“You’re a lifesaver,” Aspen said with a grin.
“I know. How are pictures going?”
“Pretty well. People are starting to chill. The dragons are surprisingly cool about it.”
Aspen had worked closely with the new dragon outreach program to find ways to help people become more at ease with the dragons. The rides on the sea dragons in the ocean were a hit. The river dragons were giving tours of the parks in the south.
“I think we’re ready,” Pandora said and changed into a silver dragon.
The couple was indeed more comfortable, and Aspen got a couple of great shots. Aspen handed them a card with her website where they could find the pictures. They gave Pandora another pat and then walked down to the visitor center.
“That’s it for today, Pandora. Thanks!”
Ella watched as Pandora took to the sky. “You know, I still can’t believe Theo was one of them.”
“He was evil though. There are other nicer dragons.”
Ella shrugged. “I think I’m done with dragons. Freddie’s bad enough.”
Once Freddie knew he could work with the dragons, he immediately moved to Gardiner and hit it off with Ella.
“Where’s Sid?” Ella asked.
“In Yosemite.”
“Has he had any luck?”
Aspen shook her head. Sid, Sequoia, and Murdoc had spent much of the last year searching for dragon eggs in Yosemite. Dragons often had eggs and hid them if they chose not to hatch them. Sid expected to find some hidden in caves in the park, but they hadn’t found a single one.
After months of searching, Hazel and Val had found several fire dragon eggs. Pearl hatched a few and would stay to raise the dragons. The hope was that over time, they could repopulate the fire dragons.
No one was looking for the canyon or the arctic, which Aspen thought was a shame. She missed seeing all the different kinds of dragons.
Ella leaned against the car and blew her fringe out of her eyes. Aspen gave her a suspicious look. “What’s up?”
“It’s Freddie.” She dropped her head and covered her eyes.
“Uh, oh. What did he do now?”
“He wants to go to Hawaii.”
“So go. Sounds like a fun trip.”
Ella threw up her hands. “No, you don’t understand. He wants to live there.”
“Why?”
“Because of the baby dragons.”
Aspen laughed. Baby dragons couldn’t control their flames. One cough and poof, no more human. “You know, baby dragons aren’t safe around humans. Hazel and Val won’t even go near them.”
“Could you talk to him? He won’t listen to me. He’s already ordered a fireproof suit.”
“Yeah. We’re meeting tomorrow. I’ll make sure he understands that he can’t go see the baby dragons.”
“You’re the best. I gotta go.”
She drove away, and Aspen headed home in her own jeep. A new one that Sid bought her after the war. This one never broke down. She didn’t like staying at the house alone when Sid was gone. It was too big and lonely. But he’d be back in a couple of days.
She opened the side door and heard giggling coming from the kitchen. What the hell?
She crept slowly into the room and found Rowan and Skye standing behind the bar, both covered in flour. Aspen stood there for a beat. “I don’t even want to know.”
Skye glanced up at her and squealed. She ran forward and threw her arms around Aspen. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Aspen pulled back and wiped the flour off her face. “When did you two get back?”
“A few hours ago. I thought I’d bake a cake.” She moved around the bar and started dumping in ingredients. Rowan stood back staring at her.
Aspen sat on a stool and couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “You know, next time you go on a honeymoon, you don’t have to be gone for a whole year.”
Skye pursed her lips. “That was the best year of my life, thank you very much.”
“She wasn’t ready to come home, but I told her you guys wouldn’t forgive us if we stayed away forever,” Rowan said.
“Yeah. You’re right.” Aspen dipped her finger in the cake batter and Skye swatted her away. “So would you recommend Fiji?” Aspen asked.
“For a vacation?”
“For a honeymoon.”
Skye’s eyes flashed over Aspen’s fingers. Then she squealed again, raced around the bar, and gripped Aspen’s hand, examining the ring.
“This is gorgeous. When’s the big day?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We haven’t set a date yet.” She still wasn’t comfortable with the whole idea. She thought the bonding was enough, but Sid thought that if they were going to be living among the humans, they should stick with human traditions.
Skye shook her head. “You’re no fun. You know that. How come you didn’t tell us?”
“I wanted to tell you in person.”
“What did Mom and Dad say?” Rowan asked.
“I haven’t told them yet,” she mumbled.
“Why?”
Aspen shrugged. “It never came up. It’s not like I get down to Texas very often.”
Her dad had been thrilled to work in Texas with the river dragons. He called her every other day to tell her about another conversation he had with Xanthous. Her parents had been more than a little freaked out by the dragon queen thing, but they got over it. Aspen didn’t know when she’d tell them about the engagement. She saw no reason to hurry.
The front door opened, and Aspen jerked her head up. Hazel flew into the kitchen and threw her arms around Rowan.
“Skye told me you guys were coming home.”
Aspen creased her eyebrows. “I thought you were going to stay in Hawaii.”
Val shrugged. “The eggs hatched. There’s not much we can do but stay out of the way.”
“Are you excited for the babies?”
Hazel shook her head behind him.
“I am.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Excuse me.” Val escaped into the bathroom.
