Cruel Daddy Dragon (Candara Dragon Ops #3)

Chapter 20 - Rufus

“So,” Kaius says with a large smirk, “what were you and Sarah arguing about?”

“Huh?” I grunt.

“She’s looking at you funny,” Kaius chuckles, “Trouble in paradise?”

“Oh…”

I can’t help but hang my head a little bit. Kaius stops laughing. I see Milo elbow him with a sharp gaze, and Orion averts his gaze.

“Oh, okay,” Kaius says, “Is it actually bad?”

I look up, and I’m meeting the gaze of all four of them. I think for a moment and then beckon to Kaius. Kaius’s eyebrows raise up and he starts following me.

“Is he going to punch him in the face?” Milo whispers to Kaius.

“I ain’t stepping in, just in case he does,” Orion chuckles.

I walk far enough away from them so they can’t hear us anymore and then turn to Kaius:

“Okay, I need to be real with me for a sec, Kai,” I say, “Like, please, I need to talk to you seriously and no bullshit, no jokes—all right?”

“Oh, damn,” Kaius says, “All right.”

He's at least looking at me seriously. I have to suck in a deep breath before I confess to him:

“I told Sarah I loved her, and now she’s acting really cold with me,” I say, “And I don’t know what the fuck to do about it.”

“Oh, damn,” K aius says again.

“I’m only talking to you because you also have a fated mate,” I tell him, “I don’t know what to do about it now. I just told her in the heat of the moment, and she… she hasn’t really talked to me since. I’m worried that I’ve ruined it. I went too fast, and I blew it.”

“Whoa, hey!” Kaius says, “Don’t plan your funeral before you die, Bro.”

He steps forward and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I told Julie I was falling for her in the heat of a moment.” He gives a nervous laugh, “Not the best moment either, to be honest.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Kaius laughs a little sheepishly, “It was just after she’d been robbed. If I planned it better, I’d have picked a more romantic place to tell her, like a beach or a sunset or something—not her destroyed house after getting burgled.”

I chuckle a little bit.

“But you don’t get to plan these kinds of things, do you?” Kaius says, “Anything with your fated is just a rush—I don’t think any of us had a chance to plan a damn thing.”

“Right,” I reply.

“Look,” Kaius says, “don’t worry about it. I don’t know about Cyrus and Lena, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing for us. We might be fated, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. I was joking earlier, Rufus—Sarah didn’t look like she was angry at you.”

He sounds genuine, and for the first time, I relax a little bit.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yeah, Man,” Kaius answers, “I really don’t think she’s angry with you.”

“What should I do then?” I ask, “She’s barely said a word since I told her I love her.”

“Don’t do anything,” Kaius says, “I mean, look at her over there, with the girls. She’s good.”

I do, and I can see the girls through the back window, all three of them on the couch together, laughing. Sarah’s doing that laugh I love… I can’t hear her, but I can hear that laugh in my head. The one where she tosses her glossy blonde hair as she throws her head back in laughter. I’ve seen and heard her laugh like that. I hope that at some point, I make her laugh that hard… Somehow…

“She’ll come back to you when she’s ready,” Kaius says, drawing my attention back to him, “That’s what Julie did, and we—”

He looks back to the window and bristles. I follow his gaze back to the girl. Julie has put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and something’s wrong. She’s clutching at Sarah’s shoulder, a thick fistful of her clothing. Her facial expression has dropped, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. Her skin has gone pale. Sarah’s holding onto Julie’s shoulder in return, staring intensely. Lena’s now leaning over to check her.

I look back to Kaius—and I’m fairly sure I don’t exist anymore to him; it’s like a switch has flicked, and he’s off, sprinting toward the house after his love. I follow suit. As we both run toward the house, Orion and Milo are standing, braced.

“Milo!” I shout as Kaius bolts into the house, ignoring us all.

“What’s going on?!” Milo yells back.

“It’s Julie! Something’s wrong!” I say, “Come on!”

I see Milo snap into doctor mode, and he and Orion follow at my heels as we all crash inside the house. Kaius is already there, on his knees and holding Julie’s hands. But she’s smiling sheepishly; her color’s coming back, and when she looks at Milo and me, even more color floods her cheeks until she’s red as a cherry.

“Oh, no!” Julie exclaims, “I’m sorry! I’m okay, Guys! Really!”

Milo steps in front of me.

“What happened? Are you all right?” he asks, his stern doctor tone coming through.

“I’m fine, Milo! Really!” Julie insists, “I just had a vision. I… uh, I’ve never had one that intense before.”

She looks back at Kaius.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” she murmurs.

Kaius puts a hand on her cheek and smiles at her.

“It’s okay,” he replies, “I’m just glad you’re all right.”

“I want to look over her, just in case,” Milo orders.

