Page 5

ALICE

H e didn’t eat me.

He didn’t eat me.

He didn’t eat me.

I keep chanting the words in my head as Fenrother changes back into his massive dragon form and, without asking, captures me in his claws once again before rising into the sky.

He doesn’t ask for anything, that much is clear given how he asked me to strip…

and I did. That he was looking for weapons and seems to have mistaken my bra for one is little consolation.

The way he inspected my body was both horrible and, when he started handling my breasts, humiliating.

I’ve never been confident with how I look, and his cold appraisal was utterly awful.

I’d have been better off if my aunt had shot me on the lonely moor road than in the grip of this monster who has decided I belong to him.

That I am his mate.

I turn the word over in my head a few times before the chilling realisation hits me.

Mate means partner.

Fenrother believes I’ve been somehow given to him to be his wife .

My blood becomes solid in my veins.

Is this what my aunt meant about her bargain?

Has she made me a bride for a monster in return for Faerie gold?

Confusion spreads over the humiliation.

Was this Wyrm looking for weapons or inspecting his goods?

He certainly sounded convincing when he stated he wasn’t going to be fooled, but then he kept my bra.

He put the lacy garment into his pocket then changed into a dragon.

My head hurts with the switching, the spinning, and all the new things I’m trying to process, the biggest of which has me in his claws and is flying me back to his lair.

But if I’m to be his wife, how is he so suspicious of me?

All these questions mean I know I’m still at risk of being eaten and not in a good way.

In a really, really bad way.

I take more interest in where we are going as it is light.

The ground beneath us is getting rockier, and Fenrother is climbing as the green pastureland beneath us rises into swooping fells ahead of us.

They have a steely look, weathered rather like the Yeavering stone but with a presence which is unsettling, as if they hold secrets no one should want to know.

The lower parts are dark burgundy with heather, but as we climb over them, the highest are dusted with snow.

Shivering in my damp clothing, frost nips at my exposed skin.

I feel Fenrother’s huge paw tighten around me.

I doubt it’s anything to do with not letting me fall, more his concern at what I am.

Humans persecuted the creatures we called dragons until they were nothing but a legend in the real world.

No wonder they have retreated to the Yeavering.

I suppose I probably shouldn’t blame Fenrother for his attitude.

But I can blame him for stripping me naked out on the hillside.

For inspecting my body like I was a piece of meat.

None of that was necessary.

And all of it I acquiesced to in order not to be bitten in two.

We cross over the peak of the fell, and Fenrother’s beating wings slow.

Down below us is a forest of dormant trees, the multitude of browns almost warm after the snowy hillside.

He turns into a sickening spin, and out of the corner of my eye, I see it.

A castle.

A huge lump of a castle, each corner a vast turret.

The slab sides have mere slits for windows, and the roofline is heavily crenelated and fortified.

It squats in the landscape like a honeyed stone monolith as if daring anyone to attack it.

The Wyrm dips again, and the central courtyard is revealed.

He dives, and I’m absolutely sure his massive form will not fit.

There is a scramble, a rush of wind, and Fenrother is setting me on my feet, claws diminishing as he becomes his human-like form.

His pants have returned, and incongruously, part of the red strap of my bra sticks out of his pocket.

“This is my lair, my castle keep and the lands of my ancestors,” he growls at me.

“It is your home.”

I start at the use of the word home .

After everything he’s put me through, after everything my aunt has put me through, the concept of home is entirely alien.

“My home?”

Fenrother gives me a narrow-eyed look, as if he’s trying to work out if I’m dumb or playing him.

As he thinks my bra is a weapon brought to kill him, it could be either of those two things.

“You are my mate. You live here,” he says, as if I’m simple.

If I was expecting any further words from him, I don’t get them.

Instead, he stalks away from me, across the sandstone flagged courtyard and through a large archway.

I look up at the imposing walls, hemming me in on all sides.

In the yard, there are more glassed windows which rise up and up the walls to at least the third storey.

It feels like there are a thousand eyes watching me.

As much as I’d rather not find out what Fenrother has in store for me inside this vast keep, given his recent pronouncement, I don’t think I have many other options.

Plus, it’s started to rain again.

As the drops splash around me, I troop across the yard and through the archway.

Ahead is a vast wooden door with an iron portcullis firmly in place.

To my right is an equally imposing, if smaller, wooden door set into another arch.

This one is open, and I see a twitch of a tail inside.

I enter as the clouds burst outside.

The sound of running water is dulled within the thick walls and behind me the door slowly swings shut.

Now I am trapped.

Now I am his.