Chapter 11
11
CAT
S omething warm covered my body from behind and something heavy laid across my stomach. But that wasn’t what startled me, or what had me wide awake before the sun came up.
It was what was poking my ass.
His morning wood sent me a very big hello this morning. A very big hello. This wasn’t my first rodeo, but I remained very still and held my breath as my gaze traveled down to his trunk of an arm wrapped around my waist. He held me tightly against his chest and clutched one of my breasts. His face was stuffed into the back of my hair.
My breath stuttered and he stirred behind me in response, making me liquify in his grasp. I bit my lower lip to keep from moaning. The last thing I needed was to get dicked down by some dragon prince in a magical world I was trying to escape from! It wouldn’t bode well for the real Arya when she returned, but Goddamnit, I couldn’t remember the last time I had sex.
Speaking of which, I wondered what kind of havoc she was wreaking in my life right now. I could only imagine the shock she was experiencing in modern times.
Yes, Cat, think about the real Arya, not this exquisite masterpiece of a man fondling your left tit.
Yeah, that was kind of difficult when I hadn’t been laid in a while and he was touching all the right spots.
Damnit . He was sound asleep and didn’t know what he was doing. I would probably get blamed if I didn’t find a way out of this predicament. Women were always blamed.
How did we end up like this anyway? His room is like a furnace. The last thing we should be seeking is body heat.
He rubbed his dick on my behind and a moan slipped out of my mouth. I clasped a hand over my mouth before I woke him up. Christ, this was such a bad idea! I needed to get out of this predicament. And fast . Just as I was about to lift his arm, a heavy bang on his bedroom door startled us both awake.
“Damien, Lady Arya, it’s time to go!” Royal Prince Bai announced from the other side of the door.
We froze for a split second. No one moved, no one breathed. It was the longest three seconds of my life.
Damien quickly unlatched himself from me as if I had burned him with a vat of acid. My shirt was slightly lifted, exposing my lower back. His eyes drifted to my bare skin with a puzzled look. “What’s that?”
Completely ignoring the compromising position in which we’d just found ourselves, I yawned and tried to play it off like I was just waking up and hadn’t noticed him pawing all over me at all. I peered over my shoulder to see him standing by the bed, pointing at my exposed lower back.
I snorted. “It’s called a tramp stamp. A rite of passage, if you will, for any nineteen-year-old girl worth her salt.” I gave a throaty chuckle and lowered my shirt before sitting up on the edge of the bed.
“Did you always have that mark?” he hesitantly asked, as if unsure if he should continue his line of questioning.
I peered over at him and winked. “I have all kinds of markings you’ve never seen before.”
He glared. “I’m being serious, Arya. I don’t remember you ever having—”
“Did you ever see Arya naked?” I interrupted, raising a haughty brow.
He choked out a cough. “What? Of course not! And why are you referring to yourself in the third person?”
I laughed. “Then how would you know if she had a mark or not?” I asked, ignoring his last question. “You wouldn’t.” I picked my torn dress from the floor and strolled toward him. “So let’s stop pretending we know each other. You said it yourself. After this, we go our separate ways. Let’s not complicate matters, eh?”
He grunted and pushed past me, almost knocking me down on his way to the door. Rude .
Once he was out of the room and the door was closed, I removed the comfortable clothes of his I’d worn to bed and stepped back into the torn dress and cloak. It would probably be odd if I showed up at the Ryder residence in men’s clothing. I was sure Lord Zacharia would have much to say about his daughter’s virtue—or lack thereof.
When I was fully clothed and Damien’s shirt and pants were folded and placed neatly on his bed, I walked out of the room to where he and his uncle were waiting. Royal Prince Bai was pacing the living room with hurried steps. When I walked in, he suddenly stopped.
“Oh, thank the immortals,” he grumbled. “We need to go, now !”
I frowned and looked between them. “Did something happen?”
Damien nodded. “The emperor has invited your family to the palace for lunch,” he responded icily.
Utterly confused, I looked at them, unsure what the big hoopla was. “Oh, okay, cool. I’m starved. Your hospitality is shit, by the way. You didn’t even offer me a glass of water.” I wagged a finger at them. “What’s the big deal?”
