Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

THEO

The tips of my wings scraped against the walls as the tunnel narrowed, but I refused to collapse them, needing to get to my wife as quickly as possible. Maybe I would be forced to give her up at the end of this, but for now, she was mine, and I was the reason she was now in danger.

There was a dragon blocking her mind from being reached, and I didn’t know which. Whoever they were, no matter their size or power, I’d have them cowering beneath my wrath if they harmed a single hair on her head.

My warning growl ripped from me and through the tunnels as I followed her scent.

I’d been so obsessed with not allowing my dragon to claim her that I’d sent her right into the jaws of another, but this time it was a full-blood. There would be no hesitation from them, no possibility of her being a mate to them—she was the enemy to them all. Nothing more. Nothing less. She was simply a human encroaching on their territory, despite the announcement that a human queen was here. Without a bond to me, she lacked the scent of a true dragon queen. Any dragon worth their mettle would question her, even if she claimed to be such.

The only thought keeping me sane in my search through the endless tunnels and alcoves was the knowledge that she was alive since I could still sense her mind, even if I couldn’t reach out to it. I didn’t understand the looping route her scent had led me on, but now that it was growing stronger, I was confident that I’d found the tunnel she’d gone down.

“Alstrid!”

The elder dragon once again didn’t answer, likely meaning he was in a deep, restorative sleep. He would be of no use to me, so I did something I swore I’d never do and opened my connection to all of the dragons within the mountains, asserting my dominion as king and forcing myself into their minds.

“All undine dragons, hear me as your king. If you are in the presence of a human woman with tanned skin that has a warmth to it like the sun, bright blue eyes like the peaks of our mountains, and the size of a baby dragon in height, you may not touch her. That is my wife and your queen. If I find she has been harmed by whoever is shielding her mind from me, I will destroy you.”

I didn’t make that threat lightly. The trust between dragons and drackya within Andrathya was a tense thing, and it had taken a very long time to come to our current terms of coexistence. Many generations of drackya had passed since the shaky peace had been established, and I bore no excitement over possibly being the king that ended it with my use of power and threats.

I was overwhelmingly hit with responses, some calling me a fool for disturbing them and others swearing they didn’t have her. A rumbling growl grew in my throat, frustration tearing through me as viscerally as the guilt that gnawed on my insides. If something were to happen to Siyana before I found her, I alone would be responsible.

A light appeared at the end of my tunnel and hope flared within me. Siyana had to have gone toward the light, hoping to be able to see.

“Calm down, young one.”

“Sinda?”

“Yes, I have your human here.”

I couldn’t help but correct her, “You mean the queen?”

Sinda scoffed into my mind. “She has yet proven to be worthy of such a title, and I don’t think I need to remind you that she won’t be recognized as queen until you have a bond with her.”

It was because of the bond I knew Sinda had with my mother that I held my tongue at her attitude. She’d never see me as an adult–and likely never would–having been present for my birth and her own lifespan being more than quadruple that of mine.

“Where are you?” I demanded to know.

She didn’t need to answer, because a second later I descended into the nest that was covered in Siyana’s scent. My eyes instantly closed in on her small, unmoving form curled up next to a newborn ice dragon. They were surrounded by a thick wall of ice. My heart thundered in my chest as my mind swirled with what felt like a thousand questions all at once.

Why was she laying down in a dragon nest? Had she been harmed?

I landed to the side, unable to get as close as I would like when Sinda was taking up the majority of the nest. I wasted no time in shifting back to my human form and running to Siyana’s, needing to feel the steady thrum of her heart beat for myself.

As I drew closer, my hand lifted and ready to dismantle the ice wall with my powers, Sinda hissed.

“They are bonded.”

My feet faltered, pulling me to an abrupt stop a few feet from Siyana, and I glanced at the towering undine I’d spent much of my childhood with. A replica of the baby near Siyana lay at the chest of Sinda, making me do a double take between them. She’d had a rare set of twins.

“How is that possible? Undine dragons rarely bond with humans. My mother was the first in hundreds of years, as you well know.”

“Do not speak to me in such a tone. Of course I know that. I’m just as shocked as you, if not more so. My Kaida hatched early in her presence. It is not ideal, but it has happened and cannot be reversed now.”

My hand dropped to my side as I looked at their sleeping forms from within the ice once more. His tail was curled around her ankle, and it seemed she’d fallen into the quickening with her hand on his cheek.

A surge of jealousy coursed through me from my dragon. Rationally, I knew the bond wasn’t the same as what she could be for me, but the thought of another dragon having any claim on her was sending waves of rage through me.

Self-hatred pooled as I remembered this was my fault. I’d felt her fear of the bond but also her tentative hope that it would work, and yet I’d denied her, forcing her from me until I could get a handle on my beast. Now she’d drawn another dragon to her.

“Did you tell her what to expect from the quickening?”

“No. I merely told her to rest next to him and that she wouldn’t leave until he woke. It wasn’t a lie.”