“What’s his problem?” Aspen asked.
“He’s still having trouble with the fact that he isn’t a dragon anymore.”
Aspen frowned. That must be hard for them. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”
“It’s okay. He’ll be fine.”
The back door opened, and Aspen spun around. “Sid! What are you doing home?”
He came and gave her a huge kiss. She pulled away. “I’m glad to see you too. But seriously, you weren’t supposed to be home for two days.”
He nodded. “Wait until you see what we found.”
Aspen clapped her hands together. “You found an egg?”
“Better than that.”
He hoisted his bag up on the table, opened it up, and lifted out a bright green egg. He handed it to Skye, whose mouth had dropped open. Then he lifted a brilliant purple egg out of the bag.
Val walked into the room. “Is that a purple egg?”
Sid handed it to him, and he looked at in awe.
“Not only that, but we found a hoard of them. There is probably thirty of each. Sequoia’s going to hatch five to start.”
Aspen couldn’t understand what was going on. These were woodland dragons. Everyone knew they were both green and purple. “I’m confused.”
“Those eggs haven’t been seen since the last dragon wars,” Sid said.
“Wait? You mean those are pure green and pure purple dragon eggs.”
“They are.”
Aspen let out a breath. “Wow. New dragons.”
Sid pulled her close. “No, very old dragons. Exciting though, huh?”
Sid twisted the ring on her finger. Aspen could see the wheels in his head turning. He wanted to say something
but was holding back.
She met his eyes. “What?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Why don’t we make this all official before they hatch?”
Aspen raised her eyebrows. “I have a better idea. We can make this official when all the dragon races have been restored.” She’d been begging him for months to look for arctic and canyon eggs, and he’d refused.
Sid blinked at her for a few seconds. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Aspen asked
“Yeah. Okay. I’ve been thinking about it anyway. I’ll head out to Alaska tomorrow.”
Aspen creased her eyebrows. “What’s the rush?”
“I’m ready for you to become Mrs. King.”
I hoped you enjoyed reading The Kings. Thank you for taking this amazing journey with me. I’ll be releasing a new series early 2017. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss it: http://eepurl.com/bH17_X
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Check out this excerpt from Kimberly Loth’s exciting series, The Thorn Chronicles.
Birthdays are supposed to be special like my Kaiser Wilhelm rosebushes. They bloom once a year, huge violet and crimson cups full to bursting with petals. When I part the petals with my nose and inhale, I go weak in the knees from the fruity perfume. But my birthdays are more like the daisies that grow alongside the roses. Ignored.
The sink looked odd next to our front door. My mother had it installed after I kept tracking in dirt and fertilizer from my greenhouse. I washed the soil off my hands with the warm water and used a file to clear the dirt out from under my nails. Then I exchanged one dirty pair of ugly tennis shoes for a pair of clean ugly tennis shoes and made my way into the kitchen. Mother didn’t allow a speck of soil from my greenhouse to dirty her home.
Paint on the cabinets peeled away in white curls. A single light bulb gave enough light to cook but not enough to read a recipe. My mother stood by the tiny window, her bottle blond hair twisted in a bun on the back of her head. She wiped her hands on her apron then smoothed a stray hair from my braid. I knelt down to tie my shoes, anything to avoid her touch. Physical touch burned, even something as little as a finger brushing my forehead.
“Wash your face. We have guests for dinner.” My stomach knotted. I tied and untied my shoes three times, wondering how to respond. Years ago, my father had closed our home to visitors. No one crossed our threshold. I was allowed to leave only to go to school and to church. Well, if you want to call it that. I’ve watched movies in school and I went to the Baptist church until I was eight. Our new church, Crusaders of God, was a bigger shock than no more pants. But Mother and Father called it church.
“Why?” I asked. My curiosity overrode my memory of the last question I asked when Grandma died and I wanted to know why I couldn’t go to the funeral. I stood and waited for the slap and a lecture.
Instead, she smiled like she was hiding something important.
“For your birthday. They’re friends of your father’s from church. We have a big surprise for you.”
Of course. Friends of my father. Nothing ever happened in our house unless he was the center of attention. Even on my birthday. At least they remembered. The surprise concerned me though, as the last surprise they announced turned out to be a drastic lifestyle change complete with long denim skirts and strict obedience. Oh, and no more birthdays. Until now, apparently. Maybe the surprise would be that my father finally found his sanity. That would be an amazing birthday present. I doubted I’d get that lucky.
Dinner took place in the dining room. The cheap chandelier struggled to fill the room with light as two of the bulbs were out and nobody bothered to replace them. Our mysterious dinner guest turned out to be familiar. And not the good kind of familiar either.
Dwayne Yerdin sat at the table. He was a senior at my school but ended up in quite a few of my classes even though he was two years older. I probably shouldn’t judge him. But with his heavy lidded, half closed eyes, buzzed head, and classic bully laugh, I had disliked him the moment I saw him. Perhaps he would prove my judgment wrong tonight. Seated next to him was a pudgy man in a suit. He wore a tie, but his neck was too thick to fasten the top button. He had the same heavy lidded eyes as Dwayne.
