“Reject her for me, NOW!”A short, cold laugh was the only response Elena had when she heard that Lennie girl’s order.She wasn’t that gorgeous, just a plain girl with curly chestnut hair and a pair of gray eyes. But that rose-red dress she wore was hand-weaved by the best phoenix tailor; the jewelry she had on her neck was even more valuable than the Queen’s collections and she bore the title of the dragon Alpha Aubrey’s only daughter.The wolf kingdom’s Alpha, Jordan, was desperate to ally with dragons. Elena knew Jordan would do everything he could to form the alliance. She just never thought when the deal was sealed, the sacrifice would be her.Just about one minute ago, she was standing here in the drawing room of the mansion in her full attire, waiting for the return of her mate, the Alpha’s son, Cory. A month ago, he departed to the dragon’s land to negotiate for the alliance. Before he left, he put a ring on her finger.“We will get married after I come back,” he whispered
Elena had never thought she would have this kind of drama in her life. She and Cory grew up together and had been dating since middle school. Friends around them always teased them and commented negative things about their relationship, because all teenage lovers will break up eventually after they turn 18. But she and Cory ignored all those voices and held faith in their love.“I would reject whoever it would be if we were not mates.”Right on his 17th birthday, a year before they could locate their mates, he had made that promise.Elena was wearing a crimson cocktail dress that night, very elegant and beautiful. They held each other’s hands, swirling on the dancing floor slowly with the most soothing music in the world.She didn’t drink that night but she was seriously drunk, about him. She placed her head on his shoulder and whispered, “You’re lying.”“No, I am not!” Cory insisted, and then said, “Do you want me to swear to you? Or put a curse on myself? If someday in the future I
“What the hell are you doing here?!” was the first thing Orion wanted to shout out at Cory. But Cory had already inherited the title of the Kingdom’s Alpha. He was his superior. It would be disrespectful to say that.Suppressing all the anger in his chest, Orion just addressed Cory dryly, “Alpha.” Eleanor pressed her lips and said nothing while staring at this young man who had just broken her daughter’s heart. And tears started to run out of Elena’s eyes again. Slowly, Cory walked in front of the three of them. His handsome face was covered with painful guilt. His voice was also in anguish. “Could you please give us a minute, Madam and Sir?” He asked Orion and Eleanor in agony, afraid of looking at Elena. Eleanor changed a look with Orion. She didn’t want to leave Elena in Cory’s hands again. He might cause her more misery, but it’s not her decision to make.“Do you want us to leave, sweetie?” She asked Elena softly.Elena’s eyes had been fixed on Cory since the moment he appeared
The world must have gone crazy. The shock she got from the conversations with Cory was so immense, Elena didn’t even feel sad anymore. Now she knew the reason why Cory didn’t call her in advance. He wanted both her and that dragon girl, but he didn’t have the guts to talk about it with her. So he let her through that ordeal in public and then came down here to push her. Because he didn’t want to admit that he was such a greedy and stupid coward!! Rage consumed Elena’s brain. But deep inside, at the bottom of her heart, relief, even a slight gladness were immersing her. Cory had just proved he still loved her. Even though he was engaged with that dragon girl, still, he couldn’t live without her. Elena knew it was stupid and wrong to feel glad about it, but she couldn’t help it. He was her mate. Their mate bond was too tight. Even if she tried, she couldn’t resist it. She just couldn’t stop feeling happy about confirming his love.But share her mate with Lennie? No. That’s the bot
After leaving the prison, Elena went straight home with her parents.Her mother Eleanor prepared her a warm bath. Elena sank herself into the water and cried for a long time.Too many betrayals and shocks in such a short time. She just didn’t know what to do next. Her head was in such a huge mess. And she couldn’t even talk about it with her parents. What Cory asked her was so humiliating. She couldn’t even say it out of her mouth. And her father might try to murder Cory after hearing it. She didn’t want to risk her parents’ lives for that.“Then what should we do now?” Nyla asked. “He will push us again, L. I assure you.”“You tell me,” Elena cried, hugging herself in the water. “I’ve never thought he would do this to me…never…never….” She couldn’t even come up with a full sentence.They went back to painful silence.After about an hour, her mother knocked on the door and called her, “Are you finished, sweetie? Jasper is here. Your father wants you to meet him.”Jasper was Cory’s Bet
Elena was stuck in her dreams. She knew she was dreaming, and she felt her body, but she was trapped inside of it, and she couldn’t find a way to get out of it. She heard someone speaking beside her bed, “She just experienced too many shocks in a short time. It stimulated her nerves. After some proper rest, she will be okay.”It sounded like the kingdom’s doctor, Dr. Todd, but she couldn’t understand what he was doing here. Another voice in the room whispered something to him, but Elena couldn’t make out who it was. And then there were footsteps going away. But the severe headache she was suffering started getting worse. It almost felt like someone had just split her head in half. She knitted her forehead and cried out of pain. Someone took her hand and whispered to her gently, “Are you okay, L?”Elena tried to open her eyes but failed. She then called the name she trusted most, “Cory…” Tears streamed down from the corners of her eyes. Cory responded to her. He knelt beside her b
