Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
White Lotus Village, Blood Kingdom
Lanlin
“Circle my blood mates,” I shout above the sudden wingbeats in the starlit sky, “protect them from the attack.”
Attack.
How is this possible?
Adrenaline surges through me. My expression darkens.
Instantly, I slip back into my role as the Supreme Commander of the Eternals who has stood strong for years against the most powerful army in the realms, Aurelius’.
If not for my Omega, I would never have bent the knee to the dragons.
My mind races with strategies and tactics. Inside, however, my dark heart is shattering.
By my blood, are the dragons truly breaking the peace treaty already?
Attacking my sacred village? The only one in my kingdom that is under my personal protection, where the weakest fledglings live? Where I was once trapped myself as an outcast?
But still, I lived here with my twin. I was happy and na?ve and a fool.
For a few years, I was loved.
My breathing quickens. I snarl.
The sweet, honey scent of lotuses is thick around me.
How dare anyone try to take White Lotus away from me?
I drop the flower, which the innocent fledgling gifted me, before leaping back onto Devil.
Shadows curl in furious tendrils from Devil’s mouth.
She is ready to devour someone. I can sense it.
I wheel around on Devil, who rumbles warning growls. Her ears are flattened to her head, and her tail is whipping rapidly from side to side in agitation.
Ruby dragons and their dragon riders from the military outpost in the Borderlands are racing like trails of blood across the moon toward me.
A huge silver dragon leads the formation. His horns curve from his head. His neck weaves sinuously. Shadows coil around his back and disintegrate from the tips of his wings like ash.
My pulse speeds up.
It’s Propraetor Rustica Atticus.
He is the harsh governor of the dragons in the mountainous region on the Draca side of the Borderlands.
I will pull out of his spine and make him choke on it for attacking me tonight.
I don’t have my full Eternal army with me, merely a single unit.
Aurelius knows this. Who else does?
Betrayal.
Shouldn’t I be used to it by now?
Yet devastation still bubbles through me, thick and poisonous.
I trusted Aurelius…again.
On my blood, we shall never betray each other…
We promised, on blood and Aurelius’ horns.
My heart aches.
Let the realms hate me, but why must my only friend?
Yet I prostrated myself before Aurelius in a way that I would never before anyone else. Does he still hate me enough to trick and kill me?
Enough to risk the life of his own Omega?
Doesn’t he know what the Blood Court may do to both wolf and fae now that he has broken the treaty?
“Get back,” I yell again. “Let the Shadow Devils burn your souls for eternity if you don’t die to protect my Omega.”
My soldiers obediently fall back, swarming to surround Shadow like giant scarab beetles.
My mates are pale, staring up in shock at the sky.
The charioteer drags the panicking horses around, whose eyes are large and white with fear, until they also stand in front of Shadow. The archer, the most accurate out of all the Eternals, raises his long bow with the shaft in his left hand and the string in his right.
He is known as the Dragon Smiter.
His arrows are tipped with the bones of dragons that he has slain. It is one of the few things that can breach the tough hides of a dragon.
I let out a breath of relief that my mates appear as dazed and shocked as I am.
They didn’t know, bless the Void.
They weren’t in on this ambush.
How could I interrogate or punish them, even if they were?
Yet the Blood Court would, the Scarlet Temple, Crocodile House, or the Void Cult.
It would turn my heart to ash for Freya or Dove to betray me, when they are the first people to have talked to me like I am not monstrous.
To talk to me like Aurelius used to.
Like my twin did.
If that was all a lie, then…?
I shake my head, licking my tongue over my fangs. I stare up at the dragons.
What in hell are they waiting for?
Then I realize and I become ashen.
The ruby dragons are circling White Lotus, fanning out to each of the corners, until the village is surrounded.
Atticus hovers directly above White Lotus, blotting out the moon.
I’ve seen this formation before. Atticus uses it on raids, when he intends to annihilate an entire village.
He’s not a governor or a ruler.
He’s a butcher.
Please let him have planned this ambush alone. He has been challenging Aurelius for years, building a rival powerbase in the Borderlands.
Who is behind this trick that has sent us home only to die?
At last, Atticus opens his gleaming, sharp-toothed mouth, and in a moment, my bats are wiped out of the sky by a breath of flames.
“No!” Shadows erupt from me in rage, reaching up into the sky.
Atticus swoops out of the way to dodge them.
He’s playing with me.
He knows that I am outnumbered by an entire army.
