“You had a choice,” he murmured, lowering his head to run his nose along my neck. I resisted the urge to move, feeling like prey caught in the teeth of a predator. One wrong move and they’d snap. His breath tickled my skin as he inhaled deeply and let it out. “And you didn’t choose me.”
The weight of his choice of particular words hit me.
Had I…hurt his feelings? The very drackya who seemed to despise my existence other than the fact that I lived to serve a purpose for him.
“You’re supposed to chooseme.”
I floundered, my mouth opening and closing repeatedly as he straightened back to his full height and dropped his hand to his side. There was a modicum of vulnerability in that statement, but when I didn’t respond quickly enough, he whirled around, leaving me breathless with the rapid change of topic throughout this conversation.
“My dragon sees you as our wife, in every sense of the word,” he explained with a gruff tone, keeping his back to me. “Even if I know it is an empty marriage to unite our people once more, in an effort to cease rebellions from stirring on both of our sides, he doesn’t. He will kill Lucius if he continues to scent him on you.”
A small gasp escaped me as I thought of his large dragon tearing into Lucius. While I knew the latter had his own dragon form, since I hadn’t seen it yet, my mind still couldn’t picture him as anything other than a frail human against Theo’s beast.
Theo continued on, like he hadn’t just spoken of such horrific brutality against a loved one, “My focus is firmly on finding away to break the curse, but to do that I need you to listen to me, so I don’t have to worry about you staying alive while you’re here. I’ve already had to dismiss the majority of my castle staff to aid in that.”
I was shocked to my core at everything he said since he’d stormed into this room. There was no space in my head to even be angry at his barbaric display of trying to claim me.
He walked toward the door, the soles of his boots echoing throughout the now-empty room. “Finish eating and I will be back in ten minutes to collect you and give you a tour of the castle, so that Lucius has no need to escort you anywhere, even if you don’t wish for me to be with you.”
As he left the room and let the doors thud closed behind him with a bang, I found myself slumping against the wall and sliding down until my ass hit the floor. Throwing my arms around my legs, I let my head fall onto my knees as I took deep, steadying breaths.
All of our missing women were dead.
The beast within Theo was incredibly real, and apparently thirsty for blood when it came to me.
We still had no clue how to break the curse.
Is there a way to prevent any of it?
“Yes,”Theo spoke into my mind, startling me so much that my head reared back and clipped the stone wall, making my vision swim with spots and a dull ache to throb in my ears. I groaned as his thoughts bombarded me.“But that requires us to complete the mating bond, so that my dragon no longer feels threatened by other unmated dragons being near you. Now put your shield back in place. If I can break through so easily, so can others.”
I slammed the imaginary ice wall back into place and let my head fall back to my knees as I rubbed the back of my skull.
What had I gotten myself into?
Chapter Ten
THEO
As the doorsclosed behind me, my eyes locked onto Lucius leaning against the wall nearby, clearly waiting to ream me out. Fury was etched into his pinched brow, and a narrowed gaze that promised wrath was trained on me.
“You’re lucky I consider you a brother, Theo,” he warned, “because my dragon is thirsting for justice with the disrespect you have shown me since she got here.”
Planting my feet wide and crossing my arms against my chest, I mulled over his words. In a fight, I’d kill him with ease, so I felt no threat in that regard, but the memory of his scent all through Siyana’s chambers had my muscles bunching and flexing as I attempted to control the rage simmering in my blood.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he prodded, and I shrugged.
I couldn’t help but let out a huff of breath at his attempts to rile me. It was bold of him. Even if I wasn’t his king, my dragon far outranked him in terms of our power and size.
“You’re treating her like she’s your mate,” he goaded, kicking off of the wall and stalking up to me. “But she isn’t.”
My upper lip peeled back as a snarl came from the depths of my dragon within, sizing Lucius up as a possible threat to my wife. He circled me and I resisted the urge to turn with him, not allowing him a chance to have my back exposed to him. I wouldn’t show him that he was successful in making me uneasy.
“You said she’d be your wife only in the terms of a political arrangement, yet here you are, smothering her with your scent and sequestering her from the world she lives in now,” he surmised before coming to stand at my front once more. His eyes traveled over me before landing on my face. He scoffed. “You’re so down bad for her, brother. Admit it so we can figure out a way to win her over and put your pissy dragon to rest before blood is spilled.”
Ice bloomed across my fists as I lowered them to my sides. Unrest swirled within my stomach as I forced the words out. “I don’t owe you an explanation, as your king, but she means nothing to me,” I spat. “I’m merely protecting her while she is here. As soon as the curse is broken and both of our sides are back to the way they were before my father’s rule, I will break our contract and send her home.”
A pang of sorrow slashed through me, as if my dragon was physically clawing at my chest from the inside. I knew what was best for us, though. I merely felt this draw because she was the only option around. It would be better when she was gone and out of our space.
