Ivory slept lightly now. That's what she often did now since she had been pregnant; she either found herself sick, fatigued with little energy, or just too tired to keep her eyes open.
Pregnancy had begun to show in the delicate curve of her stomach — a soft, undeniable roundness that rose beneath the blankets. She didn't look huge at all; Blue remarked that it looked like a marble was stuck in her small stomach, and he laughed at his comment. She even chuckled herself, and liked that she wasn't too big. She heard the stories of women gaining a hundred pounds, though that wasn't the case for her.
An hour ago, she'd fallen asleep clutching her pillow, Blue nowhere in sight. He had left hours earlier for one of his "meetings," the kind he did not explain and she had stopped pretending to understand.
Blue usually sat near her and would watch her as she remained bed ridden. Ivory remembered the "quick pregnancy" comment the midwife kept saying, and now it was an echo that stung her ears. She hoped that the baby would come out soon, though birth scared her to death.
It didn't help that she was an orphan, now would be great to have her parents around. She never even met Blue's yet, which wasn't the strangest thing about him.
He had been in a lot of "private" meetings; he'd go to his office or some random area of the mansion and have virtual meetings with people. Ivory didn't get why he had so many secrets; the amount of red flags Blue had astonished her. She really just tried to not speak to him unless she needed to, which helped keep him calm and not annoyed by anything she said or had done.
That was another part of his personality that she had unlocked: he could charm the pants off anyone, though her not being quiet and obedient made him angry; he never liked her constant questions.
Sometime past midnight, the room shifted. Not physically, no one came in or exited the room or had rearranged anything --- the atmosphere itself shifted. The air thickened like a velvet blanket covered the air as Ivory drifter deeper into sleep.
First, there was only darkness, then she found herself awake in her bed; she was able to see the outline of the furniture and felt a presence with her. She touched her belly. Then, eyes peered at her from her enlarged stomach. They were small, clear, not the vague blurry features of a normal ultrasound dream — but eyes that saw her.
They were bright blue, glowing from within.
Ivory tensed, even in sleep.
The pupils widened. First human… then widening until they nearly swallowed the color, dark blue flooding the iris like ink spreading through water. The gaze was ancient. Knowing. Familiar in a way she didn't want it to be.
A voice slid into her mind — soft, childlike, but layered with something older.
"Mother." a high-pitched voice said.
Ivory jerked slightly in her sleep. Her hand moved instinctively to her stomach. In her dream, she gasped at the eyes: my baby is a girl, she thought to herself.
"Father is in a meeting."
A pause. The pupils dilated further, inhumanly large.
"You can go."
Her breathing slowed, caught somewhere between fear and trance.
"Go? Go Where?" Ivory peered at the eyes.
"Go to the basement. I will lead you there and help you solve your questions."
"Why are you helping me?" she whispered into the dream.
The eyes blinked — not quickly, but slowly, like a creature that had never known rush or fear.
"My mother must know my roots."
The dream dissolved.
She woke instantly.
The room was dark. Her stomach felt warm beneath her palm, as if touched from the inside.
And she knew — with the same quiet certainty she used to feel when her intuition whispered truth — that she had to move now, while Blue was gone.
Ivory slipped from the bed, her heartbeat steady, purposeful. She placed her feet into her velvet slippers and padded downstairs, following a pull she couldn't name, one that guided her feet more than her thoughts. She still had a slight headache from the amount of time she had spent sleeping.
She began to worry that Blue would find her, and with the fatigue she felt, she tried to turn back and go to the bedroom, though something stopped her. She felt a slight jerk from her stomach and groaned as she suddenly felt energized.
The baby was giving her energy --- fueling her, it really had to show her something.
She reached the basement one step at a time. She noticed the black door closed with a keypad.
The air felt colder, denser, like a held breath. Her stomach tightened.
"What is the code?" she whispered, not expecting an answer.
She didn't know what Blue would use as a passcode. She thought about it for a few seconds until a sensation rippled through her abdomen — a tightening, a nudge.
