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Chapter Two

It was six days after the storm that Buck left the house where Tommy lived with Kiara and Keanon, and their three familiars. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to leave there, but Tommy was making him, telling him that he needed to go around the area. There was a house next door to theirs that Buck had heard a lot of noises from over the course of the last few days when he was sitting in the garden at Tommy’s place.

“He looks better,” Gina said as she came out of the door of the house.

Buck realized that it was Gina and her family that lived there, which explained why Tommy and the hatchlings knew her well when she came to visit him. At this point, it was just waiting for his magical exclamation to end and his body to take in magic and do what it normally did with it. There was so much that he didn’t realize about the area of the compound that they lived in. A lot of greenery surrounded the two houses, and Buck realized it was on purpose. The area around the compound, which was little known about, was set up that way to make it like living in the forests for the dragons.

There was an area that was just water with some kind of connection to the sea of the Fathoms and Undertides. There was even a sandy beach area there for Sandsurges. Buck was falling in love with the place. He could understand why people liked to live there. The whole of LA was set up like most of the cities, but there were sections that had outgrown the first plan of the city, which was a ring of area around that would be good for dragons and other beings who liked to live with nature. Some dragons didn’t mind the larger apartments in the middle of the city, and then there were the smaller dragons, like Buck’s breed, that could live anywhere without issue. He loved the loft apartment that he had in the middle of the city. There was magic that had locked it down before he had left, and he hoped that someone had gone in there to get his food out before it turned his fridge into a massive biological experiment.

“You okay?” Gina asked.

“Yeah, I’m good. I was just distracted,” Buck said. He knew that he was thinking a lot, but he needed to get his head around things, and thinking was the best way that he did it. He felt like he was close to getting better. His magic was still mostly drained, and whatever was causing that was hard to pin down. There was no other magic on him, but there was something that made Gina worried about him. The storm had done a lot of damage.

After her visit two days before, Buck wondered if the storm had meant to do what it did to him. Not kill him, but to make it so that he couldn’t use his magic ever again. He would hate it if that happened, but he could still do his job. There were more than a few dragons who just used their brains to do the job because their magics weren’t set for doing much of anything when it came to fighting fires, helping humans who got into accidents, and the like.

“How do you feel?”

“Stronger, but my magic is still playing hide and seek from me,” Buck said.

“Well, that’s good. Not that your magic is staying away, but the rest of it. You’ll figure it all out soon. I’ll come by tonight. I found a few things in some older texts that I want to try on you, but it needs to happen before bed because you might sleep for a long time after it.”

Buck nodded. He looked at where Tommy was keeping the hatchlings entertained. They were having fun, and Gina just smiled at him. Then there were three other hatchlings that came out of the house and went right for Kiara and Keanon.

“Those are Sal and my girls. Samantha, Leona, and Dawn.”

“They are very happy to see the twins,” Buck said.

“They are always like that. They are the best of friends, despite the ages of the group. They go to school together, which was more about making the twins happy than anything else. What kind of education did you have?”

“Oh, just the normal one. My hometown wasn’t very big, so there was just a single school that taught all supernatural beings in the city. Then there was the human school. There was a private school, but that cost money, and my parents never wanted to do anything like that with me.”

Gina looked horrified.

“The public schools didn’t suck. It was all fine. I promise that I wasn’t like…” Buck stopped his words because he was abused. It had never even been couched as that when he had been younger, but the disdain his parents had for him had been more than enough to make sure that he knew it when he was older. There had been the classes he had taken to become a protector of the city; those classes had left him with little idea that he hadn’t been abused. Just because there had been no hitting and nothing close to physical abuse didn’t mean he wasn’t abused. “School wasn’t the issue I had.”

Gina looked at him like she wanted him to keep going.

“Mama, can we go to the park?” One of the girls asked.

“If Tommy and Evan don’t mind,” Gina said.

“You aren’t going to come?”

“No, I am technically at work. School’s done for the girls, but I’ll be here for a few more hours with open hours for people to come to me. I work out of my home so that I can take care of them. Don’t feel like you need to give in. It would be you two watching them.”

“Evan likes to play with us,” Kiara said.

Kiara wasn’t wrong, but playing with the two of them in the garden behind Tommy’s place was different from the public park. Or at least semi-public, since only those who lived there could actually get inside to get to the park.

“I don’t mind. Tommy will support me if I say no.”

Gina laughed, and she brushed a clawed hand down the side of his face. Buck closed his eyes because he forgot what it was like to have people touching him for no other reason than they wanted to. He had pretty much limited himself to sex lately when it came to it. He had not been cleared to have sex, and it wasn’t like Buck was going to go out and try to find it in the city at the moment. There was too much at risk. He was isolated, and that meant that no one could report back on the strange dragon who was with Tommy.

The only one of the team that might end up in the compound was Bobby, and he would be dealing with the aftermath of the storm for a while. There had been more dragons missing than him. The ocean around the city was going to be combed to make sure that the dragon’s body was missing. Buck’s paperwork had been swapped to calling him Buck on everything, and so Evan didn’t really exist anymore. The only ones who might remember that were the ones he went to the academy with who had the same name as him, which prompted the name change.

