Page 1

Chapter

One

Selle

I t was incredibly hard to find books about dragons and magic in my father’s castle. It was nearly impossible to find any books at all in the castle, since Father thought they were useless.

No, that wasn’t true. Father knew that books were not only useful, they were dangerous. They led to revolutionary things, like learning and forming ideas. That would inevitably cause the people of our kingdom to notice how vicious my father’s intentions to rule over them all and to make war on our neighboring kingdoms were, so he couldn’t have that. He hadn’t reached the point of gathering up all the books in the kingdom and burning them yet, but he’d levied taxes on paper and the supplies that were needed to make books.

The fact that I’d been able to find a book that contained information about magical worlds at all was a small miracle.

“It’s just a book of fairy tales,” I told my brothers as we bided our time in our bedchamber prison, “but it’s the closest I’ve been able to find to anything resembling reference material about the magical world.”

“Does it say anything about how dragons find their mates?” my younger brother, Misha, asked with his usual, adorable sweetness.

I smiled at the look of hope in his eyes. Our brother, Tovey, had been claimed by a dragon only the month before. Tovey and the ruby dragon, Rufus, were fated mates. They’d met at one of the fantastical dances we omega brothers had attended in the magical world, an entirely different realm which was accessible through an enchanted door hidden under our eldest brother Rumi’s bed.

Tovey and Rufus had fallen in love almost instantly, which Tovey had described to us as the strangest and yet the most natural feeling he’d ever experienced. They were fated mates, and the moment they’d met, their bond began to form. Shortly after they’d met, Tovey had gone into heat, and much to his and all of our amazement, he’d immediately become pregnant with Rufus’s…eggs.

I adjusted my glasses, then flipped through the pages of my book, searching once again for anything that could explain the phenomenon of a dragon’s omega mate producing an egg instead of a live child. My book was mostly filled with tales of omegas in distress, evil sorceresses who fell in love with good princes and were jealous of the love that those princes had for their beloved omegas, and all the adventures involved in vanquishing evil. It wasn’t exactly reference material.

“As near as I can figure,” I said, answering Misha’s question, “dragons and their omega mates just meet, as if by accident. When they meet, they know they are fated. It’s written into the fabric of their souls.”

“Rubbish,” Leo sniffed as he paced the perimeter of the room. “There’s either magic involved or the dragon and their mate meet the way everyone else meets.”

Misha and I exchanged wry grins, then looked at Leo like he was being silly.

“Don’t you believe in things like fated mates and love at first sight?” Misha asked him.

“I do!” Obi, our youngest brother announced, jumping away from our room’s single window, where he’d been gazing longingly out into our papa’s garden, the only other place the five of us were allowed to spend any time these days. “I believe in love at first sight. I fell in love with that dashing alpha I danced with the other night, when we were celebrating in the magical pavilion.”

Rumi, who was sitting on his bed with a needle and thread, repairing the hem of one of his shirts, laughed. “You fell in love with that handsome beta who helped you retrieve your mask when it fell into the lake the week before,” he said.

“And weren’t you desperately in love with the alpha attendant who served that fruity punch last month?” I asked.

Obi blushed and shrugged. “I love falling in love. Especially now that I believe it might actually happen to me for real.”

He wasn’t trying to be serious, but his statement felt like a sobering reminder of the life we were almost trapped in.

The six of us, when Tovey had still been with us, had become virtual prisoners of our cruel and conniving father, King Freslik. Father hated omegas. He’d married Papa because Papa had been the only omega in a large family of alphas and he’d been certain he could get many alpha sons from him.

But Father had treated Papa with more and more cruelty after each new omega son was born. After Obi, he’d cast Papa aside entirely and attempted to get an alpha heir with one concubine or another. But none of those unfortunate mates had ever produced any sort of child. Father was stuck with six omega sons as his heirs, and throughout the kingdom, people whispered that it was because Papa had actually been some sort of magician who had cursed Father for stealing him from the alpha he’d actually loved.

