The speed with which they flew drove Skylar near unconsciousness. She hung limply in the massive talon, unable to register much more than the roar of the cold wind by her ears. The hood was torn off by their speed, giving her a view directly below. Air made her eyes water until the ocean and sky looked the same, further baffling her senses. She closed her eyes and stopped trying to orient herself.
Something bad had happened, if Chace hadn’t said anything to her before snatching her up and fleeing. She’d heard the low murmurs of two men speaking followed by the sound of breaking bones and tearing sinew, an indication Chace was changing into his dragon form.
Maybe my instincts were off. Hope surged within her. By the way he’d made love and spoken to her, she had an uneasy feeling that he was setting her up for something. Though what, she didn’t know. He’d given her the lasso, which she was able to use against him as well as the blue dragon.
Were they being chased? Was this the reason behind the breakneck speed?
Uncomfortable and helpless, she ducked her face behind a claw, trying to shield it from the cold air. The talon offered some warmth, and she wasn’t able to move her body to curl up or otherwise try to consolidate her body heat. She was shaking.
After a short while, she sensed their pace was slowing. It wasn’t enough for her to want to expose her face to the elements, but it gave her hope that maybe they weren’t being pursued.
Their speed slowed again, and the dragon began circling, a sign he was preparing to land. Huddled in his talon, she lifted her head enough to see where they were.
The first rays of sunlight pierced the dark blue skies to the east. The horizon was lined with yellow, and she got a better view of what was below them. They were headed to an isolated island in the middle of the ocean whose biggest terrain features were a building and a long beach. No other sort of land was anywhere in sight, and she ducked her head again, eyes quickly watering from the coldness of the air.
Moments later, they landed in the soft sand of the beach. She was released, and she rolled onto her belly, shaking too hard to move far. Her hands and feet were numb from cold, her stiff limbs not far behind. She rested her cheek against the cold sand and closed her eyes, comforted by the soothing sound of waves racing up and down the beach.
She guessed they had flown south, if the humidity of the air and its early morning warmth was any indication. Dawn lit up the eastern sky. The sun peered over the horizon. Bright pink and orange clouds drifted westward towards what remained of night. Sunlight warmed her face, and she closed her eyes to the brightness.
Her shivering gradually stopped, and her mind started to clear after the quick flight.
“Are you well?”
It wasn’t Chace’s voice.
So much for a pizza date. A pang of heartache almost took her breath away. She spent a moment to test her strength and reclaim her wits. The dragon was in its human form, which would make it easier to capture.
With a deep breath, Skylar pushed herself onto her knees then twisted until her back was to the sunrise.
A stranger crouched a few feet from her, watching her closely with sharp blue eyes. The ocean breeze ruffled black hair peppered with silver, the only sign of his age. He was otherwise fit and trim with olive-hued skin and a runner’s body clothed in black.
A vision from one of her dreams returned full force, almost knocking her to the ground with its intensity.
Skylar stood on a hill overlooking a large farm that was ablaze, from the old farmhouse where she’d spent her summers to the cornfields that ran in each direction as far as she could see. Her gaze followed the billowing smoke upward toward the sky. The great blue dragon circled high above. Sun glinted off his dark scales, creating small rainbows around him.
“Mama, where is he going?” she asked.
“C’mon, Sky. You have to get out of the open. They’ll see you!” her mother replied.
Skylar retreated from the hilltop to the car waiting down below on a dirt, country road. Her mother was shaking, her face covered in soot.
Skylar looked down at her hands and saw them, too, covered with soot and streaked with blood. The sight left her rattled.
“Are we going home now?” she asked anxiously.
“No, baby. We can’t go home. They’ll find us there. We just have to keep moving,” her mother said and got into the car. “Get in, Sky.”
She obeyed her mother and climbed in. “Will he be okay?”
“If we get far enough away from him, yes,” her mother answered, tense. Her eyes flickered to the rearview mirror. “They figured out how to track the protectors, baby. That means we have to go as far from him as possible.”