He knows how special White Lotus and the pyramid tomb is to me and my people.
He knows that I have my Omega and Blood Lover with me.
If I allow my true nature to show and destroy these dragons, will Freya ever look at me as if I’m not a monster again? Will Dove tease me and call me pet names? Will Freya still bond with me?
Will I lose my only chance at love?
Dove cries out behind me, summoning his ravens to himself with a panicked whistle.
Numb, I am shaking.
My bats.
My friends.
Gone.
Never again will I shift into my bat form and fly free into the cold night skies with them. Never again will they whisper the secrets that they heard in the long dark. Never again will they nestle around me when I am thrown into the punishment pits by the Priestesses in the Scarlet Temple.
My throat is tight.
My claws extend, and my fangs grow. My eyes glow crimson with grief.
Suddenly, flames erupt from the fearsome ruby dragons in a wall of flame. The heat is blinding. It hits a row of houses, which explode.
Mud, silt, and dust rain down on the villagers — my worshipers.
The Turneds’ eyes are wild with fear.
Screams echo through the night sky now instead of murmured chanting.
The Turned scramble over each other in their panic to escape.
Except, there is nowhere to run.
The Turned splash and fall into the lotus pools, breaking the sleep of the flowers and their eternal cycle.
For this village, there will be no dawn.
Was I wrong to believe in hope?
The houses are melting under the heat into deformed shapes in the dark.
The lotus flower is crushed on the path in front of me. I stare at it, blankly.
Where is the little Fang who gave it to me?
This is wrong. All wrong.
I was meant to be returning in triumph, finally bringing my nest mates to visit my family.
This was my moment of victory.
My eyes are red-rimmed, but I straighten my shoulders. I push my hair away from my face.
“Run to the tombs,” I bellow over the panicked screams. I push every bit of mesmerism and command into the order as I can. “Hide there. You will be safe. Your King will protect you.”
I have brought this disaster and destruction upon my people. I shan’t allow this night to also end in their deaths.
My shoulders slump with relief, when the crowd calms and begins to sprint toward the gleaming, lotus carved tomb. It is the sacred heart of the village. The spirits of our ancestors are alive there.
Thousands of generations of my family rest in this place. But the dragons are disturbing them tonight.
“Atticus.” Furious, I tip my head up to the sky. “You barbaric coward; I am a king. You will have your head sliced from your foul body for breaking the peace treaty. Yet I shall show mercy. This is your one chance to leave. Now.”
Atticus doesn’t retreat.
Even if Atticus is acting alone, someone from the Shadow Court must have told him the timings for my arrival.
Was it Aurelius?
Maximinus?
Another traitor in the court who is secretly working against this peace and their king?
When a ruby dragon swoops too close to Shadow, she rears back to snarl and claw at the enemy. My mates tumble from her back.
I growl, and my fangs pulse in agony.
I stagger, drawn to the Omega wolf as I have been from the moment that I saw her kneeling like a pet.
I ache for her.
Hurt for her.
Die inside for her.
I have for three years, and it feels like I will lose what is left of my sanity if I don’t touch Freya and smell her pheromones, but I don’t dare let her touch me at the same time.
I am overwhelmed.
When the pretty fae instantly shields Freya with his wings, sweeping them around like blades, my eyes widen.
As flames dance across the night, glowing in Dove’s lavender eyes behind his mask, he is transformed into a warrior.
Why did he try to hide this side to himself?
He must have been a member of the featherglass, before Maximinus turned the rebels into pets.
On the Void, I never believed that my best friend would become the type of tyrant king who treated his enemies in the same way that Maximinus always has done.
As Tarquin did.
But then, do I truly know Aurelius at all?
When the ruby dragon swoops lower again, Dove directs his ravens, almost like he has the Power as well, to attack the Omega dragon rider. They viciously peck the Omega’s head and shoulders.
His screams are like music.
Dove’s smirk is wicked.
The fae is glorious in his darkness, despite smelling of sunshine.
Suspicious, I narrow my eyes.
Who is this blade wrapped in a honey cake?
And why do I wish that I didn’t need to care, when he shows such closeness to nature and revels in it?
Why does Dove make me feel like I shouldn’t be ashamed of that side of myself because he isn’t ashamed of himself?
The Alpha dragon twists and turns, desperately attempting to help his rider. Seizing the opportunity, the Dragon Smiter looses a volley of arrows toward the underside of the dragon.
The dragon roars in pain, crashing down into the desert.