The Hailey Holloway Complete Series

by K. C. Stewart

  “He would keep it near him, if not on him,” he stated.

  “And where would he be?”

  “You’re talking to me,” he responded smugly.

  “Am not, now answer me Snot Face.”

  “He has a home outside Harrisburg. Might be there, or one of his many other houses. He has a few over the country, but he would want to be close.” Hailey agreed with that. She filled in Lia and they decided to wait for Darby before making any more plans.

  *****

  Section 2: Dragon Politics. Hailey read. Each sept is run by one dragon. In recent decades this position has been titled as King. The position is not voted on, but inherited. Much like the President or Monarch of a country, the King is tasked with running the entire sept. He has people under him that help with these tasks.

  Hailey slouched further into the couch. Politics were her least favorite section, but every little bit of knowledge helped her to understand the world she was now in.

  The Council is comprised of two dragons from each sept. They are chosen by the King and are most often family. The Council is in place to help the King and to make decisions for the breed as a whole.

  So basically, a big round table full of douchebags who think they have power, but in all actuality don’t. Hailey was getting the hang of this dragon stuff.

  “That’s a load of bullshit. The Council does nothing but whine about what they don’t have the authority to change,” grumbled Dak.

  She wanted to ask him about his comment to Silas the other night about having a contract on his head set by the Council. Then again, that would require her to acknowledge him and his existence. Hailey flipped ahead a few pages. It was all dragon history, her second least favorite subject in school. Maybe they had a movie on it all so she wouldn’t have to study it.

  “I chose my uncles for the council,” he continued as if she had responded to his earlier comment. Either he was pretending everything was alright between the two of them, or he just liked to hear himself speak. She guessed the latter.

  “They are either dead or were bought out by Silas. I hope for their sake, they are dead.” If the council did have a hit out on him then his uncles had been part of that.

  “Does a decision have to be unanimous?” she bit the bullet and asked him.

  “Two-thirds vote.”

  “So there is a chance they had nothing to do with it, right?”

  “I doubt it. If it wasn’t unanimous then it would have leaked to the dragon populous.”

  “Oh.” Dak had been a bastard lately but she still felt pity for him.

  “Are we ok again?” he asked.

  “No.” They really weren’t.

  *****

  Darby arrived later that afternoon. She was jittery and severely pissed off. Hailey closed the book, happy for a reprieve from 16th century dragon history, and joined her in the kitchen. There were a few plastic bags from the local grocery store filled with random nonsense.

  “Uh Darby?” Hailey started, “Any reason we need a spaghetti squash, a turkey baster, and fish food?” She pulled each item from the bag and lined them up on the counter before moving to the next, which was just as much of a mystery.

  The door was locked and Darby was now moving to close all of the blinds. Hailey waited out her paranoia with a bag of Doritos from mystery bag number two. When the cabin was closed, locked and curtained to Darby’s approval, she leaned against the fridge and displayed a very impressive amount of word vomit.

  “Andrea, my friend who had the book, works at Weis Markets. I usually will meet her there if she has something I need to borrow, or vice versa. Two guys followed me from the parking lot then around the store, so I freaked and started to grab random stuff hoping they wouldn’t think I was there for anything more than food. They were dragons; I don’t have proof, only a feeling.” She took a moment to breathe. Hailey grabbed a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water. She didn’t hand it to Darby, but placed it next to her. She’d find it when she needed it.

  “So I went to check out and Andrea had already noticed the two men. We played it off like I was just a customer.” She noticed the water and took a long sip. “She even had the bagger help me out to my car. It looked weird since I only had a few things but I was grateful for the kid.”

  “Did you get the book?” Hailey asked as she looked around for it.

  “Yeah, Andrea slipped it in one of the bags in between the newspaper and a box of mac and cheese.” Hailey had not seen this bag. She would have remembered the box of mac and cheese. “It’s on the table,” Darby explained.

  “So what happened with the dragons?” Hailey was unloading the last bag, being extra careful with the old book.

  “Dammit! I have successfully stayed out of the dragon eye for years since Dacea died the first time. I’ve changed everything about myself, cut and dyed my hair, got contacts, lost my accent, and yet, they still know where to find me.” The empty glass slammed down on the counter. Darby’s face was scrunched up and a line of frustration appeared between her brows.

  “Look, I’m sorry I brought all this to your doorstep. We shouldn’t have involved you.” Hailey shifted her weight between her feet and glanced at Darby. She had put this woman in danger. If something would have happened to her today, Hailey would never have forgiven herself.

  “Shut up! I’m not mad at you. I’m pissed off at those damn Green henchmen. I’m furious with myself for running scared. But mostly, I’m ready to take this fight to Silas. Lennox deserves to be avenged. So if that means helping you and getting seen by dragons, then so be it.” She stomped over to the table and pulled out a chair. “Now sit so we can go over just how this is going to work.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Hailey did as she was told and kept her mouth shut while Darby sat in the seat beside her and began to flip through the pages. She was hesitant about the idea of magic. Just seemed there were too many ways it could go wrong.

