by Lola Gabriel
“No!” she screeched, her voice unrecognizable even to herself.
It was too late. Carlyle was raising the knife to the baby. Her entire body tensed, so desperately wanting to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. Her baby, her poor, poor baby. Why couldn’t he just kill her?
The people let out a horrendous cheer. It chilled her to see so many people clap and praise a man for killing the most innocent thing alive—to give applause as a mother wailed, tied down just feet away from where her firstborn son was slaughtered in front of her.
Adrenaline coursed through Olive’s veins as her body jerked upright, a layer of sweat forming on her skin as she tried to catch her breath.
Terrifying. That was the only word Olive could put to the nightmare. To take her breath away and leave her utterly helpless wasn’t an easy thing to do. But a few visuals of Carlyle and her child left Olive in a haze. A droplet of sweat fell from her chin onto her clasped hands, making her realize that she was no longer in the dream, that she was safe.
A sigh of relief left Olive’s lips, brushing a hand through her hair as she tried to recollect her thoughts. A sudden knock came to her bedroom door, and Olive knew, without any introduction from the person on the other side, that it was her best friend, Esme. If there was any sort of savior out there, it was Esme. She somehow always knew when Olive needed her.
“Come in,” Olive called through the door, stretching out her limbs. The door seemed to burst open, and Esme swooped in beside her with an ice-cold water bottle and a warm rag. The sight was enough to bring a weak smile to Olive’s face.
“Are you okay? These dreams are getting worse.” Esme frowned and placed the wet rag on her forehead. She then opened the water bottle, forcing Olive to drink it, as she preferred to hydrate herself with whatever sugary beverage was available.
The two had a unique friendship; although they’d only known each other for a year and a half, they had a bond unlike any other. Esme was like a best-mom-friend, someone who always had Olive’s back, even if it inconvenienced her, yet was also very much a “go with the flow” kind of girl. Olive had always admired her so much for that.
Making the decision to leave her past behind was one the hardest of choices Olive could have ever made. Luckily, she’d had Esme, who had agreed to come with her, but Esme was so used to a life on the road. She was a drifter, never staying in one place too long, and she seemed to be content with that. Olive wasn’t on that spectrum—she was one to set out plans and stick to them. Going into the unknown always gave her paranoia.
“Olive?”
Snapping out of her endless thoughts, Olive rubbed her forehead with a small nod. “Sorry. This dream was different from the others. It’s still got me on edge, you know? It’s hard to explain, but it feels like these nightmares, dreams, whatever, are telling a story. And right now, I’m in the middle of the most complex part of the series.”
“Well, I don’t know too much about how dreams work or anything, but the way these have been going on have to mean something. C’mon, we have to get you ready.”
At first, Olive had no earthly idea what Esme was referencing, but then it clicked into place. She had a babysitting job that day. Her eyes widened at those words, along with a series of cuss words leaving Olive’s mouth. “I forgot!”
Olive threw the covers off herself and hurried towards the shared bathroom. A quick glimpse in the mirror was enough to earn a few grumbles from her. A night of tossing and turning didn’t exactly give you that stylish bedhead look. Shutting the door, Olive undressed and stepped into the shower, letting the water wash away all memories and feelings that stuck with her after the dreams. They had been happening ever since Olive had left, making her question if leaving was even the best decision. Nothing had prepared her for a life on her own, which was why having Esme on the journey meant so much to her.
As Olive rinsed her skin off, her attention became focused on the sole reason she had left in the first place: her baby bump.
Growing up, Olive had always been a scrawny little thing, and when she finished puberty, the most she had were subtle curves. Then, at almost seven months pregnant, her curves were certainly more than subtle. Her small frame caused her growing stomach to appear even more prominent. Elderly women occasionally stopped her on the street to ask when she was due. Nothing made her more uncomfortable than when strangers touched her stomach.
Asher would never get to touch her stomach.
The thought caused her whole body to ache. God, how she missed him. Any time he came to mind, it was like the air was sucked out of the room, and she felt moments away from keeling over. Her mind was on a nonstop loop of missing Asher and reminding herself she was doing what was best for her child; their child.
Sometimes she wondered if it would have been best to confront him with it and then run away together, but she knew that he wouldn’t have listened. Asher would have been overjoyed to have a child, of course, but he was under his father’s thumb, whether he would admit it or not. He wouldn’t understand the uneasy feeling that Carlyle gave her from the very moment they had met.
None of that mattered now. Only Olive, the baby, and Esme did. They would be their own quirky little family, and that was going to have to be enough for her.
Stepping out of the shower, Olive used her towel to dry her impossibly long hair and pulled it into a bun on the top of her head. Since this was her first time meeting the couple she was babysitting for, she should have to put more effort into her appearance. But she was going to be watching after a two-year-old. Getting put together didn’t seem worth the effort. Besides, it would more than likely be the only time she would be able to babysit for them.