They both froze. “My brother obviously has an agenda,” Royal Prince Bai said coldly. “One for which we all need to be alert. If he knows what Damien did last night…”
Ah, now I understood. They were worried the secret was out and we, specifically I, was getting invited to the royal palace to spill the beans.
“Relax,” I said calmly. “No matter what he says or tries, he won’t get a single thing out of me,” I declared. “I promise you both, you have my word. And my word is my bond.”
Damien furrowed his brows, wearing a look that said he wondered if this new version of Arya was real or not. He was probably afraid I’d revert to the old Arya any moment.
“All due respect, but you’re not known for keeping your promises, Lady Arya,” Royal Prince Bai grumbled. “And you don’t know what the emperor is willing to do to get information out of—”
“If I tell you I can handle it, will you believe me?”
I wasn’t Special Forces or anything, much less infantry trained, but I was an Army soldier, which meant I had some tricks up my sleeve. And as the great American I was, I didn’t negotiate with terrorists. Although I refrained from telling them that last part. Calling the emperor a terrorist might get me beheaded. My hand fluttered to my throat and I gulped. Yikes .
When they didn’t respond, I sighed loudly. “I’m not the Arya you knew, okay?” I admitted. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“You said the same thing the day after the boat incident,” Damien said with narrowed eyes. “But what does that mean?”
I sighed again, not wanting to get into the nitty gritty. “It means you have nothing to fear. The old Arya is long gone… at least for now.”
Royal Prince Bai dramatically waved his hands, halting the conversation. “Enough! We don’t have time for this. I brought one of my servants over last night, so Lady Arya will pretend to be her this morning and leave the island with me. I am also invited to this luncheon. But we need to leave now.”
Damien shook his head. “I’ll fly her out—”
“You can’t,” his uncle cut him off. “It’s daytime. The guards on the island cannot see you in dragon form. I will fly her—”
Damien growled so loud, the foundation of the volcano rumbled. I steadied my footing and looked between the older prince and Damien. What the hell?
“Damien?” Royal Prince Bai asked in confusion.
Damien furrowed his brows, seemingly just as confused by his reaction, and shook his head. “Apologies, Uncle, I…”
“I won’t shift fully. I’ll carry her out. She won’t ride me like she did you,” he said carefully, reassuring his nephew.
Damien nodded thoughtfully, then glared at me before storming away.
I jerked back and looked at Royal Prince Bai. “What the hell did I do?”
He stared at Damien’s retreating figure. “I… I don’t know.”
After crossing the island and traveling past its many guards in the daytime, I realized how heavily guarded Damien was. The island was small, but there were no less than a hundred guards surrounding the area. It seemed excessive. I wondered what exactly the third prince did to warrant such intensive security.
Royal Prince Bai led the way to a small wooden rowboat waiting for us on the shore. He handed a guard three gold leaves as payment before we climbed in. The guard pushed us into the water and we were off.
Royal Prince Bai rowed toward the mainland, which was five, maybe six miles away. If it had been me rowing this dingy little boat, I’d be tired as hell by the time we reached the mainland.
Salt-tinged air gusted, driving the waves against the hull with each pull of the oars. Water droplets splashed my face, but I ignored them as I scrutinized the prince in front of me.
“You couldn’t tell one of those guards to row us to the mainland?” I looked at the old man skeptically. “You gotta be in your eighties.”
He guffawed. “Eighties? Child, I’m pushing a thousand.”
I choked on a cough. “What?” I shrieked. “I think I misheard or misunderstood you; I’m talking about your age .”
“As am I.” He smirked. “We dragons live long lives compared to humans, Lady Arya.”
I gulped. “I can see that.” Leaning back against the hull, I sized him up and down. “Your Highness looks very good for his, uh… age,” I said with a toothy smile.
He peered over at me and grinned. “What about you, Lady Arya? How old are you?”
