Page 6

Chapter

Six

Diamant

“ N o.” I wasn’t generally inclined to put my foot down when Leo truly wanted something, but circumstances had changed in the last several hours and we had more than just the two of us to consider now.

“No?” As expected, Leo turned to me with his own, sweet brand of fury in his eyes. “You expect me to languish here, like I have become your bed slave, when the people we were helping less than a day ago are in danger?”

I had to fight not to smile. My beautiful omega really was a fighter, but the way he subconsciously rested a hand over his belly was proof that everything had changed for him.

I huffed impatiently and sent my brothers a quick look. The two of them understood the gravity of the situation, but I could tell they were amused that I now had a strong-willed omega as part of my soul, too.

It wasn’t polite to talk about such things in public, but I had to point the obvious out to Leo. “You’re only half-bred,” I said, clearing my throat. “You have an egg growing inside you. We, er, need to finish the process.”

I felt a brief flash of amusement from my mate over the sheepishness with which I spoke of such things aloud, but it quickly turned to stubborn indignation.

“I don’t have to birth the egg immediately,” he said, then glanced to his brothers. “Selle, you birthed your egg almost right away, but Tovey, you waited several days before yours were birthed, right?”

“Yes,” Prince Tovey said hesitantly, glancing to Rufus at his side. “I felt terrible for those days, though.”

“That was because you were separated from your mate,” Prince Selle pointed out with a nod. “I never felt sick because I was with Gildur the whole time.” He smiled up at Gildur, then faced Leo again. “I think it’s possible that you won’t feel too ill if you and Diamant stay close.”

Leo damn well would stay close to me. Anyone who tried to separate the two of us now would feel my wrath.

I could feel Leo’s approval of those emotions through our new bond. He sent me a wicked grin then said, “That settles it. We’ll return to Berk and do whatever we can to help the villagers.”

I still had reservations about allowing my omega to dash off into a potentially volatile situation while with egg, but I knew him well enough to know it would be more painful to try to stop him. Besides, with the distress he was feeling about his impending papahood, allowing him to fight might be the best thing for him.

“We can go with you,” Prince Selle spoke up, standing taller.

“We will not,” Gildur countered him with a frown. “We have a precious egg at home that needs us.”

“Our eggs can do without us for a short time,” Prince Tovey said, appealing to Rufus. “If you’d like, we can stay in the background and only act if we’re needed.”

“Our triumph would be guaranteed if we had three dragons with us,” Leo said, energy and excitement pulsing through our bond.

I rather liked the feelings of Leo’s emotions wrapping themselves around me. He was so full of life and determination. It was like feeling a bracing breeze that encouraged action.

“We have to help our people,” Prince Selle appealed to Gildur one last time. “Our Father would destroy them all if given half a chance.”

Gildur let out a sigh. I knew my brother well enough to know that settled the matter. “Alright,” he said. “But you will stay well back from any danger. Our child needs you.”

Prince Selle practically burst with excitement as he turned to Leo. “What do we need to do?” he asked.

“First, we need to see what we’re up against,” Leo said, then glanced at me. “Can you make a doorway into Berk?”

I nodded. “Easily.”

I sensed Gildur’s disapproval and Rufus’s excitement as I waved a hand and opened a portal off to one side in the parlor. The only one of my kinsmen who was better at creating doorways than me was Emmerich. Fortunately, we didn’t need that level of precision for this particular door.

My door opened into an abandoned street at one end of Berk. As soon as we stepped through, the scent of burning and the cries of wounded animals assailed my ears .

“We’re too late,” Prince Tovey said, clinging to Rufus’s arm.

“We cannot be too late,” Leo said, marching forward, one hand on his belly.

I strode after my omega, ready to jump to his defense if he needed it.

There were no soldiers in the streets like there could have been, though. There weren’t as many people as there had been before the battle either.

“How much time has passed?” Leo asked, glancing to me as we marched side-by-side to Berk’s main street, searching for the people who had become our friends before the attack.

“I can’t tell,” I said, “but at least a day.”

“You’ve returned!”

Our small procession stopped and turned to find the alpha who had been skilled with making barricades coming out way.

“What happened?” Leo asked without hesitation, moving to meet the man in the center of a crossroads. “How did you fare in battle?”

“We held out as long as we could,” the alpha said, his voice laced with defeat and exhaustion. “They broke through our defenses and started burning buildings after a few hours.”

“Do you need help putting the fires out?” Prince Selle asked, stepping forward.

The alpha started to speak, then froze and just stared at him. “Prince Selle?” he asked. “We all thought you were lost. And Prince Tovey. Your Highnesses.”

The alpha moved like he would kneel before the three princes in front of him, but Leo stepped forward and stopped him .

“There will be time for that later,” he said, as strong as any leader. “Right now, we need to know where the army is and what hostages they’ve taken.”

The alpha only looked surprised that Leo knew hostages had been taken for a moment. “It must be ten hours at least since the soldiers swept through the village, taking as many of the vulnerable as they could.”