“But how can we protect him from so far away?” Young Skylar grappled with the issue.
“He will find us when it’s safe, when he’s figured out who is taking away the protectors and hiding them.”
“But … I’ll miss … him.” Despite her mother’s calmness, Skylar wasn’t able to stop the tears.
“It’s okay, baby,” Ginger said softly. “I promise. Your daddy won’t let anything happen to you and neither will I.”
She shook her head to clear the vision.
“Father,” she said before she could stop herself. “You’re my father.”
“You remember.”
She barely heard him. Skylar stared at the man before her. He was much less … fatherly than she expected. There was nothing soft or caring about him. He was tense as if for battle with eyes colder than the blue sky they’d flown through to get there. And a dragon?
“Is this a joke?” she demanded, baffled. “Did you, like, scramble my brain or something?”
“I’m the only one who hasn’t scrambled your brain.” His smile was small, one of bitter amusement.
“But you’re a dragon.”
“You’re a dragon protector. You don’t shift, but you have dragon blood running through your veins.”
“You fried innocent people!”
“There was nothing innocent about the people I fried,” he snapped. “They kidnapped you when you were thirteen and spent years brainwashing you. You weren’t the only one. All of the slayers went through the same thing. Only a protector can track a shifter, so who better to use to kill off the shifters?”
“That’s absurd,” she said. Even as she said it, she knew his words built upon what Chace had told her and the memories that were emerging. The only truth that made sense was the one she didn’t want to be real. “You’re saying the last six years of my life have been fake!”
“Pretty much. You’ve got a lot to relearn about the shifter community and your own history.” The blue dragon shifter stood, squinting towards the sun in clear discomfort. “I’m nocturnal by nature. I’ll be in the house, when you’re ready to talk.”
Skylar watched him walk away, almost relieved he was leaving her alone. Her body wasn’t right yet, and her mind was about to explode. If she was a dragon, she’d burn the island to the ground.
But she wasn’t. She was a dragon protector, born to another protector and a dragon.
“This is just fucking insane.” It made her head hurt, and she gripped it, trying to rationalize everything she had learned the past few weeks. How could everything she’d ever remember knowing be a lie?
On one hand, she wanted to follow him into the house to demand answers.
On the other, she was afraid of what she’d discover.
Her eyes swept over the home of the dragon on the isolated island. He didn’t live in a cave like she expected but in a modern, low, concrete bunker-style house with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the beaches and ocean and a sliding glass door that led directly onto the beach on which she stood.
She made herself comfortable on the beach, lying on her back and staring at the sky. Her mind was trying to reconcile her dreams with her reality and the stranger she knew to be her father with the monster who fried twenty people she thought she’d know for years.
Her last dream-like memory had been when she was thirteen of Caleb coming for her and her mother disappearing.
Skylar resisted the urge to run in the house and ask after her dream-mom. She stayed on the beach, staring at the blue sky as the sun rose. She didn’t try to focus her thoughts but let her emotions collide and coalesce as she attempted to process her new world. She felt no connection to the blue dragon, even if some part of her acknowledged his relationship to her. Understanding why he hadn’t fried her did little to help her wrestle with the truth that Chace had given her up.
This she felt, deep enough to hurt. Had he known that he was turning her over to her father, or was he just getting her out of the way? There had been regret in his lovemaking, an aching despair that led her to believe he didn’t know she’d be safe with the blue dragon.
Assuming she was safe. He’s not exactly the friendly type.
Skylar clenched her hands behind her head, wishing she understood exactly what had transpired between Chace and her father. She prayed with no small amount of desperation that Chace had known she was going to be safe at least. Before this moment, she hadn’t realized just how hard she’d fallen for him. It was far more than physical; it was primal instinct that had drawn her to him.
The idea he had abandoned her – that he didn’t feel the same – was more painful for her to consider than the remains of her shattered life.
It was noon before her patience grew too thin for her to stay on the beach. The humid morning had turned into a balmy, hot early afternoon. Accustomed to a dry heat, she hated the idea of sweating when just lying around.