No one expected Buck to make it a name instead of just a nickname. It was something to distance himself from his parents. Then Maddie had come, and she had taken on the new name with ease. She had never once pushed him to keep Evan. It was like she knew that Evan had died.

The way that Tommy said the name made Buck want to take it again, once he was done here. That he was no longer Buck, just like he had no longer been Evan when he had come here to LA.

“I’ll take care of him,” Tommy said.

Buck pulled his emotions out of his thoughts, and he looked to where Tommy was heading toward the park. It was massive, bigger than human parks, because everything needed to be bigger. Some dragons got downright massive, even within their breeds; there were variances to make things hard to figure out how big a dragon was going to be based on just breed.

The park was going to be packed, so Buck prepared himself for that.

—

Tommy looked at where Evan was playing with the hatchlings. He was tired, but the hatchlings were taking it easy on them. It was nice to see Evan out and having a lot of fun.

“Is he doing okay?” Sal asked.

Tommy looked at him as Sal settled close to him. Sal’s body was more lizard-like than Tommy’s body was, and yet not very dragon-like, much like Tommy’s. He figured it was why they had become friends and then stayed, even when they worked on different aspects of the care and support of the governors of California.

“He is. He’s getting stronger each day, but he’s still not having any luck with magic.”

“Well, we have a complete list of dragons missing, but the thing is that dragons need to have someone to report to them. Our census is much less than the one the humans have, since we have a lot of dragons who move around. If Evan were just visiting, there could be people who have no idea that he’s here. He could be reported missing, and at the moment, from what I can find of the dragons in the county, we have seventeen missing Evans. There are three who are Aether breeds, and none of them match his coloring.”

“So, we still don’t know that his name is Evan,” Tommy said.

“I think that it is. He responds to it well.”

“And dragons without familiars?” Tommy asked.

“That’s…I was not going to say it was impossible, but we both know that it’s not. It’s not like things don’t happen. I’ll look into dragons without familiars in the census for the country. He’s got no accent, so I doubt that he’s from anywhere else. We will find him. I have the list of missing dragons from the storm and the confirmed dead ones. So I’ll be working on that as well. The 118 lost one of theirs, Buck is his name. I’ll go and talk to Chim and Hen about it to make sure that they have the support they need.”

“Bobby’s a good man,” Tommy said.

Sal made a noise and then slipped away, his tongue dragging out, and Tomm knew it was his sign of displeasure. Sal had worked with the 118 before he came to work for the governors. Tommy had me the 118, though, Sal, after he had left there, since Sal stayed in contact with two of them. He took things personally when it came to things that Bobby had done since taking over the lead of the team, over Sal wanting to do it when they had gone through so many leaders for a few years.

The loss of a life on a protector team sucked. Tommy wasn’t sure that they would recover soon at all.

Evan looked at him, and there was a quirk to his lips that said he was smiling, but Tommy knew he was tired. He moved over to a full sun area and curled into a ball, as tightly as possible, and the hatchlings all settled around him. A few others were too big for actual naps, but they seemed to be fine to settle in and just stay there.

No one in the park was paying them any mind. It was why Tommy loved to come here. Inside the compound, there was no one who was higher than anyone else. No one came to Tommy to get the ear of the governors. There was no one who wanted to get ahead and use him. That kind of thing was looked down upon. It was the kind of horror that only existed outside of the compound. There were times when someone did come up to talk to him, but usually it was to get his opinion on two or more options and what he would do. It wasn’t done to get ahead, but because he had a good head on his shoulders.

Tommy felt his Sprite land on him. He turned his head and rubbed his cheek against his familiar. It leaned into him.

“What’s going on?” Tommy asked.

“He’s hurting,” Earthy said.

“Really? I never would have guessed.”

The smaller creature shoved his face away. Tommy laughed when he was huffed at. “How much is he hurting?”

“It’s a lot. It’s what’s called the hatchlings to him on the beach, the pain that was coming off him that hasn’t gone away, even as his body has healed up. Tommy, I feel like he’s something that is going to hurt us and heal us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just…He has no feeling of a bond. Some dragons are not bonded at birth, but usually the sires do something horrible that makes it impossible. Other sires will kill the familiar because, usually, that means that the hatchling will never get another familiar until they are older. It’s a way to control.”

“So, he escaped from somewhere and is refusing to tell us anything to make sure that no one comes after him. I’ll make sure that Sal and Gina are being more careful about what they are looking for. We will stop looking for now. He feels honest, at least honest enough. There is no reason to think that he would hurt them. He never feels dishonest when he’s talking about anything that’s not him and where he comes from.”

Earthy flew up and landed on Tommy’s head. He shook his head a little, and the sprite was nearly dislodged and slapped his head for measure. Tommy looked back at where Evan was asleep with the hatchlings all around him. Maybe this was the kind of healing that Evan needed.

The kind of healing that came from being accepted for who he was and being allowed to do what he wanted. Tommy knew that he needed to guard his heart because it was already starting to fall for Evan just from the quiet moments they had together. It was going to be hard, but he could do it.

—

The list of beings who needed to talk to Pearl and Magnus was many that day, reports on the damage the storm had done now that they were over a week out from it. Tommy had lists from the human side of things, along with the help that was wanted from them. It wasn’t going to be hard to help the humans with the things that they needed help with. They had been doing that kind of thing for a long time.

