Not love. Not anger. Not even exasperation. This is something I’ve never felt before. At least not when it comes to him.
Disappointment. Utter and complete.
I look up at him, and I know he can see what I’m feeling in my…what did Other Damianos call it? My flame… sense it over our mate bond.
But his eyes drop away as if he can’t see it. Can’t see me.
And he turns away from me to address the dragons. “Now on to the next part of the ceremony. We will return to the main ballroom where the new queen and I will join in union. In front of her wolves and my drakkon.”
I want what I envisioned for us, a wedding in front of your wolves and my drakkon…
The vow Other Damianos made echoes in my ears as the dragons let out an even louder roar.
Which is probably why they don’t hear my one-word answer to their king’s announcement the first time.
But Damianos does.
It’s now his turn to ask, “What did you just say?” A splinter of rage makes it out before his side of the mate bond goes dangerously cold.
This is why he almost never talks to me over the mate bond, I glean. Because whenever he does, he has to release his mental hold. Let me in, if only just a tiny bit.
That realization makes my answer come out that much stronger.
“No,” I say again, this time loud enough to be heard over all of the dragon clamor. “No, I’m not marrying you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
DAMIANOS
“No, I’m not marrying you.”
The roars of my drakkon subjects come to an abrupt stop.
They, like me, turn to her, not understanding her words.
Despite my marriage announcement, disappointment continues to radiate inside her chest flame. Even brighter than before. And that fact makes me want to unshell and roar fire into the closest target.
But I am the King of Drakkon. And she is my queen. The queen everyone in this room can clearly see is disappointed with me.
“We will not cause a scene,” I push into her head. Then I take her by the arm and pull her through the throne room’s back door.
The small antechamber I haul her into was designed by the estate’s original architect as a staging area and to house what used to be only my crown before I had hers commissioned. Two large glass display boxes stand on side-by-side marble pedestals.
Her pedestal was just one of the many things I commissioned and ordered others to do to make this night one for the history books. Why? It is hard to say now in the wake of her refusal to complete the fantasy she wove at the gatehouse by marrying me.
It doesn’t matter that I have no intention of continuing on with this delusion after tonight. A furious, resentful feeling burns inside my flame at her rejection…of me… of what she claimed we could be if not for my need to avenge my father’s death.
“I do not think it is arrogance to say that my version of a coronation made the one given to you in North Dakota look like a child’s birthday party,” I tell her. “I presented you to the wolves of Lukos in a way that will surely be written about in their history books. I’ve placed a crown upon your head ten times grander than the one you left behind in North Dakota.”
“I didn’t leave it behind!” she answers, the flame in her eyes blazing with anger. “You destroyed it!”
“And now I am keeping the vow I made to you to marry you in front of your people and mine,” I continue on, refusing to acknowledge that pitiful complaint about her pitiful crown. “What more could you want?”
“What more could I want?” Her chest flame flares with a fresh burst of ire. “I want what you promised me! I will serve the wolves of Lukos to the best of my ability, but they aren’t my wolves. The North Dakota kingdom. Fensa and my fathers. My insanely large family. They’re my wolves. And I want us to get married in front of them. Like you promised.”
“No, that is what he promised,” I remind her. “That is what that weakling who was riddled with Widower’s Madness promised you. Not me.”
“So, I’d have to die for you to love me like he did? To pay me Reverence? To forgive my—”
“Stop this. You are nearly as bad as the pretender. Drakkon do not forget, nor do we forgive! Your fathers killed my father. Your sister’s mate betrayed our race. For those transgressions, they all must die. You are as delusional as that addled fool you keep referencing if you thought our story would end any other way.”
And so am I, I silently note. For I knew from the moment I decided to bring her here that we were living out a tragedy, not the happy ending she’d envisioned.
“I’m not delusional!” she screams back at me. “I believe in us. Just like he believed in us. So why can’t you?”
“I…” there’s no way to answer her question. Not without revealing the secret that could destroy the ultimate revenge I plan to take on the morrow.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says out loud, her voice soft. “Okay, well…”
She turns away from me. And without another word, exits the antechamber, leaving me to follow behind her.
When we arrive back to the stage, we find the dragons all reshelled and once again dressed in their clothes.
“Change of plan. No wedding ceremony.” It was impossible for them to hear our argument, silent as it was. But Ola’s flame is fully blue now with sadness and disappointment. For that reason, no one flares with surprise at Ola’s announcement.
However, their flames do startle when Ola continues on.
“But this is still a coronation,” she says, her voice projecting all the way to the back of the room. “So, you are all going to go out there and show those wolves you know how to get it turnt up too.”
She extends both her arms and palms up and lowers her crowned head to say in an exceedingly queenly tone. “That is my first decree as your ruler. You will go forth and dance! And just in case you think I’m joking, anybody who doesn’t will get sent straight to the bottom of my introductions list.”
With those words, she jumps off the stage. Leaving me to watch her lead my drakkon horde out of the throne room.
