Before I could reply, bio dad's mobile rang, and he answered it while walking away.
"How will that help me come to terms with Ashe?" I whispered, before asking louder, "Evgeni! What do you mean?"
Covering the bottom of his phone, he looked back at me and whispered, "I've got to get back to work. Get ready to go. They're sending someone for you this afternoon."
I readjusted the towel to follow him, but by the time I reached the entry hall to my rooms, he was gone, his footsteps already on the stairs back to his office.
Checking my phone, I texted Olivia.
Me: Bio-dad is sending me away to Briony! Do you live near there?
I knew she wouldn't respond to me very quickly. Both she and Logan claimed lack of signal and other crap. Whatever. I got the message, they were busy with other things.
Sighing, I dabbed at the wet spot my hair had made on the bed with the edge of my towel, then looked back to my phone.
The text box remained empty—no bubbles, no reply.
I bit my bottom lip, hesitating before giving in and looking to see if Logan had texted me. Ashe wanted me to date other guys, apparently, and I did like Logan, but it just felt off. Like the steps to the hostel George and I stayed at in Mexico. They looked good but weren't quite the right height, so I found myself tripping on them.
Logan's last text had been a picture of him holding up two German Shepherd puppies next to his face. His dusty blond hair was messy, and his greenish hazel eyes sparkled with happiness.
I examined the picture again, zooming in on the dogs and frowning.
Your sire expected you to prepare for a journey, Aaraeth reminded me, judgment and excitement dripping from her words.
Because Ashe and Eondian are there? I asked.
She snorted and I took that as a yes.
I clicked off my phone and threw it onto the bed.
Logan didn't know Ashe broke up with me unless someone else told him. The only person I'd told was Olivia.
My eyes found the bubble in the corner of my room. Staring up at the camera angrily, I pulled off my towel and stood there naked, holding up both middle fingers. With a smirk, I turned on my heel toward the hall where my closet, bathroom, and other empty room were.
Nudity didn't bother me, but somewhere along the way, I realized that it bothered other people. If Evgeni knew any of his guards had seen me naked, then he'd rip the cameras out himself.
I laughed bitterly as I slid into stretchy shorts and wrangled a sports bra over my head. I searched my paltry wardrobe, dotted with a few items Katie had given me, before slipping on a loose t-shirt that read Balaur Academy in white letters across the blue fabric.
Pulling out my school backpack, I began to throw things inside.
Maybe I would be able to get a letter out to George. Here in Evgeni's house, I'd been cut off. Taya, my guard at the academy, helped me by mailing and intercepting letters to and from George.
I needed clarification from him on several things.
Maybe the Dragonborn were dangerous after all. I thought that Ashe had my back, but now, I was alone again.
I am here, Aaraeth hissed into my ear.
Yes, and I do appreciate you. I can't even imagine my life without you now… Hey, what were you going to tell me before Evgeni came in? I asked.
You asked if humans live in the realm of dragons. I do not know of humans, but there is a creature called the Abraxas, she told me.
Is the Abraxas human?
She seemed to shrug in my mind. I know not. But it is not dragon.
A chill ran down my spine, making me shiver. But the cold had nothing to do with the temperature. Was Abraxas my mother, Celine?
Aaraeth continued, you cannot travel to the dragon realm. It is too dangerous.
But the thought was already planted in my brain.
I needed answers, and Evgeni had all but admitted he was keeping things from me.
Would he open up now that I was leaving?
I ran through the hall and down the steps before stopping outside my bio dad's office.
Hesitating, I peered inside the open door. Ponytail, the nickname I’d given this particular goon, sat in the corner on his phone, and Evgeni typed away on his computer.
My dad's eyes met mine, and he raised his brows, asking wearily, "Yes?"
I glanced around the room. "Is this a bad time?"
I didn't have to see his screen to realize that he'd cleared it with a click of the mouse.
"I have a few minutes." He motioned to the unoccupied chair. "Sit."
"I'm not here to complain or anything like that. I just have a question about Celine, and with you being gone so much and working, I thought maybe you could answer some quick questions before I leave."
He checked the expensive watch at his wrist before nodding, "All right. What do you want to know?"
"You mentioned that she was researching all this dragon stuff—for years, like rituals and ceremonies. You said she was a scientist, like George, so she must have gone to university. What kind of degree did she have?"
Evgeni bit the side of his cheek before answering. "She had a doctorate in physics from Stanford. Why?"
I tried to shrug nonchalantly, shielding my thoughts from him. "Just curious," I replied.
He narrowed his eyes. "You're getting better."
"Better at what?" I asked, eyeing what was probably a very expensive painting behind him.
"Lying. It's hard to lie to a Prime. You almost did it. But you aren't just curious, are you? You want to know for a reason…" His eyes pierced my own, and I could feel his mind touch my own—his dragon leaned on me and plucked the thought from my mind. "You think Celine is alive? Why?"
Damn Evgeni, taking information from my thoughts. I pushed back at him, aggressively closing my mind to him.
"Is she alive?" I asked.
My bio dad had an excellent poker face, which made him impossible to read, so I glanced over at Ponytail. When his eyes met mine, something clicked.
