The curvy brunette lowered her eyes to the floor and spoke in the softest, most timid voice Riyah had ever heard. “S-so this is gonna sound weird, but we’ve decided you’re going to be our friend, and friends like things that match. Candace was in the middle of teaching me how to pole-dance…sooooo…” She looked down at her own green sparkly shorts, then at Candace’s blue ones. “So we dressed you like us today. I’m Nevada. Fox shifter. Mate to Nox Fuller and part of the Sons of Beasts Crew. Vyr is my alpha.” She ghosted Riyah a look and lowered her eyes to the floor again.
“And I’m Candace,” said the lean and leggy woman with auburn hair and false eyelashes. “Baby momma and mate to Torren Taylor, and Vyr is also my alpha. So you know…don’t kill us with your witchcraftery because, by default, we really are friends. You like Vyr, and Vyr likes us. We think. He’s hard to read sometimes. He might actually hate everything and everyone, but he hates us the least, so it counts. Your other clothes smelled like prison so we had to change you, girl. I get nauseous easy nowadays.”
“Morning sickness,” Nevada whispered.
“Congratulations on the baby,” Riyah blurted, barely resisting the urge to cover her exposed stomach with her arms.
“Congratulations on being a badass with telekinetic powers,” Candace said with a nod of respect. “I mean, you’re terrifying as hell, but as long as you keep us on your good side, we’re totally cool with you being Vyr two-point-oh. Also, if I ever have to move, I would like to hire you so you can just do it for me, Mary Poppins style.”
Riyah snorted. She’d never been compared to Mary Poppins before. More often, if someone saw a hint of what she could do, they made the sign of the devil and scurried away.
“S-so do you always sleep like there is a demon in you?” Nevada asked, attention still on the floor.
“She means with the floating and flying furniture. Also, it stinks like magic in here so I’m just gonna plug my nose, but it’s not me being rude. I’m a tiger shifter, and my senses are all jacked up with this baby Kong in my belly.” Candace plugged her nose but smiled brightly.
“Um, no. I don’t do that often. How long have I been out?”
The women looked at each other and then back to Riyah. “A day. You missed Vyr’s Change. Clara has been calling non-stop, checking on you, but there was no waking you up to be there for him. You were really, really sick. She understood.”
“I have to tell you something,” she murmured, sinking onto the bed. “Since we’re friends and wearing matching sparkly shorts…” Her voice shook so she swallowed hard before she tried again. “I can talk to Vyr. In my head.”
Candace’s eyes went round as dinner plates. “Whoa. So you really are Vyr two-point-oh.”
“We have some similar powers, but I’m no dragon.” She clutched the covers under her hands. “And now, neither is Vyr.”
Nevada jerked her gaze off the floor. “What do you mean?”
Riyah’s face crumpled just thinking about it. She couldn’t look them in the face when she told them what had happened to Vyr. Couldn’t. Shame heated her cheeks. “Clara wanted me to keep Vyr steady enough to keep the dragon for the rest of his six-month stay in that prison.”
“And?” Candace asked.
“And today the dragon died.”
“Oh, my God,” Nevada uttered. She stood frozen before she turned and left. Just…left. And moments later, even with her dull human senses, Riyah could hear the woman crying in the other room.
Candace just stood in the door frame, arms crossed over her chest, watching Riyah. “I have to tell you something, too. Something that will be hard to hear.”
“Okay,” Riyah said, feeling awful. All she wanted to do was go to Vyr and be there for him.
“After we watched that video you did, the one where Vyr asked for his crew to come to him? We got a call from the seer of the Gray Backs, Beaston. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes,” Riyah whispered, stunned. “Clara told me about him. She said he can see things kind of like we can.”
“He can see across the veil. Can see ghosts, but more than that, he can see things that will happen in the future. Good things and bad things. All things he can’t change. His son is the same as him. When one of them has a vision that can affect everyone? It’s a big deal. But when both of them have the same vision, over and over and over…everyone pays attention.” Candace rested her head on the doorframe and looked so sad as she said the next part. “You’re the one who will revive the Red Dragon, but afterward, Beaston and his son Weston both see the same thing.”
“What do they see?” Riyah asked.
“Fire. Fire everywhere.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Did you leave fingerprint bruises on my leg on purpose?” Riyah asked in the darkness.
“Yes,” came Vyr’s immediate reply.
“I’ve wondered that since you kissed me.”
“I’m gonna kiss you again someday.”
“Ahh, you’re back to fighting.”
“No. What are you doing right now?”
“Lying in bed,” she said. “Nevada and Candace are staying at a hotel next door to my apartment complex until we get things figured out.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see,” she said with a smile. She did her best to keep the plans a secret. Not because she wanted to keep things from Vyr, but because she wanted to give him an entire day of surprises tomorrow. He deserved a good day after what he’d been through.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
“Because I like you.”
“You like, like me?”
“I have a crush.”
“Fuuuuck. I wish I could’ve watched your lips when you said that.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“You don’t want to know.”
With a frown, she sat up in bed. “I want to know everything.”
“They never brought a bed into The Dungeon, and they haven’t taken me back to my cell yet. So…I’m lying on the concrete floor, hands linked behind my head, staring at a dark ceiling, and wishing to God I was in your apartment, lying next to you.”
“Vyr,” she whispered.
“Stop. At least we have this.”
Riyah drew her knees up to her chest. “You feel important.”
There were three beats of silence and then, “So do you.”
“I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. I want to tell you about what you saw in my head.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe not, but it has always felt like it.”