“Nothing,” said Alexander sharply. “Our world has extreme rules, rigid rules. The number one rule is you can never, under any circumstances, tell a human about us. This rule is punishable by death.”
“So what will we do about Benjamin?”
“That’s your husband?” Alexander asked.
Mom nodded.
“I’m working on a spell, so that you could tell him, but he’d be totally unable to tell anyone else, leaving us safe.”
“I’m not totally sure I even want to tell him. He’s a very religious man.”
Sighing, I laid back on the bed. “Yeah, he’s gonna flip.”
“It doesn’t matter at this point, the spell isn’t finished.” Alexander pulled out my vanity bench and sat down. “It’s still some weeks from being finished. You have time to come to terms with it.”
“I don’t know if I ever will. Will I continue to age?”
“We don’t know.” I squeezed her. “We are almost positive we’ll stop aging.”
“I’ll have to say goodbye to the second great love of my life, won’t I?”
Alexander smiled ruefully. “You’ll learn to only love those that can match your life expectancy, which could be hundreds of years to come.”
We sat with my mom for another hour, chatting about what a huge change her life was taking. She wasn’t happy about it like I was. She’d lived her life and was ready to face the next stage with my dad.
Eventually we made our way downstairs and talked to Riley, filling Mom in on everything we could think of.
“I’m only a short drive away.” She left out the part about the portal travel. “Call me anytime you need to talk, and I can be here within a couple of hours.”
Mom hugged us all as if we were her lifeline, but we had to leave before my dad got home and saw Linna. Plus we had no cover story to give him to explain all of us being there.
The ride back to the house was quiet. We trooped inside and said our goodbyes there. The portal there took us home to the castle.
It was late in Ireland, so we said our goodnights. I wiped the makeup off my face with a cleansing wipe and stared at myself in the mirror.You didn’t do this. This isn’t your fault. It would’ve happened to her whether it happened to you or not.I forced myself to let go of the guilt. Just because I had to deliver the news didn’t mean it was my fault.
I went to sleep hoping the next time we had to break it to someone that they were a dragon shifter, they’d be more excited.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mom called the next day. She’d been up most of the night combing through an ancestry website, looking for names and dates, tracing her lineage back. We had no way of knowing if it came from her father or mother, so every stone had to be turned.
We’d either get lucky and figure out by someone turning, or we’d be able to trace it back to when the original Sárkány walked the Earth. Maybe someone like Boudicca could help us, if we could find her. She was on a mission of her own to find her descendants, which was good. Eventually our paths would cross in the search.
I made my way to the village for lunch with Kelly. She was busy in the shop so I priced and shelved a stack of books that had been delivered. When she finished with her customers we went upstairs for what was becoming a lunchtime habit for us. She cooked, I ate, and we talked.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t make any dinner last night. So we’ll have sandwiches if that’s okay with you,” Kelly said as she pulled ingredients from the fridge.
“Absolutely! I’ll help.” I slathered the bread with condiments and helped pile the sandwiches up as I relayed the story of telling my mom.
“So what’s the next step?”
“We have to figure out if it came from her mom or dad. The only way to do that is to keep tracing the lineage back as far as possible, and trace it out as well. We’ll get a clue when we hear about someone else scaling out unexpectedly. We need a breakthrough.”
“Why can’t you do a spell?”
“I don’t know the details. Alexander still seems to be coddling me. I think I’m going to demand to be allowed to go to the council with him and see what all is going on.”
“Do you think he’ll let you?” she asked as she took a big bite of her sandwich.
