Her hands slipped and the world stopped. I flung myself forward, landing in the dirt to save an egg that never quite hit the ground. She caught it just above my hands, shot me a flat look, and carried it over to lay it upon a cotton bed. I flinched as someone hammered the nails into the top woodwork of the crate and dragged myself to my feet just in time to watch that crate be loaded into the bed of another pickup truck.
Olivia climbed into the cab, checked her paperwork, and drove off with the egg that looked so much like the one I had hatched from.
Damn her.
Chapter 4
Olivia
The rich get richer and the poor, like me? Well, we just get poorer.
Wasn't that the way of the world?
When I'd been younger, I'd been convinced that I was going to change it. You get out of high school and you're just ready to go, ready to run out into the world and roar how brave and strong you are. Then it runs you over, smashes the hope out you, and ruins everything that you ever dreamed of.
As a kid, I'd dreamed of dragons. When Game of Thrones came out, I was hooked. Like Tyrion, I'd always wanted a dragon of my own and my mother had only assured me that they were real. That they were hiding among us, just out of sight. Yet, after she'd died of heart failure a few years ago, the only evidence of dragons that I'd found was that of dinosaurs.
The world shrank as you got older. Fact, reason, and cold, hard logic bit into you everywhere they could. You didn't just get a miracle because you hoped or prayed or did spell work for one. You got a miracle because the doctor who studied cardiology for a decade and a half managed to think of something that saved your mom.
Or he didn't.
I went home after our discovery, irritated by the irrational thoughts swimming in my head. Opals didn't come in sizes like that; the mineralization of the gemstones wouldn't permit it. Ultimately, it was too soft. And I'd seen something like those before.
But you don't tell your co-workers that you keep your mom's dragon egg decoration on your nightstand. I told anyone who asked that it was a dinosaur egg. I ran my hand over the smooth, red surface. From what I could tell, it was a thick as a duck's egg and relatively smash resistant. At least, it'd never gotten hurt in all my travels or my mother's.
We'd rarely spent very long in one place, often jumping from city to city after Dad left and the egg I touched had been the one constant Mom had insisted on bringing with us.
I put it down, tried to relax, and ignored egg beside me. Though I could find no place for it to have been blown, I was pretty certain it was just a well-painted ostrich shell. Thousands of farms around the world did artwork like that and sold it to make ends meet.
Besides that, dragons didn't exist. I flipped through the channels on the television, most of them late-night talk shows that threatened to bore me to tears. I wasn't the type who enjoyed listening to celebrities spill their guts about past projects. There was already too much drama at the site I was at. Heck, that was part of the reason I was living away from the rest of them.
No matter how often we all went out together; and it wasn't that often, someone was always sleeping with someone else. Jealousies infested the camp and drove people nuts until someone blew up at somebody else and there was a problem. Mostly, I was just glad that I didn't have to deal with it directly. That was his job.
Yawning, I gave in with the television and shut it off. Lunch was a distant dream, something I'd eaten on my way home after work, but I didn't need a lot of fuel to run off of. Especially when it was long past time to go to bed.
My phone awoke me seconds later and I growled at it, flinching at the sun streaming into the bedroom at-oh, was it that late already? I sighed at the clock and answered the phone. "Yeah, I see what time it is. I'm sorry. Last night was rough. I'll be there in twenty."
"Can you make it fifteen? That guy from before is here asking about you and me," Nicole said.
She sounded like she'd been put through the ringer already. It was only 8:30. "There've been a lot of guys recently."
"Eskal Vervain, that guy. He doesn't have his buddy here with him today, just him. And Doctor Sonnet has been in some meeting with him for hours. I think we're gonna get sued."
Fuck, I couldn't afford that going down and neither could she. I hung up and threw myself through a shower. I just couldn't face work smelling like yesterday, not if big, tall, and billionaire was going to be there. If he strutted his stuff, I'd feel like I belonged in a dumpster.
And to be honest, I probably did where he was concerned. But who cared about what he thought of me? I yanked on a t-shirt, a pair
