Rock Bottom (Dragon Within #4) by Kyra Dune Read Free Book Online

Megara
shrugged. “I’ve been here going on six years and nobody has come snooping
around yet.”
         “So you
set this place up as a kind of safe house for renegades,” Hannah said. “That’s
cool.”
         “It
wasn’t my plan,” Megara said. “When I left Ireland, I was like Abigail. Young.
Scared. On the run. I spent a lot of years looking over my shoulder. Seemed
like every time I tried to settle in one place, something would spook me and
I’d be gone again.
          “Then I
stumbled across this rundown hotel owned by a man named Malcolm Bryce. A water
dragon of Scottish stock raised up in Ireland. Not a renegade either, but one
who had been allowed to break with his clan and go off on his own. But the man
has a renegade heart. He was the one who put me on to this place.”
         “How did
you find Abigail?” Zack asked.
         In case
you’re wondering about my silence, truth is I was more than happy to let
anybody but me be the one to ask the questions right then.
         “Malcolm
has kept in touch with certain people back home who are sympathetic to our
cause. About six months after I got settled in here, they caught wind of a
certain young spirit dragon who can sense any hybrid from any clan in the world
coming into their powers. You can imagine how dangerous that would be in the
wrong hands. His folks were worried for him, so it was arranged to send him
here to me. He’s how I found Abigail.”
         We
entered a small office crowded with a desk and a row of filing cabinets. It was
empty of anything personal expect for a picture of a smiling, redheaded woman
hanging on the wall. She looked enough like Megara that I could guess it was
her mother. It was weird to see it there because it forced me, for the first
time, to realize Megara was an actual person. I’d been thinking about her the
way most dragons would think about me, as a hybrid and nothing more. But she
had a family and a life that had probably been harder than mine since she’d
been running from trackers for almost as long as I’d been alive.
         Sitting
on the edge of the desk was a man about Derek’s age. He smiled when we came
into the room, but it seemed to be a smile directed solely at me. “Is this
her?”
         “Yes, it
is,” Megara said. “Abigail, I’d like you to meet Jonah Hennessy, the spirit
dragon I was telling you about.”  
         “I’m
pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand.
         I shook
it, smiling uneasily back at him. He was cute in a way totally different from
Zack. More boy-next-door kind of cute, if you know what I mean. Dark red hair,
soft brown eyes, and this little sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his
nose. But the biggest difference between them was his smile. It lit up his
entire face.
         What?
Don’t look at me like that. Just because I was in love with Zack doesn’t mean I
stopped noticing cute guys. But the way he was looking at me made me feel that
same flutter of nerves as the clapping had.  
         “Did you
tell her why she’s here?” Jonah asked.
         Something
less than the absolute certainty she’d shown so far flickered across Megara’s
face. “I thought I’d let her settle in a bit before I weighed her down with the
details.”
         “No,” I
said. And then of course everyone was staring at me. I guess because I’d been
quiet for so long. “I said I’d let you tell me what you wanted in your own
time, but I changed my mind. Those people,” I gestured vaguely at the door,
“changed it for me. I want to know what it is you told them. What it is they’re
expecting from me. I think I deserve that.”  
         Megara
eyed me silently a moment. “Fair enough.” She moved around to take a seat
behind her desk. “I’m not the hiding under a rock sort. As I’m sure you’ve
noticed. These people aren’t here solely to be protected. I plan on making a
protest against the laws that call for