Olive and Esme had been getting by working odd-end jobs, posting and responding to advertisements on local Facebook pages anywhere they went. Olive mostly stuck to housekeeping and babysitting while Esme put her bartending license to use, getting jobs for just a night or two on every town they went to and bringing home over a hundred dollars a night in tips. Esme had a charming and magnetic personality, both flirty and crude, tough and quick-witted, all the while being sensitive, secretive, and protective. Even after a year and a half of close friendship, Esme remained a great mystery to Olive. The girl wasn’t the type to share lengthy stories about her life; she’d rather have you pick up bits and pieces as you hung around her. It was fascinating and kept Olive’s attention, for sure.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Esme beamed up to her from the kitchen. “How are you feeling? Want some eggs and toast?”
“Maybe just some toast and juice,” Olive replied, patting her stomach. The little one never really had Olive in touch with her appetite first thing in the morning, which was fine by her. Anything was better than spending the first couple of hours of every morning with her head in the toilet bowl.
“You need to feed him,” Esme tutted.
Olive let out a cheerful laugh. “Why are you so certain it’s a boy?”
“Because I know, and I’ve never been wrong,” Esme winked.
One bit of information that Olive had gathered about Esme was that her family had been predominantly women, having lots of sisters and aunts. Being the youngest of them all, she had witnessed many of her sisters go through pregnancy and give birth. Apparently, Esme had never been wrong once about the gender of the baby. What a useful superpower, Olive would chastise playfully.
“He’s plenty fed. Did you not see me kill that mac and cheese last night?”
“Who didn’t see that?” Esme poked as she sat a small plate of toast and a glass of juice in front of Olive.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Mhmm, just tryin’ to care for my daughter and sweet grandson.”
After more banter and a few slices of toast, Olive and Esme were out the door. While babysitting and cleaning really took it out of Olive, she was thankful for it. It kept her busy and gave her the opportunity to really feel independent, like perhaps she could raise the baby on her own. Although it was
n’t much, Olive managed to stash away ten dollars or more a day to have when the baby arrived. Of course, nothing she could ever provide would equate the life of luxury the little one would have if Asher were in the picture.
3
After Carlyle left the room, Asher sank in his chair. That entire meeting had been done in the fashion that his father thrived off of. Mysterious, beating around the bush, and then dropping a bombshell before quickly exiting.
“I don’t believe this.” Eden shook her head. “I mean, isn’t it more likely it was just a dragon the guys didn’t know?”
“Are there any dragons you aren’t aware of?” Theo mused. After five hundred years of their population at a standstill, everyone knew everyone. Even if you didn’t know their name, you knew their face, as well as their immediate family.
“Well, even Father said the guys didn’t get a good look at the girl. She could have just been a dragon.”
That didn’t make sense either, though. On top of everything else, dragons didn’t necessarily have a scent they were aware of, unless it was their mate or mother. It was more of a sense, an aura you could feel in the presence. The smell only became prominent when a mortal woman was pregnant with a dragon child. It was a phenomenon that hadn’t been explained. Osric, their grandfather, was the first dragon-shifter, and he was a mere two-thousand years old. So that only left fifteen hundred years of repopulating before their lineage had been cursed. It wasn’t a whole lot of time to figure much of anything out.
Five hundred years of nothing new also left a lot of room for infighting. Other clans within the Kingdom were constantly talking of overthrowing the Tallant family, thinking they could lead better than Carlyle. After all, Osric was the one who had cursed them all by being far too cocky and prideful and burning a witch leader at the stake, inciting the largest witch hunt in mortal history. Yet Carlyle had a certain charm, as well as a heavy, demanding hand. Nothing was going to budge him from his throne. Not for quite some time, at least.
Asher rubbed a hand down his face, letting out a small groan. For six months, he had been totally enveloped in his own world and his own problems, and now he was going to be suddenly launched into perhaps the largest dilemma of their known history? In no shape or form did Asher feel prepared to take this on—but it wasn’t like he had a choice. As soon as those words had left his father’s lips, his path was written for him. “Overwhelmed” didn’t begin to describe how Asher was feeling.
It was then that a hand clasped his shoulder. Peering up from between his fingers, he saw his older brother Sebastian’s kind face staring down at him. Sebastian had always been a gentle giant. Despite his immense size, being the largest of the Tallant men, he was more of a thinker than a doer. For hundreds of years, he had left the fighting to the others and found solace in literature and proverbs. There were times that Sebastian appeared to have even more wisdom than their grandfather.
In Carlyle and Osric’s eyes, however, this made Bash a disappointment. They wanted him to be a fierce warrior, to act before he thought, to be as wild as they had been and remained to be. It was probably why he, too, had been chosen for the task. In some weird, deceptive way, Carlyle was trying to get his sons to prove their status.
“I think this will be good, for the both of us,” Bash inserted calmly, as if he could read Asher’s thoughts.
“You both need to get out of your funks,” Theo agreed, standing from his chair.
“There’s nothing wrong with either of them,” Eden debated her brother, standing also and crossing her arms. Asher couldn’t help but smile; not at the fact that Eden was attempting to stand up for them, but more at the fact that she couldn’t seem to resist an opportunity to argue. Despite looking just like their mother, she took after their father more than she would ever admit. Her hazel eyes flickered to Asher and Sebastian, her gaze softening a bit. “However, I do think it’d be good for you. Get you back into a… normal routine.”