Back in the ballroom, the servants have set up a feast of meats, various Greek delicacies, and champagne fountains underneath the windows. Ola must have spotted the feast, too. For she runs up to the DJ booth and uses his voice amplifier to tell the gathered crowd. “This is a coronation and we gotta beast feast. So y’all know you better eat, drink, and be merry!”
Of course, I do none of these things. I turn to leave the party. But by the time I make it to the top of the stairs, Ola, the Lukos wolves, and my fellow dragons are eating from the sumptuous buffet, drinking from golden chalices overflowing with wine, and indeed making merry, just as their queen commanded.
I want to leave. I wish to be free of both this fete and the delusional thinking that led me to throw it. But I find myself rooted to the spot, unable to take my eyes off the she-wolf who has cast so many of the things I’ve believed most fervently into doubt.
Look at her…
I observe how my she-wolf interacts with both the wolves and drakkon in attendance. She is comfortable with her new power I see. But also willing to challenge the much larger males. More than one of the more imperious drakkon, including Hwedo, the Lead Researcher who’d dared to interrogate her, get shoved onto the floor when they refuse to dance. Yet she appears easy to talk to and fun—though as queen she has no need to entertain.
As I watch her dance with both our wolf and drakkon subjects, I realize that the other drakkon’s requests to be matched with she-wolves similar in nature to her was foolish. For Ola has no equal. I have never met her match in a drakki, human, nor wolf.
As if to punctuate my conclusion, Ola once again invades the music stand. This time she borrows both the amplifier and the DJ’s turntable touch screens to announce, “Here’s something my dads always insisted we do at our parties. So everybody bring yo’ best folk dance heeeeeeeat!”
Her challe
nge is punctuated by the opening melody of a boisterous pentozali folk dance song, dating back to ancient Greece.
A great cheer goes up from the Lukos wolves. And soon everyone begins dancing folk reels that haven’t been popular in centuries in the rest of Greece but are somehow still known by one and all hailing from the island I acquired. Thalia and Agda clasp Ola by the shoulders and teach her how to do the lively steps of the pentozali through demonstration. And perhaps inspired by Ola’s threats, the other drakkon join in the merriment, breaking into folk dances from their parts of the world.
Ao Quong, the Lead Field Engineer who received the region now called China when we split up the world into territories, and Kunnu, the Team Geneticist who settled in the region now referred to as Mongolia, break into a remarkably similar series of split jumps. It is a dance they could have only learned from the inhabitants of their chosen regions. For they leap with the utter joy and abandon of peasants.
Seeing this causes yet another previously conceived assumption to fall away. With an inner jolt, I realize that they have not spent their time on this planet in completely miserable exile. They appear to have more than abided these millennia away from our much more advanced civilization.
A new jealous feeling crackles through my flame. I am certain of only one thing as watch my she-wolf make merry with my drakkon. Tonight she had proven herself a better queen to my subjects than I have been a king. She has entertained them and given them hope for a brighter future, whereas I only commissioned the gate project in the hopes that it would serve me.
But if they were able to secure mates as I have done with Ola, my drakkon could be happy here on this now near-quantum planet.
However, in order for that to happen, I would have to forgive the males who slew my father and the Betrayer King. For make no mistake, there will be no matches once my revenge is done. No more convivial parties. In fact, Ola would never forgive me if I follow through with my ultimate plan. All of her and all of her promises would be broken
It matters not. It shouldn’t matter.
I have only known Ola intimately for four months, but I knew my father for thousands of the time units the anthros call years. And as Ola said herself last eve…he raised me, guided me as my only parent. I would not be the King of Drakkon if not for him.
How can I not avenge his death?
And even if I found a way to do as she wished, to make the most dishonorable decision to forgive her fathers and the Betrayer King in exchange for this happy ending she proposed, there is the matter of her fathers.
How could she believe this beef as she called it could ever be squashed. Did she not see the hate burning in their eyes before we flew away?
With these thoughts heavy on my mind, I quietly abandon the festivities that should have been a wedding. Leaving the she-wolf who refused to join with me in union behind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
By tradition, male and female drakkon do not share a room as the mates on this planet do. After our intimate time together at the North Dakota kingdom house, I’d been tempted to follow along with this convention of Ola’s species instead of mine. The idea of falling asleep next to her had been…oddly intriguing.
But as I storm into my room, I am glad I was too stubborn to show any sign of indulgence or weakness when I brought her here…was it truly only a week ago? In any case, it is for the best her room is on a separate floor from mine. It feels right that I should be alone with these thoughts.
Just as I have been for the long millennia since we lost the battle against the North Wolves. Being so far away also means I do not have to attend to the constant business of muting our mate bond.
Still, a strange bereft feeling rides me as I remove my tailcoat and white tie. And despite being many floors away from my mate, the same sad disappointment she felt in the throne room’s antechamber continues to linger inside of me. As if it is my own. But these feelings aren’t my own. They couldn’t be?
