“It’s just that we’re past the point where we can get a refund,” Kyle tells Rafes with an equally apologetic tone.
Papa Olafr steps up to Clyde and Kyle, the look on his face grave. “Our daughter has put you in this position,” he says to his brothers-in-law. “We will use our personal fund to pay you back for this trip.”
Oh, God. Everything is so messed up now. Because of me.
“No, I’ll pay for it,” I tell them all.
They all turn to look at me, like they’d forgotten I was there. Probably because these are the first words I’ve said since they all descended upon the house to yell at me—this time with military back up.
“This is all my fault,” I say from my chair. “It wasn’t mind control. I thought I could change him, convince him to choose us, choose our family, over revenge. I bet on love, and I guess I…”
The words stick in my throat, the conviction that sent me to Greece refusing to die for some reason. But eventually, I force out my new truth. “I bet wrong. And now you’re all in danger because of me.”
I set Bazzi down at my feet and stand up to face Rafes.
But not to fight with him as I have so many times in the past. All my fight is gone. Just like Damianos.
“Please, Rafes, I’m begging you,” I say to my cousin, my voice small and soft. “Don’t take out your anger on them.”
Rafes visibly startles. I don’t blame him for being shocked. Before today, I’d never begged him for anything, or spoken to him in a quiet tone. Not unless I was being sarcastic, or derisive, or most times when it came to him, both.
I take advantage of his stunned silence to push on to my next argument. “I’m also begging you not to arrest me. Not because I don’t deserve that. I do. I know I do. But because Bazzi needs his mother and this kingdom needs a queen. And I’m ready to take over as the queen I should have been from the start. No more distractions. Whatever it takes, whatever you want me to do to prove I’m the she-wolf for the job, I’ll do it. But please don’t punish my uncles. They did their time and they deserve this trip. And Rafes I’m sorry…”
I look up at him, meaning every word that comes out of my mouth next. “I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you. And I’m really sorry that I put you in this position.”
Silence. Everyone stares at me stunned. Probably because I’ve never apologized for anything in my life.
I was, if not raised, heavily influenced by Leroy Greenwolf, a great-grandfather who would do anything to get and stay on top. He never apologized for even the most heinous of his crimes, which included murder, drugs, gun trafficking, and if the rumors were correct, triggering his own daughter’s heat so that she could mate with the King of Alaska.
He’d been an amazing great-grandfather and a trailblazing king. But he’d never apologized, and he taught me that apologies were only something for the weak.
Maybe that’s why I fell so hard for Damianos. He reminded me of the great-grandfather who’d been an asshole to everyone else, but a total softie with his twin grandbabies. Maybe I’d thought our fating would, if not erase, heal the dragon king’s worst qualities. Like it had with Leroy.
But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I know that now.
“Tell me what I have to do, President Nightwolf,” I say, calling my cousin by his proper title without any derision whatsoever. “Whatever it takes to prove I’ve grown up and I’m ready to be the queen this kingdom deserves, I’ll do it.”
Rafes stares at me like everyone else. Boggled by my unexpected and total acquiescence.
He tries to speak…cuts off.
Tries to speak again. “Ola…”
He breaks off again and rubs at his forehead. I can tell he’s struggling with how to deal with this new, less brash version of me.
Nobody was ready for me to finally grow up. Most of all me.
But now I vow to him, “I’m totally serious. Just tell me what to do.”
Rafes regards me, his shocked expression much softer than his presidential one. But then his face becomes hard again and he opens his mouth to say—
A piercing shrill cuts into the room. We all turn as one to face the curious sight of the ringing red wall phone. The one that only rings if there’s an emergency some place where no one has biosystems.
Like Yellow Wolf Mountain.
I look to my uncles and they look at me.
And I guess, I’m still the head queen in charge, no matter what Rafes threatened because nobody tries to stop me when I go to answer the phone.
“Hello?” I say, carefully into the phone.
“Hello, ma’am, would you be as kind as to pass the line to Ola, The Alpha Queen of North Dakota?”
I lift an eyebrow. Whoever this is sounds official AF. “Speaking,” I answer. “Who’s this?”
“This is Clark Netherwolf, ma’am.”
I’ve never heard of him. “And you are...?”
“I’m the Wolf Force Marine President Nightwolf assigned to oversee the gatehouse after the last…” There’s a significant pause before he seems to decide on the word, “incident.”
“Oh, hello…” I slide an annoyed glance toward Rafes.
Okay, I guess we’re not quite fully in kumbaya territory yet. Irritation creeps right back in that Rafes would take advantage of my absence to appoint one of his men to the gatehouse. Matter of fact, I’m surprised this soldier decided to call me about whatever emergency is happening at the gate instead of reporting in directly to Rafes—
A sudden realization cuts my peeved thoughts short. “Wait, wait, wait, hold up,” I say to the Marine on the other side of the phone. “Did someone…did someone come through the gate?” I ask, standing up straighter.
“Yes,” Clark answers.
And in the next moment, I understand why Clark called the emergency line and asked to speak with me instead of straight snitching to his commander-in-chief.
