A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(41)

“Did I?” I said, playing dumb.

“Of a white dragon. A great white dragon.”

Randall’s eyes widened slightly before he schooled his face. It was quick, barely there. But I caught it. It didn’t make me feel any better.

“Maybe,” I conceded.

“And then there’s Kevin. Who is also a dragon.”

“Kevin,” I snorted, trying to cover my unease. “If you could even call him that. He’s more like a perverted lizard with wings.”

“Be that as it may,” Randall said, “before you, no one could speak with dragons.”

“Dragon,” I said. I was slowly losing control of this conversation. I knew the dreaded D word was on the tip of someone’s tongue. “As in singular, not plural. Nothing else. And for all we know, it’s just a byproduct of my magic. Like you teleporting or Morgan’s eternal patience in having to deal with you.”

“You can’t know it’s just the one,” Randall said, ignoring my jibe completely. “Because you’ve never come face to face with the others.”

“The dragon in the desert,” Morgan said.

“The mated pair in the Northern Mountains,” Randall said.

“And the Great White in the Dark Woods,” Morgan said, “who you already seem to have made contact with.”

“Don’t you dare say it,” I ground out.

“Holy shit,” Ryan said, sounding breathless. “You have a Destiny of Dragons!”

“He capitalized it,” Randall said.

“It must be true now,” Morgan agreed.

Fuck my life.





Chapter 7: The Boner Carriage to Holy Fuck Me Town


TWO DAYS later, I’d still refused to come out of my room. The door was locked, a chair shoved up underneath the handle, and I was pretty sure I was leaking enough magic to create a barricade I didn’t even think about making on my own. All in all, it was very effective in keeping out the riffraff, which was essentially everyone I knew. It also meant I didn’t have to hear about any destiny of dragons (not capitalized, thank you very much!). It wasn’t the most mature way of dealing with things, but it was the only thing I could think of where I could avoid everyone and just focus.

The problem with trying to focus was that it was Gary and Tiggy’s turn to try and get me to come out. They traded out in shifts that usually lasted a few hours. Each had their own specific tactic. Randall said he would give me another day before he teleported inside my room nude. Morgan told me that he hadn’t even said the word, so I should just let him in. Mom and Dad laughed at me, then apologized for laughing, then laughed some more, reminiscing about how I used to lock myself in my room whenever I got mad at them, and how reassuring it was that I acted the same at twenty-one as I did when I was six. The King told me that I could stay in there as long as I needed to, but then in the next breath said that he would decide how long that should be, and if we disagreed, I’d be pooping in a bucket in the dungeons for at least a month. Justin would bitch that he didn’t even care if I ever came out, that I could stay in there forever as far as he was concerned, which touched me deeply, as it felt like we were brothers from different mothers. Kevin tried to fly up to the windows in my room, but I shuttered them all while he scolded me that no sexy son of his would treat him like that.

Ryan had been conspicuously absent. As had Vadoma and her Wolf.

Gary and Tiggy, though?

I was going to murder them.

“—and then she said— You’re not going to believe this, kitten. You want to know what that bitch said to me?”

“What she say?” Tiggy asked.

“She said, Bitch, you ain’t gonna get my man. And then I said, Bitch, I ain’t even goin’ after your man, but if I was, I’m sure I could totally get him because, girl, you nasty. And then she said, I ain’t nasty, you’re nasty.”

“She a nasty girl,” Tiggy agreed.

“Right? But get this. While she was saying I was nasty, I noticed that her roots were showing, so I said, Girl, your hair looks like a tragedy up in here, and she said, Oh, I know, it’s so embarrassing. My stylist died from a combination of gangrene and getting caught in a stampede of manticores. So I said, Listen. Just. Listen. You go down to Ming Win and she’ll take care of you. She’ll do your hair and your nails, and you tell her that Gary sent you because then she’ll give me a five percent discount on my next visit because money doesn’t grow on trees, if you know what I mean. So she was all like, Really, that’s sounds awesome, thank you so much. And I said, Of course, that’s why I’m here, and if you ever call me nasty again, I will fucking cut you. And now we have tea once a month.”

“I like tea,” Tiggy said. “And pencils. And rocks and cats. And friendship stories.”

“Of course you do, dear heart,” Gary said. “You are precious, and I love you so. Now, on the forty-second time I got called a bitch, I deserved it, seeing as how I had been with her man. But did I know that he was married? Of course I did. But only because he needed unicorn jizz in order to free himself from the entrapment spell she’d put him under. And who was I to say no to that? He had hair on the back of his knuckles. You know how I feel about that.”

“You feel good about that,” Tiggy said.