I've been waiting to get to this chapter. What did you think?
I knew Ancalagon’s claim would be bad, but nothing had prepared me for how bad it would truly be. Nor did I realize that Ancalagon had laid some sort of claim on me and that Kendrick, by offering to take me as his mate, had offended Ancalagon deeply.When I hear Kendrick’s explanation of sharing me in different forms, I feel a bit more understanding of Ancalagon’s anger, that is until it becomes apparent that Ancalagon wants to kill him. He had no intention of letting him up once he conceded. I may not be happy with Kendrick right now, but I don’t want him killed, especially not because he offered to take me as his mate.“Why isn’t he backing off?” I ask Anala and Ajax. Ajax stays quiet, his lips pressed tightly together as he watches intently. I turn to Anala.“Anala?”“Each time someone tries to claim him, it gets harder for the Elementals to get Cal to pull back.”I watch horrified as Ancalagon blows Cedric back, Tana catching him in the air. Then he snarled at his father and growle
**Trigger Warning (aggressive/violent sex)I knew Ancalagon’s claim was going to be violent. His claims always are and now that Doc Everett is a rider, he needs to attend the claims. So, I offered to stay and watch the hospital for him while he was gone. And since my mate is heavily pregnant with our child, keeping her away from the violence is a positive thing. Thankfully, as her rider, I didn’t have to convince her to stay with me. My very independent mate has become quite loving and sweet to me since I claimed her. I love that I’m the only one that gets this side of her.“How many of these girls are conscious?” Tesha asks me as I set up the monitors so I can keep watch on everyone at once.“Less than half. They’re all on some sort of IV and the ones who are conscious seem to still be in shock. I don’t intend to spend any more time with them than I need to. I’m not sure they would accept my help, being that I’m a guy.”“If they need help, I’ll help them.”I lean down, kissing my mate
For the first time since I arrived here, I wake up to an empty room. Yesterday was exhausting. Everything was fine until it wasn't.I get up and shower, trying to figure out what I’m going to do. I went to sit with Iniko last night, telling him what had happened, even though I know he probably can’t hear me. I hadn't found any answers there.When I finish getting ready, I grab my things and head down to the dining hall. I’m surprised when I see that Anala is already here. Usually, she waits for me, or wakes me up so that we can come together.I get my food and make my way to the table to sit with her and the other dragons.“Sorry, Eliane. There aren’t any extra seats here today,” Anala says, looking up at me. Her face is filled with anger. I look at the others at the table, and realize that every one of them looks almost hateful, and that hate is directed at me.“I…okay,” I say, frowning and turning to go to the hybrid's table.“Sorry, no room here either,” Kano says. Ajax sighs and st
When someone knocked on the door, the last person I expected it to be was Eliane. She told me she wanted space to think and figure things out, so, as much as I’ve hated it, that’s what I’ve done, with the one exception of putting the dragons on notice. I understand why Anala is angry. If the roles were reversed, I’d be furious. But I also know that as my rider, Eliane now has control of my actions. If she tells me to stay away, I stay away. The dragons will have to accept it just as I have.That doesn’t mean that I didn’t ask Ajax to look out for her. I needed to know that Revalor wasn’t going to try and claim her and by extension me and Iniko. As dangerous as Eliane’s lack of knowledge is, Revalor’s need for power is much, much more dangerous.I watch Eliane as she crosses her arms over her chest and leans against my wall. I would say it’s the fire dragon in her, but she had this in her when we were in the laboratory together. A stubbornness to help me and others. It’s one of the reas
After leaving Ancalagon, I didn’t want to go to my room. Anala’s animosity was palpable in the dining hall. I can’t imagine how suffocating it would be in our room. So, instead, I head over to where Iniko's dragon is lying. There, I find Zephyr keeping watch over her son.“Hi,” I say softly, unsure of the reception I will receive from her. Given Avani’s anger, I expect anything but the kind smile she gives me.“Hello, Eliane. Are you here to see Iniko?”“Well, I thought I’d sleep out here and keep watch over him.”“The dragons are causing you problems?” she asks knowingly.“They are…loudly expressing their anger at me,” I say, taking a seat beside her.“Do you understand why?” she asks.“Yes, I think I do. I want you to know that I didn’t mean to be cruel to Ancalagon. I’m not…I’m not my father, no matter what anyone else says,” I say, my throat constricting at the thought that anyone thinks of me that way.“Ahh, a fire dragon’s angry words can hurt just as much as their fire,” she say
I’m not sure what has changed, but Eliane keeps claiming me as her dragon. I’m not complaining, I love it. And now, whether she realizes or not, she’s walking into the dining hall still holding my hand.As soon as we walk in, everyone goes quiet and stares at us.“Why are they staring?” she whispers, even though everyone in here can hear her.“You’re holding my hand,” I tell her, waiting for her to yank her hand out of mine.She looks down as if just realizing that our hands are still joined.“Does that bother you?” she asks, looking back up at me.“No.”“Okay,” she says, continuing to hold my hand as she walks to the food area.I hand her a plate and I’m just about to start piling the food onto it, when I hear Revalor’s smarmy voice.“Well, if it isn’t the Alpha dragon and her little pet.”I desperately want to smash his arrogant smile into next week but I’ve just gotten Eliane to agree to spending time with me. I’m not willing to risk giving up her attention for my anger and frustrat
