Page 13 of Delinquent Dette
Ragged screams broke his voice, as he burned and fought through tons of rubble and saw a sight no Dette should see in their nest. His first clutch hadn’t been so far along. And amid them, a bicolored Drake. A true jarl.
Sten had held him and cried harsh tears, but Frikka was gone, dead inside, and after the fires were lit and the house razed—with Frikka’s fortune inside—he’d parted ways and left for the wilds. The cries of those little ones echoed in his head until he woke with a start to stare at the sky as if the sun itself owed him restitution.
It didn’t matter. The dreams came and went, but time was eternal. Revenge was short-lived, but who did he seek revenge on? Insects? He’d known it would happen, and they’d guarded those eggs for five months, until they’d emaciated themselves with anxiety. And it hadn’t done any good in the end.
In the waking world, he could focus on other things. The season and thing he feared was for others. Merely anotherseason, another batch of rutty Drakes sniffing about. The taste of their blood lingered on his tongue.They shall wish to breed me and I will destroy them.
He’d been all over the world the past… almost two hundred years. Jaunts about Europe proceeded by a few years in China, hunting the bloodline that’d destroyed his first egg.
And of all things, that one egg he still mourned. He lay on a flat rock, letting the high sun warm his scales as a helicopter whirred by. He’d barely paid the changing world around him much mind, only coming out of hiding every few years to cause enough mischief to warrant hiding out again. He was current—enough.
His Chinese wasn’t terrible, so when a beautiful, strong Dette built more like a Drake than most, skulked somewhere beneath him on a cell phone, yammering away, he listened.
“Yes, Fu! I promise. I will tell you if I see him. Yes, a golden Dette. I’ve met him before. I’m sure he’ll want to hear that he has two pups and eight grandsons. Who breeds a Dette on their first heat, anyway? Loaded him up on nestblossom, I bet.” The Long dragon paced.Interesting.
Frikka tilted his head to listen more. Perhaps there was a Drake that needed his claw. He hadn’t murdered anyone since he’d taken out that Slang Drake months prior—the filthy bastard that bred his own son. Made it look like a suicide.
A cowardly death for a coward.
“Well, if nobody believed Hallr before, they believe him now.” The Dette laughed. “I’ll find Gabriel.”
Gabriel had saved the Slang Dette’s egg, twins running about the mountain. Frikka had kept plenty of dragons away from the whelps, praying for the world to change enough that they’d be safe to rejoin society.
“Who owns his contract?”
Owned. Like fucking property.Frikka prickled and only barely restrained a growl. His claws tensed.
“Yes, yes, I know the North American Dettes are free, but you know how those French Canadia—” The Dette stopped in his tracks, listening. Frikka, being very invested in the conversation, crept forward, tilting his head to catch a word. “If I thought you were locking Dettes up and trading them, I wouldn’t help you. And I’m not coming home until you promise me there’s no breeding dens.”
Frikka detested those, but Dettes could earn freedom if they birthed a clutch. It’d be better if they were wholly free.
“You promise? Even the Lochs?” The Dette paused. “I can’t believe he’s the last one… But it figures it’d be a Slang. Okay. I’ll find him and come home, I promise.”
Frikka’s heart thundered as he shifted and stood out of sight. “Long Dette!”
“Aya? Who calls?”
“You are searching for Gabriel Dior, yes?” Frikka parsed his words carefully.
“I am. I’m searching for any Dettes ready to come home.” The Dette didn’t move, waiting patiently. “Do you wish to come home?”
“I’m fine where I am. I wish to be here and have my privacy. My mission is not dissimilar to yours. I protect the Dettes who stay.” Frikka steeled himself. “But tell me of this Hallr and mating flower.”
“Nielsen Drake, he finally did it. Showed everyone—he and his mate have eight pups still teething and one on the way. Shui Long, the council master’s mate says it is the happiest mating he’s ever seen.”
Frikka was a grandfather. His heart thundered and visions of a tiger lily Dette came to mind. So many pups. The future he’d longed for had come. But it’d only been a dozen years or so sincehe last saw his son. Surely he’d not had two clutches so close.Bastard. I taught him better!
“And why do you seek this Gabriel?” Dragons did not search for those in the wastes. They were feral and broken. There is where hope came to die.
“He birthed two blanks before he relegated himself to the wilds. They were discovered to be fertile and hatched many years ago, and the clutch’s father wishes to let Gabriel know that he paid off his contract and he is free. There will be no more dens and his children wish to meet him.”
“Why wait until now?”
“Complicated circumstances, but one didn’t even know he was a dragon, and the other was raised by coyotes. It’s absolutely a farfetched tale, but all true.”
Only a Dette too dumb to know his family’s history and as wild and foul as Frikka would mate that boy.Colborn’s words echoed in Frikka’s head.
“I take it that one of them is Hallr Nielsen’s mate?” An out-of-body humming had Frikka frozen in place.
