Penelope realized that whoever the tiger was, it had not been Cassi that sent him. Penelope knew his face, but couldn’t place it. He had been a very old man, but still a powerful tiger it seemed. Penelope had not known they even existed in this part of the world.
“Nothing. Just thank you.”
“Just take care of yourself,” Cassi repeated before hanging up the phone.
Cassi paced back and forth in the room. How could something like this happen? This was the twentieth century, not the middle ages. Their village had been growing by leaps and bounds, headed into a new day with more progressive, integrated lives designed to help the shifters there share the world with the humans that greatly outnumbered them. Now, it was as if it was all for naught, and they were only tumbling backwards into a world of persecution and punishment.
She stripped off her clothes and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. All of this felt like a bad dream. Eventually, her exhaustion took over, and she fell asleep. She awoke with a start some hours later and jumped out of bed. It felt like her heart would beat out of her chest as she rushed to get dressed and made her way hurriedly out to the car, heading toward one of many places some men had once thought was where the world ended, but dragons had always known there was far more to be seen.
CHAPTER 18
Penelope drove as far as she could before pulling over in a nearby carpark and taking the hiking trail that led down to the edge of the small cliffs that looked toward the smaller island. The night was pitch-black around her.
It felt like hours had passed, and there was nothing. She sat down on the ground, wrapping her arms about her to stave off the chill of early morning. The sun would be coming up soon and with that, her world would come to an end. It would mean he hadn’t made it, and she was alone. Once again, she considered her options and whether she could make it without her love by her side.
Don’t be ridiculous! came a loud, clear voice in her head.
Penelope jumped up, her eyes searching the sky. She couldn’t see him yet, but he was near. She choked back tears of joy as he came into view, his powerful dragon soaring over the dark waters to the edge of the shore where he landed with a thud on the ground in front of her. Not waiting for him to shift, she ran toward him, grabbing hold of him as he returned to human form.
The tears came, no longer held back by her stubbornness, and she sobbed heavily against him. He said nothing, just holding her tightly as she clung to him as if letting him go might cause him to disappear once again.
“I was so afraid I would never see you again,” she sobbed against his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Pene. I’m here now. We’re safe.”
“Are we safe? Are we safe on this island?”
“For now, but we can’t stay. You know that, right?”
“Yes, but how do we get off? You know he will look for us. He’ll have people at the airports.”
“I’ve no doubt he will, but we didn’t use an airport to get here, did we?”
“That was a long time ago, Kergot. There weren’t as many people, and it’s not far to jump across from Scotland to Ireland. Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. We can sort that out once we get in out of this cold,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have brought me any clothes, would you?”
“Yes. I brought everything I could in the car when I left the house. Come on. Let’s get you into something warm. The bed and breakfast isn’t far but they might frown on me bringing in a naked man.”
“Obviously they haven’t seen how glorious I am naked,” he teased.
“Ordinarily, I would chastise you for a statement like that, no matter how accurate. I’m just so glad to see you that I will let it go.”
“I appreciate that,” he laughed, leaning down to kiss her before bounding over to the car to retrieve some clothes. “It’s going to be rough getting around with no identification. Do we have any money?”
“I have money. I also have your wallet. Mr. Donnelly brought it to me.”
“Yeah? That surprises me. I thought they kept it. I wonder what possessed him to do that,” he remarked, slipping into some clean jeans and a soft sweater before digging through a tub of shoes to find two that matched.
“I don’t know. He warned me to leave,” she told him.
“But you didn’t,” he replied, slipping on a pair of loafers.
“No. I needed to see if you were okay first. I only left after you told me to go,” she replied. “Aiden showed up at the house as I was getting ready to go, but something stopped him. A tiger.”
“A tiger?” he repeated.
“Yes, a very large tiger. It was a shifter. He shifted long enough to tell me to go while Aiden was down and then right back into tiger form to run off into the woods.”
Kergot nodded knowingly, but said nothing. Penelope scrutinized him closely. What was he keeping from her?
“What?”
“Tio, you’ve met him before. He and his wife, Maggie, own the inn where you and I stayed when we first came here.”
“Yes. Wow. I haven’t seen him in a very long time. He’s aged quite a bit.”
“His life span is not the same as ours. The tiger portion of him limits him a bit more in longevity,” he said.
“Tiger portion? You mean he is part something else? Dragon?”
“Yes. His father was a tiger shifter, and his mother is a dragon shifter.”
“Is? She’s still alive? Who is she?”
Kergot merely looked at her wordlessly, but did not offer a name.
“Perhaps that is not something that is not my place to reveal. I’ve already revealed too much of someone else’s story. I hate knowing so many thoughts. It’s a curse sometimes to know their secrets.”
“Oh, my God. Cassi. She is the only one old enough in this village to be his mother. Why would she not acknowledge him?”