Skylar reluctantly approached the concrete and glass structure. She hoped the door was locked, giving her a reason not to go in and face reality, but it wasn’t.
She walked into the cool interior. The open floor plan was large and minimally decorated. A modern living area was along the curved edge of the windows and house while a kitchen of stainless steel everything sat in the middle of the rounded wing of the house. The colors were likewise cool, as if to offset the hot climate outside. Crisp white walls and ceilings, light grey furniture, tarnished silver fixtures, and light blues and greens in the rugs and pillows.
While she had no guess as to what dragons did in their down time, she didn’t expect to find this one reading on an electronic reader, seated in the living area with a glass of water on the accent table beside the light grey couch.
It was yet another reminder that nothing she’d been told about dragons had yet to be proven accurate.
He didn’t move or address her as she crossed to the living area. Skylar set down on the chair facing him, the enormity of her situation settling across her shoulders.
The dragon shifter met her gaze. For a long moment, she wasn’t certain how to start. After all, this was her father, the man she thought had died before she was a year old.
“So …” She cleared her throat. “You don’t seem happy to see your alleged, long lost daughter.”
“I spent ten years trying to find you and you turn up brainwashed. Not entirely certain happiness is what I should be feeling.”
Her face grew warm. “Right. What do I call you? Don’t think daddy is going to work for me.”
“Gavin.”
“Okay. I’m Skylar.” She paused. “Aren’t I?”
“Yes.” He offered an almost-smile.
“Okay, Gavin. What is my mother’s name?”
“Ginger.”
Ugh. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I’m assuming dead. They probably killed her to get to you.”
It was one memory Skylar was glad she didn’t recall. While she wanted to know what happened, part of her didn’t want to go through remembering seeing her mother dying.
Was this the next dream she’d have? She’d seen Caleb come to her house. Did he slaughter her mother then kidnap her?
Skylar rose, unable to sit still with such a thought.
“How are you so … you’re a sociopath, aren’t you?” she demanded. “You’ve got no emotions.”
“I’ve had ten years to deal with this. Dragons as old as I am tend to have more self-control than normal people,” he replied. “My focus was finding you.”
“How old are you?”
“A little over five thousand, give or take a century.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“Just you.”
She eyed him in disbelief.
“Shifters can take mates. I had hundreds of protectors who watched over me, but the only I loved was your mother. I never wanted kids. You were a surprise,” he added with a look of mild accusation.
“That shit ain’t my fault,” she retorted. “I’m not fully convinced this is the truth anyway. I mean, obviously, if I can be brainwashed once, I can be twice.” Or maybe more.
Gavin stood and breezed by her. “Follow me,” he said curtly.
She hesitated, watching him stride through the kitchen and down a hallway into the depths of the house. After a moment, her curiosity got the better of her, and she trailed him.
He went to a guest bedroom and was pulling scrapbook-sixed containers out from under the bed and setting them on top. His movements were quick and effortless but jerky – a sign he was experiencing some sort of emotion.
“The first thirteen years of your life are here,” he said in the same brusque tone. “Should be enough proof to convince you.” He didn’t wait for her response but left, the sizzle of anger in the air around him.
Skylar heard him retreat down the hallway. She considered the containers, dread in her stomach. Did she really want to remember?
She went to the bed and sat, drawing one of the containers to her. Popping it open, she pulled out one of the two scrapbooks it contained and pushed the heavy cover open.
She smiled at the definitely feminine writing and artsy display on the first page.
Sky’s five! It read and was surrounded with stickers, paper cut outs and other scrapping embellishments in bright shades of pumpkin and yellow.
Her heart pounding, Skylar flipped to the first pages. An image of her at the age of five – grinning with icing smeared across one cheek – seated in front of a cake and wrapped in her mother’s arms was on one side. She studied her mother, a beautiful woman with chiseled cheekbones and a brilliant smile. They shared the same shade of brunette hair and cerulean eyes.
The picture on the opposite page was of her sitting on one of the wings of the blue dragon, apparently having a tea party while he dozed. She was bundled up, and the skies in the distance were grey.
