Page 4 of The Dragon Shifters' Enemy
“Love?I don’t see how--”
“Love. Claire asked earlier about it not beingloveat first sight between Valerius and me, but love played the biggest role in what happened that day.I know it sounds corny and not something you might think of when you think of Valerius.But he loves our people.Not just those in this territory either,” Caden said, his mouth dry, his hands sweaty.
“But his actions caused some of those people’s deaths,” Lisa pointed out.
“Valerius thought that I was responsible for the bomb,” Caden explained, rubbing his slick with sweat palms together. “He would do anything to keep our people safe.”
“Yet it ended in peoplenotbeing safe,” Lisa stated curtly.
Valerius’ hold on him tightened. He sensed that Valerius was now frozen, much as he had been before, with too many emotions crowding his throat.And no way to express them other than Dragon fire.Beyond Valerius, he saw his parents gazing upon him with love and pain.
Caden though, for the first time during this interview, actually felt quite peaceful.He understood all the reasons that Valerius had done what he did. He would share with the world the ones that werenecessaryfor them to know.
“He thought I tried to kill people in the square,” Caden stated simply.“In fact, at the time, he didn’t know that no one had died.And, he feared, that the bomb was thefirstact of terror I was going to commit.”
“But why?”Claire whispered. “You hadn’t done anything!”
He smiled at her sadly.“Because to enter another Dragon’s territory without permission is pretty much an act of war.And I just seemed to show up out of nowhere when something terrible had happened at the 30th Anniversary of the end of the last war.”
“But I waswrong,” Valerius’ voice was low.“I was so very wrong.”
“Yet I understand why you reacted like you did.You wanted to keep everyone safe. Everything that’s happened since then…” Caden was quiet but then he nodded, “Thinking of the damage I could have done, you had to stop it before it started.”
“But you wouldneverhave hurt our people,” Valerius stated.
“But you had no way of knowing that,” Caden reminded him.“Iolaire is just different.”
“You are different,” Valerius stated.
“So the people whodied, are you saying that their deaths are justified?”Lisa pressed.
“What?No!That’s not what my son said!”his mother gasped and clutched the front of her shirt.
“Indeed!That’s outrageous!”His father’s eyes snapped.
“You’re mean!”Tilly cried.“I don’t like you!”
“Hey now!”Wally harrumphed.
“So typical of reporters!”Rose snapped.
He knew that Valerius’ lips were drawn back in a snarl. Caden felt Chione coming nearer behind him.He was pretty sure that she was going to lop Lisa’s head off.This was that moment that everyone had warned him about, that he’d seen often enough times himself: the twisting of words. It had to behimthough that answered this charge.Not anyone else. It was time for him to step up and be honest.
“No, they are not justified.They could never be.And we will do everything we can to make sure that more deaths do not happen,” Caden said and this time when he met Lisa’s eyes she lowered them.Caden then looked directly into the cameras.“But the people who placed the bomb that started that terrible chain of events that day, they wanted collateral damage.They would say that every death is justified if they get what they want.”
“What do they want?”Lisa asked.
Caden’s gaze hardened.“It does not matter.Because we won’t let them have it.”
Family Matters
Silence fell after Caden’s pronouncement.Whatever the reporters had thought about Caden and Iolaire was now forever changed.But not in a bad way.Both could clearly be kind.But both could be fierce.Valerius felt incredibly proud.
“Well!”Carlos thumped his left thigh with one hand.“Well! Well!Fireworks there!You’re quite the speaker, young man.”
Valerius loved it when Caden lifted an expressive eyebrow at Carlos.Caden might be a “young man” but he was also a Dragon Shifter.Carlos held up his hands as if in mock surrender.
“I just meant that you aremorethan you seem, which is why I think we all need to pull back a bit and ask about who you are, King Caden,” Carlos stated genially.“We skipped the introductions, because there was so muchjuicyspeculation about dragon babies.”
