Page 103 of Creatures of Chaos

Drake’s gaze turns calculating. “I’m comfortable with the current situation. Once he’s mated in the fall, that will solve the issue.”

“Do you really want to find out what happens if Becks is forced to choose between me and his duties as the dragon heir? Because chances are he’ll choose to life-mate like you want him to—we both know how duty bound he is—but there’s always a small chance he won’t. And it’s that small chance that has you scared.”

I’m not bluffing. I can tell by how aggressively Drake has come at me that he’s worried Becks will go against them. But I’m not willing to give up Becks forever for anything less than his guaranteed freedom of choice. He deserves to choose his own life-mate, even if that’s never going to be me.

I stand my ground, waiting to see what Drake will do.

“Okay,” he finally says. “I agree to those terms.”

I nod, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, but also a deep, aching pain in my chest.

“But you need to understand that you can’t just tell him you don’t want to be with him. That’s not good enough. You have to do something to convince him there willneverbe a chance between you.” Drake takes a step closer to me, crowding me to hit home his point. “You have to crush him.”

I suck in a quick breath of air and my stomach roils. There’s only one thing I can think of that will convince Becks I don’t want to be with him anymore, but there’ll be no coming back from this. Becks will never know why I’ve done this and might hate me forever for it. If I go through with this, it will truly be the end of us. And not just us as a couple, but our friendship as well. He’ll see it as a betrayal and will probably never trust me again.

My heart screams at me, but I shove it in a box and bury it deep. I’ve committed to this path and now it’s time to see it through.

“Got it. If you come through on your end, Becks and I will be through, forever.”

“I need a favor.”

Talon looks over at me as I keep pace with him in the hall at school the next day. I’ve received three text messages from Becks that he needs to talk to me. Each message sounds more urgent than the one before. I’ve ignored them all and gone to great lengths to avoid him at school this morning. There was a council meeting last night, so I already know what he’s going to tell me. The council has had a change of heart and decided they won’t require him to find a life-mate by graduation, nor choose or approve his future life-mate. He thinks this fixes everythingbetween us. He has no idea I have to crush his heart before he can have a chance to give me the news.

“No,” Talon says, and keeps walking.

“What do you meanno?” I ask, taken aback.

He arches a brow at me. “I’m pretty sure you’re aware what that word means.”

I put a hand on his arm, stopping him, and he looks down at me impatiently.

“You owe me.”

He barks out a laugh. “How do you figure?”

I start ticking off reasons on my fingers. “You wouldn’t have made it through the last trial without me. I agreed to stay out of the way during the final trial. I’m going to do whatever I can to help you win Chaos. Should I go on?”

He sighs. “What do you want this time? Let me guess: you need help getting back together with your princeling?”

“The opposite. I need you to pretend to be dating me, so he knows we are over.”

Shock registers on Talon’s face but is wiped away quickly. “Giving up on him so soon?”

If he only knew.

“You can look at it that way.”

Talon’s gaze turns assessing. “No, that’s not it. You’re being forced to do this. Or feel like you have to.”

My heart jumps into my throat. Is he a frickin’ mind reader?

“It doesn’t matter the reason. I just need to make it clear to Becks that we’re over, and the only way he’s going to believe me is if he thinks I’ve moved on.”

Talon crosses his arms over his chest. “And you want to use me to make that point.”

“He’s already insecure about our friendship, so if I show him we’re together, he’ll believe it.”

Taking my arm gently, Talon guides me to the side, out of any hallway traffic. “Freckles, you don’t want to do this.”

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