Chapter 4
Four
Anna
Rejection hurt.
Literally. My dragon bellowed in futile effort to bring our mate back. She called to him over and over as I pressed myself to the brellwood bars of the cage. But he was gone. He’d left us.
The physical agony hit a moment later, slamming me to the ground, my body and face burning with the shame and humiliation of being so utterly and painfully rejected.
I’d been told all my life I wasn’t good enough, that I was too weak, too pathetic, because I was a clippy.
That I could understand. I’d grown used to it, hardened against the insults and the sneers.
But this was something different, something else entirely, and I wasn’t ready.
How could I ever have been ready for something that should never have happened to me?
I couldn’t, and now I lay on the floor of the cage, moaning in pain because of it.
My stomach was hollow and empty, devoid of anything.
In no uncertain terms, I had just been told that I truly wasn’t good enough. My mate, my fated mate, the other half of my soul, had taken one look at me and fled in disgust rather than accept my offer.
“Anna, what the hell was that? Are you okay?”
Careful not to get between me and the corridor my mate had run away down, Ella came to my side, scooping me up into her arms and holding me.
Milly was there on my other side, brushing away the tears and doing her best to shield me from the audience that had gathered. “It’s going to be okay, Anna. You’re fine now.”
“Was that what I thought it was?” Ella asked in a low voice, not wanting to draw more attention to what had just happened.
“What are you talking about?” Milly looked from me to Ella and back again, lines forming between her eyebrows.
I couldn’t reply. Shame had frozen my tongue while I wallowed in the pitiful existence that was my life.
“I think, somehow, she found her mate,” Ella whispered, looking from me to the corridor where Emerald-Eyes had gone.
My dragon didn’t like her looking at him.
I knew I should have been happy to have her, to finally have an awakened dragon within me, but monumental moment or not, it just didn’t matter next to the lancing pain of rejection.
A pulsing agony where the mate bond should have begun to form.
Instead, there was simply nothing now—a gaping hole in my soul. A constant reminder.
“Her mate?” Milly sucked in air. “But that’s impossible. She … we’re clippys. We don’t have mates.”
“I know,” Ella said. “But did you see her? Did you hear her growling? That’s the sound of a dragon. I’ve seen it happen before. It wasn’t quite that—”
“Arousing?” Milly suggested when Ella paused for words.
“Yeah. Intense, I was thinking. But it was similar.”
Ella and Milly both looked down the corridor now and then back at me.
“So where did he go? Why did he leave?” Milly asked, still glued to my side.
My friends were the best. Leave it to them to not care that I had been rejected for not being good enough.
To them, I was more than enough. Ella would be there with her brains to puzzle it out, and Milly …
well, Milly would use her muscles if they were needed.
She was the protector, the fighter, of the three of us.
And I was the useless one. The broken. The third wheel.
“You know why he left,” I said quietly, pushing up into a sitting position, the hole in me raw and tender but growing no worse. Maybe I could even get used to it.
Ha.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that,” Ella said, sitting with one knee behind my back as she hugged me tightly, helping support me without asking.
“It was,” I growled, wishing they would be angrier. Didn’t they get it?
I stopped. Of course they didn’t get it. How could they? Until five minutes ago, we’d all been clippys, on equal ground.
“He left because I wasn’t good enough. Not strong enough for him, whoever he was,” I said, struggling to push the words out. It would be easier once I said them. “He left because I was a clippy.”
Four eyes snapped their focus onto me. “Was?” Ella asked.
“Was? Am? I don’t know.”
“No, absolutely not,” Milly said, crossing her arms. “You don’t get to speak like that and then not explain it, Anna. You owe us. Tell us what you meant by that comment.”
I shrugged. What was the harm in telling my best friends?
“I think my dragon is awake now.”
Their eyes flew open. Ella gasped, her hand rising to cover her mouth.
“What?” Milly shouted. She was never the quiet one.
“Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a voice barked from outside the cage. “You think you’re gonna get out of there if you prostrate yourself to them, huh?”
Milly looked over her shoulder as the hunter who had captured us approached. He was older, his short, thick beard shot through with gray. His hair was shorn to the scalp, showing a big, ugly mark down the side of his head. A childhood scar that he thought made him look tougher. It didn’t.
With a hiss, Milly flung herself against the bars of the cage, her arms outstretched toward the hunter. “Fuck you,” she snarled, swiping at the air. “Leave her the fuck alone. Okay?”
The hunter easily stayed out of Milly’s reach, but he eyed her warily nonetheless, uncertain if or when she would try to attack again.
“Keep her under control,” he spat, pointing at me.
“Go flagellate your flaccid dick,” Milly snarled, her eloquence surprising us all.
It was a mistake. The hunter, angered by her attitude, came closer to the cage to try to discipline her. As he did, Milly backed away from the bars. The hunter sneered with laughter and slapped his palm against the bar to emphasize his point.
He unfortunately happened to choose the exact bar we’d been cutting the supports away from. Instead of just rebounding under his hand, it wobbled. Not much but enough.
The brellwood was stronger than steel and far more flexible under normal circumstances.
Hunter cages were further reinforced by faerie magic to contain shifters and other strong beings.
They did not “wobble.” Not unless the bonds holding the bars together, also made out of wound strips of brellwood, had been slowly sawed apart by dragon nails.
The slaver’s eyes widened, and he grabbed the bar to stop it wobbling, his eyes lowering to the floor, where he saw the frayed and partially split ropes.
“Fucking clippys!” he snapped, turning to bark orders.
Other hunters closed around the cage. The door was opened.
Milly flew forward, putting herself between us and the leather-garbed slavers.
Arms wide, teeth bared, she hissed at them threateningly until two of them came in at once.
The much stronger true dragons easily overpowered her, pinning her to the far wall.
Other slavers grabbed Ella and me, hauling us from the cage.
I struggled and fought, twisting free of one of the hunters holding my arm for just a second. An elbow to my gut folded me over, providing a physical pain to go with the emptiness in my soul. My dragon howled at the reminder of our loneliness as we were dragged away and split up.
I didn’t see where Ella or Milly were taken, and my dragon didn’t care. It threw my head back, and I shrieked my loneliness out into the air. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe my mate would hear, recognize his mistake, and come charging back.
Maybe he would rescue us all.
It was a fool’s hope, of course. Nobody would come back for a clippy like me.
“Try to escape again, and I’ll cut off your fingers,” the hunter said as I was tossed casually into another cage, the slavers not being overly gentle.
I hit the far side of the cage and fell heavily onto my back. I lay there, watching the plain rock of the ceiling sway back and forth until the cage slowly came to a stop.
I sighed and closed my eyes.
The only thing I could see were two emeralds. Watching me.
Watching and judging me as not worthy.