Dragons Realm (23 page)

Mina’s jaw dropped open in sur­prise, and she quickly pursed her lips to close it: On one hand, she was in­tim­ately touched by Prince Dante’s words—he had
never
spoken so af­fec­tion­ately, so per­son­ally, to her be­fore, as if she were more than a slave—but on the other hand, she was sickened by his con­vic­tion, won­der­ing if he even un­der­stood…

Damian did not want or need her. In fact, the only thing he de­sired was the cal­lous use of her womb. And for what noble pur­pose? To cre­ate soul­less dragon off­spring in his own ab­hor­rent im­age? To spawn mon­sters just like him? Chil­dren she would neither be al­lowed to raise nor love? And
gods for­give her
, she didn’t think she could if she tried: love them, that is.

As if he had read her mind—and truth be told, he prob­ably had—Dante’s ex­pres­sion turned as hard as stone, and he cupped her jaw in his hand. “Mina…” He spoke softly in spite of his stony re­solve. “You will love your chil­dren. No mat­ter what oc­curs, no mat­ter how much they re­semble Damian, you
will
love them.”

She chuckled then, al­though the sound was ab­sent of mirth. “Will I, my prince?” She shook her head be­fore he could reply. “Re­gard­less, it doesn’t mat­ter. I won’t have any in­flu­ence over their up­bring­ing. In fact, I’ll be lucky to even sur­vive…to live long enough to have more than one child.”

“Then fight for your­self and their fu­ture!” he in­sisted, his vehe­mence tak­ing her aback. “Just be smart about how you do it. You’re re­source­ful, Mina. You’re de­term­ined, and you’re ima­gin­at­ive. So make your­self in­dis­pens­able. Fight to stay alive.”

Dante’s power­ful words brushed over her like an un­ex­pec­ted breeze, yet they didn’t cool her des­pond­ency. She just couldn’t see it, ima­gine it, even con­ceive of it—find­ing or mak­ing a way,
any way
, in a uni­verse gov­erned by Prince Damian. “You know your brother,” she whispered re­spect­fully. “To op­pose him, even in the slight­est, is to die.” She aver­ted her eyes be­cause she really wasn’t try­ing to ar­gue—the truth was simply the truth.

He snorted in de­fi­ance. “Really?”

She met his gaze once more and gawked at him, at a com­plete loss for words.

“Did you not fight for Ta­tiana?” he asked her, rais­ing his dark, sculp­ted brows. “Have you not done everything in your power—no mat­ter how lim­ited—to op­pose me since the day we first met?”

“That was dif­fer­ent,” she mumbled.

“Dif­fer­ent?
How
!” he ex­claimed. His large shoulder muscles con­trac­ted, then grew ri­gid, as he leaned for­ward, grasped her by both arms, and raised his voice. “Was Ta­tiana more worthy—am
I
more worthy—than your­self?”

She laughed then, an­other hol­low sound. “I
love
Ta­tiana!” she ar­gued, feel­ing her an­ger start to rise. “It was an in­stinct­ive re­ac­tion, not well thought out. And I thought I could love”—she caught her words, re­coiled in sur­prise, and im­me­di­ately changed dir­ec­tion, steady­ing her voice—“I never op­posed you out of dis­obedi­ence or malice, Prince Dante.
Never.
I was simply try­ing to un­der­stand you, to un­der­stand the Realm…and my duty to it. I was simply try­ing to get along.” Her voice softened as her heart joined her words, and both began to flow as one in a pure, unadul­ter­ated stream. “I wanted to find my place with you, some place with you—
any place with you
—that was real. I wanted to some­how know you, if only from afar.” She rolled her eyes at her own au­da­city, real­iz­ing she was about to purge her soul. “I knew that I was only a slave, your ser­vant, just one of many, but des­pite that know­ledge, des­pite that cer­tainty, I was still just crazy enough…
stub­born enough…
to be­lieve…
to hope
…that this whole thing”—she swept her arm in a wide arc around them, ig­nor­ing his iron touch, in­dic­at­ing the nearby en­camp­ment, the broader ter­rit­ory bey­ond the north, the en­tire Realm—“that this whole thing would be easier, at least for me, if I could find a way to serve you with my body and my heart, if I could find some way to care for you, even if you couldn’t care for me.”