Whatever the case, the six of us had grown up clinging to ourselves and Papa as our true family, and when Papa had died when Obi was ten, we’d only had each other.

Except now we had the magical world, thanks to the enchanted marble Rumi’s mysterious beau had gifted him. And Tovey had Rufus and their twin eggs now as well. Tovey had moved fully into the magical world a month ago to be with them, which had enraged Father, who thought?—

No sooner had my mind started to wander over my brother’s story when the door to our large, round bedroom flew open and our father marched in, flanked by four guards.

“Ah ha!” he shouted, then looked around, hoping he’d caught us doing something we shouldn’t have been doing.

We were doing nothing unusual. I had been reading, Rumi was sewing, Leo was pacing, and Misha and Obi had been talking. Once again, Father’s attempts to prove that we were all nefarious villains hiding Tovey’s whereabouts from him deliberately failed .

“Good morning, Father,” Rumi said with a smile of false sweetness. He set aside his sewing and got off his bed.

“Good morning, Father,” the rest of us said as well, all smiles and benign welcome.

Father scowled at us all. He knew we were teasing him, but he couldn’t figure out how. “You should all be miserable,” he muttered, frowning. He then shook his head and said, “I’m giving you another chance to reveal the whereabouts of your wretched, lying brother, Tovey.”

The five of us blinked at each other, as if that was the first time we’d even heard of Tovey.

“I know you know where he has escaped to,” Father growled on. “You helped him to escape. You cannot fool me.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Leo said, blinking rapidly. “Did you not give Tovey to Lord Groswick? Has he not taken our brother away?”

Father had intended to give Tovey to the odious Lord Groswick in exchange for the plot Groswick had conceived of to tax the farmers of our kingdom so that Father could fill his coffers and bring them to heel. Tovey and Rufus had foiled the plan, and when they’d forced Lord Groswick to confess his duplicity to everyone in the kingdom during a festival, Father had had no choice but to lock Groswick away.

We knew full well that Tovey hadn’t been dragged off by the man, who was still in the castle’s dungeons, as far as I knew, but feigning ignorance was a fun way to tweak Father’s nose.

“You know full well…he is not…you think you can….” Father sputtered through several attempts to counter the story we stuck to every time he demanded we tell him where Tovey was, which was daily. “You know where your brothe r is, and you will tell me at once!” he shouted. “I will not let you out of this room until you confess all to me!”

We glanced at each other and shrugged. The five of us had grown incredibly skilled at looking ignorant over the past month.

“We know nothing,” Rumi said, speaking for all of us, as he frequently did. “You have kept us locked in this room for a month now without any contact with the outside world. How would we have any knowledge of where Tovey has gone?”

Father hissed and nearly stomped his foot in a tantrum. “Simply keeping you locked away is not good enough. I have half a mind to reduce the rations you’ve been allowed to starve the answer out of you.”

He grinned and rubbed his hands together, but his wicked look faded when he saw we weren’t cowed by his threat. The fact was that we traveled to the magical world every night to attend dances at the pavilion and to visit with Tovey and Rufus. The eggs were getting larger every day, although it would be another few months before they hatched. We had plenty to eat in the magical world, and we tended to bring small parcels back with us to eat the next morning.

“So you still refuse to tell me where your brother is?” Father demanded, jaw clenched.

“We don’t know,” I lied with a shrug.

Father huffed. “Then I hope you enjoy these walls,” he said. “They will be your prison until you confess.”

Without waiting for any sort of response from us, he turned and marched out of the room, the guards following. Once they were all in the hall, he turned to glare at us one more time, then slammed the doors.

We waited a few seconds, then burst into laughter .

“The only person Father is hurting with his antics is himself,” I said, closing my book, pushing my glasses up my nose, and standing.

“He’ll die of apoplexy if he keeps aggravating himself over Tovey,” Misha agreed quietly.

