Chapter 11 - Stryker

“ I really wish I didn’t meet you at all… I hate you!”

Camilla’s brutal words ring out in my mind as I stand outside the guest bedroom door and contemplate if I should go inside.

After she voiced her hatred for me, I don’t think she’d want to see my face right now.

If ever, I think glumly as I glance at the door. Though I hadn’t locked it this morning, she hasn’t come out. It’s as if she’s standing firm on her words, and is retaliating this way.

I saw a side of her I never thought I’d see, and it made me realize that I don’t know her as well as I thought I did. Maybe the whole plan to woo her wouldn’t have worked out in the end. She hates what I am and would have hated me even more if things went on longer between us.

The remorse I feel isn’t enough to compel me to take her back to the mortal world. My inner dragon, with its determination to protect its mate won’t allow me to do what she might consider the “right” thing.

All I can do for now is open the door enough to slide the tray of dinner onto the side pedestal before gently closing it and disappearing down the hall. My steps feel robotic as I head to the boardroom for the meeting.

***

The silence in the boardroom of the Aurora Dragon castle is deafening. It’s so quiet, we’d be able to hear a pin drop if we cared to listen for something as minuscule as that.

Thanks to our dragon nature, we already possess the ability to hear every little sound through our heightened senses. We don’t need to hear a pin drop; our species would be able to feel the slight movement in the air.

Perhaps I’ll hear the tectonic plates moving beneath the Earth’s surface with how still the air is. Awareness crawls behind my neck, the fine hairs prickling with attention.

I lift my eyes and scan the room. It’s probably just all in my head, and I have nothing to worry about. Father assured me that I wasn’t in any kind of trouble for kidnapping my mate.

It must be the residual shame from when Camilla yelled at me that has me sinking into myself as I face the two elders of the Dragon Council. I haven’t recovered from Camilla wishing she’d never met me at all. I want to hide myself away from the shame that gnaws on my conscience.

“Ahem…” Nova, the Fire Force elder, clears his throat deliberately to gain the attention of the room.

It’s not like there’s too much of us. With my older brothers away with their families, the Alpha and Beta of the Aurora Dragons—Draco and Aragon respectively—aren’t in attendance for today’s meeting.

It’s not an official Council meeting, anyway. That’s why it’s just Nova, my father, and me and my twin in the boardroom.

Father decided to make this meeting an intimate affair before they took the news of Rakon’s actions to the other elders and dragon clans. This way, they might be able to contain his behavior without things getting out of hand.

But when I’m brave enough to meet Nova’s eyes, I notice his dread.

“Rakon is missing,” Nova informs us with a wince. “He hasn’t been on Lizard Island since the Dragon Ball, and he’s cut communication with Fire Force.”

“What…?” Father gasps beside the man. “This is cause for concern, Nova.”

“I know,” Nova sighs, staring warily at me. “You were the last to see him, Stryker. Was there anything else you noticed?”

I shrug diffidently. “Nothing out of the ordinary, except his actions.”

Nova looks down as if he’s being weighed down by the brunt of Rakon’s behavior. “It makes no sense why he’s acting this way. I would have understood if he was under the influence of some other force. This is unlike him to act this way.”

“It will need to be reported to the others,” Father tells him gloomily. “If he’s gone rogue, he poses a threat to all the clans.”

“What if he was only out to get me?” I offer. “We have history, and maybe he was acting out to get back at me.”

Nova shakes his head. “He missed an important Council meeting last night. As the Beta of Fire Force, that was not just a coincidence. I don’t think this is about you, Stryker.”

I nod slowly as the two elders discuss a plan forward. They send out mental warnings to the other elders to inform them of Rakon’s disappearance and subsequent behavior, while Stryder and I report to our siblings to tell them to keep an eye out for Rakon.

No one understands why he’s acting out this way, posing a threat to his own kind. I’m just glad to learn that it wasn’t a personal vendetta that had the Fire Force Beta acting out. It wasn’t a retaliation to the past.

