Once upon a Dragon Gift (Once Upon a Dragon Series Book 4)

“What?” Becky asked as we all stared at George. His hand still carried a slight tremble.

“I’ve seen it.” He massaged his temples. “How we were going to merge into one and become Garrison. We each held an Elemental dragon. I didn’t pick it up before, but the Elementals are drawn to us.”

My brain sifted through memories. He spoke the truth. They were drawn to us.

“Kerby to Tabitha, as her gift is ice,” George explained. “Its purest form is water. The fire one is drawn to Sammy, but it’s because she has fire. If Brian shows his fire, he will come to him.”

“The wind dragon—”

“To you, because your gift is part of the sky,” I stated.

George nodded. “The earth dragon…Blake stood with the earth dragon.”

“Was Elena with him?” Sammy asked.

He shook his head. The worry appeared on King Albert’s face again.

“I couldn’t hear the words so well, but their essence disappeared with us, and we all travelled into Blake.”

“What?” Becky questioned as the others kept staring at George as if he had two heads.

“All six of us went into Blake,” George explained, “and last the earth dragon did his thing, and Blake became the Saadedine. He didn’t look like the Saadedine though. He looked different. More fierce.”

“Okay, so what does this mean?” Becky’s eyes grew. “We are all going to die and live in Blake’s body?”

“I don’t know, Becks. I woke up after that. You think that didn’t scare me to death? I’m fucking shaking.” He showed her his hands.

“That is ludicrous. We can’t do that,” Becky panicked.

“Then I guess there is no Saadedine.” George sounded defeated as I tried to make sense of what he must have seen.

“We can get Elena back without the Saadedine,” I said.

“Blake?”

“Dad, these are my friends. I will not kill them and carry them with me until the day I die. They deserve a life.”

“You will if it is going to save Elena,” Tabitha said.

“I’ll find another way, Tabitha. I won’t kill any of you or even consider it. And if any of you think that of me, then you don’t know me.”

I walked away. That was messed up. I refused to do that. I’d find another way to save her.

The next few days, all of us were left with our thoughts. Then, during Strategy, George went into a frenzy again. Shakes rushed out the classroom to get the king.

George screamed the roof off, and Becky did not know what to do. She just stared at him, cupping her mouth. Tears welled up in her eyes.

Lu and I tried to help him as Tabitha comforted Becky.

George’s cries stopped, just like the other day, and then his eyes were pure white as the king and Dad entered.

I let go of him and put my finger on my lips to show everyone to shut up.

George walked the entire classroom. Lu, Brian, and I grabbed chairs and tables out of his way so that George bumped into nothing. He gaped as he followed something with his eyes.

Hopefully, the Saadedine. It wouldn’t happen.

He chuckled and blinked. The coughing fit followed, grabbed it from the pit of his stomach as it was that raspy cough. Dad grabbed a bottle of water that Tabitha always carried with her and threw it at me. I caught it and handed it to him.

“George?” Becky asked as he downed the last bit.

“This is fucking crazy,” he said.

“It won’t happen,” I replied.

“We don’t die. We come back as seven individuals. I just watch us being happy about it. Brian spoke about his experience inside of you.”

What? My gaze flickered to my father. “Dad, is there a spell that can do this?”

My father looked at King Albert.

George grabbed my wrist. “I’ll see the spell. I think I’m seeing the other use of the Saadedine. I mean, Lucian couldn’t shut up about it, and it was as if it became my obsession, as there are no answers.”

“Because they don’t have another use, George.”

“No, I think they do. I think Paegeia just got it wrong.”

Lu squinted. “What do you mean, got it wrong?”

“I don’t know. From what we discovered about the Saadedine, they said when they go into their hosts, it’s horrible to watch. What I witnessed wasn’t horrible; it was peaceful. They were peaceful. It’s like they knew exactly what was going to happen, and they didn’t protest.”

“Protest?” Dad asked and looked at King Albert.

“We had it wrong,” George said again. “Everyone had it wrong. That is why they squirmed and screeched every single time.”

We all just stared at him.

His gaze came to rest on mine. “I’ll see more. I know I will.”

I gaped slightly, staring at George. We became Garrison and the Saadedine, plus keeping ourselves?

We made sure that there was at least one person with George twenty-four-seven.

Lu and I took turns to sleep in his room.

If only the guy could shut up about what he’d seen, then we could all get some shut-eye. It almost felt as if I’d been there from the amount of times he’d told it now.

I woke up with George screaming, murdering my eardrums.

The water was close by as he tried to muffle the screams in his pillow. Was that going to be his life now? Screaming every time he saw something?

It stopped, and his eyes flew open, pure white like always.

He just stood on the bed watching, listening. I kept quiet so that he missed nothing.

When the blue of his eyes came back, and he coughed, I handed him the water and watched him sip the entire contents. I gave him time to calm down and then he told me what he had seen.

“I get why the others did what they did. I saw the version that everyone saw, and they did it to a tee. But there were a lot of steps missing. They didn’t see the others.”

“What others?”

“The Saadedine doesn’t wake up when there is danger, Blake. It wakes up with Dents.”

“Dents?”

“Always four. We had it wrong.”

“What are you saying?”

“We are the first era whose Dents lived. Every time, it’s either a dragon that died not being able to go through the change or the riders died of a horrible illness. Think about it. Tanya said there were three during the Great War. There is always four. The Saadedine is not there to protect whatever is coming. They are ours, the Dents.”

“George. You saw all of this?”

He nodded, shocked. “It was like a movie I watched, dude.”

“You were out for five minutes.”

“It felt like hours. It’s amazing, Blake. What they are actually created for. It’s always Garrison. Because the four Dents become Garrison.”

My face fell. Elena wasn’t here.

“We are not four Dents, we are three and a half. Elena is not here.”