“And what is the origin of the storm?” one of the underlings from the northern area of the state asked.

The storm’s effects had been mostly in the area of LA, but there were waves and other issues that had gone all the way toward the upper and lower areas of the coast. The magic bleed off had made issues.

“We have tracked it to a spot where the storm started and found a small stone that looked like it had been the holder of a lot of magic, a runestone of some kind. It was dead in the water, but an Undertide from the protector squad found it. He didn’t touch it and instead used magic to pick it up. From what we can tell, as soon as it was dropped, and it hit the water, it started to build a storm. We are unsure who could have dropped it there, but it is what it is. We cannot track like that, especially in open water. The magic on the stone is going to be broken down, and we will see if we can figure out a trace on what it was supposed to do, and see if what it was supposed to do was what it did, and if there was a target.” Magnus laid down the paper he was reading from and looked at those assembled.

“You think there was a target?” the same underling asked.

“The storm started to act weird at the end. There was so much chaos trying to stop the storm from hitting with full force on the coast.” Pearl leaned over and took a drink of water before she focused on Tommy again. She nodded.

“We have reports that at the end, the storm started to head back out into the ocean, and then it just disappeared. The abrupt end makes us think that whatever the target was, it got to it and then just pulled back to disappear. We will know nothing without having the runestone broken down,” Tommy said.

“You are still so young. The storm did not go back out into the sea,” one of the underlings from the lower part of the state said.

“Oh, I didn’t realize that you were here for it,” Tommy said. He turned to look at the dragon. Tommy knew her name, but he always refused to use it. She had tried to seduce him once and give him his hatchlings and then never bother him again. He had just laughed at her because the woman was a ladder climber. She would use her time with Tommy to get the hatchlings to make sure that she was where she wanted to be. That she wasn’t living in the compound with the Governors was the biggest sin to her. She wanted to be powerful but was lazy as fuck, and everyone knew it. The thing was that her father was an important man, and that made it hard to just shove her out. She didn’t do well, but the people under her did really well, and they were loyal to her.

“I was not,” she said. She stared at him like he was scum. She thought that he was because he didn’t want her. She didn’t understand why even a dragon who was only attracted to males wouldn’t want her.

“Good, then you don’t know what the storm did.”

“Storms don’t move like that.”

“Magical ones can if they have a target and the target moves,” Pearl said.

“Targets don’t move,” the female said.

“If they are a dragon, they do. I need to know everything about the dead dragons and even other supernatural beings. There were no humans on the water at the time, so we don’t need to worry about them.” Magnus looked at the papers in front of him and sighed.

“Sal’s working on that,” Tommy said.

Magnus nodded. He looked at Pearl, who nodded. “Everyone is dismissed, except for your Karen.”

Tommy didn’t make an outward show of emotion, but he was pretty sure that they had hit the point in time when Karen’s control of her area was going to start to slip. Just because it would be hard to get her out didn’t mean that it was impossible to do. It would take time to do it in a way that would make it easy to keep the area under control, but they could do it. Maybe sending Sal down there would make it easier. He would hate it, but he could get back enough to see his kids for the weeks he would be there.

There was so much going on with trying to find the source of the rom, and now having that runestone in hand meant that they could do it.

Tommy was the last out of the room, like he always was, even if there were guards in there. Tommy had perfected the art of not rising to the female dragon’s bait and instead baiting her with facts. It had been something that he did easily enough. It was the kind of thing that made Tommy’s day when he was able to do it. He knew that Pearl and Magnus knew he was doing it, too. They just didn’t care. They didn’t like her and would make sure that she was out as soon as they could.

It took just twenty minutes for the dragon to leave the room, pissed off, and she looked at first like she might try and throw down with Tommy, but stopped herself. She huffed and fled. Tommy waited, and the door opened, and the pair of Flutterbuns came out of the room and waved him in. Tommy shut the door behind him as he slipped into the room. He saw that Pearl had two flagons of ale settled down in front of them, and there was a small glass that Tommy knew was for him. He liked his whiskey neat.

“Have you seen Cumulus?” Magnus asked.

Tommy swallowed because it was not the question that he was expecting. No, he really hadn’t. He understood why the whiskey was there. Since he was pretty big, he knew that it was going to be the strong stuff, and he could drink a lot more of it before he got drunk.

“Not in three weeks. He comes and goes as he pleases and spends a lot of time at my place. He disappears for a while.”

“He’s not been to the house for a while,” Pearl said.

Tommy frowned because Cumulus used to spend a good bit of time there, in William’s room. Tommy hadn’t realized that the few times that Cumulus had been going from Tommy’s place were actually the familiar being long gone. No one understood why Cumulus hadn’t moved on. There was hope that it meant that William was alive somewhere, but if he were, the familiar would be able to find him just like they should have been able to find him in other ways.

Never saying anything like that out loud, Tommy had secretly thought that William was dead for years. He had thought it from the moment that William had gone missing. The kind of power it took to take a dragon like that, the power to break through the wards that stopped that kind of magic, and then take the dragon elsewhere, and no one would be able to ever find him? That meant in Tommy’s eyes that he was dead. They have looked for him to this day. As long as Cumulus stayed there, there was hope for Pearl and Magnus.