  “This is a fairly simple unbinding spell, the trouble lies with the knife. Without it, then you will be unbinding nothing. The knife is the catalyst, it will focus the spell. Dacea, how’s your Latin?”

  “Heh, it has seen better days but I’ll be fine.” A little bit of her worry eased with his confidence.

  “He’s good,” Hailey relayed.

  “Good enough, any plans for the knife retrieval?”

  “Hailey, can I take the reins for a bit?”

  It was petty of her, but she didn’t want too. She had been knocked down a few pegs earlier and wouldn’t allow him to keep on climbing up when she was still nursing her bruised ego.

  “No,” she stated.

  “Now is not the time for you to be playing games and holding a grudge.” He was so used to getting his way, but she stood her ground, and when he push with his mind, she pushed right back.

  “I said, no.”

  “Hailey…” Dak sighed.

  She wasn’t having any of that. “Dacea,” she responded.

  He never thought he would miss that asinine nickname, but all day she had been calling him Dacea, and it hurt. The reaction surprised him when it should have pleased him. All Dacea wanted was to get back to his life; she was now treating him like he had wanted, detached. He should be pleased, but he couldn’t find that emotion anywhere in him.

  Darby had been listening to their conversation, probably filling in his spots. She was smirking at them. No, he thought, only at him. The witch had been a sister to him in her years with Lennox. She had always pushed him to find his Mate, even after he told her about Katherine. “That isn’t a good enough reason,” she told him. “We all get our hearts broken at some point.”

  She didn’t understand at the time, although she might now. In all of this Hailey had wormed her way through his heavily guarded barriers. He cared for her, he just didn’t know if it was enough to turn away from what he believed in.

  “Please tell Darby that I’ve been to Silas’s river house outside of Harrisburg. His family hosted gatheri
ngs there years ago before his father died. He’d want to be close and that’s the closest house I know of. I can get us to the safe inside.”

  Hailey’s soft voice repeated his words, with neither feeling, nor caring. He had wanted detached. He just didn’t expect it to be like this.

  *****

  “Give me good news,” Silas said into the phone while raising a finger over his lips quieting the dragon he had hanging in chains.

  “We spotted the witch in town, followed her around until she disappeared.”

  “And by disappeared you mean…” The chains rattled.

  “Poof.”

  “Fucking witches. Okay canvas the area and look for her home. It’s not a big town, won’t be too hard to spot her car again.” The man silently sobbed, his body shaking with effort to stay silent. Silas smiled and slowly shook his head in disapproval.

  “When you find her, contact me.” He hung up and pocketed the phone. The man whimpered as Silas reached for a knife on the table, in one quick movement he swiped the blade across the man’s throat, blood immediately flowed out of the cut and

  pooled at his feet. “Now look what you made me do.” He told the gurgling man.

  Chapter Nine

  There wasn’t much to pack. It took her under five minutes to get all of her belongings shoved into a duffle bag. Figuring she wouldn’t get much sleep as the excitement of tomorrow raged in her head, she decided to head to bed early and give herself the opportunity for as much rest as possible.

  It was just past nine when she crawled under the covers. Her teeth were brushed, hair in a floppy bun on top of her head, lights turned off, it was a routine that normally told her body to shut down for a few hours. Tonight though, she just lay there with her head turned towards the one small window. It was hard to believe that only yesterday she had been under the stars pointing out constellations.

  Today had sucked, she decided. One of those days that even if you won the lottery it would not make up for the fact that your day was crap. The worst part was Dak didn’t even get why she was so hurt. He just assumed she was over reacting and being a girl. Apparently he didn’t know her as well as he claimed. Hailey didn’t over react, didn’t know how too. So he didn’t want to be married forever to her, oh well. It’s not like she asked him to be with her. But she had thought they were friends at least. It was his rejection of her that made Hailey want to crawl under the blankets and never come out.

  Keeping people active in her life was a full time job. It started with her parents. Once her brother Josh died, they acted like they had lost their only child and all but forgot about her. She had been ten at the time. She fed herself, got to and from school alone, learned to forge signatures so she wouldn’t bother them with silly things like field trips. They had turned their backs on her; she didn’t forgive or forget, Hailey adapted.

  The pattern continued into college. Her roommate was a” here and now” kind of person. If you were outside of her bubble, you would be forgotten. Hailey worked hard to stay in that bubble. In the end, she only screwed herself by wasting all her time on her roommate, never bothering to make other friends. After college ended, she never heard from her roommate again.

  Keeping to herself became a skilled art form. Learning when to take lunch at work to avoid the largest amount of people, keeping her face schooled with no reaction, giving off a “not interested” or “loner” vibe to ward away strangers. Most everything Hailey did, she did to protect herself from growing close to people.

  Then there was Dak. He forced himself into her life and then pushed her away when she started to feel connected to him. Hailey wanted to hate him, but in her sad reality, she just missed talking to him. He had an opinion for everything that she said or did. She wasn’t afraid to be who she was on the inside around him. Because he was always around it was easy to forget to hide.

  Hailey closed her eyes and settled into a warm spot in the bed. Right now she needed to shut down and sleep. Morning would come soon enough bringing with it her first act as a criminal.

