House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1)

by Samantha Snow

  “She still wouldn’t be fully activated,” Alistair countered.

  “But it would give one of us time to partially bond to her,” Elijah said. “And if she’s even partially bonded, there won’t be a whole lot the Egans can do.”

  “You can’t bond someone without their consent, even partially,” Alistair told his cousin. “She might not even be sufficiently activated to bond.”

  “One of us has to try,” Elijah told him. “If we’re going to solidify our chances to make the prophecy happen, we can’t let the Egans get her away from us. The best way to make that happen is to have her start the bonding process.”

  “But again,” Alistair countered, “none of us can do that without her consent, and we could only do it with her consent if she was sufficiently activated first.”

  Elijah shrugged. “So, we talk to her about it,” Elijah suggested.

  Alistair folded the scrambled eggs over themselves in the pan, thinking. Breakfast was almost done, and in a matter of minutes, he was sure that Cami would be up and about. Before they decided on any kind of strategy, they needed to get on the same page.

  “Get Nick and Dylan,” Alistair said. “We need to talk about this before Cami gets up.”

  Elijah nodded and hurried out of the kitchen, as Alistair finished off the eggs with a little hot sauce and grated cheddar cheese, sliding them out of the pan and into a bowl for serving. He popped a few slices of bread into the toaster and started the new pot of coffee.

  They had to keep Cami on their side and as close to them as possible. Alistair knew that; hadn’t he been the one who’d brought her into the house in the first place? He knew that using his ability on her had been morally suspect, and when she’d confronted him about it and pointed out that it was no different from putting drugs in her drink, he’d had to acknowledge that she was right and that he owed her an apology. But the entire future of the clan—and for that matter, dragon-kind—depended on the four Overton men making the right moves with Cami, convincing her to trust them and to eventually mate with them. The Egans didn’t care if they doomed the rest of their kind, as long as they took out the Overton clan. Then again, they’ve also half-convinced themselves that the prophecy could apply just as much to them as to us, Alistair mused.

  “What are we going to do?” Nicholas came into the kitchen and immediately got to the point, and Alistair reasoned that Elijah had probably taken just enough time to fill the leader of the clan in on the basic sketch of how things stood.

  “You heard Elijah’s idea?” Alistair asked.

  Nicholas shrugged. “I think he’s got a point,” Nicholas said. “The best way to make sure that she can stay here, that she stays with us, is to forge a bond. And we need to do that before the Egans make any moves to get her out of here.”

  “We don’t know that they will,” Dylan said as he came in. “I mean, of course that’s the way we’re thinking; it would be a fucking disaster for us if they did. But that might not be what they’re trying to do. They might be clueless.”

  “There was an Egan among the representatives that came and searched us,” Alistair pointed out. “That wasn’t a coincidence.” Elijah followed Dylan into the kitchen, and Alistair took the toasted slices of bread out of the machine, spreading butter on the first of them.

  “She barely trusts us,” Dylan countered. “Even if she was activated enough, even if we could convince her to consent to a bond, she might not be in the right state of mind to actually do it.”

  “And there’s the question of which one of us to approach her,” Nicholas agreed.

  “You can’t do it,” Alistair told him. “You invaded her dream and dream-fucked her.”

  “You drugged her with your ability,” Nicholas countered.

  “So, either Dylan or me, then?” Elijah asked.

  “Why not give her a chance to choose?” Nicholas suggested. “We explain the situation to her, explain what’s needed, and let her decide who she feels comfortable with.”

  “What are we going to do if she’s not ready?” Dylan asked. “I just want to point out that we need a contingency plan. She might not be activated enough. She might not be able to choose. She might not be able to trust whoever she does choose enough to create the bond. Probably fifty other things could go wrong. We need a plan that doesn’t require Cami being okay with bonding to us.”

  “Did you have an idea, or are you just suggesting overall that we need something?” Alistair asked, putting more bread in the toaster.