My father, a tall thin man with thick blond hair, saw me waiting in the doorway.
“Naomi, it’s about time. Come and meet Dwayne and his father. They go to church with us. Here, sit.”
My father indicated the chair next to Dwayne, but I sat across from him instead. My head buzzed with the act of disobedience and the air smelled faintly of wisteria. I almost smiled. A look of irritation passed over my father’s face, but he didn’t say anything. Next to my father, the pudgy man stared at me with piercing gray eyes.
My mother served us all pot roast and baked potatoes. She piled every plate high but hers and mine. Hunger kept me humble. And skinny. I focused on my food most of the dinner, not wanting to meet the pudgy man’s gaze. Or Dwayne’s. His eyes shifted rapidly around the room as if he were looking for the nearest exit. But when his eyes met mine he smirked, like he knew something I didn’t.
My father and Mr. Yerdin talked of politics and religion, not once acknowledging that anyone else sat at the table. Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised since more than one sermon had been preached about the place of women and children. We were inferior and didn’t deserve an opinion that differed from our husbands’ or fathers’, so it was best that we just didn’t say anything at all. As the conversation turned to the medical experiments Dad performed on the dog that had been dumped in our yard last week, I tuned out and tried to think of what I would get if I crossed an Iceberg rose with a Sunsprite. A nice pale yellow and only a few thorns. Could be interesting. If Grandma were still alive, she’d appreciate it.
A quick glance at the clock told me they’d only been here forty-five minutes, but it felt like days. After another excruciating hour, Mother presented the cake. The carrot cake (my father’s favorite) had sixteen candles on it. I had not had a cake with candles since my eighth birthday. On that day, the cake was chocolate, my favorite, but that was before Father went insane. I missed those days, the ones before he went crazy. When he would come home and take me canoeing and fishing. When we would wake up early on Saturdays and go to breakfast at Sheila’s Café. I blinked back tears thinking of the father he used to be.
After the cake, I moved to help my mother clean up, but Father put a hand on my wrist, a signal to stay seated. The skin burned where he touched it.
“See,” my father said, “she’s obedient.”
Mr. Yerdin grinned. “Yes, of course she is. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Dr. Aren. Dwayne, what do you think?”
Dwayne shrugged and shifted his eyes. Me, I kept my mouth shut and listened for the words that weren’t being said.
Mr. Yerdin eyed me up and down. “Well she certainly has the required blond hair and blue eyes.”
“And she’s a virgin.” My father spoke this a little too loudly and I flinched. My mother paused before picking up Mr. Yerdin’s plate. She met my father’s eyes and nodded. Then the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly.
My stomach sank at the thought of what my birthday surprise would be. Although part of me did not want to hear the rest of the conversation, but to escape back into the quiet world of flowers and dirt, another part of me needed to know what my future held, where being a virgin was important.
I cleared my throat. Dwayne smiled a wide toothy smile and my father glowered like I’d done something wrong. Which, of course I had, but it would be worth the punishment if I got the answers I needed.
“Could someone please explain?” There. I asked the question. So out of character for me and yet satisfying in a strange way, like the way I fel
t when a teacher praised me for a good job. I bit my bottom lip and tasted butterscotch, which was weird because the cake we had, contained nothing of the sort. While I knew asking questions was not an act of disobedience, I also recognized the power in the asking. As if I was taking control, even if that control was small. I took a sip of my water. Father hesitated for a moment and then frowned. He looked up and saw my mother standing in the kitchen, her eyes boring into his. He didn’t look away from her when he answered me.
“You’ll be marrying Dwayne.”
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Kimberly Loth can’t decide where she wants to settle down. She’s lived in Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Utah, California, Oregon, and South Carolina. She finally decided to make the leap and leave the U.S. behind for a few years. She spent two wild years in Cairo, Egypt. Currently, she lives in Shenzhen, China with her husband and two kids as a full time author. She loves romantic movies, chocolate, roses, and crazy adventures. She’s the author of Amazon bestselling series The Dragon Kings.
Also by Kimberly Loth
The Thorn Chronicles
Kissed: www.kimberlyloth.com/kissed
Destroyed: www.kimberlyloth.com/destroyed
Secrets: www.kimberlyloth.com/secrets
Lies: www.kimberlyloth.com/lies
The Dragon Kings
Obsidian: www.kimberlyloth.com/obsidian
Aspen: www.kimberlyloth.com/aspen
Valentine: www.kimberlyloth.com/valentine
Skye: www.kimberlyloth.com/skye
The Kings: www.kimberlyloth.com/kings
Omega Mu Alpha Brothers
Snowfall and Secrets: www.kimberlyloth.com/snowfall
Pyramids and Promises: www.kimberlyloth.com/pyramids
Folly and Forever: www.kimberlyloth.com/folly
Monkeys and Mayhem (Coming Jan 2017): www.kimberlyloth.com/monkeys
I truly cannot believe this series is at an end. These characters have been with me for so long that I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do without them. Someday, we’ll have to revisit them.
The Kings: The Dragon Kings Book 5 Page 18
