Page 25 of The Dragon King's Pregnant Mate
I try again to tell him about the baby, about Ulric's schemes, as I know I should, but the words still stick in my throat. All I can do is watch as he begins to fade, his form dissolving into the swirling snow. The last thing I see is the naked anguish on his face, the way he strains toward me even as he disappears. There is something strange in his face, and I recall the distance, the fury, the strain. I recall all we have both lost to one another. Nothing seems so simple all of a sudden.
"Wait," I try to call, but the dream is already slipping away, leaving only that lingering warmth behind.
I wake with tears frozen on my cheeks and the taste of winter on my tongue. The fierce echo of his presence seems to reverberate through me like a tuning fork, sharp and jarring and unending. But still, the warmth of him lingers in my chest, fighting back the perpetual chill that seems to seep from the very stones of this place. I still don’t know whether I hate the feeling of it.
Something moves within me then, a flutter so distinct it steals my breath.
My hands fly to my stomach as I feel it again—the lightest of movements, like butterfly wings against my palm. The child, making themselves physically, tangibly known for the first time, cutting through my very worst fears. Their presence feels stronger suddenly, more defined, as if the dream has awakened something in both of us.
And with that touch comes understanding, sharp and clear as breaking ice.
The strange warmth I've been feeling, the impossible connection to my husband that grows stronger each day—it's not just my magic reaching for Arvoren. It'sourmagic. The child's power mingles with mine, amplifying everything, creating a bond that even Ulric's poisons can't fully sever. No wonder he's so desperate to keep me drugged, to keep me weak. He must suspect what's happening to me, must have suspected it long before I could hope to guess it. He must have figured my magic will only grow stronger still as my child grows.
Dragon and Windwaker blood combined. Something unprecedented. Something that could reshape the world, for better or worse. I know what he meant now, though I still despise the words.
A tap at my window draws my attention. Through the narrow arrow-slit, I catch glimpses of the storm still raging outside. But it looks different now, more purposeful somehow. The wind seems to move with intent, driving snow against the ancient stones in patterns that almost look like words, but then they’re gone again, and I am alone, and I am cold, and I yearn so strongly for safety and warmth that it feels as if it might break me open.
I press my hand harder against my stomach, feeling that precious warmth. The child moves again, stronger this time, as if responding to their father's voice on the wind. Whatever else Arvoren might be—dragon, tyrant, monster—he is also the other half of this miracle growing within me. And something deep in my soul knows he would die before letting Ulric harm us.
"Your father's coming," I whisper to our child, though the words catch in my throat. My voice sounds small and lost in the vastness of the tower, but I feel the truth of it in my bones. "And whatever your uncle has planned, whatever poison he feeds us, he can't break this connection. We just have to survive until then. We just have to hold on.”
And after Arvoren finds me?
No matter what, I will fight for this child until my dying breath.
The wind howls fiercer, making the tower's ancient bones creak and groan. I curl around my midsection, trying to share what little warmth I have with our child. Outside my chamber, I hear the heavy tread of guards changing shifts, the whispered conversations of servants who never meet my eyes. Sometimes I catch fragments of their words, carried on drafts that whistle through cracks in the mortar. Whispers of armies moving in the night, of strange lights in the northern sky.
Ulric's lies still weigh on me—the possibility, if he speaks the truth, that Arvoren truly has ordered my death, that my husband sees me as nothing more than a threat to be eliminated. But the dream planted more than doubt. It gave me hope, dangerous as that might be.
I refuse to believe a single lie again in this life, I swear to myself.
And when I doubt, when I fear, I close my eyes, remembering the desperate longing in Arvoren's gaze. Despite all else between us, his love is an anchor, an island in a vast and churning ocean. A single solid thing. My feet seem to brush against it for a moment, a single instant of stability before I am whisked away. No matter what Ulric claims, those weren't the eyes of a man who wants me dead. They were the eyes of someone who would burn the world to find what he's lost. I've seen that look before, in quiet moments when he thought I wasn't watching—when his mask of cold control would slip, revealing something fiercer and more tender beneath.
I know it. I know so few things in this world, but I know Arvoren will love me until he dies.
Whether that will be enough is another question entirely.
The child moves again. I swear I feel something else—a pulse of foreign emotion that cuts through my exhaustion like a blade. Determination. Fury. A bone-deep need to protect. Arvoren's feelings, bleeding through our connection, growing stronger with each passing hour.
Let Ulric play his games. Let him think his poisons and schemes can break us. He doesn't understand what he's really fighting, not truly. He cannot understand that which he will never feel.
We just have to survive long enough for Arvoren to find us. Just have to stay strong, stay smart, stay alive.
The storm rages on, and somewhere out there in the swirling white, a dragon hunts through the night, following the impossible tether of magic and blood and love that binds us all together. I feel him drawing closer with each passing hour, his presence growing stronger in my dreams, in the child's movements, in the very air around me.
I press my hand to the cold glass of the window, watching frost spread from my fingers in delicate patterns. The storm responds to my touch, snow swirling closer, and for a moment I swear I can smell smoke and dragon-fire on the wind. Somewhere out there, Arvoren rides through the endless night, drawing closer with each passing hour.
And when he finds us—when he discovers what his brother has done, what he planned to do—I’m certain that one way or another, there won't be enough left of Ulric to bury.
Chapter 12 - Arvoren
The stronghold rises from the ravine below us like a broken tooth, black against the predawn sky.
I stand at the edge of the ridge, snow swirling around my boots as I study the ancient fortress below. Even from here, I can feel the weight of centuries pressing down—there's old magic in those walls, maybe older than my kingdom itself. The tower seems to twist strangely when viewed directly, its geometry refusing to settle into anything that makes sense. Sometimes I count seven levels, sometimes nine. It is enchanted so thickly that it gives me a headache.
My dragon blood recoils from it instinctively, scales rippling beneath my skin as I fight the urge to transform, to take to the sky and burn this cursed place to ash. But that would mean risking her. And I've risked her enough already.
"No wonder it's not on any maps," Darian mutters beside me, his voice barely audible over the wind. Steam rises from his armor where snow melts against the metal, heated by the fire that burns in all dragonborn. "Place doesn't want to be found. Doesn't even want to be seen."