  “Oh, zero clue,” Dylan admitted. “I’m just saying, we need to know what we’re going to do if Elijah’s idea doesn’t pan out.”

  “We don’t even know when they’ll call us to account,” Nicholas mused. “Or if they’ll call all of us.”

  “If it’s about Cami, the Egans would make sure we’re all called to the carpet,” Elijah said. “They can’t risk one of us taking her off elsewhere.”

  “Have you made any progress on her inheritance?” Nicholas asked Alistair.

  “I’ve got some people looking into who the executor could be,” Alistair replied. “I should have contact with the executor within a couple of days.”

  “That might not be fast enough,” Nicholas said.

  “You’re thinking we can just offload her at her father’s place?” Dylan asked. “If we’re assuming the Egans made contact with her mom and all that, they probably have someone watching it.”

  “But the Elders wouldn’t move her from it,” Alistair pointed out. “If we could get her there and establish her ability to stay, they would let her stay there.”

  “But then she doesn’t get enough exposure to draconic energies to fully activate in a week,” Elijah countered.

  “If she’s safely installed there, it won’t matter if it takes a week or a month,” Nicholas said. “By the next full moon, she’d be active, just from the exposure she’s already had and a couple of lengthy visits.”

  “If the Egans know she’s there, they might visit her too,” Dylan said. “But it’s better than no backup plan.”

  The second batch of toast popped up, and Alistair took it out of the machine, getting to work on buttering it. For a few moments, everyone was silent, trying to foolproof the plan.

  “We have to take a certain amount of risk here,” Alistair said. “Cami knows what the stakes are. She’s not just going to buy into whatever crap the Egans come up with.”

  “But she isn’t knowledgeable enough to reject them outright,” Nicholas countered.

  “As long as she’s suspicious of them, that should be enough,” Elijah suggested. “She’ll get exposure, but she has no more reason to trust them than she does to trust us—less, in fact.”

  “Except that none of them have invaded any of her dreams or hypnotized her,” Dylan interjected. “But I’ll grant that she trusts us in spite of how we’ve fucked up on that score.”

  “So, we’re agreed that we try to get her into the house if we don’t have time for one of us to bond her,” Nicholas suggested. “And if the Elders take issue, we’ll just say that we were trying to help her get access to her father’s estate, which she would be entitled to.”

  “I think the Elders can remember the prophecy as well as any of us,” Dylan countered. “They’ll know we’re trying to get the big prize.”

  “But they won’t be able to prove we’ve done anything against the rules to do it,” Alistair pointed out. “As long as Cami doesn’t directly tell them that we did, they have to just accept it.”

  “Do we need another contingency?” Nicholas looked at the rest of them, and Alistair added the final batch of bread to the toaster, pushing down the lever and checking over all the other elements he’d prepared.

  “You mean, in case we can’t bond her or get her into her dad’s place?” Dylan asked. “A contingency-contingency plan?”

  “There’s a chance that neither of those two plans will work out,” Elijah said. “Nick has a point.”

  “If neither pla
n works out, we get her the hell out of dodge,” Alistair said. “Get her on a plane somewhere and bring her back once the heat is off.” He looked at his three cousins, trying to see how they felt about the idea. For a few moments, all four Overton men thought about the conundrum silently.

  “I feel like you four are talking about me behind my back.”

  Alistair looked up to see Cami in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing one of the pajama sets he had bought for her; the dark green cotton camisole and loose pants did nothing to conceal the lush curves of her body, and the color only seemed to enhance the warmth of her skin, the deep hazel tones of her eyes. As soon as Alistair looked at Cami, felt her presence, he knew that one aspect of the situation had been resolved: Cami was definitely sufficiently activated to bond to a dragon. He could feel the energy coursing through her, sense the changes that had happened in her overnight, as she’d slept amongst other dragons. She might be ready to try her first transformation by the end of the week, if they had enough access to her to help her through the preliminaries.

