House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1)

by Samantha Snow

  “Why?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Werewolves, bears, tigers—all the other types that are like us—are” he sighed. “Not inferior creatures, don’t mistake me. But the essence that makes them up isn’t as powerful. It isn’t as demanding. So, while dragon fertility has been an issue, it isn’t the case for werewolves and other shifters.”

  “Hence my father going after a human woman,” Cami said, taking a deep breath.

  “From a purely academic standpoint, your existence is exciting,” Nicholas told her with a wry smile.

  “Oh, it’s pretty exciting for me too,” Cami said. “Not necessarily always in a good way.”

  “On the bright side, you’ll be able to fly,” Nicholas told her. “And you’re going to be treated not just like a princess but practically a goddess.”

  “I’m intrigued by the first part,” Cami said. “The second part sounds more scary than fun.”

  Nicholas considered her comment and then nodded slowly. “The good thing about it is that once you go public—at least, public amongst our kind—you’ll have our entire kind mobilized to protect you from anything and anyone,” Nicholas said. “The downside”

  “You seem to always hesitate when it comes to telling me the downside to things,” Cami pointed out.

  “The downside is that, while you’re meant to be with us,” Nicholas said slowly, “pretty much all the other clans—and a few clans especially—will want you to ally with them. And they might resort to some extreme methods to try and make it happen.”

  Cami looked at him steadily for a few minutes. “So, what you’re saying is, there’s a risk that some other people are going to try and abduct me, and probably worse,” Cami said.

  Nicholas hesitated, but then nodded slowly. “Can you blame me for wanting to put off telling you that?”

  Cami snorted and then sighed. “No, I can’t blame you,” she admitted. She closed her eyes. “I’m actually pretty tired. I should go back to bed.”

  “You could sleep here,” Nicholas suggested. “The couch is pretty big. We could share.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it more likely that you’d end up in my dreams?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I’ll be careful not to,” he said. “Besides, physical proximity isn’t what does it.”

  “What if I wake you up again?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Then I’ll be here to help you with whatever is happening,” he said. “And you won’t have to walk through the house to get the help you want.”

  He plucked one of the pillows from behind him and tossed it to Cami. In reality, his sole interest was staying as close to her as possible; he would, per his word, avoid going into her dreams. But Nicholas wanted whatever edge he could give himself when it came to Cami choosing an Overton—or even just her choosing which Overton she would try out first.

  Cami pulled the blankets out from behind her, and the two settled on the couch, the blankets over them both, head to foot. Nicholas closed his eyes, the closer proximity to Cami letting him better sense what was happening to her energies. There was no doubt that she was more distinctly draconic than she’d been the night Alistair had brought her in. As he dozed, Nicholas wondered if Cami might not be ready to start learning to change by the time the week was over; if she was, then her progress on gaining and taking control of her secondary abilities would be coming along nicely too. He smiled to himself, relaxing, comforted by the possibility that the Overton clan might pull the stunt they’d planned off, after all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cami

  Cami stared at her coffee cup as her phone continued buzzing on the table in front of her, forcing herself not to pick it up. The calls were coming in from a few different corners: her mother, a couple of the friends from the bachelorette party—including Jessica and Isobel—and her boss.

  “Are you going to just let them all roll over to voicemail?” Cami glanced at Alistair, who had been watching for at least a minute after walking into the kitchen.

  “For now? Yeah,” she replied. “I’m just not really in the mood to come up with a bunch of different stories about what’s going on.”

  “On the bright side, you know you’re missed at work, and your friends give a shit,” Dylan offered, pouring himself a cup of coffee to join her.

  “I’ve also learned never to talk to my mom about anything,” Cami said.

  The calls had started coming in about an hour before, waking her up from a deep sleep—a surprisingly deep sleep—on the couch curled up with Nicholas. The first notification had been from her mother. Call me as soon as you get this. Cami had ignored it and started to drift off to sleep, and then the buzzing had started again, since her phone was on silent, and it hadn’t really stopped.

  “At some point, you’re going to have to at least tell them not to call the cops,” Elijah pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Dylan agreed. “As much as we like you, cops are kind of low on the list of guests we’d like to entertain here.”

  Cami had gotten a few text messages in between calls and had listened to one or two of the voicemails that had come in while she hadn’t been answering her phone. From what she’d been able to work out, her boss was pissed at her sudden disappearance from work, her friends had gotten calls from her mother, and—after confirming she hadn’t gone to work—were worried that she’d been kidnapped and was being held against her will somewhere.

  “You would think it would occur to somebody that if I was being held somewhere, it’s not like I’d have free access to my phone,” Cami observed.

  “What’s up with your mom calling your friends?” Nicholas asked, coming in from taking a quick shower. He’d awakened when she had, and Cami had been briefly tempted to join him when he’d said that he was going to clean up before he attempted even having some coffee to wake up. An hour after the notifications had started coming in more or less constantly, Cami thought she could have used the shower, and despite her ambivalence about Nicholas walking in on her dream, she couldn’t deny that she was more than a little curious.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Cami admitted. “I called her to ask about my dad, and somehow she seems to have jumped to some wild conclusions.”

