Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
S trong arms are wrapped around me. I blink, trying to remember where I am. A pale ice wall on the other side of a room with dark wooden floorboards. A soft bed with dark gray sheets. And a warm muscular body pressed tightly against my back.
That confused sleepiness is swept away like mist by a strong morning wind, and I’m suddenly wide awake.
Draven.
At some point during the night, he did what I suspected he wanted to do last night. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close.
Since I’m only wearing that short silk nightgown, and he is only wearing a pair of underwear, I can feel every ridge and every curve of his body as he holds me tightly. His forearm is positioned along my chest, between my breasts, and his hand is resting straight over my heart. As if he needs to feel it beating in there to reassure himself that I’m still alive.
And it all feels so… natural.
Part of me wants to be shocked and outraged that he wrapped his arms around me. That I can feel his muscular chest rise and fall against my back. That I can feel his cock pressing against my ass. That he touches me this intimately. But the other part of me never wants to leave this bed. Wants him to hold me like this every night. Because it feels right .
My chest tightens as an entire wave of conflicting feelings crash over me.
Dragging in a strangled breath, I try to keep from drowning underneath the weight of it all.
My feelings for Draven were already complicated before he revealed the truth about this stupid mate bond. I feel free and strong and powerful when I’m with him. Which is an incredibly impressive feat considering that I am literally his prisoner right now. But there is something about him, something about how he sees me and how he treats me, that makes me feel, for the first time in my life, that I don’t have to hold myself back. I don’t have to make myself smaller for him to accept me. On the contrary, he challenges me to take up even more space. To say what I really think. Do what I really want. Be who I really am.
But at the same time, he ranks in the top three of my biggest enemies. He and Bane and Jessina are the biggest threats to our resistance movement and the biggest obstacles to freeing the Seelie Court. In order to overthrow the Iceheart Dynasty, we would need to neutralize Draven. Which means either capture him or kill him. Or turn him. But from what I’ve seen, he has no intention of ever leaving the Icehearts. He is actively, and with almost single-minded determination, hunting the most important human resistance fighter. He is standing in the way of everything I want to achieve.
And as if that wasn’t enough, now I find out that I’m his fated mate. Which means that those feelings I had started to develop might not even be real. They might just be a side effect of the mate bond. Just like his feelings for me.
I heave a frustrated sigh. Goddess damn it. Why does everything have to be so fucking complicated?
Draven stirs behind me. I wait for him to yank his arms back and scramble out of bed when he realizes what he’s doing. But he doesn’t.
A low contented groan comes from deep within his chest, and he pulls me even closer and buries his face in my neck.
My heart does a backflip in my chest.
Draven draws in a deep breath through his nose, as if he is breathing me in, and when he lets it out, his warm breath caresses the sensitive skin on my neck. A pleasant shudder rolls down my spine.
He stiffens behind me.
For a few heart-pounding seconds, he remains still as a statue. Then he does what I assumed he would. He yanks his arms back and quickly rolls back to his side of the bed.
The sudden loss of his warm body against mine is like having a bucket of ice water dumped over me. I quickly scramble out of bed as well.
My heart patters against my ribs as I straighten on the floor. Draven is standing on the other side of the bed, watching me with such a raw expression on his handsome face that I feel like someone is strangling my heart again.
How much of those emotions in his eyes are his actual feelings and how much is just an involuntary instinct caused by the mate bond?
Every day, I find out something that shatters my worldview over and over again. Is anything even real?
Draven opens his mouth to say something, but I can’t bear to hear what it is. So before he can get a single word out, I blurt out a question that I know will just make everything worse. But I ask it anyway.
“Are you sterilizing us?”
Draven flinches as if I had slapped him. Pain flickers in his eyes for a second, but when he replies, there is steel in his voice. “ I am not sterilizing anyone.” His tone softens. “But yes, they have created a selective breeding system to produce stronger magical bloodlines.”
After what Lavendera told me down in the kennels, I already knew that it was true. That the shifters are sterilizing us after we have given birth to one child both to keep our population from outgrowing the city and also to create stronger magic users for them to drain. But hearing Draven confirm it like that is like a blow to the chest.
Staggering back a step, I have to brace myself on the nightstand as I draw in an unsteady breath and echo, “ A selective breeding system .”
Draven winces. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” I accuse, anger rising inside me to cover the pain. I pull it eagerly around me like a shield to stop my heart from breaking completely. “You’re breeding us. Like cattle!”
“ I am not doing any of that,” Draven replies, the steel returning to his voice as he holds my gaze with serious eyes. “And I don’t approve of it either.”