  “We’ve hit another snag,” Dylan said.

  “In that case, someone pour me a cup of coffee,” Cami said. “Because it would probably be better for your planning if it, you know, actually involved the person you’re planning for.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dylan

  Elijah began clearing the plates from breakfast away, carrying them to the sink to wash them, and Dylan watched Cami intently to try and determine how she was taking the news. They’d spent all of breakfast filling her in on the situation in front of them, at least in the broadest strokes; it would take much longer than a meal to explain the significance of the Elders and how much power they had over all of the dragon clans.

  “Okay,” Cami said, turning the base of her coffee mug in half-circles on the tabletop. “So basically, the issue is that the Egans are calling your bluff, they probably know I’m here, and since they want to screw you, they’re going to get the Elders to force you to kick me out of the house, separate me from you.”

  “That’s the basic idea, yeah,” Dylan agreed.

  “And your worry is that the Egans are going to screw up your plans to, ah, mate with me and create the baby that will save all of dragon-kind,” Cami continued.

  “Before you make a point about us not trusting you,” Alistair interjected, and Dylan resisted the urge to laugh—he’d seen that issue coming up too, “it isn’t that we think you’re weak minded or some nonsense like that.”

  “Really? Because it sounds to me like you think I’m just some airhead who will drop my panties for anyone,” Cami pointed out.

  “The Egans are some of my least favorite people on the planet,” Dylan said. “But I have to admit, they’re genetically blessed.”

  “What secondary abilities do they have?” Cami asked, looking around the table for an answer.

  “They’re telekinetic,” Nicholas said. “To varying degrees. The women of the family can teleport, and most of the men of the family can only manipulate objects in space—that kind of thing.”

  “I mean, that’s impressive, but it’s not exactly going to win me over,” Cami said. “Although, it would be nice not to have to worry about my mind being messed with.”

  “That’s not what Dylan meant,” Alistair told her. “Objectively, they’re good-looking men.”

  “Not as hot as we are, but pretty hot,” Dylan agreed. He considered the Egan clan; there were six cousins that were in the main line, but only four, like the Overton clan, who really counted for anything. Their matriarch, Vanessa, was still alive, which gave them considerably more ability to play politics. With Nicholas’s mother gone, the four Overton cousins had a much more limited ability to gossip and intrigue—something that would continue to be an issue until they got a new matriarch.

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Cami said sarcastically, “sign me up to defect!”

  “Obviously, we have a vested interest in you being involved with us,” Alistair said.

  Dylan let his cousin explain, knowing his own commentary would be a lot less diplomatic. Look: we think you’re hot, and you’re supposed to make a baby with one of us to save all of dragon-kind, Dylan mused, careful not to let his mental voice go beyond his own mind.

  “Yeah,” Cami agreed. “Based on the whole aggressive ass-kissing thing you’ve got going on, I’ve pretty much gathered that.”

  “You know why we need you,” Alistair said. “But they’re very persuasive.”

  “I’ve been here, what, four nights? And I haven’t had actual sex with any of you,” Cami pointed out.

  “What he means is that as you transition into a dragon, things change,” Nicholas explained. Dylan pressed his lips together to suppress a chuckle.

  “What? I become some kind of horny, hormonal wreck?” Cami asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You’ll have different preferences, different desires,” Nicholas said.

  “And none of you thought to warn me about this until it became a possibility that I’d be around four other foxy men?”

  “We wanted to take it slow with you,” Alistair said.

  “Yeah, real slow,” Cami retorted. “Invading my dreams and screwing around with my mind.”

  “Nobody here has actually come onto you in physical space since you got here,” Dylan pointed out. “We’ve been very respectful—at least, in terms of your actual body.”

  “that’s not the virtue that you’re trying to make it,” Cami countered. “Not molesting me is kind of a bare minimum thing.”

