Chapter 13:
Athena
Weeks passed with me locked in The Tower—the cage I had referred to as ‘Old Familiar.’ Aurlauc didn’t understand the reference, but he seemed to smile each time I brought it up.
I had spent days and days healing in my cage, unsure where to go from there. Clearly, I wasn’t good at running away. And most of all… I just missed Vaikrand. As disgusted as I was with him, it felt strange not to spend my days with him. His company was the only real comfort I had ever found on Dobromia.
And then he became the downfall of it all.
“What’s going on?” I asked Aurlauc and his eyes quickly flicked to mine with mischievousness.
“What makes you think anything’s happening?”
“Please,” I scoffed with sarcasm, waving off the silver shifter.
So many royal delegates had come and gone from my cell room that I knew something had to be up. Even the king had come to look at me before heading back to his underground tower. I felt like some strange specimen as he’d looked me up and down. Then it occurred to me that I practically was.
He seemed to acknowledge something about my body with surprise as he looked me over: an action that made me sick to my stomach.
“Something’s going on,” I said with a worried laugh as I looked over at Aurlauc, stationed far from my cell.
He looked over at me with azure eyes and smiled; nodded. “Something is, yes,” he said. “Vaikrand is requesting a proving ceremony.”
“A what?” I frowned deep, pulling my eyes tight. “What does that mean?”
“It means he wants to petition the D’Karr for an audience.”
“He wants to talk to the king?” I simplified and Aurlauc gave a playful shrug. “Why? What about?”
“About you,” he said simply, making no bones about the subject matter. “He wants to claim you,” he said, tasting the words and forcing them out slowly. I felt terrible for him then as he watched my face.
“Ah,” was all I said.
“He wants you to do something for him, should he win the proving.”
“Wait,” I raised a hand to him. “What does that even mean? He is going to fight?”
The description of what came next horrified me to no end. Because Vaikrand was an outcast, he would have to win a battle to be granted access to an audience with the king. This meant a battle: bloody and public. Something like an old Coliseum battle.
“What does he want from me?” I asked suddenly.
Aurlauc looked over to my cell and then his eye line fell to the floor. It seemed like the moment I was ready to be friendly was the moment he’d had enough of me. He took a sharp breath and looked entirely removed from me. “He wants you to tell the D’Karr where Earth is. As you know,” he sighed, “Tredorphen is his son. He wants him back. Wants your resources.”
My brows rose and fell in surprise and I breathed, “Well, you don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
He blinked. “What will you do?”
“What do you think?” I teased wryly.
Usually Aurlauc was always up for a round of banter with me: a night of playing cards through the thick bars and conversation. He was my only solace in The Tower. Now he was distant from me, but of course I knew why. That didn’t mean it made me any less sad.
“I think you won’t take the deal,” he said tersely. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
I swallowed at the statement and looked down at the scarring flesh on my exposed thigh. I was healing up nicely, Patience had said.
“What would you do?” I asked.
The silver shifter blinked in surprise and offered me a laugh. “Do you want the truth or do you want me to placate you?”
“When have I ever wanted the truth?” I winked. “Shoot.”
“I would… take the deal.”
My brows narrowed deeply and I felt my heart sink, a wave of heat rushing over my face. It wasn’t the answer I was expecting.
“Because you want our resources?” I asked seriously.
“Because I want you to live,” he said simply.
I shivered inwardly at the thought and quickly petitioned Aurlauc for a secret meeting with Vaikrand, who, as I understood, was also being watched closely by the king’s guards.
Ever a loyal friend, Aurlauc made it happen.
As Vaikrand approached the cage, my tongue seethed with hurtful things to say. The yellow shifter looked at me with his pools of deep blue, deep-set eyes, and I felt a white-hot pain course through the center of my body.
It felt like my heart dropped one time after another as he gripped the bars. His eyes flicked from mine and in my peripheral I could see Aurlauc waiting by the door in a silent fury. His brow cocked suddenly, the silver shifter watching and waiting to see the extent of our interaction. How we had bonded.
My eyes focused back on Vaikrand and my stomach fell once more. You forgot about me, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell him how much it hurt me that he had given me exactly zero regard before figuratively locking the door behind him, selling me down the river.
I wanted to find a way to express to him that all the things he did meant that he didn’t love me and how I wasn’t special. But, even as my foot throbbed from kicking it against the bottom of the door, my rational side kicked in.
“I’m sorry,” he said lowly, his eyes briefly flicking to Aurlauc before leaning closer into the cage and slipping his large hand over mine.
I took a heavy breath as I looked at him and a sigh died on my lips before it ever flourished. “It’s fine,” I said, and for a second he looked at me as though it was.
Suddenly, I began to fume on that fact. That he could possibly think this was forgivable; how coming to terms with his betrayal and hours of knocking and banging and kicking and screaming could be summed up with a simple smile and a kink of my neck to the side. An ‘its fine’ said out loud in a whimsical tone.
As our eyes met it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t know the extent of my pain. That he believed I would find a scrappy way out of this and everything was cool. Because that’s what I led him to believe, wasn’t it? That I was good and calm and docile enough to be his chosen. And he wanted me to believe he was worthy of my efforts.
