Why was she laying down in a dragon nest? Had she been harmed?
I landed to the side, unable to get as close as I would like when Sinda was taking up the majority of the nest. I wasted no time in shifting back to my human form and running to Siyana’s, needing to feel the steady thrum of her heart beat for myself.
As I drew closer, my hand lifted and ready to dismantle the ice wall with my powers, Sinda hissed.
“They are bonded.”
My feet faltered, pulling me to an abrupt stop a few feet from Siyana, and I glanced at the towering undine I’d spent much ofmy childhood with. A replica of the baby near Siyana lay at the chest of Sinda, making me do a double take between them. She’d had a rare set of twins.
“How is that possible? Undine dragons rarely bond with humans. My mother was the first in hundreds of years, as you well know.”
“Do not speak to me in such a tone. Of course I know that. I’m just as shocked as you, if not more so. My Kaida hatched early in her presence. It is not ideal, but it has happened and cannot be reversed now.”
My hand dropped to my side as I looked at their sleeping forms from within the ice once more. His tail was curled around her ankle, and it seemed she’d fallen into the quickening with her hand on his cheek.
A surge of jealousy coursed through me from my dragon. Rationally, I knew the bond wasn’t the same as what she could be for me, but the thought of another dragon having any claim on her was sending waves of rage through me.
Self-hatred pooled as I remembered this was my fault. I’d felt her fear of the bond but also her tentative hope that it would work, and yet I’d denied her, forcing her from me until I could get a handle on my beast. Now she’d drawn another dragon to her.
“Did you tell her what to expect from the quickening?”
“No. I merely told her to rest next to him and that she wouldn’t leave until he woke. It wasn’t a lie.”
“So you conveniently left out that she wouldn’t be leaving because she would fall into a magical hibernation?”
A big gust of air brushed across my body with Sinda’s heavy sigh.“She didn’t need to know, and Kaida had already fallen into it!”
“Humans are fragile, Sinda, or have you forgotten?” I demanded out loud, unable to contain the fury her careless decision stoked within me. I’d already almost lost Siyana once to carelessness such as this. “She needed to feast in advance, so that her body has the reserves to carry her through this! Not to mention the near-freezing temperature she’s encased within!”
Sinda surged to her feet, towering over me, yet I didn’t flinch, keeping our gazes locked. I stood by every word I said.
“Don’t you dare ask me if I know how fragile humans are. My bond to your mother still wasn’t enough to save her after your father died. I wonder every day if there was anything else I could have done.”
Her words served as a balm to my fears and I dropped my head.
“Young one, I would have prepared her if there had been time, but Kaida initiated almost instantly, and she had to join him. Their scenario is not one I’ve seen before, but my twins are special. They are seers.”
My head jerked back up as I glanced at the dragon who’d chosen my wife.
If that were true, that would make them an unusually powerful pair, with his powers and her claim to her throne. She truly wouldn’t need me when our marriage dissipated. All she had to do was return home with her dragon and demand what was rightfully hers.
The thought twisted my stomach into knots. While I knew she could stand on her own without me, I’d never considered that there would be a dragon in place of me to support her.
A cry sounded in my mind as my dragon wailed, feeling the loss of the one he wanted to claim.
“I will watch over them for the duration, if you need to leave.”
“No,” I quickly said, rejecting the idea. My eyes traced over the rise and fall of Siyana’s chest and the way her dark hair pooled around her as if she were suspended in water. “She is mine to care for, still. I will wait here until the quickening is complete, and after that, I will train Kaida to protect her, for when I am not around.”
“You plan on leaving your queen?”
Sinda’s incredulous tone had me sighing as I prepared for the incoming judgment.
“Save it,” I said, lifting a hand up toward her as I continued to gaze at the bonded pair, who were cementing their connection. “It’s for her own good.”
A blast of water hit the side of my body and I stumbled from the force of it, spluttering as it went up my nose until Sinda saw fit to stop the barrage. I glanced over at her, lips thinned and nostrils flared. “Was that truly necessary?”
“I did it for your own good. How did you not know that?”
