Page 86 of Retrograde

Father had always said they worried about influencing the royal family, so they stayed out of things and our lives afterMother mated him. That never seemed like the full truth to me, but I knew it upset Mother, and she always said Darren was stronger than the others to go against her father.

Whatever that meant. She came from such a loving family—she was so normal and that family was like the model of what families should be like in Thovudin. A lot of people praised them for making sure they didn’t benefit off of being mated into the royal family.

I thought it was horrible they left me without a maternal side of the family to have, but I just wanted someone to accept and love me. Darren always did, so maybe in my mind I’d thought the rest of them would have?

“Probably, but it’s for him to worry about,” Maple answered, winking at me as Darren came back within hearing range.

Fair enough.

I changed into something I didn’t care about shredding when I shifted, but all of the Alphas had made it clear that if anyone took a picture of me in my castle, all of them would pound the person. It was against thelawand one slip was stupid.

More than one was a fucking disaster.

So not that they really cared about me and my privacy, but they wanted to protect the opinions of Alpha families.

It still worked for me, but what a bunch of assholes.

I let out a long breath and glanced up at the gods asking for patience before shifting forms, apologizing to Eloise like always that it would be Iris. I hated that it would be her only that ever took off from our home. It was so beyond unfair that… Eloise was honestly as abused and neglected as I was.

Not that Iris wasn’t, but she was “normal.”

“Let’s focus on the very abnormal objective of dealing with all these men,”Iris said gently in my mind before Eloiseand I got distracted in our upset. She was honestly the adult sometimes that kept Eloise and me grounded.

But then she huffed when Onyx somehow made sure he was first. She hated how pushy he was. She basically acknowledged him but snorted in his face when he tried to get friendly with her, especially publicly.

His dragon wasnothappy about that, and I agreed with her when she put him in his place, baring her teeth and basically reminding him of his place in life. I couldn’t deny my attraction and now feelings for Onyx, but it was anunderstatementto say things were complicated.

And I didn’t like him trying to pee around me like this.

She responded better when his rock dragon basically pouted and plopped down, sulking and hanging his head. He even went further and flopped down submissively and just stared up at her.

Even Iris wasn’t completely resistant to that sort of attitude and booped his snout with hers before moving on. We rolled our eyes when his dragon chortled more than chuffed, clearly amused at her antics as well.

Thorn went next and while Eloise still liked him, Iris and I were pissed. She basically gave him a nod and kept moving.

His dragon wasn’t happy… But it didn’t seem to be focused on us? Was his dragon mad atThorn?

Oh boy. That would be drama to deal with later.

I kind of recognized Dayan and Cosmo’s dragons from flying and acknowledged them. I did remember Zev’s from the fight when I saw him change.

I went over and booped him, making it clear that I did see him now. His dragon studied me and seemed to catch on, sitting and looking happy.

It was honestly kind of endearing.

Iris was distracted when Joris changed and was immediately all about him, upsetting more than a few people. His dragonwas just as friendly, and it was probably pretty fucking clear to everyone there that we were intimate.

Well, that backfired. I hadn’t considered that, but also… I was fairly sure most figured that out after I was drugged and went off with Joris.

Was anyone that dense to not have figured it out?

Maybe, but hopefully it made people behave better instead of how things had been going.

There was a lot of chuffing when we spent too much time together and I moved in front of Joris and gave a few warning noises to people. Like chill the fuck out and wait your turn. This was the wholepointand it hadn’t even been five minutes.

Seriously, people needed to check their egos.

Ayao’s spirit dragon wasgorgeousand much larger than most male dragons, but again… I couldn’t accept what he wanted in a mating. So we were pleasant, but I held back.