He walks over and shoos Kaius away. Kaius reluctantly steps aside, and Lena moves from her spot on the couch and gestures to it. Kaius sits next to Julie as Milo clicks on his small flashlight and shines it in her eyes, asking his basic medical questions.

I walk up to Sarah.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

Sarah just looks at me for a moment, then utters an incredulous laugh.

“Am I okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. That must have been scary to see Julie like that,” I say.

Sarah’s green eyes soften a little.

“I guess… but you do what you can when something happens, right?”

“But you’re good, right?”

“Yeah.” She smiles at me, “Thanks for worrying.”

Her soft smile prompts a smile of my own. Movement attracts my attention, and I see Milo stand up.

“I’m satisfied,” he says, “I think it was a false alarm—not a seizure or anything.”

“No, it was just a vision,” Julie insists, “I’d just never had one that real before. Sorry, I scared everyone.”

Julie gives an embarrassed laugh. Then, she opens her hand and reveals the copper ring.

“I was researching this ring, trying to see if the museum had any records on it today,” Julie explains, “I couldn’t find anything in our human records, so I think it is a relic. I could feel a vision coming about it, but the vision never really happened though, so I kept it on me. But then I brought it out of my pocket, and I put my hand on Sarah’s shoulder and… well, I guess the two together is what unlocked the vision.”

“What was the vision about, babe?” Kaius asks.

She smiles lightly and then turns to Sarah. She holds the ring out to her:

“This is yours,” Julie says, “That’s the main thing the vision told me.”

“What?” Sarah asks, “But I’d never seen this ring before I found it in the cave the other day. How is this ring mine?”

“I saw into the past,” Julie says, “and I saw a woman who looks so much like you, Sarah. I think it was an ancestor of yours, and she was using this ring to do… something. I think she was a witch.”

“A witch?! ” Sarah asks.

Julie nods. She scans among the rest of us as she continues:

“But there’s more. I didn’t just see Sarah’s ancestor magically using the ring,” she says, “There was a dragon at her side.”

I stiffen. I look at Sarah, and she stares at me back. Then I look at Kaius and Milo, and they’re both aghast as well. Orion steps forward, his gaze intense.

“So, hang on,” he says intensely, “you’re saying our ancestors worked together?”

“That’s what I saw,” Julie replies.

“But that…” Orion says, “That’s just… we’ve never been in Greyson Ridge. We have no record of ever being in Greyson Ridge! That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know…” Lena pipes up suddenly, and everyone’s looking at her, “Gram’s notes included a letter saying that her notes are the only records of what happened. I haven’t finished going through everything she noted down yet, and I was focusing on the keys, but one thing that was obvious was that something happened in the past which was so large and dangerous that it was locked up with all these magical keys, and everyone agreed to forget about it for the safety of everyone else. If you dragons had no records of it, I wouldn’t be too surprised, to be honest.”

There’s a ringing silence after that bombshell.

“Do you think your Gram would have written what this thing is?” Orion asks.

“I haven’t gotten there yet,” Lena answers, “I would reckon she would. But there are boxes and boxes of notes here, so it’ll probably take me a hot minute to get to it. What I can tell you is that the keys and the relics are different. The keys are locking up something extremely dangerous, but the relics belonged to what Gram called the “circle of power”. ”

Lena shrugs, then looks at Julie.

“I thought the “circle of power” was a spell of some kind, but what if it’s not?” she says to Julie, “What if it’s a group?”

Julie nods at her.

“That would make sense!” she says, “This ring is Sarah’s—it was how her ancestor’s powers were channeled. I know it. What if the other relics belong to other descendants of the circle of power?”

“We already have the amulet,” Lena says, “Maybe there’s someone we know who it may belong to! I need to get back to checking Gram’s notes—see if she mentions something about it or the dragons who were here before.”

“Right!” Julie says, “And I need to get that amulet and see if I can find anyone it belongs to!”

“It may belong to you,” Lena says, “You had your first vision holding it.”

“You’re right!” Julie says, “I need to try again!”

As the two girls talk excitedly among each other, I look at the other dragons. They’re still in shock somewhat, looking between each other. Eventually, Kaius speaks up:

“You know, all of us finding our fated mates in this tiny little mountain town suddenly makes a lot more sense if that’s true,” he says.

“You’re right,” Milo replies, “If this is true, then there’s a good chance all of this was fated—we were meant to come back because this is where we came from.”

“That’s just… weird,” Orion murmurs.

“I know,” I say, “And what a discovery to make while the Alpha isn’t here, right, Guys?”

That lightens the mood a little bit. Everyone chuckles a little.

I look over to Sarah. She’s still turning the ring over in her fingers, a frown on her beautiful face. When she realizes I’m staring at her, she looks up and then smiles at me.

So… all of this is fated? Every bit of it? I grin back at her; p robably pretty safe to say dropping the L word too early isn’t going to ruin everything, then.