“Look around, L. We are not in our bedroom!!!”The moment she heard that, Elena suddenly sobered up from her devastating headache. She rolled up from the bed and observed, and then found that she was in a completely strange room. There were no lights on right now. She could only see some simple furniture vaguely. But she knew it wasn’t night outside. Because from the narrow window above her bed came dim daylight.“It’s a basement,” Nyla explained. “And there are silver bars blocking the window, and the door is iron. I bet we can’t open it from the inside.”Elena responded to her with nothing. She just got up from bed and then went to check the door. As Nyla had guessed, it was locked from the outside. She put her hand on the doorknob and pulled it. It wouldn’t open.“He locked us here, L,” Nyla cried. There was a rare trace of panic tinged her voice.Nyla was a competent wolf, always giving her mature advice and acting composedly. And when she started to panic, Elena knew they must ha
Cory had changed. The moment Elena saw that dangerous flash flicking through his eyes, she realized Cory had changed into a different person. Each time, when he showed up in front of her, he became more aggressive than before. Each day, the ego inside him grew bigger and bigger. His engagement with Lennie was like a demoniac key that unleashed this hidden beast inside him. Now he had gotten support from dragons. He had become powerful. He didn’t need to play by the rules anymore. And he didn’t need to pretend to be caring or ethical either.When you can get something by intimidation and threats, why bother to coax and act?The moment she saw that ice in Cory’s eyes, Elena knew she was doomed. She watched Cory walk out of the basement, and then heard him lock the door from outside. Her body went cold out of fear. Tears streamed down from the corners of her eyes. She knew she might never find a way to get out of this, but she couldn’t just give up like that. She could never share he
Simon shifted to this huge, yellow dragon and roared into the sky. He flashed across the dark sky like lightning, and then disappeared into the thick night chasing the wolf carrying his sister.Once the snow stopped, the temperature started to rise. Everything around started melting slowly. Elena felt her phone vibrate. She pulled it out of her pocket and checked, and then saw a message from her mother.He is awake. It said.Elena let out a relieved sigh and smiled. The sky above her head had never been so clear. She knew it was the end of it.All these hates, and betrayals, and revenge, and greed. It was finally cleared out. They were free now. She and Ragnar, they could finally start their new life.“We need to get home like now,” Nyla strongly urged in her head.Elena nodded her head, and then looked around.The two dragon Betas were still there. The demise of the Princess was a huge deal. They needed to find a proper explanation to their Alpha.After meeting Elena’s eyes, the old
She squatted in front of the wheelchair to get closer to him, and then kissed his hand with tears streaming down the corners of her eyes. “I am sorry, Simon,” she said, “I am truly sorry.”Simon leaned forward a little to stroke her hair. “It’s alright, Little one. It’s not your fault,” he said, and his voice was so gentle, “It’s nobody’s fault. No one could foresee this to happen.”Lennie shook her head. She held her brother’s hand with both her hands and leaned on it with her forehead. She knew it was time to tell him the truth, and she felt so sorry and regretful that she had to disappoint him. “I am sorry, Simon,” she raised her head, looked towards her brother, and confessed, “I killed Cory the other day because I want to have my own kingdom. I want to be a real Queen, Simon. I am sorry, but I just … want it.”Simon’s face turned pale. His heart sank. No matter what horrible mistakes Lennie had made, he would forgive her as long as she didn’t mean to be bad. They all would. But
Hearing Lennie’s “confession”, Elena knitted her brows. Nyla whispered in her head, “She is lying again.”Elena knew but she didn’t interrupt. She knew Simon would naturally trust Lennie more than her and she was just here to make sure the necklace to be destroyed. She needed to save Ragnar first. Simon widened his eyes. He recognized it was the necklace Lennie had been wearing since she was a child. But he couldn’t understand how a necklace could threaten people. “What does it mean, Little one?” he asked, but in a soft tone, “You have to explain to me first.”Lennie sniffed, wiping her tears with the back of her hand, and then explained, “There is a werewolf living in the necklace. His name is Tyron. He is the ancestor of the wolf brothers. He started to speak to me in my head after I turned 18. He threatened me to kill all the wolves, the old wolf king, Cory and his big brother, Ragnar. He hated them for some reason. He wanted to destroy the wolf kingdom. And he is very powerful,
