Chapter 7: Chapter 7

DRACO

Events had taken a turn for the worst. When I got out of the shower, knowing my girls, Evermore and Penny, were resting on my bed—my phone buzzed.

~Draco! Your father was shot, we are on the way home early, get the kitchen ready for the Roses, Buzzard is on the way to get ready to heal him—clean up a little, he’ll be there in five, we’re not far behind. Love you so much—Mom.~

Five minutes, and Buzz was going to be here. Great. Fuck.

I wrap a towel around my middle and I open the door to see the girls snoozing.

“Wake up,” I snarl and both Evermore and Fiona sit up. “Get out of here,” I tell Evermore with a dark look in my eye.

“Why?” Fiona asks.

“Should we…” Evermore ponders. She takes my tone seriously, but her curiosity is always shining in her ice-blue eyes, tinged with an edge of violet which she gets from her sweet mother Silver.

“Go home-home, to Storm and Silver,” I suggest quietly. “I’ll meet up with you later. Travel via the Shadow Realm. Move quickly.”

Evermore slips from the bed. She picks up Fiona’s clothes and tosses them her way, then she dresses herself as she walks toward me, letting out a slightly unhinged smile.

“What’s that look for, Ice?” I growl the warning. “I don’t have time.”

“One day, you’ll want us on your arms, when you take the room, and the men, and you need me to make a few statements with Penny…” her voice is a sultry, dark promise. “One day you won’t have to send us away.”

Evermore’s confidence is always sky-high. To be fair, she’s got the skill to have the confidence, but if only she knew how much it made my heart race.

The thought of my girls being anywhere near danger. Taking them to my home for the first time had been a risk, but I just felt cornered with Sini sniffing up our asses.

“Not today.” I shake my head at Evermore and she loses her smile, but her eyes remain sharp.

“We’ll go home,” Fiona speaks up as she comes to Ever’s side, taking her hand. “Let’s go, Evermore. Draco said he doesn’t have time.”

“Aspen is the one running out of time, Draco will be his demise…and me, I’m just the cute, harmless Silver on your arm. That’s how I imagine it.” Evermore loves to joke about this fantasy, being sweet, being so shy and unassuming when she wanted to be, hiding the dragon’s psycho Silver side.

“You done having your little fantasy?” I tease Ice, and she shimmers away into the Shadow Realm with Fiona.

They’re there, and then they’re gone. I miss them already, but I don’t have time to think about them any longer.

I check the time just as I get an early knock at the front door and my security system alerts me to Buzz appearing out front.

I quickly throw on an old suit. It’s bloodstained, but I hadn’t the heart to clean it. Fucking hated this life. Hated being their bitch Red.

I had only grown up recently and they were always taller, always bigger—not so much anymore.

Still didn’t make me enjoy their company any more than I needed to tolerate it.

I head downstairs and open the door, letting in Buzzard.

The dark-skinned, bald mage has got his kit of magical herbs and other supplies.

He follows me into the kitchen, where I clean the bench and set it for my father to lie on when he arrives next.

The kitchen was my mom’s only space she ever really smiled—ironically when she was baking cookies, of all things.

It calmed her. I liked to help her bake. Of course, that was the butt end of all jokes with the Reds.

Those depraved motherfuckers. My blood boils around them, but I keep it locked up, although I feel it’s getting harder with every passing second since Aspen discovered I have two girlfriends.

Fuck. I’m going to hear no end of it.

“You’ve shot up a new few extra inches, son,” Buzz speaks to me, small talk.

I wasn’t exactly fond of him either. He was a paid-off lackey. He served the highest bidder. I didn’t trust anyone whose loyalty was bought.

“Don’t call me son, Buzz,” I whisper in his ear with a venom only Reds can hold.

It comes out around the other Reds, not a growl, but a low hiss.

“Apologies, prince,” he murmurs under his breath. “Heard it’s only the knee, it’ll be painful, but I have a quick remedy for shattered bones.”

“Yeah, that’s great.” I brush him off and ignore him as I walk to the front of the house, out of the kitchen, anticipating the knock.

I hear it, the feminine hand, the light sound. Mom.

I run to the door and open it up, she’s first in, dressed in black like she’s always going to a funeral.

