Page 10 of The Forsaken Heir

That was a sore spot for me. As the crown prince and heir to the throne, it was expected that I take a mate and sire children.

The population had to increase. If I took over, it didn’t matter how good my policies and plans were if there weren’t enough dragons to implement them.

Our birthrate was decreasing every decade.

In five or six hundred years, at the current rate, our species might be close to extinct.

An eternity for the human mind to comprehend, but barely more than a generation for dragon shifters.

“It’s going fine,” I lied. “I have my eye on a few ladies.”

My father smirked. “Truly?”

Truly? No. The truth was, the council had steered the very women my father had spoken about in my direction.

I’d found them all lacking. They were beautiful, smart—some of them were funny—and charming, but I’d yet to feel that spark .

And I flatly refused to bind myself to a woman I felt nothing for.

It wasn’t fair to me, and it most definitely wasn’t fair to her.

Sometimes, in the darkest parts of the night, I worried that love would never be in the cards for me.

As king I would have to marry. That was a given.

Right now, as prince, I have more options and time to be picky.

Once the crown was placed on my head, my choices would be removed.

I’d take a wife, spark or no spark, and do my duty.

The thought always filled me with sadness.

My entire life, I’d dreamed of having the kind of love my parents had shared.

“Sure.” I grunted the single syllable as an answer to his question.

He stared at me for several long moments, and I thought I could almost see the thoughts and questions spinning, desperate to be let out. Thankfully, he seemed to read my reticence to speak on the issue on my face.

“What of the humans?” he asked, again changing the conversation course back to diplomatic areas rather than personal.

“They are as they’ve always been. They’re advancing faster than ever,” I said, happily going along with his line of questioning.

Dad shook his head in wonder. “You know, I can still remember when they first took flight. We’d heard rumors that they were trying, and none of us believed it could happen.

My father and I both truly believed the sky was the dominion of only one sentient species.

Then those two brothers did the impossible.

” He chuckled. “Now they have satellites in space, probes on the moon and Mars. Soon, their technology will be even beyond our magic.” He gestured to the computer on his desk.

“I can barely understand this thing as it is. Who knows where they’ll be when you take over as king? ”

“It is impressive, although I think it will be a few more centuries until they can compete with men who can transform into dragons at will.”

Our conversation continued like that for another hour.

As much as my father liked to think he had kept tabs on the advancement of the humans, he was woefully uninformed on most of their recent developments.

Gene editing, artificial intelligence, nano tech.

I was serious when I said the humans weren’t close to rivaling us and our magic, but it wasn’t as far out as I’d let on.

It wouldn’t be a few centuries. It might only be one.

When we’d covered all the topics that needed to be discussed, my father bade me farewell and called Titus for his dinner to be brought up.

“Dinner?” I asked at the door. “It’s past midnight, Dad.”

He shrugged helplessly. “A king’s job is never done. I forgot to eat. Better late than never.”

“Fair enough. Good night, Dad. I love you.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I love you too, son. Good night.”

Exhausted, I dropped my briefcase in my office, then headed to my quarters. All I truly wanted was to go to bed. I was still not fully recovered from my trip, and combined with the drama of the council meeting the night before and talking with my father, I was ready to crash.

Silence washed across the massive building I called home as I walked the halls. Silence, but for what sounded like a muffled conversation. In the hallway leading to my room, I could pick out a couple of voices. Too quiet for me to make out the words or whether they were male or female.

Perhaps the staff were changing my sheets. It was incredibly late for such a task, but I couldn’t imagine who else might be in there.

As I opened the door, a strange new scent assaulted my nose. It was both foreign and familiar. A wolf ?

Before I’d made it two steps into the room, a strange and confusing tableau presented itself to me.

What I was seeing was so incomprehensible that I froze where I stood.

Vincent and Rasp were in my room, for some ungodly reason.

Vince was on his knees, his hands full of rope, tying knots.

Not an entirely unheard- of situation. He had a thing about puzzles and knots, but what didn’t make any sense was the fact that he was tying a woman to a chair.

