Page 28 of The Emerald Dragon Prince
He didn’t have to answer. Emmerich’s actions spoke louder than anything Nazeing could have said.
“Get off me,” he told me, sounding annoyed.
Confused, I tightened my grip on my mate’s arm. At least until he peeled my hands off and pushed me away.
“Emmerich?” I tried to grab him again, but with his eyes fixed on Nazeing, he shoved me so hard I stumbled and would have fallen over if Leo hadn’t been there to catch me. “Emmerich! What has he done to you?”
“He hasn’t done anything,” Emmerich said, smiling warmly and stepping close enough to Nazeing to take his hands. “I give my heart to him willingly. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he spoke directly to Nazeing. “I was a fool to cast you aside all those years ago. You are the one and only omega I’ve ever loved.”
My heart sank into my nauseated stomach. Not because I was heartbroken at my mate rejecting me, but because I knew he had to have been caught in a net of extraordinarily powerful dark magic to have turned to Nazeing the way he was.
“Let him go!” I shouted, struggling to right myself so that I could lunge at Nazeing, ready to strangle him if I could.
Without taking his eyes from Emmerich, Nazeing held up a hand to me.
I flew back as if he’d taken a section of a brick wall and pounded me with it. This time, Leo wasn’t strong enough to catch me. I slammed into him, and we both fell backwards, crashing to the floor.
The pain of impact that racked through me was nothing to the fear that the magical blow might have hurt my baby in some way. Instead of rushing to get up, as Leo did, I clutched my stomach, curling into a protective ball to shield the most important part of myself. I firmly believed I had a chance of breaking whatever spell Nazeing had cast over Emmerich to get him back, but if anything happened to our egg, I didn’t know what I could do.
“All this for misplaced love?” Rufus demanded as the dragons tightened the circle around Nazeing and Emmerich, shielding their mates as they did. “You went to all this trouble to support a tyrant king just to use dark magic to win back an old lover who doesn’t want you anymore?”
Nazeing dragged his eyes away from Emmerich’s adoring gaze and turned to Rufus. “Yes?” he said with a shrug.
“This is madness,” Diamant shouted, grabbing Emmerich’s arm like he would yank him away. “You’re strong enough to break this spell.”
Emmerich was slow to drag his gaze away from Nazeing. He blinked at Diamant once before shoving him away as he’d done with me. “Nothing comes between me and my beloved,” he said in a strangely stiff voice, then reached for Nazeing again.
“We have to get him out of here,” Gildur said, stepping forward like he would pull Emmerich away from the dark omega.
“I think not,” Nazeing said, raising his hand again.
No one stumbled back or fell over, like I had. Instead, something much worse happened. All of the other dragons suddenly grasped their heads, some of them bending double. They moaned and cried out like someone was crushing their skulls. My brothers shouted in sudden pain as well, likely feeling their mates’ pain through their bonds.
“And now, it’s just you and me, my love,” Nazeing said. He grasped the sides of Emmerich’s face and pushed up to his toes to kiss my mate. My heart sank as Emmerich kissed him back with passion.
As quickly as whatever had the other dragons in its grip started, it stopped. My brothers were left panting and panicked, but their mates, Emmerich’s brothers stood blank-eyed and docile, like they weren’t aware of anything and didn’t have a care in the world.
“Our bond!” Obi shouted, scrambling toward Argus. “Is it gone?”
“Not gone,” Leo said, gasping for breath like he’d been underwater as he rose to his feet. He helped me up, too. “Just…silenced.”
In a panic, I reached for my bond with Emmerich, willing him to stop mindlessly kissing Nazeing as if I didn’t exist and nothing else in the world mattered. I didn’t know what it felt like for my brothers, but to say the bond was “silenced” was accurate. It was still there, as thick as ever, but it was like the invisible cord binding me to my mate had once been a conduit of light and energy, but now it was nothing.
“What do we do?” Misha asked, so panicked that my own fear paled in comparison to my deep-seated need to protect my fragile brother.
“We fight,” Leo said.
His bravado vanished a moment later when he turnedto the doorway that was supposed to bring the rest of Osric’s army into the Great Hall only to find that it wasn’t there.
The doorway was gone. I had been too distracted by Nazeing’s transformation and everything that happened after to note that it had closed up before a single soldier could come through. The only people who had made it into the Great Hall were me and Emmerich, Nazeing, my brothers, and their mates. Now, the only ones who remained unstupefied by Nazeing’s dark magic were me and my brothers.
I took one last, painful look at Emmerich and Nazeing completely absorbed in each other, my heart breaking with what I knew we needed to do. “We run,” I contradicted Leo.
“What?” Leo dragged his attention away from Diamant, who didn’t seem particularly aware of anything, and glared at me. “I am not leaving my mate.”
“We have to,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to the side. “While Nazeing is distracted.”
“He’s right,” Selle said, pushing up his glasses. He grabbed Misha’s hand and gestured to the others to follow me toward one of the doorways leading out of the Great Hall. “We can’t fight against this kind of magic.”