What was normal about going on a crazed hunt for a woman they weren’t even sure existed? Asher knew what she meant by it, though. Out of mourning. Directly following Olive’s disappearance, his siblings had rallied around him, trying to help him make sense of it all so that he didn’t go completely out of his mind. Eden’s leading theory was that Olive wasn’t his one true mate, but something close to it. What had her exact words been?
A trial run. A beta. Something so close to the real thing that it looked, felt, and even smelled like the real thing, but simply wasn’t. Dragons all had soulmates, which could be dragon or mortal and could come at any point in their eternal life spans. When you met that mate, as cliché as it sounded, you just knew. It was instantaneous, powerful, and undeniable. Asher had felt that with Olive.
He had recently graduated from a college that he had at most symbolically “attended” for his law degree, and on a whim, due to sheer boredom, he had gone to one of the alumni events that mingled with the attendees.
He had felt Olive’s presence the moment she entered the building. However, not noticing her quite yet, he had written it off as the couple of beers he had consumed getting to him a little too much. Then, when he spotted her from across the room, and their eyes met for the first time, the sensation came back to him tenfold. The way her cheeks flushed and her eyes rounded, Asher knew she felt it, too, but didn’t understand. There was absolutely no denying, in his mind, that she was his “one”.
When she disappeared, it was as if his heart had been ripped right out of his chest. The sheer panic he felt, worrying something horrendous had happened to her, whether from mortal hands or witches seeking some form of sick, twisted revenge still. When a mate died, it was quite literally like half of the dragon died as well. They could feel the pain of death but didn’t know the sweet release of mortality, forever bound to Earth until one day they could join their loved ones in whatever afterlife awaited them. Asher hadn’t felt this when Olive disappeared, and that was what caused Eden to believe she wasn’t Asher’s true mate. Just something strikingly close to it, or his mind had tricked him into believing she was when she wasn’t at all.
After weeks of searching for Olive, Asher came to the realization that either Eden was right, or Olive had purposefully run away and didn’t want to be found. Why would he chase after someone who didn’t want to be found? It was only when that fact hit him that he accepted defeat and ceased his search. Ever since, he had been in a state of mourning. Their lives had so rapidly become intertwined upon meeting that every little thing reminded him of her and the memory they shared.
Tears were stinging his eyes again, and he could feel his siblings staring at him. Forcing himself to clear his throat, Asher nodded. “Yeah, yeah. It’ll be, uh, it’ll be good.”
“We have work to do,” Sebastian sighed, finally getting up. The four of them moved to the door and made their way to the elevator.
On the way down to the lobby, Asher gave himself a mental pep talk. Everyone was right: this would serve as the perfect distraction. There was no doubt that himself and his brother would be living and breathing the case of finding the mystery woman. That would leave no room for thoughts of Olive and her creamy skin, infectious smile, or intoxicating voice. It would work him out of his mopey routine and into a fresh mindset. It would be hard at first, but he told himself to give the task his all, let it consume him alive if that was what needed to happen. Find that woman and make his father proud.
As Bash and Asher stepped onto the sidewalk outside of the building, Asher was just about to ask his brother how they were supposed to get started on this mission with as little information as they had, when a car pulled up right beside them. A tall man with mousy blonde hair emerged, and Asher instantly placed the face. It was Collin, a scout. There didn’t need to be an exchange of words, just a simple nod from Collin to gesture for them to get in the back. Once inside the car, Collin looked into the rearview mirror at the Tallant men.
“I understand that the king assigned you two to the task and wanted y
ou to assemble a squad of men to assist in the matter. While the final call is, of course, up to the two of you, I have put together a list of men I believe would be best suited, as well as trusted, for this.”
As soon as he finished talking, both Asher’s and Sebastian’s phones vibrated. Taking his out, Asher had a text from an unsaved number, with a list of names and contact information on each of them; he assumed Bash had an identical one. He didn’t even know where to begin with weeding through the list to select however many they should get. Collin seemed more than knowledgeable in strategy execution and would probably be their best resource throughout the entire thing.
“How many people do you think we will need for this?” Asher asked, perhaps a little too submissively for someone of his nobility.
“With myself, Carter, and you two, I would suggest two or three more. No more than that, though.”
Asher nodded and looked to Sebastian, who simply nodded and peered down at the message on his phone. “I’ll start weeding through them.”
Inwardly Asher let out a sigh of relief, glad that Bash was willing to take on that task alone. Asher stared out the window, watching the city move by in a blur as he pondered what needed to be done. “Where was this woman located?” he called to Collin.
“About six hours away by car, towards the coast.”
Asher contemplated. If they had to travel that far, it would make more sense for them to meet all together before leaving. If they flew, it would potentially cut that time in half, giving them a better chance of catching the woman before she completely disappeared again.
“Once you select the men, have them meet us at the family estate by sundown. We’ll leave from there,” he mentioned to his brother without turning in his direction.
“Good thinking.”
Already, Asher was finding himself lost in thought of the task at hand, trying to figure out what each of their steps would be. For the first time in six months, there was a solid hour where Olive didn’t enter Asher’s mind.
