The Dragon's Secret Baby

by Jasmine Wylder

  But that didn’t change the fact that everyone in the Pack – including his own dad – blamed him for his mother’s death. Now, Justin pressed his lips together and looked away from his father. “I don’t know what I have to do to prove myself,” he muttered. “It isn’t enough that I’ll have to live with that shame for the rest of my life, that I’ll never forgive myself for it. You’re never going to forgive me, either. You’ll never give me a chance to show that I’ve changed.”

  “Changed?” His father let out another hostile, hollow laugh. “And how have you ‘changed?’ It seems like every other month I’m bailing you out of some trouble you’ve managed to get into. You’re twenty-four years old, Justin! The only reason you’re not doing drugs anymore is because I threatened to cut you off financially, but I know you still drink. You have no respect for me or this community when you show off in bars, abusing your abilities and putting yourself at risk of being found out. There are people out there who know we exist and they are just waiting for any excuse to come for us.” He pointed a long finger at his son. “One day, you’re going to slip up and expose yourself, and the safety of every member of this Clan will be compromised.” Randall stared into his son’s eyes, his own a bright shade of yellow that he hid behind colored contacts when out in public. “Now I know that the only way you’re going to learn is if I stop enabling you.” He lowered his arms to his sides again. “As of this moment, you will no longer receive any monetary assistance from me or from the Clan. Furthermore, you will be demoted to the lowest rank within the Pack.”

  Justin’s mouth dropped open and he managed to work out a single word. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Randall squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Starting tomorrow morning, you will no longer be afforded the privileges of the Alpha’s son. You will receive a job placement, and you will report to work every day. You will follow a strict schedule, take your meals when assigned, and observe lights out with the other members of the Omega class.” Randall started to turn away to walk to his desk. “Oh, and as of tomorrow, you will report to Labor Barracks. You will no longer be allowed to reside within this house or occupy any of the other private homes in the compound.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Justin spat out, his rage making a swift return. He lunged at his dad, grabbing his arm. “Why are you doing this to me? You might as well just send me to jail!”

  “While I would agree that’s where you belong, given some of the Human laws you’ve broken over the years,” Randall replied, not meeting Justin’s gaze this time, “you are still in need of strict discipline, and the only way you’re going to get it is here, among your kind.” He jerked his arm free and calmly circled around to sit in the leather winged-back chair behind his large mahogany desk. “You’re one of us, Justin, like it or not. We take care of our own.”

  “And what if I don’t follow your fucking rules?” Justin demanded. “Maybe I should just go Rogue, become a Lone Wolf.”

  At this, his father’s gaze flickered up and locked on him again. “You know that Rogues are not tolerated,” Randall said in a low, ominous tone. “You’ll do as you’re told or face permanent exile to an isolated region from which there is only one escape.” He reached to open a drawer and pulled out a tablet, switching it on. “You think living in this community is a ‘prison?’ Trust me, the alternative is much worse.”

  “You talk about fear of internment camps,” Justin said. “And yet, anyone who doesn’t agree with you winds up in one of your own making.”

  “I didn’t create it,” Randall said. “It has existed for over a century, voted upon by the Alphas of all the Clans scattered around the world. It’s how we keep ourselves safe from our own, the ones who can’t or won’t conform to Pack life.” He touched one of the icons on the screen. “I never thought my own son would be one of them...”

  “I’m not!” Frustrated, Justin slammed his fist down on the desk, hard enough to crack the wood. He stared at his father, pleading with him. “All my life, you’ve always ignored what I had to say, always pushed me away. You never believed in me. You never talked to me about one day taking your place as Alpha because you never wanted it. And now I know why.” He stabbed a finger at his father. “You’re afraid. Afraid of giving up your power. Afraid that all your precious fucking traditions,” he sneered the word, “will be treated like the outdated bullshit that they are!”

  Randall surged up out of his chair. “Your lack of respect is why you’ll never be Alpha!” he roared. “By all that is sacred to our kind, you will never sit at the head of this or any other Clan until you earn it, and you will start by learning to take your place – as a submissive Omega!”

