My Drake took my lecture with surprising composure. He let me talk until I finished and then gave me the equivalent of a mental shrug.
“You are too frightened—too worried,” he said, his mental voice free of stress. “When I meet our fated-mate face-to-face, all will be well. She will understand me as I understand her and her fear will be gone.”
“What? How do you know that?” I demanded. “How can you possibly be sure of that?”
Another mental shrug.
“She is our L’lorna,” my Drake informed me, as though that answered everything. “She is meant to be with us. When she meets me, this will be clear to her.”
At that point, I gave up lecturing my stupid beast. I wished I could have his confidence that everything would magically turn out all right the minute he and Kaitlyn came face-to-face, but I didn’t. I thought it was more likely that the very sight of him would make her so frightened she would refuse to come with me to the Sky Lands.
And while I had been able to delay my trip back home for a little while, I could not defy the will of my Sire forever. His Drake’s wings flew higher even than my own—I was subject to him in most things. Though I had sworn to myself not to give Kaitlyn up under any circumstances, I was under no illusion about how he and my mother would feel about having her as the future Queen. It would be much easier to hold onto our love and refuse to let her go if she was with me in the first place, so I could protect her in my Drake form.
That is, if my Drake didn’t scare her to death the first time he met her.
“Oh please,” I prayed, though I wasn’t quite certain who I was praying to—perhaps the Goddess who made us all? “Please, don’t let him frighten her. Please let me keep her with me, keep her safe. Please don’t let me lose her tonight.”
There was no answer to my prayer and I knew I would simply have to wait and see how Kaitlyn reacted to my Drake.
62
Kaitlyn
We went stealthily down the long stone hallways towards the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms, which was the only way out onto the athletic field behind the castle.
We kept it quiet and held the talking to a minimum, aware that we were close to the Healer’s office. She might be gone for the weekend…or she might not. There was no way of knowing and none of us wanted to risk getting caught and have to think of an explanation for wanting to be out on the field this time of night.
Somehow I didn’t think anyone would believe that we were itching for a game of flag football at midnight.
The boys’ locker room was locked but the girls’ was open, so we all slipped in that way. It was dark, but there was a dim greenish light high up in the corner that barely illuminated the changing room with its rows of lockers and benches.
I hadn’t been in here since Griffin had gotten Ms. Vasquez, the gym teacher, to let me out of PE permanently, but I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d been in this part of the castle. The bad memory was burned into my memory too deeply to ever forget it.
I remembered being forced to dress out—that is, wear the t-shirt and shorts which was the Nocturne Academy girl’s PE uniform and which showed my scars. To make matters even worse, Ms. Vasquez had made me put my hair back, showing the scarred left side of my face as well. Then she had paraded Megan and me down the field for the whole rest of the PE class to see.
The shame of that moment was permanently burned into my brain—a scar that didn’t show but ached and throbbed just as much as the more visible ones on my skin. I remembered how Pedro Sanchez had called me a freak and hit me in the face with a football on purpose—then laughed about it when I started to cry out of pain and shame.
That had been when Ari first stepped in, I thought, watching his broad back as we made our way through the locker room. He had punched Pedro Sanchez and put him in his place—first defending me and then helping Megan to get me to the Healer’s office. He had wrapped me in his own shirt to help me hide my scars and had stood guard outside my door, refusing to let anyone hurt me.
Was that when his Drake first took notice of me? I wondered as we passed through the door that led out into the broad expanse of green lawn that was the athletic field. It was silvery in the light of the full moon overhead. Was that when he first started to want me?
But want me for what? If he didn’t want to eat me, what use could a huge dragon possibly have for me? Did he think of me as some kind of a pet that he’d picked out and saved from torture or death, the same way a human might pick out the ugliest dog at the pound because it was slated to be put down? Was that how Ari’s Drake saw me?
I supposed I would find out.
The field was dominated by a huge, oval track with a smaller green oval of grass in its center. It was here that Pedro Sanchez had hit me in the face with
