They were silent for the few minutes it took to get settled with food and drink at the table. “Continue,” he said.
She finished chewing and swallowed, washing it down with water. “About a year after my dragon sign presented, they had just decided it was time to move again, for safety. If anything, they’d stayed in one place too long. Chaghan and Qara had left to secure new homes, and Kip was staying with us. Unfortunately, by total chance, he tangled with a bear shifter who we think reported him. Enforcers came. They discovered that my parents knew of their kind and…” She paused and Rune waited. He could see the demons in her eyes, a past that would probably never stop haunting her.
“They executed them to keep our secrets safe,” he hazarded. Her earlier description of what she’d seen was a dead giveaway.
She gave a jerking nod. “You were an enforcer. Why didn’t they just wipe their memories?”
He grimaced. “I’m guessing the amount of time involved. If they’d known Chaghan and Qara for more than a year or two, a memory wipe for that long would likely kill them anyway.”
“Oh.”
“So how’d you get out?”
“Kip. He told them he’d tried to mate me, and it didn’t work. They dragged him out of the house, too. Chaghan and Qara returned the next night and found me still hiding under my bed. We found Kip together.”
And she had panic attacks about it. That was what was happening to her in the cave before, he was sure of it.
After a long beat of silence, she took a breath. “Chaghan and Qara took me and ran.”
“How old were you then?”
“Ten.”
“Seven hells,” he muttered.
Then he stilled, arrested at the sight of the sweetest smile. Not a hint of bitterness, though no doubt that was there, too. “The heartache I will always carry,” she said. “But Chaghan and Qara…they love me.”
No wonder. This woman was the only link they had left to their dead son.
“Despite those horrors, I’ve led a good life.” How did a person who’d lost what she had come out the other end so…optimistic? Naivety, probably.
Speaking of which, he was supposed to be poking holes in this damn story. Except his mind wasn’t coming up with any.
“Then…” he prompted.
“We moved around a lot.” She pushed the food around on her plate with her fork. “For a long time, no one came. Then they tracked us down a few months ago. A group of about five. The two who spoke were a green dragon named Roan and a black dragon named Tineen.”
She had the names and colors right at least. Tineen had been the alpha of the Alaz and Roan his beta.
“Chaghan sensed them outside the house. He put me in an underground safe room he’d designed specifically for just such a situation, then lit a fire, burning down the house along with any evidence—my scent, my things, memories—that I lived there.”
“I thought you said you identified the two who spoke,” he said. “How’d you do that from a safe room?”
“An outside camera system,” she said. “Set up so I could see when it would be safe to come out of hiding.”
Suddenly, she dropped her gaze as though unable to look him in the face. “I expected them to be executed right there, but I had a panic attack and passed out. When I woke up, they were gone.”
Fuck me.
No way did a human with this much knowledge of their kind make up shit like that. Which meant only one thing… Hadyn was telling the truth.
“Then you tracked them down?”
“Yes. That took a while.”
“And you said they’re being held in the Alaz headquarters now.”
“As far as I could tell, yes.”
He leaned in, gripping his silverware harder. “As far as you could tell?”
She winced. “I never actually saw them.”
…
This was the part where he was going to tell her to fuck off. Hadyn was sure of it.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been as honest about that last part, but Rune was having a tough enough time believing her as it was. Lies would only make that worse.
Believe me, she silently urged.
Right now he was the Obi Wan to her Princess Leia…her only hope.
She didn’t voice the words aloud. She would if she had to. Begging wasn’t beneath her when it came to saving the two people who meant the most to her in this world. Saving Chaghan and Qara was worth any risk. Even dealing with a man whose black eyes made her think of the dragon who’d taken her parents away from her. Unemotional pits that only sparked with distrust.
“Then how do you know your parents are being held there?”
She tried to hide another wince, because this part would be the hardest for him to believe.
“My dad wears a ring that emits a low frequency signal. One I can track.” She pulled a tiny flat rectangle out of a zippered compartment of her jacket and wiggled it. “Only if I get close enough. I managed to get into part of the mountain but wasn’t able to confirm visually.” The place had been locked down tighter than her curfew as a teenager. “Near enough that this thing started beeping.”
Rune glanced at the small device—black and roughly three inches square with a nub of an antenna and a red bulb in the center, laid flat within the casing—then back at her.
A single eyebrow rose in lazy disdain. “That’s quite a story.”
Disappointment puffed from her in a short burst. This had been a waste of time. She knew it. She’d known she couldn’t convince him the second he’d said he didn’t believe her. She slumped in her chair, hitting the wooden backing with a thump.
Part of her wanted to rail at him, scream that he had to help her. She had nowhere—no one—she could turn to after this. Rune Abaddon was the end of the line. The only person her parents had trusted, given what Hadyn was.
What do I do?
The panicked thought set on repeat in her head, drowning out any possible ideas that might be helpful.
“I believe you.”
She straightened, almost coming out of her chair. “You do?”
Then immediately winced at her squeaky voice.
Amusement flashed in his eyes, there then gone, but unmistakable, before he shrugged one negligent shoulder as if this were no big deal. Mother trucker. She was tempted to stab him in the eye with her spoon for putting her through that hit of hopelessness.
His glance dropped to her hand which had curled around the end of that utensil in anticipation, then back to her, another dark twinkle in his dark eyes, this one lingering because he no doubt read her thoughts exactly. What an ass.