Page 33 of Court of Rivals
Prince Alaric gives me a look. “You don’t need to talk to your dragon, you just need to do better. You need to lead him.”
I glance over at Ebron. To my surprise, his focus seems to be on the white, gold, and silver dragons. For a second I wonder if this means they’re the three he might pick as his mates, but then Prince Gareth jerks my arm again.
“And that stunt in the water… never fucking do something like that again.”
“As dragon riders, don’t we need to be prepared for everything?” Ebron didn’t dive into the water for fun, he dove into the water because he thought it would help with our training. There must have been a reason why.
“So help me, Harper,” he whispers, teeth clenching. “If you can’t be the leader your dragon needs, I will ignore my father, I will ignore what Ebron ‘wants,’ and I will claim him for myself.”
I step onto my tiptoes. “Let’s see how that works out for you.”
My bet… Ebron will leave him a charred mess as a reminder to the other riders that he’s not just a tool. He’s a living being with thoughts and feelings of his own. And people who don’t respect that, well, things won’t end well for them.
“You’ll see,” he says, softly.
I yank free of his grip and step back. “If you want things to change with Ebron and I, you all need to stop with the dick measuring contest and actually teach us something. Tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing, so we actually learn.”
Prince Gareth crosses his arms in front of his chest. “If you were cut out for this, I wouldn’t need to tell you what to do, you’d have trained all your life andknowwhat to do.”
I roll my eyes. “You know that ego of yours is going to be your downfall.”
Turning, I walk away, feeling their gaze blazing into my back. No, things are not going the way I planned when I agreed to come here with Ebron, but their hate is only driving me harder. These idiots are going to be damned surprised when I become a better dragon rider than any of them ever thought they could be. I’m sure of it.
14
Lucien
The door to my father’s chambers closes behind us, and we three brothers stride away as an angry trio. It’s strange. I don’t remember any time in my life where my brothers and I were on the same side. Even my vague memories of us as toddlers always involved fighting, screaming, and avoiding one another. But I guess the appearance of this beautiful Harper changes all of that.
This Harper who seems to have no interest in me in any way. Yes, it’s true I’ve been a bit of an ass, but I’ve sprinkled in my usual charm as well, and that’s had no effect on her. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she troubles me deeply.I’m a good looking prince. She should be bowing at my feet.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like her in my life.
“He’s wrong,” Gareth says, followed by some colorful swearing.
“He’s not seeing the larger picture,” Alaric says, and I know before he starts speaking that it’s going to be all about the rules and honor and what’s right and wrong, because that’s just how the stick-in-the-mud is. “Dragon riders are supposed to be nobles. They’re supposed to have been trained from birth. Andthey sure as hell are not supposed to be women. Harper breaks every rule that’s ever been set into place. She’s disrupting our training and our bonding with our dragons. She needs to go. How can he not see that?”
“Besides,” I say, “she’s a beautiful woman who he’s thrown in with a bunch of horny men. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the looks the guys are giving her. It’s going to cause problems when she starts being passed around. Understandably, the men are not going to want to share her.”
I certainly wouldn’t want to. Not that I wouldn’t sleep with other women, of course, but I wouldn’t wantherwith other men. It’s a territorial thing that only a man would understand.
“You’re assuming she’ll allow herself to be passed around,” Alaric says, frowning.
I laugh.Is he serious?“A woman like that. A peasant. Surrounded by the perfect male specimens… of course it won’t be much longer before she starts spreading her legs.”
Alaric looks at me funny. “Do you intend to sleep with her?”
A very delicious image forms in my mind, but I say, “No. Of course not.”
Even though I might be lying. As irritating as I find her, as ridiculous as I find her presence here, if she showed up in my bed, I wouldn’t turn her away. I’ve already imagined countless things I could do to the little spitfire.
Gareth punches the wall. “If she was just some fuck toy for the men, I wouldn’t mind, but she has that powerful male dragon at her back. A dragon who seems to only want her as his rider. We need to disrupt their connection. We need to show Ebron that we’d make for better riders.”
“How do we do that?” Alaric asks.
Gareth opens his mouth, then shuts it, and I know why. Harper is a completely untrained and inexperienced rider who has somehow managed to remain seated on her dragon with nosaddle on one of the most difficult rides we’ve ever been on. Three men were unseated from their dragons in the water and had to be retrieved by their dragons. Another fell as we were darting between mountains and had to be caught by another rider.
Harper is a good rider. Maybe one of the better ones we’ve ever seen. And it makes all three of us angry as hell. We needed her to be bad. We needed her to see that she wasn’t cut out for this.
