Page 26 of Pregnant Forced Mate

“Y-yes?”

“Will you help me take this over there?” she asks, gesturing to the bone and nodding to the desk.

I nod before lifting the bone over my shoulder and lugging it to the desk. Feeling somewhat overwhelmed by being in the same room while she works, I leave the study in search of Felix.

***

“Remind me why we’re doing this,” Felix grouches before spearing the spade into the hole we’ve been digging.

Chuckling, I do the same, tossing a pile of unearthed dirt over my shoulder. The hole is big enough to be considered a grave, dug out at least six feet deep. “We’re looking for more bones, remember?”

“Yeah,” he lifts his brows and wipes his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. “The bones for your human mate.”

His comment has me halting abruptly, frowning at the evident derisiveness in his tone. “This isn’t about her, Felix,” I remind him. “This is about finding all the remains and figuring out if it belongs to one of ours.”

“Of course,” he bleats irritably. “Clan responsibilities, no?”

“Wait…” I throw down the spade and place my hands on my hips like a mother who’s about to scold her insolent child. “Where’s this coming from?”

Felix sighs, throwing his own spade down and leaning against the dirt wall on one side of the hole. He lifts his eyes to mine, scoffing without an ounce of humor in his tone.

“Becoming beta isn’t everything you might have thought it would be, brother,” he admits disgruntledly. “Not to mention that I now have to wait until the next Council meeting to have my mate picked out.”

Frowning when I notice the look of pure disdain on my brother’s face, I’m suddenly compelled to offer him that only comfort I can in this situation. An awkward pat on the shoulder, followed by a forced smile.

“There’s no way Draco will swap our positions, is there?” I ask grimly.

Felix scoffs at the idea. “Not now, when you’ve already brought the human to the island. Perhaps, if you’d waited for the wedding…” His voice falters off, allowing for a moment for me to think about what he’d just said.

“We can still swap,” I suggest. “It’s not like I’ve touched her yet.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix clicks his tongue dismissively as he picks up his spade again. “You’ve already told her that she is to be your mate.”

I shrug, picking up my spade and returning to digging. “It’s not like I plan—”

“Plan on what?” Felix grunts. “Sleeping with her? How else do you plan on having children?”

“Artificial insemination,” I chuckle.

“It’s not funny, Aragon,” he scolds, spearing the tip of the spade with such force, it hits something hard beneath the ground.

I look up to meet his wonder-filled eyes. “I think you just found what we’re looking for.”

Grateful for the distraction, I get onto my knees and claw out the rest of the dirt. True to the metallic knock of the spade, we finally uncover the rest of the bones.

“It would have been better if we’d just used our dragon claws to dig through this,” Felix comments when he stands up and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

I smirk knowingly as I get to my feet too. “I know. But I wanted to spend some time outside the island.”

“To avoid the girl?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Felix sighs, throwing me a disdainful look. “You cannot avoid her forever, Aragon. She is to be your mate. It’s time you accepted it.”

“Like you’ve accepted your fate?”

“I’m working on making peace with it, okay?”

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