Chapter Twenty-Six
Tor
“Holy. Shit.”
I stifled a toothy grin as Mia’s curses only grew more varied from there. A dragon’s grin, full of teeth half the size of her, was perhaps not something she needed to see right away. The reveal of my true nature was likely enough.
My wings spread wide, a brilliant sapphire blue like my eyes. They stretched, and I suppressed a groan at using muscles I hadn’t flexed in nearly a week. It felt good to finally be back, not just in my realm but in my true form.
The membranes eventually calmed, and I folded them down along my sides, where the wings were actually duller in color than my scales, which reflected the light of the Rift to reveal their near baby-blue coloring, marking me as a pure born noble, descended directly from the immortal God-King himself.
Reflexively, I glanced upward, my orange cat-like pupils staring at the ceiling. Far above that resided the God-King, at the very peak of Mount Drakonus. What he did up there, I had no idea.
“Tor?” a tiny voice squeaked, bringing my attention back to ground level.
“Hi.” The voice that emerged from my mouth was deeper and full of melodic undertones, making it somewhat sing-song, but it was definitely still me. I could see that recognition in Mia’s eyes.
“You’re a … dragon,” she said, licking her lips, her eyes wide.
“I am,” I said softly, lowering my head to the ground and resting it on the floor, hoping that was as unassuming as it felt. I needed to put her at ease.
“Ha-ha, yeah, right!” Mia said, looking around. “Well played. Good trick. Where are the mirrors? How did you do this? That was incredible. Are there cameras making it look like you’re a dragon?”
“Yes,” I said, deciding to play along with her thoughts. “Just walk straight forward. Hands out. You’ll go through the projection and see it from the other side.”
Mia frowned, slowly approaching my dragon, her hands out in front of her. The closer she got, the slower her steps became.
“I can feel the breath of your nostrils,” she said as my neck curled around to watch her reach my left flank.
“I know.” I didn’t say anything more. There didn’t seem to be anything I could say. I was winging the whole reveal-thing anyway. I had no idea how to go about it. Nobody did. We weren’t supposed to let humans know what we were. Yet there I was, forcing one of them to come to grips with it.
No, not “one of them.” She’s my mate! She’s more than any other human. She has the soul of a dragon in her.
I’d already seen bits and pieces of that, from how she reacted to certain stresses or problems. The electricity of a storm dragon fueled her soul, and I couldn’t wait to dive into understanding Mia completely and thoroughly.
Soft hands made contact with one of my scales, drawing me back to reality as Mia gasped. “This is so lifelike. I thought you said it was a projection.”
“How else was I supposed to get you to come closer, Mia?” I said gently. “I need you to see that this is real. That I am not faking it. I am a dragon.”
“A dragon,” she said. “You’re a dragon. You can transform into a dragon?”
“Technically, I can transform into a human,” I said. “We are dragons. You are in the dragon realm.”
“In the dragon realm,” she said distantly, feeling her way along my flank, to my tail, and up the other side, alternating between dragging her fingertips across scales and spikes on my tail to pressing her palms flat, feeling the coolness against her skin.
“So, what do you think?”
She paused, glancing at my snout and then my eyes. “I don’t know what to think. Why are you showing me this?”
I hesitated. I longed to tell her the truth. That she was my mate, and we were going to be together forever. That the rest of our lives began that day. And, most importantly, that she was dragon royalty. My Princess. In name and spirit.
But I didn’t tell her. I kept that information to myself. For the time being.
I will tell her, I swore. When she’s ready to hear it. Right now, it would be too much. She’s been through enough today. I’ll let her come to terms with what I am before I tell her what we are.
“Tor?” she prompted.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “But when you stumbled on Temp coming through the Rift, there was no going back.”
Mia jerked like she’d been stung, looking at the Rift. “No going back? You mean I’m stuck here, forever, in dragon land?”
“What? No! No, that’s not what I meant at all,” I said, rushing to calm her before she got too worked up. “I was just referring to revealing the truth to you, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I wanted you to know you aren’t crazy. That we aren’t men from Mars or anything like that.”
“But you are from a different planet.”
“Realm,” I corrected. “Connected to Earth.”
Mia’s brown eyes watched me with a certain amount of skepticism. “Nobody’s going to believe me,” she said softly.
“Nobody’s going to know,” I said, beginning the change again and reassuming my human form. “Because you aren’t going to tell them. Any of them. You can’t tell them, Mia.”
“Right,” she whispered, looking me up and down, then at the blank space around me where my dragon form had been as if trying to merge the two bodies in her mind. “It’s a secret.”
“One we’ve worked very, very hard to keep to ourselves and away from humanity.” I tried to keep my voice soft without injecting too much sternness into it.
“I understand,” she said in that same soft voice. “So, what now? Am I your prisoner for life?”
“No,” I said, smiling at her. “Nothing like that. But you will have to stay with us at the house for a bit longer than planned.”
“Why? What did I do? What about my job?” she asked, worry coloring her words and her face.
I found I didn’t like seeing her upset. Not in the slightest.
“It’s not about you,” I said. “It’s about my sister.”
“Your sister.” Mia jerked. “She’s a dragon, too.”
I nodded.
“Ty? That other big guy, what did you call him, Temp? They’re both dragons?”
I nodded again.
“I see.” Her eyelids crinkled as she thought furiously. “Your sister is a dragon. And she hates you.”
“And probably wants to hurt me,” I added. “If not kill me.”
Mia licked her lips. “Does she want to kill me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, in all honesty. I don’t think she really knows about you yet. She just thinks you’re my house cleaner.”
“Aren’t I?” Mia asked, conveniently ignoring what had happened between us at her house the night before.
“If she finds out about you, I can’t predict what she’ll do,” I said, deciding to ignore her question. I wouldn’t lie to her. Not about that. “So you should stay in the house, where you’re safe, until I figure out what to do about her. She’s already a nuisance enough.”
Mia tilted her head to the side in question.
“She’s the one who disabled your car,” I explained. “She also blew up my battery at your house, then hit us with the lightning bolt on our way home this morning.”
“That was all her?” Mia yelped.
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say she’s a big danger to me. I almost died several times because of her, Tor! She almost killed you. You went through the windshield …” She trailed off.
I smiled. “I wasn’t in any danger of dying. Just a bit of pain. We’re very resilient like that.”
“Must be nice,” she said.
“It has its perks,” I admitted with a heavy sigh. “But you’re right. She’s a threat to me, but also you. A threat I have to eliminate if I’m going to protect you.”
And I will protect you, my mate. With everything I have. No matter the personal cost. Even if it destroys me.