“Damianos Drákon would like you and your son to meet him at the gatehouse. Alone.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Even if we find this male unarmed, he is extremely dangerous.”
At the bottom of the Yellow Wolf Mountain, I watch Rafes command his troops.
The only weapon I have on me is Bazzi, standing at my feet in winged wolf form.
But Rafes and his squad of soldiers are all armed to the teeth.
They’ve got propulsion handguns at the ready, and railguns strapped to their backs just in case that’s not enough. There’s even a small nuke tank sitting behind them.
The Wolf Guard couldn’t roll it into the woods without alerting Damianos of our presence, but Rafes made sure to let me know what would happen if Damianos tried to take flight with Bazzi and me again.
“I don’t care who he’s carrying, I’ll have him shot down,” my cousin informed me on the drive over from the North Dakota house. “So please, Ola, don’t make next Thanksgiving awkward.”
Solid burn. To be fair though, he didn’t resort to issuing this threat until we left the house with way more entourage than he wanted for the trip.
My dads insisted on coming with us. And this time, they both had their Viking swords, ready for the fight. Aunt Myrna also brought her axe along. Not the stunt one she used for her pro-wrestler shows either. This one was a larger, sharper replica of an authentic North Wolf beard axe, from its etched blade to the Norse artwork carved into its handle.
Of course, Rafes tried to talk his wife out of coming along. But she answered, “This is a fight I will not—cannot sit out, my beloved mate. This day will I wield sword against our serpent enemy beside our brothers.”
Her declaration was so intense, that I was surprised a wind didn’t show up out of nowhere to whip through her hair. But wind or no wind, there was no way Rafes could argue against that.
And of course, he wasn’t able to talk his brothers out of coming either. They were both former Wolf Force Marines, and as Nago pointed out to Rafes, “Dude, you only got a few soldiers on you. That migh
t not be enough.”
“And hell if I’m going to miss out on finally setting sight on this dragon fuck,” Knud added, way less nobly. “Time to light his ass up.”
As laidback as Knud’s been lately, I sometimes forgot he started out as a sharpshooter for the Wolf Force, then spent a few years as an elite assassin before transforming himself into someone who could happily settle down with a wife and kid.
I remembered his dark and dangerous past with a quickness though when Rafes wordlessly nodded to one of the soldiers and Knud received a propulsion gun like it was everyday business. He strapped it on with a grim expression that might make even a dragon think twice before messing with him.
But even that hadn’t been enough concessions to get our show on the road.
When I tried to hand Bazzi off to his uncles and leave him behind, he totally freaked out. There was a lot of yapping from Bazzi, then a lot of yelling from my uncles when he suddenly took dragon form and came flying toward me.
“Don’t!” I yelled at the soldiers who immediately raised their guns.
My dads and Aunt Myrna to their credit didn’t try to run him through, only stared at the small golden dragon bug-eyed.
“I’m not going to cooperate if you shoot him,” I warned Rafes. “And he’s obviously not going to let me walk out of here without him.”
Which was how Rafes ended up threatening to shoot my whole damn family out of the sky if we tried to fly away again.
On the tense ride over I began to rethink what I’d assumed had been simple loyalty from Eos when he not only escorted his mother back to the future but refused not to come on our mission to find Xenon.
Now that I know about Reverence, I wonder if there wasn’t something bone deep inside of dragon kids that made it impossible for them to be separated from their mothers when they sensed danger.
In any case, even though Bazzi reverted to wolf form by the time we climbed out of the car, he stays right by my side as I hike up the road toward the cabin.
Gotta be truthful here. With soldiers and Vikings creeping along the woods on either side of the path, it’s kind of hard to put any kind of real plan in place.
Not that I’m sure I would have come up with anything, even if I didn’t have a well-armed and hugely distracting entourage hidden on either side of me.
I’m more of a reactionary than a strategist. My plan as Queen of North Dakota is a relatively safe mix of keep doing what your uncles were doing with more partying thrown in—but not enough to bankrupt the kingdom.
And both my plans for dealing with Damianos—the escape plan, then the make him fall in love with me again plan—had been drawn up with the same simplicity. No Plan B
And now my mind is a spinning blank after both of those Plan As failed spectacularly.
Why is Damianos here? For Bazzi, the prince he left behind? Has he changed his mind about us splitting up? Or is this part of his ultimate revenge?
Moreover, what will he do when people start shooting at him?
I’m pretty sure he can’t take a bunch of minds at once, or there wouldn’t have been any reason to wage that Dragon-Viking war. But the extremely dangerous warning Rafes gave his men continues to ring in my head as I hike up that hill. Along with the memory of what happened to the last person who tried to rescue me.
And now almost everyone Damianos ever wanted to kill was in the same space.
My steps become slower as I get closer to the house. And my stomach churns at the memory of coming down this road just a few months ago with a biocollar around my neck. How things have changed since then, but not as much as I previously thought.
Damianos is still an incredibly evil dragon king. And I’m still only pretending not to be terrified of what he might do next.
I reach the part of the path where the woods on either side of me give way to form a circle around the house.
My dads and the other soldiers, stay back behind the tree line, keeping hidden for obvious reasons.