She aver­ted her eyes in shame and rushed to spit out her next words be­fore the prince could si­lence or con­demn her. “I know.
I know
. I heard you, each and every time, and you were right all along: Duty, ob­lig­a­tion, obed­i­ence—that’s all there is. You told me and told me, but I re­fused to listen. I didn’t want to hear it—I couldn’t ac­cept it—not with the
duty
I was fa­cing; and I’m sorry that it took me so long…” Her voice trailed off as she swiped sev­eral angry tears from her eyes and forced her­self to meet his pen­et­rat­ing gaze. “But I get it now. I hear it now. I even ac­cept it, but don’t ask me to fight for such a mean­ing­less ex­ist­ence any­more. Don’t ask me to op­pose Damian for the sake of our un­born chil­dren. Not now. Not when everything has changed. Not now that you’re gone.” The last sen­tence was noth­ing but a whis­per. “Not when I don’t have any love or re­bel­lion left.”

Dante grew deathly quiet, and time seemed to stand still as he pro­cessed her words and stud­ied her fea­tures, as he searched for a way to re­spond. Fi­nally, after sev­eral long, tense mo­ments had passed, he cleared his throat. “Earlier, in the throne room, you col­lapsed be­fore the high priest could ad­min­is­ter the sac­red rites. Did Damian—”

“Ad­min­is­ter the tonic?” she in­ter­rup­ted, know­ing ex­actly what he was re­fer­ring to. “Did he give me the fer­til­ity drug?” She scoffed. “Yeah; he broke the vial over the man­tel and shoved the con­tents down my throat, broken glass be damned. Yes, he
ad­min­istered
the rites.”

Some­thing dan­ger­ous and fore­bod­ing flashed through Dante’s eyes, and then his fore­head creased in a deep, brood­ing frown. “Then he also…” For whatever reason, he couldn’t fin­ish the sen­tence—he couldn’t quite muster the words—but Mina caught their im­plic­a­tion.

“No,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

Damian had not raped and im­preg­nated her…yet.

There were still twenty-one hours left in­side the thirty-six-hour win­dow when preg­nancy was guar­an­teed by the serum.

Dante nod­ded, stoic­ally. He ran a taut hand through his hair and sighed. “You are a wo­man who is led by her pas­sion, Mina Louvet, a wo­man who must fight for a cause. And you are the poorest ex­cuse for a slave I have ever seen.” He with­drew his hands from her arms and strolled away, pa­cing around her in what could only be de­scribed as pred­at­ory circles. “You have given me the cour­tesy of the truth. Now, I will do the same: In thirty-one years, I will be cap­able of fully shift­ing. You already saw what happened with the Lycanian—the change has already be­gun. And when that day comes, I will be strong enough to chal­lenge my father. My sons will be strong enough to lead this realm at my side.”

Mina vis­ibly re­coiled at the sedi­tious words. She couldn’t help it—it went against years and years of strin­gent in­doc­trin­a­tion—yet she watched him as­tutely, curi­ously, as he turned on his heel, stalked dir­ectly to­ward her, and cupped her face in his hands. “Un­til that day, you
will
love at least one child, and you
will
fight to stay alive.”

Mina trembled like a baby bird in the hands of an in­quis­it­ive child.

She was emo­tion­ally ex­hausted, phys­ic­ally worn out, and she couldn’t track where the prince was go­ing with this line of thought. Did he in­tend to take con­trol of her mind? To force her to feel some­thing for Damian—
surely not!
—or at least for a fu­ture child? “I’m sorry, my prince, I don’t un­der­stand.”