A lacy hat hangs over her eyes. She loved dressing like that. Not sure why. I hated it. Not that I ever told her how much I didn’t like it.

Made me feel like she was preparing for the moment she died. Any day.

Behind her, Aspen is carried in on a stretcher by his closest Reds.

Sini is at the back, and I’m relieved he’s here and not chasing after Evermore right now.

I stay right next to my mom, I never leave her side around these monsters.

I keep my arm around her shoulders as I lead her into the kitchen and I stand with her at the cleaned out bench.

The silence is something else. Usually Franky and Pincer are goading me on first chance they get, but they’re looking at me like they’re trying to read if I’m happy about Aspen having a shot knee.

Knowing he’s in excruciating pain as he’s laid out for Buzz to fix.

“Be gentle, please,” my mother whispers to Buzz.

“I’ll be fine,” Aspen manages to groan out a complaint, even now.

“Don’t speak.” I talk over my father, with a tone that’s lost my usual forced-respect.

But right now I’m on edge. “Let Buzz work. What happened?” I turn to Kage and Knifer. “You forget to shield?”

“Shipment of missing teens escaped, one stole a gun, shot him, tried to shoot all of us, being a hero…you know what happens to heroes.” Kage’s lip is busted.

Whoever he fought, fought back. I try not to throw up, knowing the hero is probably six feet under by now. Or dragon meat.

“I am glad their victims escaped this time around. I could never be direct with my own work, but I had been weakening their whole supply chain for months now, foiling with the cages, heating and cooling the metal until it was brittle, easy to break.”

“We opened the borders this week and our business is expanding outside Requiem City,” Knifer adds. “Should tenfold our profits soon.”

“My profits,” Aspen whispers out while Buzz fishes out the bullet still lodged in his flesh.

“Sorry, boss,” Knifer awkwardly apologizes, as if forgetting Aspen was right there.

“You didn’t tell me you were seeking to grow outside our usual grounds.” I ask this of my father. “Why not inform me?”

“You didn’t tell me you had two girlfriends. Why the fuck should I trust you any longer?” Aspen closes his eyes from the pain, but still manages to sound disappointed in a way that always fucks up my confidence.

Not that I need his approval, but I always tried to keep the monster’s trust.

It was better to be in his good books.

Very, very bad to be on the wrong side of him.

If I ever wanted to overthrow him, I would have to blindside him.

He was too smart otherwise.

And now, he’s already pushed me out of the inner circle. Fucking ~shit~.

I was too busy fucking my girls and he was finally realizing I didn’t actually give a fuck about him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Mom senses my panic, and she tries to stroke her fingers through my hair.

“Time to grow up and stop sitting on the edges,” Franky finally pipes in. “You want in, you have to come with us to every critical point—not just the full meetings. You want to be a real Red?”

“Don’t need the money,” I bite back. “I got enough. You—you’re always spending everything you get on pussy, can’t even get a woman without them biting or trying to slit your dick off. Animal.”

“I like it when they bite,” Franky licks his teeth. “They bite you, Draco, or nibble at you? You’re probably soft. You know Silvers like pain? Or didn’t you work that out yet? There’s some free advice for you.”

Don’t fall for it.

Now more than ever, I have to keep my calm.

“Don’t talk about my personal life,” I suggest, speaking without raging. “How about we talk business—and you tell me when the next critical point is. I’ll do the work, so you can have a week off and pay for more women to bite you.”

“You want to stay in, Draco,” Aspen speaks up in a fury as Buzz starts to stitch him up. “I want to meet that Silver—no secrets in this business. You know that. If you don’t introduce me to these two mates by the end of next week, you’re out of the picture for good.”

I feel my blood run cold.

Pincer is really smiling now, they’ll all sense my fear.

That was a death threat.

Aspen knew how to bring me in line, but he had never, ever threatened my life.

Things really were changing fast around here.

“~How could you say that?~” my mother chokes on her words. “Your own son, who’s been loyal since he was born—”

“He’s been a lying, sneaky shit since he was thirteen, always crapping on about why he can’t come to my meetings. Reds don’t leave the business, they accept the role and live. Otherwise you’re dead, Draco, you’re dead, you hear me?” Aspen threatens me again.

The rest of the Reds just look openly at me, waiting for me to crack, to cry.

They’ll all be set on me.

They’ll all rip me to pieces.