A woman who had been working near by noticed the conversation and came over to join us. Her dirty face was streaked with tears. “They took my sister and my papa both,” she said, sniffling. “I overheard one of their generals say King Freslik would be pleased to have such comely prisoners and that his noblemen would pay handsomely for them.”

I hadn’t thought my disgust in King Freslik could sink any lower, but the hint that he planned to sell his own people as slaves disgusted me.

“We need to find the camp where they’re being held,” I said, glancing first at my brothers, then at Leo. “This kind of cruelty by a king against his own people cannot be tolerated.”

“Agreed,” Rufus said, a deadly sort of fire in his eyes. “I should have squashed that bug when I first had the opportunity.”

“No one is squashing anyone,” Gildur said, holding out his hands. When we all turned to stare incredulously at him, he said, “Mother has rules. We cannot—” He glanced to the alpha and the woman, then cleared his throat. “We must obey the rules of engagement and find another way to resolve the situation.”

Meaning we couldn’t simply charge through the cruel world using magic to do the work for us .

It would have been infinitely more convenient to resolve the entire situation with magic.

“We should begin by helping these people restore their homes and livelihoods,” Prince Selle said, as if he’d already decided what he wanted to do.

“It’s a shame Rumi and Obi went back to the castle, otherwise they could have helped us,” Prince Tovey said.

Leo seemed to light up. “Rumi and Obi,” he said. “We need their help. And Misha’s, too, though this whole thing would probably terrify him.”

“I don’t see how putting more of you in danger is going to do much to find the captured villagers and rescue them,” Gildur said.

“This is their kingdom, too,” Leo insisted. “I know they want to be part of the efforts to save it. Besides, Rumi is the eldest of us and knows more about how Father thinks than the rest of us do.”

“He really would want to be a part of the efforts to fight back against Father’s tyranny,” Prince Selle pointed out, pushing his glasses up his face.

“Very well,” I sighed. Aside from the fact that my omega was stubborn enough to get himself into trouble if he didn’t get his way, I had to admit that involving Prince Rumi and Prince Obi could lead Emmerich and Argus to join our cause as well. “Where are the other princes now?”

“Back at our Father’s castle,” Prince Tovey answered. “They returned there hours ago.”

“Then I suppose we’re headed straight to the lion’s den,” I said. Admittedly, I felt a thrill at the possibility of facing King Freslik on his own turf. There was no telling what I would do if the two of us ended up alone in a room, though.

Leo grinned at me, clearly sensing that I wasn’t as opposed to the idea of continuing our crusade on the most dangerous ground possible. “Should we fly?” he asked, excitement rippling from him.

“No,” I said with a wry laugh. “Not in your condition, and not when we’ll be heading into a highly populated area.”

I could sense my beloved’s disappointment, but it abated a bit when I raised a hand subtly and caused a doorway straight into King Freslik’s castle to appear off to one side, out of view of the villagers who had gathered to plan a course of action with us.

“We need supplies first,” I gave the excuse for our departure to the villagers completely unconvincingly. I gestured for Leo to follow me to the alley where I’d created the door.

“What can we do to help you here?” Gildur asked the villagers as we left, drawing their attention away from us.

As the alpha answered, Leo and I slipped off, traveling through the doorway and straight into what looked like a seldom-used servant’s hallway in the castle.

“Mother will have words with me when she learns how many doorways I’ve created in the last few days,” I muttered, careful to close the door behind us before Leo and I started down the hall.

“From what Selle tells me, Queen Gaia is aware of everything that happens in the magical world, and this one, too,” Leo said. “If she didn’t want you meddling in things, she could find a way to stop you.”

“True,” I said. Although that had me wondering why she didn’t stop so many bad things, like King Freslik coming to power, in the first place and solve us all a lot of trouble.

As if my thoughts of King Freslik summoned the bastard, Leo and I heard his sharp voice moments before we were about to turn a corner that would have brought us face to face with the man.

I threw out an arm to push Leo and myself up against the wall, using a bit of magic to make us difficult to notice as the man passed.

“—don’t care what sort of army he has with him, I want him neutralized, even if I have to do it myself,” he was saying to a pair of advisors.

“Your Majesty, these are rumors only,” one of the advisors, a youngish alpha who already looked debauched beyond his years, said. “The only army within your kingdom is the one you hired to round up peasants and take them to the work camp.”

“The work camp is coming along nicely,” the other advisor, an older beta, said. “It will achieve so much more than simply bribing your people to behave on threat of their loved ones being hurt. I’ve already found a buyer willing to pay top dollar for the barrels and tools the prisoners, er, the workers have made.”

The man had more to say, but the trio moved too far away from where Leo and I hid for us to hear more.

“My father is evil,” Leo growled as we slipped back into the main hall and hurried on, Leo taking the lead. “He’ll pay for the cruelty he’s inflicting on his own subjects.”

“I’ve no doubt he will,” I agreed, though in my gut, I knew that it sometimes the arc of justice was long.

Leo slowed down as we approached the part of the castle where he explained in a quick whisper that his and his brothers’ bedchamber was located. I suspected his reason for slowing down as we approached and was proven right when we peered around the last corner to find four bored guards lounging in front of the door.

