Dad bowed to him.
“Stop, you are longer in the service than what I’d ever been, and from what we learned, you basically raised a Malone.”
Oh, yeah, that was the other thing. I wasn’t Watkins. I was a Malone. The last bloodline of the Malone Monarchy. It still felt so unreal.
I was a princess. I said it a thousand times every day, and it still sounded unreal. Princesses were brats and snobs, not running for their lives.
“Elena, I want you to meet one of my closest friends and the bravest dragon that I ever met.”
“Ooh, we may throw the dragon word around?” the guy asked.
If he knew how I felt about that word, he might think twice, but what else was I going to call them—beasts?
The guy looked young, like somewhere in his mid-twenties. He was big, had muscles pressing against the black long sleeve shirt he wore. He had pushed up the sleeves to below his elbows. The pair of jeans hugged every muscle in his legs. He had a Chris Daughtry thing about him.
“Princess.” He bowed.
I didn’t know how I felt about that either, but my curiosity was at its peak. “Show me?”
“Elena?” my father questioned.
My eyes flickered to Dad. “I need to see for myself what he looks like, please?”
The guy winked and smiled. “The barn will be big enough if I lay down.”
Dad spoke to him in Latin again, and I rolled my eyes. I was so over their secret language. The guy answered back.
“Thanks, Emanual.”
“Anything for the Rubicon.”
I felt like throwing up. That was my life. Everyone was going to step aside if he asked. I did not know what he even looked like.
Was he going to make promises too that he wouldn’t be able to keep?
A part of me was still so angry at Blake. He didn’t have to make those promises. He sounded so sincere.
“Let’s go, Elena,” Dad said. I pushed myself from the couch and followed. A throng of people waited outside. They were all dressed casually. Some had black hair, others blond. One had red hair, there was a skinny one with silver hair. I kept staring at him. He had piercing blue eyes.
I looked away when he bowed his head. He looked way too feminine to be part of the rescue team. Like he should rather be a model walking on a runway somewhere in Milan.
“Get up!” My dad spoke, and I looked back. They all bowed.
They bowed for me? I shook that from my thought. It sounded so unreal.
The men stood straight and followed us to the barn.
I waited outside with Dad and Robert as baldy, Emanual, was busy doing his thing in the barn. My heart pounded, imagining what I was going to find.
“Don’t scream, okay. I will not ask Tanya again to take your memory away.”
“Just let me process. No matter how long it takes, please?”
Dad nodded.
A deep Latin voice came from the barn.
“He’s ready,” Robert said. “You’re doing good.”
