Page 33 of Owen

God, I wished he was smiling. I wished he would laugh and tell me it was all a joke. I might even be able to forgive him if he did. Granted, it was a mean joke, but I could forgive it so long as he admitted he’d been trying to fool me.

Because the alternative was just too much to accept. He was either insane, or he was trying to tell me there was a dragon living in the mountain.

“There’s a dragon?” I whispered. “Is that what you’re saying? Is that honestly what you want me to believe?”

“It’s more than that.”

“Oh, good, because I can totally stand more of this. I was definitely hoping you would tell me there was more to it than the simple presence of dragons in the world.”

“For once, I’m going to have to ask you to leave your sarcasm at the door. Granted, I enjoy it. I do. But right now, you need to lower your defenses and listen. Really listen. What I’m about to tell you is the complete truth. Nothing less than that.”

My insides felt loose. My knees were watery. My palms were sweating buckets.

“Perhaps you ought to sit.”

“Perhaps you ought to just tell me whatever it is you want to say.”

And then, once he’d said it, I would be out the door and running for the exit before he could stop me.

“All right, then. Have it your way.” He took a deep breath, his jaw tightening, his brows lowering. “The dragons in the legends exist today. I am one of them. So is Dallas. In fact, most of those in this underground compound are dragons, all of us from the same clan which split off a thousand years ago. Some of us came here—we aren’t certain why, though part of the reason had to do with protecting the treasure of the witches who were later killed here—while the rest of us remained in the highlands, protecting a mountain of our own.”

I barely heard anything after the point where he said he was a dragon.

A dragon.

A freaking dragon.

“Please, say something,” he whispered, his gray eyes pleading with me. Searching my face—for what? Acceptance? Approval? Understanding?

Right. Because there was any chance of his getting any such thing from me after saying something so entirely off-the-wall.

“What do you want from me?” I asked, backing toward the door.

I remembered how we’d come into the compound, and that miles-long tunnel we went through. Maybe it had only seemed like miles at the time, but I knew it was much too long for me to run through without getting caught. But Dallas had talked about a back entrance and asked whether it might not be a better idea to take me through there, past the cells.

It would mean turning right once I was out of the room, since we had entered from the left. I only hoped the compound was laid out in a straight line. If not, I was screwed.

But I had to try to get away. I had to at least try.

“What am I supposed to say?” I asked, taking one step after another and hoping he didn’t reach out and grab me before I made it to the door. “That I think you’re full of it? That it feels like my heart is breaking right now because I thought you were something special? That I’m gonna start screaming in, like, three seconds?”

“Molly—”

“No.”

“Molly, I love you.”

I shook my head. “Another lie. You don’t love me. You’re insane. You can’t possibly love me.”

“Why won’t you allow yourself to believe?”

“Because literally, everything in my life up to this point has told me I shouldn’t believe you! Why would you even ask me that? Are you that cruel? Or are you just clueless?”

“Which is it? Insane, cruel, or clueless?” He was starting to get angry.

And something told me I wouldn’t like it when he got angry.

I reached the door and slid a hand between my back and the knob.

---