Page 1 of The Dragon King's Pregnant Mate

Chapter 1 - Calliope

The snow falls like ash all around me, thick and relentless. Each step is a battle against knee-deep drifts that seem to grab at my legs, trying to drag me down into their frozen depths. My borrowed boots—stolen from a dead soldier outside Millrath's walls—have long since soaked through, leaving my feet numb and clumsy as I forge ahead through the desolate forest.

I've lost track of how long I've been walking. Days blend into weeks, marked only by the endless cycle of dawn and dusk, each sunrise bringing a colder wind than the last. The forest stretches endlessly before me, a maze of black tree trunks against white snow, their bare branches clawing at a steel-gray sky.

Something is wrong with this winter.

I feel it in my bones, in the way the storms follow me like hungry wolves, growing stronger with each surge of fear or exhaustion that ripples through me. The snow falls harder when I stumble, when my resolve weakens. Sometimes, in the dead of night while huddled beneath pine boughs, I could swear I hear the wind whispering my name.

I curl around my midsection and try to remember how to breathe on those nights. I have one sole thing in this world to protect, I know. One purpose, a lone pillar in the endless cold.

My magic, once dormant, though it seems a lifetime ago, now pulses beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. It responds to every emotion, every fragment of fear or anger or despair. Each day I can feel it tearing at something inside me like delicate lace, a barrier I had not previously known was there; of course, now I know. All I have in the long, cold nights is this knowledge, my deep, eerie certainty that something is coming apart. I try to control the force of it, to keep it contained, but it slips free anyway—wild and untamed as the ancient power that flows through my veins.

The forest has grown preternaturally quiet tonight, as if holding its breath. No birds call, no small creatures rustle through the underbrush. Even the wind seems muffled, creating an eerie stillness that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I've learned to trust the feeling in my gut during these silences, or perhaps simply the silences themselves—they usually mean soldiers are nearby, combing the wilderness for any sign of their runaway queen. I can kid myself into believing the storm is quelling to warn me, sheltering me in the eye of the hurricane. Or perhaps it, too, wishes that I be found and dragged back south to my gilded cage.

But the wind does not know I am queen. The thought is a scant comfort.

I pause to catch my breath, leaning against a massive pine tree, listening hard. Its rough bark bites into my shoulder through the layers of stolen clothes—a guard's leather jerkin beneath a refugee's worn cloak. Neither meant for this kind of cold. My hand drifts unconsciously to my stomach, still flat beneath the leather, though I know what grows there. Their presence is sharply rendered in my mind every day, stronger all the time.

"We'll be alright," I whisper into the cold, breath turning silver upon the air. My voice sounds small and lost in the vast silence.

What pitiful words they are. What a pitiful thing I have become. At least I am free, I think, wildly, furiously. At least I am free.

But where might house me now? Who would take me, this thing I have become, the danger it brings? Where could I possibly escape from the fearsome cold, the near-endless night? Essenborn, my home village, now merely rubble, is west of where I stand. I know Fort Caddell lies somewhere ahead, further north, beyond these endless trees at the foothills of the jagged mountains that loom on the horizon like teeth of the jaws closing endlessly around this nation. The last human stronghold in Kaldoria, where dragons are forbidden to enter. It might offer sanctuary, if I can reach it before Arvoren's forces find me. If the brutal cold doesn't claim me first.

Arvoren. His name sends a painful twinge through my chest. In my weaker moments, usually in the dark hours before dawn, I let myself remember: the warmth of his arms around me, the fierce protectiveness in his golden eyes, the way his voice softened when he spoke my name. But those memories are dangerous. They make me want impossible things.

A distant horn blast shatters the silence, sending my heart racing. The sound echoes through the trees, followed by answering calls that seem to come from all directions at once.

They're closer than I thought. I have to move.

I push away from the tree, forcing my frozen legs to move. The snow is falling faster now, responding to my fear, thick flakes swirling around me in a dizzying dance. My magic rises unbidden, making the temperature plummet until the very air seems to crack with the cold.

The horns sound again, closer this time. The soldiers are coordinating, moving in formation through the forest. Hunting. Always hunting—huntingme,though I know they do not know I’m here. They’re hunting me everywhere, I know. Across all of Kaldoria, they howl my name, or the only name that matters now:heretic, heretic, heretic.

I stumble forward, no longer trying to be quiet. Speed matters more than stealth now. The snow pulls at my feet, dragging me down, each step requiring more effort than the last. My breath comes in ragged gasps that tear at my throat. The cold seems to reach inside me, turning my lungs to ice.

Through the curtain of snow, I catch glimpses of movement—dark shapes moving between the trees, too precise to be shadows. The soldiers are spreading out, trying to encircle their prey. Me.

My grandmother's voice echoes in my memory.Magic responds to need, little one. The greater the need, the stronger it flows.At the time, I cared not for the meaning of her words, nor why she suspected I might need them. I only wished to hide in the soft warmth of her voice.

Somehow, she must have sensed that need would arise someday in me. I need it now. Need it desperately.

I reach deep inside myself, past the exhaustion and fear, past the bone-deep cold, to that well of power that broke free in Millrath, worlds away from this place. It shies for a single moment from my grasp, a startled animal. Then, seeming to sense I am as desperately afraid and furious as it is, it rises eagerly, too eagerly, surging through my veins like liquid fire.

My ears begin to ring. As my vision spots with black, tiny dots swimming up into my sight, I hear shouting in the trees, though I cannot see what is happening. The wind howls and my legs tingle fiercely, then my arms, then my entire body.

The world disappears into white. I hear more shouts of alarm from the soldiers as their carefully coordinated hunt dissolves into chaos—a distant scream, a harrowing yelp from a hunting dog. The smell of death. The wind howls, drowning out their voices, driving the snow horizontally through the trees with enough force to strip bark from trunks.

Something in the back of my brain, the strain of animal instinct we all have within ourselves, tells me to run.

I run. Or try to. My legs are leaden, my whole body trembling with the effort of maintaining whatever fury my power has unleashed upon the forest. The ringing gets louder. I feel tiny, sharp skittering like static electricity in all my limbs now, travelling up and down.Too much.It's too much power, too fast. But I can't stop. Can't let them find me. Can't let them take me back to him.

Can’t let them hurt my child.

A wave of nausea hits without warning. I stumble, catching myself against a tree as my stomach heaves. Nothing comes up. I haven't eaten since yesterday. The storm falters with my lack of concentration, the wind dying momentarily.

Through the trees, I hear the stampeding of horses, the single distant, solitarycrackof an arrow hitting something hard not far from me. A brief, sharp snap of laughter echoing in the night. A viscerally angry shout, then dozens of voices calling out to regroup.