Dante took her hands in his and tightened his grasp, al­most pain­fully, sink­ing the tips of his fin­gers, now those of a nor­mal man, deep into her palms. His eyes grew dis­tant, and he bit down hard on his lower lip, draw­ing a trickle of blood. If Mina hadn’t known bet­ter, she would have sworn he was wrest­ling with his own in­doc­trin­a­tion, bat­tling some an­cient de­mon, in­side. He glanced at the moon, peered at the earth, and then gazed bey­ond her shoulders, as if seek­ing guid­ance from the north­ern shores. Then just like be­fore, a white owl swooped down, perched atop a low-hanging branch of a tree, and hooted three times, re­veal­ing a mys­tical sign.

Dante must have un­der­stood it be­cause his eyes grew all at once clear, and he met her seek­ing gaze with a look of ab­so­lute cer­tainty. “You
will
fight for me. You
will
fight for the Realm. And you
will
fight for your un­born son be­cause the child will not be Damian’s—he will be mine.”

Chapter Twenty-one

M
ina gasped in
alarm, even as Dante swept her up by the waist, car­ried her into the thick of the trees, and dropped to his knees with Mina still in his arms, ef­fort­lessly lay­ing her down along a soft patch of grass. “My prince!” she pro­tested, trem­bling from head to toe as he crouched above her with fierce glow­ing eyes.

There wasn’t a ques­tion in Mina’s mind that Dante had made a de­cision, that the
prince
was as­sert­ing his priv­ilege, or that the
dragon
was now in con­trol. It was evid­ent in Dante’s regal but ruth­less pos­ture, his gentle yet pos­sess­ive grasp, his de­term­ined and hungry gaze. There would be no dis­suad­ing him from his chosen path.

Yet and still, she had to try.

What he was sug­gest­ing was bey­ond dan­ger­ous or im­proper. It was be­trayal at its worst, adul­tery at the least, il­legal, no mat­ter how one turned it over. “My prince, we can’t,” she re­peated the ob­jec­tion.

He snarled, flash­ing the barest hint of fangs. His eyes swept lower, be­neath the neck­line of her cross-laced doublet, and his hand in­stinct­ively fol­lowed, his fin­ger trail­ing a pro­voc­at­ive line between her breasts.

She snatched at his wrist. “Stop,” she panted, truly be­gin­ning to panic.

“Shh,” he uttered, dip­ping down to brush her lips with his. The con­tact was fire and ice, swel­ter­ing heat and arc­tic cold, cre­at­ing a shock­ing sen­sa­tion of alarm­ing in­trigue, and des­pite her fer­vent protests, Mina’s head began to spin.

“My prince!”

“Look at me,” he com­manded in a deep, raspy voice, arch­ing for­ward to rest the bulk of his weight on his power­ful arms while he gazed into her eyes be­neath sul­try, hooded lids. “Tell me what you see.”

Mina blinked rap­idly, try­ing to bring things into fo­cus, try­ing to clear her be­fuddled mind…try­ing to still her ra­cing heart. His onyx hair was disheveled and un­ruly, fall­ing for­ward into his stun­ning, mys­tical eyes; his sculp­ted lips were full and par­ted, just barely, adding in­terest to his regal mouth, and
blessed god­dess of mercy
, his chiseled, com­mand­ing frame—that rock-hard chest and those strap­ping shoulders—were prac­tic­ally trem­bling be­neath his ef­fort to re­strain his pas­sion. He was dark­ness and light; stealth and grace; beauty and an­guish, all in­ter­twined.

He was the most mag­ni­fi­cent be­ing Mina had ever seen, and his coun­ten­ance—his oth­er­worldly dragon’s aura—swirled around them like an ele­mental cor­onet of light, bathing her body, her mind, and her soul in his prim­or­dial heat. “I see…I see…”
The
only male she would ever love.
“I don’t see any­thing.”