A sentiment that I was finding increasingly hard to believe.
He looked over my living quarters, my cage, and raised a smug brow. Then he smiled. He actually smiled.
I scraped my lip so hard over my teeth that it shredded so that drops of blood salted over my mouth.
“I need to talk to you,” he said quietly as I ripped my hand away from his. He looked to Aurlauc but didn’t turn his head before he corrected, “Alone.”
Aurlauc looked at me as though waiting for a signal that it was alright to leave us be and I gave a small nod and a deep inhale.
“Not going to try and kill him this time?” Aurlauc tested with a raise of his brow and I simply smiled.
With that, the shifter left us to our privacy.
“I needed to see you,” Vaikrand repeated, the hurt evident in his eyes.
“Why?” I scoffed, backing away. “To try and convince me to give up my sister?” I watched the expression on his face sour and his forehead contorted into a series of lines. “Aurlauc already gave you up.”
“Ah,” he said, tilting his head back. With a shrug he said, “It’s not in my interest to convince you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Oh, really?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s my interest to get you out of this cell,” he smiled. “I have a promise to keep, after all.”
My reply was thickly coated with sarcasm. “I believe that.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, his voice thickly coated with lust as he reached his hand into the cage and gestured me to come nearer to him.
I frowned in disgust and backed away. “Don’t you think there’s other things to talk about?”
He gave an arrogant smile and fingered the bars, clamping his hands down on the dewy finish. I watched them carefully and like a lightning strike, a vision of his fingers inside me flashed into my head.
I clenched my teeth together and tried to force the image from my mind. I wouldn’t be Marina.
“I want to be inside of you,” he whispered and my eyes widened, face flushing a coral shade of pink.
“Shh!” I said with a laugh, staring back toward the door Aurlauc had disappeared through. “We have a guard, you know.”
He waved me off. “He’ll be gone a while, I’m sure. Waiting for me to help turn you against your people.”
I felt a familiar rush of sick through my belly as he smiled at me as though it were all a big joke.
“That’s funny to you?” I snapped.
He gauged my expression and licked his lips. “Not ha-ha funny. Just, cruel funny.”
“Which is still worth a laugh, apparently?” I seethed.
“Come over here right now,” he said sternly, seemingly out of nowhere.
I exhaled heavily and looked in the direction of his snapping fingers. I stood firmly in place, as though my feet were cemented to the floor. I could feel the air thick and hot and humid as midday rose over the towering spire of a prison.
Maybe if I held out long enough he might open the cell just for a chance to touch me, I thought.
“Come here,” he said, softer this time. Then he grit his teeth and, as though it pained him to use the phrase asked, “Please?”
My eyes shot up so that my eyelashes skimmed the skin below my eyebrow. With a teasing smile, I said, “Careful what you wish for, Vaikrand. Last time I came that close to you I nearly killed you.”
“Ah, but we’ve put that behind us by now, haven’t we?”
I could tell from his tone he was already sexually motivated. His eyes were glazed over with thoughts about my body, and I couldn’t help feeling the same.
With slow steps, I neared the side of the cage and swallowed hard as I grew close enough to smell him. With a far reach, I ghosted my fingers over the muscles on his chest and trailed my touch down his navel. Then I pulled my hand away.
“No,” I said lustfully.
“Yes,” he said, daring. “I need you.”
“You don’t, actually,” I said. “But you want me.”
“You want me,” he said as though it were a correction. “Deny it.”
“No,” I said. My insides twirled inside like a rapid wave crashing toward me. I felt sick for a myriad of reasons now. My body pulling toward him and my mind telling me not to trust him.
He spun me around so that our bodies aligned with the bars, the warmth of him familiar and comforting, yet sickening all at the same time. I felt his hardness throbbing against my back. He reached his arms in through the bars so they caressed and slid down my breasts, past my navel and farther still.
“This,” he whispered as though the word said it all.
With his hands buried down the fabric of my pants, he began to moan in my ear and touch me. His lips found my neck, and he began kissing down my skin until he reached my shoulder, kissing over the fabric of my shirt.
“I have to have you,” he said.
I reached a hand back and began to rub it against the stiff peak in his pants, and he began to breath heavy. It’d been too long for both of us: our shared bodies a new pastime we hadn’t yet had enough of.
With a hurried, lustful motion, he tugged my pants down and bent me into the bars so I was leaned far over, our hips aligned. Without looking, I could hear his pants fall and soon I was being filled with him: thickness thrusting in and out of me as my body banged against the metal bars with an earthy clang.
I reached behind me and grabbed onto them for leverage, and Vaikrand grew louder, grabbing softly at my hair and whispering filthy things into the space between the bars.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded, and I removed my left hand from the cell bar and reached between my legs.
His heavy breath was approval enough, and he began to give long, hard thrusts into me like hitting a hammer against a nail. My body shook with each pound, and my breathing hastened.
“Now,” he said, letting me know it was about to come to an end.
“Not yet,” I whispered and tried to focus my mind as he tugged my hair back harder.
