Page 19 of A Story of Mates and Temptation

“Once here, I realised I couldn’t leave. No matter how many tries—so many tries—it was pointless. It was like the magic didn’t want me to go, and I made a life here instead. A life where I didn’t have to be a breeder. I could just exist. I was never fully happy, though. I looked at every person who turned up, every day, asking them about you. But no one ever knew. Until somebody arrived about four weeks ago.” She pauses, her hands tightening around mine. “They said they’d heard of a woman called Story Dehana, whose very name began rebellions in the cities. She was the prince’s blood slave who escaped. Please tell me that the second part of that wasn’t true. That you were his blood slave?”

Avaluna comes back to the table and sits down. My heart aches as I begin to tell my mum everything. I tell her everything that had happened in the past. How I became the prince’s blood slave. About Kyrell, leaving out his second death because that should stay between Ziven and me and my friends who saw how Kyrell was at the end. I tell her instead about how he saved me and got me free. How I found the mansion—a mansion full of dragon riders and people like me. How I fought in the Decidere to become a rider. “Yes, it’s complicated, but…I found happiness there. I found Ziven, who is my entwined mate, and we are going to be married.”

“Who is Ziven?” she asks, her voice laced with curiosity and confusion.

“He’s the Moon Dynasty king and the King of the Dragons,” I explain softly, and her eyes widen. “He’s my king, my lover, my best friend and rival all in one. I love him with every bit of my soul.”

“And I love her back.” Ziven wraps his arm around my waist from behind. “And you are?”

I lift my head to Ziven and smile. “This is my mum.” His returning smile is pure light, direct from the moon in the night sky. “Mum, this is Ziven with a bunch of titles, if you want to hear them all.”

“The most important title of mine is being hers.” He offers my mum a bow of his head. “Thank you for creating my mate.”

My mum’s expression softens as she says, “I’ve not just been blessed with the return of my daughter, but soon a son, too.”

I almost feel how Ziven reacts to that. After losing so much of his family, it means everything she has accepted him. I love her more for it.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” I admit.

“Neither did I,” she returns with a soft smile. She hasn’t aged much since I last saw her, but there is a lightness to her features now that brightens the room. Ziven joins us at the table after grabbing us another bunch of drinks as the hours pass. We drink until we were all tipsy and laughing at the stories my mum tells Ziven about me as a child. The hours seem like minutes before leaving the tavern as it is closing and emptying out.

Calix is waiting for Avaluna, and he wraps my mum up in a bear hug when I tell him who she is. She only laughs and tells me she is happy I have friends. We walk my mum back to her hut, andshe hugs me so tightly outside the door as Ziven gives us some space.

“I am proud of the brilliant, fantastic woman you have become. Deities hear me…this gift is a miracle.” She leans back. “And I know war is coming for us soon. I want you to keep fighting with every bit of your soul. I know you left out what it was like for you as a blood slave to that monster, but you survived it. You are a survivor, Story Dehana. You’re a warrior. Your father would be so, so proud, and I know this because I am too.”

I might be tipsy, but her words linger in my mind. I thought I was broken when I was doing nothing but surviving, but I was training the broken pieces of my soul and knitting them back together. For moments like this. For a future I couldn’t even imagine anymore. “I’ll come over tomorrow and bring Hettie. You will love her.”

“I cannot wait to meet your ward,” she replies, kissing my cheek. “Now go with your mate. He is waiting.”

I almost can’t leave my mum as she goes back into her hut, feeling like she might disappear again. “Today was real, right? I’m not dreaming?”

“Not dreaming,” Ziven confirms as we walk back. We are on the other side of the town, and it takes us a while to walk through it, but I don’t mind; in fact, I enjoy the quiet walk with Ziven. “You’re even more beautiful when you’re happy, Storm.” He cups the back of my neck, stopping us. “Smile at me, take my breath away. I need to remember this moment forever.”

“As cute as this moment is,” Etena’s cold, chipped voice cuts through, “we have a problem.” The effects of the alcohol seem to fade instantly at the tone of her voice. “King Daegan sent me toinform you of the news. A fae woman has turned up as a refugee with unsettling news.”

“What did she claim?” Ziven questions.

I almost wish Etena waited till morning to speak, to darken this night. “The king and prince are burning fae in each of the cities every single day—thousands of them. It’s a calling to us, letting us know that the days we spend here are costing lives. It’s a warning that if we wait too long to act, there will be no people left to go to war for.”

Chapter Ten

Catherine

Page Ten. Dragons are like deities, but dragged down to a mortal form. They should be free.

My dragon dives straight through another endlessly dark tunnel, taking the air from my lungs in a sharp snap. We lunge to the left and I grip her scales, clenching my thighs so I don’t fall straight off. The children cry out from the quick changing direction, and I can’t see the state of the wooden crate they are in. It’s heavy for my dragon; we’ve had to make so many stops along the way, hiding from the Silkvir in the night, making repairs to the crate with anything we could find along the way. Niko is a good fighter, and that has been needed more than once along the trip when the vampyres have found us. Their hesitation when seeing their prince is useful because they don’t suspect he will fight for me and not them. It only further proved to me that my gut feeling and my dragon are right. He is on our side. Now I have to convince my king and my friend. Story is going to take one look at Niko and see who he is, and King Zivenor King Daegan will attack him for his royal blood. Niko knows this, and yet he is here, flying with me into danger and never asking to stay behind.

There is a change in pressure that makes my ears pop, and I straighten, feeling the hum of the box tied to my back with straps. I don’t like having the box so close to my skin, but I don’t have a choice but to keep it close until I give it to Story. It’s hers, and I want to be as far away from it as possible. I don’t know if it is alive, but there is a hum that rattles in my blood, and it grows stronger the closer we get to the dragons. To the fae too. I don’t know what the book in this box wants, but it feels strangely agreeable to the flight.

It’s rare I’ve flown alone on my dragon in the last couple of weeks, but for this final trip of the tunnels, where he warned me last night we are close, Niko decided to stay with the children in the crate to calm them. We don’t usually fly more than two hours at a time, but today, we have flown for six hours straight to get here. Without flying high in the skies, it’s been a slow flight, and my body is aching, not just with the flight but the pressure of knowing what is coming. Story is my friend, and she trusts me. I remind myself of it a hundred times because, otherwise, fear of losing what I just found in the Decidere might tear me apart.

“The other dragons hear us, they sense the vampyre, and they’re not happy with me. They hunt us,” my dragon warns, and he speeds up. The children scream and I can’t do anything but hold on.

Command. I have to make a command. “Get us quickly to the kings. We need to plead our case before the dragons get involved in this.”

The tunnel finally ends, and we glide out into fresh air, a crater of sorts deep within the ground, and on a ledge is a town. The brightness of the light in here makes me squint as I take it all in, wondering how this old town is even possible, and a bigger part of me is relieved. My people could be alive down there…my parents. I know it’s so much to hope for with what happened, but I am hoping and praying it is true that they are down there, that they survived what happened at the mansion. I know I’m about to find out.

We land on a clearing outside of the town, dust blowing up a storm around us, and I cover my eyes as he gently drops the crate and lands next to it. His wing spreads out protectively over the crate, and I touch his neck. “Well done, and thank you. Those children and I owe you our lives.”

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