“It wasn’t an accident, Grand-Mère. People were sent to kill him, to kill us.”
Audible gasps resounded in the room.
“But, who would do something like this?” her father asked from where he now stood, halfway to his chair.
The moment of truth.
Kseniya gently pushed her effusive mother away and advanced in on Elena. A quick tap at her comms link in her ear would let the team outside know to close in soon. The snipers reported that they didn’t have a clean shot on Elena across the window. Drat. She’d have to make do, think of every contingency. She didn’t expect her cousin to have a weapon handy, but as Djibril had pointed out, she was a fucking sociopath, and so Kseniya couldn’t put anything past her.
“Oh, I think Elena would have the answer to that. Wouldn’t you, darling?” she asked.
The other girl blanched, her usually golden complexion turning waxen. She had never expected to be caught. Well, of course—Elena was a hacker, and a very good one, too, Gaia had told her. Too bad they’d been better than her.
“Hélène!” their grandmother gasped, while the others uttered the name in Russian and not French.
“What is she talking about, Elena?” her grandfather asked in his stern, no-nonsense manner as he stepped into the sitting room from his study.
Stunned silence filled the room. It looked as if they’d all been frozen. Ice blazed in Elena’s eyes, and Kseniya knew she would get no answer. Well, that was a mystery that would have to go down in the water. She couldn’t dally anymore; she had to take her in.
Another tap on her comms link, and the three men filled the room. Her mother let out a little shriek, her grandmother appearing stricken.
“Elena Ivanovich Sokolova, I have been tasked to take you into custody to then stand trial at the public court of the royal palace,” she said as she advanced and took her cousin’s arm.
The girl came without saying a word, and within minutes, Kseniya had bundled her in the SUV that had been waiting outside to take them to court. Her family must’ve risen as one once the stupor had cleared, but she’d already stashed herself into the vehicle by the time they’d made it to the main courtyard.
Icy silence filled the car all the way to the castle, Elena not looking at her at all. Once at the palace, they alighted from the vehicle, the guards taking hold of Elena to bring her to the main hall of the throne room. Kseniya followed behind, ready to launch into action should her cousin try to make a break for it. Her keen dragon senses picked up on the sounds of her family arriving and rushing through the hallways, escorted by the king’s men.
When they got to the throne room, her step faltered. Because there, standing on the dais on King Anton’s right side—in his full princely regalia of military uniforms complete with the gold braids and épaulettes so reminiscent of historical Russian court wear—was the Crown Prince. Not simply Djibril, and certainly not her Gabe.
A cacophony erupted as her family flowed in, as well as quite a few other inhabitants of their land. The king must’ve proclaimed a public hearing in dragon speak, through their summons’ system, and everyone had complied with the request.
They were so not out of the woods.
“Silence!” the king intoned, and a hush fell over the Great Hall. “Elena Ivanovich Sokolova, you are being accused of high treason against this nation for plotting to assassinate the Crown Prince and another esteemed inhabitant of Fire Island under the direct protection of this royal household. How do you plead?”
Elena remained quiet. In fact, it appeared she straightened her spine and threw her shoulders and head back in defiance.
“Very well,” the king continued. “According to the evidence presented to me and the Minister of Justice—” he gestured toward the man at the foot of the dais, “—there is no doubt possible about your involvement in this despicable act. Others who you involved in this endeavor have been punished already, but you remain as the one who spear-headed this plan. I repeat, how do you plead?”
Silence once more.
Kseniya’s heart was beating so fast, but she knew she had to try something, anything, to change this state of affairs. “Your Majesty, if I may?”
King Anton waved a hand, giving her permission to proceed.
She turned to her cousin, and her chest clenched. This was the girl she’d considered her sister of the heart, her best friend for as long as she could remember. They’d shared the same crib, playpen, blanket forts, written their diaries across from each other in the room they’d occupied as teenage girls. In fact, until she’d been sent to finishing school in Switzerland, the two of them had been inseparable.
She reached out and touched her cousin’s cheek gently … but Elena shrugged her away.
“Don’t you dare pretend you care!” the girl hissed.
Her voice reeked of so much venom, even Kseniya who’d known what Elena was capable of was stunned by the vitriol. The room around her faded, just the two of them existing in a sort of bubble.
“What have I ever done to you?” she asked softly, the words escaping her before she could clamp her mouth shut.
Elena snorted. “Done? Oh, dear Kiki, you’ve done everything a dutiful girl like you had to do.”
“I … I don’t understand,” her mother said a few paces away.
Elena trained her amber eyes onto her aunt—how come they’d never noticed how cold and lifeless those eyes had always been?
“You don’t get it, do you?” the girl ranted. “None of you do,” she continued as she addressed the whole room before returning to face Kseniya once more. “It should’ve been me! I should’ve been the one born in your shoes, you goddamn bitch! I should add consummate whore, too, shouldn’t I, seeing how you’ve been fucking the prince all this time while supposedly on your mission?”
The crowd gasped, but nothing stunned them all like the next words that resonated in the room.
