Page 2 of The Dragon King’s Pet

Mika glanced at the pictures of her adventures and wanted to argue, but she knew what Traci meant. She’d never had sex and she’d never done drugs, and both those things were apparently prerequisites for adulthood in the eyes of every teenager she knew.

“It’s my parents. They don’t let me do anything,” Mika complained, twirling a strand of her blonde hair. Copper roots gave away the fact that she was naturally a redhead, but she had started dying it a highlighted blonde just to be different. Well, maybe not entirely different from all the other pretty girls, but different from her parents, which was all that really mattered. “I mean, I know the legal age is twenty-one for clubs and stuff, but I’ve been to Europe and they drink at sixteen there.”

“Your dad’s from Europe, right?”

Mika shrugged. “Something like that,” she said. “Some country with some name I never remember. He doesn’t like to talk about it. We never went wherever he’s from. We just usually went to France on a holiday, and he’s definitely not French. He didn’t speak a word of it.”

“Maybe he did something messed up back there,” Traci said. “There’s all kinds of weird stuff that happened in Europe, like the soviet states and, yannow, things?”

“I don’t think so,” Mika said. “He never does anything wrong. He’s the most straitlaced guy I know. He follows every single rule he can. And he makes me follow them too.”

“Yeah, your dad’s hot, but he’s boring,” Traci said.

Mika let the comment about her dad’s hotness slide. There were rumors that Traci had slept with some of their friends’ fathers, but her dad was an exception. He didn’t have any time at all for girls like Traci; in fact, he barely seemed to notice she existed.

They fell into a short silence in which Mika thought about Traci’s vacation plans. It did sound like fun. It would be the first time she’d been so far away on her own, but it was time she stepped out from under her parents’ wings.

“Okay, so I don’t think they’re going to say yes, but I don’t care,” Mika said. “I’m going. I’m eighteen now. I can do what I want. And what I want to do is spend the next month in Ibiza. I want to get out of this city and onto a beach.”

“Yay!” Traci clapped her hands together eagerly. “We’re going to have so much fun, and we’re going to meet so many hot guys. Guys from all over the world.”

“Better than the same ten guys we’ve known since forever,” Mika said with a dramatic yawn. “I can’t wait to meet someone new.”

“You can’t wait to lose your virginity, you mean,” Traci beamed. “I am going to make it my mission to get you laid, Mikkie.”

CHAPTER 2

An hour later…

“Come on, Mom, it’s a vacation! And I’m eighteen now. Are you going to make me go to Disneyland with you two forever?” Mika made her case, knowing it was futile and feeling frustrated as a result. She was right, she was eighteen now. She could get married if she wanted, but her parents insisted on treating her like she was still a little girl. It wasn’t fair at all.

Her mother pushed her reading glasses down her nose and looked over them at Mika.

“Ibiza is hardly a vacation spot, Mika. It’s a den of drug addicts and sex workers. Your father would never permit it.”

“I’m eighteen, Mother,” Mika reminded her yet again. “At some point, what he permits doesn’t matter anymore. I’m my own woman.”

“Oh, your own woman. I see.” Her mother’s cheek dimpled as she took her glasses off and fixed Mika with a look. “So, as your own woman, how will you be financing this trip of yours?”

“I make money modeling,” Mika reminded her. “And I have jewelry I can sell if I have to.”

“When I was your age, I was nose-deep in textbooks.” Her mother changed the subject, as she always did when she was losing an argument.

“When you were my age you were boring. Sorry I’m not,” Mika scowled.

At that moment, they were interrupted by her father’s arrival. He was a very tall man from whom Mika had gotten many of her features. She had her mother’s hair and face shape, but her eyes held a golden ring at the very center of the pupil, which had expanded as she had aged to turn her once blue eyes almost as golden as his. There was still a hint of blue at the very edges of her iris, but for the most part her eyes burned gold. It was a very unique color that many people assumed was created by contact lenses, but her father claimed it was common where he was from.

She had his expressions at times, his broad smile, his laugh. She had his nose too, a smaller version of the sharp, straight bridge and neat nostrils. Her cheekbones were high and her lashes were thick and dark, usually further amplified by cosmetics. Her skin was a creamy color, the darling of makeup artists who always noted how smooth it was. Some even said that it was ‘thicker,’ less prone to wrinkling. She wasn’t sure what that was about, or if it was even true, but there was no doubt that between her parents, she had won the genetic lottery.

“What are my two favorite women arguing about?” Her father dropped a kiss on her head and continued on to embrace her mother from behind, wrapping his arms around her mother’s shoulders and smiling warmly at Mika.

“Your daughter wants to spend a month on a Spanish island where the main pastimes are alcohol poisoning and STD transfer,” her mother said, making Mika’s holiday plans sound like the worst possible thing in the universe.

Mika shot an angry look at her mother. “It’s not like that,” she said. “My friends and I want to take a summer trip before we all go to college. Almost none of us are going to the same place. It will be the last time we see each other. We want to make some memories that will last a lifetime.”

For a moment, she thought maybe her father was buying it.

“No,” he said, his tone definite as he crushed her dreams.