Page 15 of Once Upon A Bear

Although it did seem cruel to keep her inside too much. “Have you thought about visiting the mountains?” she asked the young dragon. “I know that you could have more freedom there, and there’s nothing saying that you can’t come back after you spread your wings and fly for a little bit.”

She looked up at Beatrice, who looked genuinely devastated at the thought of Rose leaving.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have said it. She hadn’t quite remembered that Rose was Beatrice and Alexander’s pet…but still, she was not just a pet.

She was a dragon, and a dragon ought to be free.

“I’d miss Beatrice,” Rose said, looking over at the human who had become her surrogate mother.

“You could always just visit the mountains to stretch your wings,” Guinevere pointed out.

Rose hummed in agreement as the men ambled in, and Alexander took his place next to his wife, leaving Gideon free to take the seat next to Guinevere. If they had made their way to the formal dining room, there would have been many chairs, but the breakfast room seated four regularly. Alexander and Beatrice didn’t like to stand on formality when it was just them and Guinevere, and apparently Gideon was now included in that.

When Gideon sat down next to her and looked over to see Rose in her lap, a boyish grin split his face.

It was adorable.

“Hello, kitty,” he said, reaching over to pet her, entirely unaware of the fact that this put him very close to Guinevere’s personal space. “Aren’t you so pretty?”

His voice was smooth as he mumbled the words with that deep voice that Guinevere was beginning to associate with him when his bear form decided to surface.

And he clearly had no idea of Rose’s true identity.

“Rose is actually a dragon,” Guinevere told him, the corner of her mouth turning up in a smirk. Would he believe her?

His eyes widened, and his hands stilled as he looked at the cat on her lap. “Normally, I would assume that you’re simply teasing me, but after everything else I’ve learned the past few years, I’m not convinced that you are.”

Rose let out a meow that was only a meow, not a word.

Alexander sighed and looked around the room. It was empty except for the five of them, the door was closed, and there was no one outside the open window. “You may show him, Rose.”

Rose hopped off Guinevere’s lap and, in an instant, transformed into her dragon self. She was much larger now, the size of a large goat, and Gideon seemed appropriately impressed, his eyes wide as he stared at the dragon.

Though Guinevere was pretty sure that most dragons were typically bigger than Rose. Whether she was a runt or had become stunted when her egg was stolen from the nesting grounds, Guinevere wasn’t sure. But according to one of her magic books, dragons could be much larger than Rose was.

“Wow,” he muttered under his breath. “I suppose… I suppose there are more of you?” he asked her.

“Of course there are more dragons,” Rose said. “I’m not the only one. I was taken by a bad man as an egg, and he used my magic until it was time for me to hatch.”

Guinevere translated for Gideon, who seemed disturbed by the thought.

“Would he have—” He stopped talking, then growled.

“A wand with an egg on the end of it?” Alexander nodded grimly. “Yes. That is exactly what he would have had.”

Gideon’s shoulders slumped, as if he was relieved that someone knew what he was talking about without him having to say it.

“I wondered if you and I had run into the same man, and now it seems we did,” Gideon said. “Unless there’s another one.”

“I don’t think many people know where the hatching grounds are,” Guinevere said. “They are a well-kept secret.”

She had only stumbled across them once and had not gone back since, for fear of drawing others’ attention to them. But she would love nothing more than to go back and see them—she’d been so drawn to them.

“How many dragons are there?” Gideon asked.

“I don’t know,” Guinevere said with a slight shrug. “I haven’t studied them the way I should. I’ve mostly only read about them. As much as I would love to become an expert in dragons, my resources seemed better put to use in learning about potions, since that is where my skills lie.”

“Are you sure they can be called skills?” Alexander asked with a grimace.