Page 155 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)

“They seem to have noticed we’re only after some of them.

Alezya seemed to say her birth tribe was hell-bent on attacking us, but the ones she had me meet were of a different mind.

She showed them Kein listened to her too.

I think they’re scared of us, and most of them have no intention to fight.

They’re terrified of Kein, but they live too far to care what happens on our side of the mountain.

I think there’s more going on between the tribes than we know. ”

“So they would have their own reasons,” Kiera shrugged, ”but are we sure that we do want to keep fighting? You got your girl and her kid, Kassein. If you wanted, we could stop things here and go back to the camp.”

Tievin raised his eyebrows in question, probably in favor of that option as well. Kassein hesitated, before he gently pulled Alezya to face him.

“Do you want us to keep hunting?” he asked her. “The tribes, the mountains. Your people, the... Deklaan, was it?”

Alezya nodded.

“Your friends. Do they want to hunt too? ...Why?”

She licked her lips, glancing around, before she suddenly grabbed Tievin’s notepad, snatching it and his pen out of his hand and getting on her knees to start scribbling something.

All three of them gathered around her after a moment.

. Alezya wasn’t a great artist by any means, but it didn’t take long to realize the triangles she made were meant to be those mountains.

She made a circle at the bottom, and lower down, a black dot. She began by pointing to the dot.

“Onyx Castle, yes?” she asked them.

They all nodded, and she moved to the big circle.

“Kassein’s home,” she said. “Kassein’s men, with the medicinal herbs and the fire. And the forest.”

She moved up, showing the triangles, and Kassein nodded.

“The mountains.”

“My home,” Alezya nodded, pointing at one of the triangles nearest to the camp.

“Deklaan Kulani . This mountain, we attack Kassein’s home.

Those kulani, they hunt Kassein’s kulani .

Munsa Kulani , here. They don’t hunt Kassein’s kulani.

They don’t want to. But my home kulani , my father, they want men. More men to hunt Kassein’s men.”

“Your father?” Kassein frowned.

Alezya paled subtly, and immediately, he knew he would despise the man. Was she scared of her own father? Alezya seemed to hesitate, glancing at them before she ran her hand through her hair.

“My father is a bad commander,” she explained.

“My Deklaan Kulani, they hunt Kassein because of my father. The other kulani too. They give men to my father to hunt Kassein and Kassein’s men.

And to hunt Kein. A lot of men. But the other kulani, they don’t want to hunt Kassein.

They are scared. Their commanders don’t like my father.

They don’t want to hunt Kassein. They are scared of Kein.

If Kein stops hunting, they stop hunting too. ”

“...Well, now that makes things a bit clearer.”

“The lady’s understanding of our language is impressive,” Tievin blinked, clearly stunned. “Archaic for sure, but certainly impressive for a few weeks...”

“Aside from Alezya having the speech of a six year old, can we talk about what she said?” Kiera said. “They would stop fighting us if we tell Kein to stop? That’s it? They’ve been the ones sending men down to fight us!”

“Not their men,” Kassein said. “Alezya’s father’s been sending other tribes’ men to attack us.”

“With their position, it makes sense,” Tievin said, clearing his throat.

“Based on Lady Alezya’s rudimentary but explicit design, it is most clear that her tribe has enjoyed a privileged position to attack our camp.

If my theory that each tribe has been behaving independently is right, and based on what I have seen of the mountains so far, it appears I was, then it is most understandable that the tribes have been suffering from a cruel lack of information that has led them to rely solely on the misinformation provided by individuals like Alezya’s father.

Crucial information that could have very likely been weaponized to assert dominance in negotiations regarding resources by threatening their safety.

Thus, all of this indicates that those tribes have been subjected to Lady Alezya’s father’s intentions regardless of their own. ”

“...Meaning?” Kiera grimaced.

“Some tribes had no choice but to fight us,” Tievin shrugged.

“The Commander’s dragon, along with the others of your relatives, have been a constant threat to the tribes.

I might add that the previous generations were even less kind to the people of these mountains.

Since your father, I am inclined to believe that there have been far fewer killings. ”

“I get that part, but why would Alezya’s father and his tribe be hell-bent on sending men to fight us? They always lose! What’s the point? Why would he want to keep going? And worse, based on what Kassein heard from that Munsa Tribe, the guy’s rallying even more people to his lost cause too.”