A single intuitive flash ignited in her mind:
Blue's tattoo. The one that only she could see.
The sequence of numbers that she had memorized in her mind because it was such an unusual number. Numbers she had seen when she had driven her around, numbers she'd seen a hundred times when he pulled his shirt over his head, numbers that threw themselves into her face when he wore a short sleeved shirt.
Her fingers moved on their own. She typed in the numbers at once, not the symbols, just the numbers.
Beep.Beep.Beep.
The keypad light flickered from red to green.
The lock clicked.
Ivory stared for a beat, then pushed the door open.
A single light hummed to life, illuminating a chamber carved into the earth, cold and sterile. The walls lit up from the bright blue crystals in their organic shape and as carved dragons engraved in them. The floors also had crystals embossed into them, though these were a dark blue, green appeared from behind them. The floors were cold and welcoming. It was an odd feeling.
At the center stood a black pedestal… and atop it, a box as sleek as obsidian, engraved with the dragon sigil.
Her pulse hammered.
She opened the box.
Inside lay a book: a thousand-page, dark, metallic volume that pulsed faintly with blue light — as if responding to the child inside her.
The title glowed even before she brushed the dust from it: THE SERAPHYNE CODEX.
Ivory lifted it.
The moment she opened the first page, the world seemed to tilt, the air compressing around her.
Symbols. Diagrams. Anatomical sketches. Constellations. Histories written in a language she shouldn't have been able to read but somehow understood instantly.
An ancient extraterrestrial race.Blue scales.Dragon elegance.Genetic architects.Conquerors.Designers of hybrid bloodlines…and overseers of their "chosen offspring."
Ivory hyper ventilated and turned the pages, and saw photos of men and women, people that didn't look like regular humans: tall, blue scales around their eyes, bright blue eyes and hair, all with the tattoo that Blue had on this arm, except that certain numbers were different -- they were probably identification numbers that the aliens had engraved into them -- humans used social security, the aliens used tattoos.
Ivory went to a different chapter in the book and read about a planet called Croxatia --- Ivory made the connection with the tattoo: it had the first three letters of the planet before a serial number --- pronounced Crow-ZAY-shuh, and how the alien race originated from there. The planet shared a moon with Earth and had a draconian alien race that resided on the planet.
The Seraphyne looked somewhat similar to humans in present time, though as their own race, they had more scales and were bulkier. They're called the Seraphyne. They lived thousands of years before humans did and descended from the original dragons as a result of mating with humans to advance their tribe and humanity. Though, dragons were not the nicest creatures, so as a result, the dragon-human hybrids resemble humans a little more yet act like dragons. The goal was to take over the world.
Ivory's breath trembled.
The truth unfurled like a serpent:
Blue wasn't just connected to The Seraphyne. He was one of them, or he served them. He had to be both. He was a dragon-human hybrid. That would explain the thick skin he always had.
Either way… this child she carried was not merely his. It belonged to a lineage older than human memory.
The bright lights flickered around her.
Ivory closed the book, the truth thundering inside her like a second heartbeat. And the baby — her baby — rolled beneath her hand, as if satisfied she finally understood. Though, Ivory was shocked and felt disgusted. Her real family were mobsters, so she wondered how Blue even knew who they were and why he wanted to work with them.
Ivory gently touched her stomach and peered down at it; she felt her baby staring at her, though she couldn't see its eyes. It was able to show her its eyes in her dream because the dream world is where people are the most vulnerable.
If the Seraphyne are after world domination, then working with gangs makes sense, because the government and the justice system are intertwined with gangs. Blue once said the police function like a gang; they brutalize civilians. You start with the real gangs, then the people have no choice but to follow alone.
Ivory felt a light kick from her stomach, and she knew her baby agreed with her. She closed the book and exited the room, closed the door and made her way back to her bedroom. She was still in shock over what she had read. Though, she knew that what she read wasn't even half of the truth.