“DRAGON DAD!”the call was as clear as sunlight. I glanced around, searching for Jondi. How did he get here? Who let him leave school on his own? He didn’t even fly!
“DRAGON DAD!”the call came again, this time from inside my head.
The rest of them would have to forgive me for not staying to help quell the chaos. My kid needed to know everything would be alright! My kid needed ME! I took to the sky, spotting the dragon who was probably my dad holding onto the legs of a bear shifter while the biggest man I’d ever seen ripped the top part of the bear’s body away from his legs like two kids ripping a meat snack in half to share. I shook my head and flapped hard.
“DRAGON DAD! WHAT’S HAPPENING? WHAT’S GOING ON?”Jondi’s little voice cried out to me.
“I’m on my way. What’s happening at school?”I asked, a vice around my heart fearing that perhaps the bears had intended to do more than vandalize or attack Flight School.
“THEY LOCKED US IN THE BASEMENT!”he cried.“I DON’T LIKE IT! ARE THERE MORE DEAD PEOPLE? I DON’T WANT DEAD PEOPLE GERMS!”
That was the protocol for when the GGB was under attack. Hell, they might not even let me into the basement, but I had to try. An attack anywhere in town meant that all the kids went into the underground infrastructure that Canton spent decades designing and construction teams spent even longer building. A lot of them were in place before the GGB was even the GGB.
Not knowing what to expect at the school, I sort of tried to tell the group link that I was at the school for Jondi. I’d onlybeen there in the pickup/dropoff lane or in the parking lot if Jade went inside to pick him up on a hard day. Turned out that I didn’t need to worry so much. As I circled the parking lot, I spotted plenty of other parents. I landed and made for Evie once I spotted her. We really hadn’t talked after the night where the pride made a good attempt at eating me, but Jade was obviously fond of her. She smiled when she saw me as if we hadn’t fought the one and only other time we were this close together.
“Jade has a broken wing. Maybe a shoulder injury too. Jondi is losing his mind and yelling for me,” I dumped all the words out of my mouth at once.
“Is Jade okay? Shouldn’t you be with him?” someone else asked. I didn’t know who they were but I had to fight off the urge to punch them. “I’d be with my pregnant mate if she was hurt.”
“Shut up!” Evie snapped. “Where is Jade?”
“At the bar with Carmine. You know Jondi is the most important person in his life! He’d never forgive me for—Hell, our kid obviously has things he needs accommodations for and he’s scared and freaking out and I need to know how to get inside to him.”
“Gotta wait on someone to unlock the basement from the inside. You could try to take one of the other entrances, but you might get shot or mauled,” Evie said, her eyes darting in every direction. “What’s going on at the playroom?”
I couldn’t string it together in words. She leaned close and I thought she was going to kiss me like the lions were always kissing each other. I stepped back and she grabbed me. She sniffed me and frowned.
“Mercenaries,” her brows knitted together. “There was this group of non-magical mercenary bears that helped Mundanes Before Magic during the war. They’re from some Other World village.”
“Do we need to tell someone?” I asked.
“They know. They’ll pick it up over the group link. Shit!” She swore under her breath.
“FERAL!” she shouted a second later and shouldered her way past the guy who commented about me leaving Jade alone. Evie pulled me with her.
“I KNOW!” Feral Moonscale shouted back and then said, “They’re searching the city now. All the mercs at the playroom are dead. Fucking these two dragons showed up out of fucking nowhere! One is claiming that he’s Volex from Medwin and Clarence’s book but no one knows what to believe. The other one is claiming he’s Delin. They both say they spoke to Pras Lavender months ago. Well, months ago for them at least. They came here because Delin has this son…”
My ears rang for a second. I didn’t want to hear the rest of that right now. If that dragon shifter had been my father, it didn’t matter. All that mattered right now is that I got to Jondi and we went back to check on Jade and the baby.
“He’s safer down there until we know for sure,” Evie said, gripping my shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but what we do works. No one in. No one out. That’s how we keep our babies safe.”
I paced. Smoke rings came out of my nose one after another.
“DRAGON DAD!”Jondi called out again over our family link.
“Jondi,”I said his name gently.“Jondi, it’s okay. We’re all going to be okay. Your Dad is with your grandpa. I’m right outside the school with Evie and the others. No one is getting near you or any of your classmates.”
I talked him through what I could only guess was a panic attack or maybe a meltdown for the next hour. A few times I managed to distract him by asking him about the places he wanted to see – from the whales in the older climates to going swimming in the sort of sea that you can float in that he’d only heard about in stories. I promised him again and again that his dad was okay. I knew Jade was okay or at least that he was alive even if whatever they gave him for pain made him a little loopy. Carmine and Elliot both assured me that he was okay.
“I feel so useless,” I said aloud so that Jondi didn’t hear me.
“You’re not. I’m surprised about that too,” a voice said from behind me. I turned to see Vius and Claw. I wasn’t sure what they were doing here since if they had kids I didn’t know about them. “You’re right where you need to be. Come on. They’re about to open the doors. We’ll get you as close as we can.”
Five minutes later, Jondi collided into my legs and I scooped him up. The crowd roared around us and instinctively I flew upwards. Jade had told me Jondi was afraid of heights but all I could think about was getting him away from the crowd because the little guy was clearly scared and overstimulated. My original plan was to head straight to the bar to meet up with Jade, but we needed somewhere quiet for a moment. I flew until I found an area of the town where the streets were blocked off and landed on the roof. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought we were on the bank. Its roof had one of those concrete ledges. So I sank downagainst it and rocked Jondi as he caught his breath. Crying made it hard to breathe.
“You were right there,” he said, wiping his eyes after he caught his breath. “Right there.”
“I couldn’t get in, buddy,” I said, wiping away his tears with my shirt.