  *****

  The sun crested over the horizon at exactly 6:52am, just like the app on her phone told her it would. Light streaked across the forest floor spreading out like a flood. Each leaf, twig, and blade of grass was highlighted with morning dew; it glistened as the light reflected through the tiny droplets. Noticing things, such as morning light, wasn’t usually in Hailey’s normal routine. However this particular morning had her tramping through the trees bundled in a blanket that fought off the worst of the fall chill.

  Why was she waking every deer, squirrel, and bird up from their slumber? She had wondered the same thing as a rabbit stuck his brown head out from his borrow giving her the stink eye. It could be because she hadn’t slept the night before, instead only catching an hour or two here and there. Or it could be that she hadn’t spoken to her inner dragon since the day before last, and it was slowly killing her.

  Yeah, that could be it.

  Hailey came upon a clearing, on the other end she could just make out Darby’s closest neighbor. Little puffs of smoke came from the tree hidden chimney. She had half a thought to turn back. Darby would be up by now and would fill Hailey with hot chocolate and make her spill the clusterfuck in her head. She stood there almost able to taste the creamy hot chocolate but turned away. Talking would help, but Darby was not the person to do it with.

  A few nights earlier a storm passed through upheaving a few trees in its wake. Hailey perched herself on one of those trees and deliberately took the time to cover every bit of exposed skin with her blanket. When she was successfully cocooned, her voice flowed freely into the morning.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive you.” She let the words go, releasing them from the life sentence previously ruled. “I do miss you though. I miss our banter and that stupid imaginary eyebrow I see raised when we argue. I miss flying and burning stuff with a puff of breath.” She sighed, “I miss talking to you, but it’s been so quiet lately. At times I wonder if you are there anymore, if you ever were.”

  As the forest woke, the noise level increased. All the sounds of the world, except the one she wanted to hear. The crickets chirped their song and the birds chimed in. The sun was slowly warming the land with her rays. Soon the fog would clear and in its wake leaving nothing but a memory of the ghost it was. Hailey rested her chin on her bundled knees and watched a family of deer make their way across the clearing. Her heart beat slowly, aching with every thump.

  She had slid off the log giving up on the hopes of reconciliation. She was already halfway back to the cabin when she thought to give it another shot. “Dacea?”

  “You stop calling me Dak, why?” he spit out, frustrated. It made her smile.

  “Because you are an asshole.”

  “That’s no explanation.”

  “Sure it is,” she told him. “It’s the perfect explanation.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Well, we can’t get everything we want in life. Take me for example; I want you to apologize for earlier. Yet all day you tell me I was being childish.”

  “That’s why you stopped calling me Dak?”

  The stillness and magic of the morning was completely lost. Part of her wondered why she wanted to talk to him again. “See what you did there? It’s call avoidance.”

  He sighed and grumbled about confusing women. “I don’t know what I should be sorry for.”

  She mirrored him and grumbled about dumbass men. “You don’t want me in your life!”

  “I never said that! I don’t want a Mate, Hailey. That’s different than not wanting you in my life. At this point I don’t think I could survive without your sarcasm.”

  Well that made her feel a little better. “Why don’t you want a Mate? Isn’t that required or something?” She had made it back to the cabin and snuck in the door.

  “I’ve been there and don’t want to do it again.”

  “You were married? How did I not know this?” excla
imed Hailey. “Why didn’t Darby say anything?” The woman in question was in the shower at the moment but had made coffee already. Hailey poured a cup and went to her room.

  “She doesn’t go telling my secrets to the world. Only you do that.” Smirking Bastard. “My family, and that includes Lennox and Darby, knew about Katherine. We hid it all long ago. It’s dead and needs to stay there.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Hell if I know.” It, whatever it was, still bothered him.

  “What happened, Dak?” The name slipped out but she just let it go.

  “If I tell you, will all be forgiven?” he asked.

  She took a moment to think about it. “Yes.”

  Dacea despised going back to those memories but if this was the way to clear the air between them then he would relive it, for her. “We met when I was a young man, only 19 or so.” It seemed like a lifetime ago. He was an impressionable young man with an empty place inside that needed filled. “The pressure of being the heir to the Red dragon legacy was too much. My father, Quinton, was very hard on me. I had to be advanced in everything I did. My studies were everything from swordsmanship to various languages to mathematics. All day, every day was dedicated to them.” His first 30 years were devoted to schooling. The house where they lived became more like a jail cell than a home. “All I wanted was to be a boy like Silas; he had freedom, friends, as well as obligations. I was allowed only the latter.” Katherine had been his first friend.

  “I had wandered into the forest one night ready to end my life. I had thought about it for weeks before hand, even justified my actions.” Dacea felt Hailey’s quick intake of breath. If it was anyone else their pity would aggravate him, but not with her. “There was a woman sitting up high in a tree, she was naked with only a smile on her face and a hum of a song on her lips. She sat there, humming and swinging her feet without a care in the world. To feel that carefree, I remember wondering what it would be like. When she finally caught me gaping, she tilted her head like an owl and stared back.” To this day, Dacea wondered why she was in that particular tree, on that particular night. One thought had always haunted him, had she been waiting for him?