She almost laughed at the bizarre sight, not understanding how she’d been so calm around the massive, otherworldly creature when so young.
Turning the page, she saw all three of them: the stoic shifter with his almost-smile, her mother grinning and herself. Gavin’s arms were around the petite Ginger while Ginger’s were around her.
She turned the pages, taking in the photos, the pre-school graduation certificate and tassel, and her mother’s cute, quirky commentary with growing alarm.
Skylar’s heart was soaring. She didn’t recall any of this old life, and she was almost glad. She didn’t want to imagine what she should be feeling by rediscovering everything she’d lost.
She closed the scrapbook then opened the next. Her mother had made a new one for each year of her life, so she opened all the boxes and put them in order then started flipping through them from the beginning. She saw her as a newborn in her exhausted mother’s arms in the hospital and one of Gavin, who seemed uncertain holding her but was smiling. The pictures were numerous in the first book, her mother’s scrapping clearly that of a beginner. But Ginger’s joy was clear in every page and comment, and the pages were cluttered with pictures and stickers.
Skylar finished and went to the next book, then the next. It was almost like learning about someone else’s life. She knew the girl in the pictures was her, but she didn’t remember any of it.
The more scrapbooks she flipped through, the more she realized that she wasn’t able to recall anything from her youth, aside from the memories that appeared in her dreams. There weren’t even any false memories to replace the real ones. There was just … nothing. As if she’d been born when she was seventeen. The first memories she recalled were of being trained by Caleb, meeting Mason, Dillon and the rest of the staff at the Field two years before, and learning everything she knew about dragons and shifters.
The pictures in the thirteenth scrapbook stopped less than a quarter of the way through. The rest of the pages were blank. The last was of Skylar on the front porch of the farmhouse from her dream.
She closed the book, a sense of loss making her ache. She didn’t recall her first thirteen years, but there was at least proof of who she was and what she’d gone through.
There was nothing for the four years after the final picture in the last scrapbook. Like she had fallen off the face of the earth.
Or spent four years being brainwashed.
She opened the last scrapbook again, looking for some sign of what happened to the girl whose life she’d followed for the first thirteen years. She flipped through the empty pages, hoping there was a picture or something she’d missed, one last piece of her mother and the life she didn’t remember.
Tucked between the last pages of the scrapbook was a piece of notebook paper folded into thirds. It was well preserved, though the ink had sunk through the paper and left marks on the pages of the scrapbook. She unfolded it, recognizing her mother’s loopy, cheerful handwriting.
Gavin,
I hope you’re doing well. I know you’re alive, and that’s enough for me to sleep at night. Sky and I talk about you all the time. She misses you as much as I do.
I think they’re getting closer. I’ve noticed people following me again. I wish I knew how to give our daughter the life she deserves. I can find out nothing from the other protectors except that more of them are disappearing. It’s too much of a risk to keep talking to them, but that makes for a really lonely life right now. Hopefully, it changes soon.
Sometimes, I get so tired of running. I’m praying you can find the shifter you’re looking for, and we can build the island getaway we talked about. Then Sky will be safe, and we’ll be together again.
Until then … know I’ll do whatever I can to protect our baby girl.
Keep safe, my love.
Ginger
Something splashed onto the letter, and Sky wiped it away quickly to keep from destroying what might’ve been the last written letter from her mother. She swiped tears from her eyes next, not expecting the short letter to affect her as it did. It left her with many questions but also the knowledge that her mother and father had loved each other deeply.
“Not sure how,” she murmured, thoughts on the cold, distant Gavin. She re-read the letter, touched by her mother’s hope and also her despair, a poignant combination Skylar was beginning to experience as well.
She started to put it away then stopped and closed the book. The letter wasn’t addressed to her, but she felt more connected to the two people within it than she did with any of the pictures.
Skylar tucked it into her pocket and straightened. After not moving for hours, she grunted at her stiff body. Stretching lightly, she replaced the scrapbooks in their containers and gently pushed them under the bed.
