Chapter Three

I was expecting to see guards when I got to the location, which is behind the building that leads to the garden entry, as Anonymous had mentioned, but I didn't. It was entirely empty. I looked up, then shrugged. I only need to find the prince, I thought, but I felt strange. I paused and tried to understand my feelings, but I couldn't. It felt like an elderly woman was stirring a cauldron filled to the brim with purple liquid in my gut. It made me feel as though something bad was about to happen. I knew my gut never lied, so I couldn't back out at this point. If I noticed any indication of danger, I would teleport with it without Dean's help.

 

I carried out the instructions that Anonymous gave us. Unbelievably, the prince was sitting by a pool and gazing at the tranquil water. Bingo! I exclaimed. This is too simple, but the prince stirred and took a whiff of the air before I could reveal myself. I had disguised my scent before I went after him as usual, so he wouldn't be able to smell me.

 

He abruptly stood up and turned to face me. It astonished me. Was he trying to find me, or am I simply seeing things? He abruptly disappeared from my line of sight. I became perplexed and started searching for him. Where did he go? I wondered, but then I caught a whiff of something that couldn't possibly be orange juice and sunset. Then it came at me like a freight train. The moment I heard the prince's voice, I became disoriented.

“At last, I've found you. Love of my life.”

 

His voice sent shivers down my spine, and not the good kind. Why? I thought. Why must it be him? Why was the prince my mate? Why couldn't it be Dean?

 

Seeing as I couldn't move anymore, I lamented, How do I kill him if I can't even move my body? I took note of him hugging me from behind and pressing my back against his chest.

“I've waited so long to find you, love,” he said.

I've been wanting to avoid you at all costs, I thought. Why must it be a prince? I thought, "What did I ever do to deserve a prince as my mate?" I noticed that his hands lessened their hold a little and tightened more around my waist, like he didn't want to let me go. I started panicking.

“Please don't leave me, Minty,” he whispered.

 

I froze and wondered how he knew my name.

“I've waited so long for you. I can't lose you now. I will lose my mind if you leave me,” he said.

 

He gave me a sign when I accidentally leaned against him. When I realized what I had done, I tensed up. I tried to pull him away from me by holding his hand, but he clung to me instead. I screamed a magic word in a fit of fright that would make me vanish and reappear in the tunnel.

 

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the tunnel. I attempted to control my erratic breathing, which felt as though I had just finished a marathon. How am I going to explain anything to Elias? I'm not going to tell him I've discovered my soul mate. I'm not sure how he would respond.

 

“The prince is stronger than I thought. He located me immediately as I approached him, and I had to teleport back to the tunnel.” I whined, trying to perfect my acting.

“But I didn't receive a blip, and no one knew when you got back.” Dean said, looking at the computer to check for signs of problems within the system.

“There are many holes in your story, Azalea, but I won't question you. I will send Savannah. The informants said a fire holder, but I think she would do since she's the opposite of fire,” he said thoughtfully.

“No!” I said it a little too loudly, and everyone stared at me.

“Why?” Elias asked, folding his arms together.

“I am worried about everyone's safety. The informant had a reason for saying that. Maybe the prince is allergic, or maybe it's just fear or something. But we can't risk any chances.” I said. 

 

“Did you use fire against him?” Elias asked with an eyebrow raised.

 

“He didn't give me an opening for me to use it.” I replied. 

“Then, why would you assume it's something to do with the prince?” he said.

 

“I'm just worried, boss. I love Savannah so much, you know.”

 

Elias lifted an eyebrow at me as Sarina muttered. They were aware of our friendly relationship, but no matter how friendly I was, I never allowed anyone to approach me too closely. Savannah, however, got close enough for it to be true, I reasoned.

“And besides, are you worried that anyone will take up the job? Remember, dragons are almost extinct. I don't think other organizations have a dragon among them. Just give me time to practice. I will kill the prince in no time.” I said. 

 

The silence left behind was deafening. Everyone stared at Elias, waiting for his decision. I waited with bated breath before he exhaled and said,

“I give you one week,” he said.

 

“Two weeks!” I said, “Please, give me two weeks. I want to be fully prepared.” 

 

“Did the prince hypnotize you, Lea?” Sarina said. 

 

“That would explain the jittering and the loud exhales.” Ellie said. 

 

And there goes my fantasy, broken and shattered because I thought they wouldn't notice how out of place I felt, but I still held my cool and said,

“No, he didn't, boss?"

 

He exhaled, and if I didn't know that he was a wolf, I could have sworn that I saw smoke coming out of his nostrils.

