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Kaida knew what he meant. She could feel that the others also understood what he was talking about. Kaida did not like this plan, especially when Enzo suggested that a small team of people fly to the kingdom and test its weak points, but they would not make it home if the king spotted any of them.
She wasn't going to stand for that. "If you are caught, they will kill you. This plan is not the best idea."
"I think it is," Enzo countered her. "I may have known the weak points before I came here, but now that my father knows I stand against him, there is a greater chance he will send the men to the weakest points. If I know what they are, then he certainly does. If he sends everybody to those weak points, the normally strongest areas are weak. We need to know if that is the case."
She could feel that the other guys agreed with Enzo, and a twist in her gut told her this would end badly. She did not want to lose her mates because of a bad plan.
"NO! I will not let you guys do this. It is suicide."
Beckett's calm energy flowed through her, bringing her anger down to a simmer. "Don't allow your fear to overrun your mind right now. This is very much how armies do things. Any general inside of an army will tell a small group of people to run reconnaissance like this. Knowing exactly where to make our attack is the best course of action. What if the point at which we originally wanted to enter the kingdom is now heavily guarded? We will lose the moment that we try.
"What if this is exactly what the king expects us to do? What if this is exactly what he wants us to do so he can take all of us out before we can try?" Kaida pleaded.
"What if we are all thinking too much about this? My father is many things, but he is too arrogant to expect us to have a plan like this. He often told me I would never be a great general in our army. After he announced that I would be taking over the throne soon, he first told the council that someone would need to step forward and help me manage the situation around me if we were ever attacked."
"Your father did not believe in you? That is cold," Esen said with disdain.
"That is how I grew up. My father drilled me on many strategies and explained to me many times how I should run the army once I took over. He thought I was too dense to take in the information. If there was any new strategy that I suggested, he immediately shot it down."
Beckett growled. "I think I would have killed my father in his sleep if this was how he treated me growing up."
Aww. They are so cute when they get protective over each other.
The Great Dragon Knows what they are doing.
"Another reason was to ensure that my father held onto the throne. He told many people on his counsel that this was exactly how you parent. This was how you raised a king who will rule the world and remain on the throne."
This time, Kaida growled. "He is more delusional than I thought. That is not at all how you should parent a child. If you want to groom them into the perfect king or queen, you need to teach them grace, humility, acceptance, compassion, and adaptability."
"I agree. My father would disagree. I grew to be the man I am today because of my mother, not my father."
"Remind me to thank her before I kill her."
Enzo beamed at her bloodthirsty moment. "Good to know. I may just do that."
"So, you believe that this is the only thing we can do to ensure the safety of everyone who chooses to join us?"
Enzo nodded. "I do."
"Then it is settled," Beckett told them with authority in his voice. "We'll leave in the middle of the night. We will assess all of the kingdom's injury points ourselves. It will show those who want to join us that we will take this leadership seriously. Doing this mission ourselves shows we will put their safety above our own."
"NO!"
"Kaida, I understand your hesitancy and that you want to keep us safe. However, we must show our citizens we will do these things. If we only allow grunts to oversee this kind of work, then they will see us as a dictatorship. They will see that we see them as unimportant. That is the last thing we want to show this island. We want to show them that you matter and that everyone matters. We will lead by example, not by barking orders."
"But why does it have to be you four? Why do I have to possibly sacrifice my mates for this when we’ve only barely found each other?"
She understood that she sounded whiney and that she was being selfish right now, but that did not matter to her. She finally had all four of them and would do whatever she needed to keep them. She had lost Enzo once and didn't want to lose him again. If his father caught them, he would kill Enzo without hesitation.
"We need to do this. It is not up for debate."
"Then I will join you."
"No," they all screamed in unison.
"If you believe that any of us will be the targets on-site, you will be the greatest target of all. Gemar knows exactly what you are by now. Just your mere presence is a threat to his throne. Your dragon is the one that will rule us all. You are much too precious to risk."
"Do not give me any of that Alpha male bullshit!"
