Page 123 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
“One sister and one brother have babies too. Babies have baby dragons too. Lots of baby dragons,” he chuckled.
That was a scary thought. Her clan had only seen a handful of them, but as it turned out, there were at least twice as many dragons they didn’t know about... although she couldn’t help but be curious about what baby dragons looked like. From the size of those nests she had seen in his home, they probably once were as tiny as snow leopard cubs.
“Father dragon too?”
“Yes. Black dragon.”
So the legendary black dragon her clan had feared for decades was Kassein’s father’s. The other dragons all belonged to his siblings, then? Alezya couldn’t believe she held such a piece of important information, and she’d gotten it so easily too. His clan’s dragons had terrorized all the clans for generations, and now, she was beginning to understand where they came from…
“Black dragon is a mother dragon?”She frowned.
“Not mother. Egg.”
“Egg?”
“Yes. Baby dragons are eggs.”
Baby dragons came from... eggs? Like birds? It almost made Alezya chuckle. To think such a mighty, scary creature hatched from an egg like a bird.
“Alezya has brothers and sisters?” Kassein suddenly asked.
“Three sisters,” she said. “No brothers.”
She once had brothers, but they had all been killed or died young. Every time, they were her father’s pride until he sent them to their deaths to fight another clan. She knew her last brother had been killed in one of the attacks against Kassein’s clan, but now, she knew her father was the one responsible for this, more than any of Kassein’s men. His pride always came long before any of his children’s sake.
She had never felt close to any of her brothers because she was her mother’s only child, and as a girl, she had been raised with her half-sisters.
When her mother had left, Alezya had lost the only person who had ever treated her like family, and she was far too young to remember enough of it.
Now Lumie was her family, and as always, her heart hurt whenever she thought of her baby.
“Alezya father? Mother?” Kassein asked, visibly eager to know more.
“...Father,” she said. “No mother.”
She didn’t know her mother’s whereabouts, and she wasn’t even sure she was still alive.
If she was, Alezya hoped that woman was happy. She had been sad when her mother had left, but she had quickly become resigned to it as she had been to any of the clan’s rulings. At the time, she was too young to understand what had happened and why, but as an adult, and after having been married herself, Alezya couldn’t blame her mother for having left. Her father was so horrible as a father, she couldn’t imagine the monster he was as a husband.
After her mother, either no clan wanted to give him any more of their daughters, or her father had given up himself. He would probably pick one of his nephews as his successor someday.
“Father and mother,” Kassein said, “and jinida.”
“Jinida?”
“Jinida. Mother of father.”
His grandmother. Alezya smiled, amused that he even had his grandmother.
“My azyela,” he said. “Father, mother, sisters and brothers, dragons, grandmother. My azyela.”
His family. It was funny how the word he used for family was so close to her own name, Alezya. In her language, Alezya meant freedom.
“Alezya azyela?” he suddenly asked.
She hesitated for a second.
“...Lumie,” she muttered. “Lumieis myazyela.”
