Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) (30 page)

“Well, I’m still not pretending or anything else that we’re dating, even if you do want everyone to think we’re in a contract for some reason.”

“We
are
in a contract,” he said. “I offered you my protection, you accepted it—”

“Actually, I asked for your protection and
you
accepted it,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, smiling, “There’s no technicality or loophole you can find that can get you out of this Dakota.”

“Can I add an ‘end date’ then?” I asked.

“Negotiations are over,” he said firmly.

“So, I’m stuck in this contract until you decide it’s over?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I believe you said that you needed me to protect you, for as long as you are in danger from anyone you attract attention from while searching for my sister.”

Could I have made that more open-ended?

“But you can break it at any time?” I asked.

“By dracon law I can, but don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going to,” he ran the back of his finger down my arm.

I had to stifle a gasp because when he touched my arm it felt so much better than when he had held my hand. I did not acknowledge the touch because I knew if I did, I would have to tell him to stop.

“Your family made a very bold statement when they tried to break the contract within an hour of learning about it. It tells me that the moment you leave my side, they will make another attempt.”

“Probably not,” I lied, “You found me in what, fifteen minutes?”

He just gave me a look.

“Well, none of my family can pass the water wards,” I said. “So going to school should not be a problem.”

“Whatever kidnapped Honua can pass the water wards,” Wyvern said. “Do you really think you can ask me for my protection, then not let me protect you?”

“Honua was under your protection, you let Honua go to school,” I said, sounding way too much like I was begging.

“Do you think I don’t regret that?” Wyvern said. “This is not a permanent arrangement but until I get a security team over here from the Mainland, you will not leave my side. I will make sure there is a human on the team so when they arrive you can go back to school.”

“How long will it take for this security team to get here?”

“My steward needs to assign the team, find them permanent housing, enroll the human in your school and fly them out,” Wyvern said. “The soonest I say would be about forty-eight hours from when I first called, which was directly after we spoke this morning.”

“After you left today, I spent all day without your protection,” I protested.

“I had someone follow you. He did not do a very good job; I won’t be offering him a permanent position,” Wyvern said, as if that wasn’t extremely icky. “I had to deal with some arrangements in person on the house I bought.”

“You bought a house here?” I stared at him, horrified.

He smiled wolfishly at me and tapped my nose with his finger. “Not because of you.” He laughed. “I purchased the house three months ago, my mother and sister live on this island too, remember?”

“Sorry, I’m having a hard time determining your level of psycho,” I said mostly because I knew my cheeks were probably bright red.

“I’m not a psycho,” he said. “I’m a dracon. You’re just so obsessed with trying to be a human that you don’t know the rules and customs of your own kind.”

“You don’t know me,” I said. Then I turned forward to the dark road because I was finished talking with him.

Thankfully, he stayed silent for the rest of the dark drive home. When we arrived at my house, he climbed out of the car and grabbed a duffel bag from a storage space, that was surprisingly in the hood of his car. He beeped the lock and came around to where I was standing.

“You’re going to stay in my house…with me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you’re going in looking like that?” I asked, pointing to his bare chest.

He grinned. “I’ll change in your driveway if you really want me to, this time you don’t even have to turn around.”

“You look fine,” I said, heading for the house and ignoring his low chuckle. I knocked on my front door because I had left my purse at my grandfather’s house in all the confusion of running away.

Immediately, my mother answered the door. My mother was wearing the slinkiest and most revealing evening gown that I had ever seen her wear and that was saying a lot for her.

“Welcome home, sweetheart,” my mother said, her slurring voice husky. “Oh,” she said then bowed low, exposing way more than I wanted to see. “Mr. Manderson, we weren’t expecting company. Welcome.”

I looked between Wyvern who looked like he was the best entertainment any bachelorette party had ever had and my mother, who just looked drunk and awkwardly inappropriate, and I burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” I said to my mother, through my laughter, “I just can’t…” I walked in past her and laughed all the way to my room.