  “We’re getting off topic,” Nicholas said, raising his voice just slightly to cut through the cross talk, and Dylan pushed aside his urge to keep battling with Cami. “We didn’t bring it up because there is so much that will be happening as you change, as your dragon genes become active, that we figured we’d sort out anything about your desires when it came up.”

  “It sounds more like you figured I’d become extra susceptible to your charms and didn’t want to potentially tip me off,” Cami said.

  “It honestly, truly is that we were going to wait and see how your activation went,” Alistair said. “And right now, how it’s going is ‘faster than expected.’”

  “Pretty much everything is going faster than we expected,” Dylan said. “We figured we’d at least have until the end of the week before the Egans made their move. That you would need until the end of the week to fully activate. So, all in all, we suck at predicting time frames.”

  Cami pressed her fingers to her face and sighed. “So, let’s get down to brass tacks on this,” she said after a moment. “Your plan requires that I don’t get swept off of my feet by one of the Egan guys, that I bond with at least one of you, and eventually end up mating, which involves sex but doesn’t only involve sex.”

  “That is accurate,” Nicholas said. Elijah came back to the table and sat down.

  “You’re worried for some reason that the Egans are going to somehow interrupt your plan, even though I haven’t even met them yet, and have no reason to decide to have anything to do with them,” Cami continued.

  “They’re hot and have more money than us,” Elijah said. “Like, Bill Gates money.”

  “Hot and rich aren’t my criteria for deciding to sleep with someone,” Cami countered.

  Dylan couldn’t resist a chuckle at that. “Don’t tell me you have principles,” he said.

  Cami shot him a dark look. “I might,” she said. “I definitely have standards.”

  “Hot, rich, and probably charming,” Dylan said. “I mean, I hate them, but they seem to do pretty well with women.”

  “And the four of you are living here like monks,” Cami said sarcastically.

  “We were looking for you,” Nicholas said.

  “And we were waiting for any kind of serious relationship until we knew who you’d choose,” Elijah added.

  “I’m going to sidestep my concerns about that,” Cami said. “So, the plan is to try and have at least on
e of you bond with me before the meeting happens? And then, if that doesn’t work, somehow get me into my dad’s house?”

  “Even if you’re not technically on the paperwork to live there, the Elders would ensure that you aren’t arrested or kicked out or anything,” Nicholas said. “You’re the rightful heir to the property, and in due course, you’re supposed to inherit it.”

  “You’re sure they’ll juststick up for me like that?” Cami asked, her tone disbelieving. Dylan nodded and saw his three cousins nodding too.

  “You’re basically dragon royalty,” Alistair said.

  “Once they know who you are, they’ll want to protect you,” Nicholas explained. “All the Egans might have told them is that we’ve got a dragon heir. Not the person the Seer predicted would save our kind.”

  “So, why don’t we have me go to them and say I want to stay here?” Cami asked.

  Dylan looked at Nicholas. “I mean, she makes a good point,” Dylan said.

  “Just because you’re important—vital, even—to our species doesn’t mean the Elders will let you get your way entirely,” Nicholas said.

  “If the Egans make the case that you should be introduced to the rest of our species, or at least those who want to meet you, as you transition” Elijah pressed his lips together, not finishing his sentence.

  Dylan looked at his cousins and then at Cami. “If we can’t convince her to side with us, to choose one of us, just because she gets to meet other dragons, I kind of feel like we suck at life,” Dylan said. “The Seer predicted that her mating with one of us would bring about the child. But if she doesn’t decide to, that’s kind of on us.”

  “Thank you,” Cami said.

  “Our family’s fortunes depend on you,” Elijah said. “That’s what Nicholas keeps dancing around.”

  “What do you mean?” Cami asked.

  “We haven’t been entirely explicit about all of the reasons we want you to choose us,” Dylan told her. “I know: shocker.”

  “At this point, I’m assuming there’s an infinite set of things you haven’t told me about this situation for every one item you have told me,” Cami said dryly.