Her head was hurting, maybe from spending the day hunched over the scrapbooks. A wave of dizziness hit her, and she felt suddenly weak, off balance. The episode passed. Attributing it to her insane day, she pushed herself away from the wall that caught her when she almost fell.
She found the bathroom next then made her way through the house, stopping to stare when she reached the kitchen.
The rounded wing of the house lined by windows held almost a 360-degree view of the ocean. The sunset was brilliant, coloring the white floors, walls and grey furniture in bright fuchsia, oranges, and purples. The red-orange sun was perched on the distant horizon, about to sink into the depths of the sea.
She searched for Gavin with her gaze and found him standing on the beach facing east, where night had begun to claim the sky.
She slid open the door to the beach and approached him, uncertain what he was doing. He seemed to be listening or maybe, using his dragon senses.
“I think I know the answer to this question, but is this your secret island sanctuary?” she asked, once again uncertain how to fill the awkward silence.
“It is.” He glanced at her and shook out his arms, frame relaxing. “Took me a long time to build. It’s off the radar of everyone: humans, shifters, protectors, slayers.”
“I take it you were too late to save Ginger.” And me. But she couldn’t say it out loud yet, wasn’t quite able to accept the surreal world she’d witnessed within the pages of the scrapbooks.
Gavin said nothing.
She sensed it was a sore point.
“Why couldn’t you find the people chasing her?” she asked.
There was a silence. She didn’t think he was going to answer.
“My generation of shifters is nocturnal. The people after you and your mother knew this. They moved around during daylight and hid too well after dark. There wasn’t much I could do,” he replied slowly. “Chace made more progress in his few days of scouting around than I could in six years.”
She winced at the dragon shifters name. As if rediscovering her history wasn’t enough to confuse her …
“You were working together?” she ventured.
“I wouldn’t say it like that. He had something I needed and I had something he wanted. We made a couple of deals, until everyone was happy.”
“He had me, and you had … what?”
“Magic he doesn’t have. The old generation of dragons were more powerful, which was why we were limited to night activity.”
“I thought he hated magic.”
“He does. He needed mine to become human again.”
She absorbed the information. It was plausible, given the trouble Chace seemed to have controlling his power and the story behind him being made into a shifter.
“Could be worse,” she reasoned. “Did he know who you were when he traded me?”
“That I’m a dragon or your father?”
“Father.”
“No.”
“Ouch.” She frowned, stung by the idea Chace had traded her for something as selfish as being made human again. Wasn’t there some part of him that cared for her? How did he just turn her over to the creature that fried her coworkers?
“Can’t trust the new generation,” Gavin said.
“Guess not.”
“He mentioned you’re marked by one of the shifters.”
“Yeah. And?”
“If it’s in a decent spot, I’d like to see it.” Gavin faced her.
“That sounded dad-like,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Will you tell me what it means?”
He nodded.
She turned her back to him, looked at the sand and lifted her hair to reveal the tattoo. She waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, she turned to face him once more.
Her father was gone. The blue dragon was back, his long wings propelling him silently into the darkening sky.
“Damn, moody dragon shifters,” she grumbled. “What is wrong with you people?” It came out as a strangled shout, the words burning their way through her tight throat.
So much for learning more terrifying truth tonight. Clearly stuck on an island, Skylar went inside.
She stood in the cool interior, facing the way her father had flown off. The sky grew darker as she watched, and she couldn’t help the sense of concern that made her stomach churn.
“Why the hell is it so cold in here?” She shivered, an odd feeling sinking into her. She didn’t feel right, but she didn’t know why.
Skylar sat on the couch and picked up the glass of water her father had left on the stand beside the couch. She took a deep swig then coughed, swallowing hard enough to make her eyes water.
“Vodka!” she managed. “Maybe we are related.”
Whether it was the alcohol or the stress of her day, she suddenly felt drowsy. Skylar stretched out on the couch.
“Let’s not kill the shifter your little girl thinks she might really like,” she whispered to her father before drifting into an unnatural sleep.