She’s honest, and that’s quite rare in any species, let alone humans.
“I don’t want to tell you,” she says finally. “I don’t know if I can trust you,” she says, and I don’t blame her. She has my fucking niece, after all. Oh, Daisy might be wearing different clothes and covered in the human’s scent, but I know my niece when I see her. I almost lost control when I neared the sleeping human and was able to see who she had wrapped in her arms.
How did she get Daisy?
Does she know where Ellie is?
Did she do something to Ellie?
I don’t want to think the worst of this little human. I don’t want to assume that just because she has Daisy, she did something to hurt my sister. I don’t want to be naïve, though. I don’t want to give myself some false belief that she’s here out of the goodness of her heart.
So what it is?
Why is she here?
“You don’t exactly have a choice,” I tell her. I rise to my full height, then, and she cowers back in fear. Good. She should be afraid. “You’ve wandered into dragon territory, little girl, and the monsters have come out to play.”
Peggy closes her eyes for a long minute. She’s going to cry. I can tell. I can sense these things. This is the part where she breaks down, where she begs me to let her go. This is the part where she confesses everything, where she tells me that she’s sorry she wandered so deep into the big, bad forest. This is where she apologizes for trying to trick a dragon.
I cross my arms over my chest, elongating my body as much as possible. She’s still on the ground and I tower over her. She must be feeling tiny right now. She must be feeling weak and scared. She should, too.
What was she thinking, coming to the stone tower?
Did she think we were just going to welcome a human with open arms?
Did she think showing up would get her a free pass to Fablestone?
There’s no doubt that this woman thinks she’s clever, but she’s not. She’s just like all the rest of them. She’s normal and ordinary, and she’s about to have a complete mental breakdown. She’ll tell me what I need to know, and then I’ll take Daisy and the human can be on her merry way. Oh, I won’t kill her. I wouldn’t kill a human randomly, especially not one as beautiful as her.
She could be our mate.
My inner-dragon keeps whispering to me, taunting me, but I ignore him while I stare down at the human. She sniffles and wraps her arms around her chest.
Ah, yes.
The breakdown.
“You’re right,” she says.
“I am,” I agree.
“I never should have wandered into the woods,” she says.
“That’s right,” I tell her. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
“I told you,” the woman says. “I came to find Cameron.”
Then she breaks the mold of what I expect her to do.
Then she deviates from my well-laid plan.
Then she gets crazy.
Before I even know what’s happening, the human shoves her fist out hard and nails me right in the balls. The scream that erupts from my mouth is so wild and unbearable that I’m sure creatures will be able to hear it for fucking miles.
“Fuck you!” She shouts, and then I hear her scuffling around. I’m too busy holding myself to see what she’s doing or where she’s going.
That.