  Justin’s lip curled. “Fuck you!” he said, and shoved away from the desk. His father must have foreseen this because he gripped it from his side to hold it in place, a silent means of conveying his unmovable stance. Justin growled in frustration. Faced with a choice between accepting his demotion to the lowest rank in the Pack – a position which would no doubt delight several members of the Clan who made no secret of their dislike of him – and spending the rest of his life in nightmarish exile, he could see nothing positive about either situation. For a moment, the thought of undergoing “treatment” for Rogue behavior seemed favorable to the humiliation he would suffer from those who despised him and would make his life here a living hell.

  At last, Justin lifted his chin in defiance. “Okay,” he said quietly. “This is how you want it? Fine. But I’ll show you, Dad.” He stormed over to the door and jerked it open. Glancing back over his shoulder, he looked into his father’s eyes. “But mark my words: I will be the next Alpha – no matter what it takes.”

  He slammed the door behind him, hard enough to rattle the framed paintings on the walls out in the hallway. As he stormed around the corner, he nearly collided with his cousin Warren. “Fuck!” Justin barked, startled. It unnerved him that his anger had clouded his senses to the point where he hadn’t been able to hear or even smell his kin before encountering him. Five years older than Justin, Warren had always been the academic type, which was probably one of the reasons he had been named as one of his father’s Betas. “Sorry, man – didn’t see you, there.”

  “It’s okay,” Warren assured. He peered at Justin over the rims of his glasses; like Justin’s dad, he had pale yellow eyes that he hid behind tinted lenses. “Is everything all right?”

  “Peachy,” Justin replied with a thin smile. He shoved his hands down into his jeans pockets and scuffed the hall runner with the toe of his boot.

  Warren nodded. “Ah, okay. Well, I was just on my way to go over the fall quarter budget with your father…”

  “Look, Warren,” Justin said, cutting him off, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got shit to do.” He sidestepped his cousin, wondering if he already knew about the demotion. Justin didn’t want to hang around and find out. Right now, he just wanted to go back to his room – while it still belonged to him – where he planned to pull out the bottle of hard liquor he kept hidden in the wall at the back of his closet and crawl into it for one last binge. Tomorrow, he would assume his new rank; tonight, he would get good and fucked up. Dragging his fingers back through his short blond hair, Justin sighed. “I’ll, uh, see you later. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  It was sometime after four in the morning when the sounds of shouting and then a pounding on his door roused Justin from his drunken sleep. He groaned and tumbled out of bed, kicking the now-empty bottle to the floor where it rolled away under the dresser. “Hang on!” he yelled, tripping over his discarded clothing as he made his way across the room. He couldn’t even remember undressing.

  The door burst open before he could reach it. Three of his father’s Betas – Gerard, Phil, and Samuel – pushed their way in. Phil flicked the light switch, causing Justin to wince and shield his eyes from the brightness. “What the hell?” Justin muttered. “What are you assholes doing, here? This is still my
room – at least for a few more hours!”

  “Look at his hand,” Samuel said, and Gerard reached out, grabbing Justin by his wrist.

  “Hey!” Justin jerked back, giving them a warning glare, but then he caught a glimpse of his own hand and he frowned, seeing a sticky, dark red substance on his fingers. He blinked and sniffed, immediately identifying the scent. “What the fuck? Blood?” He stared at them. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Samuel shoved past him and scooped up the jeans and hooded sweatshirt lying in a heap on the floor. “You tell us,” he said, turning to show Justin the clothing. They, too, had dark stains, the strong iron smell of blood soaked through the material.

  All of Justin’s previous anger fled along with his inebriation, replaced by the cold sobriety of fear. He flashed back to that night in the run-down tenement building, when he had held his mother’s body in his arms, sobbing and covered in her blood. That’s how his father had found him when he had arrived an hour later, searching for his missing wife and son. Justin shook himself to refocus his thoughts on the here and now. “Where’s my father?” he demanded. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I need to see him.”

