Page 12 of Dragon Untamed

Damn. What has this girl done to us?

He pushed his thoughts aside. It was torture to even have Kaida cross his mind. He ruined his chance with Kaida when he joined in on the "fun" of training her. Arlo could have stopped himself from adding onto the moment she could have died, but he didn't. He was relentless and treated her poorly. He couldn't even blame her if she never said a nice word to him.

Arlo sighed heavily and looked down at his food. It almost turned his stomach to smell the savory and salty fumes. Did he deserve to eat? Probably not. Maybe the Great Dragon was doing this as a payback. What better way to teach him how awful he was to a potential mate than by making her unavailable when he was still interested? The Great Dragon could turn this off at any time but chooses not to just to show him what he was missing.

This sucks.

When Arlo took a bite of his sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich, the savory, creamy, and salty flavor was exactly what he needed. The sausage was smokey with a rush of salt quickly complemented by the salty buttery fluff of the accompanying biscuit. The creamy yellow cheese, which normally felt like plastic in Arlo's mouth, was melted to perfection around the sausage patty, which made up the main part of the sandwich. In short, it was a mouthful of salty, buttery bliss.

"It's not just me, right?" Esen asked Arlo. "You want her, too? You feel guilty for everything we did, and now you are wondering if we just pissed our chance at happiness away because we listened to Blaze about her not belonging with us?"

Arlo swallowed his food first and thought about how he wanted to phrase this. Yes, he fully agreed. There was just one thing bugging him. "I do want her. I am annoyed that we just fell into a hive mind and went after her because Blaze deemed it so. I just don't know if she is supposed to be ours, which is why we feel this way. Maybe it is the higher power trying to teach us a lesson. Maybe we need to make amends before we find our mate because we upset them."

"I guess. I wish I knew the right answer. I wish I knew what this all meant so I could stop feeling like this. It didn't even feel right to attack her the way we did for training."

"Prince Arlo! Prince Esen!"

Arlo looked over to a balding man with a barrel-chested belly waving his hand to get their attention. It was the owner of the market down the road, Mr. Kangley. He was the one who looked out for others and paid attention to things going on around the island. Arlo and Esen called him their "insider man" because he knew everything about everyone.

"Mr. Kangley, how are you today?"

"Oh! Good, good! Can't complain. How are you, boys?"

"Good," they said in unison.

"I had to track at least one of you down. Something is not right on the island, and I wanted to bring it to your attention."

"Sure, lay it on us."

Mr. Kangley looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to them. Arlo knew this meant that the information he had was worrisome. The man only told them bad things when no one else could hear.

"I've been noticing people becoming a bit short-fused the last few days. Not like our usual hot-headedness because we are dragons. I'm talking about ready to throw down because someone glanced in their direction."

Arlo looked over at Esen, and he shrugged. That wasn't something he noticed, and apparently, Esen didn't notice anything like that either. They hadn’t even been called to break up any fights lately.

"Is it a certain area of the island? Like maybe more of the Witches or Fae or something? Lycans, maybe, because a full moon is coming?"

Mr. Kangley shook his head, "No, not at all. It's everyone. Not just the dragons or the Lycans. I have just noticed a lot of people becoming testy over minuscule things while at my store. It's the damnedest thing. I don't know what's going on."

"Well, we can look into it. If anyone causes an issue in your store, just give us a call."

"Thank you, mi boys. Knew I could count on you two. Just keep me updated. I'm sure it's nothing...but you never know these days."

Arlo and Esen gave another round of goodbyes, ensuring that they would get to the bottom of things. When he walked away, Esen gave him a look.

"What do you think is going on there?"

"No clue."

"You don't think..."

Arlo had a feeling he knew where Esen was going, "No, I don't think it's because of Kaida's presence here. That really wouldn't make any sense. It could be anything. For all we know, something from the mainland is moving its way down here, or people just aren't getting proper sleep. We will keep an eye on things and make sure no one causes too much trouble."

Esen nodded and finished off his meal while Arlo did the same.

What is going on around here?

Kaida heard footsteps on the stairs, and her skin broke out in a sweat. Quickly, Kaida shoved her G-strings and thongs underneath a small pile of shirts in her drawer before Beckett entered their room. Shoving the drawer back into place and turning to face him with a bright red face, the mist of sweat on her skin grew to full-on droplets. Kaida put her hands behind her back and tried to look as innocent as possible. Beckett smirked at her and leaned a little to look around her. From how fast she moved, Kaida glanced back to see if a panty or two was hanging outside the drawer and was relieved not to see any.

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