Two of the guards were playing some sort of dice game while sitting on the floor. One of the others was sitting in a corner, arms crossed, eyes closed, snoring. The fourth stood with his back against the door, picking his teeth with his fingernail.

“Your father doesn’t think much of you princes if these are the men he’s put in charge of guarding you,” I said with a bitter smirk.

“My father doesn’t think much of us at all,” Leo sighed. He swung back around the corner to look at me and whisper, “Do you think you can draw them away from the door?”

I grinned with particularly dragon-like zeal. “Easily.”

I gestured for Leo to lean back against the wall with me, and after reviving the spell to make us unnoticeable, I called out, “Guards! You four! Attend me at once!”

The order came out in King Freslik’s voice. Mimicking voices was a party trick I’d mastered, but never imagined using in any serious context. It worked, though. From where we waited around the corner, Leo and I could only hear the sudden scramble and clumsy shuffle as the guards leapt to attention.

“Your Majesty?” one of them asked.

“Follow me!” I shouted in Freslik’s voice. “You’re too slow! Attend me in the throne room!”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” all four of the guards grunted and blurted.

A moment later, the four of them rushed around the corner. They breezed right past us, not noticing Leo and I were there at all, and hurried on down the hall, as though they believed they were at fault for losing sight of their liege.

“I wish I could do that trick,” Leo laughed as we turned the corner and sped up to the door to the omega prince’s bedchamber. “I can think of a dozen times when it would have come in handy.”

“Given time, I’m sure you could do it,” I said as we reached the door and worked to lift the bar keeping it closed, then to turn the lock. When Leo looked at me with excited questioning, I said, “You’re a dragon’s mate. You share my magic. It takes time to learn to use it, but you have all the time in the world now.”

“I do?” Leo asked breathlessly.

I laughed as we turned the last lock. “Dragons live so long we are considered immortal, and our mates live as long as we do.”

“You mean I won’t ever die?” Leo’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“We all die eventually,” I said. “You and I will be blessed with a very long life indeed, though. If we can avoid being killed in an effort to defeat your father.”

There wasn’t time for all the questions I could feel Leo suddenly had about our future. As soon as we opened the door, Prince Rumi, Prince Misha, and Prince Obi leapt up from where they’d been reading, or in Prince Misha’s case, mending, in an arrangement of chairs in the center of the room.

“Leo?” Prince Rumi asked, coming forward ahead of the others. “What are you doing here?”

“Why are you coming in this way instead of—” Prince Obi glanced back to one of the bed, then blushed and glanced to me, as if he wasn’t certain he could reveal secrets in front of me.

“We need your help,” Leo said, gesturing for his brothers to leave their bedchamber and follow us. “Father’s mercenary army attacked the village of Berk and kidnapped many of their people. And just now, we heard Father and some of his advisors talking about this vile work camp he has established. We need to do whatever we can to find out where it is so that we can?—”

We’d only just reached the end of the hallway outside the princes’ bedchamber when the voice that I’d just imitated rang from the connecting hallway.

“I would never demean myself by calling the likes of you to my throne room,” King Freslik shouted in a temper. “You have one job and one alone, to guard the princes.”

There was no time to change course or open a doorway so that we could escape. A second later, King Freslik turned the corner, the four guards and two advisors with him. The omega princes pulled up short, eyes wide, as our two groups converged.

“You!” King Freslik bellowed, glaring at his sons. I could tell from the way he looked at them that he saw only three of them and not Leo. The cloaking magic I’d used earlier was still in effect. “How dare you?” Freslik went on. He turned to the guards. “How dare you allow my sons to escape. Are you in league with the sorceress?”

“We didn’t…They weren’t…Your Majesty,” all four of the guards stammered their weak defense, bowing and lowering themselves.

Prince Rumi stood straighter, valiantly taking charge. “We’ve heard about your wicked plot to keep your own people prisoner in a work camp, Father,” he said. “We won’t let you get away with this.”

King Freslik looked shocked at first, then his eyes narrowed. “If you are so concerned about the fate of a few, pitiful peasants, then perhaps you should share their fate,” he said.

I felt Leo tense by my side and through our bond, but not with fear or horror. My omega had just been struck by an idea. “Yes,” he said, stepping forward and breaking the spell that kept him hidden. “We should experience it for ourselves.”

King Freslik blinked and shook his head as he noticed his other son. His brow knit with suspicion, but instead of contradicting Leo, he snapped, “Guards! Take these sniveling omega whores to the work camp at once.”

I sucked in a breath as I realized two things. Firstly, Leo had used my magic with surprising deftness for one who was inexperienced with such things to put the thought of taking the princes to the camp into his father’s head. The second was that he didn’t want me to come with them.

“Tell the others,” he said aloud without looking at me. “You can find the camp through our bond.”

“What?” King Freslik barked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I knew exactly what it meant. My brave omega thought he could outsmart his father. As much as I hated the idea of separating from him, he had a good point.

There wasn’t time for me to discuss or debate the plan at any rate. The guards, eager to prove they weren’t a complete waste, jumped forward to grab the princes. All I could do was stand there and watch my beloved being marched away before turning and opening a door to race back into the magical world for whatever came next.