  “That won’t be possible,” Phil said, his tone as icy as his gray eyes. “Your father’s dead.”

  Justin reeled, feeling like someone had just punched him in the chest. He staggered back; his calves hit the edge of the bed and he dropped down, legs suddenly too weak to hold him upright. “Dead?” he echoed. “H-how?”

  Gerard made a derisive noise. Grabbing Justin by the throat, he lifted him off the bed and swung him around, slamming him up against the nearest wall. “Don’t pretend you don’t know, you worthless piece of shit,” he snarled, eyes glowing. Older, broader, and more muscular than Justin, he had acted as Randall’s bodyguard for years. “You didn’t even bother to ditch the clothes or clean yourself up – you just came back here and got drunk on your ass again, like you always do.”

  “You’re crazy,” Justin choked out. In a quick move, he managed to dislodge the hand on his neck and twisted away. Grabbing Gerard’s arm, he wrenched it up behind his back and shoved him face-first into the wall. The fight did not last long – no sooner did he get in that little retaliation when Phil and Samuel jumped on him, holding him on either side, their combined strength too much for Justin to fight off. Gerard rounded on Justin with a fist to his gut, making him double over with a grunt of pain. That same hand caught him by the hair, using the short blond locks to jerk his head back. Justin gasped. “You’re making a mistake,” he ground out through his teeth. “I didn’t kill my father!”

  “Yeah?” Gerard challenged. “Well, pretty boy, surveillance cameras caught you on tape outside your dad’s study wearing those clothes – and then there’s an eye witness who overheard you threaten your dad earlier tonight.”

  Justin frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about? I never threatened him!” He struggled against Samuel and Phil’s grip. “Who told you that?”

  “I did.” At that moment, Warren came into the room. He looked pale, visibly shaken. He stood in front of Justin, almost nose to nose; he had removed his glasses and now Justin could see the pale yellow of his irises. “I heard you arguing with your dad,” he said quietly. “You told him you’d be the next Alpha, ‘no matter what it takes.’” He gulped and shook his head. “How could you do it, Justin? He was your father – and he was like a father to me, too, taking me in after my parents died.”

  “I didn’t do it!” Justin insisted.

  “Maybe you were just too drunk to remember doing it,” Phil said. “Maybe seeing what you did will jar your memory.”

  They dragged Justin from his room. Dressed only in his boxer briefs, they hauled him down to the main floor. The odor of blood got stronger when they reached the door to Randall’s study. Justin began to panic. “No,” he said, digging in his heels. He kept going back to that night and his mom, when he thought he would never get the smell of blood out of his clothes, his hair, or off his skin. “I don’t want to see.”

  Despite his protests, he found himself shoved into the room. He stumbled and came to a stop, his eyes wide as he looked around in shock at the scene before him. There had been a struggle. Chairs overturned, books scattered on the floor, a lamp knocked off a table…and there, slumped in his leather chair, a gash where his throat used to be… “Dad,” Justin breathed. “Oh, God…God, no…”

  “Justin Waylan,” Samuel said, addressing him formally. “On behalf of the Clan Council, I hereby place you under Pack Arrest for the murder of Randall Waylan, Clan Alpha. You will be held in confinement until the Council can convene for trial.”

  “Which may wind up being pointless,” Gerard threw in. “The penalty for killing an Alpha is death.” He got up close to Justin’s side and growled in his ear. “When you see him again in the Afterlife, be sure to tell your father I said ‘hello.’”

  “Dad,” Justin whispered again, too numb from shock to fight as they pulled him from the study. “I didn’t do this…I swear I didn’t do it!”

  But even as he proclaimed his innocence, Justin found himself unable to recall anything that happened once he had entered that alcohol-induced fog, and it left him with a foreboding feeling of self-doubt.

  Jesus…what if I did?

  Chapter One

  “Thanks for coming in tonight,” Savannah Goode said, holding out three dollars in change and a receipt to her last customer of the day. She tucked a spiral curl of black hair behind her ear with her free hand. “You have a great evening, now, Tom.”

