Big mistake.
The first site I clicked on had a long article written by an obvious dragon shifter named ‘DexRex’ entitled Why Should Garen Karn Have All The Fun? It was a huge diatribe about how I was the Chosen One and Garen stole me away and became the black dragon by having sex with me. I blushed as my eyes scanned through the article. I don’t even know why I was reading it; it wasn’t good for my mental health, for one thing. There was nothing at all good about it, for another thing. And it also meant that other dragons were beginning to catch onto the fact that having sex with me really gave dragons powers.
If it worked for Garen, why wouldn’t it work for them?
When I was younger—about sixteen—I think I might’ve been thrilled to read about how much guys wanted to fuck me. When I was at the height of awkward pubescence, I would’ve seen all this as complimentary. But now that I was older and wiser and had seen some pretty fucked up shit, I knew that this was bad. This was downright dangerous. People were still clearly intent on coming for me. Intent on finding me. And now, they weren’t only wanting to kill me, they also wanted to have sex with me to grow stronger.
It suddenly seemed like it was bigger than the two factions. People who believed that I was helping to prevent the end of the world were starting to come forward with the same opinion: all of them could have what Garen had, if he would only share the wealth.
I swallowed hard and turned the computer off. Until I received the textbooks in the mail, I wasn’t going online again. Why did I ever think this was a good idea? I thought, taking gasping breaths and trying not to cry—a clear sign of a panic attack. I don’t need to pursue a degree if I’m going to be fucked to death in the process.
“I just read something really disturbing online,” I wrote to Garen. “Any chance you could come home early?” As soon as I typed it out, I deleted it. He was a busy man, and I was a grown-ass woman. I didn’t need him to come home and soothe me because I’d read something bad on the internet. What’s wrong with me? Am I legit going crazy now?
Sighing, I left the den and went back out to the kitchen in search of Brock. He was still sitting at the breakfast bar, reading his newspaper as if nothing had happened, and an hour hadn’t just passed. I wondered if he was even really reading.
“Hey,” I said to him. Immediately I wished that I had better greeting vocabulary. “What are you up to today? I was going to try to get some classwork done, but the internet had other ideas.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I read.”
Glancing at the newspaper, I realized that it wasn’t The Chicago Tribune or anything like that. It was something called The Clawcore Chronical. What the fuck? Normally, I would’ve noticed something weird like that, but the previous weird had already overshadowed everything about my day. Why wouldn’t a dragon read a special dragon newspaper? Sure, fine, that made sense.
Instead of being surprised or confused, what I felt was anger. “You read about what they want to do to me and you’re just sitting here calmly?” I demanded. I didn’t really expect much from him, but some answers and some outrage on my behalf would’ve been nice.
Brock looked at me and shrugged. “I thought it went without saying that those fuckers were going to want a piece of you as soon as it was confirmed that your powers worked.”
My powers. That was right. I had powers. I wished I didn’t feel so powerless to defend myself, though. “So there’s nothing to do about it?”
He shook his head. “Not really. You can’t change how people think. At least you’re here where they can’t get to you, but I wouldn’t think about going anywhere else if I were you. Not even to check the mailbox.”
I blanched at that. “What if I get a package delivered to me?” I asked with a nervous smile.
“I don’t recommend that you’re the one who goes and gets it,” Brock said, turning the page of his newspaper. “Someone’s liable to spot you.”
I frowned, my heart sinking a bit. Even in this place, I had to stay indoors. I was beginning to get a major case of cabin fever. And it wasn’t like I ever fully loved living in that cold, stony castle. I’d sucked it up and committed myself to this handsome dragon man with a cause, and once again I was feeling lost without him there to—pun intended—fire me up.
“Fine,” I said to Brock. “Well, I’m supposed to get a few packages in two days. They’ll be kind of heavy, so maybe it’s better that you grab them anyway. I’m going to go take a shower and await my inevitable death out of boredom.”
Brock unsurprisingly didn’t react to this at all. He went back to reading his paper, and once it was in front of his face, I flipped him off. Proof that I was still a child no matter how hard I railed against being treated as such.
I climbed the stairs and went back up to our bedroom. For some reason, even though the king-sized master bed was soft and comfortable, it just wasn’t the same without Garen there. Even when he sometimes stole sheets and pillows out from under me, I still found it endearing. But without him, it became just a rock-hard pit. The bed was no longer warm or quite as soft as when he was there with me, lying on it, and sometimes on top of me…
I shook the sad thoughts away, mentally playing a tiny violin for myself, and I took off my pajamas. The white terrycloth robe that Brock had dressed me in for my first Garen experience was hanging in the closet, so I went ahead and threw that on. Normally, when the Master was at home, I didn’t mind wandering the halls of the house fully in the buff. Modesty took hold when there were only strangers around to see me. Sure, Ash and Brock had never once seemed to actually like me, never mind find me alluring, but it still embarrassed me when they happened to see me with their cool, uncaring eyes. I had a feeling that they wouldn’t even eat me if they were the kinds of dragons who ate humans for every meal. I just wasn’t good enough for them.
