Chapter 8: Adelaide March
1214 Words
CHAPTER EIGHT
ADELAIDE MARCH
The box sat on my nightstand, mocking me. I tried to fall back to sleep, but the minute I closed my eyes, I saw Bradley Endless. I felt Bradley Endless. His fingers on me, his body in me, his hunger, his heat, consuming me until I was nothing left but ash.
I could still feel the ghost of his fingers on me.
But I had never been with him. The most I had done with Bradley Endless was a few, small conversations in passing about the weather. Or asking him for a pencil at school. I was not the girl of his dreams, much less his soulmate.
But still, the box was there.
Waiting.
I opened it up and stared at the dragon’s eye that seemed to stare back at me. Pick me up, it seemed to say. I picked it up, then gripped the necklace in my hand. I saw it. I saw us.
I saw Bradley Endless, chasing me at Emma’s birthday party, trying to put cake on my dress. I saw me at thirteen, dancing with an older Bradley off in the corner. Then there was me at eighteen…
Me at eighteen, leading Bradley up the stairs, and the two of us in the same bed that I was in now. I bolted up right at the memory. Quickly, I got dressed, then I grabbed my cell phone off of the night stand.
I called Sylvia. “Do you have Bradley’s number?”
She groaned. “Adelaide, it’s nearly three in the morning. Are you seriously calling me now?”
“Please, text me his number.”
“Alright, but I’m killing you in the morning,” she told me, “anyway, it probably doesn’t work anymore. He usually changes the phone number whenever he leaves town.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!”
The phone call ended, and my phone vibrated as the text message came through. Bradley’s number was there, in my cell phone. I called him.
“Hullo?” he said.
He sounded wide awake, alert, very different from when he had dropped the necklace off. I wondered if, maybe, he had been drunk when he had delivered the necklace to me. He had been drinking at the bar, it was possible, and now…maybe he was sober.
That had to have been the explanation. Although, the orange eyes…the orange eyes I couldn’t explain.
“It’s me,” I whispered.
“Adelaide.” He spoke my name with such reverence, as if it held magic in it. I couldn’t explain why, or what this newfound obsession with me was. But I knew that I needed something from him. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Can you meet me?” I asked.
“Yes,” I said, “where?”
“The moors,” he answered, “by The Lovers Tree.”
The moors were an expanse of hilly land in between our properties. It was at least a mile between our properties, while in the center there was a single tree. It was called The Lovers Tree, because it was where couples used to meet in order to runaway together before going to Scotland for a quick marriage in Regency England.
I got up, put on my coat, gloves, hat, grabbed my house keys, then put my phone in my pocket. Grabbing a flashlight, I set out to the field to The Lovers Tree. My heart pounded the entire time. I thought that my heart was going to explode before I reached the tree.
I saw him, his eyes glowing orange in the dark of the night. “Who…. who are you to me?”
“Yours,” he replied, “every atom, every bit of my soul.”
The necklace with the dragon’s eye was hanging around my neck. I felt it pulsing around me. I said nothing, but I could see him straining, looking at my lips with desperation. Hunger radiated off of him.
“We’ve been together, haven’t we?” I asked.
“I never wanted you to forget,” he explained, “but the estate…. the estate makes it so that once a person leaves it, they forget everything that happened there. If you don’t have the sight, or something that can make you remember, all your memories are wiped. As if you’ve never been there. Anything that doesn’t happen there, it’s almost like….”
“A dream?” I finished.
“Yes,” he breathed, “yes, it’s exactly like that.”
I should have run. The whole thing sounded so looney tunes, so bonkers I didn’t know what to make of it. But I could see the seriousness in his firey, orange eyes, and feel the burning heat blazing from him.
“When I touched you, there were scales on my hands. What are those from?”
There was steam….no smoke…coming from his nostrils. “Honestly, it’s easier if I show you, Caraid. If you are frightened, take the necklace off, and I won’t come near you again. You’ll forget everything in the morning.”
I nodded. “Okay. Show me.”
“Might want to shine your flashlight on me,” he said.
I did, wondering if I would blind him while doing it. But he didn’t seem bothered, I could hear what sounded like leather cracking…then, I saw it. His face. There were scales there. Green scales. Like----
“I…. are you a dragon?”
“Yes,” he replied, “yes Adelaide, I am a dragon, and you’re my mate.”
Then, instead of doing what any sane, logical person would do and run, I reached out to gently touch the scales on his face. They were cool to touch, almost like that of a fish, but not slimy. They glittered in underneath the flashlight.
I blinked, stunned.
“Hideous, right?” he said with a lopsided smile. “You can scream if you want to. It’s alright. I know I did when I first saw it.”
I took his face in both of my hands. “No…no, it isn’t that at all. I…. Bradley….”
“What?” he said harshly, and I think he half expected me to turn away in disgust.
“You’re beautiful,” I told him.
“Adelaide March,” he said, in that awe spoken, reverent way of his, “this is why I love you. Why I’ve loved you, and always will.” Then, like the firestorm that he was, he kissed me, consuming my lips, claiming them in such a way that I was ruined for anyone else. For no other kiss could compare to the way he made my lips burn, and ache for him even with him there.
- Writer