The moment Lennie locked her eyes with Elena, she clenched her fists. She had never expected to meet Elena at her own home, and she didn’t like it when Elena spoke of her necklace in front of all the others. It was supposed to be her secret.She stared at the unexpected guest and smirked, coldly.“How dare you come to my home, you pathetic loser? You are not welcome here,” she said. Elena didn’t reply right away. She took off her cloak and passed it to Brian, and then said to the dripping princess in an indifferent tone, “I wouldn’t call myself a winner if it was my mate who poisoned my brothers.” She had just learned from Jack that, not only Alex, Lennie’s youngest brother, Liam, was affected by the snow too. Lennie clenched her fists even tighter. She hated what Elena was suggesting here. She wasn’t Zeno’s mate. She was a dragon. She was herself. She would never be anyone’s mate. “I guess there is a reason why your stupid ex put you into that hospital,” she said contemptuously,
Lennie was in a huge fury.The meeting place she agreed with Elena was where she escaped from Ragnar the day before. She reached the same place long before sunset and observed the whole place carefully in order to catch Elena.Her permit to the wolf kingdom had been deactivated. But to make the exchange, she and Elena, one of them, must cross the border. She knew Elena wouldn’t come into the dragon’s land, but it didn’t matter.She brought a special plant with her. It looked like a piece of dead vine, but was actually alive. Once the vine reached its target, it would grow rapidly to wrap the target up and then drag the target back to its owner.Her third brother, Simon, brought it to her from one of his mysterious trips years ago as a toy. Lennie hadn’t played with it for a long time. It took her a while to dig it out from her piles of precious gifts.She then carefully twined the necklace on that vine. If Elena wanted the necklace, then she would have to take the vine with it and tou
“Who is that?”Noticing Elena had turned back, Chris reined the horse too and came near her.Elena didn’t reply. She was hesitating whether to check it or not.The sun had already gone under the horizon. Lennie should have already found that she didn’t go to the borderline to exchange the necklace. She must get in touch with dragons before Lennie figured out what she intended to do.And they only had two horses. It wasn’t that easy to help an unconscious person.Chris made no further comment, waiting for her decision.Elena hesitated for like 5 seconds, and then got off the horse and walked closer to that person.The snow had covered most of his body. Only the shape of a person and some of his clothes could be vaguely seen.Elena knelt beside him and wiped the snow off his body with her gloved hands. A tall man lying face down gradually showed. He was very strong but na/ked with clothes piled on his back. It seemed like he passed out somehow in his dragon form and shifted back to huma
The blood-curdling screams and curses were horrifying. Lennie felt cold sweat had soaked through the clothes on her back. At the same time, she was being enveloped by another ball of white light. The next moment, she was sent back to the library. She found she was sitting on the carpeted floor with that old book on her lap, at exactly the same posture as before she was transported. Only now the book on her lap was wide open. But all its pages were blank like nobody had ever recorded anything on it. Lennie quickly figured out the book was spell-protected. Someone put a spell on the book which required certain keys to read the secret in it. And the necklace she placed right beside her leg was just the key. That young, but gut-wrenching voice was still echoing in her ears. Lennie took a deep breath to get it out of her head, and then bent over a little to pick the necklace up from the floor.This time she didn’t touch the ruby pendant, but used the silvery chain to lift it. She slo
Back to five hundred years ago, in the dragon’s castle of the dragon kingdom. One of the most powerful dragon leaders, and the sole Dragon Queen in dragon history, the fire dragon, Vivian, was sitting on her throne, quietly, alone. She used her left hand to prop her head, leaning against that magnificent but cold, stone seat. The winter afternoon sunlight ran through the broken ceiling, fell upon a bunch of debris on the floor. The whole place looked more like a ruin than a royal palace. She sat there, completely alone, still, staring at that sunlight and those remnants on the floor. After a while, a transitory shimmer shone through the egg-sized ruby on the necklace she was wearing, but she didn’t notice it. At the same time, a strong, bearded male dragon walked into the tumbledown door frame, and then bowed to her. “The second of the Tinsley brothers asked to meet you, Your Majesty,” the male dragon said. His voice was thick and heavy, and echoed in this ruined throne hall. Th
Hearing Elena’s request, Lennie clutched the cell phone in her hand. The only reason she wanted the Moon Goddess’s relic was that she didn’t want to lose Zeno along with his incomparable power. If she traded the Moon Goddess’s relic using Zeno, then what she was trying to do now would be pointless.Although speech so, she couldn’t give up that easily. “Why do you want my necklace?” she asked questioningly. Except for herself, no one should have known the power Zeno possessed. Elena answered quickly and calmly, “In case your mysterious friend hasn’t told you. He is actually a werewolf and belongs to us. He is a property of the wolf kingdom, Princess. That’s why we want him back.”Lennie bit her bottom lip. She had already known Zeno was a werewolf from their conversation yesterday. But if Elena knew Zeno was a werewolf too, it would be a different story. There must be something special about Zeno. She thought for a few seconds, and then said, “Fine, you can have my necklace. Come t