I wake up, smelling Eliane’s scent nearby. It’s faint, but it’s here. I need to make sure the Mean Ones didn’t get her. If they did, I need to help her!I force my eyes open and push myself to a seated position. There are voices all around me and someone puts a blanket over my back which still feels raw from my last whipping. I feel weak, barely able to sit up. I can hear a lot of voices around me, but I can’t seem to make out what they are saying until I hear one in particular. The only one that matters.“Let me through!” Eliane’s insistent voice says.“ELIANE!” I cry and even to my ears, my voice is weak.She’s pushes through the crowd of people surrounding me. “Iniko! You’re awake!”“Oh Eliane! You’re here! You’re safe!” I say, pulling her into a hug.She carefully wraps her arms around me. As gentle as she is, it still makes me flinch.“Of course. We came to get you, the dragons carried you back,” she says.The dragons?“How are you feeling?” she asks. I can feel my rider’s strengt
I knew what needed to happen to heal Iniko. And since I know that this is what my rider wants, I’ll do it.I knew my father wanted to say something. He was the Alpha once, so he knows what it takes to heal a dragon whose scales have been ripped off. The only way to heal him is to give him mine.Since he’s in his human form, I stay in my human form. I duck my head so Eliane can’t see how much pain it causes me to rip my own scales out of my body and insert them into Iniko’s. It's a mental transition and I have to feel past his human side to do it. I’m thankful that my scales are larger than his. I won’t need to replace as many as he lost. And in our human forms, she’ll only see that his skin is healing, not what it’s costing me to heal him. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t matter to her how much it hurts me, as long as he is healed. She obviously loves him very much.I feel my parents come to stand on either side of me. They push their healing power into me so that Elaine won’t smell the bl
One Month Later.I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. An Alpha, especially an Alpha of Alphas, should never be this tired. But with twenty-two mouths to feed, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. I’m pretty sure that whoever said it takes a village to raise a family was a dragon, because if I didn’t have the help of nearly every dragon at the academy, I don’t think I’d ever be able to sleep.I can hear my little darlings screeching before I can see them. The four deer I have in my talons will only quiet them for a moment. By the time I’ve fed every one of them, the first ones will be screaming for more food again. And by screaming, I mean screeching. It’s an ear-piercing sound that makes my head throb.As I fly in, I see all of my half siblings in various stages of assisting with my babies. Thankfully, the younger kids enjoy helping out and they can oil and scrub my babies as they shed their skin, which seems like they do every damn day. I’d think I was over-feeding them if they were
Three months later.“Iniko! Be careful!” I say to the little dragon, the perfect little white dragon. He hatched from his glass egg a couple of weeks ago and because I laid my eggs while he was still in his, he seems to think that my babies are his siblings. I don’t mind. I love that I get to see Iniko as a baby dragon.“Hey, little bro. It’s too hot for you to be here. This is a hatching ground. You’re going to burn yourself,” Ancalagon says, using his big snout to carefully move Iniko away from the hot area that used to be the medical center and is now a dragon egg hatching ground. Of course, I’m the only dragon producing dragon babies, and they had to put a barrier around my eggs since Ancalagon and I won’t let most people near our babies, but it’s still a hatching ground. Iniko hatched here and he’s one of the few that I let near my eggs.He’s always allowed to come see me. I’ll never be able to say no to him. He’s just as sweet as a baby as he was when I met him, sweet and gentle.
The aftermath of the battle was tough, made more difficult by Iniko’s passing. Two of the people manning the harpoon launchers were killed, but no one claimed that they killed the third and by the time we went searching for him, he was gone.The two earth dragons refused to speak to us until I used my Alpha command to force them. Once I did, they told us how Galeus, Truda, and Banari had convinced them that we were the reason that everything had happened to them and that’s why they attacked. I still don’t trust Dion and Sena, the new earth dragons, but Kaylani has allowed them to move into the big house. At least there, we can all keep watch over them. To their credit, they’ve joined the classes and seem to be advancing quickly.The clean up took a while. With so many dragons crashing to the ground and the two new earth dragons rupturing the earth, it’s taken all of us to make sure that the big house is structurally sound for us to keep living in. The earth itself was easy to correct.