“It’s in your eyes, sweet Mina,” he rasped. “You are already mine.” He bent to brush his lips against hers a second time, and her stom­ach clenched in re­sponse. It was as if he truly did own her—and not as a slave or a cit­izen of the Realm—but as an in­tim­ate ex­ten­sion of his own primal body: like she was made by him,
of him
…for him.

No…no….no.

This wasn’t right.

It couldn’t be.

He pressed a firm, lan­guor­ous hand over the ex­panse of her chest and splayed his fin­gers over the re­gion of her heart be­fore he deftly began to un­lace her bod­ice. And his touch was pure, unadul­ter­ated ma­gic.

Mina gulped.

Oh dear lords, he prob­ably
was
us­ing ma­gic
—lit­eral ma­gic.

She shivered be­neath his tan­tal­iz­ing caress, and tried to grasp his wrists. “My prince!”

“My Ahavi,” he mim­icked with a satir­ical smile, push­ing her hands aside. “Don’t you see?” His voice lost all traces of satire, be­com­ing all at once deep, res­on­ant, and ser­i­ous. “The Realm is bleed­ing.” He dipped down to taste her throat, swirl­ing his tongue over the tiny punc­tures he had just made with his fangs. “Our en­emies are at­tack­ing.” He lapped up the slight trickle of blood and groaned into her throat. “And my broth­ers are fight­ing alone.” He made a seal over the wound, healed it with cool­ing fire, and lav­ished her neck with a pas­sion so in­tense it made her shud­der. “Yet I am here with you.
With you.
Sub­mit to me, Mina. We don’t have much time.”

She mumbled some­thing in­co­her­ent, shiv­er­ing be­neath his ex­pert min­is­tra­tions, be­fore try­ing again. “Your father would—”

“
What
?” he drawled lazily. “Scold me? Kill me? My father will never know.” He cupped her face in his hands and wedged his hips to hers, mak­ing it abund­antly clear that he was more than ready to con­sum­mate their union.

“But Prince Damian, he would—”

“Damian must never know.” He tapped her lightly on the tip of the nose, mak­ing sure he had her at­ten­tion, while roguishly stress­ing his point.

“But, won’t he be able to tell? I mean—”

“Not this early. Not if I mask my scent.” He drew a slow, tan­tal­iz­ing out­line along her up­per lip with his tongue be­fore nip­ping her gently on the bot­tom lip and then fol­low­ing the love-bite with a be­guil­ing kiss.

She sighed in pleas­ure, los­ing her­self to his un­deni­able ap­peal, un­able to re­strain her in­vol­un­tary re­ac­tions to his mag­netic charm. And then the real­ity of what was about to hap­pen if he con­tin­ued—
what she would be help­less to res­ist if he con­tin­ued
—fi­nally got the best of her, and she shoved at his chest.
“My prince…”
Help­less tears es­caped her eyes, and she struggled to hold them at bay. “Dante…
please
.”

In a mo­ment of un­ex­pec­ted ten­der­ness, Dante pulled away, and to Mina’s com­plete sur­prise, he shif­ted his weight to the side, sat up ab­ruptly, and leaned back against a nearby tree. Be­fore she could re­act, he pulled her into his arms, tugged her back against his chest, and sheltered her between his power­ful thighs, nuzz­ling his chin in her hair. “Mina, my darling; you are trem­bling. You want this with every fiber of your be­ing, yet you are ut­terly ter­ri­fied.” He pressed a soft, al­most chaste kiss against the crown of her head and sighed. “That is not what I want.”

Mina could not have been more stunned if he had slapped her. Who was this gentle dragon? This fear­some, all-power­ful be­ing who tempered pas­sion with em­pathy and de­sire with…
re­spect
?