Ponytail knew something.
Was this confirmation?
Evgeni clenched his jaw as his eyes flicked between the Russian and me.
A smile lit up my face before I could hide it.
"Holy crap!" I said, standing, meeting my bio dad's eye. "What do you know? Is she in the dragon realm? Why would she go there?"
But his cold, bored stare stopped me in my tracks. "I need to get back to work," he told me before his eyes returned to his computer screen.
I bit my lower lip, glancing between Ponytail and Evgeni, furrowing my brow.
Had I been wrong?
For a second, I thought I'd discovered something. Had I just imagined it?
Finally, after several moments standing and looking between two men who were ignoring me, I murmured, "Okay, I'll go. Sorry about interrupting you."
"It's no problem. Celine was given to flights of fancy as well," Evgeni replied as he typed away on his keyboard.
I was not given to flights of fancy.
3
Ashe
Sydney stood before me. Her blond hair hung loosely around her shoulders in soft waves, and her blue eyes sparkled with humor. She wore a short, strappy yellow dress that showed off her long tan legs, legs I wanted to run my hands up and pull around me.
Rolling hills of corn went on for miles and miles into the distance. Overhead, the sky was an impossible blue, contrasting with the pale fields.
She laughed and tugged on my hand. Instead of following, I pulled her into my arms, feeling her warm body against mine. But she wriggled free, dancing away, that smile lingering on her lips as she turned a corner, getting lost in the stalks.
I followed, listening to the rustle of the field as the wind blew across it.
When I rounded the bend, I stopped in my tracks. Several men and wyverns stood before me, the crops trampled flat. A man stood in the middle beside a large green dragon and held Syd close to him, gripping her upper arm. I recognized him from Cal
ifornia—this was one of them men that tried to kidnap my bondmate in that canyon.
“Sydney? Let’s go,” I called out.
She just smiled back at me, shaking her head, “No, it’s fine. These men are here to help us.”
But they obviously weren’t, and the Prime who held her smirked evilly at me from behind my mate’s back.
Eondian? Eondian! I called, trying to summon my dragon, but no reply came.
“Eondian!” I bellowed, searching the skies when my mental cry went unanswered.
The men chuckled, and the Drake Prime, with the green dragon, spun Syd to face him. “Well, let’s take a look at you.”
She fought back, beating his chest with her fists, which only made him laugh as he swung her around to tie her hands behind her back.
“Sydney!” I tried to rush forward, but unseen hands stopped me, forcing me down on my knees in the dirt. There was nothing to do but struggle pathetically as the other Prime bound my mate’s feet and gagged her with a bandana. He lifted her squirming form, laying her on the back of his dragon’s saddle.
When she struggled again, the man slapped her face—hard. “Stop moving, or I’ll do more than just hit you.”
“You touch her again, and I will kill you!” I growled as I strained to break free of my own captors.
Tears leaked from Syd’s eyes as she lay on the dragon, hands and feet bound with rope. When the Prime crawled up next to her, he turned to stroke the perfect bronze skin of her thigh. Burning anger filled me, and I struggled helplessly even more.
“I will find you, and I will kill you!” I promised.
“You? No,” he scoffed and smirked as he adjusted himself on the dragon’s saddle.
Syd stared at me, her eyes wide with terror.
I was useless, helpless as I watched the beast rocket into the sky, its dark green wings stretching wide to catch the breeze.
I cried her name, “SYDNEY!”
Somehow, I broke free and started chasing them, running as fast as I could, but I knew I would never catch another dragon without Eondian.
“Sydney!” I screamed.
Something struck me over and over again.
Waking with a gasp, I bolted out of bed, still caught in the snare of my nightmare.
“Sydney!” I roared.
“Shut the fuck up!” Spat a familiar voice—the newbie, Nate. “You’re having another nightmare.”
Someone uncovered the glow basket, and the room filled with orange light.
“Hey? Carrick?” Matt stood over me in his boxers, his hair standing on end from sleep and his brow furrowed. “Ashe?”
My eyes searched the room. “Matt?”
“Yeah, man. You okay?” He held a pillow in one hand.
I swung my legs over the edge of my bed and looked around the quarters I shared with three other soldiers.
Briony.
I was in Briony.
“Yeah,” I told him, my voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”
My heart was still racing from the dream as I watched my fellow Harrow Prime, Matt, crawl back into his bunk.
I pulled a t-shirt over my head and gathered up a clean uniform before covering the glows and slipping out the door.
I made my way down the narrow tunnel toward the baths, where I scrubbed myself with the Dragonborn version of soap before plunging into the cold water to rinse off again.
I’d been back at Briony, the Dragonborn headquarters, for weeks now, but things had changed for the worse. Instead of the good dreams about Sydney, I’d begun having nightmares instead. Had Evgeni’s words poisoned me, or was it true what he told me about an incomplete Tetrad driving people mad?
Drying off, I dressed and checked my watch—4:57 am.
Yep, my roommates were definitely going to murder me if I kept waking them up every night. I needed to find somewhere else to sleep.
For now, I’d get to the lab and start working on some Russian intel Durand had asked me to translate.