“His collection of items is still in the little house that he made in my garden. I check on the things each time it rains on the grounds, just to make sure. I think that a few things were added to it over the last few weeks, but I cannot be sure it’s not someone else messing with them; the other familiars do play with his things from time to time.”

Pearl relaxed where she was hunched, and she looked at Magnus. “We can have hope.”

Tommy wasn’t sure that he was made for that kind of hope. He would serve and never say anything that would make them think that he had given up hope. That was for someone else because this never affected them when it came to taking care of their people. They were just a present as they had been when William had gone missing years ago. He didn’t have a lot of memories of who they were before it all, but his mother had never once questioned them. There was no reason to; they were good at what they did, and they worked on finding a replacement for their missing heir. They would find someone at some point.

In the dark of the night, Tommy wondered if they had chosen him, and it was why they gave him as much attention as they did, and Sal was being prepared to take over for him. It wasn’t out of the realm of impossibility, but when he started to go down that road, he thought that he was going a little crazy because his father’s voice would tell him that he was crazy for thinking it. His father’s voice was hard to push away, but he did most of the time. He would keep on doing it as well. If that were his lot in life, he would take it. He didn’t know how good he would be at it, but he would have time to say no if he sucked.

Becoming a governor was something that only a few dragons would want to do after doing anything close to it. There was a lot of pressure. It wasn’t something that a dragon would keep on doing for so long if they couldn’t actually get their mind around it. It was going to take a while for Tommy to settle into it, but if that were the course that Pearl and Magnus wanted, he would do it. It wasn’t like it was going to be hard to slot into that. He had the hatchlings, but they could easily be taken care of by Gina when he was working, and he would work a lot longer than he did at the moment. It wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best.

“When he comes back, I’ll let you know.”

Pearl nodded and smiled at Tommy’s words. She looked at her mate, and then they both looked at Tommy again. “We can talk about Karen. Tell you what we have planned, and you can help us figure out if it’s a viable plan.

—

Buck headed for the sun again. He stretched and shook his fur out. Then he slipped over toward where the sun was at its brightest in the garden. There were a few other areas, but this was close to the roses. He loved the roses most, and he had come to want to be around them a lot. Tommy was working. Kiara and Keanon were doing their lessons, with a side field trip somewhere. Buck hadn’t been paying too close attention to where they were headed. Gina was going with them because all of the hatchlings in the school were in the compound. It was the kind of trip he would have loved, and it was part of why he hadn’t said anything at all about the trip like that. He hadn’t really wanted to draw attention to the fact that his years as a hatchling had been shitty.

Watching Tommy with his two hatchlings proved to Buck that his life had been for shit. He had a horrible life. He didn’t know what the fuck to do about it either. He wanted to get the hell away because it had been horrible the last couple of days with Tommy doting on his hatchlings. It wasn’t even really doting. He just took care of them the way that they should be. It reminded Buck too much of what his life had been like growing up. It was why he kept his distance from a lot of the team that he worked with. They were close, or they thought that they were close, but Buck hated seeing Hen with Denny, Bobby, and Athena with May and Harry. Eddie and Chris had slipped under his radar, and he did love hatchlings, but he liked hatchlings without the parents. The reminder that his parents were pieces of shit.

Everything that Buck learned about being a dragon, about the world, about how to live in this world had come from school and friends’ parents. He hadn’t ever learned anything from his parents other than being unneeded.

The sun was warming his body again, and Buck looked up into the sky. He wanted to fly, but Gina was worried. There was a bit of magic to how dragons flew. He wanted to be up in the air and have no worries, but when he was going to come down. He wanted to have his life back to normal. There was no normal anymore, though. Not with someone out to kill him.

Buck tried to push those thoughts away because he had slept for shit last night and hadn’t been able to really stay asleep for long at all. So he had just lain there in the bedding. If he got up, Tommy would know, and he would come out and be with him, which wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t like to bother him. So Buck had just stayed in bed and tossed and turned, staring at the ceiling.

Napping in the sun was the highlight of his day at the moment. He rolled to where he could curl on his other side to get it warmed up, and he closed his eyes. He knew that he would leave an imprint there that was different than the one that Tommy and his hatchlings left because they were vastly differently shaped dragons.

The thing was that Buck knew that he fit with them, and it was making his heart ache because he was lying to them about who he was. It was horrible, but he needed to find out more about everything. He needed to do that and figure out what he needed to do.

The sun pulled at him, and Buck tried to stay awake, but the sun was too much. He started to drift off.

Waking up a little while later, Buck knew that he was out of the sun, and he felt cold now. He tried to move, but he liked where he was too much, and so he dealt with the cold. Until something moved over him, it was like something soft, and he groaned before he started to drift off to sleep again.

Chapter Three

Tommy walked into the garden where he knew that Evan was. Over the last few days, Evan has been in the garden a lot. He had been enjoying the sun as it warmed him up. The hatchlings had been spending more time outside of the house as well to spend more time with him. Evan had seemed hesitant at first, but settled into it.

He stopped as he took in what he was seeing. Tommy’s heart broke at that. He could see that Cumulus had come back and was now draped over the top of Evan, where he was in the shade from where the angle of the sun had moved. He looked like he was dead asleep.

