for an x-ray to make sure everything was okay. She’d been hurt before, but never so severely. As an immortal dragon, she healed quickly, but she figured it was worth the effort to make extra sure that she was okay instead of just assuming everything had healed. She should have known better.