He crouches down on his heels so he can see my face. The bruise on my cheek has darkened to black, purple, and green. “But my bed smells like tears, and…” He trails off, and then exclaims, “Zenevieve, what happened to you?”
I’m hurting inside and out.
Are you truly waiting for an Omega?
Will I never be good enough for you?
I open my mouth to tell him everything about Mirelle’s false heat, Emmeric, and the king hitting me for speaking up. I remember the shock in Stesha’s eyes as he saw my cut palm. He takes his oath to my father seriously. If I tell Stesha that King Aylard put this bruise on my face, how will he react? Alphas are notorious for hot tempers around their ruts. What if Stesha loses his temper at the king? Prince Emmeric’s threat to have me beheaded is ringing in my ears. I won’t be responsible for someone hurting Stesha.
Forcing a smile, I tell him, “I got too close to a wyvern’s tail, and she accidentally knocked me over.”
His lips press together in sympathy. “That looks like it hurts.”
He goes to a shelf and takes down a bottle of ointment that we use for bruises and cuts. “They’re unpredictable creatures, those wyverns. You must remember that they’re not as clever as dragons.”
As he gently daubs ointment on my bruise, I feel terrible about the things I’m hiding from him.
He pushes the cork back into the bottle. “Zenevieve, are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me?”
I’m silent for a long time.
“I missed you,” I whisper. My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away, hoping he doesn’t notice.
He caresses my cheek. “I missed you, too. I’m always glad to come home.”
His touch and his sweet words cast some of the shadows from my heart. Maybe Stesha will grow tired of his lonely ruts. By his age, most Alphas have been mated for several years. He must want to father children. I see how happy the hatchlings make him, and how proud he is when they venture out of the nesting caves for the first time. Stesha would be prouder still of his own sons and daughters. I can picture him patiently helping a baby to walk while they grasp his big fingers, their little feethitting the ground while they laugh in delight. Painful longing squeezes my heart.
I get up off my chair and slip into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my cheek against his chest so I can hear his heart beating. Stesha doesn’t move for a moment, then he resettles my legs across his thighs to hold me, and releases a heavy, exhausted breath. He rests his cheek against the top of my head.
Maybe he’s waiting for the day he notices me, but he doesn’t know it yet. Maybe I’m the only one who knows, and I just have to be patient.
A spark of hope has been glowing in my heart for a long time, and it hasn’t yet been extinguished.
8
Stesha
“I’ll kill you, you stumble-headed oaf! How dare you tell me what to do?”
“You don’t deserve a dragon, you rotting wyvern carcass.”
The roars of two Alphas who barely know the swelling of their own knots shatters the peace of the dragongrounds. Emmeric and Onderz are laying into each other with their fists. Nilak lowers her head and hisses in disgust.
“You two, cut it out,” I shout across to them, but neither heeds my words. Gods, I don’t need this today. I’m feeling more irritated than usual after the dream I had last night.
It wasn’t an unpleasant dream. Far from it. For a few moments, I was in heaven.
I was with my Omega.
That alone would be enough to make the dream sweeter than most of my waking hours, but I was more than with her. She was… Gods, she was… Just recalling the dream makes my knot ache.
She was kneeling on the ground before me, her knees splayed, and her hands and her mouth wrapped around my cock. She sucked me slowly, pushing me all the way to the back of her throat and drawing me slowly out again, her cheeks hollowing. Her lips were red and wet. When she pulled me from her mouth, a string of saliva connected her tongue to the tip of my cock, and she gazed up at me pleadingly, because she was so needy for me to fuck her. Her slick was all over my boot, and she rubbed her sex against the leather. Pleading with her eyes. I could smell how much she was aching for me, and it made my head swim.
I gathered her silky hair into my fist and gripped it tightly. “Suck me.”
“Yes, Alpha,” she whimpered, and pushed the swollen head of my cock past her lips. She sucked me like I was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. Her thighs squeezed my boot. Her breasts arched against my leg. She was so aroused and desperate that tears were wetting her lashes, but she did as her Alpha commanded. I needed her as much as she needed me, but it was so sweet to make her wait. I tipped my head back and groaned. Such a good, obedient little Omega. But who was she?
I couldn’t make out her face, but gods, I could hear her, and I could feel her.
