His father had always shown strength above anything else. As the Pacific Dragos, they were sworn to protect the people of the islands from any threat, and as of late, crime had soared across their lands.
Kingston had looked the other way too long, allowing the humans in charge to deal with their own. That clearly wasn’t working. Murder rates had tripled, and violent crime had quadrupled.
There was no question that it was time for the Pacific Dragos to regain control of the situation and protect the people they were born to protect. To do anything other than that would render them useless as a species. They were created for a specific purpose: to protect the people from themselves.
He looked around the lair. It was just as his father had left it before his death. It was in serious need of updating and being brought up to the new decade in terms of furnishings and technology. The lair was to be his home. His seat of power. With today’s available technology, he could make it more secure for Emmy than it had ever been.
Though, because she was fully human, that would present its own set of challenges when it came to her freedom and being able to come and go as she pleased.
Kingston felt Jace’s presence well before he had closed in on the lair. What surprised him more than his increasing strength was the fact that Jace was not alone. He had brought Malia with him.
“Brother, we came as fast as possible,” Jace said as he touched down and set his mate gently on the ground. “Malia insisted on coming to check on Emmy.”
“Good thinking. Thank you, Malia. Emmy needs someone other than me to talk to right now. She’s going to need a support system. Speaking of that. I need to make a quick phone call. Brother, can you show Malia back to the living quarters? I put Emmy in the bedroom to rest.”
“Sure.” Jace led his mate back to the living quarters.
Kingston scrolled through his contacts until he found the name he was looking for. He hit the call button and waited for the call to connect.
“Kingston Conrad, what can I do for you?” Gerri asked.
“The situation here has become complicated,” he said.
“Is Emmy okay?” he asked.
“Yes and no.” Kingston rushed through everything that had happened since he met Emmy and how he was worried about how much she had been forced to deal with in the last few hours.
“I’ll catch the first flight out. It sounds like you’re going to need my help.”
“I wouldn’t ask if the situation wasn’t dire.”
“I get it. I’ll see you soon,” Gerri said and disconnected the call.
Kingston resumed his pacing, wishing there was some way for him to undo all that had happened.
“Brother, explain,” Jace said.
“I wanted to take Emmy for a ride in the plane to show her the true beauty of our home. Twenty minutes into the trip, one of the engines caught on fire. It didn’t take long for the other engine to stop. I didn’t have a choice. I had to save her. We were over the mountains, and the plane was dead. There was nowhere to try to make a safe landing.”
“So you had to shift to save both of you?” Jace asked.
“Yes. I didn’t know what else to do. But she was surprisingly okay with me being a dragon. She said she knew I was some sort of shifter. That I had inadvertently said a few things that gave it away.”
“Well, that’s an unusual human reaction to our dual nature,” Jace pointed out. “So was she freaked out from the near-death plane crash?”
“Nope. She laughed. Hysterically.”
“So she lost it?” Jace looked at him curiously.
“Nope. That wasn’t even what freaked her out.” Kingston thought back over the conversation and her reactions to all that had happened. Maybe he should have kept that king thing to himself for a bit.
“Then what was it, brother?”
“That I would be king when I claimed my mate,” he admitted.
“Why is that a big deal? It’s not like she knows that she’s your mate. Unless … Oh, for the love of God. Please, tell me you didn’t tell her. Already? You’ve only known her for what? Forty-eight hours? Plus, from what Malia has told me about her, this trip to Hawaii was supposed to be her honeymoon, but she called off the wedding because she caught her ex cheating.”
Kingston threw his arms in the air. “She asked! What was I supposed to do? Lie to her?”