“Who would inherit the kingdom if Father dies?” Obi asked as we all headed to the wardrobes beside our beds to change into our dancing costumes for the night. “Omegas cannot become kings.”

I shrugged. “I think Father has a younger brother, but he was banished before we were born.”

“He did and he was,” Leo said as he pulled on a blue tunic. “But Uncle Florian was an omega, so he couldn’t have inherited the throne either.”

“Then why did Father banish him?” Obi asked, sitting on his bed to put on his dancing shoes.

“I think it’s because he was with child,” I said. “Father couldn’t have known if that child was an alpha that might supplant him, but he banished Uncle Florian anyhow.”

“I heard he stole the child, which was an alpha, when it was born and did something bad to him,” Misha said in a hush.

“I hope not,” I said, genuinely worried for the potential cousin I’d never met.

There wasn’t time to think about it. We changed quickly, and with a little push, Rumi’s bed was moved to the side, revealing the magical door.

I always felt a thrill when my brothers and I descended the golden stairway into the vibrant forest of the magical world. It was like I could finally breathe and my spirit could come alive after the oppression of living in our father’s world.

I knew the path from the spot where Rumi’s door opened to the lake where the pavilion stood so well now. The trees that lined the path were tall with leaves of every shade of green imaginable. But they were also dripping with gems, in clusters and in ropes, as if jewels were the fruits they bore. The air was fragrant with promise, and the music that wafted to us from the pavilion had my heart singing even before we came within sight of the lake.

The lake itself looked as if it were made of living, liquid crystal. It sat at the bottom of a small hill, atop which was a magnificent castle that I was itching to explore. In the nearly two months since my brothers and I had started attending dances at the pavilion, several of the partners I’d danced the nights away with had told me that the castle belonged to the dragons that ruled over the magical world.

Well, in actuality, it was the dragons’ mother, Queen Gaia, who ruled the magical world. Some said she ruled all the worlds. Her son, the prince who I suspected was Rumi’s secret lover, Emmerich, was the ruler of the particular part of the magical world where the forest, castle, and pavilion stood. Tovey had confirmed that Rufus had rooms at the castle as well, as did all of his brothers and other family members, but Rufus and Tovey preferred to spend their time at Rufus’s lair, now that they had eggs.

We crossed over one of the magical bridges of grass that appeared for invited guests to give them access across the lake and into the pavilion. I stood straight, glancing around to see if Tovey and Rufus had decided to make an appearance at the night’s dance. I couldn’t see them anywhere, but I did see several familiar faces. Fairly quickly after we’d discovered the magical world and begun attending the nightly dances, my brothers and I had made friends with several people in the magical world.

As soon as I picked up my favorite golden mask, one that fit magically well over my glasses, from the table at the perimeter of the pavilion and fastened it in place, one of my new friends, an omega named Billi, rushed up to me.

“You’re here!” he exclaimed, grasping my arm. “You have to come join the conversation,” he rushed right on, his lilting voice filled with excitement.

“What conversation?” I laughed. I nodded and waved to my brothers, each of whom now had their masks and dispersed through the pavilion to dance or find the particular friends that they had made.

“There is much happening in the magical world that you’ve missed,” Billi told me, his large, purple eyes bright with excitement.

I didn’t know for certain, because the topic had never come up, but I suspected Billi was a unicorn. All of the books I’d been able to find indicated purple eyes meant someone was a unicorn.

“I know time passes differently in the magical world than it does in our world,” I told Billi, “but I didn’t think it was that different.”

Billi laughed in the unique way he had that sounded like a delicate horse’s whinny, which seemed to confirm my theory about him being a unicorn, and said, “Time magic is the trickiest magic. Our worlds don’t run concurrently, but they’re close. In any case, the talk of the day is about missing ogres!”

We’d just reached a group of Billi’s friends, all of them omegas, who I’d been becoming friends with as well. They turned to us as if we’d been there for the conversation from the beginning.

