Chapter 16

Grady

I hadn't left the property but trouble had still come to me.

Peeking around the side of the house, I pulled out my phone before I went back to hiding near the bushes at the back of the house. Texting Alick might've been cowardly, but I decided it was smart to know what was going on before I went out to talk to the other Daddies.

At least, I thought that was who the people currently invading Alick's yard were.

Hey baby boy. Um. You've got company. Did your friends mention an invasion?

The emoji he sent me looked like it was rolling his eyes, but thankfully words quickly followed.

No but I got a lot of emojis from Kenzie earlier that now make me think he was warning me. Sorry?

I wasn't sure if I should laugh or not, but it was kind of funny.

If they eat me, just remember I was strong and meaty, not crunchy.

Alick was smart enough not to send me a laughing face…instead, I got wide eyes that looked very sad.

Sorry, Daddy. I'll remember you're meaty.

Managing not to laugh so I didn't give away my position, I shook my head.

It's okay. I'll gladly be eaten defending my mate's castle.

And that got me the laughing face.

OUR castle, Daddy.

He was so cute.

Thank you, baby boy.

His reply had me thinking he wasn't quite as big as I'd expected.

Have fun playing, Daddy. Remember friends are a good thing even if they're weird.

Yeah, definitely not big.

I will. See you later.

We still had a few more hours before he was back for the day—it seemed to be one of his long ones—but I'd been productive getting everything organized and settled in, so it'd passed quickly. Alick had warned me that some of his nosy relatives might find an excuse to come by, but so far they'd respected our privacy.

I was hoping it was because they were polite, but Alick had spent breakfast growling at his phone like a pissed-off dragon, so I had a feeling threats had been involved.

I definitely approved for a variety of reasons…but I just wished he'd realized he needed to threaten his friends as well.

But since we couldn't go back in time and fix that, I just ignored the quiet voices coming from the front yard.

I'd found myself the perfect spot to surround myself in Alick's flowers and sketch, and I wasn't going to move unless the invaders actually found me.

"No, his trailer and his truck are here, and Kenzie said he couldn't leave the property without it disappearing on him. Kenzie's explanation was long and interesting but I'm pretty sure it all meant that Alick was frustrated." The voice wasn't familiar, but the mention of Kenzie had me realizing it was the deputy.

"Who recharged that fucking spell? The roads are not supposed to disappear that randomly, and once he's invited onto the property, he's supposed to be able to find it again." The grumpy voice with the rough tone seemed to be the mage everyone had mentioned, but I couldn't remember what his name was.

It'd started with a C but that was all that came to mind.

"Your cousin." The voice that answered had a flat tone that said he wasn't happy with the situation.

"Why in the fuck would you have him do it? He's a moron. He can't spell his way out of a paper bag." The grumpy mage sounded like he was getting closer, so I set my sketch pad down.

"You suggested him." The guy with the flat tone was pissed but it was a cold anger that made me want to fuck with him.

Unless he was a mage...so I told myself to behave.

"Oh, fuck." The frustration in the mage's voice and his sigh made me smile. "The council caught me after Ellen tried to fine me for not having flowers blooming in my yard like we were a fucking HOA. It was fucking November and it was stupid."

I had to agree.

The flat-toned guy groaned. "Damn it."

Yep, I agreed with him too.

"I'll fix it." Grumpy mage guy didn't sound happy about that, but he seemed to understand the problem was his fault.

"Well, that explains a lot of the weird calls we've been getting." The deputy was trying to sound professional but something about his tone said he found the whole thing funny. "People are getting lost entirely too easily."

"And it probably explains a lot of the weird reviews we've been getting online." A voice I couldn't match with a face or a little sighed. "The reviews on most of the rentals in the area are terrible and it sounded like half the people were high."

Nope, just tired of the roads disappearing.

"We'll get it fixed and then sit down with the council and some of the other local business owners and see what we can do." The mage sighed again. "Next time, make sure they know not to ask me to do anything after fucking with me first."

That seemed like it should've been obvious, but maybe it was just me.

"Alright, let's find out where Alick's mate is hiding so I can make sure he can get back home and you guys can make sure he's sane." The mage definitely wasn't sane, but I knew that already.

"Um, I thought we were the welcoming committee and were making sure he had friends?" The unfamiliar voice was definitely the nicest of the bunch and possibly the least devious based on the way the others chuckled. "That was what Lorne said."

Oh, was he Lorne's other mate?

The Daddy guy?

Had anyone said his name?

"Lorne also probably said he was crunchy too." I didn't have to see the deputy to know he'd rolled his eyes. "You have to tell him to stop telling everyone that human forms are crunchy. It's at the point where if a body shows up having been gnawed on, he's the first person I'm going to have to bring in for questioning."

They were all so weird.

"He'd like that." The mage's response was probably honest but it got laughter from the group. "It'd make him feel important. Oh, how about we stage that for his birthday?"

Huh?

I'd landed in some fucked-up version of Oz.

Not the Oz from the first movie, the second one that was so fucking scary it gave kids nightmares.

Yep, these idiots had watched entirely too many scary movies growing up.

"I'm not fixing it so we find a dead body." The deputy didn't sound nearly shocked enough at the idea and it made me wonder what his life had been like when he'd first moved to the mountain. Hadn't Kenzie said his Daddy had thought they were all aliens?

I was starting to understand why.