Aspen might feel bad for one second, but he won’t really care, he lost his soul when I was a child.

At some point he turned sour, real sour—and completely lost to the violence calling within.

“Say you hear your father, son.” Franky blinks at me. “Hmm?”

“I hear you.” I give into the beta position just this once.

One more time.

But never again.

When I left this house I would never bow again.

I would not go through this anymore.

Oh, how many times my thoughts had run this way—but now something critical changes.

No one saw her move to the counter so quietly.

My mother, grabbing the kitchen knife in her hand.

She rushes for my injured father, slashing for his neck.

“Hey!” I yell just as Buzzard pushes her out of the way.

She knocks into the wall and falls over.

Pincer walks over and picks her up, takes the knife and pushes her toward me.

They don’t react, they don’t even flinch.

I grab her shoulders as she cries. I am trembling now. Anticipating Aspen’s rage.

Aspen has gone white.

She hadn’t attacked him. I had never seen her try. She wilted. Always. To protect me.

And I stayed good under Aspen’s eye, to protect her.

Right now we were both making mistakes.

Aspen says nothing.

He doesn’t need to.

I usher her out of the room with me.

We go quietly.

When we’re out and in the second room, where a grand piano is set next to an artist’s depiction of a peaceful, tranquil waterfall—my mother sits on the stool of the piano and looks up at her favorite painting.

I am so scared for her, I can’t say anything. I just pace by the door.

I wonder if we’ll even be alive by midnight.

The both of us.

“Don’t look like that, Draco,” my mother speaks to me, her eyes dark with some kind of steady knowledge I never understood and still don’t.

“We can’t keep living like this,” I whisper this, a thousand times I’ve said the same thing, never been able to change anything.

“He can’t kill me, I’m his mate.” My mother always said it, and I never believed it. No mate would treat a mate this way. It was impossible.

I’d rather cut off all my limbs than ever lay a hand on Evermore or Fiona out of aggression or frustration, yet I had seen Aspen hit my mother more times than I care to count.

“But he can kill you.” My mother had never spoken so boldly before. I freeze in my pacing.

“Be careful, Draco. I want you to listen to me. I want you to introduce your mates to your father. I promise he won’t hurt them. He’s just curious. Don’t worry.”

How do I tell her, he’s already hurt Fiona?

He’s already—

I can’t even think it.

I look off at that waterfall and I want to change that water to fire.

“Aspen. Is never. Just. Curious,” I growl out. “He’s evil.”

“He never used to be so lost,” another strange, meaningless thing she would say.

“How?” I ask. “…you never explain how? I can’t even imagine him any different to how he is now.”

With this, she would always go silent.

But now she changes her tune, opening up to me.

She gets up and walks to a desk, scribbling down something on a piece of paper.

She comes to me, folds it up, and places it in my hand.

“Visit this address in your spare time,” she suggests.

“I have never explained this to you, but I will now, Draco. You’re old enough to learn. As you might have come to suspect by now…a Red always mates twice. They always do.

“Twenty years ago, Aspen had me and one more—my best friend. She died—and he was never the same again. She was the one who could make him laugh.

“I was always scared of him. Being human. She was a dragon. One night, on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol—he killed her by accident.

“A mock game of Russian roulette with the Reds. The gun was loaded. It wasn’t meant to be. Aspen was always a little rough but he gave into his demons after that.

“I saw her die. I was there. He was never the same. And I have never recovered from what I saw either. We’re broken people.

“I’m sorry, Draco. But…that address will lead you to your eldest brother. He moved on ~long~ ago… He’s ten years older, but he and Aspen recently reconnected.

“He’s a good fighter, wants to join the Dark Ring. Wants to meet you, Draco. His name is Ozzy. You should seek him out. He’ll love to meet you. He’s a lot like his mother, patient and funny.”

Long-lost brother?

This was news.

I just nod.

It’s too much to take in.

My mom embraces me in a tight hug.

I hold her back.

I imagined a life of safety…only in my dreams.

It would only ever be in my dreams if I let it stay there.

I know what my mother is saying.

I know why she’s opening up to me now, explaining why Aspen fell off into the deep end.

It’s not an acceptable excuse for his dealings in violence, but it’s information.

Leaders need information.

I have to fight evil.

I can no longer hide.