Tommy knew that he needed to tell his hatchlings to tell no one. Tommy could keep this lie going for a while. No one came over, but Sal and Gina and their hatclings, and he could make us think that they didn’t say anything either. Nothing that would bet back to Pearl and Magnus. Cumulus picking a new dragon wasn’t good, not for keeping the hope alive that William was still alive. It would be hard to keep the hope alive. It was going to be horrible if they found out. Tommy could keep Evan away from everyone, but those who had already seen him, and then he could slip away once they were sure that he was fine again.

It was strange to think that Evan had gone this long without his familiar. Tommy wasn’t sure what he thought of what Evan told him about him killing his familiar. It was impossible unless he had ripped it to shreds. He wondered what had kept Cumulus from Evan. Evan and William were close in age, but Cumulus could have been hoping along with Pearl and Magnus about the return, and that was why he had never gone to where Evan was.

Tommy sat down, curling his legs under him and staring at Cumulus. He swallowed as he stared at them. Evan looked peaceful and like he was sleeping deeply for the first time in a long while. There was so much that was strange about all of this. Cumulus wasn’t even the hardest part of it all.

“Are you going to protect him?” Tommy asked.

Cumulus opened his eyes and looked at him. “Of course. I always will. He’s mine.”

“Then where were you for him all of these years?”

“I could not find him. I know why now.”

Tommy had gotten a report before coming here. Pearl and Magnus had been there when a pair of the mages who were working on figuring out what was going on with the storm came in to tell them what they had found.

The storm had been tracking someone. The thing was that the magic that had been collected and looked at from when the water had been safe to go into told a different tale than what was first thought. The storm had been sent to kill someone, and that someone had gone into the water. The thing was that they couldn’t tell if that dragon was dead or alive. The list of missing dragons and the list of dead dragons didn’t help them figure out what was going on at all.

“Magic kept me from him. I never felt him. He never had a familiar before me,” Cumulus said.

“I need to look into him more. I need to look into his family.” Tommy was now sure that Evan had been the target of the storm, which was why he was not trying to get out of there. Evan had to know the storm was after him. He had been in the water. He had lied to Tommy, but Tommy understood why. He would have to figure things out from the other end before he confronted Evan about it. Then they could work on it together. He would have to figure out who Evan was. Get used to calling him a different name as well, unless Evan was a name, and the name he had been hiding under in LA was the fake name.

“I will protect him, even from you, despite the shelter that you have given me here away from the pressure to find another dragon when I knew that my dragon was being kept from me.”

“Why did you never say anything?”

“Because our gods told me that I would find my dragon when it was time and I needed to be where I felt safest, and that was with you, Tommy.”

Earthy came over and hovered close and then settled into the crook that was made with Evan’s body. Tommy knew he wasn’t going to win something. Cumulus would tell him what he wanted to tell him and nothing more. It was the way it had always been. He had always sheltered him because he felt for the family. He felt that his dragon had been taken from him.

Now, Tommy had to think that William was dead. The spell that took him took him to some place where he was killed instantly. There was no chance that the familiar would move on unless they knew that their dragon was dead. The bond was too deep, and even if he couldn’t find William, he would know that he was alive. It was the whole thing of why there had been hope. Tommy didn’t realize how much hope he had in this as well, even as he told himself over and over that he didn’t have any. He wanted to mourn the loss of the hatchling dragon that had been so young and had been so loved and had been so wanted. Who was now dead. It was horrible, and it was something that would have to be dealt with when Tommy was sure that he could broach the subject in the best way. Sal and Gina could help with it.

“We need to figure out what we are going to do about this,” Tommy said.

“We are not doing anything. You are accepting it, and we will deal with what is going on as far as that storm trying to kill him.”

Tommy nodded. He knew that he was going to get very little out of Cumulus. Tommy was pretty sure the familiar was older than most dragons who were alive at this point in time. It was the kind of thing that no one was able to figure out when it came to familiars. If there were a massive group that just lived forever, or if they had their own life span. They had some who tried to figure that out, but were found to be rebuffed by something. Tommy figured it was the Gods. The Dragon Gods protected them as much as possible, and it was why familiars existed as they did. They had been made to be companions to dragons, not just a being to be with them all the time, but to have someone who was never going to leave them. Even dragons sometimes had points where they could no longer be with their mate. Even dragons changed, but there was no big deal like it was when humans divorced. They just split everything, and it never happened when there were hatchlings that needed to be raised, unless there was a violence issue, then the one who was committing that lost a lot of rights, and sometimes, if it was bad enough, their life.

“Tommy?” Evan asked.

Tommy looked down to see that Evan was looking at him, looking really confused as well.

“Hello, did you have a good nap?”

“Did you cover me up?”

Tommy shook his head.

“I’m covered up, though, right?” Evan asked. He blinked a few times, and his body jerked a little, but he didn’t try to move.

“You are covered by something, but it’s not a blanket. His name is Cumulus,” Tommy said.

“Cumulus?” Evan asked, like he didn’t understand why a blanket would have a name.

“Or Lus if you want to call me by a nickname,” Cumulus said.

Evan jerked again, and this time Cumulus came up off him and floated there; the green of his body was visible. Evan just stared at him. Tommy knew that the bond had happened the first time that eCumulus and Evan had touched; there was no breaking it now. No one could break the bonds between familiars. The Gods sent them where they needed to be.