"We'll just tell him there's a body." Surprisingly, it was the Daddy guy who was agreeing with the ridiculous idea. "We don't need to have a body to make it work. You can just interrogate him and we'll come to rescue him. He'll like that."

The laughter from the group said everyone agreed that Lorne would love it, but I didn't because their sounds had gotten louder.

They'd found me.

"Hey, there you are." The happy-sounding Daddy voice came a second before a face popped over the bushes. "Good job hiding."

It was not hide-and-seek.

"Thank you." Looking at the crowd that had come around to the front of my flower cave, I didn't bother looking excited. "Thank you for fixing the spell. Being able to leave the property and find it again will make it easier to run errands."

The man I thought was the flat-toned dragon based on his icy exterior raised one eyebrow. "Don't you have a job?"

What did that have to do with anything?

"Yes, but someone needs to do things like grocery shop, and being self-employed, my day is more flexible." I'd already confessed to Alick that what would drive him most insane about me was my ability to get distracted by projects, but he promised to say something if it ever started to make him imagine killing me.

I didn't feel the need to explain that flaw to the welcoming committee, though.

"Alick works a lot of unconventional hours." The Daddy guy who was wearing jeans and had his pockets stuffed with random tools seemed to think that was a profound secret he'd just confessed.

"I know. I spent several days following him all over the mountain." Alick was the assistant manager at the local plant nursery and ran what he called a yard business on the side. However, it was definitely more of a landscaping company that occasionally mowed yards. So his being busy was not a surprise. "I'd have found him a lot sooner if the roads would've stopped disappearing."

We were going to have to work on how he explained his career, but that could wait until after we'd finished getting to know one another.

He downplayed his accomplishments on a regular basis and that needed to stop.

Several of the men looked like they wanted to laugh, but the mage rolled his eyes and stepped closer. "May I touch you?"

That got snickers from several of the onlookers, which had me raising an eyebrow at them. "The first thing I'm going to do after you leave is tattle on you. Just to let you know."

Their groans filled the yard, but the mage must've found it funny because his eyes sparkled with barely suppressed laughter. He seemed to like a challenge and appreciated being fucked with. Maybe he wasn't going to be as annoying as I'd thought.

"Yes, you may touch me." Closing my eyes so I could focus on the spell, I listened to his quietly mumbled words and tried to follow the magic since the words were confusing.

It was a complicated spell and I lost track of it about halfway through, but with the amount of work that'd been done to hide the community, I wasn't surprised at how involved the spell was.

When he finally pulled his hand away from my shoulder, I opened my eyes. "That wasn't English. Our mages use English."

The mage blinked before answering. "English will work. I use it sometimes on easier stuff, but our spell work is usually done in a mix of Gaelic and what I've been told is Old Dragon."

Because it worked better?

Was it easier to stay focused when it wasn't English?

The mage kept going but didn't answer my questions. "I don't think anyone actually speaks it conversationally today. A few old diaries are written in it, though, so we're working on getting it back into a spoken language that can be used outside of spellcasting."

The Daddy guy smiled at that part. "Some of the teachers want to try to use it to satisfy the foreign language requirement but that caused an uproar because half the town got offended at them calling it a foreign language."

I wasn't sure which side I fell on in that debate, so I focused on another part.

"Old Dragon?" I thought it was a legitimate question since I'd never heard of it, but they all got distracted by something else.

"He was following the magic."

"He knew what you were doing."

"They cast in English?"

The questions were coming over each other and the mage just shrugged and looked at me like I was the strange one.

Bullshit.

But I played along. "I had a great-grandfather that was a pretty powerful mage. The dragon genetics usually come out stronger, but I can do a few basic spells with no problem."

I wasn't going to brag about being able to unlock my front door without a key, but it was magic, so I was going to count it.

That had most of them looking dumbfounded but I just focused on the mage because he was nodding slowly. "That's what we've thought, but around here, there's a very strong separation of dragon and mage. It's a pain in the ass."

I'd have to agree with that.

"It might be because our community was so isolated but we've never had that kind of division." For a long time, it'd been a better than just human versus just human thing, but we'd mostly moved past that.

Lately, the biggest issue had been wanting the cheap, fast internet that the rest of the country had.

I wasn't going to explain that, though, because I was pretty sure they wouldn't understand.

Something distracted them and had the mage turning to the flat-toned dragon. "We need to make sure the council knows there are more communities we haven't gotten in touch with. Someone on the Canadian council dropped the ball. He probably doesn't even have a login on the website."

There was a website?

There was a Canadian council?

Okay, yeah, it seemed like someone had dropped the ball.

The group shrugged but the frowning dragon who seemed to be part of the local council sighed. "I think they need to move their council out of Quebec."

Oh.

I was starting to see the problem.

But, not wanting to rehash that drama, I focused on the less political parts. "There's a website? Oh, and if there's a basic Paranormal History 101 kind of book, I'd really like a copy. Did you know we came through a stargate? That means we're aliens, right?"

And mouths dropped open.

They were all so dramatic…and way too easy to fuck with.

The deputy recovered first and nodded. "Yes, you're an alien. From what I understand, you came from another planet through a stargate—yes, like the TV show—and it was open for a very long time, so there was a lot of cross contamination of the DNA and evolutionary shit. So maybe you're half alien? There's not enough research on that, honestly."

I was starting to like him best even if he had threatened to have his mate eat me.