Page 158 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
“...Is it true, what you said? You speak the Dragon Clan’s language?”
Alezya assessed her cousin’s husband for a second.
Despite the concerned expression he had on, perhaps he had been sent by her father to check if she still said the same things to someone she potentially trusted more.
Luckily for Alezya, she didn’t need to lie on that particular subject.
“I do,” she whispered.
He raised his eyebrows, stunned. Alezya’s eyes went over his shoulders to the busy tunnels. There was some extreme tension, worse than what she remembered from the previous gatherings.
“Why are things so tense?” she asked him.
“The dragon’s making everyone nervous,” he muttered. “It’s still in the area. Some clans have been sending messages to ask to postpone the gathering, but your father insists on maintaining it.”
“He wants to use me to make a demonstration,” Alezya scoffed.
It was just like her father to thrive on other people’s fears. Her cousin-in-law glanced around, nervous about being caught chatting with her, but cleared his throat and gave her a faint nod.
“...Thank you,” Alezya muttered after a second, “for taking care of her.”
Suolk looked surprised by her words, and his eyes drifted to the baby girl dozing in her arms, most of her white-skinned body protected by Alezya’s fur coat. He gave her a half-hearted smile.
“She’s so close in age to my son... I don’t know why your child is different, but after spending time with her, it’s obvious she’s just that, a child. As a father, I can’t help but think... What if it had been my wife’s? How would I have treated the child then?”
“You’re a good man, Suolk. Zenia’s lucky to have married a man like you.”
Perhaps it was because he had come from a different clan, like the man Alezya had been married to. Most daughters were wedded to other clans, but women who were related to the man of power in clans or belonged to stronger clans often had the luck to bring their husbands into their clan instead of the other way around. Zenia’s husband had been one of those cases. Suolk came from a different clan with, perhaps, a different culture.
He let out another sigh, glancing around nervously.
“I have to go,” he muttered. “Do you need anything?”
She needed a lot of things, but none that her cousin’s husband could give her, so Alezya shook her head.
“I’m alright.”
“Alright. I... I will try to come and check on you again later.”
“Will you be at the gathering?” Alezya asked just as he was about to stand up.
Suolk froze, frowning. He seldom attended the gatherings; he came from a minor clan and had married into theirs.
Suolk was one of those men who held little authority during the gathering, so he usually only attended for the sake of seeing his former clan. As a woman, Alezya had never been allowed to attend the gathering, but she had heard that more than a hundred men from different clans usually attended; it was a bigaffair for all the neighboring clans, and tonight’s promised to be one of the most important.
It was going to be Alezya’s first and, hopefully, her last. She had no doubt that her father was going to bring her, just as a demonstration, to show off his daughter that’s supposedly pregnant with a dragon’s child and, even more impressive, her ability to summon a dragon.
Alezya was counting on things going very differently from what her father had planned; she was going to call Kein, not because her father wanted her to but because she needed the dragon’s help.
If things went well, she might get Lumie and herself out of there, but if they didn’t, she had to prepare for the worst-case scenario. She had seen Kein attack and kill human men plenty of times, and she had no doubt the orange dragon wouldn’t hesitate to attack again; she wouldn’t hesitate either if things went down this dark route.
However, she was unwilling to get more people killed than necessary, especially people like Suolk who weren’t as evil and greed-filled as her father.
“Alezya...”
“You should go,” she whispered.
A few seconds of heavy silence passed between them, Suolk still staring at her with a vaguely confused, almost nervous expression. Alezya dismissed him by refocusing her attention on her baby until he left.
