Page 32 of Dragon's Midlife Secret Baby
“It’s zeroing in right here, but I don’t see anything on the map,” Maeve noted.
Jace rubbed his hand along his jaw. “If we can mark that point, I can check some other maps I have, ones that are more detailed. My guess is that we’re looking at a small, private island, the kind that wouldn’t show up in an atlas like this because no one is allowed to go there.”
As the women broke the circle, Beck cleared his throat. “You said this guy named Sol has Corbin. The one who was supposed to help you find the person who’s after me.”
Chelsea gave him a distant look. “Yes.”
He knew what he needed to tell her, but thewords stuck like a hard lump in his throat. After hundreds of years on this planet, it shouldn’t be impossible to say anything. He forced them out. “I believe they’re one and the same.”
The stunned looks that met him were almost as hard to bear as the truth.
“Sol was the one who did this to you?” Maeve asked, her voice harsh with disbelief.
He avoided the sorrow in Chelsea’s eyes, especially since he knew he’d put some of it there. “I won’t know for sure until we see him. My clan will help us.” Even with all the strength of the coven and the clan behind him, Beck felt sick. He knew how horribly this person had treated him, and now Sol had his son. Beck had only just become a parent, but already he was living a father’s worst nightmare.
“Well, then.” Lucille got up off the floor and dusted herself off. “Sounds like it’s time we go and find out.”
14
“Aren’twe supposed to be riding on brooms?” Lucille cackled. “I’ve never tried it, but I can already tell you this is more fun.”
“We’re not here to have fun,” Maeve reminded her.
“What, you don’t think taking down some moldy old jerkwad and getting revenge for everything he’s done to our family is going to be fun?” her younger sister challenged. “Sounds like a fucking blast to me, and riding on a dragon is just a bonus. I love the wind in my hair!”
Beck listened to the three women on his back. Maeve and Lucille were constantly bantering, but Chelsea was silent. He didn’t take that as a good sign.They were going to get their son back. What would happen after that?
He turned instead to his fellow dragons that’d readily volunteered to come along. Lilith was on his right, her long gold body easily riding through the night’s wind currents. Kristy was on her back, along with Lucille’s daughters Amanda and Jamie. “Everyone all right over there?”
“We’re trying to be,” Kristy replied, her voice barely picking up enough to travel to him. “This is a new experience.”
“I feel a little sick,” Jamie admitted.
Amanda was sitting in the middle, taking deep breaths and not saying anything.
Beck was worried about the witches. It’d been determined that the fastest way to get to the island was to come in on their wings, but this wasn’t exactly normal. If someone got sick or fell off, they’d have even more problems on their hands. “Did Kendrick say when he’d be joining us?”
Lilith flexed her wings slightly to adjust for angle and elevation. “We gave him the coordinates. He said he’d catch up as soon as he found Griffin.”
“I wonder where he went,” Beck mused aloud. His cousin hadn’t seemed particularly excited about Beck’s return, and it wouldn’t be a surpriseif Griffin declined to help them at all. While the majority of the Alexander clan stuck together, Griffin had always been a bit of an outlier.
“I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he can,” Ewan assured him. He flew on Beck’s left, with Jace and Erin on his sleek blue scales. “He was concerned about bringing enough people to the fight.”
Beck had been concerned about that, too. Sol was just one man, but he knew magic that was powerful enough to keep at least one dragon down. They’d concluded that he must have some followers if he’d sent someone else to do the dirty work of kidnapping Corbin for him. “What do we know about this island, Jace?”
“Not much.” The ship’s captain kept his arms tightly around his mate. “It’s private, like we thought it might be, and it’s been owned by the same family for a long time. No one has been invited out there for any geographical surveys or anything. We do know that the sides are steep cliffs. There are no sandy beaches there. I’m not even sure how anyone would get on it by boat, unless they were going to climb up.”
“Then we’ve chosen the right way in,” Erin concluded.
“I agree. I think that’s it right there.” Jace pointed.
It was getting dark, which was to their advantage as they shifted into their dragon forms and took off. Now, the deep cerulean of the water was blotted by a much darker shape, a rocky crag that stuck up out of the sea. Waves crashed against the cliffs all around its base, sending up white foam that never quite reached the flat land on top. Some trees had managed to grow there over the years, and they crowded around the old houses.
As soon as he could see the layout of the place, Beck once again had that same horrific feeling inside him that’d occurred when he’d realized he and Corbin had been kidnapped by the same man. “This was the place. This was where they kept me.”
Ewan craned his head around on his long neck. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” As things grew clearer, he had no doubt. “There are a few houses and storage buildings toward the center of the island. They’re all very old, but that means they were built solidly enough to handle the weather out here all this time. Stone foundations and timber frames. That’s probably where Corbin is.”
