Chapter 1 #2
Trying to shake the memory off, I passed by drunken crowds and couples kissing.
A few dragons tried to sell joints on corners and tucked their supplies into their pockets when I passed by.
Pot wasn’t technically illegal, but you needed a license to grow it.
I nodded at them and kept walking. It didn’t matter where my feet took me.
The world was mine and they were mine. Mine to protect from my own parents.
How many of them had my parents hurt? How many of their parents?
Grandparents? Was it my grandparents too?
That was it. I had to take Moonscale London and make it my own world.
“Get into the bloody taxi, Earl!” someone shouted over the late-night noise.
“I don’t want to go home! I want to dance!” another man called back.
Earl was shaking his ass and grinding it on a streetlamp. His companion rubbed the bridge of his nose so hard that I thought he might break it.
“Earl, you’re drunk. You’re getting in the taxi and going home!” the other man said.
“You’re not my daddy!” he laughed. “Medwin, you’re not my daddy!”
“Get in the taxi,” Medwin pointed at the open the door.
“No! Dance with me! Celebrate that we know who the next royal prick is!” Earl laughed. “Royal prick! Do you think he wears a crown on his dick?”
I sped up to assist Medwin in getting his obviously drunk friend into the taxi before someone or the streetlamp was injured.
“Hey!” Earl pointed at me. “Heir boy! Come here!”
“I’m on my way,” I said, keeping my tone level.
I didn’t really care what people said about me.
The Moonscale Dragons had a longstanding tradition of poking fun at rulers.
Though, I had to bite my tongue, so I didn’t tell him that my dick was too big for a crown. Maybe I was my sire’s son after all.
After all.
My heart skipped a beat. My dragon stood up on his hind legs and roared.
It took a long, silent moment to realize why he roared.
Mine! This was my sign from the ancestors!
The very next second, after deciding that I had to take the world for my own, I stumbled into my true-mate.
Everything inside me stood on edge. I picked Earl up gently and sat him inside the taxi.
“I’m not going home with you! I’ve heard about you guys! Your daddy isn’t going to smoosh my eggs! Keep your dick crown on, heir boy!” Earl shouted as I shut the taxi door. Medwin gave the driver his address and then looked at me as if he was ready to take the punishment for his friend’s words.
Dragon omegas weren’t a short group. Sometimes with us you couldn’t tell from a height lineup who was alpha, beta, or omega.
He was nearly as tall as me. Only I knew Medwin was an omega because he wasn’t blocking his scent and he was mine.
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
I longed to know what went through his beautiful head as I raked my eyes over him.
Brown hair, blue eyes, slender, but muscular as all dragons were.
I wanted to grab him and kiss him. To run my hands all over his body.
Mostly, I wanted to toss him over my shoulder and pull a runner.
I’d fly him right out of this hateful territory and never look back.
Except the city was still alive around us. I had to save my dragons from my parents. From Roster and Ferrick Moonscale. I had to start thinking about them by name. I could never kill my parents but Roster and Ferrick Moonscale who raped and pillaged their own – I could kill those bastards!
“Shall we go for a walk?” Medwin asked, breaking the silence. “I think the occasion calls for more privacy than we’ll have on Robin Street.”
“Where to?” I asked, offering my mate my arm for the first time. Would this moment burn into my memory? Yes. Yes, it would.
“My flat. We’re lucky my roommate isn’t home tonight,” Medwin said, sounding more poised than I felt. He was so fucking elegant. How was he keeping it together? I was one more long look at him from pushing him against the wall and shoving my tongue between those plump bow-shaped lips of his.
“All the things we could do with those lips,” my dragon murmured.
“Earl isn’t your roommate, is he?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I’d never live with him. He likes to party too much.
He’s the younger brother of a – a friend,” Medwin said and I wondered for a second what he’d have to hide from me.
Then it hit me. Even now, walking on my arm, he probably didn’t see me.
He saw Clarence Moonscale the heir to the Moonscale Dragons.
Was he afraid? He didn’t smell afraid. He smelled neutral.
How did he control his scent? Practice? Magic?
Some secret ability that ran through his bloodline?
Medwin lived in a penthouse above the city street.
It was one of those where the lift opened directly into the apartment.
