Page 85 of Cruel Daddy Dragon

Cyrus’s eyes widen. The other dragons look at each other in alarm.

“Wait, you actually had to fight one of them?!” Kaius gasps, looking between Julie and me, “I thought you girls were just chased by one!”

I just shoot Julie a look, and she squirms a little bit.

“I didn’t want him to worry,” she murmurs.

I grunt and—ignoring Rufus’s concerned gaze on me—look back to Cyrus.

“We did have to fight one of them,” I clarify, “And we won together. Combined, we managed to summon some kind of power that absolutely decimated the dragon who was attacking us.”

Cyrus frowns at me and looks between Lena and me as he speaks back:

“What kind of power?” he focuses in on Lena, “Was it like your lightning or electrocution powers?”

“Sort of,” Lena explains, “I started to try and throw lightning at him, but Sarah grabbed my wrist. Then… it was like she’d added her power to mine. I just felt my magic double. Then, when Julie got in on it, it got more powerful again. It wasn’t like lightning; it was like… a beam or something. But when we fired it, it was like awaveof power.”

Lena gives a light chuckle: “It was kind of incredible, actually.”

Cyrus leans back a little bit, surprised. He then nods.

“What I’m trying to say,” I say, attracting his attention back to me, “is we’re clearly magically inclined. It’d be stupid to say we’re not—Lena, Julie, and I have activated visions. Lena has lightning powers that can stun a dragon, and when we band together, we candestroya dragon. In fact—” I look to Lena, “—I don’t want to overestimate us, but I reckon that wave of power could have taken out more than one dragon.”

Lena considers and then nods. I look at Julie, and she smiles, nodding as well.

“And from what I understand about this magical bullshit,” I continue, “Greyson Ridge itself is the source of all this. The relics, the keys… it seems like you dragons had to arrive and set it all off, but if we’d met in anywhere other than Greyson Ridge, it wouldn’t have worked.”

There’s more nodding around the table from the others watching this conversation happen.

“There may still be more powers waiting to be unlocked in the residents here,” I argue, “I think combining our powers with Lena proves that Julie and I have some extra power we haven’t manifested yet, and we might not be the only ones. Who knows who else might have potential.”

“I see your point,” Cyrus counters, “but this only matters if those same residents are planning on fighting with us.”

“I don’t think you should underestimate theget off my porchcommunity spirit Greyson Ridge has,” I clap back, “This town has survived the silver rush, epidemics—so many things that turned other towns around here into ghost towns, and we’re still kicking.”

Cyrus’s face twists a little, unconvinced. I can see the other dragons in the circle staring at him, reading his responses.I know if I can’t convince the Alpha, there’s no point convincing any of the others.

“Okay,” I start up again, “consider this: we somehow manage to convince the entire population—both human and shifter—to pack up and leave within a month. Eclipse takes over the ghost town that Greyson Ridge has become. What then?”

Cyrus narrows his eyes a little at me.

“What do you mean, ‘what then’?” he asks.

“We know that they don’t actually want Greyson Ridge,” I state them, “They want the keys and relicsinGreyson Ridge, not the town itself. Once they have those, they’ll be even more powerful than ever, right? What then? What if they still want to settle the score with Soleilus after that? What if they want to do something else with that power?”

Cyrus averts his gaze, pondering over that. There’s a light rumbling around the table.

“You make a good point,” Cyrus admits after a second.

“We have to stay and fight,” I say, “As far as I can see, there’s no other option. Not just because we have to keep Eclipse from the power in the town, but because this is our home. All of us, human and dragon—we have to fight for it. If the carvings are right, then it’s always been our shared home.”

Cyrus frowns a little at me.

“Carvings?” he questions simply.

“Oh, that’s right!” Lena says, “You weren’t around when we investigated them! We found some very old carvings in a cave close to the collapsed mineshaft. Julie and I had a look over them, and it really looks like these carvings are ancient.”

“They are,” Julie adds, “They look a couple of hundred years old, at least. I haven’t had the chance to check exactlyhowold—I’ll need to find that out, but it’s a few generations at least.”

---