Page 6 of Kidnapped Plus-Size Mate

“I’m fine, Abuela,” I assure her. My worries are diffused when I realize it’s just another paranoid episode. My grandmother has been having a lot of those lately, ever since she changed retirement homes from Sacramento to Fresno. She wanted to be closer to me, but not too close, refusing to move into my apartment.

She’s determined to keep her independence, even when she fusses over me and has panic attacks about my well-being.

These past few months have been particularly troublesome for her, especially when she’d call me every time I’d visited her dream.

I saw her just this weekend when I visited the retirement home. It isn’t enough to convince her I’m perfectly fine, even if I’m alone. She just doesn’t seem to have as much faith in me as in herself.

Chuckling lightly, my shoulders relax when the tension subsides. “I am fine, Abuela. You just saw me this—”

“Dios mío!” she scolds, using God’s name to voice the gravity of the reason for her call. “You don’t understand, Camilla. It was no ordinary dream.” Her voice drops an octave lower when she whispers discreetly, “Respirador de fuego…”

“Firebreather…?” I murmur back in shock. The little Spanish I know is enough to get by, and enough to understand what she just whispered in horror.

Panic crawls along my throat in scorching jets reminiscent of the fire the dragon from my dream blew out in the imaginary air.

How does she know?

“Yes, firebreather,” she confirms, her voice still low as if she’s whispering so that no one else in the retirement home can hear her. Like it’s the biggest secret she’s ever had to tell me. “Theserpientewas taking you, Cami. Promise me you’ll be safe, please.”

Serpent?

I gulp when I feel the blood draining from my cheeks. Terrified by the coincidence of Abuela’s call when it was only last night that a dragon visited my dream and turned it nightmarish, I do my best to remain composed.

“That’s—That’s crazy, Abuela,” I chuckle nervously, trying to hide the shock I’m feeling. This is no reason to confirm my grandmother’s concerns and have her stress for nothing.

It’s not like the dream meant anything.

None of them ever did before.

It’s probably just her maternal instincts that kicked in. It’s simply a coincidence…

“I’m not crazy,mi hija!” she reprimands, her voice returning to the strict, no-nonsense tone I’d grown up with. “Listen to me very carefully. You need to be safe. Don’t go out after dusk, and burn that sage I gave you.”

“Yes, Abuela,” I concede, hardly paying attention to the rest of the firm instructions she gives me. My mind lingers on the magnitude of this coincidence, and I’m suddenly plagued by the thoughts of last night’s dream-turned-nightmare as a shiver slithers down my spine in heat waves that only serve to remind me of the fire breathing creature I saw.

“Will you be fine, Camilla?” my grandmother asks, and I only hear her over the deafening silence that fills the room because I’m suddenly afraid of being alone in my apartment.

“I—I’m fine, Abuela,” I lie with a gulp.

“Don’t forget to do what I told you before you sleep tonight, okay?”

I nod for no reason since she can’t see me. I’m too petrified of closing my eyes, let alone going to bed tonight, plagued by the images of the fire breathing serpent that somehow has appeared on Abuela’s radar.

Too stunned to explain that I probably won’t be going to bed at all tonight, I diffuse my grandmother’s worries with a string of reassuring words that make up a lie. When the callends, my cell phone slips from my fingers as I stare blankly ahead of me, images of the fire breathing dragon coming to haunt me again while I’m wide awake.

I never understood the meaning of my dreams in that fantastical land with its picturesque waterfall, oddly colored flowers, and creeping vines that danced before my eyes like a swaying curtain of geometric proportions. I never cared to read too much into it, either. My dreams were always an escape to the magical land conjured by my imagination, and it didn’t have to mean anything before now.

I shrug and raise my shoulders, deciding I can’t be weak like this. Abuela didn’t raise a weakling, and I won’t be fazed by a mere dream.

Even if Abuela thinks it means something, I have to remind myself that she’s old. She’s probably just paranoid, and none of this means anything.

Right?

Right…

Dragons don’t exist in the real world.

I’ll be just fine. I have nothing to worry about.

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