The receptionist did something behind the desk, and then the big double doors opened, and Orion and Cadence followed Dr. Hamill and Dr. Kowalski down the hallway, along with one of the fire dragon security guards. The doors slammed shut behind them with a clang.
They followed the doctors down a long hallway and reached a big metal door with a security pad next to it. Dr. Hamill stepped in front of the pad and it scanned his retina, and then the door slid open. Dr. Hamill, Cadence and Dr. Kowalski walked through. Suddenly, the security guard shoved Orion back, and the door slammed shut behind him. She heard one startled shout of rage from Orion right before the door shut, and then silence.
Chapter Seventeen
Cadence froze as fear and anger shot through her. She was in an enormous room filled with banks of machinery that she didn’t fully understand, but she knew which incubator held her dragonlings.
To her confusion, she saw that the door to the incubator was already open, and there was a nest sitting on a cart…with dragonlings. Four beautiful little dragonlings. Two white, two red.
Where were they trying to take them?
She glanced around wildly. This room was too small for her to shift in, and she was outnumbered, but she could at least blast them with ice.
But everyone who could help her was on the other side of a thick metal door.
“He can’t blast through it in time,” Dr. Hamill said coolly. “My guards will have him subdued shortly anyway.”
“Where are Orion’s men?” Cadence asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.
“Detained. We thought that would help to ensure Orion’s cooperation.”
“Then you don’t know Orion,” Cadence said, looking him in the eye. “But you’re going to.”
Then she hurried towards the nest of her babies. Her heart plummeted to her shoes when she saw who was standing next to it. Humphrey was there, along with a bodyguard and a woman she didn’t recognize. The woman carried a briefcase and wore a tailored pantsuit. She looked like a very sexy accountant, and her eyes briefly went blue and reptilian when she looked at Cadence.
Humphrey’s eyes lit up with a look of gloating triumph when he saw Cadence standing between the two doctors.
“Excellent,” he said. “A little early, but that’s no problem. This is the woman who will be raising your dragonlings.”
Like hell.
The woman smirked at Cadence and flipped her shiny blonde hair with one slender finger.
“She’s my mistress. She’s not at all fertile, so she’s basically useless, but she’ll do fine as a nanny,” Humphrey added dismissively. The woman’s smirk vanished and she scowled at the floor.
“Why would you have her raise them?” Cadence needed to stall for time. Orion would save her. She knew it. She just needed time.
Humphrey snorted at her stupidity. “You’ll be much easier to control if you’re only allowed to visit your dragonlings under guard,” he said. “You step out of line, and they’ll pay for it.”
Cadence imagined him consumed in a giant ball of flame. He would suffer. He would die for this.
“We should get them out of here quickly,” Dr. Kowalski said to Humphrey. “The Garrison clan may be calling in reinforcements.”
“True, but Cadence has a document she needs to sign first,” Humphrey said, and then nodded at the woman. She opened up her briefcase and unrolled a scroll.
Cadence raked Dr. Kowalski with a look of pure hatred. “You bitch. I will end you.”
The doctor couldn’t meet her gaze; she hung her head. “They have my dragonlings,” she whispered. “They forced me.”
“Oh, please, why bother dragging out the lie?” Humphrey sneered. He smiled at Cadence. “She doesn’t even like children; she sent hers off to be raised by the father’s clan the second they hatched. She only had them so she could test out her treatments. You want to know why her all of her clutches died? She was experimenting on them – illegal experiments, might I add – and her early experiments failed. That’s why she had to come here from Poland.”
Dr. Kowalski shot him a sullen look of resentment but didn’t say anything. Dr. Hamill shrugged. “What can I say? She’s a lousy mother but a very good scientist,” he said to Cadence.
“So why did you agree to betray me?” Cadence demanded.
Humphrey answered for her. “I blackmailed her. I found out that the clinic had been using your blood as a very successful fertility treatment for female dragons. She took far more from you than was necessary, because it turned out that your blood has some kind of fertility magic, which will turn out to be very useful. You’re going to birth a lot of my dragonlings. I’m thinking thirty or forty at least. As soon as we remove one clutch, I’ll put another one in you.”