A woman I’d never seen in my life. A woman who, by her scent, was a wolf.

Rasp straightened when he noticed me entering, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He looked like he’d returned home from school with a report card that declared he’d made the honor roll.

My eyes darted from my friends to the woman, taking her in.

She looked a bit frazzled. Her hair was a mess, and her jeans were stained with dirt and grass.

But what truly caught my attention were her eyes.

Bright green, almost like shards of jade.

When she looked at me, the fear in her eyes was real, but beneath it was something else.

A barely hidden fire. She was afraid, but not terrified.

Vince’s ropes had bit into her soft skin, accentuating certain areas.

My gaze tracked over her, and my breath caught in my throat.

She was curvaceous and sexy, and her face made my chest ache with longing.

Gods, she was beautiful. No, she was stunning.

Something stirred within me, but I tamped it down, too concerned with what was going on to explore it any further.

Pointing a trembling finger at the woman, I glared at my two best friends.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Rasp chuckled in delight. “We helped, bro.”

“Yeah,” Vince said awkwardly. “We, uh, helped.”

Taking a couple staggering steps into my room, I grabbed the door and slammed it shut. The captive woman flinched at the bang .

“Helped with what?” I asked, heat rising inside me.

“Dude,” Rasp said with a smile. “This is Bastien Laurent’s sister.”

“She’s the oldest,” Vincent explained.

“Right,” Rasp said, still grinning ear to ear. “He’s the heir to the family, but he’s not the firstborn. She is.”

I wouldn’t have been more shocked had I walked in to find Rasp having sex with a donkey on my bed. The ground seemed to give way beneath me as the true scope of what they’d done sank in.

Pushing my hair out of my face, I glared at my two friends, then shot a quick glance at the woman again.

My God. This was Brielle Laurent? The eldest daughter who’d been missing for years from her family and public life?

Her location and what had happened to her were a closely guarded secret.

Why on earth had these two thought kidnapping her would do anything good?

“You kidnapped this woman?” I asked, circling the three.

Rasp, sensing my displeasure, was rapidly losing his smile.

“Uh…yeah,” he said.

“I found her,” Vincent said, pressing his thumb into his chest.

“Oh yeah!” Rasp said, his smile regaining some of its former brilliance. “He did a bunch of research last night. I don’t know how he did it, but our boy here was able to find where she was when nobody else knew.”

I turned my glare on Vincent. “You found her? What the hell does that mean? How did you find her? She’s been missing for over ten years.”

Vincent grinned at me, obviously pleased with himself.

“I hacked some of the Laurent accounts. Found some strange wire transfers to a local bank account. Thought that was weird. So I checked on it and found an apartment with Laurent LLC as the leaseholder. Then I hacked the security cameras in the area and found a lady entering that looked sort of like the old pictures of Brielle Laurent. Easy enough.”

Finally unable to keep my temper leashed any longer, I lunged at Rasp, holding my hands out at my sides.

“What have you done? Do you have any idea what this will cause?” I shouted, unable to keep my voice steady.

Rasp flinched back in surprise. “Hey, man, this is good. We have their eldest daughter. We found her living in some human apartment. It was obvious she’d been kidnapped.

Probably stolen by, like, sex traffickers or something.

We saved her, bro. Now we can get her back to her family and stop all the animosity and shit. ”

He held his hand up for me to high five him. I didn’t move. Instead, I glanced at the woman, who was staring at Rasp with intense incredulity and confusion. Shit.

Shoving aside his upraised hand, I said, “So, you two thought she’d been kidnapped, yet you say her apartment was being paid for by her family?

She also has free reign to walk around and come and go as she pleases?

Doesn’t that seem fucking weird? Do hostages typically get to head out for coffee in the morning on their own? ”

Vincent and Rasp frowned and looked at each other. Vince looked worried, and Rasp confused.

“Uh…we, uh, we didn’t think about that,” Rasp said. “We just got really excited when we found her.”

Sighing in disgust, I knelt before the woman.