“Careful how you speak of Kseniya Dmitriievich Sokolova,” Crown Prince Djibril Antonovich Vasiliev said in the cutting tone of a royal addressing his court. “For she is my mate and my consort, and one day shall be your queen.”
As stunned silence fell over the Great Hall, Djibril fixed Elena with an unyielding glare. The woman shut her mouth and stared at him, the whites of her eyes showing. She reminded him of a madwoman fit to be thrown into a padded cell, but she wasn’t completely gone yet. She knew he meant business.
Nothing would compare to the look Kseniya gave him, though. Was that shock or disbelief he saw in her gaze? Happiness—maybe a hint of that in the smile that struggled to appear but that she tamped down. As usual, it wasn’t like he could figure her out at the drop of a hat.
Her family, who stood among the first row of people to the right side, were another matter altogether. Her grandmother, the matriarch, looked about to lose consciousness at any moment. He didn’t think it possible, but her usually snow-white skin had paled a few degrees. Thankfully, it seemed like the power of speech had been ripped from her.
He caught his father’s gesture—a motion for him to continue, which meant the king was giving him the floor—the right to move on with this trial.
The older man stepped to him and whispered in his ear, “A king is never certain of much. The trick is to focus and power through it, and to do so well. You know how.”
Yes, he knew how. He’d done it in capoeira. He’d lived by this in his tennis career. He’d adopted this rule in business. Kiki had shown him by example. He knew how to be a king, to act like one.
He just had to do it.
His father had set his doubts aside. He was trusting him with a task only the monarch had the power to oversee under their laws. Crimes of high treason against the king or members of the royal family were tried by the king. So his father was telling him to step up, yet another time. Djibril had successfully completed his mission, but what he needed to accomplish now felt like a hundred times more difficult.
Difficult, but necessary. Such things would be ex
pected from him as sovereign of this land in the future, when the time came.
Still, none of it made his job any easier, especially when a case involved a member of his mate’s family being brought to justice.
He had no choice. Around him, the crowd had its attention trained on him. Waiting.
He’d never seen these people as his future subjects before—only as his fellow Fire Island residents, who were his father’s responsibility. Today, he saw everything in a totally different light. The responsibility had been shifted to him.
There, in the middle of the room, where a wide aisle had been cleared for the royal guards’ entry with their prisoner, Kseniya stood proudly, fiercely. Pain radiated from her—none of it physical. Her heart had been wounded to the core, her cold energy now silent in him, and this angered him to the point he had to exert an incredible amount of self-control to suppress it. His father needed him to live up to his status, and so he would. No better time than now.
As he regarded the small party in front of him surrounding Elena, Kseniya shifted on her feet. She straightened to her full height, clearly holding steadfast to her pride, having fast shrugged off her initial surprise. She’d changed from the daring dress into a kickass outfit, one that meant secret agent business, but her cousin’s vitriol visibly distressed her. He just couldn’t have that.
Djibril took two steps forward and stopped in a wide-legged stance, his hands linked behind his back.
“Kseniya Dmitriievich Sokolova, come stand in your rightful place, by my side,” he said decorously, keeping his tone somewhere between demanding and asking.
Nothing. Fucking shit. She stood rooted at her spot, and Elena, thank goodness, did not comment on that.
“Please, Kiki, I promise we’ll talk about this later, but just this moment, will you step over here, next to me?”
There he was, pretty much a notch short of begging, as he should have expected. He never had it easy with her.
After some hesitation, she joined him, head held high and aloft, like a queen, and turned to face the crowd. Having her there felt right. Coming to think of it, every situation they’d been in had felt right, no matter the danger they’d faced, from the very first moment he’d laid eyes on her. He’d been fighting the feeling back then, and that’s why it had felt like discomfort.
They’d always belonged together.
His mind travelled to what had taken place in the past hour and a half since he'd stepped into the car with his father and after she'd turned her back and left him to go get Elena. He'd known she'd snapped at him to push him away. Why she’d reacted that way, he had no clue, but she’d been behaving oddly since she’d been shot. Well, since after they’d mated, if he had to be truthful.
Women.
She could act weird all she wanted, but things were the way they were. She was his—she had to know it—and he'd told his father as much. And his mother, too, who hadn’t acted as surprised as she should have when he’d gone to disclose the news to her.
“Oh, Gabe,” she’d said, cradling his face between her palms, her soulful dark eyes moist as she’d looked up at him. “About bloody time.”
Granted, he was still a youngling in dragon years, but his parents had been on edge regarding the debacle his private life in the human world had been in the recent years. Seeing him settle down with someone couldn’t be anything other than a boon for them.
Zoya hadn’t been around since she’d had her violin lesson at the time. With the Ivan guy. Another loose end he still had to tie …
His mother had given him zero room to form a sentence. Wearing a scheming, Maleficent-style look on her face, she’d rambled on about things that needed done before the ‘big day.’ Totally jumping the gun.
“Mother, I haven’t spoken to Kiki yet.”
She’d waved her hand at him, dismissing any concerns or common sense. “Of course she’ll be fine with this! I’ll have a talk with her. Just sit down and let us handle the important stuff.”
