Drago:
After breakfast we met in the living room with Ria.
So right now Cinder and I are attempting to help her buy maternity clothes. We have some things on the way, but we're having issues with the fact Ria refuses to wear anything except black, and there's not as many solid black maternity clothes as you might think. There's like pants, but then you order 5 pairs of the same pants.
"I have an idea. What if we had a seamstress come and sit down with you and create a maternity wardrobe? That way you can get the color you want but aren't stuck wearing basically the same thing every day. I know you did really great designing the gowns with Zoe. You could do that with this as well, if you'd like."
She looks at me and kind of tilts her head, and I can see her thinking about it.
"Yah, that actually sounds like a good idea. I would probably like that better than some of the things we are finding."
"Okay, how about we call Zoe and see if she knows anyone. We don't have a dedicated seamstress here in town per say, but I know Zoe has some women who sew for her."
"That's a good idea Drago. Hey Ria can I ask why you decided to wear all black?" Cinder asks and I hold my breath for a moment. We have all wondered, but leave it to Cinder to have the guts to ask.
She shrugs a bit, and adopts a I don't care tone to her voice, "actually it's a couple reasons. One was that I knew I could never say goodbye to my family, it was like they had died." She pauses and swollows hard.
"So, part of it was mourning for my family, it was supposed to keep them always present to me, now it's actually mourning they are gone. The other was, as a child, Braun had me wear black, a lot. It made me look older and sophisticated. It was supposedly elegant. So after 14, I didn't wear it because I was free and had gotten away."
She leaves it there, and I feel it when it sinks in what she's saying without "saying". She doesn't feel free anymore, so now she wears black again. I hate that. The last thing I ever want is to be associated with what he did to her, but how do I refute that in her mind?
I can read the pain on Cinder's face, and I am sure I have it on mine as well.
"Is that what the dresses thing was about?" He whispers.
She looks at both of us in the face, "Yes, he only let me wear dresses, so I didn't ever wear them. Well, until now."
She doesn't spell it out, but we both get it.
"Since we are doing show and tell, what's so important about Royal Dragon Females and Royal Dragons. I mean the people in this town worship you guys like preteen girls at a KPop concert, they don't care what illegal or other shit you do."
I look at her,"I don't honestly know what that means, but Royal Dragons all have special abilities that other dragons don't. We are the only dragons that are immortal. We are stronger, faster, and more resilient than regular dragons."
"So what, you guys all have some freaky x-men powers or something?"
I look at Cinder while thinking of how to go about this. "I guess in a way. I guess we never really sat you down and explained all this, there was a lot of other stuff happening."
She just nods, "right now we had taken a couple of months off after we got you home to spend some time with you. Normally, we work more than this, and we've already been contacted about some situations we need to take care of. I mean we have our own businesses, but that's more of a overseer roll, rather than always 9 to 5 office. The 4 of us all have different aspects of the businesses we own that we oversee."
I pause and she nods again, "One of the major things we do as Royal Dragons is to police the other supernatural species. We also protect humans from rogue supernaturals."
She has a stricken look on her face, "Ah, other supernatural species? You mentioned a witch did magic on this bracelet thing, but witches are just people, I mean that was something I heard about before, but what the hell? There are other things besides dragons?"
Oh fuck, well had really dropped the ball on this one. "Yes, there's actually quite a lot. Some, like us, shifters, blend in with regular society, so you'd never know. Some, only live in certain areas and have an extreamly strick no contact policy with humans."
"Someone needs to get me a mother fucking manual for this shit." She shakes her head.
Cinder chimes in, "actually there are some, in fact we have some in the library, after we leave here I'll show you."
"Yeah that would be good." She pauses. "So the dragon thing?"
"Okay, I am a black dragon, and I have superior strength, and a higher level of dominance, which I can use to help control some species. Ash, is a red dragon, and he actually blows fire and lava that's hot enough to melt anything. Cinder is blue, and his is storms and weather. Then Cole is green and he can exhale acid and he actually has an extra ability in controlling shadows."
Her mouth is hanging open. She just shakes her head but doesn't comment, probably trying to absorb that.
"What about Natalia?"
"Well, Natalia is not our blood sister, so she's not a Royal Dragon. Our parents adopted her after her parents were killed."
She doesn't comment, just gestures with her hand for me to carry on. "Well the birth rates of dragons has significantly dropped. We have all sorts of scientists and doctors trying to figure out why. Now, the birth of females in dragons is even lower, but normal dragons do have more girls born than we do."
I pause for a moment, "there are two types of Royal Dragon Female births. The most common is a girl born from two Royal Dragon parents. Our girls will be Royal Dragon Females. The other is the most rare thing in our whole world. Every now and again, the DNA of dragon bloodlines trickles down through recessive and dominate traits, and eventually comes together in the exact right way and combination to create the rarest combination of a Royal Dragon Female. That is you."
"Royal males can only ever breed with a Royal Female. Royal Females can only ever breed with Royal Males, our histories say there was a time that wasn't the case, but it is now. So, due to that, we are vital to each other for continuation of our species."
"Are all dragons polyandrous since girls are rare?"
"No, not all dragons are polyandrous, but the majority are, and all Royal Dragons are" I tell her.
She looks at me scrunching her eyebrows together, "So, what happens if there's like a Romeo and Juliet sinario, and some Royal Dragon loves a regular dragon?"
I think about that, "Well, dragons mate for life, so they could choose to mate and just know that the regular dragons will die, whereas the Royal Dragon will not, and they'll never have children. That sets up a very sad sinario. I'm sure somewhere at sometime that's happened, I just haven't personally known one."
I pause and think about what else to add," Oh, and I do know about a couple situations where there was two females in a mated union, the females were mated to each other as well as the males, and some males who are not blood related do mate each other. The males always mate a female as well, but there's occasionally cross mating of genders."
She nods, "So how many Royal Dragon families are there,"
"Right now there are 5. There's Escarra in Argentina, There's Diamani in Capetown South Africa, There's Patel in New Zeland, Landry in Northern Canada, and then us."
"So do you all get along with each other?"
I look at Cinder for a moment before answering. "Not really, Dragons are extreamly territorial. So having us in the vicinity of each other isn't normally a good idea. In fact, it was Escarra that was threatening to start a war over acquiring you."
She seems to just sit with that for a second, "So do all the governments know about you?"
Cinder jumps in, "yes, with what we do, coordination with governments is vital. Also, with so much crossover between countries and governments it's important that everyone knows everyone."
She tilts her head, "so do you have areas you oversee for the policing of supernaturals as you put it?"
I answer, "yes, we each have an area that we take care of. We handle all of Europe and the USSR, as well as China and Japan."
"Wow, that's a lot. Is it dangerous?"
"It can be, our parents died in an attack by a group they were attempting to bring in." Cinder looks down as he says that.
She looks like she's thinking of something fairly hard, "so, what happens to me if something happens to you?"
I startle at the question, "well, the possibility of all 4 of us dieing at the same time are astronomical, so if one or even two were killed, you would still have the rest of us."
She gives me a dirty look so I sigh, "worse case sinario, we all 4 die. Another Royal Dragon family would claim you, and our children. You are far too precious to not be. Territories would be realigned to cover everything."
She lets out a huge breath and laughs just a little, but it's not a happy sound.
"Wow, so I'm a commodity no matter what. Since I have now been "discovered" I will forever be someone's property, and continue to be raped and bred like a fucking 2 bit whore, no matter how I feel about it."
With that she gets up and walks out of the room shaking her head, and she tries really hard to hide it, but I catch the tear that slides down her face.