Page 33 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

Still, eventually she nodded once. “Thank you.” The sincerity in her voice unsettled him far more than anger would have.

That night Mikael slept poorly despite the antidote continuing to clear the poison from his blood. His dreams circled endlessly between strange warmth and ugly memories he did not entirely understand. Several times he woke with his dragon pacing violently beneath his skin while the same warning circled relentlessly through his thoughts whenever Dag entered his mind.

Threat.

Each time the instinct returned stronger. By dawn, Mikael had stopped dismissing it entirely.

Snow fell steadily beyond the windows, and Mikael had barely opened his door when raised voices suddenly echoed from outside his chambers.

He stepped into the corridor immediately.

One of the younger guards paled upon seeing him. “Your Majesty.”

Mikael’s stomach tightened instantly. “What happened?”

The guard hesitated. “The prisoner… she… she’s gone.”

Cold fury swept through Mikael so quickly that even the dragon recoiled beneath it.

“Gone where?”

“We don’t know, sire. The servant assigned outside her room said she slipped away sometime during the night.”

Of course she had.

Mikael closed his eyes briefly as understanding struck all at once because Lyra had never truly believed the castle would help her find Beckett quickly enough. After years surviving alone, she trusted herself far more than anyone inside these walls.

“She went back for him,” he muttered.

Martin appeared farther down the corridor already looking exhausted. “Mikael, if you rush into another snowstorm half-recovered, it will not end well.”

“She is alone.”

“And you are barely recovered yourself.”

Mikael ignored the protest entirely and continued toward the stairs while servants scrambled hastily aside to clear his path.

Because somewhere out there, Lyra was searching frozen roads and dark forests alone for a terrified child, and every instinct inside Mikael screamed that if he did not reach her soon, something terrible was waiting in the snow ahead.

Chapter 14

Lyra

The truck smelled faintly of gasoline and pine sap, while the heater rattled unevenly as it struggled against the winter cold. Icy roads stretched endlessly ahead beneath a sky swollen heavy with snow.

Lyra sat rigid in the passenger seat with her gloved hands locked tightly together in her lap while the older man driving kept his attention mostly on the road.

She had been grateful that he agreed to take her partway back toward the village when she caught him at the petrol station. She couldn’t survive another hour trapped inside the castle waiting politely while Beckett remained missing somewhere out in the cold.

Besides, she told herself, Mikael may not even be able to go with her in the morning. Thankfully the driver seemed to possess the rare gift of understanding when silence was preferable to conversation.

Every now and then the driver muttered something brief about worsening weather or road conditions. Otherwise he left her alone with the storm raging inside her head, which was almost worse because as the quiet settled fully around her, the memories started creeping back.

Dag’s laughter had once ruled the hallways like something cruel and inevitable, loud enough to turn heads from half the corridor away while students pretended not to notice the damage it caused. Drawing Dag’s attention was the fastest way to become his next victim.

“Move, Low-Life Lyra.”

The nickname slammed into her sixteen-year-old chest as hard as his shove had sent all the books from her arms crashing across the polished floor. Conversations nearby stuttered into silence before quickly resuming again and suddenly everyone was fascinated by lockers, phones, or classroom doors. Anything except her humiliation.