Page 69 of Cruel Daddy Dragon

She told me that she was going to keep herself safe for my sake, but I don’t know… old habits die hard…

Sarah strides forward with purpose. Kaius and Milo are landing now and gently dropping off Julie and Lena.

“Are you all right?” I catch Milo asking Lena seriously, “Do you still feel okay? Not nauseous or dizzy from the flight?”

“I’m fine, Milo, thanks,” she answers.

“Just let me know,” he says sternly, “we don’t want any extra stress on the baby.”

I see Sarah noting the encounter before I catch up to her. She smiles softly in greeting, and we all gather at the edge of the hole.

“Wow!” Julie murmurs, “I never knew this was here!”

“It was underground until the other day,” Sarah answers, “Seems I dislodged a very careful balancing act when I tried to spelunk in, and it just crumbled.”

“And we need to still be careful,” Orion interjects, “It might collapse in further. Milo, Kaius, Rufus, keep close to the girls in case.”

We all nod. Orion is then the first to float down into the hall, just spreading his wings and falling. I turn to Sarah and give her a teasing smile.

“You hear?” I loop my arm around her waist and give her a squeeze, “I have to keepcloseto you.”

She gives me a grin back.

“Ugh! How annoying,” she teases back, “But I guess it’s Alpha’s orders. Or… whatever Orion is right now.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure,” I answer, “Cyrus is the Alpha, but when he’s gone, Evander is in charge. Since Evander’s also gone, Orion usually steps in, so he’s… whatever we call two steps down from the Alpha.”

Sarah laughs.

“Right. So it’s Alpha number three’s orders, then.”

I cackle back. I see the other two dragons take hold of Julie and Lena and then gently float themselves into the cave. I hold Sarah closer to my body, and she curls up against me. I spend a moment enjoying the feeling of her wrapping herself around me before I spread my wings and step off the edge of the cave into the hole. My wings act as a parachute, and we float down easily. As we hit the ground, we hear Julie shiver:

“Oh! It’s colder in here than it is on the surface!” she cries.

“Is it?” Sarah says dryly, and I start chuckling.

Kaius comes closer to her, trying to shield her with his body. But Julie doesn’t even notice him, instead gasping and walking toward the wall.

“Oh, my! Look at these engravings on the walls!” she exclaims, “That’s incredible!”

“I know!” I hear Lena cry out from across the room, “These sigils areamazing!I’ve neverseenmagical signs like this!”

I watch Lena cross the room, Milo by her side, watching her with a worried expression. But Lena doesn’t pay him any mind, pulling out a small, battered notebook and looking up and down at it.

“So, you don’t recognize the signs at all?” Milo asks.

“Um… yes and no,” Lena answers, looking up and down at the notebook, “See, I recognizepiecesof the sigils, and these individual pieces have their own meaning. But they’re put altogether into one bigger spell—that’s got to be a much more powerful one. It’s like it’s a paragraph written in a different language, but I only recognize a few words in it.”

“Do you think you could translate it?” Milo asks.

“Probably,” Lena answers, “I mean, they have to have been written by Grams, right? That means they should be in one of her notebooks…”

She looks down at the disheveled journal in her hands.

“I guess it’s just spread out among a lot of different notebooks…”

“It might have been written by someone else,” Milo points out, “You recently said that there might have been an entire coven of witches in Greyson Ridge back in the day. Do you think it’s possible that someone else might have written them? Are you going to be able to translate them if that’s the case?”

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