“Don’t blame her,” Mom says to Dad. “She needs help. Rafes is there any way to help her?”
“I can try, Aunt Tee,” Rafes answers, “But even after months of therapy, we’re still not sure if we were able to break his mind hold over the people he got to on my staff.”
“Oh, God.” Mom whispers. She looks up at both my fathers. “But we’ve got to try, right? We’ve got to…”
“I haven’t been brainwashed!” I scream, clinging to the baby who somehow managed to fall back asleep after finishing his fifth bottle of formula. “Will you listen to me?”
To my surprise, my uncles who have been sheepish and silent ever since the dragon baby bomb drop suddenly decide to come to my defense.
“You should know, he didn’t let her escape,” Uncle Clyde says to Papa. “She had him tied up in the basement, bruised and battered when we got her call.”
“Uncle Clyde, don’t…” I warn, already seeing exactly how they’ll translate that part of the story.
He shuts up, but unfortunately Uncle Kyle keeps on going. “If anything he’s the one trying to escape. She’s got him chained up in our bedroom and you should hear the way those chains of his have been rattling when the two of them—”
“Uncle Kyle!” I shout.
He finally breaks off when he sees my murderous look. “I’m sorry, Ola. I’m with Clyde. I don’t think you’ve been brainwashed. But you’ve got to admit keeping him here and not telling your parents or anybody else that you’re back with a baby is all sorts of cray.”
“Plus, we want our bedroom back,” Clyde whines. “The bed in the guest room is murder on my back.”
The rest of my family listens to our conversation, their heads swiveling back and forth.
Then comes a collective, “What?”
Then FJ says, “Tell me this is not true, daughter. Tell me that serpent is not presently in this house!”
Chapter Nine
DAMIANOS
“Call me an idiot if you want, but one day, you’re going to look up and find this idiot standing over you with a sword. I promise you that, and I always keep my promises.”
The recollection of that passionate vow echoes through my mind when I awaken that morn to find Ola standing above me….
With a sword.
I tense, preparing to fight. But then I see what she’s carrying in her other arm.
A baby.
It sleeps, but I know who it is without having to be told.
“My hatchling,” I say, my voice husky with disbelief. “You have finally brought him to me.”
“Yeah, something like that.” She glances over her shoulder, then back at me. “Do you know how to operate him?”
“Operate him?” I repeat, not understanding her meaning.
“You know, like make him turn into a dragon and make fire. The tw—I mean Fensa said Eos could do that when he was a baby. Torch stuff if you aimed him at it.”
I parse through her words. “Yes, it is true our young can easily make small fires.”
“Great, show me how to get him to shift.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I answer. “Drakkon are not like you. We don’t shift. Drakkon is what we are. What you see before you is merely a shell.”
She raises her eyes to the ceiling and lets out an exasperated growl as if I am purposefully seeking to frustrate her. “Okay, we don’t have time for this. They’ll be here as soon as they find the code to the door. I’m just going to have to try it with the sword.”
For the first time, I register her appearance. She has on a robe, the same as our previous encounters. But this one is composed of terry cloth, not the silky material that caressed my body so unbearably when she lay down beside me. Also, instead of one of the nightgowns I provided her, she sports an overlarge T-shirt underneath with the words KING POPPA emblazoned across it. And her feet are shod in what appear to be fuzzy narwhals.
Most alarming, the sly seductive gaze has vanished, replaced by wide scared eyes as she gently sets our baby down on the floor. Then raises the sword.
I sit up in bed, chains rattling. “What are you doing?” I find myself asking yet again, my fire crackling with alarm.
“Don’t move!” With both hands, she raises the sword over her head and chops it down at the chain leading to my right wrist shackle.
“Fuuuckkk!!!” she yells out when it doesn’t work. Then she heaves the sword at the chain again and again.
In this moment she reminds me much of the she-wolf who continued swinging the chair at the unbreakable window. But in this case, she is not trying to escape me…she is trying to free me.
“Ola! Cease!” I shout over her efforts. “What you are doing is not working. So cease and explain to me why you have decided to set me free.”