“It’s true,” one of them, a dryad named Maeve, said, her leafy hair fluttering as she spoke. “An entire clump of ogres has gone completely missing.”

“A clump?” I asked, laughing before I could stop myself.

“That’s what a village of ogres is called,” Gandy, a beautifully fae-like omega who I was reasonably certain was an actual fae said, their voice musical. “Not that ogres are very good at organizing themselves into any sort of society.”

“Ogres wander off and get lost all the time,” Billi said, “but for an entire clump to go missing all at the same time is extraordinary.”

“They get lost?” I asked, reflexively trying to push my glasses up my nose before realizing my mask was keeping them where they needed to be anyhow.

“Ogres are unforgivably dumb,” Maeve said, rolling her eyes. “They hate everyone different from them, think they’re better than everyone else, but they’ll dribble all over themselves to follow the first idiot who tells them what they want to hear as if they’re that person’s slaves with no minds of their own.”

“The only thing they love is violence,” Gandy confirmed with a wary expression, as if they had experienced that violence themself.

“And you say an entire clump has gone….”

I was interested in the conversation, truly, I was. But my statement faded off into nothing as I glanced across the pavilion and saw the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on entering from a bridge that had appeared on the castle side of the lake.

Instantly, my heart stood still, and when it began to beat again, it was for one thing and one thing only. It beat for the man who had just arrived at the dance. I’d never seen him before. He was a particularly tall alpha with broad shoulders and a trim waist. His hair was golden blond, its highlights catching in the magical light that illuminated the pavilion. He was dressed in an elaborate white suit rich with gold embroidery and braid around his collar and cuffs, and he wore golden-brown breeches that hugged his strong legs.

My womb shivered with longing as I watched him walk over to a group of other alphas and greet them. I could already feel slick dripping from my hole, as if I were going into heat, and the second the man turned, scanned the crowd with a curious, urgent look, then met my eyes, that slick truly began to flow.

“Ooh! That’s Prince Gildur!” Billi exclaimed, nearly prancing with excitement. “It looks like he’s seen you, too!”

“He’s coming over here,” Maeve whispered, grabbing Gandy.

“Did you see the way he looked right at Selle?” Gandy giggled.

“I’m not certain it’s me he’s looking at,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. I felt hot all over and…ripe. That was an embarrassing word to use to describe my feelings, but it was so right.

“It’s definitely you,” Billi said. He glanced to the others and said, “We should leave you to it.”

“What? It? Me?” I blabbered. “Don’t go!”

It was too late. My friends dashed away as Prince Gildur drew closer. Worse, or maybe better, still, Prince Gildur noticed the others fleeing and his smile grew. He slowed down his pace, approaching me with a devilish arrogance in his stride that I reacted to at once, even though I usually found arrogance completely off-putting.

“Well, well. What have we here?” Prince Gildur asked as he came close.

I breathed in his alpha scent and immediately my mouth began to water. He smelled of rich linens and fine cedar, like the sort used to make boxes that stored delicate and naughty pieces of clothing.

“You’re Prince Gildur,” I said, embarrassed by how weak my voice sounded. I was not weak, and I was not silly or stupid either. But something about the man who stopped in front of me and raked me with a gaze made me feel…squiggly.

“You have an advantage over me,” Prince Gildur said. “I don’t know who you are.”

“Selle,” I said, then cleared my throat, stood taller, and said with my chin raised, “Prince Selle.”

Recognition seemed to dawn in Prince Gildur’s eyes. “Prince Selle,” he said, his smile growing. “I believe you’re my brother Rufus’s mate’s brother.”

My smile warmed. “Yes, I am. Tovey is my brother.”

It was a stupid, obvious thing to say. It was more or less what Prince Gildur had just said to me.

“Would you care to dance, Prince Selle?” Gildur asked, holding out a hand to me.

“I would love to,” I answered breathlessly.

From the moment I took his hand, I knew. All it took was that touch of skin against skin and every cell in my body rearranged itself to the truth that the man who led me the short distance onto the dance floor was my fated mate.