“I meant I haven’t discussed marriage yet.”
A laugh had escaped her lips. “But she’s your mate, correct?”
“Erm … yes.” This conversation hadn’t taken a direction he’d ever feel comfortable with.
“I mean … you did what you had to do? You know, in bed. All the way. Copulated? Made love? Got jiggy with it, as you kids say?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Mom! You want every single detail laid out? And that last expression stopped being cool maybe two decades ago.”
“As long as the message got through, we’re clear. Dragons bond only during such an encounter, Gabe, and you know it.”
She’d probably already organized their wedding and decorated the nursery and children’s rooms in her head, judging by the way she’d shifted her gaze to and fro, deep in thought. She would have schemed about getting Kseniya in her corner and giving her all the insider information on being a queen. After all, she’d been waiting for him to choose a mate ever since the day he’d been born.
Nodding, he’d said, “All I wanted was your—”
“Blessing. I know. And you have it, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed about being in love. You do know I’ve been there, too. We were just about your own age, in fact. The times your father couldn’t keep his hands off me. Even now …” She’d smiled, seeming steeped in memories she cherished. “Go now.”
“I really needed that visual, Mother,” he’d teased, then sobered up when the true weight of what he needed to do had struck him suddenly.
“You know what’s going to happen,” he’d said on a sigh. Queen Taitu had already been apprised of Elena Sokolova’s involvement in the plot to undermine their mission and to kill him. “I don’t look forward to this.”
She’d touched his cheek. “But you can, and you must. This is your duty.”
“I know that. This woman has meant a lot to Kiki …”
“That is true, but even she has done her duty. She’s doing it now by bringing that criminal to you so she can face justice. A Chromatic dragon, indeed,” she’d scoffed. “Do not let Kseniya down.”
His mother’s words had rung serious and heavy—their meaning clear.
“I will deal with that bitch once you’re done with your bit,” she’d continued. Her eyes had sparked with a mother’s fury, sending a chill from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. “And I’ll get your father, too, for not telling me what had happened. Nobody keeps me away from my son when he needs me.”
Her gaze filled with love, she’d then added, raising her hands palm up, clenched in a clawing position, as though ready to rip a thing to shreds, “If he does that again, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
Oh, man, he didn’t envy his dad at all.
With a sigh, he’d hugged her and asked her to meet him in the throne room within the hour.
And now, here he was, in full princely regalia of royal blue and gold, a solid gold five-toed dragon flying off a crescent moon pinned to his chest pocket. The shit was about to hit the fan. Doubts assailed him, but now, he was steeped in the awareness that he needed to keep them locked away. And through it all, he wished he could be alone with her … his woman. His dragon mate.
Her ice awoke inside him, sensuously mingling with his heat in the manner he’d now grown accustomed to. This was the way he always wanted it to be, the way it should always be. Opposites in harmony—where one ended, the other started.
Yet, her very own cousin, her sister of the heart, had sought to destroy their lives before they’d even had a chance to live them together. She had planned to destroy the future of their land for selfish reasons. Planned to take their lives in the most cold-blooded and chicken manner, by getting other people to do it.
It took twelve steps—twelve taps of his feet, clad in black leather boots that had been polished to a high sheen—to walk to her. When Elena was barely two feet away from him, he stopped. Without a word, he demanded she look up at him and refused to set her free.
�
��Let me tell you a story.” He crossed his hands behind his back, position at ease though he kept his shoulders ramrod-straight. “Years ago, I met a man called Yakob. This man … he’s not someone you’d notice as you’re walking by him on the street. He doesn’t have a fancy pedigree, any claim to fame, or particular talent that would put him in the public eye. No blue blood, no important attachments. He had quite a history, though.” Djibril smiled and shook his head. “His Somali father, you see, had been killed by the Ethiopian military that invaded his country a few decades ago. His mother was raped and killed by soldiers, and his little sister … well, his sister was forced to watch everything and then, in the end, one of the soldiers held her while another cut off her tongue.”
He made a slicing gesture with his hand. The woman didn’t even flinch.
Turning away, he started to pace, his hands linked behind his back once more. “Years later, after much searching for her, he found out she had survived, but committed suicide at age fourteen, after she’d been forced into years of prostitution.”
He stopped in his tracks, catching her gaze again. “Yakob had watched his family being brutalized and murdered, feeling helpless, unable to do anything, and somehow, he’d managed to escape. His father had been a village elder, a leader, someone the villagers looked up to. If such a tragedy hadn’t happened, Yakob might have been his successor. But, as things went, Yakob was set to be a failure, a loser, a man who’d never amount to anything because he had no true support.”
Once more, Djibril got as close to Elena as he could muster and trained his cold, steel gaze on her. “He once had rights, and a family, which those soldiers had stolen from him. He had no home left, no future—did not even have a clue where his next meal would come from. Nobody took him in and cared for him. Nobody fed him, gave him love, or new siblings he could grow attached to. Nobody gave him a chance to study, to know things, go to medical school, or have anything worth anything.”
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