“No,” Evan said. He shook his head, and he got to his feet before looking at Tommy like Tommy was going to tell him that this was a big joke. That Tommy would ever do that.

It hurt, but Tommy also knew that Evan barely knew him. It was the kind of thing that made Tommy think that things were weird with Evan and everyone else he had ever had in his life.

“Yes,” Tommy said.

“No, I killed my first one.”

“You did not,” Cumulus said.

Evan jerked his head back like he had been slapped.

“What do you mean? How can you know? You’ve not been there for years!” Evan looked like he was trying to hold back tears.

“I had tried to find you for years, but there was magic on you that was broken by a storm when you went down in it. However, it took a while for it to dismantle fully. I couldn’t find you. Whoever told you that you killed your familiar was lying to you because that stain would leave you marked, and no familiar would ever want to be around you after that. If the other family members in your family’s life didn’t go around you, it was because of whatever magic was put on you, probably meant to keep them away as well.”

“My mother told me. She told me that I killed my familiar, and it was why I would never have another one.”

“If you had one that you never would think is true, but you are a true and honest dragon, you have no fear.”

Evan raised a hand, and he rubbed at where his heart was, and he looked at Tommy before looking at Cumulus again.

Tommy felt like maybe he was in a place that he shouldn’t be. He thought that maybe they should be alone.

“No, don’t go,” Evan said.

Tommy looked to see that Cumuulsu was right where he had been before Tommy had started to think. Was Evan talking to him? “Me?”

“Yes, you. I…can’t handle this alone. I need someone, and you are here.”

“Of course,” Tommy said. He couldn’t even understand what Evan was going through. What would it all mean? That he would have something that he craved for years and years and years. Always fearing that his other was right and he had killed the one being in the world that was supposed to be by his side.

“Thank you. So you are Cumulus. I’ve never seen a familiar like you.”

“There is only me. I have no other kind like me. I am very picky about the dragons that I bond with, and sometimes I take a while to find a new one after the loss of my dragon before. I will be around as long as there is a world to have dragons.”

Evan looked like he was on the verge of passing out from too much. Tommy moved closer, and Evan leaned into him, taking what he could from being pressed to Tommy. Earthy was still there, dislodged from where he had been cuddled to Evan, but still there.

“I lied for years to everyone I came across that my familiar didn’t like to be around other people, that they did what they wanted. I guess that I will have to keep that up.”

“I don’t tend to go around a lot anyway. Your job as a protector is going to have to deal with me staying away. I’m a novelty. I will draw attention.”

Tommy realized that Cumulus knew more than he did about what Evan did. That was going to come in handy as Tommy tried to figure out who the dragon was, because if the storm was aiming for them, Evan knew something that someone wouldn’t want to come out. Or he had wronged someone who felt like that was a thing to do. There was so much about his that still didn’t make sense because that storm was more than enough to take out too many beings. There had been a loss of life that would have been worse if Evan hadn’t moved away from the coast to make the storm go for him out there, which was how he had ended up washed up on the beach. Tommy needed to go back to the beach and figure out what was going on with it. If there was residue, it might be there. He would have to make sure that someone else came with him who was better at that kind of thing. Gina might be better, but it could be Sal. Maybe both of them. Leave all of the hatchlings in Evan’s care. It was going to be interesting to see what came of this.

Evan reached out, and he touched Cumulus, and the familiar came closer and then got bigger and wrapped fully around Evan. Tommy didn’t look, but he could feel that Cumulus was doing something with his magic to help Evan with something. The power that started to radiate off of Evan was enough to make Tommy feel like it was pressing on him. Cumulus was removing whatever was left of the block that had been keeping them apart.

Things were slowly coming into place. He wasn’t sure what was going to come of this, but he had the center of the storm right here, and it seemed like Evan wasn’t ready to give up why yet.

—

Buck looked at where Tommy’s magic was cleaning the dishes. It was something that was installed in a lot of houses that Buck had ever been in because not all dragons were able to do this kind of thing. Tommy’s hooves made it hard. Snappers were also another breed that would not be able to do something like that. Servants were an option, other beings, and even humans who wanted to earn money by helping to take care of a dragon household in exchange for a place to live. Buck had seen more than a few over the years, especially those who were running away from something. Buck had worked a lot of jobs over the years because he had never felt like he belonged anywhere until he made it to LA.

Kiara and Keanon were asleep; their rooms were sealed to make sure that noises were not something that made it inside for them, but Tommy could hear everything in the room that happened, and he would keep it like that until the hatchlings were a little older.

“I don’t think that my parents ever had even a quarter of the spells that you have placed on this house for me.”

“They didn’t love you at all? Why have you?”

“I don’t know. They had single egg nests twice. Maybe they wanted another daughter. Or maybe I wasn’t what they wanted at all. I took after my father, and my sister took after my mother. Maybe they wanted another Veilspun. I don’t know, but I just know that my mother is the cause of the spell that blocked me from being found by my familiar. Given that it was something that should have happened before I was attacked, that means that it was placed on my egg.”

Buck knew that it had to be right, even as he said it, because there was no other way given that familiars sometimes show up just as the eggs were created.