Oddly awake from all the adrenaline and cold water, I followed the central passageway up into base operations, waving to the guards on duty.
At the locked door to INTEL OPS, I entered my code into the keypad. For a second, nothing happened, then the security lock beeped, and flashed a green light. I pushed the door inward, striding down the familiar hallway. Wires covered the ceiling in bundles spreading down the tunnel before branching off in different directions.
I worked in two places, the cage, and the lab. The cage got its name from the grid-like EMI, RFI sheeting built into the room to make it secure, like a faraday cage. You’d think that hundreds of feet of rock would block all signals, but I guess we weren’t taking any chances.
The lab was where I went. Even though it had some shielding built-in, the room was carved into an alcove fitted with large windows and a dragon ledge that overlooked the valley. I stopped a few feet into the room before pouring myself a cold cup of Virago.
With the stimulant in hand, my laptop, and my down jacket, I headed outside and sat facing southeast to watch the sun as it began to rise. It was July, but the nights were still cold here at the mountain.
I looked out at the tufts of sheep as they lay sleeping in a group on the western side of the valley, and I thought of Sydney.
What was she doing?
Was she okay?
That image of her on the back of that Drake dragon in my dream seemed burned in my brain. The weak part of me regretted leaving her, but I still believed I’d done the right thing.
I rubbed my eyes with one hand before staring back at my screen in the busy room. It was nearing second meal, and the team in the lab had already begun to get anxious and fidgety.
We all straightened when our boss, Prime Durand Lambert, stormed into the room and barked out, “Bryant, Adams, Carrick—My office.”
Corbin Bryant, Mia Adams, and I shared a look before following Durand through the dimly lit tunnel and into his office. Several tall windows tilted inward, open to let fresh air and sunlight stream inside.
The room was a large rectangle, with a desk on one end and a circular table at the other. It reminded me of a mundane government office with its metal filing cabinets, bookshelves, and a large whiteboard lining one of the carved stone walls.
Two senior officers stood above the table, sifting through a pile of electronics.
“Lieutenants, private,” Major Brooks addressed us before motioning toward the table.
We neared but didn’t speak.
Durand pointed to the cables and pieces of computer, then crossed his arms. He stood next to Brooks, another Drake Prime. “These are the electronics found in George Miller’s apartment. The three of you will search them, break into encrypted or coded files and report back. This is a classified project. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” we replied.
“All right, take what you need back to the lab and let me know as soon as you find anything of interest,” he ordered. Then he met my eye. “Carrick, let’s talk at my desk.”
I followed him over and stood, hands behind my back as I waited for him to speak.
“Did you translate the message?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’ll email it as soon as I get back to my desk.”
“All right. Also, do you have those numbers I asked for?” he asked this in a quiet voice, making sure the others weren’t listening.
Those numbers painted a bleak picture for the Dragonborn, supporting everything the Elibera had been telling the Council for years. We’d been operating on the defensive, covering our tracks but never anything more. Never anything evasive.
This had been an unauthorized project to be kept between him and me. “Yes, sir. According to the data we’ve been collecting on mundanes, population growth, and human settlement patterns, the chances of exposure are growing exponentially. At this point, without offensive actions, it’ll be impossible to keep our presence hidden—according to the data sets I used.”
He frowned. “What about th
e viruses and whatnot we’ve created to rout this stuff out and delete it?”
I raised my eyebrows and scratched my cheek. “Yeah. I mean, we have hundreds of those programs scouring the internet right now, eating any data they find… but that’ll only go so far.”
“You haven’t skewed the numbers? This is all on the level?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his seat.
I nodded, “I’ve had Corbin double-check the algorithms. As an Orthodox, I know he’d spot any bias.” I looked out across the room, keeping my voice low, “I know that the PL doesn’t like to intervene in the mundane world…”
“It’s against the ancient laws,” he reminded me.
“I know. But if you’re talking about the ancient laws, I think that exposure is far worse than little things we could do to prevent it.” I told him.
We were cocky as Dragonborn. The belief that mundanes were inferior had been ingrained in us since birth because if it was one mundane against a Dragonborn, we’d have the upper hand. But underneath all our arrogance, we feared them.
We feared them even back when they shot arrows and used axes. Now they had guns, grenades, nuclear bombs, and biological weapons. They wouldn’t just defeat us; they could wipe us out. Not to mention the kinds of experiments their cruel and curious brains might come up with first.
What would they do to us? To our dragons?
And why weren’t these fears keeping the PL up at night? Why hadn’t he acted?
Because like most Orthodox, the mundane world was an afterthought. A problem ignored. This was why most Elibera lived apart from the Dragonborn. We interpreted the ancient laws differently, and took the human world as a serious threat.
Meeting Durand’s eye, I could tell he was thinking the same thing… well, maybe not the part about the PL, but definitely worrying about what mundanes might do.
“So, that’s what all those millions of numbers tell you?” he asked.
I sighed, thinking back to data sets my algorithms spit out. “I wish they didn’t. What are you going to do with the results?”
“Write me up a report, and I’ll take it to the next Council meeting.” He glanced over at my other two soldiers and frowned. Corbin looked like he was removing a hard drive with a screwdriver.
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