The trip was unexpected, and none of us knew where he went. When he’d returned, I had to pack my bags, and we’d both left like thieves in the night.
I couldn’t even tell Sam that I would not fight for a while. It had put me on edge, too, as we had a blood contract. Not that I cared about what would happen to me, as that was the only person he could hurt. My sister and mother were safe through the blood contract.
The curiosity had burned like fire when we’d crossed the invisible barriers of Paegeia.
I had only been behind the wall once. It was long ago, and I hadn’t received my human form yet. We’d gone to China.
China still knew about our existence. They knew dragons lived behind a magical wall inside the Bermuda Triangle. Dragons were prominent in their culture and art, and it was an honor when my father had introduced me as the alpha of the dragons.
My father had promised me we would go back one day, but China wasn’t our destination this time.
We’d flown for hours and landed early in the morning inside a crowded forest covered in snow. The tiredness had consumed me, and after we transformed back into our human forms, we’d crashed inside tents and sleeping bags in the forest.
When we’d woken up, I’d discovered we were in America.
I had no clue what we were doing here, or why my father needed me.
The nearby town was beautiful. Not Paegeia’s type of beauty, but beautiful. It was so primitive. There was hardly any of the technology that we had behind the wall. Dad shoved a phone in my hand.
“Lucian,” I spoke into the phone, and my father laughed.
“What?”
“It’s not a Cammy, Blake. Here?” he asked for my phone with an outstretched hand. I handed mine over.
“You press the buttons. Each device has a sequence of numbers connected to the phone. The number is like pairing a Cammy. They answer on the other side, and you can hear them speaking.”
“So no holograms?”
“No, but they have a video call. Their faces pop up on the screen.”
“That’s boring.”
My father chuckled. “It’s the real world, Son.”
He hadn’t called me son in a long time, and I didn’t know if I trusted the warmth that spread through my core. It differed from my fire.
“One without magic,” Dad said. “This side of the wall relies on science and technology, and you have to be careful. If they discover you are a dragon—”
My gaze shot up and met my father’s stare. “What will happen?”
“Let’s just say they don’t like myths. People usually get hurt when our kind feels threatened. It’s important that nobody knows about our existence.”
I nodded.
“Don’t lose your temper. Don’t use your abilities either. We have to blend in. So thick jackets and boots.” Dad shoved a heap of clothes in my arms, and a grunt pushed past my lips.
“We need to blend in. The humans will question it if you don’t wear a thick jacket.”
“Fine.”
The real world was a strange and scary place, but we were clever, intelligent creatures and had figured out things like Facebook and Instagram fast and how to find others that didn’t want to be found.
I was the alpha of the dragons and the only one of its kind. They knew me as the Rubicon. All ten breeds in one, and my abilities were still waking up.
I had a few already that were like my allies, but they didn’t belong to me. They belonged to my rider that was prophesied through our Víden. She was like a seer that could see a little of the royals, the true royals, who had died fourteen years, almost fifteen years ago. We called her prophecies foretellings.
She’d foretold my rider would be their offspring. That the two of us would be destined for one another. The king and queen had died before the queen could sire any offspring, or that was what we had thought.
