Page 5

Chapter

Three

Obi

S omething was definitely off. In my father’s castle, in the magical world, and in me. Especially in me. As I hurried into my bedchamber as Councilor Dormas shut and locked the door behind me, I was certain that something was very, very wrong with me.

Rumi was waiting in our room for me. He leapt up from where he’d been lounging on his bed, looking like he was ready to go to sleep for the night.

“There you are,” he said with relief in his voice and a sparkle of mirth in his eyes. “We were all worried about you when you ran off after dancing with Argus.”

“Argus?” I asked with a frown, pacing restlessly instead of going to stand and chat with Rumi or heading to my own bed. “Argus the dragon?”

“Argus the silver dragon,” Rumi said with a laugh. “Your fated mate.”

I stopped and turned to face him. “Argus is the name of the dragon in the children’s stories Councilor Dormas has had me copying.”

Rumi snorted with laughter. “Yes, I suppose he would be.”

Something was very definitely wrong. I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin, my insides burned and throbbed, and my brother was laughing at me over fairy tales.

“Don’t laugh at me, Rumi,” I said, moving closer to him, mostly because standing still was horrifically uncomfortable. “I’ve had the strangest and most frustrating night. Meeting my fated mate at the pavilion and dancing with him wasn’t the exciting, romantic moment I thought it was going to be.”

“It wasn’t?” Rumi asked, his expression shifting to sympathy.

“No,” I said, rocking from foot to foot once I was by his bed. “He’s handsome and powerful and has a sexy aura about him, and he smells amazing.”

“And that’s not romantic?”

“I don’t know him!” I shouted, hot under the collar…and everywhere else. “It’s like this overpowering, demanding alpha has waltzed his way into my life, my heart, and my mind, and I have no choice in whether I fall in love with him or want him.”

“That’s generally the way fated mates work,” Rumi said, now looking at me like I should be pitied.

“I don’t like not having a choice in who I fall in love with,” I said, unbuttoning the vest I wore and tugging at my tunic to untuck it from my trousers so my body could get some air.

“It’s bad enough that we’re forced to stay in this room or go wherever Father says we should go to do his bidding.

Now I have some outside force telling me what I should think and feel as well? ”

Rumi tilted his head to the side. “I suppose if you look at it like that….”

“And where has my mate, this Argus the silver dragon, been all these years?” I went on, overheated and angry. “Why didn’t he come to rescue me sooner?”

“Um….” Rumi suddenly looked suspicious.

“It’s just been the oddest night,” I ranted on, walking over to my side of the room so I could get out of my clothes.

I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of wearing any sort of clothing at all.

“First that encounter with my fated mate in the pavilion, then I somehow took the wrong doorway back into the castle and ended up in a broom closet right outside Councilor Dormas’s chambers. ”

“A broom closet?” Rumi asked stepping closer to me.

“Yes, and Councilor Dormas found me,” I said, tearing my shirt off over my head. “That man makes me so uncomfortable.” Everything made me uncomfortable in that moment, but old Councilor Dormas was definitely part of everything.

“How so?” Rumi asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the end of my bed.

“He’s just…every time I’m around him…and he’s so old, but….”

I couldn’t fully form my thoughts into words. The thoughts weren’t fully formed themselves. Councilor Dormas was my enemy. The time we spent together was supposed to be torture. But I…liked him.

“And then we went to take a look at Papa’s garden and Father found us there,” I went on, throwing my shirt aside and reaching for the fastenings of my trousers. It was a sign of how agitated I was that I would undress while Rumi watched me.

“Father found you?” Rumi was suddenly serious. “In Papa’s garden?”

“The garden has been taken care of,” I said, even though that wasn’t the most important part of the things I’d said.

“He found you with Councilor Dormas?” Rumi asked on.

“He did, and he wasn’t happy, but he ended up going back to bed when Councilor Dormas said he’d take care of me, or something like that. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

I startled myself with those words. How could I have not paid attention to an encounter between Father and Councilor Dormas?

Because I’d been feeling hot and uncomfortable and even a little horny as I?—

I froze in the middle of pushing my trousers down over my hips as the truth hit me. With a gasp, I yanked my trousers back up again and hugged myself around the middle, gusting out, “Oh, Goddess!”