  “Wait,” Elijah said, sitting down at the table. “What did you ask her about your dad?”

  Cami shrugged. “I was still kind of reeling about the whole disclosure of being a dragon and all,” Cami explained. “I knew I definitely couldn’t call my friends and tell them anything about it. But I figuredI guess I figured Mom might be able to at least confirm a few details, if not the whole thing.” She frowned, seeing the concern appear on the Overton cousins’ faces. “What?”

  “What exactly did you ask her about, and what was her reaction?” Nicholas asked.

  “I asked her about why she left Dad, if there were any conditions in his family she knew about,” Cami said, shrugging. “I didn’t exactly go, ‘Hey, so apparently, I’m a dragon. Know anything about that?’ I told her I was getting some genetic testing done and wanted some information for forms.” She looked around as silence fell over the four men.

  “What do you want to bet,” Dylan said, after a moment, “that where Finn didn’t contact them after Cami’s mother left, the Egans did?”

  “But if they knew about her already, why didn’t they pounce before?” Elijah countered.

  “What are you talking about?” Cami frowned, looking at each of the men.

  “We think the Egans—I told you about them last night—were behind the sudden tip that we were holding a dragon heir,” Alistair explained.

  “If they were, then they know we have you,” Nicholas continued.

  “They’re the family that wants to, like, end your line or whatever, right?” Cami asked. All four men nodded.

  “They claim to believe that the prophecy about you isn’t specific to our clan,” Alistair said. “That any clan could ally with yours—through you—and get the same result.”

  “Are the
y right?” Cami crossed her arms over her chest. Her phone had stopped buzzing, but it would start again soon, she was sure.

  “Obviously, we don’t think so,” Nicholas said. “The prophecy was 1.”

  “So then, why does it matter? If it only works if I have a kid with one of you, then there’s no reason they should be able to coerce me. Everyone should be on board with me making a baby with an Overton dude,” Cami pointed out.

  “The prophecy was phrased in such a way that it could be interpreted to mean just a child of yours with the right dragon,” Alistair said.

  “So, how do you get the conclusion that you’re the right family, then?” Cami asked, starting to feel frustrated. “You know what? Why don’t you tell me exactly what the prophecy was?”

  The four Overton cousins looked at each other.

  “It’s in the language of dragons,” Elijah said. “We can translate it directly, but you’re going to miss some of the nuances.”

  “Of course you all have your own language,” Cami said with a sigh. “Okay, lay it on me.” The other three Overtons looked at Nicholas, who sat up a little straighter in his seat and took a long drink of his coffee. What left his lips was a series of sounds and noises that didn’t sound anything like a language to Cami: harsh and growling and guttural, but with odd hissing, sibilant sounds at the same time. As it came to an end, she reflected that it sounded almost exactly like one would expect a language by creatures that didn’t have human mouths—or human limits—to create.

  “What that means, directly translated, is this,” Nicholas said, his voice still slightly gravelly and low. “The first part: ‘The Source will be renewed by the flower of the warriors.’ That part refers to you: the name ‘Keane’ comes down through Gaelic and refers to warriors. The ‘flower’ would be a sole daughter.”

  “Okay, but there have to be other families that could apply to,” Cami pointed out.

  Nicholas shook his head. “There’s more, obviously,” he said. “It goes on, ‘The clan that has been deprived of daughters will give birth to renewal through a stranger, and the child will be joined to an heir of the riverbank settlement.’”

  “Draconic language can’t really depict our name properly,” Elijah interjected. “But the name ‘Overton’ means ‘upper settlement’ or ‘riverbank settlement’ in an older version of English.”

  “Okay, so there’s got to be more than this, right?” Cami asked, looking around.

  Nicholas nodded. “The last bit goes, ‘Joined to the correct heir, the Source will renew all, bringing an era of Dragon rebirth and fire.’”

  “The Egan family hits on the last part especially,” Alistair said. “Since ‘Egan’ refers to fire, they figure that might mean them.”

  “But how did you get my name?” Cami asked.

  “Every one of our kind knew that the source had to refer to the Keane family,” Nicholas explained. “So, Finn—while your mother was pregnant with you—asked about the situation, and the Seer confirmed it was his child. After your mother left, the Seer was asked about the name of the child, in the hopes of finding you, by our family. She confirmed your name.”

  “And this Seer is who you have to send my blood to?” Cami asked. All four men nodded.

  “The issue is that even if the Egans are wrong that the prophecy refers to anyone you might mate with,” Alistair explained, “they still have reasons for wanting to get you away from us.”

  “If I’m supposed to save all of dragon-kind, wouldn’t that be sort ofstepping over a dime to pick up a penny?” Cami asked. “Likeif they screw it up, long-term their prospects are going to suck too, right?”

  “They might have rationalized that the risk is still a long way off,” Dylan suggested, shrugging. “They might figure that they’re just going to keep doing fine, even as secondary abilities continue to degrade and break down and become diluted.”