“She doesn’t know. He had to go away with his father for his protection and when he came back, he didn’t tell her who he was. He thought it might be too painful for her to know what had happened to his father, how he had missed her until he died. It’s a sad story for both of them.”
“Oh, Kergot. I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that no one has secrets from you, that you know them all and must keep them as if they were your own.”
“It is my cross to bear, love. Not yours. It saved you yesterday and, for that, it is worth every year I’ve spent cursing it.”
“Aiden. Do you know why he did this to us?”
“Yes. It is payback.”
“Payback? For what?”
“Aiden led a very sad life as a child. He was envious of everyone and everything. You were a bright spot for him. The beautiful teacher who seemed to care about him when everyone else shunned him. Then, you rejected him.”
“Rejected him? I don’t remember . . .,” she started to say, but then it came back to her and she looked at Kergot, wide-eyed.
“Yes. That day. It was all it took for someone with a mentality as cruel as his.”
“Still, I can’t believe he would do something like this.”
“He’s done worse. Anyway, enough about Aiden. Let’s get in out of the cold and get some rest. We will have a long day ahead of us. I figure one more night is the most we can stay here and then we need to be on our way to elsewhere, quickly.”
Penelope nodded and climbed back into the vehicle, giving him directions to where she had booked a room. They pulled in just as the sun was rising, and made their way quickly up to the room, where they undressed and climbed beneath the covers. She was torn between her need for him and how tired she felt.
“Just sleep,” he told her. “We have the rest of our lives together.”
They curled up against one another and fell quickly asleep. Even with all that had happened to them in the past few days, they were content now that they were back together. Tomorrow would bring about another busy day full of decisions that must be made quickly, but for now they were just happy to
be back together and safe.
CHAPTER 19
Kergot and Penelope awoke early the next morning and began the flurry of activity that would fill the next few days. After a bit of debate, they decided to return to simply to take the ferry across to the mainland and enter into France. It was a part of the EU, so they wouldn’t have to go through passports or seek out visas to stay there for as long as they liked.
“It’s near the water, so it will afford me the opportunity to fly a bit rather than being land locked,” he told her.
“Not a problem I have,” she said mournfully.
“I know, my love. If I could give up my ability to fly in order to restore yours, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
Penelope nodded. She knew he meant it. In all the years they had spent in the village, he had continually sought out anyone that could help with her problem. He had carried the small bottle of poison she had retrieved from Scotland with him to places around the world, rising in the wee hours to fly near and far in hopes of a cure, but as the years passed, and the art of that sort of alchemy had diminished with modern civilization, it had become less likely. It was one Sunday morning when he began to climb out of bed that she had stopped him.
“Where are you going, Kergot?”
“I heard there was an old witch up in the northwest of Greenland who knows a bit about spells and potions. I want to fly up there before the sun comes up and see what I can learn. I will be home once the sun falls.”
“Just stay here with me, Kergot,” she had told him.
Kergot had laid back down beside her, turning to her and brushing a few strands of hair from her face as he spoke to her quietly.
“Why, Pene? I know it means a lot to you. I know you miss being able to fly.”
“I do, but there is no use. No one knows anything about what is in that bottle. Perhaps it is nothing more than a few oils she mixed together and cursed. We’ve had it tested. No one can even identify the contents other than a few trace amounts that probably came from former containers.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy. I have you. I have everything I want.”
Neither of them discussed the elephant in the room, the other issue of not being able to conceive at that moment. Each knew the other wanted children, but it always ended in tears and pain that neither wanted to feel. Instead, he climbed back into bed beside her. It was the last time Kergot ventured out in search of a cure.
When the age of the internet had come along, he had gone back on the trail without mentioning it. She had seen it in the browser history, endless searches for answers and emails to purported experts. She never mentioned it. Women found worse on their husbands computers. It was a secret she let him keep, though even that wasn’t really accurate with his ability to know her mind.
“What about our things?” she asked.
“We will sell the car. We won’t need it in France, and the money will help us along until we can find work there. We’ll store the rest here until we’re settled, and then I’ll retrieve it as I did from Scotland.”
“I left a lot in the house. I couldn’t take it all. Our beautiful furniture, the antiques. Your mother’s things that were too big.”
“Don’t worry about those. We left people behind that will look after them for us. We’ll get them back somehow.”
“I hope so.”
“Look at it this way. We have the most important things–each other.”
“Very true.”
“Alright, well, let’s go find a place for this stuff and get it tucked away. Then, we’ll head toward the coast. We will get to the nearest ferry crossing, and sell it there before we hop on the boat.”
“It’s an adventure!”
“That it is, love. That it is.”
Penelope could tell that he was tired, and there were still bruises and scrapes from his encounter with the dragon council visible everywhere. It saddened her to know what he must have gone through in Aiden’s dungeons.
“Don’t think about that,” he told her. “I’m home now.”
“We aren’t home. We’ve been run out of our home, twice. Once from people who couldn’t understand and now, by our own kind.”
