Page 83 of The Lost Princess

NASI

Ihad a mate; a beautiful, glorious, loving mate. I didn’t care that I was the last male draken, and she was perhaps the last female. All I cared about was the here and now.

For those first few days, we could barely stand to be more than a foot apart from each other. I mated with her constantly. Endlessly.

I couldn’t help it. Every time I caught a glance of her wings filled in with my colors, my inner draken rose up and demanded satisfaction. Not that Kaida was complaining at all.

My mate was just as insatiable. I took her every way I could imagine and then some. Up against the cave wall. Sitting with her on top. She pleasured me with her mouth, and I enthusiastically returned the favor.

I assumed at some point the fervor would decrease, but for now I was enjoying my mate relentlessly, as she was with me.

But after two days, my inner draken whined about something else: food and necessities for our mate. She need to be cared for, especially if she were growing a drakling. My child! I didn’t think Kaida was pregnant; I figured I would scent it when she was. Regardless, we had to come up for air sometime and restock.

And come up with a plan of action.

For a week things were tense as we snuck out in the dead of night, flying far to farms of the neighboring kingdom to steal food. We would have to figure something out in the long term. We both agreed we had to stop stealing post haste.

But after a few weeks passed, no soldiers had come stomping to my mountain. No crowds chased us. We were safe or as safe as we were going to be.

It was another two weeks before Kaida suggested anything beyond the comfortable daily routine we’d developed in the cave. One morning she looked up from the mat she’d been attempting to weave from dried reeds, biting her lip with uncertainty. I gave her my full attention and folded my hands in her lap.

Her eyes shimmered with tears. “Alfred said a lot of things to me after I refused to meet his demands. Things that were horrible.”

I leaned in, putting a hand around her shoulders. I didn’t probe further or dig deeply. She would tell me in due time.

“That cage I was in,” she continued. “He said it was my mother’s cage.” Her indigo eyes met mine, full of pain and longing for the mother and sire she never knew.

I squeezed her tightly to me. “I am sorry, Kaida.”

She sniffed. “It still had blood in it. He hadn’t cleaned. He hadn’t—” She stopped herself, taking a moment to breathe.

“If I couldn’t stand to be away from you for long, I’d fly there now and stake his head on the front gate,” I swore.

Kaida snorted, and gave me a playful shove. “So flirtatious.”

My cock stirred at her sultry tone, but I pushed such desires away. She needed to get whatever this was off her chest.

“He … he also said some things I wasn’t able to process right away. Now that I have distance from him, I’ve been able to sort it out more. He said my mother was a gift of war. But not only that, he mentioned she’d come there with a younger male draken. A boy, in his words.”

Her face twisted in sorrow, looking to me for hope and guidance. “Do you …do you think that was my brother?”

I sucked in a breath at the implications. “It is certainly possible. He could have also simply been a young draken caught with her.”

Her lips pursed as she stared at the fire, lost in thought. She jerked suddenly.

“There was a man Alfred called in. He was a supposed draken expert.” She shook my arms off and stood, pacing excitedly around the cave. “How can you be a draken expert unless you are around drakens? He claimed he was. He even offered to free me if I would go with him.”

My fists clenched. “He does not sound like a good man,” I grit out. A good man would have freed her without conditions or promises.

Kaida rolled her eyes. “It was obvious he was a sneak; he looked like a pirate.” She sighed. “What do you think? Could he have the other draken?”

I was cautious. “I … that makes sense,” I relented. I could scarcely imagine it. More drakens alive?

I tried to think about it rationally. While most of the draken population had been on Lyoness when the volcano erupted, it hadn’t been everyone. All of our warriors had been on the shore of Dorea, fighting in the demon wars. It was obvious none of them had returned to the island after the war, so what happened to them?

I blinked, feeling foolish for not considering the possibility earlier.

“More drakens. That certainly seems plausible. Where was this human ‘draken expert’ from?”

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