Page 63 of Dragon Tempted

Sienna did as she was told. Ryan came to stand a few feet away. His body angled so that he could see the front and back of the room.

Mia clicked on her smartwatch and Ryan tensed. “Stay calm, Mr. Bodyguard. I’m setting a timer. We have fifteen minutes and then we leave.” Mia focused on Sienna. “You found the second storybook?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?” Mia demanded.

Sienna took a shallow breath. This could blow up spectacularly in her face. “I found the book. I didn’t say I would bring it with me.”

Mia scowled. “I thought you said you don’t like to play games.”

Sienna stood her ground. “This isn’t a game. This is about the well-being of my family and clan. You asked for proof of my sincerity. I would ask the same of you.”

Mia crossed her arms. “I’m the one who gave Adam the first book to begin with and told him about the oracle and the curse.”

“Yes, you did. But why? Why show Adam anything?”

Mia studied Sienna. If Mia thought she would win in a stare down, she had another thing coming.

“I’m not going to give you any information, Mia. Not until I understand what you plan to do with it. Why reach out to Adam?”

“Because after I read the book, I realized it was written by an oracle and that the children represented you, Eric, and Adam.”

“Where did you get the book?” Sienna asked.

Mia sighed. “Your mother.”

“What?” Sienna gasped, her chest tightening.

“Your mother had always believed that some sort of curse or spell had damaged your dragons, especially given the books she had inherited from your great-grandmother. When she had you three children, she realized you were the ones who would possibly save your clan and bring back your dragons. She had been reaching out to others to help in her search and was tricked into bringing the book to a meeting. It was taken from her. But she was smart enough not to bring all of the books, so we were only able to locate the one. We assumed that another storybook or two was passed down to you.”

“The ‘we’ you keep talking about are the Templars?”

A moment of pain flashed on Mia’s face before she schooled it again. “A Templar tricked your mother into believing he would help her. I was given it years later to study.”

“That’s why you were so adamant that we had another book.” Sienna clenched her fists in her lap under the desk. “Why wouldn’t she have told us the truth?”

Mia shrugged. “Adam said that your mother told you part of the story at bedtime. She must have thought she had more time to tell you before she died.”

Sienna’s stomach cramped, and she swallowed back the bile in her throat. “Did you have something to do with her accident?”

Ryan tensed again. His body poised to strike like a snake.

“No,” Mia answered immediately. “I wasn’t a part of this when your mother died.”

“What about your Templar buddies?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?” Sienna pushed.

“Because the Templars wouldn’t have hurt your mother. She was still an asset that they could use to gain more information.”

Sienna swallowed again. “How practical of them. And once she was dead, they weren’t worried about her children saving our dragons?”

“They observed the three of you. Eric was the only one who thought that there was something more than biology going on with dragons slowly losing their powers, but when Adam banned him from the clan, Eric never found anything concrete to go by, and he wasn’t considered a threat.”

“Then why didn’t you approach Eric? Why reach out to Adam? Were you trying to trick him like you did my mother?”