As soon as it opened, he dropped my arm and shoved me out of it.
I laughed thinking it was a sex thing. Of course, my true-mate wanted me so badly that he couldn’t be bothered to wait for me to get out on my own.
I stumbled around to face him, and the blood fled my face.
Medwin held up a long-handled blade, and his eyes were narrowed on me.
“What the fuck?” I snapped, taking a step forward.
“Stop moving,” Medwin said, standing in the threshold of the lift, keeping it open. “Stay where you are. Hands up where I can see them.”
“What--? Did you fake this? What the hell?” I raised my hands, confusion eating at my insides and making my dragon fire burn hot enough to waste away the last bit of the bourbon left in my system.
“We’re going to get a few things straight right off the bat,” Medwin said.
“I’m not against flaying you. A broken heart is nothing compared to what some omegas go through.
I don’t care that you’re heir. I don’t care that your whole family thinks they’re free to take what they want.
If you ever try to pull a Roster on me, I’ll cut off your balls and shove them so far up your ass that you taste them. ”
I blinked.
“Pull a Roster?” I asked him.
“He thinks he can fuck whoever he wants whether they want to or not,” he growled.
Oh.
My father’s reputation must’ve only been a secret to me.
“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about. That dumb himbo look doesn’t work on me,” Medwin said. “I got dumb himbos lined up around the corner to fuck. I see straight through that horseshit.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I only found out tonight, but I wasn’t sure he’d believe me at all and the thought of taking him anywhere near my parents sent a chill down my spine. Couldn’t this have waited until I figure out how to turn the world right side up on its axis again?
“I’m not a rapist,” were the words that tumbled out of my mouth again.
Medwin inched closer, pointing the knife at me as if he wanted to remind me that he was the only one allowed to move.
It was such a shitty end to a shitty day.
I wouldn’t hurt him. He was my omega. He was the one who was supposed to come along and make the world make sense.
Only tonight—Well, tonight he was another reminder that I must’ve been living with my head under a rock for the last two decades.
When he was close enough, Medwin sniffed me. I must’ve smelled like sweat and bourbon, but he didn’t react except to meet my gaze.
“I won’t put up with you running around on me either,” he said. “And if you ever lay a hand on me, you might win the fight, but you have to sleep sometime and you can’t hide forever.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, my hands still up.
“You better not because love and magic won’t be enough to stop me from killing you, Clarence Moonscale,” he said and his scent said he was telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, may Frost have mercy on us all.
He lowered the knife and it disappeared from sight. Years later, I’d figured out that it was a simple glamour over a thigh sheath but that night it was magic.
“I don’t have a roommate,” he said. “I just wanted you to think someone would come to my rescue eventually before I brought you up here.”
The London Medwin lived in wasn’t the London I knew. My sire and his friends ran around pillaging his. Did he know about the eggs too? Did everyone know about everything except for me? How dumb could I be?
“You looked so shocked right now. I’d offer you a drink, but you smell like you’ve had enough for the night. All that celebrating has probably gone straight to your dick,” Medwin said.
No, it hadn’t. The only thing that had gone straight to my dick was him. I was rock hard and throbbing despite being held at knife point. Medwin stepped properly into the apartment and let the lift shut behind him. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it over the back of a leather sofa.
“What preparations will need to be made on your side?” he asked.
“There’s some ceremony or something, right?
Then we have to put on the theater show of a wedding?
I’ll have to let my people know of course.
I’ll have to…” he paused as if choosing his words wisely.
“I’ll have to let them know that you don’t smell like Roster’s sins. ”
“I..” I started but what could I say? “I have a plan.”
“I’m aware, alpha. There is a plan for every occasion when you’re part of the ruling family,” he nodded, moving into the living room. I followed straight to his little drink cart where he made something that had a lot of grenadine in it and drank it down before making another.
“No, I meant—Do you know about Ferrick?” I asked.
He turned and moved to lean against the sofa.
“Do I know about your carrier? Do all royals call their parents by their first names?” he asked. “I don’t think I’d like our hatchlings to do that.”
Our hatchlings. The words hit my dick and my heart at the same time. Our hatchlings might not be safe in this new London I’d discovered.