“No, now,” he grunted.
I felt my breasts shake and bounce against the force that came next and luckily it was enough to send me over the edge before he finished.
When he released me, my legs shook from the awkward stance we had taken for so long, and I immediately pulled my pants back up. I spun around to look at him and couldn’t tell if I felt a love-smothered lust or just hatred.
“I want you to be mine,” he said quietly.
“Super,” I laughed halfheartedly.
His deep blue eyes flashed back and forth from mine like a metronome, and his dire expression suddenly made me sick.
“What?” I asked. He blinked but said nothing, and with more panic in my voice I repeated, “What, Vaikrand?”
There was a look about him that suddenly seemed very dragon-like: the curve of his jaw and the way his scales flared and shone in the daylight. The way his pupils went suddenly vertical sent a rush through my body.
“I’m going to tell you exactly what is going to happen,” he said evenly, a touch of arrogance and spite in his tone. “The D’Karr will rape you. He will take you as his and force you to live in the pit. He will try and charm you, and when that doesn’t work, he will torture you. Then he will kill you if he doesn’t get his way.”
“You can’t make me give her up, Vaikrand,” I said shakily.
“No,” he swallowed hard and shook his head. “But I can beg you to be my chosen. To make things right.”
“And what does that mean?” I said, narrowing my eyes unsurely.
“You believed once, didn’t you?” He winced and gestured a wave with his hand into the distance. “Before all this? I know you believed we were worth fighting for, Athena. I saw it.”
“So?” I said petulantly.
“So,” he followed, “why can’t you make our cause your cause?” Then he neared the cage and crouched down. I followed his lead and sat on my knees, leaning into him as though we were in some kind of shared secret and my stomach dropped as he said, “Would you let what’s happening to the dragonlings happen to our child?”
I felt a sick burning rush up my throat and swallowed it back down, my face turning grim and white. My mind whirled and whipped around in a panic that I never showed on my face as we sat in suffocating silence for moments longer.
“I’ve known for a long time,” he said, emotionless.
My eyes creased at the sides and I narrowed my brows, my lips pronounced. “How?”
“I can feel it,” he said in a puzzled timber, as though his statement didn’t need explaining. “Can’t you?”
“No!” I said with a shocked laugh. “Vaikrand…”
“Don’t take it from me,” he said, showing the first signs of emotion in his voice: a slow panic building and tensing in the back of his throat. “The child.”
Tingles latched onto every free inch of my body, and a cool shiver tickled its way up my back.
“I love you,” he said with a collected tone.
I swallowed hard and felt light and airy in my feet. His words were simple and masculine and factual, yet in my mind, they dripped with honey that I could practically taste.
His words were said so matter-of-fact, it almost felt as though we were conducting a business deal as he continued, “This thing… between us. You and me. This is real. I claimed you, and I want the child: this family. All of it. I want it. There’s never been any question of that.”
“There hasn’t?” I asked, indignant. “You really have to work on your charms there, bud, if you think locking up the woman you love is a way of telling her you want to spend forever with her.”
He dismissed my joke: a sign that our banter was far out of the realm of normal. Still crouching, he leaned in and ran the back of his fingers along my stomach and locked eyes with me.
“Please don’t make our child live on this planet: a doomed planet. Please don’t take away its chances. I am begging you. We can make this work, but you have to put the child first.”
“Which means betraying my sister?”
“The way she betrayed you,” he said forcefully.
“I’m the one who made her leave!” I screamed, backing away from the bars.
He inhaled a sharp breath, and I could hear the beast in him as he screamed back, “And she never came back!”
I felt my emotions rush forward then and tears formed full and hard at the base of my eyelids, spilling over solemnly. My throat was so tight I knew it was pointless to speak. I turned my back to him so he couldn’t see me cry and he reached through the cage, but I jerked away from his touch.
With a simple shift, I saw a flow of yellow through the cell bars, and his thick, slippery tail wrapped around me and spun me toward him.
“Athena, I am begging. I will get on my knees if that proves it to you.”
I gave a half-smile at the sentiment and shook my head, tears spilling harder.
“I can’t,” I said through the crack in my voice. As soon as I heard myself, I crumbled, bursting into tortured sobs and burying my face in my hands. “Please don’t make me, Vaikrand. I can’t.”
“Athena,” he swallowed desperately and tipped my chin up. He kissed me with soft lips that contrasted against the facial hair that scraped against my face as he drew away. The sound of our lips parting echoed over and over in my ear. “You’re going to be a mother.”
“I know,” I said. “If I’m lucky.”
“That’s not funny,” he said firmly.
I nodded. “I know.”
He stared at me, and I knew… that I was about to crumble. To agree. I felt the life kick inside of me, and my hand instinctively reached down toward my stomach. My tongue ran over my lips, and I looked up at him.
I wanted everything he was saying. To be a mother. To be his. To raise our child in its home where food was abundant, and there was no need for killing.
It was with that simple thought my heart leaped from my chest and before I knew it, I was nodding to him and reaching back in for another kiss.
“Alright,” I said.