Page 18 of The Sapphire Dragon Prince (Omega Fairy Tales #4)
“Really, Azurus,” I said, the knot in my gut beginning to reflect the storm ahead of us. “I might be a little bit fragile, but I don’t need to be shielded from everything. If you need my help with something I would love nothing more than to give it.”
“I don’t want to trouble you,” Azurus said, darting a sideways look at me.
“Azurus,” I said, impatient and desperate to make my point that I was capable of more than he thought.
I didn’t have a chance to say anything more on my own behalf.
The terrain we’d been walking through had grown rockier as we approached the mountains, and all of a sudden, one of the rocks moved.
It wasn’t a rock at all, it was a man dressed in a rough, gray cloak.
He was seated on the ground, and as he turned to us, he unfolded from his crouched stance, holding up a battered tin cup to us.
“Spare a poor old man a coin or a bit of bread,” the man said in a dry, cracking voice…but one that sounded strangely familiar to my ears.
I glanced quickly to Azurus for reassurance, but he looked as confused as I was. “I wasn’t aware there were beggars in my mother’s kingdom,” he said.
“Times are hard,” the beggar said. “Every man must do what he can to survive.”
Azurus and I reached the man and paused to watch him for a moment. I twisted to open one of the pockets in my pack, taking out an apple I’d brought with us from the storeroom. “Here,” I said, extending my arm and cautiously handing the apple to the man, wanting to help as much as I wanted to flee.
The beggar stared at the apple from under the hood of his cloak and sniffed. “You call that an offering?” he asked.
I pulled the apple back, hugging it close as if the beggar’s harsh words might have offended it. “I…I was just trying to help,” I said, confused about why someone in need would be so snappish.
“Coins,” the beggar said, shaking his cup. There was something in it already that made a rattling sound. “Coins are what I need.”
“You would refuse an offer of nourishment from my omega?” Azurus demanded incredulously. “Is there not a saying about beggars not being choosers?”
“I am no beggar,” the man said, his voice growing stronger and even more familiar. “And this omega owes me. He owes me his very life.”
I gasped and jumped back, hiding behind Azurus as the beggar stood and pushed back his hood.
Instead of some weak, old man standing before me, it was my father.
Underneath the cloak he wore a regal suit trimmed with gold and jewels.
His eyes blazed with hatred and avarice, and he continued to hold out the tin cup, shaking it as if it were some sort of weapon.
“You owe me!” he shouted, glaring straight at me. “You and your brothers. You are mine, my property to do with as I see fit. Your wretched waste of an omega papa tricked me by only having useless omega offspring. You owe me recompense for the alpha sons I should have had.”
“No!” I gasped, hiding behind Azurus. Although with the pack he wore, I couldn’t get close enough to him to really feel secure. “No, leave me alone!”
It was like every nightmare I’d had recently, only worse. Father was standing right in front of me, reaching out grotesquely with his tin cup and its sickening rattle.
“He owes you nothing,” Azurus said, holding his arms out to shield me even more. “Misha is his own man, and he is free of you forever.”
“He will never be free of me,” my father cackled. “Not as long as I live inside him. All the magic in the world cannot remove me from his head.”
“No! No, go away,” I wept, trying to turn away from my father. Everywhere I turned, though, it seemed like he was there. He was right, I would never be able to be free of him.
“You’re not real,” Azurus said in a steely voice. “You’re some sort of test thrown into the road to test us. Be gone with you.”
“And how do you propose to get rid of me?” my father, or at least the specter of him, asked with a laugh. “With your magic?”
Yes, that was it. Azurus was a powerful, magical dragon. He could make my father go away.
“Please, Azurus,” I said, trembling like a leaf as I tried to keep my mate’s body between me and my father. “Please banish him.”
Azurus made a frustrated sound and raised his hand, but nothing happened. The ghost of my father was still there.
“You are mine, boy,” my father growled. “Now and for always.”
“Azurus, please,” I cried. “I’m scared.”
“Leave us!” Azurus shouted, holding one hand up to my father and reaching behind him for me with the other. “Go back to wherever you came from.”
“You cannot make me,” my father’s specter laughed. “You do not have it in you.”
I sucked in a breath, suspecting that my father meant what he said literally. Azurus did not actually have the power to banish my father’s ghost.
“You are nothing,” Azurus told my father in return, also meaning it literally. “You are just an idea, just a phantom. You cannot do any harm to him.”
But he could and he already had. Just the memory of my father was enough to have my knees shaking and my heart feeling weak.
“Can’t you do anything?” I wept, stepping away from my mate, hurt not only by my memories but by Azurus’s lack of honesty with me. “Can’t you help me?”
A loud roll of thunder sounded, taking my attention for the moment. We were so much closer to the mountain and the storm than I’d thought. It was right there, all around us.
“Misha,” Azurus said, a note of hopelessness in his voice as he turned to me. “I want to help you. With everything in my body, heart, and soul, I want to help you. I wish I had the power to banish your father from your life and your thoughts completely…but I don’t have that power.”
I knew it. I’d known all along that the bulk of the burden I carried was mine and mine alone. Azurus had made things better. He’d helped me to heal and feel hopeful again. He was so important and meant everything to me, but he hadn’t been honest.
“I’ve been losing my power bit by bit since we came together,” he admitted with a sigh, dropping his shoulders.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that my father’s specter instantly vanished with Azurus’s admission of the truth.
“That first, bonding heat fated mates are supposed to enjoy when they meet isn’t just for the benefit of the omega or for having children.
Without it, an alpha dragon’s powers start to fade. ”
His words struck me to the core. “It’s my fault,” I said, the hurt of it all sweeping through my body. “My brokenness has broken you, too.”
“No, my love, it’s not that,” Azurus said, taking a step toward me. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”
“But it is,” I said, the tears streaming down my face joined by the rain that began to pummel us from above. “If I wasn’t so broken I would have gone into heat when we met. We would have an egg, we would be happy, and you would still have your magic.”
“I promise you, love, the moment will come,” Azurus said. “We just need to be patient.”
I shook my head, knowing the time for patience was long past.
“I’m never going to get better,” I wept, taking a few backwards steps away from him. “I will be like this always, and I will bring you down with me.”
“No, Misha, that’s not true.”
“It is, it is,” I wept. “I don’t deserve to be with a dragon like you. You deserve more than me.”
“I love you, Misha,” Azurus said, stepping closer to me.
I couldn’t let him reach me and pull me into his arms, though. I knew the truth now. I was broken and I always would be. If I stayed with Azurus, I would only ruin him as well.
“I love you, too, Azurus,” I sobbed, “but I cannot do this to you.”
I did the only thing I could think to do.
I turned and ran away from my beloved. The mountain and the storm loomed all around us now.
The jagged walls of rock that thrust up into the lightning-filled sky were living personifications of the wall I’d felt all around me for so long.
They seemed to close in on me, keeping me prisoner, stopping me from ever healing or seeing the light.
“Misha!” Azurus called after me.
It broke my heart. I wanted to be everything good and light for my alpha, my mate. I wanted to make him happy, even if I couldn’t be happy myself.
But maybe you can , a celestial voice whispered through the storm. Maybe together you can make the path to healing easier .
I caught my breath as hope flickered in me, like the first sparks of a tinderbox.
Maybe.
I swallowed hard and turned back, searching for my beloved mate. But as soon as I spotted him running toward me from what felt like such a long distance away, lightning struck hard between us and a massive wall of reflective black glass slammed down, separating us. The Black Mirror.