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“What’s on the agenda, boys?” Soren asked with a bit of playfulness in his tone.
“First on the agenda is welcoming this flower to the fold. Freya, we understand your matings have been carried out. You are now royalty as far as we are concerned because of your tie to your mates. Congratulations are called for, I believe.” It was the older man who congratulated us, the one who finally got control of his coughing.
No one moved. Technically, I was only mated to Jude, but apparently the gossip train had picked up more passengers along the way, passengers like I was mated to all three of these males.
None of us corrected the man.
“Thank you, Volmir. We are delighted to have Freya as a mate. And, as newly mated dragons, we would like to return home as soon as possible. We are trying to make an heir here. May I ask what this meeting is about?”
I ignored Soren’s baby talk in favor of moving on with this meeting and yes, getting home.
Not to make babies, but still.
“Very well. We have decided to end the chance of rebellion once and for all.”
“How?” Nico asked, stepping forward.
The man, the leader of the council, or so I thought, leaned forward. “Well, there cannot be a rebellion if there is no lesser race to rise up against us. We have been in negotiations with a wolf pack who is on the verge of self-destruction. Their alpha is pathetic and is running the entire pack into the ground. He offered to send us his entire pack if we compensate him well.”
What kind of alpha sold his pack to vicious dragons?
“And the lessers? What will happen to them?” Jude held my hand tighter while I held my breath. He had asked the exact question I wanted to.
“Well, either one of two things. One, they accept their future defeat and leave of their own terms or…the other option.”
I gasped. Couldn’t be helped. I knew what that meant. Everyone in the room knew what that meant. Genocide…of my people.
Because they dared demand not to be treated like the dirt under the dragon’s feet.
“Is there no way something can be done with the lessers? They have been with us for centuries. They know our ways. They are dragons. Do we really want to bring wolves in? Wolves are temperamental, even more so than dragons.” Nico, bless him, was trying to fight for my people the only way he knew how.
Except, it looked like to me, that the council had already made their decision.
The lessers were going to die.
Because I was a lesser and I would rather die than stick my tail between my legs and leave.
The rest of the meeting was talking about dragon garbage, like they hadn’t just proposed the murder of all of my kin.
I tugged on Jude’s hand when the conversation turned from business to shooting the shit. There was no reason to stay with these horrible men if there was no more business to discuss.
“Our mate is eager to get home. If there is nothing else?” Jude said but had already begun to walk away.
“Of course,” they all said with a chuckle. “Do get her home.”
Chapter Eight
I had to warn the others. The council said they would give the lessers the option of leaving, but would they? Or would they just pretend they’d decided not to go and kill them anyway. We left the meeting in silence and returned to the apartment. I was stunned, but what had I expected? The tension had been building between the two sides for months, probably years. Decades.
At one time, there had been a mutual respect, but the lessers were tired of being treated like slaves. They had been serving willingly, but the highers pushed harder on them for more and harder work with worse living conditions. I’d heard that in the past they actually paid a certain amount of cash or jewels or other hoard materials once a year, but not anymore. And now they were talking about killing them? Killing dragons and bringing in wolves to be our servants?
I wasn’t close to many of the lessers, and most had never been all that nice to me, but that didn’t mean they weren’t people deserving of good treatment. The High Council had drawn a line, finally. The lessers were to have the choice of being driven from their home or murdered.
When we were safely behind closed doors, I spun on my mates. “We can’t let this happen. We have to stop them.”
Soren threw his hands up. “We have to be careful, so keep your voice down. The walls have ears.”
He’d never said anything like that before. “The walls…what?”