My eyes widened. I didn’t know how old Arya was; I never bothered to ask. I knew I – Cat –was twenty-seven, but I had no clue if Arya and I were the same age. I assumed so, but you know what they say about assumptions... Besides that, she and Gianna were still unmarried, and during this archaic time period, girls were married young. By that rationale, she was probably younger than me. I straightened and smirked. “Your Highness, isn’t it improper to ask a lady her age?” I said with a quirked brow. “Just know I am of marriageable age, but I’m not looking.”
“Oh?” He raised a bushy white brow. “Interesting,” he mused knowingly.
I wondered if there was something he knew about Arya that I didn’t…. Damn, I hated being in the dark. I needed Maeve, but as recent events had shown, even Maeve didn’t know everything about Arya.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s interesting,” I mumbled. “But I’ve always thought the life of a spinster suited me best.” I grinned awkwardly, knowing damn well I was ruining this girl’s future. Frankly, she needed it. No man in his right mind would want to marry this she-devil.
The Prince laughed. “Well, I hope you were sincere about keeping Damien’s secret, Lady Arya. His life would be at risk if you didn’t.”
He continued to row in silence, but I was bursting at the seams with questions. Huddling closer within my cloak against the chilly air, I leaned forward. “What is his problem, anyway? I thought the dragons were a big deal around here? Why does he have to hide?”
An annoyed flicker passed across his face before he shook his head and sighed. “You probably forgot the story due to your accident.”
“Nothing like getting the information straight from the horse’s mouth!” I said with a smirk.
He sighed and continued to row. “My brother… the emperor, is married to many women with whom he has many children.”
“Okay… Elaria’s version of Nick Cannon,” I mumbled, but he ignored me.
“However, the emperor had a favorite among his women… which was the empress. She was Damien’s mother,” he said, lost in the memory. “They loved each other fiercely. So much so that for a long time, the emperor didn’t visit any of his other consorts and spent all his free time with the empress. She was fertile, and gave birth to the first, second, and third princes in quick succession. But her pregnancy with the third prince was difficult,” he whispered.
I didn’t like where this story was headed. “What happened?”
He winced. “It was a complicated pregnancy. She was confined to bed rest for most of it because she hemorrhaged during the first five months. We didn’t understand what went wrong. The emperor hired every doctor from humans to witches, even bringing on the fae to cure her, but no one could discern her ailment.”
He rowed in silence for several minutes. I looked out into the distance and saw the mainland getting closer.
“When she went into labor, it was brutal. She didn’t last very long. She gave her life in exchange for Damien’s,” he whispered. “And in doing so… she damned him.”
I frowned. “How?”
“Because to the emperor, there was no bigger crime than to kill one’s own kin.” The prince’s eyes met mine. “As soon as Damien was born, he was exiled to the island of Obsidian Reach. When he came of age at twenty and was about to complete his first shift into his dragon form, his father came to see him for the first time since his birth. However, the only reason the emperor came was to extract Damien’s dragon bones so he could never become a dragon.”
Indignant, I exploded, “Talk about father of the year. That’s horrible! It’s not like it was Damien’s fault that his mother died!”
The prince nodded knowingly. “Many others know that, Lady Arya. But the emperor still grieves the one he loves and can’t seem to forgive his son for his part.”
I scoffed and looked away. “If I was Damien, I wouldn’t forgive him . Fuck that.” I turned back to look at Royal Prince Bai, who tried to bite down on a smile. “So, I’m guessing Damien got his bones back when he wasn’t supposed to?” His uncle nodded. “Good for him. I hope the emperor—”
“Lady Arya,” he reprimanded darkly. “Be careful with your words.”
I swallowed my words and stayed quiet. The emperor can kick rocks barefoot , I thought to myself. No wonder Damien was such a sour puss. I would be, too.
“Does it hurt to extract your dragon bones?”
Royal Prince Bai peered over at me, contemplating the wisdom of telling me the truth. “It’s the worst pain imaginable. It is quite literally someone dismantling your insides and pulling them out, bit by bit. The pain… is excruciating.”
I gasped in horror. The emperor was a real piece of work… and I was about to meet him. Jesus Christ. Who knew what he’d do to me to get the information he wanted? Damn, I really needed to get back home before I lost my life due to a royal pissing match.