Chapter 34

**Avery**

This is insane. All of this is insane. I locked my door and rested my back against it. I could hear The Trio quietly talking in the hallway on the other side of my door, but I couldn’t make out what. They were happy and excited no matter what they were discussing. They all want me to forgive them but Cassius. He wants to prove himself. Should I let him?

Not thinking, I throw open my door. “What am I to you?” In unison, they said, “Mate.” I abruptly slammed and locked my door before I pressed my forehead to it. Mate? How? Oh, fucking god! I pulled out all of the historical books in my room and some of my romance books too because some truth always lies in fiction if you are willing to read between the lines.

In my human history book, there is a section on mythology. In Babylonian myths, Tiamat was the goddess of all dragons and she was believed to bring chaos and violence as well as create monsters. What if she didn’t bring those things but was created from them? Next, I found an example in Chinese culture. There was a woman named Longmu. She and those dragons that she bonded to are believed to have created devotion and parental love. I wonder if she is the one responsible for the mating bond. I picked up a romance book called The Flame. I rented it by accident because it is about dragons.

Shakily, I began to turn the pages and read. In this fictional book, the female lead never knew who her parents were. She was found as an infant near death along the shore of a frozen river by an elderly dragon woman. She raised the girl as her own. The girl had a strange mark on her right hip. It turned out that the mark was from a royal lineage of dragons dating back to their creation.

I stood and stripped off all of my clothes. After turning on all of my lights, I grabbed a hand mirror and walked into my bathroom where I proceeded to look over every inch of my body. None of my scars remained except for the marks on my back but they looked different. Yes, there was still a dragon’s clawed handprint on my back but instead of jagged lines, they resembled a pattern...a dragon’s mark. Maybe my nightmares of that day in the forest when I was six are true. A dragon didn’t attack me, instead, it marked me. But why? I was a child.

I continue to search my body. I have looked everywhere except between my legs. I sit on my toilet seat and slowly spread my legs. Next, I lower the mirror. On the inside of my upper right thigh is an iridescent triquetra with a dragon’s eye in the center. I screamed as I dropped the mirror and it shattered into a million pieces on my cool tile floor. I smell smoke and suddenly I am not alone in my bathroom.

“Avery, are you hurt?” Cassius asks as he rushes to me with Asher at his side.

I stumble off of the toilet, falling onto the shards as I grab the shower curtain in an effort to cover myself. “Get out!”

He went to say something but Asher stopped him. Asher took a hand towel from my rack and gave it to Cassius. He wrapped the towel around his head so that it covered his eyes. “Avery, let me help. I won’t look, I swear,” he said. I sighed but agreed. He scooped me up and carried me to my bed. I suddenly remembered how I must have been brought back to the palace after Lenore and the other Hags tried to kill me. But it wasn’t Cassius who carried me, if I had to guess it was Clint. I am taking a huge leap of faith in allowing myself to be vulnerable around Cassius. To my surprise, he only bumped into a few things along the way to my bed. He gently laid me down as he said, “Guide my hands so I can remove the shards. Before you tell me that you can do it yourself, let me.”

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I take his wrists and guide his hands to where the shards are protruding from my body. It hurts, but I am used to pain. As he is removing the shards, the others come in. “Either get the fuck out or close your fucking eyes,” he yells in Asher’s voice. I see them leave but return with their eyes covered. Conner fumbles around but Clint seems at home in the darkness. “Alright, I got them out. Now I need you to guide my hands over where they were once more,” he said as he was licking his palms. I did as he asked. “Now, tell me what happened.”

I told them about what I read and what I saw. “Avery, we need to see it,” they all said simultaneously.

I sighed as I adjusted the shower curtain to cover my intimate areas. “I am trusting all of you, don’t make me regret it.” Without hesitation, they all nodded and fell to their knees at the foot of my bed. I inched closer and they clasped their hands behind their backs.

“Point to where we need to look and then tell us to open our eyes. We won’t lay a finger on you, Avery,” Clint said.

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I chewed on my lip before I took in a deep breath, mustering up the courage that I never knew existed. “Open.” Such a simple command with life-altering implications. I started to grow more nervous as the silence stretched. “Say something.”

“I thought it was fictional,” Conner said. I went to cover it up. “Don’t hide The Mother’s Mark.”

Staring at the mark while inhaling my scent, they leaned forward. Cassius fell back on his heels. Barely able to restrain himself, “Close your legs now!” he roared.

I slammed my legs closed, “If I stink, just tell me like you always have.”

The Trio stared at me with one of their eyes and one of their dragons’. “Avery, you don’t stink. It’s the opposite,” Cassius explained.

I clamp my legs together even tighter as I press the shower curtain against my naked