“Uh-huh. She has her role.” His lips curved.

“Get out of here?”

He laughed and nodded. “She is the rider.”

George told me everything. How every era had four Dents. It didn’t matter if it was peace or war. There were four Dents.

Which meant that every era had a Saadedine attached to us. It was still only the wyverns that could find them, but they needed the help of the metallic and chromatic dragons to help them hatch.

It also made me wonder if there wasn’t a truce with the wyverns. We needed them to awaken the Saadedine that would merge with the four Dents and become the protector of Paegeia during their hardships.

“So many Saadedines never got to fulfill their true destiny,” George remarked as he finally got to the end of telling me everything he’d seen.

“It’s why you are getting these visions, as it’s the first time that four Dents exist.”

“What I was thinking, too.”

“We need help,” I pointed out.

George’s gaze flashed to mine. “Who is going to help us? Nobody even knows the correct use for the Saadedine.”

“You saw we got our forms back. And we are the Saadedine when we need him.”

“Yeah, it’s like their essence lives in us. Like they become the magic to merge with us in order to take his form.”

“You saw Elena riding us?”

He shook his head. “The one in the movie was a guy. It wasn’t even us. I got a feeling the document is something the four of us are going to make for future reference.”

I laughed the way he said it was a movie. “Or maybe they want us to make it.”

“Lucian never let this other use of the Saadedine go,” George said.

“Because he is a dreamer. He makes decisions with his soul. I asked him to let it go, and he told me never. You know what he said when I asked him why?”

“Is it cheesy?”

“Very.”

George laughed.

“He said that he doesn’t believe that something that magical only lives for a short time and then turns to stone.”

“Fuck, he was born in the wrong era, but you’re right. It’s cheesy.”

“So cheesy,” I agreed, and we both chuckled. “We need to tell the others,” I stated.

“Hey, it’s four in the morning. Let them wake up first.”

My stomach grumbled. I was always so hungry. I couldn’t still be growing, but it felt like it at times. “I’m going to raid the kitchen. Try to get some sleep. We will figure this thing out.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” George said, saluting me as I walked out of his room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.

I jumped as Dad sat in the dark at the island.

A light switched on. He was having a midnight feast as dishes filled with leftover chicken and salads filled the table. I grabbed a plate and dished up.

“You couldn’t sleep either?”

“After what George has seen, I found it hard. Besides, I feel so off-balance.”

“I’ve felt like that for the past fifteen years, Blake.”

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“I thought he was dead, but to be honest, a part of me knew he wasn’t. I just wasn’t sure.”

Silence lingered for a few minutes as I dug into my cold chicken. I was too ravenous to heat it up.

“I should’ve killed him.”

“Dad, you didn’t know—”

“I should’ve known, Blake. The guy could speak wyvic fluently. His own father beat the crap out of him. That is usually a sign among our dragons. When a father stamps on the egg, something is wrong.”

“Humans are different.”

“Still, he had all the signs that he was a bad egg.”

I chuckled the way my father spoke about humans as eggs. “It’s in the past. We can’t change anything. We just need to focus on the future and find Elena.”

“It’s crazy what George has seen.”

“Something tells me he is going to be one hell of a seer.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling too,” Dad said between chews.

“Believe me, you don’t want to miss out on tomorrow’s vision.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

My dad’s gaze flickered to mine. “He got another one?”

I nodded as I chewed the food in my mouth, still trying to process what he’d seen.

I got up from the chair and took my food with me. “See you tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, okay?”

“You too,” my dad replied. The light switched off again as I left the kitchen. My dad always loved the dark. Guess it was one reason he was called a Night Villain. But he was far from a villain. In fact, he was a hero—mine, to be precise. I never thought that I would feel this way about my dad again. The man he used to be, that drunk and lousy asshole, was long gone. If there was one thing that Samual had done correctly, it was giving me my father back, but then again, it wasn’t Samual, it was Dimi.

During breakfast, George told everyone about his latest vision. Everyone around the table hung on his words as the revelation hit the grownups hard about why the Saadedine was really there. The fact that they shouldn’t have died laid heavy on Dad and King Albert’s shoulders.

“How were we supposed to know, Al?” Dad said.

“We were a new era; we could’ve done what they had done.” King Albert swiped his hand toward us.

“There were three Dents, not four.”

“I know. What if I’d taken your rider’s spot, Bob?”

“We are like a Dent for crying out loud. I don’t care if you have the mark or not. You claimed me. You are stuck with me.”

Laughter burst from me. I couldn’t stop seeing the comical side of their bickering. Then the girls laughed, and finally the guys all chuckled.

Dad and the king were the last to join. When the laughter died out, King Albert’s gaze flickered to George. “You are going to be one hell of a seer, son.”

Becky glowed with pride.

“Which brings me to you, young lady. You have any headaches lately?”

“Apart from the ones worrying about my dragon, no,” she replied.

That elicited a few more chuckles.

I wished I could share this with Elena, but she was behind enemy lines now. She would pee herself if she discovered she had to ride the Saadedine.

“Elena has to ride the Saadedine,” Sammy voiced my thoughts.

“My daughter will be honored.”

“I feel sorry for her, being my rider and the Saadedine’s,” I said.

“You’ll be the brains of the Saadedine, Blake, seriously,” Lu commented.

Everyone laughed as it sounded jealous, but it wasn’t. I just missed her.

“I need to speak to Adolph,” King Albert said. “Maybe he knows a spell that doesn’t know where it fits in, lying around.”

He got up.

My gaze landed on the empty spot that belonged to Elena. It was growing bigger and bigger, the way the ache in my gut of missing her grew.

I missed her in every way a husband could miss his wife, and I wished Goran could just send her on another mission to steal the Elementals again so that I could break this fucking spell once and for all.