Page 15 of The Dragon's Captured Heart
Madison did no such thing. “Orwhat? You people keep forgetting I have quite literally no reason to listen to you or what you want me to do. I’m already here as your concubine. I have no way home. If I tried, you’d probably kill me. Why should I showrespect to the woman who all but ordered my kidnapping? Tell me how she’s deserved it.”
“My sovereign,” I said awkwardly. “I am sorry that you had to hear this, I—”
Lifting a hand, the sovereign stopped my half-formed apology. Her eyes were focused on Madison. “Do you know why you’re here?” she asked without a hint of anger.
“To be his bedroom plaything?” Madison suggested. “He’s attractive enough for it, I’ll give him that, but it takes more than looks to get me to want to bed someone. Iespeciallyam not into it when it’s done by force.”
“Wrong.”
The word was spoken with such confidence that Madison paused to listen for more.
“You’re here because we need you.”
I wasn’t sure whose eyebrows went higher, Madison’s or mine.
“What?” we said in unison.
“The dragon race is dying,” the sovereign explained to a shell-shocked audience. “Not quickly, not tomorrow, but very slowly, we are going extinct.”
“How?” I demanded to know. This was the first I’d heard of any such thing.
“Simple population numbers,” the woman explained, tucking her perfectly straight, platinum-blonde hair behind her ear. “Not enough dragon women are born, and those that are aren’t carrying the number of offspring necessary to keep our race flourishing.”
“You need more babies.”
“More babies,” the sovereign agreed with Madison, “andmore females. Which is where you come in. It’s an experiment to see if dragons and humans can mate regularly and help bolster our numbers.”
“Doesn’t that give me more incentive not to help you?” Madison asked, crossing her arms. “After all, you have killed a lot of my people. Helping make more of you seems counterintuitive to stopping that.”
I glared at her, growing very tired of her attitude.
“Perhaps,” the sovereign agreed. “I understand your anger. But I will remind you, it wasn’t us who chose you.”
Silence reigned until I grew uncomfortable with the friction in the room.
“My sovereign,” I said, breaking it at last to ask the question still burning at the forefront of my mind. “Do you know why I survived Noa’s death?”
I tried to keep any emotion from my voice, but judging by the sharpness of the sovereign’s look, I hadn’t succeeded. Not fully. It was hard. For two years, I’d lived with this guilt, and the entire time, she’d known why? I’d endured so much from the other dragons, and to find out I might not have had to burned more than a little.
“There is a reason,” she said. “It is rare among our people, but it does happen.”
“Which is?” I pushed.
“Someone killed her.”
I blinked. “Dragons kill other dragons all the time.”
“That’s not what she’s saying, I think,” Madison interjected.
All eyes turned to the human woman.
“I just meant, it’s like a car accident versus an assassination. Both times, someone dies.”
“But only one time are theykilled,” the sovereign finished. “Someone murdered your mate. Premeditated, on purpose. Most of the time, dragon death is the result of a fight, a challenge, something like that. Where both parties are aware of what could happen. But premeditated murder is rare. It’s not fully understood, but the assumption is that the other party is left alive to ensure justice is found.”
The blood in my veins began burning, clouding the words.
Someone hadmurderedNoa?