In my room, I found Lorelei and Mele…who I had completely forgotten was here. The two were on my bed looking at clothing catalogues.

“Is Keanu here?” I asked.

“No,” Mele said, “He said that after he returned the computers he was going to my house so he could go wave riding in the morning before school.”

“Wave riding?” I asked, incredulously. I mean, I was glad he was not here, but did he really take this threat so lightly?

Mele shrugged. “That’s the way Hunter and Keanu are, Dakota. They would miss their own funerals if there was a ‘big swell coming in.’”

“Wyvern is here,” I said.

“We know,” Lorelei said, turning the page in her catalogue, “That’s why we’re not in the living room, Glacier called mom to say you and Wyvern were coming. We were kicked out and sent to your room.”

“He says he’s going to stick around me twenty-four, seven until I find his sister,” I said, for Mele’s benefit.

“That’ll be just great,” Mele said, looking up from the catalogue and sounding like it would be anything but. “And I’m stuck here too, sorry about that.”

“You can stay forever as far as we’re concerned,” Lorelei said, smiling at Mele. “You might not get any food, but you’re welcome to stay.”

“I’ll get you food, somehow. But yeah, Mele,” I said. “You should probably stay here with us. Unfortunately, Wyvern has decided he’s staying with us also, and I don’t have the ability to stop him. So it’ll be interesting…”

Mele let the pages of her catalogue flip closed and she sighed. “I’m a big girl, I can handle it.” The look she gave me told me that she was talking about more than the fact that the dragon that had attacked both of us last night was now going to have a slumber party with us. She asked, “It’s not going to wear off, is it?”

I did not know what to tell her, so I said nothing.

“I feel different,” she said.

“How?” I asked.

Mele said, “Like something is in my veins that should not be there. It doesn’t really hurt, it just doesn’t feel right…”

Lorelei stared straight at me, willing me with her eyes to help Mele, probably to tell her the truth about us.

I would if I could.

It’s not that I did not trust Mele; she was willing to fight a dragon with a kitchen knife for me. I just feared that if I told her that I had betrayed her by lying to her every day while we were friends for years, I would destroy our friendship. I was afraid that she would walk away, making it impossible to help her.

At the same time, if I helped her, it might damage my mission in so many ways. For example, if I found her a dampener, even if it did not look like mine, Mele would figure out I wore a dampener too soon enough. Mele was one smart cookie.

However, if she was infected, I needed to find her a dampener and quickly. Mele had already made a very public display that appeared as if she was infected to Senator Hale, my primary target. If I kept her at my house, Senator Hale might start to be suspicious about me and all the forward motion I had made toward infiltrating his family would quickly slam into reverse.

The other option, the option my grandfather would order me to do if he was here, would be to help her find a new life in the supernatural community and cut ties. The very idea made tears form in my eyes. I had to blink them back and admit to myself that I just did not have it in me. Mele had become a sister to me and at the very core of it all, it was my sisters that really mattered.

“If it doesn’t fade away, which it should…but I’m starting to get a little worried...well, if it doesn’t…” I blurted out the words in a rush, “I might be able to take you to a witch that can help you be able to cross water wards. I’ve heard that it can be done.”

“Are you serious?” Mele asked.

“I’m not saying that it’s going to work… but you were right, my family has gone to witches for different things, this is the same witch that made Clara so beautiful. I was going to go check out Honua’s house and talk to her mother. As both the witch and Honua’s mother live on the east side of the island, we can see both. We might even make it back to school in time for lunch—except,” I groaned, remembering, “I won’t be going to lunch because Wyvern has decided that I can’t leave his side which means he’s probably going to insist on going with us tomorrow—”

“He does,” said Wyvern’s voice from directly outside my room.

I turned on my heel and looked out of the door to where Wyvern was just standing there outside my open door, leaning against the wall.

“What are you doing?” I practically shouted.

“Giving you the illusion of privacy,” he said. “But I’m tired and I would like to change, so grab your computer and whatever you want to sleep in so we can head down to the guest room.”

