Then I see how she flinches when she sees Kane, and I feel sorry for her. I’m jealous of a woman who’s been hurt by her Alpha in the worst possible way. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.
I dream about Stesha almost every night, lurid dreams where we’re both naked, and when I wake in the morning, there’s so much slippery wetness between my legs that I have to wipe down my thighs with my sheet. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The summer heat is really getting to me this year.
The Dragon Games begin, and I try to enjoy them, but there’s so much restlessness and jealousy burning in my heart. Kane and several riders from the wild flare insist they be allowed to compete, angering many of our riders. Zabriel allows it, but they are as disruptive as anyone could have predicted.
I watch the first event from the castle battlements with hundreds of spectators. They’re all cheering and waving colored banners or streamers for their chosen dragon and rider pair. I catch sight of Ravenna, and she’s holding blue and white streamers for Stesha and Nilak. A wave of bitter nausea overtakes me. This is what Stesha’s always wanted, an Omega fawning over him. Will it matter to him that she’s another Alpha’s mate, or will he only care that her perfume is sweet and strong, and she can take his knot?
My eyes burn with tears, and I lose track of the event. It’s not until I hear gasps of shock and anger that I wipe my face and realize Nilak has returned, and her tail has been bitten. Stesha’s white riding leathers are spattered in her blood. After he’s finished tending to his dragon’s injury, he stalks angrily over to two of Kane’s dragonriders and punches them both in the face. The crowd cheers.
Stesha and Nilak haven’t earned a place, and Zabriel comes in last. It’s not an auspicious opening to the Dragon Games for two of our best riders.
It breaks my heart, but I find little pleasure in watching the events over the following days. Neither can I stay away. Little by little, most of the crowd begins cheering for Stesha and Nilak, but all I can notice as sweat beads on my brow and sunlight lances painfully through my skull are the young, beautiful women with open and sunny hearts admiring the dragonmaster, all of them better than me. They haven’t had their insides ripped apart. They haven’t been forced to betray Maledin or starved into a skeleton by lavish sickness.
I have shouted at Stesha and flung cruel words at him. I have sobbed and bled and crumbled in his presence. I’m too weak and emotional for such a stoic man. Too broken. Too scarred. There are too many dead dragons in my heart. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want me.
But he wants Aurissa and Auriana. They are a pair of yellow female Alpha dragons from the wild flare. I see him watching them hungrily between events. He’ll steal Kane’s dragons, and then he’ll steal his mate as well.
If I had a dragon, I think I would throw myself from its back.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for. The battlements are right there, and one leap over the edge would do me in. I think I want to see it happen for myself first, for Stesha to win the games, defeat Kane, steal his dragons, and sweep Ravenna into his arms. I want to carry all that hurt into the afterlife, lay it at the gods’ feet, and demand to know why they needed me to suffer so.
I keep my misery tightly locked up inside me, and I support Isavelle and Esmeral by flying their colors. The pregnant queen is beautiful and fierce on her dragon, and applauding her successes is the one small pleasure I can find.
There’s an event where dragons must seek out enchanted chirping rocks that are hidden under various debris. The event commemorates a group of Maledinni who were buried under snow and saved by clever dragons. My heart is racing and making me feel slightly sick as I watch the riders prepare for the event. I try to focus on Isavelle and Esmeral, who are determined to do well and earn some points, but my eyes keep straying to the dragonmaster. Stesha, normally so stoic before an event, is pacing up and down.
He and Nilak win, and I understand now how they were able to locate Minta and me buried under that avalanche. I applaud along with the rest of the spectators, my smile frozen to my face as I’m battered by painful memories.
As I walk back up to the castle, I crave something to soothe my nerves and the pain in my heart, and I know where to get it. I go straight to the rooms I used to share with Stesha. As I open the door, I breathe in deep lungfuls of air. His scent lingers everywhere, but I need more. Inside his bedroom, I paw through his discarded clothes. There are several unwashed shirts and a cloak, and I bring each of them to my face and bury my nose in them. I wish he’d been in a rut recently because I want his rutting scent. I need his rutting scent.
The bedroom door bangs open, and Stesha catches me with my face pressed into an armload of his dirty laundry.
I freeze and my mouth goes dry, and I know guilt is written all over my face. “I-I can explain.”
With a furious glint in his eyes, he lunges forward and rips the shirts from my arms and tosses them aside. I gulp back a sob and try to slip past him, but he catches me around the waist and yanks me against him. I struggle with my back against his chest. He holds me so tightly that my feet don’t touch the ground.
“Stop struggling,” he seethes into my ear.
I thrash from side to side and try to elbow him in the stomach.
“I said stop.” His growling, snarling voice fills my head. His Alpha’s roar, with its power not only to make me do what he says, but it makes mewantto do what he says.
I go completely limp. His roar vibrates through my chest to the tips of my toes and fingers and gathers in my core. There’s a surge of wetness between my thighs. That’s been happening more and more lately. I didn’t know I could be this traumatized and this turned on at the same time.
He presses his brow to the side of my face, and I listen to him breathing. He makes no move to put me down. His hands hold me possessively.
“Why are you here?” he asks me. A delicious, musky aroma fills my nose and makes my heart pound. He’s close to a rut. So close that if it were the old days, he would have left for the ruthouse by now, but there are no longer any ruthouses in Maledin. He has nowhere to go.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why are you here?”
Gods, that growl of his. My head falls back against his shoulder with a moan of pleasure, and I have to take several breaths before I can speak again. “It doesn’t matter because I don’t matter to you. Just give me a shirt or a blanket to borrow for a few nights and leave me in peace.”
He snarls in frustration, and I can feel rather than see that his teeth are a fraction of an inch from my flesh. Bite me.Bite me. But he does nothing because Stesha never does. I reach up behind his head, seize a handful of his white hair at the nape of his neck, and tug sharply. He snarls even louder and douses me in his rutting scent, making my head swim. He turns toward the window while holding me securely with one arm and rips the hanging tapestry aside.
I’m assaulted by blinding sunlight. I cry out, raising a hand before my face. The lighthurts.
Stesha covers my eyes with a large hand. He holds me tight and rocks me as he whispers a prayer to the gods in a harsh whisper. His panting breath is hot in my ear. His arms are a beautiful cage, and his scent and touch are overwhelming, but I’m angry, soangrywith him and everyone else, and I’m confused as well. I just want to be alone so I can sob into his dirty shirt and feel sorry for myself.
