AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The comment made her smile through held-back tears. Candied cherries had been her favorite growing up. It didn’t quite take away the tremble in her lower lip, but it got close enough. He wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulders as they left the room for the hallway, walking through three large rooms—the parlor, the second parlor, the red room—to get to the excessively huge kitchen. The staff had all finished their daily chores and had retired for the night, but Margarita the cook was preparing a tart of some kind as they entered.
He had grown up with her tart and her candied cherries. This house had been his home, and now he felt like a stranger in it. How odd that he thought he’d got away scot-free. What an oversight on his part, he should have known better. Now it was too late.
Tomorrow he would meet his mate, they would be bonded, and he would be expected to take his rightful place at his father’s side. If he defied these expectations in any way, the truce would be null and void, and all hell would break loose. People on both sides would be killed. His family and everything his bloodline had worked for would be in danger of collapse, all because of him. Against his own belief system, his own set of morals and his own choices, he’d been roped back in, and he knew that this time there was no leaving.
This time he was in it for life.
Chapter 2 - Anna
Anna Aslanova stood before the full-length mirror of her bedroom, staring at her own reflection as if she was looking at a stranger. The dark purple dress she was wearing hugged her curves, its short sleeves showing off slender arms, its low-cut neckline not without taste, but she still felt exposed. Half-naked. The dress didn’t leave much to the imagination. She’d known that it wouldn’t—she’d been to enough bonding ceremonies to be perfectly familiar with what the dress for her own would look like—but seeing it on herself was still surreal.
Was this happening? Was she going to be bonded within the next hour?
The velvet of the dress was soft to the touch, reflecting the light in enchanting ways. It was a little comforting, running her hands over it, but it still seemed outlandish and misplaced on her. She had gone from being single to being mated in the span of twenty-four hours, and she still wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about it.
She’d be wearing a layered, thin veil, tainted purple as well, the color symbolic of the first dragon. It was a myth, of course, but the first dragon was said to have had black scales that would glow purple whenever she breathed fire.
Anna’s scales were dark green, as most of her kin, and as she’d never seen a black scaled dragon in her life, the myth was difficult to truly believe in. Added to that was the fact that dragonkin rarely got to shift into their dragon shapes these days, at least not those who had chosen city life, so if a black scaled dragon appeared, it wouldn’t be a fast-spreading fact. There’d never been one rumored, though, and that said something. No matter, they all stuck to tradition as though the myth was a truth that had to be upheld. There was no getting out of wearing this dress or altering anything about it to make her feel more comfortable, more like herself. She was meant to be on display, like an offering.
She supposed that was exactly what she was.
She ignored the soft surge of jitters that thought produced, turned from the mirror, sinking down on the edge of her bed.
She was twenty-four and had never lived on her own. She’d thought she would, had planned to leave after a few years working at the city aquarium, spread her wings and find her place in the world. She’d graduated from college with honors and a master’s degree in marine biology. She knew she could land a research position if she only went for it, but now there was no going after anything without her mate’s approval.
Her mate.
The jitters intensified, like waves crashing against her ribs.
She got to her feet, hands on her hips, fingers clenching tight as she tried to catch hold of the runaway emotions in her chest.
Zeke Kumarin. He was her chosen mate. Him, of all dragons out there.
She remembered him smiling at her whenever he’d picked her up from school to bring her safely home. Even as young as sixteen she’d known that he’d only started doing it as a favor to her father, but it had still felt special. Zeke had been eighteen and way out of her league, but that hadn’t stopped her from developing a crush. It had grown and grown until it had become the burning center of her. It had stayed wrapped around her heart for the next five years. He’d only been driving her home for a few months before he left for medical school, and though it took a long time for the fire to die down, gradually it had been reduced to no more than embers.
She clutched a hand to her heart, drawing a slow breath as the sensation of almost forgotten yearning tore through her again. It had been doing that steadily, ever since her father spoke Zeke’s name and declared she was to be bound to him the following day. It was so clearly a business arrangement that it had somewhat stumped her shock.
This was what her happiness was worth to her father?
She had come to a breath away from congratulating him on making such a fine choice. Expressing gratitude in the most ironic way possible. It would have meant slapping him in the face with her emotions the way he’d slapped her with his lack of them. But what good would it have done? He didn’t care if she was attracted to Zeke; he didn’t care if she was in love with him. This wasn’t about her.
The thought made anger flare, and she embraced it. It was better than the desire laced with absolute trepidation. Zeke had left. He’d left her behind without a backward glance. He’d never felt what she felt. She didn’t even know if he’d gotten the note that she’d sent him a year after he went away. She’d mailed it, like an idiot, because she’d wanted it to be handwritten. She’d wanted to put her feelings into words, even though she’d known there was no hope for her. She was fifteen by then, and he was nineteen and in college. What had she even been thinking?
Why had he agreed to do this? What had his father held over his head to convince him there was no other choice? She knew he’d studied medicine for three years, that he worked as a paramedic. Getting dragged back into the life his father had failed for years to trap him in didn’t seem like a decision he would have reached of his own volition.
This was all a mistake.
She was the iron chain that would bind him here. Their children would be no more than reminders of how he could never get out.
She turned to the bedroom door at the sound of it opening, thinking it was her father, readying herself to tell him that she couldn’t do this when someone she hadn’t expected to see in a million years stepped into the room.
“Nikolai?” she said, staring at the tall, dark-haired, and stunningly handsome man as he pulled the door closed behind him.
His blue eyes glittered at her the way they had on so many occasions before, a warmth there that disguised the utter hollow where his heart should be.
“You look beautiful, Anna Aslanova,” Nikolai greeted, bowing his head slightly, as if in reverence.
“How did you get in the house?” she asked.