But even with that relief, I’m not entirely in the clear. Because of what he did in the mortal world, I’m left to deal with the aftermath in the form of Camilla’s resentment of me.

When the meeting concludes, I hang back to speak to my twin brother. Looking into the mirror of our identical resemblance, I see the polar opposites of our lives in broad daylight.

Stryder wears a look of pure relaxation on his face, his happiness evident in the twinkle in his eyes. He smiles at me while we wait for the elevator to arrive, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on in my personal life.

A pang of guilt floods my being. Since condemning him for what he did in the mortal world to keep me away from Camilla for three treacherous months, we’ve hardly been as close as we were for centuries. He’s also been busy now that his mate is on the island, and she’d just given birth to their dragonspirit child.

A daughter.

Clearing my throat when we enter the elevator, I timidly ask, “How’s Blair doing?”

My brother’s lips lift into a warm smile as he leans against the mirror. “Ah… She’s growing so quickly…” he beams proudly. “You’d be surprised how smart dragonspirit children are. She’s already sitting upright.”

I smile wistfully while listening to Stryder speak so fondly of his daughter. It was less than six months ago when he hated the idea of having to take a human mate. Now, he’s done a complete three-sixty and matured into a family man.

“How are things with you and your mate?” he asks cautiously.

I shiver nonchalantly. “She hates me, of course.”

“Of course,” he concedes with a hint of amusement. “You did what you needed to do. It seems the Vulkan brothers could never catch a break, huh?” he chuckles.

“It’s a curse, Brother,” I click my tongue shamefully. “I really thought everything would go as planned. But I wasn’t so lucky.”

As the elevator comes to a stop on the fifth floor, Stryder turns to me and smiles encouragingly.

“If it helps, I’ll ask Olivia to check up on her. Maybe with another human…” his voice falters off as he shrugs thoughtfully.

I step out and tentatively smile. “That would help a lot. I would have asked Kairo, but she decided to explore the world.”

Stryder chuckles. “I’m glad our sister finally got a break. She’d been a mediator in all our lives so far.”

“She could have waited for me to come back,” I wail, to which Stryder pats my shoulder encouragingly.

I know I’m being unreasonable, since it isn’t Kairo’s job to do the damage control after her brothers bring their mates to the island. I guess she was expecting me to do things differently, instead of kidnapping my mate and locking her in the guest bedroom in my quarters.

Though the circumstances were different with each of my four brothers, the outcome was the same.

Except, with Camilla’s hatred for me, there’s no light at the end of my dark tunnel. She believes I tricked her, and thinks that she’s my next meal.

“Why don’t you join me for a drink before dinner?” Stryder offers. “I just spoke to Olivia, and she promised that she’ll go check up on your mate as soon as Blair falls asleep.”

I’d been so lost in thought, that I didn’t realize he’d paused for a moment to send his mate a mind link. I wish that’s a bridge I could cross with Camilla. It would make life so much easier if she was already pregnant and able to receive the gift of immortality and connect to the mental mind link shared by the dragons and their mates.

“You have no idea how thankful I am, Bro,” I appreciate.

Stryder smiles thoughtfully. “I think I have an idea. I was in a similar position when I found Olivia being kidnapped in the mortal world.”

“How did you guys get over everything you went through?”

“A grand gesture, Stryker,” he consoles. “Any woman appreciates a grand gesture of romance. That does the trick.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I pout. “I paid so much attention to detail trying to woo her in the mortal world. All those months I spent watching her, making sure that I knew everything about him. Now it feels like I don’t know her at all…”

Stryder perks up a brow. “So that’s what you were hiding from me…” he chuckles. Heat crawls across my cheeks as I realize I’d just come clean about the secret I was hiding from my twin.

He doesn’t seem upset, to my relief.

“Well, you can tell me all about it over a drink,” he offers, patting my shoulder again before proceeding down the hall. “And you can decide what you’re gonna do about your human mate situation.”