I Married A Dragon (Prime Mating Agency)(63)
She gave me a sympathetic look. “It doesn’t make it any easier. I kept my youngest throughout their youth, but when they left my lair at twenty-four for Roldren and twenty-six for Caldri, it was just as difficult. During the Shadow Trail, we get monthly check-ins from the younglings. We embed a tracker in their arm should something happen. Shadow Lords also regularly scout through the Trail and the deeper void to keep a distant watch over them. And then there are shadow dwellers who roam around the different realms where future Kwesars and Shadow Lords spend their evolution years. They are extremely protective of them.”
“Sounds like you have quite the safeguards put in place to keep the children safe,” I admitted, rather impressed.
“We do. We love our little ones and do what we must to protect them during their journey,” Oshtara said proudly. “It is undeniable that when one of them returns a Shadow Lord, it is difficult to no longer be able to hold them and kiss them like our mother’s hearts demand. But you learn to cope. There are many established ways now to still keep them part of the family and show them love.”
“That’s the other part I would really struggle with,” I confessed. “Cedros told me how he was in a separate house from you and watching his siblings play together while he had to remain at a distance.”
“That’s true, but you would not have that problem,” Oshtara said eagerly.
“What? Why?” I asked, taken aback.
“Because, unlike me, you are an Ejaya. Thenzi, Cedros’s father, couldn’t be around me because he didn’t have an Ejaya. You are Cedros’s Ejaya. Meaning that he will be able to raise his own offspring because he will have you as his mate to silence the discomfort from the little ones.”
“Right, but that won’t fix the problem of our Shadow Lord children. Once they come back from the void, they won’t be able to stand us,” I argued.
“A Shadow Lord’s primary function is to stabilize phase shifts,” Oshtara said smugly. “With you giving him peace, Cedros will have the focus to balance the phasing your other offspring could generate around your little Shadows. Ask Rovain and Trinit. Their second-born is a Shadow and lives happily in their lair with her other siblings.”
“Jeez! I didn’t realize that was a possibility. It certainly puts things in a different light,” I said, stunned.
“And a good one at that, I hope. I am quite looking forward to you and Cedros making me a grandmother for the first time,” she deadpanned.
I burst out laughing at her less-than-subtle statement. I genuinely liked Oshtara, and her obvious ploy to bind me to her son had given me some serious food for thought.
Three weeks after introducing me to his family, Cedros and I had fallen into a very comfortable routine. Although he hadn’t brought up his desire for us to be mates again, we technically, unofficially were. Aside from sharing his bed—and making love like rabbits on every surface of our home—we multiplied the romantic outings, from more picnics and going to the fair to attending plays, sports events, and concerts. Spending an evening at Rovain’s and Trinit’s house with their four kids had been eye-opening.
With a little over four months to go before I had to decide whether to stay or leave, there was no rush. But I already had a good idea where my head was leaning. Cedros embodied everything I could have ever wanted in a man, and the way his family welcomed me made it an even more perfect package. To think I’d always worried I would end up with the mother-in-law from hell!
However, if my deepening bond with Cedros exceeded all of my wildest hopes and dreams, my mission was proving to be a total and complete disaster. I had nothing. No actual trail to follow and only a slew of wild speculations. In my desperation, I’d taken to walking around the void with Nero as my search dog and bodyguard.
I’d concluded that I wouldn’t find anything in the stable void through the black gate. Too many people traipsed through the various main pathways. Crooks up to shady business always did so in the most unlikely places and away from prying eyes. The primary places I could think of were phase shifts. Everyone dodged them or got the fuck out of them quickly if they ever got caught by one.
That theory was the first solid trail I got with some common link between multiple incidents. It hadn’t been obvious at first because many of the “accidental portals” created on Dramnac had originated from completely random locations scattered around various cities and continents. Or rather, they had appeared random before I had the phase shift key as a common denominator. When I cross-referenced them with that factor, suddenly, I realized every location was in the most unstable hotspots of each of those areas.
Okay, that didn’t qualify as a massive discovery. The greater instability and thinness of the veil in those sectors could have been the cause that someone doing something totally innocent triggered the accidental rift. However, further investigation also demonstrated that those incidents matched the timing of calendar instability peaks of that specific area, but not necessarily the real peak in terms of actual instability that day.
Just like Earth’s meteorologist would more or less accurately predict snow, thunderstorms, or tornadoes, Derakeen scientists gave daily, weekly, and monthly warnings about the least safe areas and expected highest shift fluctuations. The recorded incidents perfectly matched the annual calendar marking which regions averaged the greatest number of rifts for a given month.