Tommy was staring at him, and Buck didn’t know what that meant, and then, as he stared back at him, Buck realized it. Tommy knew the storm was after him, and he was waiting for Buck to tell him. He wasn’t sure how Tommy had figured that out. Or maybe Cumulus had. He had learned that Cumulus had been living here for years, and it was kind of strange that Tommy and his hatclings had found him, and they were the ones who had been sheltering his familiar since he had been blocked from finding him for thirty years.

“You know,” Buck said.

“I do. I don’t know why the storm was coming after you, but I know that you were the target.”

“I don’t know either,” Buck said.

“And you’ve been hiding out. At first, it seemed like you were aiming to get out of here, and then you stopped.”

“I was safe here. I haven’t been able to figure out much, and I’ve been afraid that the storm will come back if I step outside the compound. This place is the safest in the state.”

“That’s good that you had enough reason to stay here because there is a lot of horror that could happen outside of here. I want to go over everything that we have been called to over the last year. That spell would take about a year, maybe two years, to store enough magic in the runestone. If I don’t think that anything you did over the last year is enough, we will go further back.”

“So someone tossed the runestone in the water, and it started to make it?”

“Yes, and there was masking magic, or the water dragons would have been able to figure it out. Or the familiars that are in the water, or the other beings that are down there as well. There is no way that storm just popped up as it did without someone knowing, unless something was blocking it.

Buck nodded. He knew that. He had been taught a lot about magic that he had never learned when he had gone through the academy. If there were an elective class about magic that Buck didn’t have to take to be allowed out of school, then he wouldn’t take it. His parents didn’t allow that. Now it made sense. If he figured out a lot about magic, he could have broken what they did to him long before.

“You are more powerful,” Tommy said.

“That is what Cumulus said. He said that most of my magic was blocked, fueling the spell that they had planned on me. It was one that would make me pass out if I started to do too much magic, and it was running the risk of me draining myself to where I had no magic and couldn’t feed it. It was why I’ve been so tired, the spell was half working until he broke it.” Buck had spent all night the day before talking to Cumulus in his room in the house. The guest room was more than big enough for the two of them, but Buck still liked to be out with the rest of the occupants of the house.

“Let’s start with your childhood and go from there because there is a lot that we can figure out about this from the past.”

Buck nodded. He felt like he needed to be honest, finally. He was glad Tommy wasn’t pissed off about him telling him the wrong name.

“I was born with the name Evan, but I adopted a nickname of sorts and stopped going by Evan.”

“I’m sorry you had to lie to me,” Tommy said.

“I told you the name because I was afraid of coming up in the list of missing beings and someone realizing I was alive.”

“What name are you on the list? We can figure out if anyone has come up with it.”

“Buck,” Buck said.

“Okay, I’ll go over that. What name do you want me to be calling you?”

“Evan,” Buck said. He felt like Tommy said it like he saw Buck for who he was, not the persona that Buck tried to show the world.

“Well, Evan, I am glad that you are finally getting this one on the road to reunite you with your family.”

“Just my team,” Buck said.

“Your sister?”

“I…” Buck looked away.

“Ah, you aren’t sure if she knew.”

Buck nodded.

“We’ll figure it all out.” Tommy moved closer, and Buck curled into him because he would take whatever support he could get from him because, sooner rather than later, he was going to have to leave here and go back to his life, and he would miss Tommy.

—

Evan was asleep in the sun again, this time it was because he had slept for shit during the night. There had been nightmares, and it seemed like just talking about everything meant that the nightmares that had been held at bay were coming out. Even Cumulus hadn’t been able to keep Evan asleep the night before.

The list of people who had looked into the names was massive. There was the fact that it was posted in certain areas, too, that made it hard to know who had done what with that list. Tommy hoped that their person had looked at the list in a way that could be tracked. None of the names stood out to Tommy or Sal.

Sal and Gina didn’t know what was going on with Evan, but they had realized that Tommy was now looking at the storm from a different way.

“Ready?” Gina asked.

Sal was staying behind because Evan was so tired from not sleeping.

“Yes,” Tommy said. He took flight, and Gina followed behind him. They were going for the quickest route to the beach. Tommy didn’t tell her much at all about what was going on because while he trusted her and Sal more than anyone else in the world, he felt like this was going to blow up in his face.

“He’s been here for three weeks,” Gina said when they landed on the beach.

“Yes, he has. The spell on him broke a while back, but he’s been…”

“He’s the target of the storm, isn’t he?” Gina asked.

“You two need to stop that shit,” Tommy said with no heat to it. “Yes.”

“Sal and I were talking about this trip, and that’s how we figured it out. It’s strange to think that someone so insignificant in the way of things was a target. Do you think that he made an enemy in the course of his job?”

“We can’t find anything, and we went back all the way to when he came to LA,” Tommy said.

“And nothing?”

“Nothing that he can remember. We know that if it’s someone with means, it could be stupid enough that Evan just didn’t bow to him in the right way, or didn’t pay enough attention to him. You know that we have fucks in this world that don’t like dragons they think are under them.”

Gina snorted. She walked to the edge of the water and turned her nose up. “The dragons haven’t done much with this area, have they?”

“No, this falls into the scope of the protectors for the governors, and there are a lot of other things they are doing right now. It works for us, though.”