“Okay. Two weeks it is and if you disappoint me, you know what I do to failures.” I gulped and sighed.

 

I've got to do this, I thought.

 

Back at home, I checked on Alee. She was curled up on her side of the bed, sleeping like she had no cares in the world. I lay on my side of the bed and gazed at the empty ceiling. Alee preferred to sleep in the basement, and I couldn't sleep on my own. We did almost everything in the basement, and it didn't matter because we were used to it.

 

I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to sleep, but I couldn't. My thoughts were consumed by him. How did his hand feel around me? How has his breathing affected me? I even wondered what sort of clothing he had worn when I met him. I didn't have the chance to get a good look at him. I had been consumed with the thought of escaping. I hit my forehead and slapped my cheeks. Get it together, stupid, I thought. "You are not going to see him again, and if you do, you are just going to kill him. But what I had thought would give me comfort made me feel gloomy.

 

I felt pain in my chest, like a hole was being dug there. The pain seemed so intense that I thought that physical pain was being inflicted in the middle of my chest. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. The last time I cried was when I found my parents' dead bodies and the culprits were getting away.

 

I lied to Elias. Dragons were not extinct. At least, I don't think they will be anytime soon. Our house was located in a remote area where residential buildings or people in particular were far away. We lived on a big property surrounded by fences and security if we were threatened by something. I had always thought that would be our home forever, but it wasn't meant to be. I and Alee were bouncing on the bed that fateful day because we were going to eat our favorite meal for dinner. Well, I was bouncing. Alee's body followed the motion of the bed, and I held her so that she wouldn't hurt herself. We were so busy playing that before we heard the screams, the damage had already been done.

 

We rushed downstairs only to find a man stabbing Dad over and over. The wounds were healing at a slow pace, and he was losing so much blood that I knew he would pass out soon if they continued. Alee and I were nine back then, and I wanted to help dad, but I couldn't. I didn't have any training in martial arts, and I was carrying Alee on my back. I bombarded my brain for answers, but as I looked up into mom's green eyes, she used her magic and threw a thought at me. She told me to run to the basement. She told me that they knew what they were doing and that they would handle it. I ran to the basement like I was told, but mom didn't tell us there were computers down there that were connected to the CCTV cameras outside and within the house.

 

We watched everything. We didn't want to, but we did, and it still bugs me now. Why couldn't we just take our eyes off the computers? They replayed everything even after I left Alee to take a look at mom and dad. I had told myself that whatever I saw on the computers was just a figment of my imagination. TV lies, and so do computers. They want us to believe that our parents were dead, but I will not until I see hard-core evidence of them outside the computer, and I did see it. The dragons that landed from the sky onto our property without alerting the alarms—the first mistake dad made, not putting alarms in every single place around the house—to the time mom came out to see who broke down the front door Judging by the way Mom spoke to him, she was familiar with him.

 

She knew him, and yet he raped her continuously, even after she lost consciousness. Dad had fought well, and mom did as well, but they injected something inside him that slowed him to a snail's pace. Something I later knew as wolf's bane, a very dangerous poison for a wolf. Mum had tried to fight while protecting dad, but she was injected with something that I now know as unpurified belladonna, which is a powerful poison against witches. Belladonna is not harmful to a dragon, but to someone with both genes, it would fuel the fire within the person, burning the person from the inside till they turned to ashes, and that was what happened to my mom.

 

They had injected her with a small dose so that the evil man could carry out his atrocities. After that, her legs were red in color, as if she were about to summon her dragon, but they injected her with a full dose. After that, they left the house without looking for us. He saw me when I came out to look at my parents and see if they needed help, but he smirked, transformed into a dragon, and flew away. My mother had left us her last magic bubble, containing words that might have saved us or not.

 

We didn't move out immediately. I gave them a decent burial, or what I called a decent burial back then. I did all the work while Alee moped around. We didn't have much food left, and most of it was raw. I found Mom's spell book and used it to teleport us to the house we are living in now. I knew this house because we come here during the holidays, especially Christmas. It only had joyful memories, and that made it worse. Alee got worse with time, and I wasn't getting any better until we ran out of food. I had to buckle up and face reality, like my mom would have me do.

 

I focused on the joyful memories to keep me going, and I feel like I have gone forward since I met him. I cried harder than before when I remembered all this. This is all because of him, I told myself. He's a deceiver. He's wicked, and he wants you to be killed by some unknown or unnatural circumstances. I needed to kill him first, or else he would kill me and my sister as well. With that, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, but not before I heard someone in the darkness whisper my name like a prayer. I felt him close to my ears, and I knew that voice.