Page 68 of Accidentally a Dragon Daddy

“I’m going to need more drawers than this,” I said, reaching down and pulling out the third drawer. “Whoa, what’s all this?”

“Uh …”

But I was already pawing through it all. There were keychains and bits of rock. A magnet. Pieces of paper. A metal number three. From a house address, perhaps?

“What is all of this?” I asked.

“Mementos,” he said awkwardly. “Here, I’ll take—”

But I nudged his hands away, fascinated by the items. There were beach shells and car keys, a USB drive and someone’s driver’s license. “Mementos of what?”

“My missions,” he said.

I drew back, staring at the drawer. “There are a lot of things in here. Are they each from one mission?”

“Yes,” he said stiffly.

“Oh.” I swallowed. “I didn’t realize you were so, um, prolific?”

“I was good,” he said defensively.

“Are all of these, uh, you know, did you kill someone?” I licked my lips, nervous about the answer.

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. Some are, yes, I won’t deny that. You know what I do. But many of these are spy missions. I often have gone to retrieve information about our existence.”

“This is a dragon scale,” I said, pointing at a smooth gold object the size of my palm.

“Yes.” Damon sighed. “That one is from my first kill.”

“You were sent on missions to kill your own people?”

“Very rarely,” he said. “But sometimes, yes. As I said, we have our bad people, too. I won’t hide that from you. Nor will I pretend I haven’t killed other dragons.”

“I saw you kill one,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but that was in self-defense. These were … not.”

I could tell he didn’t like what he’d done, that there was a lot of unpacked emotion surrounding his job, but he also wasn’t lying to me, and that was important. Hiding the truth was always bad, but right now, at the start of our relationship, it could have been devastating.

“Here, let me take it,” he said, reaching again for the box. “I’ll put them somewhere else. You don’t need to have the reminder.”

“I guess,” I said, pawing through the objects.

There was another license, a photograph. Somebody’s ID badge. I frowned as I saw the thick plastic card. There was something about it …

“Wait!” Damon cried, but I’d already plucked it from the back of the drawer.

The face on it was unfamiliar. An older man, with bright blond receding hair, a thick bushy mustache, and thick-rimmed glasses. He was an utter stranger. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was his name.

Charles Lekkohnen.

“That name,” I whispered, looking up at Damon.

He grimaced unhappily, the look of a man who knew things were about to go badly.

“Damon,” I asked quietly. “Why do you have the ID badge of a dead man who the police say I killed?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

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