“Trust me, Phillip, you are not seeing things clearly. I talked them into letting me slip out and I conned them into letting me stay for a few weeks. They don’t even know what or who I am.”
“Bullshit, Christin. You’ve never been too smart.”
Christin gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to think about how many times she had heard such things from him.
“No, I guess not. I married you, didn’t I?”
She thought that he would be mad, but he just chuckled. “Yes, you did and that was a mistake. Your family’s legacy is gone and now you are exactly where you should be, in a cage. If the humans can’t keep you in one successfully, I assure you that I will have no problem doing so.”
Christin didn’t want to beg him, but she also didn’t want to stay there with no light for the rest of her life either. She had never learned what it was that Phillip wanted from her, besides to be his plaything to torture. That was all it felt like he ever did, and Christin started to see how she was never going to break from him. It was impossible to imagine it, but there was nothing that she could do about it, nothing at all.
“Will you let me see our son?”
He smiled but it never reached his cool, gray eyes. “Now why would I let you do a thing like that?”
Christin’s heart was breaking so much it hurt. She should have known that Phillip was never going to have any compassion for her. This was just another phase of her torture. How could she have been so stupid as to come back there alone? She should have stayed in prison. Then, Broch wouldn’t have been attacked, and she would still feel some kind of peace. How could she ever have peace now?
Chapter 24
Broch
The coffee was cold, but Broch drank it anyway. He was almost done with talking altogether. He was tired, and his head felt like it was going to explode. The person at fault for all of this was him. He should have never saved Christin. He hadn’t had a choice, though he could see now that everything was changed. He had started a war and from the sound of it, he might not be able to win. Dragons, what the hell?
“So, tell me again, how she is?”
Broch smiled at Eve. She was hard not to like, looking so much like her daughter. It was the father though, that Christin really took after. She had the same fire, and the same passion was there. There was also a ruthlessness that reminded him that they had both seen carnage. Broch had no idea how she had survived such a man. The more he learned, the more he wanted to kill Phillip for his own reasons. It wasn’t hard to dislike him for being with Christin, touching her, making her flinch when another man touched her.
“She is well. She is stubborn and is trying to get her son back. She kept all of this to herself. I never knew that she was a dragon until I looked you two up. Then, it all came together.”
“It sounds like the two of you are close.”
Broch tried not to squirm. No answers were had.
“We are getting there.”
“I wish we could see her. It has been so long. I don’t even know what she looks like anymore. She was so young when she married him. I am afraid she will hate us though. We pushed this. We didn’t give her a choice.”
“I think that Christin would love to see you. She misses you and has talked about you, though it is always with sadness. You should come with me.”
“I would love to go. What do you think, dear?” Eve searched her husband’s face, and they came to a mutual agreement.
“We will go with you, Broch. Take us to our daughter.”
Broch agreed. “Gladly. She is going to be so happy to see you.”
***
As always lately, Broch didn’t get the homecoming that he had imagined. Christin was not there and there was no one else at the mansion. He looked around, and finally apologized to his new guests, found them a room and then made himself scarce so that he could talk to Ernest. He was the one that was supposed to be watching her and making sure that she was safe. Now, she was gone, and he had come to the burnt elders. Broch was livid, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. He had to find out where she was, and he would worry about the rest of it later.
Ernest wasn’t much help. He was all apologizing, but that wasn’t something that he wanted to hear at the current moment. He didn’t need to hear any of that. He needed to know where Christin had gone and the longer he sat there asking, the more frustrated with his lot he became.
Broch was on the move, but it was hard to cover her trail because Christin went high very quickly, and he lost it almost at once. He didn’t want to call it a wash, but he was thinking that maybe it was time for him to see it as things really were. They weren’t getting better; they were getting worse.
When he got back home, her parents were anxious, and he had to face facts that Christin had probably been taken. She was gone and he didn’t think that she would disappear like that, if not for one thing. She had tried to get her kid and maybe this time, Phillip’s men had caught her. It was the worst-case scenario, but it was quickly looking like the right scenario.
Eve suggested that they all go see Phillip, but Richard didn’t agree.
“He has so many dragons underneath him. We need to get some of them back. Some are still loyal to me and my family. They have been disgraced in our clan, banished like Christin was in the end, but they will come back and fight, earn their honor and dignity back.”