  “The issue here is whether or not they know who you are already,” Nicholas said. “If they know who you are and that you’re herethat would make things complicated for us.”

  As if on cue, Cami’s phone began buzzing again.

  “If they couldn’t prove that we have her, they can’t get the Elders to send people again any time too soon,” Elijah pointed out. “We should at least have a few days.”

  “They might insist on a tribunal,” Alistair countered. “And we’d have to be examined by the Elders.”

  “What does all this mean?” Cami asked.

  “If we’re put to examination, it might not go great,” Elijah said. “They could call a battle or tests. And at some point, we’d have to produce you, at which point it would be obvious that we lied about Alistair having a human friend he was interested in courting.”

  “Why would you think my mom had any connection with the Egans, though? Like you said before, if they knew where I was, why wouldn’t they have jumped first?”

  Nicholas pressed his lips together in response to Cami’s questions. He sighed. “It isn’t just about snatching you up,” he said. “If they get us in trouble with the Elders, and the tests or whatever other examinations go wrong for us, it puts our whole clan at a disadvantage. We’d be punished. So, they wouldn’t necessarily go right for you, and instead wait for us to make our move and then get us in trouble for it.”

  “Ah,” Cami said, working her mind around that twisty logic slowly. She sipped her coffee. “So, maybe someone from the Egan clan got in touch with Mom, made friends with her.”

  “And had her feeding them information, at least,” Elijah agreed.

  “Then when I called her, maybe she got suspicious about why I wanted to know about my father,” Cami mused. “But wouldn’t they have to be ‘out’ for it to be relevant?”

  Alistair shook his head. “They could have had someone suggest to her that they know about our kind, but maybe are some kind of throwback, some kind of non-dragon,” Alistair suggested.

  “Yeah, it would definitely work better to have one of their own pretend to be, like, a half-human or something,” Dylan agreed. “Then gain her mother’s trust, convince her that the Keane family and anyone involved with them was dangerous, and to let them know if anything like that came up.”

  “I could see it,” Nicholas said, nodding.

  “So, the reason they know I’m here—if they know—is because I called my mom,” Cami said. She sighed and drank down half of her coffee in a few quick gulps. “I need to figure out what my mother has been telling my friends, and what the hell people think is going on.” She looked at her phone, finally. She had a dozen missed calls and a few text notifications begging her to get in touch.

  “The big question is: how and when will the Egans strike next?” Alistair asked. “They’d want to make sure Cami has no chance to bond to any of us before they take her away, and while they can’t know how fast she’s progressing, they know it’s a week to activate her.”

  “If I were them, with those goals,” Cami mused, sending a text first to Jessica to assure her friend that she was safe, and not in ‘some kind of crazy cult,’ “I would want to get me away from you as soon as possible. They can’t know if you’ve told me anything. So, try and get my mom to get me out of here, and she gets my friends. Maybe get someone to call the cops.”

  “The cops thing won’t work out that well, depending on how we play it,” Nicholas pointed out. “Cami’s just a guest here. We point out that her mom is obviously off a bit, let them walk through the house, talk to Cami, all that.”

  “They’ve probably got someone on the police, if they’re this invested,” Elijah countered. “That would give them confirmation they could take to the Elders to convince them to move on us.”

  “So, the big thing is for me to convince everyone that I’m fine, no need to send the police,” Cami said. She looked around the room. “Unless anyone else has any other ideas?”

  All four Overton men shook their heads, and Cami got up to add some more coffee to her cup. She had a whole morning of
damage control in front of her to take care of, and while she still had a dozen questions about the prophecy and her place in it, she wasn’t willing yet to risk the only connection she had to answers about her father.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Alistair

  Alistair looked up from the scrambled eggs he was working on as Elijah rushed into the kitchen. “We’re fucked,” Elijah said, holding out his phone for Alistair to look at the screen. “I thought you should know.”

  “What?” Alistair stepped away from the stove slightly, still stirring the eggs as Elijah held the phone so he could see. The message was from Elijah’s mother. The word is that the Elders don’t buy that you don’t have a dragon heir in your keeping. They’re going to call you to account. Alistair groaned.

  The day before, Cami had been able to convince her friends that she was safe and sound, with nothing untoward happening; her mother hadn’t seemed to truly buy it, but Cami was an adult and there wasn’t much that Myra could do about the situation. All Cami had told her friends was that she had stumbled into a decent job opportunity that started immediately, working with “some wealthy guys,” while she’d told her mother that she had been contacted by her father’s estate and was looking into it.

  Alistair had used the time to start making some discreet contacts on the subject of Finn Keane’s estate, as he’d promised Cami he’d do. He hadn’t made much progress, but by the end of the week—when Cami might be ready to leave the Overton home—he thought he would have at least a starting point for her to claim whatever there might be to claim.

  “It has to be the Egans,” Elijah said.

  “Well, yeah,” Alistair agreed. “But what the hell can we do?” Elijah set his phone down and pressed his lips together.

  “She’s about halfway to the point of no return,” Elijah pointed out. “If they make us show up today, the Egans will win. Tomorrow or the next day”