Page 86 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)

“Yes. Black dragon.”

So the legendary black dragon her clan had feared for decades was Kassein’s father’s.

The other dragons all belonged to his siblings, then?

Alezya couldn’t believe she held such a piece of important information, and she’d gotten it so easily too.

His clan’s dragons had terrorized all the clans for generations, and now, she was beginning to understand where they came from…

“Black dragon is a mother dragon?” She frowned.

“Not mother. Egg.”

“Egg?”

“Yes. Baby dragons are eggs.”

Baby dragons came from... eggs? Like birds? It almost made Alezya chuckle. To think such a mighty, scary creature hatched from an egg like a bird.

“Alezya has brothers and sisters? ” Kassein suddenly asked.

“ Three sisters, ” she said. “ No brothers .”

She once had brothers, but they had all been killed or died young.

Every time, they were her father’s pride until he sent them to their deaths to fight another clan.

She knew her last brother had been killed in one of the attacks against Kassein’s clan, but now, she knew her father was the one responsible for this, more than any of Kassein’s men.

His pride always came long before any of his children’s sake.

She had never felt close to any of her brothers because she was her mother’s only child, and as a girl, she had been raised with her half-sisters.

When her mother had left, Alezya had lost the only person who had ever treated her like family, and she was far too young to remember enough of it.

Now Lumie was her family, and as always, her heart hurt whenever she thought of her baby.

“ Alezya father? Mother? ” Kassein asked, visibly eager to know more.

“...Father, ” she said. “ No mother .”

She didn’t know her mother’s whereabouts, and she wasn’t even sure she was still alive.

If she was, Alezya hoped that woman was happy.

She had been sad when her mother had left, but she had quickly become resigned to it as she had been to any of the clan’s rulings.

At the time, she was too young to understand what had happened and why, but as an adult, and after having been married herself, Alezya couldn’t blame her mother for having left.

Her father was so horrible as a father, she couldn’t imagine the monster he was as a husband.

After her mother, either no clan wanted to give him any more of their daughters, or her father had given up himself. He would probably pick one of his nephews as his successor someday.

“Father and mother, ” Kassein said, “ and jinida. ”

“ Jinida? ”

“ Jinida. Mother of father .”

His grandmother. Alezya smiled, amused that he even had his grandmother.

“ My azyela, ” he said. “ Father, mother, sisters and brothers, dragons, grandmother. My azyela.”

His family. It was funny how the word he used for family was so close to her own name, Alezya. In her language, Alezya meant freedom.

“ Alezya azyela ?” he suddenly asked.

She hesitated for a second.

“...Lumie,” she muttered. “Lumie is my azyela .”

“ Altha ?”

She turned her eyes to him, surprised. Altha was the Dragon Empire’s word for snow. She hadn’t thought he would remember the one word she had recently taught him. And suddenly, she found herself tearing up, and she nodded.

“ Snow is my family ,” she whispered, well aware it probably didn’t make much sense to him.

Kassein frowned as she couldn’t hold her tears back and began crying. He moved to lie on the bed with her, wrapping her in a protective arm. He didn’t ask anything else, but instead, gently hugged her against his warm torso and rubbed her back until her tears dried and she fell asleep.

When she woke up, Alezya found herself cold and alone. Without Kassein nearby, the temperature had dropped and the fire had been extinguished too.

From the bit of orange light that came in through the hole at the top, it was probably sunset. She pulled one of the fur blankets around her shoulders and sat up. Her eyes felt dry from her earlier crying, so she grabbed some water from the jug on the bedside table and dabbed them.

How long had Kassein been gone, and where to? His side of the bed felt cold, which meant he’d probably been gone for a while. She knew they had been holed up inside for most of the day, so she figured he probably had somewhere to be for his clan.

“Kein?” she called out.

But the dragon was gone too because she didn’t get a growl in response.

Alezya sighed but forced herself to move, getting up to do a little bit of cleaning again, rearranging the messy blankets, and drinking a bit of water.

