Page 25 of Fallen for the Two-Headed Dragon

Samantha eyed her over the top of their mom’s blue sedan. “Oh, yeah. That’s the other part of what Jackson’s been saying. You dumped him after he proposed to you at the top of a mountain. I guess he thought if it sounded like he loved you enough to marry you, it would be less suspicious.” She snorted. “It definitely made me suspicious! I told you he was lying, Mom.”

“Ya wis, you did.”

“At least let me run in and get my old pair of glasses and take out these dry contacts,” Dana grumbled.

The spare lenses were adequate, and at least they were more comfortable. Her eyes couldn’t take another squirt of eye drops. She slumped into the seat behind her mom. She’d expected to have to talk to the police, but she wasn’t looking forward to it. Her palms were clammy and her mouth suddenly felt deprived of saliva. Between her discomfort and Samantha’s deadpan stare, it was difficult to pay attention to her mom’s relentless questions. Samantha’s entire body was angled toward her, watching every twitch of her face, undoubtedly trying to gauge what pieces of her answers were truthful.

The police station in Witmore—which doubled as a community center—was set up for some kind of meeting. Dana walked around rows of rusty folding chairs, through a hallway with multiple flickering lights, and knocked on a door cracked open by a brick on the floor.

“Hang on!”

After a few moments of scuffling, a police officer whipped open the door. His peppered mustache featured yellow mustard tips that matched his red-and-yellow-spotted fingers. His cheeks smacked around a mouthful of what she assumed was hoagie by the flashes of lunch meat and white bread in his open mouth.

“Come on in, ma’am.” He held the door open with his hand way up at the top, craning so that she could duck under his arm awkwardly. “What can I do for ya?”

“I-I’m here to report a crime?” She winced at how pathetic she sounded. She cleared her throat and tried again. “My boyfriend pushed me off a cliff in the Rockies.”

She detailed her experience as truthfully as she could. The officer took her statement in stride, his thoughts indiscernible as he scribbled along to her voice. When she summed it all up, he nodded and clicked his pen a few times.

“Welp, I’ll get this to the chief. Come back in the morning with all your belongings from the trip for evidence. This’n will probably go to the court, so I’d start lookin’ for an attorney if I were you.”

“A trial? But—”

“Sensitive case like this, we might’n be able to expedite it in front of Judge Larson.”

“I don’t have time for that. I have to—” She stopped in her tracks. She couldn’t exactly say I have to get back to my anxious dragon mate. “I can’t stay here.”

The officer nodded, the motion void of any real empathy. He sniffed, his grubby mustache swishing. “All right, all right. We’ll see what we can do, okay, ma’am? In the meantime, come on back in the morn’.”

Dana helplessly agreed to his placating bullshit and left. She found Samantha outside of the building, perched on top of a lopsided picnic table. Her mom was engaged in a conversation with a clearly unwilling officer at the end of the sidewalk. Their body language and proximity to the idling police car made it obvious that her mom had trapped the unsuspecting woman before she made it three steps from her vehicle. Judging by the officer’s familiar behavior—lots of head shaking, palm raising, and a look of total bewilderment—she was struggling to understand her mom’s thick accent. Of course, none of that deterred her mom.

“Hey, should we get an escort to drop by Jackson’s place with us so we can pick up your stuff?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, that’s probably smart.”

When they reached her old house, Jackson wasn’t home. A small relief. With Sam’s help, she gathered all necessary items and bagged them up in white trash bags, a total of two thirteen-quart bags containing all her things. Compared to Rathym’s endless cave full of stuff, it seemed like an insignificant amount for one person. Did any of it really matter to her? Well, yeah, her laptop and books. But the bag full of clothes could remain or even be fodder for a fire as far as she cared. When she returned to Rathym, she didn’t plan on wearing clothes. Unless she was simply in the mood to look like a fae princess.

For the hundredth time, she wondered if Rathym was holding up all right. She hated that he’d been going through all of that heavy stuff on his own. Wished that she could have relieved his burden even a little. Early on, she had wondered why he was so reclusive and grouchy, but she hadn’t considered that he was going through something so traumatic.

Others might look at him like a monster in a cave, but she could no longer see him as anything but her pisang goreng lover, his crispy shell encasing a sweet, creamy center.

Chapter Fourteen

Rathym

The enormous arena buzzed with activity. The general atmosphere teetered the line between hostile and somber. Rathym’s anticipation grew at the sight of the roasting stage. Soon the sun would kiss the horizon, and the day he’d given up hope for would commence.

His claws tapped against his thigh as he searched for Anabraxus and Ryuu outside of the coliseum. Aside from his short visit to the council the other day, it had been a long time since he’d visited society, and even longer since he’d been in a crowd like this. He longed for his human’s comforting touch along his scales, but he would settle for a familiar face.

The hushed whispers exchanged behind claws didn’t help.

“It can’t be.”

“I swear, that’s him!”

“The regent?”

“The Grand Commander!”

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