“Well, it is hard to determine for sure with the limited information at my disposal, but I would be inclined to believe that their socioeconomic situation is to blame for this ongoing war. More precisely, if he could convince other tribes that sending fresh troops to lead the fight was vital, Lady Alezya’s father might have also enjoyed the unique advantages that came with his position.

He might have coerced the other tribes into thinking he needed more supplies, for example, or enjoyed trading agreements or perhaps favors from other tribes.

Everything points to this man leveraging their unique insight into the situation with our army to scare the other tribes into providing him with whatever he needed to keep us, the enemy, away from the other tribes.

Mind you, our recent progress toward those mountains since His Highness became the Commander of this army might have been a tipping point in the situation between those tribes, cementing Lady Alezya’s father’s power unknowingly. ”

“In other words, that asshole is using other tribes’ fear of us to get free things and sacrificing men to fight us?” Kiera grimaced. “They’re the ones who have been sending people to die attacking us!”

“Well, I would say there are probably more nuanced parameters and that those are mere conjectures based on what we could decipher from Lady Alezya’s explanations and our own observations, but... yes.”

A stunned silence followed, and Kiera let out a whistle.

“By the dragon ancestors,” she said. “Well, that explains why she left her tribe, then. I would have flown off too if my father was that much of a manipulative bastard!”

That reminded Kassein of a question he had wondered a long time ago, and hadn’t thought about for a while. He frowned and slowly turned to Alezya, trying to find a way to voice this properly.

“Alezya, you said your home tribe hunted you. The Deklaan Tribe. The one who hunted you... Was it your father?”

He regretted his question almost as soon as he’d uttered it. Alezya’s face turned pale, and angry tears appeared in her eyes. She clenched her fists so much that Tievin’s pen snapped.

“...Yes,” she hissed angrily. “My father hunted me.”

“...Why?” Kiera asked.

“Because Lumie,” Alezya confessed, a tear escaping her eye.

Kassein immediately used his thumb to wipe it away, then put his other hand under her elbow and pulled her to stand.

“Lumie?” he asked.

“My baby,” Alezya said. “She is... like snow. She is not...”

“She’s all white,” Kassein patiently translated for her.

Alezya nodded.

“Father is... He doesn’t like Lumie. Because she is white like snow, he hunted Lumie. He hunted Lumie to give Lumie to Kein. He wanted Lumie to be dragon food.”

“He wanted to feed your baby to Kein?” Kiera sneered. “What the...?”

“I said no,” Alezya kept going. “I took Lumie to the mountains. To leave. To other kulani. But... Father’s men hunted us. Hunt Lumie. So I...”

“You ran away,” Kassein said. “You saved her, Alezya. Lumie is fine.”

As tears had begun streaming down her cheeks, he pressed a long kiss on her forehead, rubbing her back to help her calm down. This was the first time she’d told him the entire truth about how she’d come to be with him, about why he’d found her beaten and bruised. By her own father’s men, no less...

“That man has to die,” Kiera declared, echoing his thoughts. “I’ve decided. He’s dead. What a bastard!”

“I concur,” Tievin said with a sour expression and a nod. “What a horrible character! To sacrifice a poor child! His own blood, no less! By the almighty dragon, he’s despicable!”

“And Lumie’s father?” Kassein asked.

Alezya’s eyes opened wide, visibly surprised to hear him ask. She avoided his gaze for a second, causing his heart to skip a beat with worry, but when she returned to Kassein, her eyes were filled with fury and disgust, nothing else.

“He said... he called Lumie rakshnia, ” she muttered.

“I’ll take it that’s bad?” Kiera tilted her head.

Alezya nodded with an angry expression.

“Really bad,” she seethed. “He said Lumie isn’t his baby. That I made Lumie with rakshnia . Bad blood. But I did not. Lumie is not rakshnia, Lumie is just white. Snow child.”

“...He didn’t want her?” Kassein hissed, furious and dumbfounded.

How could a man refuse his own child? Lumie was an adorable little girl, as beautiful as her mother.

He had seen men agonize over their wives not being able to have a child, and that man had refused his simply because she had been born a different color?

He clenched his fists, while Alezya’s eyes grew angrier.

“He didn’t want Lumie,” she muttered. “He said... he wanted to hunt Lumie. I said no. He said I couldn’t have Lumie, but I wanted Lumie. So I go back to Deklaan. To my father.”