“But you’re helping them! You’re keeping them in power. You’re serving them, for Mabona’s sake. Like an eager little lapdog.”
Draven forces out a frustrated breath and stalks around the bed, closing the distance between us. “I have already told you. I don’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice!” I snap as he comes to a halt in front of me. Raising a hand, I stab an accusatory finger against his firm chest. “And whether you want to admit it or not, you are choosing to serve them. The consequences if you don’t do as they say might be awful, which is why you feel like you don’t have a choice, but you do have a choice.”
Anger flashes in his eyes like lightning. Opening his mouth, he gets ready to retort. But he must see the truth in my words, because in the end, he just closes his mouth again and flexes his hand in annoyance while forcing out another frustrated breath.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he shakes his head and instead changes the subject. “What about your own blind trust?”
I stare back at him. “ My blind trust?”
“Yes! I know that you’re smart, which is why I can’t for the life of me figure out why you didn’t use that brilliant mind of yours before you entered the Atonement Trials.”
“We were all fooled by the Atonement Trials,” I snap back.
“That’s because you never question anything!” Desperation now drowns out the anger as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Like why did no one ever come back to visit after they won the tournament? Or send a letter or something? If people have been winning the Atonement Trials for centuries, how come not one single person ever contacted the loved ones they left behind?”
His words are a knife straight to the gut. Because he’s right. I had never even thought about that. Let alone questioned it.
That desperation pulses in his eyes as he holds my gaze. “If you had just questioned things before it was too late, none of this would have happened. So I need you to start using that head of yours. I need you to start questioning things that don’t make sense. Please.”
My head is pounding. It feels as if giant metal bells are clanging somewhere in there inside my skull. It’s so loud that I can barely hear anything.
Because Draven is right. Goddess damn it, as much as I hate to admit it, Draven is right.
There are so many things that I never questioned. So many things that I just accepted as fact. Simply because someone told me that it was true.
But now that I look back on it from the outside, I realize that everything I know, everything that all fae know in the Seelie Court, has been taught to us by dragon shifters. There were no fae teachers at school. Only dragon shifters. They taught us everything we know. Everything we know about our own history, our culture, and our biology. Everything.
Panic crawls up my throat.
I suck in a breath. But no air makes it into my lungs. I drag in another panicked breath, but just like the last one, it never makes it past my throat. Another wave of panic slams into me, and I desperately try to force air into my lungs. But it feels as if an iron fist is gripping my windpipe, strangling me.
Stumbling backwards, I crash back first into the pale ice wall behind me. No matter how fast I breathe, nothing makes it down into my lungs. I throw my hands out and brace myself against the cool wall behind me while I desperately try to breathe through the panic.
Draven’s hand appears underneath my chin, raising my head. Worry swirls in his eyes when I meet his gaze.
“Selena,” he begins.
“Nothing is real,” I gasp out.
My chest heaves as I suck in rapid breaths that never make it past my throat. I curl my fingers into fists against the wall as my legs wobble.
“Selena,” Draven says, more forcefully this time. “You need to slow your breathing.”
But I can barely even process his words because I still can’t get any air through my throat and down into my lungs. My hands begin to tingle. Panic crackles through me. I suck in even faster breaths.
“Nothing is real,” I gasp out again. A choked sob rips from my constricted throat. “Goddess above, nothing is real.”
It all just crashes down on top of me at the same time. The truth about the Atonement Trials. What really happened to Isera’s mother and all the other fae who won. That we are biologically able to have more than one child but that the Icehearts are sterilizing us after we have given birth to one child in order to create stronger magic users. That only a small minority of our ancestors committed the crime of using dragon steel and that the rest of them were innocent. That I have been taught that I am inherently evil and that I need to atone for that when the truth is that I am being punished for a crime that has nothing to do with me. That the Unseelie King is still alive. That the Unseelie Court has been free all this time. That Draven and I are only drawn to each other because we are fated mates.
One lie after another. One shocking truth after the other. One blow after another that shatters everything I thought I knew about the world. About us. About me.
My knees buckle.
Draven’s hands immediately appear on my hip and my arm, keeping me upright.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasp out between rapid breaths that keep stopping in my throat.
“Selena.” Draven’s voice cuts through the air like the crack of a whip. Utter command pulses in his eyes as he locks them on me. “I need you to take a breath and hold it.”
“Hold it?” I press out, still sucking in rapid breaths while the panic inside me keeps mounting. My entire arms are tingling now. My hands shake and my head is spinning. “No. I need air.”
“I’ve helped soldiers through panic attacks all my life. I need you to trust me.” He braces his knee on the wall between my legs to help keep me upright while he cups my cheeks with both hands. “So take a breath and hold it.”
