Page 55 of Dragon’s Rebel

Tyr looked puzzled. “Zefir don’t have feelings,” he said. “Do they?”

Rebel thought of the irritated zefir almost-slamming the balcony door of her room last night. “Um, yeah,” she said. “You guys didn’t know that?”

Zane said, “I’ve always been nice to them. It seems like the least I can do for the people—beings—who make me cake.”

“Huh,” Tyr muttered. “I need to look up some references on that. I wonder if…”

“Focus, people?” Thorne said.

Rebel grinned. He was back to his normal, grumpy self. She noticed, though, that when Blaze’s cat, Bucephalus, came in and twined around his chair legs, purring, Thorne slipped him some slivers of steak.

Softy.

Thorne ate and listened to the situation reports, a feeling of satisfaction slipping over him. He was back where he needed to be, making sure everything was working according to plan.

And making new plans. Now that he had his human body back, they could do some real work finding the Seal.

At least, they could if Rebel didn’t try to back out of mating with him. Had she really invoked the mating bond to free him from Vyrkos? If so, he wondered if she realized what she’d done.

He’d just have to win her over before she realized she’d trapped herself.

He watched her plowing through a plate of steak and fried potatoes, showing every evidence of being just fine.

She seemed so solid and together, but he was beginning to realize how much pain she was masking underneath that tough exterior.

He didn’t know how to connect with her. Every time he thought he’d made some progress, she slipped out of his reach again.

“So we had this idea,” Zane was saying. “Since Rebel and Tempest don’t know where their Seals are, we’ve been working under the assumption they may have been lost somewhere along the line because their importance was not understood. So far, we’ve checked out all the places they lived in foster care, and gone through all the possessions they’ve kept with them since childhood. Nothing has pinged on our radar.”

“Which it might not, until they bond with their Destined Mates,” Tyr said.

“Yes, I know,” Zane said wearily. “But we can only do the best we can, and hope that by checking out every avenue, it will give the Seals the opportunity to reveal themselves. That’s what we did with the Dragonfly Seal, and we were successful.”

“Blaze had her Seal tattooed on her ass,” Rebel pointed out. “I do not.”

“Are you sure?” Tyr said, leering. “I could check.”

Thorne growled at him. “I’m sure.”

Tyr’s eyes went wide. “Does that mean there was naked boinking? Are you two—”

Zane began to talk loudly over him, saving Thorne the trouble of head-slapping him.

“We agreed the next step was to go back even further, to the last place Rebel and Tempest lived with their family. And that’s where we ran into a dead end.”

“Because we don’t remember,” Rebel said.

That still didn’t sit right with Thorne. Rebel’s memories of the time leading up to her parents’ death had been blurred, although he suspected she remembered the attack itself vividly. Too much so.

Tempest had no memory of that night—in fact, she had no memory of their parents at all.

It was clear someone had tampered with their memories. The question was who, and why? And how to find the missing pieces?

Zane skipped tactfully over that part. The few times they’d brought it up, Rebel had stormed out in a rage. That was another indicator of tampering—implanting a resistance to the person recovering the memories.

According to their records, some Draken had been skilled in mental manipulation and memory recovery, but the Wild Dragons lacked the ability to be that nuanced. All they could do was basic memory blurs—enough to confuse people who’d seen things they shouldn’t. Like giant blue dragons.

Zane continued, “It’s possible—likely even—that there’s a clue to the whereabouts of the Seals hidden at that location—or even the Seals themselves.”