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FENROTHER

N o one has ever asked me about being alone before.

This could be because I am alone.

I like being alone.

“I am always alone. I am the Lambton Wyrm,” I respond, my brow growing tight.

“It is how it has always been.”

“So, no one looked after you when you were…smaller?” Alice queries.

“You don’t have any friends, any family?”

I snort at her suggestion.

“What would I want with any of those?”

“I don’t know.” Alice looks up at the shelves which stretch to many times her height.

“Company? Conversation? Assistance?”

“I am the Lambton…”

“Yes, I know.” Alice sighs.

“You are the Lambton Wyrm.” She imitates my deeper voice.

“That’s the one thing you keep telling me,” she adds techily.

“But it doesn’t actually explain anything.”

“I have my texts and my castle.” I lean back in my chair.

“I have done my part in the wars of the Night Lands. I am content.” My eye catches the silvery scars which run down my left side, and I immediately concentrate entirely on Alice, not wanting to think about them.

“So, what do the texts tell you about finding your mate?” she asks.

“It is not something I can control,” I growl.

“Nor is it something Queen Mab has any say in either.”

“So, why did she do the whole lightning storm to issue an ultimatum?”

I shrug.

“There has always been a Lambton Wyrm. She wishes my line to continue.”

“Absolutely nothing she said suggested she was in any way altruistic toward you or me.” Alice huffs.

“And I particularly do not like being told who I have to have sex with or that I’m expected to pop out a child on demand.”

Her words make my pizzle ripple again.

“Queen Mab does not dictate what I do,” I respond.

“I choose, although sometimes there is an instinct a Wyrm cannot deny.”

“Well start denying it,” Alice fumes.

I lean back in my chair and prop my feet up on my desk, staring at the ceiling.

“I do not recall my mother or father. My earliest memories are of the inside of the castle well as a young Wyrm.” I smile to myself.

“Plenty of time in the water, tadpoles to eat. It was good. Then I climbed out of the well and found my home.”

“But who taught you to read? To write?” Alice demands.

“If there was no one here.”

“I taught myself,” I say, feeling confused again.

“Didn’t you?”

“No, I went to school. I was taught with other human children. I had parents. I grew up around other humans until the plague came and took them, before the Faerie arrived to save us all,” she says, chewing the words and spitting them out.

I tuck one arm behind my head.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“You prefer to be alone?”

“It’s served me well.”

“Right up until the moment I was dropped in your lap,” Alice says.

“And you’ve been told to make a baby in a month.” Her voice tails off and she turns her back on me.

“No one forces me, or my mate, to do anything,” I growl, on my feet in an instant.

“I fought for Queen Mab in the Night Lands because it is what the Lambton Wyrm has always done. She might have disliked my decision to return, but it doesn’t mean I have to do what she says.”

“Then why the whole drama? Why the threats?”

I feel my guts twist, and it’s far, far worse than my pizzle reacting to her words.

The female deserves to know the truth.

“When a Wyrm takes a mate, he has but one moon month to get her with child or there will be no other chance,” I respond.

“His line will die out.”

“And what about the mate? The queen said I would die too.”

“Without a Wyrm to protect you,” I sigh, “a scrap like you would not last long in the Yeavering.”

“So, I don’t get to go back beyond the veil if I don’t get pregnant?” Alice says quietly.

“You just abandon me in the Yeavering instead.”

A growl sits in my chest. For all this female is weird, soft, apparently without inbuilt weapons, and has a scent which sets my heart pounding.

I will never, ever abandon her.