“Not by our own. We have plenty of people that support us in that village. Right now, Aiden has the upper hand, for some reason. Time has a way of dealing with people like him.”
“I guess we will see.”
“Yes, we will. As for home, our home is wherever the two of us are together. You are my home, and you always will be.”
Penelope smiled up at him, rising on her tiptoes to kiss him. He lifted her up for a proper kiss, and she laughed. It was a part of him that she adored, the sheer power of his body and yet how gentle he was with her.
“Shall we get going then?”
“We shall,” she responded.
Their research led them to Rosslare Harbor, where they were able to find a storage unit in which to store things, and a car dealership that was willing to pay a decent price for their van. They repacked only what they would need into backpacks and made their way to a nearby hotel to spend the night, after purchasing tickets that would take them on the early ferry across to Cherbourg in France. From there, they could begin looking for a place to settle.
It was a long trip, nearly eighteen hours on the ferry. They checked into what most would describe as a fleabag motel that was still accepting guests at the late hour and fell quickly asleep as they had the night before. It had been a grueling week, and it wasn’t even finished yet.
Waking the following morning, they rose and went downstairs to the somewhat sad, little continental breakfast bar where they opted for the croissants and fruit with a bit of yogurt.
“Well, that is hardly going to get us through a day of house hunting,” Kergot laughed.
“It will do me just fine. We’ll find you a bear or something to eat along the way.”
“Very funny,” he chided as they stood up to leave, neither of them entirely sure where to start.
“Where to then?” she asked.
“I guess we find a nearby realtor and go from there.”
“Do you speak any French?” she asked.
“Nope, not a bit,” he told her.
“I know about six words. Hopefully, we can find one that speaks English.”
“We could really confuse them and speak Celtic.”
“Yes, that will help the situation,” she laughed.
“I’m always full of helpful stuff like that,” he told her, motioning for her to go ahead of him out to the front desk.
It was hardly a place where you’d find a helpful concierge. Instead, they were at the mercy of a pasty-faced, young woman who looked like she had just walked out of a local club and into work, with heavy makeup and a sequined blouse.
“There is a real estate agent just down the street on the right,” she told them in somewhat broken English.
“Thank you,” Penelope replied.
Making their way out the front door and in the direction they had been sent, they joined hands and breathed a collective sigh of relief. It was horrid having to start over after all of these years, but they were together and that was the most important thing.
“Did you ever think of just going back to the cave?” she asked.
“Yes, but you don’t belong in a cave, my love.”
“You loved it there, though. It’s not all about me.”
“I loved it there when I was alone and wanted to be alone. Then you came along and changed my life. I don’t want to live in a dark cave anymore. I want to live out in the sunshine with my beautiful wife, wherever that sunshine may fall upon us.”
Penelope smiled up at him as they stopped in front of what appeared to be a realtor’s office.
“I guess we should go inside and see where our sunshine will fall upon us next then,” she told him.
CHAPTER 20
“It’s furnished, so you won’t need furniture. Of course, you can c
hange it out if you like. You only need to notify the landlord that you need the existing furniture picked up for storage,” the realtor was telling them as they looked at what was now the fourth house of the day.
Penelope looked around. It was clean and wouldn’t drain their bank account, but it was so tiny. She couldn’t see them here long term. It might do for now, though. Looking toward Kergot, she saw him nod in agreement to her thoughts.
“When is it available?” she asked.
“Immediately. You can start moving in with a deposit and first month’s rent.”
“We’ll take it,” Kergot told her.
Both he and Penelope knew that not having to go through the usually routine credit and background checks was a bonus in their situation. Though the realtor was showing it to them, it wasn’t a place being rented through his agency, but a place he was helping a friend get a tenant moved into.
“Perfect. Sam will be glad to hear I’ve rented it so quickly. He was called away for his job so quickly that he didn’t have time to do anything with it and wasn’t looking forward to paying months of rent on an empty place. Come back to the office with me, and we’ll get you a lease filled out and a set of keys.”
“We can move in today?”
“Absolutely. You might need to top off the electrical box, but everything else is ready to go.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” Penelope told him.
She felt as if a weight was lifted off her shoulders. On the run, without a home, far away from friends they had come to know as family–it was all too much. At least now they could begin to find their way again. A quick trip back to the realtor’s office, and a set of keys later, they were moving their things from the hotel to their new home.
“I think that we need to celebrate!” Kergot told her.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Maybe retrieve some takeout and a bottle of wine, build a nice fire, and settle in for a nice film of some sort.”
“He didn’t leave a television.”
“No, but we have my tablet in my pack. We can prop it up and watch whatever I have downloaded. I don’t remember what all is on there. I don’t think we have any Wi-Fi. We’ll have to get that hooked up later.”
Awakening The Dragon (Exiled Dragons Book 9) Page 9