I heard a sudden commotion downstairs as the front door boomed open, and footsteps clicked against the floor. “Where is she?” Garen’s voice asked. “Don’t just sit there! I’m sure there’s something to polish. Or better yet, why don’t do some patrolling with Ash now that I’m back?”
I tried hard to suppress a grin but it was a failing endeavor. I rushed out of the room, naked under my robe, and not even bothering to tie the rope around myself as I ran down the stairs and into Garen’s arms.
“How are you?” he asked me. “Are you all right?” He petted my hair and pulled away just enough to look me in the eyes and see that I was fine. “I saw the news and your text and I came home as soon as I could.”
I blinked at him. “The news that’s in the newspaper?” I asked him, trying to clarify. I’d hoped that maybe some geeky dragons that couldn’t get laid, complaining about that fact online, was mostly the stuff for eye-rolls for a guy like Garen. Even in the newspaper, I thought it was perhaps an editorial or something, not any kind of headline report.
Garen looked at me a bit sternly and shook his head. “It was all over the news when I was at work. They’ve always been bad about this prophecy, but now things have amped up even more. Believers and Unbelievers, both factions are vying for their chance to be with you now. The dumb ones, anyway. The smart Believers know that I’m the one who was chosen to lead alongside you.”
I suddenly didn’t feel like showering. My legs buckled a bit and he hung onto me. “I don’t feel so good now,” I said.
He picked me up and carried me over to the couch in the fancy, barely-ever-touched living room. “I should’ve known something like this would happen. I shouldn’t have let you go to school online either.”
“Let me?” I asked him, offended even though as usual he did have a point. “What else am I supposed to do while I’m stuck at home and you’re off doing whatever it is that a dragon businessman does? For all I know, you’re always off having amazing adventures and meanwhile I’m here with nothing to do but watch paint dry. Which, by the way, none of the paint in here is dry. It’s all perfect. And I hate it.”
I was full-on pouting at him. He
smirked a little at me. “You don’t mean that.”
“No,” I relented. “I don’t. I just wish there could be some small amount of freedom for me while I’m forced to be in this position.”
He hugged me close to him again. “I know. I’ll think of something.”
That promise was starting to carry less weight now that he’d said it so many times before.
Chapter 2: Cabin Fever
Thinking of something didn’t really seem to amount to anything, as I’d predicted. Garen went back to work as usual after that conversation. I was forbidden from even stepping outside for the time being in a hope that some of the hysteria might die down on its own. “They can’t obsess over this forever,” he said to me. “If they never even see you and can’t get here.”
“Who says they can’t obsess over it forever? I’ve obsessed over things before for a long, long time and the thought of these creeps being like that about me is enough to keep me up at night.” I looked at him expectantly. “And who says they can’t get here?”
“That’s an easy one,” he replied. “I took away the boat in the lake.” He said it so simply that it almost gave me some comfort, but dragons could fly. Everyone knew that.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, which succeeded in giving extra emphasis to my breasts in my tight t-shirt. I frowned at Garen. “That’s not exactly security. Can’t any of them just fly over the lake, or—I don’t know—swim around it somehow? I doubt these assholes care about getting lake gunk on themselves.”
He looked back at me as if it had just dawned on them that people could swim in lakes. It probably wasn’t a usual thing for this particular lake, but that didn’t mean that the crazy guys wouldn’t try it. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, short of hexing the place, I don’t know what else we can do to keep them at bay.”
Comforting.
The following afternoon, while I was sitting down in the den and trying to read a book but mostly feeling sorry for myself, I heard the doorbell ring. Instinctively, I closed my book and stood up from the couch before remembering that I couldn’t answer the door. I didn’t know who it even was, but I had a feeling it might be my schoolbooks.
As much as I wanted to go out and peek, I knew that it was a bad idea. I wasn’t in the safest position to be in at the moment, but staying put in the room furthest back from the front door was the best thing for me to do as long as Garen wasn’t there. I hoped that Brock would do well to protect me again, if it came to that. I also hoped that it was him and not Ash… I hadn’t seen Ash in action much and I wasn’t confident in him doing his best for me.
There wasn’t any further sound from the front of the house after the doorbell rang. Did anyone even go to answer it? I wondered, confused. Against my better judgement, I did get off the couch then and I slowly and silently padded up the few short stone steps in order to peek out of the den’s doorway and see what was up at the front doorway.
Brock was standing there. He had a large, cardboard box in his arms and he appeared to be reading the label with great curiosity. The door was completely closed next to him, which surprised me because I’d never heard it even open. I supposed that the house’s guards were more skilled at being silent than I was, especially as these were dangerous times, where making a lot of noise could attract undue attention. I could learn a thing or two about how to do such things.
Not sensing any danger what with the door being closed, I left the den and walked towards Brock. “That’s my schoolbooks,” I informed him. “I’ve been waiting for those. I kinda need them for my classes.”
He seemed surprised to see me when he looked up from admiring the box. “Are you sure?” he asked me. “It’s really heavy.”
I nodded my head, smirking wryly at him. “Textbooks are like that,” I said. “They used to kill my back in high school.” I reached out to take the box from him.
“It could be a bomb,” he said with narrowing eyes.