Could they?
Once I am naked, I consider unshelling. Yes, a flight around the keep followed by a plunge into the deep. That is what I need.
But what I want—
My reflection in the beveled full-length dressing mirror snags me on the way to the window. Without my contacts in I can see the longing ache radiating throughout my flame. Not just above my male works but also in my chest.
“So you’re saying I’d have to be dead for you to love me like he did? To show me Reverence?”
Instead of unshelling, I sink down onto the bed, rubbing at my chest flame. And I grit my filed teeth, as heightened emotions crash into me like waves upon my isle’s rocky beach.
I will put the contacts in, I decide, standing up. Ignore my flame. Ignore the ache.
However, when I reach the bureau where I’ve stashed my back up pairs of contacts, I find something else inside. My old handheld ever charge phone. I updated my phone a few months ago and should have thrown this one out. But I didn’t. Because it was the one that I was speaking on in the moments just before Ola came crashing into my life.
Sentimental claptrap. I should take the phone with me on my flight and chuck it into the ocean. I pick it up, intending to do just that. But when I touch it, the screen alights with one number and two Greek words.
I appear to have one new message.
A wrong number surely. No one else would call me on this phone. But then my flame stills when I see the delivery date underneath. It is from nearly a month ago. Before the Future Timeline Damianos disappeared.
With a shaky hand, I press play on the message…
And the old language immediately starts spilling out. “If you are listening to this, my worst fear has come true. I am gone, and she has found you in the basement. If this is the case, there are things you must know…”
I immediately jam my thumb into the pause button.
The terrible feeling is no longer so vague.
Fear. This is fear. Plain, as English speakers so colloquially describe it, but not at all simple.
Fear overtakes me, and then a knock sounds on the door.
“Damianos, Damianos, it’s me,” Ola says on the other side of the wood. “Please, baby…we need to talk.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
OLA
Damianos is an ass.
He’s been holding something back from me. I know that like I know I’ve got big titties. But the truth is, the party’s not much fun without him there to see how much fun I’m having.
And he’s not the only one keeping secrets. Mine are just easier to hide. At least they were easier to hide.
It’s time for a reckoning.
Which is why I am knocking on his door less than an hour after he leaves me to dance the night away.
What was it he said to me in that club? Go ahead, Ola, have your fun. I’ll wait.
He yanks open the door.
His side of the mate bond is set to numb—that’s the first thing I notice. The second thing is the crazed look in his golden eyes. And the third thing is that he’s Ken Doll naked.
Worry replaces the need to reckon this shit out right now. “Is everything okay?” I ask.
“What are you doing here?” he demands without answering my question. And he sounds annoyed—like, even more than usual.
Good. I’m used to annoying people. Worrying about them, not so much.
“I wanted to say thank you…for the party,” I answer, remembering how my Uncle taught me to go completely against type and gently introduce difficult topics. Or as he put it so that I’d remember: Gratitude then Attitude.
But Damianos narrows his golden eyes suspiciously at my thank you. “You came all the way up here to thank me?”
“What? You’ve never tracked a scent up four sets of stairs and through a labyrinth of hallways to tell somebody thank you?”
“No,” he answers. “Not once have I done that in all my millennia.”
“Well that’s because ya rude,” I answer. “But I think we’ve alrea
dy established that, amirite.”
Damianos stares down at me for a long stony-faced second. Then he says, “You’re welcome,” in that aggrieved tone he uses whenever I’m getting on his nerves.
And when I look down at his scaled pelvis, it’s perfectly flat. Nothing squirming or straining with any kind of desire.
Which makes me feel very, very awkward.
Being wanted by him is a cornerstone of our relationship. It’s what got me through, even when it felt like I’d never bridge the gap between the dragon I lost and the dragon I had to make see reason.
But now he just continues to stare down at me, his expression cold and unwavering. An unfathomable feeling stirs in my belly, I almost turn around and leave. But I am still Leroy Greenwolf’s great-granddaughter. Damn if I’m going to start backing down from fights now.
My heart trembling, I hold his beautiful gold eyes and say, “I know why you won’t let me in.”
Another aggrieved sigh. “Ola, this is not about sex.”
“I know it isn’t,” I answer. “It’s about you being afraid.”
His expression goes even colder. Like he’s competing with his friend Colossus to see who can look deader in the face. “You think I’m afraid?” he asks, lion toying with a mouse.
“I know you are,” I answer with a jut of my chin, mouse standing up to the rude fucking lion.
“And what would make you think that?” he asks folding his arms across his chest.
“Because…Damianos rub your stomach and pat your head.”
He freezes and stares at me.
And I stare back at him.
There’s several seconds of frozen silence between us, but then his cold expression gives way to one much more stricken.
As he unfolds his arms to pat his head and rub his stomach.
“Yeah,” I say for the second time that night. “That’s what I thought.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet Book 2): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 2 Page 16