She was hungry, but she wasn’t sure if Kassein kept any food in here, and after having been caught once stealing, she didn’t want to be a fool and try it twice.

She did know where they kept the medicinal ointment though, so she decided to check on her injuries and change her bandages herself this time.

There wasn’t much to do, however, for once she had taken the old ones off and cleaned her wounds a bit, she realized there was almost nothing left that needed much treatment.

Which was nothing short of a miracle, and she knew it.

What kind of heavenly medicine did they have in this clan to leave her with almost no scars, and wounds that healed so fast it was as if they’d never happened?

Even the bones she knew her father’s henchmen had broken in their violence didn’t feel as if they’d ever been cracked at all.

The remaining scars were just perfect white lines, almost too pretty to qualify as scars.

This was close to sorcery if she had ever seen it, and she knew quite a lot about herbs, which reminded her to take the ones she had nicked from their herb-growing space earlier.

She would run out soon, but she had enough for a couple more days, so she would be fine so long as she got to grab more and kept taking it regularly.

She’d had her last bleeding about two weeks before her father had kicked her out, so she would probably be safe now.

.. but she didn’t have much time until she was expected to return pregnant.

If they wanted her back before the next gathering of the clans, she had to return within less than a week.

All she could do was pray that her father would buy that she had spent every night since she’d come here with Kassein and that their clan’s Healer would mistake her for pregnant. It had to work. All she wanted was to get Lumie out of there; nothing else mattered.

“Alezya.”

She lifted her head, swallowing the last bit of herb as Kassein stepped back inside with a small smile.

He was holding two new bowls of soup and some of those sticks with meat on them.

Her stomach immediately growled in appreciation, making him chuckle, but she grabbed some water first to rinse the bitter taste of the herbs.

“ You saw Kiera? Tievin? Lorey? ” she asked.

“Yes. Too much snow ,” he said. “ All in khamzil .”

In their leather dwellings, she guessed. Alezya nodded. Though it wasn’t nearly as bad as in the heights down here, even the Dragon Clan people probably didn’t enjoy being battered by heavy gusts of wind and snow.

“ Kein gone too ,” she remarked.

“Kein hungry ,” he shrugged.

So his dragon had gone to hunt, then.

She wondered if the huge orange dragon could still fly in this weather, but given its size, a bit of wind probably wasn’t too much of a bother. Maybe more for Kiki, who was considerably leaner and thinner.

She took the meat as soon as Kassein sat with her on the bed, and like earlier, they ate together. She was starving, and although the meat was just lukewarm, it tasted like the most delicious food.

“ You like meat, ” Kassein said, watching her eat with a little smile.

“ Yes ,” Alezya nodded unapologetically. “ In the mountains, I only eat small meat. ”

“ Small meat? ”

“ Rabbits ,” she said, remembering the word Lorey had taught her the previous day, when they’d spotted a couple of them in the garden. “ Birds too. This is more than rabbits and birds .”

“ This is better ,” he corrected her with the right word. “ The meat is dubbrun .”

Alezya had no idea what kind of animal dubbrun was, but it was tasty. She finished her first stick of meat, and Kassein tried to offer her the second one, but she refused.

“ I ate with Kiera too ,” he said, “ and you’re hungry.”

She realized he had split his meal in two parts to eat some of his dinner with her.

Now it made sense; a single stick of meat and a bowl of soup wasn’t much for a man she’d seen eat vast amounts of meat so far... She gave in, and took the second stick while he ate his bowl.

“ More meat? ” he asked when she’d finished her stick.

“ No. Thank you .”

“Kiitso,” he repeated.

She nodded, but she was still pretty sure that she had never heard Kassein or any of the others use their word for “thank you.” Maybe she lacked some cultural context there.

They finished eating while exchanging more words, this time translating more abstract concepts such as greetings or emotions.

This language exchange had become sort of a special thing between them, and soon enough, they were back to lying on the bed together, Kassein’s arm around her shoulders and Alezya’s cheek on his torso.

This time, neither of them initiated anything; in fact, their chatting was somewhat fascinating enough that they talked late into the night and fell asleep like this.