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“I didn’t ask for your apology. I asked you why you’re touching my Omega.”
“I said it was a mistake,” he says sharply.
“It didn’t look like a mistake. It looked deliberate from where I stood.”
“Then perhaps you didn’t see what you thought you saw. Coveting another man’s Omega isn’t in my bloodline.”
He speaks so quietly that I’m the only one who hears him. No one has brought up Emmeric and Mirelle to my face since before Maledin fell. Emmeric, the rapist who knotted his own sister.Mysister.
I pull back my fist and smash it across Stesha’s face.
Staggering, he moves along the wall away from me, his hand over his mouth as blood drips down his arm. He moves out into open space, and onlookers back away from the Alpha as he straightens up.
The dragonmaster wipes blood from his lip and glares at his fingers. Then he lifts his cold gaze to me. “I hope your honor is satisfied.”
With a sneer of his bloody mouth, he turns his back on me and starts to walk away.
Five drops of blood for laying his hands on my Omega? My honor is not satisfied.
“Stesha. Fight me, Alpha to Alpha.”
With his back to me, he shakes his head. “You don’t want that.”
“You still think you can best me?”
Stesha turns slowly toward me, pride burning in his icy eyes. He won’t say it out loud, but he believes it in his heart that he can beat me.
He wants the crown.
He wants my Omega.
My whole life, Stesha has been like an older brother to me, or an uncle. Not a benevolent older brother or a kind uncle, because Stesha in neither benevolent nor kind, but he was what I needed. He was who I admired. Not my own father, but Stesha. The Alpha I looked up to as the epitome of everything I wanted to be. Strong. Fierce. Honorable. Courageous. The strongest Alpha in Maledin.
Stronger than my father the king.
Betterthan my father the king.
Now I see that all the time I was looking up to him, he was looking down on me. Resenting the boy who was becoming the man who would take his place.
“I yield to the king,” he says in a flat voice.
That only makes me angrier. I didn’t accept the crown because I am my father’s son. I accepted it because I thought I could do better, be better,ambetter. The strongest. The smartest. The bravest. I led the invasion of Maledin, and I took our country back for us. I’m not so arrogant that I believe I can rule Maledin without the might of the dragonriders and wingrunners behind me, the dozens of soldiers as well as theHratha’lenwho give me advice, and the love of my mate.
If another Alpha thinks he can take my Omega from me, I’m going to make him bleed.
“I’m invoking the Rule of Flame. Defend your honor, or I will banish you across the mountains and you will never see Maledin or Nilak ever again.”
27
Isavelle
There are gasps all around the courtyard, and I look to Fiala and Dusan to try and understand Zabriel’s words.
“Separating him from his dragon? That’s a worse punishment for a dragonrider than death,” Dusan whispers, and then explains to me, “The Rule of Flame means that two Alphas can duel with each other to first blood, even if one of them is the king.”
“But why does Zabriel want to punish Stesha so badly?” I ask desperately.
“Stesha smelled your hair,” Fiala says.