I’d been so preoccupied with the people who wanted to fuck me that I’d kind of forgotten about those who wanted to murder me. “It’s not ticking, is it?” I asked him, the smirk fading from my face. As much as I felt like joking around, a bomb was not what I ordered.
Brock shook his head, but he still remained convinced that the package was somehow not what I expected it to be. I moved closer to him and gently took it from his grasp, looking it over myself. The label had the logo of the company I’d ordered from. Relief rippled through me. I looked up and into his searching eyes. “I’m pretty sure it’s just my textbooks, dude.”
“Open it right here, in front of me,” he said after a beat.
What’s he going to do if it’s something bad, exactly? Throw his body on top of mine? I did what he asked, setting the box carefully down onto the floor and ripping it open with the aid of my long nails. I never used scissors to open boxes, preferring to pull at the tape like some kind of hungry animal.
As soon as it was pulled open, I looked down into it and there were the three textbooks, sitting in a neat little stack from smallest to biggest—but of course, they were all on the big side. I smiled down at them and then up at Brock. “It’s just my books, like I said.” I attempted to pull them out one at a time and carry them back down to the den, but they were so heavy, that I was really faltering after two.
Brock watched me struggle for a moment before taking the heavy books from me and grabbing the remaining book in the box. Smiling cockily, he started to walk down the hall. “Let’s go,” he said back to me.
Once the books were set down on the coffee table, I had a nice workspace set up for myself. I could treat the den like it was my classroom. I still wished that I didn’t need to go online to participate in the lectures, but it was nice to have books and feel like a ‘real student.’
I was able to go onto the computer and add to the discussions of the readings now, which felt good. I didn’t exactly feel normal, but I was able to do school stuff and that was better than waiting around for something to do all day every day. Still, I felt like I was living each day just for a bit of time with Garen. Since I wasn’t allowed to leave the place, he was the only excitement I had, and his time at home was always so fleeting.
When he returned home that evening, he smiled in a pleased sort of way when he saw me sitting there, cross-legged on the floor with a textbook in my lap. “Happy now?” he asked me.
I set the book aside and stood up, coming over to him and throwing my arms around him in a hug. “Especially now,” I replied, smiling a little as I cuddled against him. “It feels good to have work to do again, but I’m still so lonely and bored when you’re not here.”
He frowned slightly in that thoughtful way of his. I knew what he was going to say and I wished that he wouldn’t. “I’ll think of something,” he said. “You deserve a vacation.”
My eyes lit up a little at that. It was nice to know that he understood my need for an escape, but it would’ve been even better if he’d thought of that sooner. “I’d be up for any kind of vacation,” I told him honestly. “Even if it was just a walk around the park or a brief excursion to the grocery store with you.”
Garen wasn’t convinced that this was a good idea. I could see it in his expression. He was still hemming and hawing and thinking things over. The wheels were turning, but too slow for my liking. “We’ll see,” he said at last, putting the conversation to rest now without even hinting if it would be brought up again.
I felt so defeated.
“Let’s order some pizza,” he said to me then. “But you know the drill; stay away from the door when it’s delivered.”
We went together to the kitchen where he had his landline phone. He called to order and didn’t even ask me what I wanted. “Yes, hello. I’d like two extra-large pizzas. One all meat and one with green peppers and spicy Italian sausage. Thank you.” He hung up and looked at me. “It’ll be about forty minutes.”
“How are they going to deliver it without a boat?” I pointed
out, crossing my arms in front of my chest and pouting my lower lip out a little.
He laughed, shaking his head at me. “You’re not going to let this boat thing go, are you? I put it back as soon as you pointed out that people could just swim through the lake if they really wanted.”
I smiled at him victoriously then. “See? I can be right about some things.”
We went out to the living room together to cuddle and wait for the pizza. “How were your studies today?”
“Fine,” I replied with a shrug. “I participated in a discussion after I did my reading, too. That was fun. And I didn’t let social media drag me in. You should be proud of me.”
He chuckled and pulled me in closer as we sat on the large couch. “I’m very proud of you.”
“I never used to be that into sites like that,” I explained, “but I guess it’s mainly because I’ve been so cooped up inside now. I’d of course prefer being able to meet up with person in person. Or, you know, go for energizing walks every once in a while.”
Garen looked at he and raised his eyebrows a little. “I think it’s definitely too soon for anything like that,” he told me. “We’d have to take baby steps when you go out again. That’s the only way to keep you safe. And you still really shouldn’t go somewhere where there will be a lot of people.”
The mere fact that he was wavering at all made me feel good. Maybe I wouldn’t have to resign myself to living like a hermit for too much longer. It’s really not fair to me, I thought. Especially because my parents got to leave the country. Presumably they’re able to live their lives like normal people in Montreal. I really envied them, even though they’d had to completely leave the U.S. without much prior warning. They’d taken it in stride, from the sound of it, which weirded me out because they’d never been like that when I’d lived with them. I supposed that Garen had worked his charm on them the way he did to me. He made people trust him. Was that a dragon trait? I didn’t think so. Most of the other dragons that I’d met had been decidedly untrustworthy.
Abducted By The Dragons: The Complete Series Page 10