“Yes, I can see why things were missed.” Gina went right over to where the spot was that Evan had been found. Tommy had never told exactly where it was because Evan had been moved by the time that she had arrived, out of the lapping of the water that had come back. “There is a lot of malice here. The spell was done…” Gina looked at Tommy with a lot of fear.

“Gina?”

“The tracking spell that I can see is…” Gina stopped, pulled a few things out of a pouch at her side, dropped them down to the sand, and there was a purple miasma that came out of the sand. Then it puffed up like it was being sucked up and blown away by the wind. “His parents triggered this.”

“What?”

“The runestone, I’ve seen the reports on it that have come out now that it’s been cracked, and the tracking spell was built into the runestone to lock onto someone specifically, and the magic left where he lived when it broke, says that he’s had that spell tracking for a very long time. What has happened to him over the last while, Tommy?”

“He got an award for something that he did, and later this year, when the full list comes out for the last year, they will have a big event for all of them here in the compound, and the protectors will be allowed to ask for jobs here.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else good. There is a lot of bad.”

“He has met, or his parents fear he will meet someone who will start to figure this out. Whatever they did to him as a hatchling is something that they fear. They are not going to like that he lived. No one can know until we have more and get them tracked down without alerting them.”

“That could take a while, but we are going to do it.” Tommy looked out into the ocean, and he thought about what was going to happen if someone figured it out before Tommy was able to protect Evan. He didn’t want to tell him what was going on, but he had to tell him. He wasn’t going to lie to him.

—

Buck watched as the sprite and the two nymphs were working on food for them for dinner. Cumulus was off to the side, checking the meat that was roasting over the fire and using the wind to stir the coals and make it burn hotter. He wasn’t sure what made them want to be the ones to cook that meal, but Buck watched with rapt attention.

Tommy and Gina had been back for a while from going down to the beach. Buck had wanted to follow them to the small office that Tommy had in the house, but a look from Tommy had him stop. The hatchlings were outside in the garden; they didn’t need him to watch them that closely, so he had come inside to watch the food being made. There was just someone who needed to be on hand who was not a familiar.

A door in the house shutting had Buck looking to see if Gina or Tommy was going to come into the kitchen. There was no one after a moment, so Buck looked back at what was happening. He had never cared too much about making food taste good. He had been left with scrapes and other things, and then when he was on his own, he just never cared. Bobby’s cooking was one of the biggest things that he had ever really gotten into, and Bobby had been teaching him, but these familiars were cooking in a way that was interesting. They were using their hands for everything of magic, being what was used like when Bobby did it.

“Evan?” Tommy called out.

“Kitchen,” Buck said. He turned around, and he looked to see Tommy stick his head in the door, finally. Tommy had a wan smile on his face.

“Gina and I would like to talk to you,” Tommy said.

“We got the hatchlings,” Cumulus said.

Buck swallowed, and he sang a snack before flying to follow Tommy while holding his treat in his hand. It was a soft peach that tasted so good. There was a peach tree in Gina’s backyard. Buck had been sneaking as many as he felt he could get away with. He loved them. He took a few bites of it and groaned at the soft flesh that yielded to his teeth. The door to the office was open, and Gina was curled near the fire and was looking at some kind of paper.

“What’s up?” Buck asked as he settled in the sun that came in from the window.

“What do you want? The utter truth or the softer truth?” Tommy asked.

“Utter truth.”

“Your parents are the cause of the storm, and they had a tracker stuck to you. They always planned on using that to kill you. Or at least to fine you. The runestone had been lying in wait for a long time, ready to be dropped. I am not sure if they corrupted one of their familiars or one of them flew it out there, or they are adept at teleportation magic that would have dropped it there.” Tommy was blunt.

Buck was glad that Tommy was blunt as hell about it.

“Why? Why would they want to kill me?”

“You obviously know something about something. You have been gaining a lot of recognition here in LA over the last couple of years for the rescues that you have done. Maybe you have met someone who didn’t want you to meet, or they thought you were going to meet someone who they didn’t want you to meet. They have kept you under their thumb as far as breaking your magic went. It’s why you feel more powerful now, like you said, after you woke up when Cumulus first came to you. They blocked you.”

“What are we going to do?” Buck looked at Gina, who was still reading the papers. She looked up at him.

“We are going to start to look into your parents. We have allies even that far out, and we will couch a lot of things into looking for the cause of the storm. Word has spread just from the looking that we have been doing that it was targeting someone, but that the dragon or being is already dead because of the stopping of the storm.”

“Why didn’t it wait for me to come up?” Buck asked.

“We are unsure what exactly happened. We are not sure if you died and something or someone brought you back and pulled you up onto the beach, or if there was something else that could have made the storm think that it killed you. It wasn’t sentient. It wasn’t living like a being would be. It could be tricked. We just aren’t sure what tricked it.”

“I’ll help however I can, but I don’t…I don’t want to risk myself,” Buck said.

“We don’t want to risk you either, so you will stay here, and we will look for you. We will figure out what is going on and go from there.”

Buck nodded at Tommy’s words. He just wanted to curl up in Tommy; the urge had been something that he had been getting a lot, and he had been giving in as much as he could to it. Tommy just wasn’t around all the time. Tommy was his safe place, and he wanted to keep that.