Des­pite the fact that the Sk­la­vos Ahavi were con­sidered spe­cial—
sac­red
—they were still slaves, prop­erty of the Realm, and Prince Dante was free to take what he wanted, des­pite the dire re­per­cus­sions. Real­iz­ing that her ac­tions were also a blatant act of dis­obedi­ence, she mur­mured an apo­logy, and then she began to sob as all the pres­sure and angst of the past few days rose like a tide, surged to the sur­face, and spilled out in waves.

“Don’t be,” he whispered. “Just let me hold you.”

Mina swam in a sea of dis­be­lief as her tears con­tin­ued to fall, as this ut­terly un­ima­gin­able, wholly in­com­pre­hens­ible mo­ment con­tin­ued to play out. It was as if the world as she knew it was no longer on fire; the Realm was no longer un­der at­tack; and her ter­ri­fy­ing ob­lig­a­tion to the king­dom—and to Damian—was no longer loom­ing lar­ger than life. For one blessed, in­des­crib­able mo­ment, Mina Louvet felt safe. She
al­most
felt free. Dante Dragona, one of the most power­ful creatures she had ever known, was
hold­ing her
, pro­tect­ing her, cher­ish­ing her as if she were ac­tu­ally pre­cious in some in­tan­gible way—as if the two of them had all the time in the world to linger to­gether, when she knew it wasn’t true.

Fi­nally, when her tears were all spent, Mina cleared her throat and whispered, “My prince, I can’t…I don’t…” Her voice trailed off, and she tried again: “Why are you do­ing this…
for
me
?”

Dante drew in a long, labored breath, and she felt the weight of the world shift upon his shoulders like golden coins upon a scale, be­ing lif­ted, re­coun­ted, and then scru­tin­ized again. “You and I are not so un­alike,” he said softly, his sin­cer­ity tak­ing her aback. “We are both be­holden to our duty, creatures mol­ded by our pasts, and equally de­term­ined to find some mean­ing, some honor, no mat­ter how in­sig­ni­fic­ant or small, in this per­il­ous world we live in. Would it be so wrong if, just this once, we lived in the mo­ment…for ourselves?”

Mina’s breath caught in her throat as she struggled to make sense of his words: How could Dante bed­ding Mina—and giv­ing her a child to pass off as Damian’s—equate to a mo­ment for them­selves? True, she would have a son to cher­ish, but she would also have a volat­ile and ex­plos­ive secret to carry to her grave. “And you pos­sess­ing me…tak­ing me…for­cing me to sub­mit…that would be a mo­ment of our own?”

“No,” Dante said harshly, “
that
would be an ab­om­in­a­tion. But Mina…” He ran his fin­gers through her hair, weav­ing the pads in and out of the thick raven strands. “Has it not been your de­sire since the day we first met for me to simply treas­ure you, just once, to show you true af­fec­tion?”

Her heart tightened in her chest, and she felt her tears re­turn. “But you don’t love me, my prince, and that’s just it.”

Dante sighed in frus­tra­tion. “Oh, sweet Mina.” He breathed softly, paus­ing for sev­eral in­ter­min­able heart­beats. “I can­not af­ford to love. I hardly know what love is. As a child, I loved my father, and he beat it out of me. As a youth, I loved my mother, and she turned her back on me out of fa­vor for Damian. As a brother, I loved my twin, and he hung that love in a tree be­cause his heart be­longed to a mor­tal wo­man. And through it all, I learned that love makes one weak. I learned to be strong, and I vowed not to love
any­one
…ever again.” He res­ted his hands on her shoulders and pulled her more tightly against him be­fore wrap­ping his arms firmly around her chest. “You, with all your fire and pas­sion and noble ideas, are only be­gin­ning to learn the les­sons that I’ve learned. Your heart bleeds for Ta­tiana, for your sis­ter, and now for the in­justice of your fate, and yet, you still love.” He nuzzled the nape of her neck, deeply in­hal­ing her scent. “Oh, sweet Mina, if I could’ve loved any, I would’ve chosen you: your fire, your beauty, your strength. And had my father given you to me—
as I de­sired
—I would’ve held you in high re­gard as much as any dragon can. I would’ve shown you pleas­ure and re­war­ded your obed­i­ence. I would’ve given you the Realm on a sil­ver plat­ter to make your obeis­ance easier. And yet, it would not have been enough, not for your sens­it­ive soul. And now…now you have Damian, a ter­rible cross to bear, and what little I can of­fer you, I still wish to give: a child of your own, an­other soul to love that is worthy of your pas­sion, and maybe, just maybe, you can give the babe what I no longer pos­sess, a heart that isn’t dead.”