It was the most curious thing. Tovey had described the sensation, but I hadn’t truly grasped what it meant. But as Gildur took me into his arms to begin the waltz, I felt as though I’d known him all my life and that I would know him every day for the rest of my life.

“You’re not an omega of many words, are you,” Gildur said, telling me, not asking me, with an almost condescending look in his shining, amber eyes.

My dopey smile and my sense of breathlessness immediately vanished. “I beg your pardon?” I asked, frowning slightly behind my mask.

Gildur shrugged one shoulder. “I know. I’m overwhelming. Gold does that to people.”

My frown increased. “I’ve never been swayed by gold,” I said. And because I didn’t like the sense that he thought I was as silly as Billi and his friends, I squared my shoulders and added, “I’m more impressed by intelligence and careful thought.”

“Oh, I’m intelligent as well,” Gildur said, laughing.

“And arrogant,” I added, feeling unaccountably annoyed. My fated mate wasn’t supposed to be so full of himself.

Gildur laughed. “Yes, when it’s deserved,” he said.

“No one ever deserves to be arrogant,” I said. “Nothing good ever comes of someone thinking too highly of themselves.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Gildur said, as if he were correcting a child. “There’s nothing wrong with knowing when you have advantages and acknowledging them. I’m not about to walk around pretending I’m less than I am. I am a dragon, after all, a gold dragon.”

“Yes, I know,” I said flatly.

Gildur’s smug smile dropped, and I could just barely see a hint of the man beneath the persona he’d put on, like a rich cloak, for some reason. “You know?” he asked.

“Of course, I do,” I said, taking a turn pretending to be smarter than him. “My brother is mated to your brother. I know all about you.”

It was a lie. Tovey had never mentioned Prince Gildur. He’d mentioned Rufus had kinsmen, but he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to explore the world that was now his home. In fact, our other brothers and I likely knew more from the time we’d spent at dances than Tovey did.

“Oh,” Gildur said, looking vaguely disappointed. He spun me through a few turns in the dance, his expression puzzled. At least he was a good dancer. “I should probably ask you more about yourself,” he said.

“Yes, you should,” I replied with a satisfied grin. Gildur may have thought a lot of himself, but I could already feel where his weaknesses were and that he could be mastered, given time.

Actually, I rather liked the idea of mastering a dragon.

“So, you’re one of the captive omega princes,” Gildur said, prompting me.

“I am,” I said, giving away as little as I could. If my fated mate wanted to get to know me, he would have to work for it.

“That must be…nice,” Gildur said.

I laughed, then felt something, like I knew he liked the sound. “It’s not nice at all,” I said. “Our father, King Freslik, keeps me and my brothers more or less captive in our bedchamber at his castle. If not for the magic doorway, we would have very miserable lives indeed.”

“Thank the Goddess for magical doorways, then,” Gildur said, his smile resuming. “Of course, magical doorways can cause problems as well.”

“Can they?” I asked, my heart beating fast again as I tasted the possibility of learning all the things I was desperate to know about the magical world but had been unable to find out.

“Yes, but there’s no need to worry your pretty head about all that,” Gildur smiled.

I narrowed my eyes and stepped away from him as the dance ended. He looked confused .

“Do you know,” I said, “I think I will worry my head over it. I think I’d rather worry my head than spend time dancing with an alpha who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

“I didn’t say?—”

“I think I’ll find my friends so we can continue our exciting conversation about missing ogres,” I said, then bowed to him. “Good day, Prince Gildur.”

“But I wasn’t finished?—”

I turned away from him and headed to the edge of the pavilion, where my friends were watching with looks of awe. A clever smile touched my lips. I liked Gildur. I liked him a lot. But I wasn’t the sort to fall all over myself to give an arrogant alpha what he wanted, even if he was my fated mate. If Prince Gildur wanted to woo and win me, he was more than welcome to try.