I nodded.
“I think it’s enough.” Dad spoke to the dragon then in Latin and led me out of the barn. My legs felt heavy, and it was an effort to walk, as my body still trembled. How on Earth was I going to tame one of them?
We went back to the house, and I sat on the couch trying to get my heartbeat under control and my mind to process what the hell I just saw.
“Elena?” Dad asked, sitting next to me.
“Peageia is full of them?” I whispered.
“It’s their home. You are their princess.”
“I didn’t ask for this.” It barely came out, even my tone trembled.
“I know. I’m proud of how you didn’t yell and scream. Emanual is one of the best among his kind. He saved more people and dragons alike in his lifetime.”
“His lifetime? He began saving people when he was ten?”
Dad laughed. “No, he looks young. He is over three hundred years old.”
“What?” My eyes grew as I stared at Dad.
“They call it the essence, and if their riders are good to them, they will grant them part of that essence. Your father was almost 250-year-old when you were born, and your mother around two hundred.”
“Come again?” How was my mind going to process that?
“They didn’t look that old. They both got the essence from their dragons a long time ago, when they were young. She just struggled to get pregnant. They waited almost two hundred years for you, and then they had to give you away. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for your mother. She wanted nothing more in this world than to have a little baby of her own.”
Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t even know what she looked like.
“You will learn about both of them in no time.”
The dragon came back in his human form. He stopped in front of me where I sat on the couch and bent a knee to be the same eye level as me. “Not that scary, am I?”
I just stared at him. He had these weird brown eyes, almost auburn. I shook my head, and a smile lingered on his lips.
“Good.”
“Where is my son, Emanual?” Robert asked as he got up from the floor. He made that look so effortless.
“He’s going to meet us at the first stop in Virginia with Matt. He feels more needed there at the moment.”
Robert huffed and smiled. “If he thinks that, I trust him.”
“Yeah, I didn’t say your son is a genius.”
Everyone chuckled, Dad included.
Blake thought so.
“So when are we leaving?” Dad asked.
“Pack lightly, rest. We will leave around two this afternoon as it’s a push to Maryland.”
“What about Fox, Emanual?”
“Let us worry about him. He will not harm her.”
“He’s not that guy anymore.”