“I’m not…I’m sleeping here,” I said.

He just looked at me, and then walked right past me.

“Good evening, ladies,” Wyvern said with a small smile as he passed the bed with Mele and Lorelei wide-eyed and speechless on it.

To my horror, Wyvern walked over to my drawers and started going through my clothes. I was so offended by the situation that my brain froze and I just stood there, watching him do it. He grabbed some clothes, and then walked to my desk to grab my laptop.

“Am I going to have to carry you down, too?” he said to me, a smile of challenge on his face.

“Yes,” Lorelei said, “Carry her.”

“No…don’t carry me...
Lorelei!
” I said. “I’m going to walk down there with you right now, but I’m not going to sleep down there, understand?”

He just smirked and gestured for me to walk ahead of him.

I did, but not because it was a fight that I thought I could not win, but rather more a fight that I just did not have the energy to fight.

Trudging down the stairs, I found my mother just waiting in the living room, holding a glass of what looked like ice water but I knew it was not.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” she asked Wyvern.

“I have what I need, thank you,” he said, “Dakota and I will be staying in your guest room for at least tonight, perhaps longer.”

She gave him a flirtatious smile which was fully creepy. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer taking my room? It’s larger. I could stay in… the guest room, if you’d like.” She did not even pretend to object to the fact that Wyvern had decided that he would be staying in a room with her teenage daughter. Not that it would make any difference, but a stern word or two might have made me feel a little better.

It did not matter, there was no chance that I was sleeping in there with him; I would sleep on the floor if he insisted we share a room.

“The guest room will be fine,” Wyvern said politely, smiling and putting his free arm around my waist.

“I can take you,” she said, smiling while batting her eyelashes.

“I can show him,” I said quickly, because if I had to watch my mom drunkenly-flirt with Wyvern for another second, I would scream.

It was almost worse that he wasn’t treating her with the contempt that I had come to expect men to treat her with, even though he was about twenty years too young for her and a million times out of her league. I was pissed off and I wanted to be pissed off at him.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, gently pushing me forward.

When we entered the guest room, Wyvern immediately closed the door, locked it and put my clothes and computer on the bed. He checked out the guest room and then the bathroom, which had no windows or escape.

“You want to take the first shower?” he asked.

“Go for it,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

A knock came on the door and before I could even stand up, Wyvern was across the room, unlocking and opening the door.

“Hello,” Clara said, politely.

I was momentarily scared that Wyvern would be rude or cruel to my sister for aiding in my escape, but he surprised me.

He smiled wide, like she was his friend, “Clara, nice to see you,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too. I just knocked so I could return Dakota’s purse,” she said.

“What did Braiden say to you when you got back?”

“He seemed to find it very funny that I tricked him,” she said with a smile.

“I had underestimated you quite a bit. I’ll be sure not to make that mistake twice,” he said good-naturedly, as though she had pulled a friendly prank on him.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, equally good-naturedly, handing over the purse, “Goodnight Wyvern, goodnight Dakota.”

It struck me, this contract thing was a game to
all
of them, it was a serious game, but it was a game all the same. Maybe Wyvern was right, maybe I did not know nearly enough about my own culture.

“Goodnight,” I called from where I had not moved from the bed.

Wyvern locked the door again and handed me my purse.

“I’m going to shower,” he said, “Stay in this room, or I’ll come out of the shower and get you, as is.”

I had to swallow before I could nod. “I’m happy right here,” I said.

He grabbed his duffel bag and walked into the bathroom but left the door a crack open.

Sitting against the headboard of the bed, I turned my phone on and scrolled through the messages Bobby wrote me.

He left four, the first one, ‘Your boyfriend was jumpy when we saw that the files were encrypted. Said he did not want his dad to know he was going through the security files. I said I would cover-up what we had already done and let him take the computers. Handled it.’ Then, ‘Carol is sending the files back now.’ ‘Going through files now.’ Then the last text, ‘It might take a while.’