Page 211 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
Now, he didn’t have to fear fighting with his dragon again, and for the best reason: even if they hated each other, they needed to be better, for Alezya’s and Lumie’s sakes. His older sister was right: they deserved the best of him, and the worst of him had led him to fight his dragon in the Capital, destroy countless buildings, and kill a man.
Even if his sister insisted he wasn’t to blame, Kassein knew he would never be able to fully atone or forgive himself for what had happened, and he didn’t want to.
Instead, he intended to carry that guilt all his life so he would never forget what he’d done and never do it again.
He and Kein took off high in the skies, but their eyes were already analyzing what was going on below, and it didn’t takelong to spot Kiera and the men ahead, quickly making their way up the mountains.
From where they flew, he could see the triplets were happily running ahead, probably thinking this was some fun walk they were on. Kassein knew his sister didn’t need him to launch an attack and could well have led this entire operation by herself, but he wanted to be there in case they found the smallest trace of Alezya.
He hadn’t seen her in far too long, and he hated it.
He had never missed someone so much in his life, and the pain was becoming so much that it almost felt physical. He was dying to grab ahold of her black hair again, caress her skin, look into those deep black eyes, smell her scent, and bask in her warmth. Every memory of the two of them in his tent, touching, caressing, kissing, was becoming almost too painful to remember.
Underneath him, Kein echoed his distress with a long, high-pitched growl.
“We will find her,” he whispered to his dragon, his eyes riveted on the mountain paths below. “We’ll find her, Kein.”
The mountains had never seemed so vast, daunting, and mysterious, but that was an enemy Kassein wasn’t afraid to take on.
He would search every single one of those mountains, battle every tribe he came across, and inspect every nook and cranny until he found Alezya. His men had been aching for a fight, and now, so was he, and it wasn’t against himself nor his dragon anymore.
The tribes were about to taste what he’d been too lazy to hit them with all this time.
He circled the mountains several times, Kein flying lower each time, ensuring their presence was known.
The sun was steadily rising, and it was a clear, bright day, one where the tribes would definitely see his dragon coming and hurry to hide inside.
What they didn’t know yet was that now, his sister was coming from the ground too, and their hiding inside wouldn’t stop his army anymore.
For the longest time, Kassein hadn’t cared about those tribes. So long as he didn’t fulfill Kassian’s order, he could stay here, in his relative exile, fight when he felt like it, and let the world forget about him, but things couldn’t have been more different now.
Now, he was desperate to inspect every mountain, search every tribe for a woman, and make this area safe. To establish peace just so that a woman and her child could live happily in it, now that was a cause worth living and fighting for.
Kiera reached the entrance of the first mountain, a different one from the one they’d attacked the previous day, and Kein dove to the other side, ready to look for escapees.
For the first attack, he wanted to observe how the tribes would react. Since Tievin had established that there were several tribes and that they might not be as harmonious as they’d previously thought, Kassein was more curious to notice the differences and the dynamics between them.
Would the nearby tribes come to the rescue? Or would they simply be left alone to their fate?
Kiera had picked one of the mountains that definitely wasn’t Alezya’s, so he could be at ease knowing she had a low chance of being brought into the scuffle, even if it was also disappointing.
Kein flew lower, and soon enough, they heard shouts, screams, and the familiar sound of fighting going on. Kassein listened as the triplet dragons’ excited, high-pitched growls echoed from all sides of the mountains, spreading absolute chaos inside.
Much to his relief, he witnessed first-hand as his sister’s plan worked perfectly; within minutes, there were tribespeople who ran out of openings from the mountain, rushing down pathways or climbing to safety.
He kept Kein hovering above, high enough in the hopes that it wouldn’t scare any tribespeople and make them slip and fall to their death or something like that. Still, the mere sight of his dragon was enough to have some of them scream and run back inside through the nearest entry point possible.
For a while, it was a strange sight to see people appearing out of an unsuspected hole, running down a flank of their mountain, and disappearing through another, but Kassein kept observing, trying to gather every morsel of useful information while maintaining a distance.
He spotted women running with children, elderly, and younger men carrying supplies, but this time, it didn’t seem like any warrior was running from the fight.
He observed, letting his sister have her fun, not worried at all about her; with Kiki probably waiting on the other side of the mountains, a few men with her, and three young dragons running amok, Kiera was most likely having a great time.
Moreover, from what they’d seen previously, the tribes’ caves were too narrow for them to be ganged up on, and the tunnels too loud for anyone to come and take them by surprise. While they made for great hideouts from sky-bound threats, grounded armies, and adult dragons, those mountains were nearly impossible to defend once they were invaded. If Kassein had desired to do so, he would have probably been able to conquer the entire area in a matter of weeks. But he had no desire to exterminate the tribes and no reason to.
The Dragon Empire had always thrived without taking an interest in what the mountains had to offer aside from hostile inhabitants and miles of unexplored caves and tunnels.
Kassein’s father, the previous ruler of the land below them, had never cared more about those than making sure they didn’t make a scratch on the North Army and his children could safely use the forest beneath as a playground. There had been no chance to open communication and, therefore, no previous known attempt at peace aside from a mutual disinterest.