“So you conveniently left out that she wouldn’t be leaving because she would fall into a magical hibernation?”

A big gust of air brushed across my body with Sinda’s heavy sigh. “She didn’t need to know, and Kaida had already fallen into it!”

“Humans are fragile, Sinda, or have you forgotten?” I demanded out loud, unable to contain the fury her careless decision stoked within me. I’d already almost lost Siyana once to carelessness such as this. “She needed to feast in advance, so that her body has the reserves to carry her through this! Not to mention the near-freezing temperature she’s encased within!”

Sinda surged to her feet, towering over me, yet I didn’t flinch, keeping our gazes locked. I stood by every word I said.

“Don’t you dare ask me if I know how fragile humans are. My bond to your mother still wasn’t enough to save her after your father died. I wonder every day if there was anything else I could have done.”

Her words served as a balm to my fears and I dropped my head.

“Young one, I would have prepared her if there had been time, but Kaida initiated almost instantly, and she had to join him. Their scenario is not one I’ve seen before, but my twins are special. They are seers.”

My head jerked back up as I glanced at the dragon who’d chosen my wife.

If that were true, that would make them an unusually powerful pair, with his powers and her claim to her throne. She truly wouldn’t need me when our marriage dissipated. All she had to do was return home with her dragon and demand what was rightfully hers.

The thought twisted my stomach into knots. While I knew she could stand on her own without me, I’d never considered that there would be a dragon in place of me to support her.

A cry sounded in my mind as my dragon wailed, feeling the loss of the one he wanted to claim.

“I will watch over them for the duration, if you need to leave.”

“No,” I quickly said, rejecting the idea. My eyes traced over the rise and fall of Siyana’s chest and the way her dark hair pooled around her as if she were suspended in water. “She is mine to care for, still. I will wait here until the quickening is complete, and after that, I will train Kaida to protect her, for when I am not around.”

“You plan on leaving your queen?”

Sinda’s incredulous tone had me sighing as I prepared for the incoming judgment.

“Save it,” I said, lifting a hand up toward her as I continued to gaze at the bonded pair, who were cementing their connection. “It’s for her own good.”

A blast of water hit the side of my body and I stumbled from the force of it, spluttering as it went up my nose until Sinda saw fit to stop the barrage. I glanced over at her, lips thinned and nostrils flared. “Was that truly necessary?”

“I did it for your own good. How did you not know that?”

I lifted my hand and wiped off the remaining water before squeezing out as much as I could from my hair. “That’s not the same thing and you know it. I forced her into this marriage. We will find a way to break the curse, and then she will go back to her life as princess of Andrathya.”

Exhaustion crept into my bones as the mental and physical toll of the last few days finally caught up to me. I didn’t have it in me to have this argument. Not truly.

“Did you ask her if she wanted to go home?”

“Sinda!” I exclaimed, whirling to face her. “The odds that she is my mate are practically none. I won’t risk the wrath of my dragon if a bond doesn’t work.”

“And if she is your mate?”

My words were sharp, speaking to the pain I felt at the thought, as I countered, “And what if she denies me, still, forgoing our one chance?”

Perhaps I was the one who wouldn’t be able to handle her rejection, not my dragon. Maybe what I’d been doing all along was hurting her before she could hurt me with her choice.

Sinda’s front leg lifted until her talon knocked me back onto my ass. “Silly boy. You have much to learn about love. Sleep now. I sense your exhaustion. I will watch over you all. Perhaps when you all wake, everyone will have more clarity. And sense.”

Sinda was the only dragon I’d entrust to watch over not only myself, but Siyana as well. I was sending a thank you to the undine god for ensuring this was the nest she stumbled into. The results would have been disastrous had she found herself in any other nest, with any other dragon.

I didn’t bother arguing, knowing I’d need my rest as soon as Kaida and Siyana came out of the quickening. Not only would I have my hands full of a sassy, headstrong woman, but I’d also be responsible for a baby dragon that I would need to turn into a battle-ready guardian. No doubt Siyana would treat him like a baby and fight me every step of the way.

As my head lay against the ground and I gazed at the two of them, I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. I’d never pictured myself as a parent, but the thought of raising Kaida together, at least for the time being, had a new kind of warmth radiating in my heart. Thinking of him as a child to take on seemed to settle the beast within me.

My eyes closed and I attempted to give myself over to sleep, but I tossed and turned, unable to. Worry for Siyana’s well-being in such a state gnawed at my mind. Each quickening was different from what we knew, and there was nothing I could do to wake her up from it if her heart began to slow.

Eventually, I gave up on sleep and settled my racing thoughts by simply watching over her. What I wouldn’t give to see those eyes open and look up at me.

I bit down on my lip as I thought back to how haunting her gaze had been only hours earlier. Would she continue to look at me with such distrust and hurt?

Would she even give me a chance to remain at her side with another dragon completing a bond with her, even if it was different from the one my own beast ached for?

None of my questions mattered if she didn’t make it through the quickening.