Page 57 of Billionaire Dragon King’s Rejected Mate

Chance stepped forward. His posture was rigid and stiff. “I was told it was necessary.”

A faint smile touched his father’s lips but it looked more like a snarl.

“Necessary,” he repeated. “You abandoned your post, ignored your responsibilities, and now you speak of necessity as though it were not your absence that created it.”

Randi felt the tension spike instantly. She resisted the urge to step up beside Chance.

“I didn’t abandon anything,” Chance replied, his voice steady but edged now. “I refused to become what you wanted me to be.”

A murmur rippled through the court, quickly subdued but impossible to miss.

His father’s gaze sharpened. “You refused your duty,” he corrected coldly. “You ran.”

“And you executed my brother and killed my mother,” Chance shot back. His control slipped just enough to let the truth cut through the room like a blade. “So forgive me if I didn’t feel inclined to stay.”

His father’s expression didn’t change much, but something darker settled into it, something that made the air feel even colder.

“And this,” he said after a moment, his gaze shifted to her. “Is what you bring back with you?”

Randi straightened and refused to shrink, though she could feel the scrutiny press in from all sides now with the entire court watching and waiting.

“A distraction,” he continued. “A weakness.”

Chance stepped slightly in front of her, not blocking her entirely but enough to make his stance clear. “She’s neither.”

“You bring an outsider into this court, into this conflict, and expect me to see strength in that?” he asked. “Or is this simply further proof that you are not prepared to rule?”

The accusation hung there, heavy and deliberate, and Randi felt it. It wasn’t just as an attack on Chance, but it was something directed at her very presence, as though she were nothing more than evidence of failure.

Her jaw tightened slightly, but she held her ground.

Because now she understood that this wasn’t just about earning acceptance, this was about surviving judgment.

And she was already seen as a liability.

Chapter 23

Chance

Chance did not speak as the heavy doors of his father’s throne room shut behind them with a hollow, echoing finality. The sound reverberated down the stone corridor like a verdict already passed. He could feel the tension in Randi beside him like a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse on the verge of exploding.

Randi walked a few paces ahead of him. Her spine was rigid and her hands were clenched at her sides. He could tell by the set of her shoulders exactly what she was feeling. He knew her well enough now to recognize the difference between anger that burned hot and loud and the kind that settled deep and stayed there.

“He thinks I’m a liability.” She spun on her heel to face him once they exited the outer door of the castle. Her voice was steady in a way that made it worse than if she had shouted because there was no mistaking the hurt buried underneath it. No matter the situation, there was no mistaking the fact that she had expected better, if not from Gunner as the king, then at least as Gunner his father.

Chance exhaled slowly and dragged a hand through his hair as he tried to gather something that might soothe her. He didn’t want to make the situation worse by telling her that she was right. The truth was that his father did see her that way and likely weighed her not as a person but as a risk he intended to control so that he could control his son.

“He doesn’t know you,” Chance said, though even as the words left his mouth, they felt insufficient. He quickened his pace until he was beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder, unwilling to let distance grow between them when everything else seemed intent on pulling them apart.

“That’s not the point,” Randi replied. There was a sharpness in her eyes that made his chest tighten. He knew it wasn’t directed at him and yet he felt it all the same. “He doesn’t need to know me to decide I’m expendable.”

Chance flinched almost imperceptibly at that word, because expendable was exactly the kind of calculation his father excelled at. It was the kind he had been raised to understand even if he had never fully accepted it. His brother and his mother had been expendable, and Gunner had made it happen. He didn’t have to try hard to hear Gunner’s voice in his mind, cold and certain, speaking of power and sacrifices.

“You’re not expendable.”

Randi let out a breath and shook her head as she resumed walking. “That may not be how you see me, but it’s how he sees me, and whether we like it or not, that matters if we think we can stay here.”

Think we can stay here.