AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Miranda was right; I was more powerful than I’d understood.
Taking my cold hands in his, Cyderial warmed them, watching me closely as he waited for me to confess every last thought in my troubled head.
“I worry. The kids at the academy… they are so sweet, Cyderial. I can’t bring myself to hurt them, even if it might be for their own good. But that’s what you expect of me. Our children suffer.” My lip shook, voice wavering, as I whispered, “I will bring a daughter into a dangerous world where she will be tortured, where at least three powerful males will try to take her, and I am forced to admit that doing this thing may ultimately make her world—every hybrid female’s world—a better place. At the cost of our child, who should never forgive me.”
Pleading, I squeezed his hands and entreated, “You will keep us safe. I know you will.” He had to, my eyes begging that my burgeoning faith not be misplaced. “Or I will slit your throat while you sleep and burn this city to the ground. Okay?”
One single blink. The strongest statement a fully-engaged hybrid male might make. “You would destroy the human’s city for your child?”
I would. She was already real to me—had been for days. A little fascination I could feel as if she had already awakened in my womb. “Yes.”
“Innocents would die,” Cyderial said, leaning closer and smelling the air between us.
My voice was barely above a whisper. “Only if they threaten my daughter.”
Something in my scent earned his hyper-focused attention, changed his eyes in a terrible way I could not describe. “Do you understand what you are doing right now?”
No. Maybe?
I was getting warmer yet shivering. Waking up yet growing sleepy.
Aware something had begun, I instinctively knew I would be pregnant by morning.
Nostrils flared, Cyderial sucked in a deeper breath, eyes flashing in a way I had never seen before. “It is time I return you to our nest.”
“Not yet.” I wanted to finish my drink and work up the courage to confront Miranda, who was waiting for me, staring at us from across the courtyard. “Let me have one more night.”
His hands holding mine shook from how hard he was holding himself in check, Cyderial scenting the air between us once again. “I can give you five more minutes.”
Then I had better hurry.
I stood, pretending I didn’t see how Cyderial gripped the table as if holding it might keep him off me. My scent had changed; I could feel the change too, and it was even more than a man with his fortitude could withstand.
His obvious need ran deeper than any torment of the song.
And as far as I knew, hybrid males had no manuals on a mate ready to invite a daughter to life.
Marching to the women who had chosen to abandon their mates for female company in the evening breeze, I recognized many from that first night and nodded a greeting.
Yet, I did not give Miranda the chance to speak first, as I announced to them all, “I will bear a daughter, but I will not do it alone.”
She cocked her head as I continued, my eyes marking every last face at that table. “Every single one of you who asked this of me will bear a female child now as well. All of you. Those who refuse, I will remember. If you really want change, the sacrifice must be more than my own.”
Miranda, belly fat from her mate’s attention, stood with her signature unhinged grin. “Every woman at this table will do as you have ordered. And not just this table, but every female hybrid of worth. All of us will help you carry the banner, or they will answer to me long before they might be known to you.”
“And you.” My final words were for Miranda alone. “Do not think I failed to recognize your machinations at work here. Everything aligned just as you hoped.”
Those green eyes looked as if she might actually feel fondness for me. “You are so much more than anything I could have hoped for.”
And that reverence, that insanity, had to stop. “You may think of him as your king, but I am not your queen.”
Lifting her wine glass in a toast, the ageless woman narrowed her eyes. “Not yet.”
18
Miranda and her insane objectives, I would battle another day. I had a war to win, and she had her part to play. Positioned as she was in our society—a veteran hybrid—she could exercise the influence I lacked. From the dangerous gleam in her eye, the ethereal blonde would see it done.
Not just her.
