Page 50 of Brutal Alpha Dragon

What happened?

I’m about to kick my feet off the bed when I spot a folded paper beside my pillow. I grabbed it quickly as if it would change anything. I unfolded it and read the letter Draco left behind.

Of course, it won’t change anything. By now, he must have flown back to Aurora Island. As alarming panic rises like bile in my throat, I read the letter again. And again. Trying to make sense of it.

“Forgive me for showing you a side of me that even I didn’t know existed.” My frown deepens as I read it under my breath. I know he’d been different lately, chivalrous even. But that’s the side of him that I had been drawn to. The side of him that made it possible for me to submit to him. “And that’s the side of me that can never accept doing this harm to you…”

So that’s what it’s all about…

It seems that when it comes to Draco, I really don’t have a choice. I don’t have a say. It’s never my decision to make.

Doesn’t he know that I would have chosen—

“Lily?!”

I look up when I hear Violet’s exclamation. I barely recognize her voice—I’ve been gone for a long time. As if time on Aurora Island doesn’t follow the same rules as it does in the human world.

But her voice brings back a whole range of emotions that I didn’t realize I had been suppressing. I throw myself off the bed and rush toward her, flinging my arms around her.

“Violet! Oh, my God!” I sigh with relief, my body relaxing instantaneously.

When I pull away, holding my sister at arm’s length, she frowns at me.

“When did you get back?” she asks, clearly not as concerned as I thought she would be.

At least, I thought she’d be more worried that I’d disappeared for two weeks.

Staring at her with my mouth agape, I need to tread cautiously. “Why are you so calm? Didn’t you miss me?”

Violet’s jaw drops, her eyes going wide with shock. “Of course, I missed you, Lils! But you didn’t give us much of a choice, did you?”

“I-I didn’t?”

Violet rolls her eyes, grabs my hand, and walks me back to the room. She pulls out her phone, unlocks the screen, then holds it up for me to see.

“Sorry, I need to leave the country for work,” I read the text aloud with a frown. That’s when I realized Draco probably sent the text when he abducted me.

For the sake of formalities, I’m guessing.

But now I’m back, and I have to explain my whereabouts.

“The tavern sent you out of the country?” Violet scoffs in a tone that makes me aware that she never believed it in the first place.

“Violet, I—”

“Save it,” she dismisses with a wave of her hand as she sits on the edge of my bed. “That’s why you were acting all weird when we asked about your love life.” She narrows her eyes at me. “All you could have done was told us. We would have understood.”

As it sinks in that my sister thinks I eloped with a man out of the country, I’m actually thankful for it. How else would I explain that the tavern sent me away for work?

I can use this.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize earnestly as I kneel in front of my sister and take her hands in mine. “I know I should have told you. And I regret that I didn’t.”

Violet sighs heavily before lifting her eyes to mine. “Will you at least tell me who he is?”

I shake my head, eyes dropping with shame. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’s out of the picture now.”

“What?!” Violet exclaims with a gasp. “You run away with a guy, and you come back after two weeks, and now you’re broken up? I don’t believe it!”

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