Mina closed her eyes, let­ting all she had heard sink in. “My prince,” she fi­nally said, “to me, that is so very sad.”

He smiled, and she knew this be­cause she felt his lips curl against her hair. “Per­haps. Per­haps not. Do you know what I think is sad?”

She shook her head and waited.

“That you can’t see this rare, in­valu­able mo­ment for what it truly is, for what it can be.”

“And what is that?” she asked.

“A frozen mo­ment in time. A chance—
just one chance
—for two souls who owe everything, yet con­trol noth­ing, to have some­thing to call their own: a memory they will never for­get. A chance for two ser­vants, who have never had a choice, to fi­nally choose for them­selves.”

Mina glanced over her shoulder to gaze into the prince’s eyes—she was des­per­ate to read his ex­pres­sion—and when their eyes met, his were soft with com­pas­sion, un­char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally
alive
. They were filled with con­vic­tion, and he seemed to be search­ing her very soul with his gaze. Through quiv­er­ing lips, she mouthed the words:
What would we be
choos­ing?

He smiled at her, and his fea­tures be­came resplen­dent. “Eyes the color of em­er­alds,” he said. “A heart that can still love. I would be choos­ing
you
, Mina Louvet, over my father, over my brother, over my duty…if only for a night, an hour, a frozen mo­ment in time. I would be choos­ing you.”

Mina closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of Dante’s sooth­ing words. She took them in and bur­ied them deep in her heart, some­place sac­red, private, and un­touched, where she could find them—and re­trieve them later—to be used as a balm for her troubled soul. His un­di­vided at­ten­tion was re­ju­ven­at­ing, like wa­ter flow­ing through a bar­ren desert after years of an aching drought, and she couldn’t ab­sorb enough. His strength sur­roun­ded her. His voice ap­peased her. And his cer­tainty cast away all doubts…

Yet she knew she wanted more, needed so much more.

If only for a frozen mo­ment in
time
.

So what if it didn’t last forever?

So what if it wasn’t true love?

What could be truer than this ex­quis­ite, can­did mo­ment? Then the fact that Dante had prom­ised to save Raylea; that he had spoken hon­estly to Mina, from his heart; that he had offered to give her a child to love…

The ul­ti­mate de­fi­ance of
Damian.

Rock­ing for­ward to break free from his em­brace, Mina turned around and knelt between his legs. Bit­ing her bot­tom lip in a cau­tious, nervous ges­ture, she, once again, sought his pen­et­rat­ing gaze. “I have to pre­tend I love you,” she whispered, her own eyes brim­ming with tears.
“I have
to.”

“Shh,” he whispered, pla­cing two firm fin­gers against her quiv­er­ing lips. “Then don’t pre­tend, sweet Mina.
Don’t pre­tend
.”

Her mouth fell open in sur­prise, and he claimed the of­fer­ing with an ar­dent kiss. As his arms snaked around her waist, he pulled her to him, shim­mied away from the tree, and re­clined on the soft green grass, set­tling Mina on top of him.

“Dante.”
She breathed the startled word into his mouth as he fis­ted his hand in her hair. Al­though she froze for a mo­ment, she didn’t ob­ject, and he im­me­di­ately deepened the kiss, caging her between his power­ful, pos­sess­ive arms.