Treasure Of Dragons, Royal Dragons Book 1 Chapter 122

David

Ria had asked me to come into her office with her this morning. She shut the door behind us, and I looked around. As far as offices went this one was rather pathetic. I didn’t see a computer anywhere, or anything electronic, no phone, just a desk, calendars, and papers. One thing I did notice however, was that an entire two walls were covered in photographs. There were all different configurations of the kids in these pictures. One thing I did notice was that there were no pictures of the kids with her mates in here. I then noticed one other thing, there was a picture of a child in here that I didn’t recognize.

“Hey, Ria, who’s this? I recognized Elizabeth, and I think I had seen her and her name was Mari, but who’s the other girl in this picture?” I turned and Ria’s face was white, and she was swallowing. 

I immediately went to her where she was sitting on the couch, and I took her hand as I sat next to her, she cleared her throat a couple of times before she softly said, “That’s Desi, or Desiree, she was the 3rd triplet, there was Elizabeth, or Eli, then Marielle, or Mari, then Desiree, or Desi. They were my first babies.” 

I sat with that for a moment, I knew I had heard references to the triplets a lot, and Elizabeth had been referred to as one of the triplets, but it hadn’t clicked that I hadn't ever seen the 3rd girl in those triplets, or even really heard about her. So, that told me that she was deceased. They wouldn’t find it so painful to talk about her if that wasn’t the case. It also looked relatively fresh as far as sorrows went.

“She’s actually one of the things I wanted to hash out today. I felt like our talks had gotten so chaotic with jumping around all over the place, I thought it might help if we just sat down, and I could help write out a timeline, and events, so that it was all clearer and not so tangled all together. Again, though, I have to remind you, you can’t kill my mates. The kids would be devastated if anything happened to them.”

I tilted my head at that, “What about you Ria? Would you be devastated if something happened to them?” She swallowed.

“Honestly I don’t know how to answer that. I think now, I would be hurt if something happened to them, as they and I have been trying to build something together out of all of the absolute bullshit and garbage that has been, but I still have a huge amount of complicated feelings where they are concerned, and my dragon absolutely adores them, so that affects me as well.” I nodded to her. 

“Okay, well how about we sit at your desk, and we can write things out, and see if we can’t get things better laid out where you feel you are actually communicating what you want and need to? Does that sound better?” she smiled and nodded, so we moved to her desk.

She took out a notebook and a pen, “I think we should start back at the beginning. The stupid fucker who started this whole fucked up thing in the first place, the one who wanted to play dragon god or some shit.”

I nodded, “Yeah, that’s a good anchor point, because that’s true. If it weren’t for him a huge amount of things never would have changed for the worse with dragons and dragon society as a whole. There also wouldn’t have ended up being this whole segregation of villages and families, and this whole cloak and dagger bullshit about branches of the government that don’t exist." 

She nodded, “Yeah, so, not sure which relative of the guys was the first to fall under his spell, and neither do they. They know it was at least back to their grandparents though. So, back then we had a decline in births and dragons were supposedly going extinct, so dragon villages were created to keep them “safe” from the outside world, a “Royal Family” was put in charge of said village, given the job of policing rogues for the government, and told that Royal Dragons could only mate and breed with Royal Females, and this was the only hope for dragon kind or some shit.” 

I had to chuckle at that, “Yeah, that about sums all of that bullshit up. So, those beliefs got ingrained, and you said that your mates had been on the lookout, and people from their village who did actually venture out into the world for short durations, would in fact help them look for a Royal Female dragon. If one was found, or suspected, then the family was notified, and an investigation was launched. At the time you were found, none had been located for more than a hundred years right?”

“Yeah, their mother was supposedly the last one born that they had known about. So, the Stoicas tricked me into being able to get some of my blood, and I guess sent it here so their lab could test it. As soon as they found out I was whatever they were looking for, which now I have to wonder what kind of blood test they ran, and what they found, if there’s no such thing as a Royal Dragon Female?” 

I scratched my chin at that, “Probably a marker that shows you have gifts. I’m not that kind of scientist in any stretch of the imagination. It might be something to ask the lab, what do they look for if they are testing for that?” 

“That would actually be a good thing to investigate, along with where the test originated from.” I nodded. 

“Okay, so we know where the belief originated, and even where the segregation, and the Royal Family establishment came from. So, the guys believing that their whole dragon village and the whole of dragons in general were going to go extinct if they didn’t do something about it were searching for a female to breed with. They were under the impression that they had this all-important job of taking care of rogue members of other species, and if they went extinct that these rogues would cause devastation across the whole world or some shit.”

I snorted, “It sounds rather egocentric when you frame it like that, but in essence it is. That guy was all ego so it makes sense it trickled down.”

She took a deep breath, “So, when the guys found me they set a plan in motion to get me to college, which they knew I was attempting to do, they would get Natalia to be my friend, they would court me and eventually win me, then tell me about dragons. That was the original plan. 

“Yeah, but that got totally fucked up.” I looked at her pointedly and she nodded.