“Are you alright?” Rumi asked, holding out his hands like I might fall over and he would need to catch me.

I glanced up at him, my eyes wide. “I’ve gone into heat!” I exclaimed in a high pitch. “Of all the times for me to go into heat. It’s not even time yet. And there’s about to be a battle that I need to fight in!”

Damn him, but Rumi smiled. “I’m glad you figured it out before I had to explain it to you.”

“You could tell I’m in heat?” I asked, my voice still as shrill as a teakettle.

Rumi laughed. “What else would it be? You’re flushed and restless, you have a wet spot on your trousers, and you just spent part of the evening with your fated mate.”

Anger cut through my incredulity. “That bastard!” I shouted. “He acted so smug and overly charming when we were dancing, and now he’s gone and sent me into heat at absolutely the wrong time.”

I started pacing again, recognizing the ache in my womb for what it was and feeling the overpowering need to be filled with a thick, alpha cock and knot. It was so powerful that it made me groan and writhe.

“Now I have to spend the next three or four days in agony because of that monster,” I whined. “What am I going to do if I’m in heat when the battle begins? I’ll have to lock myself in this room and hide under my bed or something.”

“What? No, you won’t,” Rumi said, coming up to my side and steering me toward his bed. “You’ve met your fated mate. You’ll spend your heat with him. And if it’s anything like the first mate heat that our brothers have had, it’ll be over before morning.”

When I realized Rumi was steering me toward his bed, because that was where the doorway into the magical world was, I stopped and gaped at him. “I will not give that absentee mate of mine the satisfaction of taking my heat.”

Rumi blinked at me, baffled, then pushed me on toward his bed.

“I’m not going to let you stay here in the castle when Father is just as likely to kill us as keep us and let you suffer through what’s probably going to be the strongest heat of your life.

Remember, there are half a dozen alphas on the other side of that door, and they can probably smell you. ”

That was enough to put the fear of the Goddess in me. Even though those guards were all asleep when Councilor Dormas brought me to the room, that didn’t mean they would be asleep now. I definitely did not want a bunch of alpha guards going into a frenzy and taking my heat by force.

Councilor Dormas was an alpha, though. Maybe I could get him to?—

Goddess, no! What was I thinking? Councilor Dormas was old enough to be my great-grandfather. Something was seriously wrong with me if the idea of a withered old man taking my heat had me gushing slick like a waterfall.

“I am not happy about this,” I told Rumi as he quickly pushed his bed aside and opened the door to take us back into the magical world.

Rumi sent me a look as if he knew damn well how grumpy, and how horny, I was and didn’t agree with my stubbornness.

He couldn’t possibly understand, though.

He’d met his fated mate before the rest of us.

Emmerich was the reason we’d been able to get into the magical world in the first place.

Why the two of them hadn’t mated already was a mystery to me.

“Come on,” Rumi said once the door was open, shuffling me through and down the golden staircase into the forest.

I should not have been at all surprised that my mate, Argus, apparently, was standing near the foot of the staircase, a look of expectation shining in his pale blue eyes.

“There you are,” he said, a deep, sexy note in his voice as he stepped forward and held out a hand to me. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I am not happy about this,” I repeated with more force.

“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Rumi said with a half laugh, then turned to head back up the stairs.

I was sad to see him go and contemplated returning to our father’s world with him, but that thought was fleeting and quickly overtaken by raging instinct within me.

“This is so not fair,” I panted, turning back to Argus. “Whoever came up with this system of fated mates was evil.”

Argus laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell Mother next time I?—”

I didn’t give him the chance to finish. Instinct took over and I threw myself at him, jumping into his arms and wrapping myself around him. I slammed my mouth over his as well, groaning when he kissed me back and thrust his tongue into my mouth.

I shouldn’t have been so desperate for an alpha that I’d met for a handful of minutes earlier that evening.

It shouldn’t have felt so good and so natural to rut against him or to kiss him or drag my tongue up his neck to see if I could taste his salty, spicy scent as well as smell it.

And it definitely wasn’t at all right to gasp out, “I need your knot inside me and your cum filling my womb now !”

“Alright, little one,” Argus laughed, adjusting the way he held me. “My, but you’re an eager young thing, aren’t you.”