And his eyes are so steady, so calm and confident, that I suck in as much air as I can and then hold it. My heart pounds like a battle drum in my chest, and blood rushes in my ears. Draven keeps his eyes firmly locked on me.
“Good,” he says. “Now, let it out.”
I gasp out the air in my throat.
“Take another breath and hold it,” Draven commands.
So I do.
After a few seconds, he tells me to let it out. I obey.
“Good.” Draven takes his hands from my cheeks and instead reaches down and grips my wrists. “You need to stop your mind from spinning out of control and instead ground yourself in the present.” With steady moves, he raises my hands and places them against his bare chest. “So close your eyes, and take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, then let it out and tell me what you feel.”
My chest is still heaving as my instincts are telling me to breathe rapidly, but I force myself to suck in another breath and hold it. Then I close my eyes. My arms are still tingling, and it reaches all the way up to my collarbones. Draven places his hands on my hips, holding me steady. I let the breath out.
“Tell me what you feel,” Draven says.
“Your hands on my hips.”
“Good. And?”
I curl my fingers against his chest before relaxing them again and pressing my palms against his firm muscles. “Your chest.”
“Good. Take another breath.”
I draw in a breath. To my relief, this one makes it almost all the way down to my lungs. But I make myself hold it for a few seconds before letting it out again.
“Describe how it feels,” Draven says.
My mind is still spinning and trying to drag me back into that terrible panicked state, but I force myself to concentrate on only this specific moment in time. What does it feel like?
“Your chest is warm,” I whisper.
It’s as if sensation is returning to my hands for the first time in minutes. Goddess above, I can’t believe that I didn’t notice how warm his body is before. Still keeping my eyes closed, I press my palms harder against his muscular chest.
“And firm,” I continue.
“Take another breath.”
This one actually makes it all the way down into my lungs. I almost gasp at the feeling but manage to hold the breath for another few seconds before letting it out. That tingling sensation in my arms starts to fade.
“Your hands are steady,” I continue, suddenly able to feel the comforting weight of his hands on my hips. Then I realize that I can feel the wall behind my back. “The wall is cool against my skin.” I can feel the wooden floorboards underneath my bare feet too. “And the floor is hard.”
Without being told to, I take a deep breath that makes my lungs expand fully. Then I slowly let it out and do it again. My hands and arms are no longer tingling.
A breath of profound relief comes from Draven’s chest.
My heart flips as I suddenly feel his forehead against mine. But I don’t open my eyes.
“Good,” he whispers against my lips as he flexes his fingers on my hips.
For quite a while we just stand like that. His hands on my hips and my hands on his chest. His forehead against mine while we breathe slowly and deeply.
The overwhelming panic from before drains away with every second until it eventually fades completely. I drag in a long steadying breath.
“Are you okay?” Draven asks against my mouth.
“Yes.” The word comes out as a whisper.
But Draven nods anyway. Then he straightens, taking his forehead off mine. I open my eyes at last. And to my embarrassment, tears begin streaming down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer while desperately trying to wipe them off.
Seriousness descends on his features as he cups my cheeks again and uses his thumbs to wipe away the tears while he levels a commanding stare on me. “Don’t ever apologize for crying. It’s not a weakness. It’s a sign that you’ve had to be strong for too long.”
A sob rips from my throat, and a steady warmth fills my whole chest.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I whisper. But the tears have stopped. And the panic is gone.
A soft smile blows across Draven’s lips. “Then focus on how much you hate me. Because you know that that is real at least.”
Something between a sob and a broken laugh escapes my mouth, and I manage a small smile.
The smile stays on Draven’s lips too as he bends down and kisses my forehead. Then he lets his hands drop from my cheeks and steps back.
He opens his mouth to say something else, but right before he can, loud knocking comes from the door.
“Commander!” a voice calls. “We just got word that the Red Hand has been spotted outside the palace. On the east side of the mountain.”
My heart leaps into my throat.
But then my mind catches up. The east side. That’s the side where the emergency tunnel leads out. The side that I told Kath I needed an excuse to search. She must have spread a rumor that the Red Hand was there, knowing that Draven would take me with him when he went to investigate it. Mabona’s tits, she’s brilliant.
Draven frowns at the door, and the messenger outside it, in confusion. But I’m already wiping the final tears from my cheeks. I need to pull myself together. I can break down and cry once I have successfully launched a rebellion against the Iceheart Dynasty and left Frostfell behind.
But for now, I need to keep all of those lies and world-shattering truths buried deep inside me. I need to keep it together for a little while longer. Because I have a secret entrance to find.