As we rush towards where Zephyr continues to cry her dragon’s lament, we pass Iniko. My heart clenches, but I know we have to help the others first. As much as I want to go to Iniko, to let myself grieve for the loss of my friend and dragon, I need to help Zephyr. Iniko would have wanted that.When we get to her, Ishir has stopped outside the big house, holding on tightly to her as she cries her dragon’s lament in her human form.Ishir seems to be fighting his own tears and based on what Ancalagon told me, I’m sure he’s battling Zephyr inside her own mind. Nova and Brooke are with them, all of them have their arms wrapped around Zephyr, Nova and Brooke sobbing with her lament for Iniko.“Go get Cyrene. She’ll respond better if it’s you. I’ll help your mother,” I say to Cal.“Be careful,” he says before running inside the big house. I can smell a fire nearby, but that will have to wait until I can get Zephyr calm.“Zephyr,” I say, putting my hands on her body. Almost instantly, I feel t
As I blow my elements onto my mate’s chest, submitting to him as his dragon and leaving my mark on his chest, I feel something inside of me heal, something snap into place besides our bond. Suddenly, memories come flooding into my mind, images of times in the laboratory when I was a girl, memories of helping Ancalagon when he was captured by the man who claimed to be my father, my father imprisoning me and torturing me to make me into the dragon I am now, my first shift where I destroyed the underground laboratory where my father kept me captive, shifting back because I was terrified of what had happened and seeing Iniko for the first time, helping him escape the laboratory. I remember being alone, being lonely, finding Iniko again, realizing now that he really did know that I was both the humanand the dragon, and that he and I weren’t fated mates. I remember seeing Ancalagon and having no loving feelings for him, being angry with him for leaving me and not coming to find me. I didn’t
The moment the howls of alarm went up, I raced to the house, helping Zephyr get our kids and rushing them to the nursery in the big house. We have several babies on campus now, so we’ve established a safe room of sorts for the young kids with any mothers or assigned protectors going with them. I want Zephyr in the safe room. She’s getting close to delivering our next kitten, but I know she won’t sit this out. Two of her sons and her sister are out there fighting.As we rush to the battle, I hear the sickening sound of a harpoon launching. The sound brings with it the memories of fighting in the arena, of the days when the dragons were attacked. I thought the harpoons and launchers were gone, but obviously, some remained or have been rebuilt.I hear Avani scream in pain, the earth rumbling around us as he pulls on his earth element and tumbles to the ground. I know it must be bad if the harpoon brought him down. I heard in the past that he ripped a harpoon out of his wing and kept fight
I’d been flying patrols, thinking about Emmi when I saw the strange dragons, two of them. I bellowed a warning, in case it was an attack and I’m glad I did. At least everyone had a few moments to prepare before all hell broke loose.It felt like harpoons were flying everywhere. Elemental dragons were getting hit and taken down quickly. I’m not sure if that was an intentional move by the attackers, or if the elementals are trying to protect the others. Either way, Avani and Kaylani went down fast.Zephyr is still pregnant, so she can’t shift, but Tana is up, blowing fire and protecting the packhouse where her pups reside.I realize that Merethyl was protecting their house, but once Avani got shot, she raced to him, working to get the harpoon out of his body. I stayed back, battling with the others against these new dragons. Since I was the first to see them, they’d attacked me together. Then Kenzo and Daichi, two other earth dragons, jumped in and we began throwing our earth elements ba
This past week with Eliane has been amazing. Except for the times when she goes off alone with Iniko, sometimes even flying with him, it’s been incredible. I know I’m a greedy dragon, all water dragons are, but I want my mate to myself, all the time.Today we have mate bonds class. I love this class, not only because Iniko isn’t in the class with us and I get to have her all to myself, but it’s filled with other students who share a mate bond like we do.“Where are Tesha and Fenian?” I ask when we walk in. Those two are always in this class, Fenian wanting to make sure that he’s a good mate to his dragon, especially now that she’s about to have their baby.“Tesha went into labor this morning. She and Fenian are at the medical center,” Kaylani says.“Ohh, another baby. How exciting!” my mate says. I can’t wait for the day when it’s my mate going into labor, or maybe laying her eggs. We just have to get her connected to her dragon first.“I’m surprised that she didn’t want to go off into
It seems like once Cal accepted me, everyone accepted me. Well, except the elves, but I was warned by basically everyone to stay away from them, Revalor especially. So Eliane’s first day back, even though she spent most of her time with Ancalagon in our joint classes, went really well. I guess being the Alpha of Alphas, what Cal says goes, or at least it seems so.If I’m not in classes with Eliane and Ancalagon, I’m in them with Ancalagon and the other dragons. There are very few classes that Eliane has without Ancalagon, but more that she doesn’t have with me, like mate bonds. Since she and I don’t share a mate bond, I’m not in that class, but she and Ancalagon are. I know that she’s learned a lot about what a mate bond is from that class. And while I know that she and I don’t share a mate bond like the others do, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love her with my whole heart.While the two of them are in classes together, I go to see my mother. I still feel the draw to her and even thou