  “Ah-ah,” Tom said, shaking his head and holding up a thin, age-spotted hand. “Keep it.”

  Savannah looked over at the place where Tom had been sitting at the counter and saw a five-dollar bill sticking out from under the empty coffee mug. She pursed her full lips. “I can see you already left me a tip, Tom,” she said. She shook a light brown finger at him in playful admonishment. “And from the look of it, you gave me fifty percent gratuity!”

  The old man chuckled. “My dear Savannah,” he said, as he settled his tweed cap on his bald head. “I’ve been coming in here for years. I can be having the worst day of my life, but I know the moment I walk through that door I’m going to be greeted with a warm smile and a good meal. You’ve always treated me like family, and I appreciate that.” He motioned around the dining room. “I see you in here, working hard, never complaining. I have yet to witness anyone leave here without a smile on their face.” He gestured to the money. “You deserve that, and so much more.”

  “Well, thank you, Tom,” Savannah said, genuinely touched by his words. She put the money back into the register and closed the drawer. “Hold on – I’ve got something for you.” She walked over to the dessert case. Boxing up a couple of banana-walnut muffins, she brought them back and passed them over to Tom. “There. A bedtime snack, or breakfast in the morning.”

  Tom smiled, the lines in his craggy face deepening. “You’re a true gem,” he said. He tucked the box under his arm. “So, what are your plans for this evening? I couldn’t help noticing you seemed more upbeat than usual, today.” He winked. “You seeing someone special tonight?”

  She winked back and replied, “I’ll never tell.”

  That made Tom laugh. “Well, all right – you enjoy yourself, young lady,” he said, making his way toward the exit. “Just stay out of trouble, now!”

  “Aw, what fun is that?” Savannah called after him. He waved to her from the door and she waved back. “Such a sweetheart,” she murmured fondly as she watched him go.

  Reaching up to the small stereo on the shelf behind the register, Savannah hit the ‘play’ button to start the CD player. Upbeat rhythm and blues music began to fill the restaurant. Grabbing a plastic tub from under the counter, Savannah headed out to clear the dirty dishes from the counter and the now-vacant tables, humming along with the tune. Her voluptuous hips swayed to the song. She had been on her feet all day, cooking and doing her best to take
care of her customers, but she always managed to find a little reserve of energy for dancing.

  Tom had been right about her mood today. Savannah could not help feeling excited. She paused at the windows and peered out. Last night’s rain clouds had cleared away and now she could see the full moon rising large and silver against the rich, dark blue of the evening sky. Every month, even in winter, Savannah would retreat to her private garden on the rooftop, light candles, and celebrate with rituals. Tonight, she had a very special ceremony planned. As soon as she finished cleaning the restaurant, she would head upstairs to her apartment and go about her preparations – bathing, putting on her ceremonial robes, and setting up her altar for the rite just as her mother and grandmother had taught her.

  The bells on the front door jingled. With her back to the entrance, Savannah called out, “Welcome to The Goode Soul Café! Kitchen’s closed, but if you’re hungry I can still whip something up for you.”

  “No, thanks – we’re having dinner downtown tonight.”

  Savannah’s smile faded and her pleasant mood drained away like water through a sieve. Setting down her bucket, she turned to see two elegant, dark-skinned women striding into the small café, dressed in the latest fall fashions. Their expensive high-heel shoes clicked across the floor as they made their way toward her. Savannah managed to find a new smile, but without her usual warmth. She had learned some years ago not to bother when it came to dealing with people who made a habit of reminding her that they wished she had never been born. “Well, hello, Ceara and Tynice!” she said with mock cheer. She wiped her hands on her apron. “And how are my two sisters on this lovely October evening?”

  “Half-sisters,” Tynice corrected, always quick to point this out. They may have shared the same father, but the two older girls had never treated Savannah or her mother like family. After Daddy had passed, there had been only one reason for Savannah to have any dealings with them, that being the restaurant he had willed to his three daughters.