The plan Rafes came up with was for me to go as far as the house. I’m supposed to show myself and call out to Damianos. Try to get him to come outside.
I agreed to the plan in the car. Fixed my face, and repeated, “Whatever it takes.”
But I’m all sorts of hesitating now, even as the words from the dragon king’s note continue to rage through my head.
Reconciliation is not possible.
Reconciliation is not possible.
Reconciliation is not freaking possible.
Why can’t I make myself believe that?
“Ola, tell him to come out here,” Rafes whispers over the encrypted biocomm line he is using to communicate with me, his troops, and all the unwanted family back up.
I can feel everyone’s expectations pressing into my back. And I open my mouth, but…
I can’t do this.
My stupid, stupid heart.
I want to be a bad-ass bitch. Even more, I want to be a good queen.
But in the end, I can’t bring myself to call Damianos out into this trap.
“Ola.”
My name, delivered in that dark and resonate tone, drops into my head like an anvil.
And I still, my gaze raising back toward the house, though I can’t see anyone in the window.
“Ola,” he says again.
“Damianos…” I answer.
And I try to keep the words in, but I end up saying, “Don’t come out. My cousins and dads are here, along with a bunch of soldiers. It’s a trap. And if you turn dragon and try to fly away they’re going to shoot you down with, like, a small-range nuke.”
There comes a long silence.
Then the door to the house opens.
I hear all sorts of clicks and power-ups behind me, everyone’s prepared to shoot on sight.
But it’s not Damianos.
“Colby?” I say when the thin human emerges from the house and comes down the stairs. He’s dressed in a business suit now, not the uniform I remember. But it’s definitely the Brit who Damianos used to call his thrall.
“Maxwell actually,” he answers, his eyes a lot clearer than I remember them. “My friends call me Max. Speaking of friends, could you ask yours not to shoot? I’ve come with an offer of reconciliation from Mr. Drákon.”
Colby—I mean Max must be wearing some kind of voice amplifier. It’s not hard at all to hear him, but I blink, struggling to understand his words. Did he say reconciliation?
“But I thought you said in the note reconciliation wasn’t possible,” I push into the mind of Damianos.
“No, it wasn’t,” Damianos answers from wherever he’s hiding. “Not as things stood between your fathers and me.”
At the same time, Max calls out. “Fathers of Queen Ola, Mr. Drákon would like for you to come forth for a conversation.”
“Don’t follow that—” Rafes starts to say over the biocomm line.
But before he can even finish issuing that command, my dads emerge from the forest. They fall in on either side of me with their swords raised like they were just waiting for an excuse to defend me at close range. Oh, Dads…
Through the abject fear, my heart squeezes at their immediate arrival. They’re still protecting me, even though as FJ said when he first arrived at the North Dakota kingdom house, I’ve offered them “naught but grave disappointment since receiving my crown.”
No matter how bad of a queen I’ve turned out to be in their eyes, they’re still my fathers. And I’m still the daughter they will love and protect until their last breath.
I silently apologize for everything I’ve put them through, before breaking my promise to Damianos. “Don’t hurt them,” I yell fiercely into his mind. “Don’t you dare hurt them.”
“There is no need to issue this command,” he assures me.
Before I can answer Damianos, Max calls out to my dads, “Fathers of Queen Ola, I have been sent by Damianos Drákon to request your forgiveness and to ask formally for your daughter’s hand in marriage on his
behalf!”
I stare at Max like he’s crazy. My fathers stare at Max like he’s crazy. I can’t see any of the wolves hidden in the trees behind us, but I’m pretty sure they’re all looking at Max, like, “Bitch, is you crazy?”
“You think we’d ever allow that serpent our daughter’s hand after all he has done to dishonor this family?” FJ asks Max.
“No, he did not believe you would grant him this honor,” Max answers with a frank shake of his head. “This is why he’s brought you a dowry present. One he hopes will change your mind.”
Again, we all stare at him. What kind of present does he think could ever squash this beef?
As if in answer to my question, Max looks over his shoulders and says, “If you would please come out now…”
Behind me I hear Rafes curse, before whispering to his men, “Sounds like he’s got hostages. Take aim and wait for my order. If they’re under his mind control, they might try to shoot at us. Or worst…”
I turn my head in the direction of my cousin’s voice, which is why I don’t immediately see the person who calls out, “FJ, Olafr, is that you?”
The woman’s lilting voice brings my head back around.
And my eyes widen as Nago says over the biocomm, “By the Fenrir Wolf, is that…”
Chapter Thirty-Four
We all stare at the couple coming down the stairs. A large white man and a much smaller black woman.
The man looks to be at least as old as my dads. He’s nearly as tall as FJ and almost as broad as Papa Olafr. He also has red hair with grey streaks, but in his case, I’m pretty sure the grey is natural. They run in a wiry unruly pattern that can’t be replicated by the machines that keep my fathers’ red hair only slightly grey at the temples. Usually going real grey is a sign that you’re poor. But the man is wearing real leather pants, a brown tunic, and a fur coat with what looks like a real bear head as it’s hood. Despite his age, I clock him immediately for what he is. An alpha king born and raised.
Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet Book 2): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 2 Page 20
