Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dream Bond
Aurelius
Where are they? Why isn’t this fucking dream bond working?
I pace from one side of the vast cavern to the other, swishing my crimson cloak as I turn.
The cavern is set in the side of Mount Primo, which overlooks the south of Bael.
At least, the version is that my mind has created for the Dream Bond, which will summon Freya and Daire tonight to share this dreamscape with me, as long as our bond is still deep enough.
I pray to the Shadow Gods that it is.
I swore that I wouldn’t leave my consorts alone in Blood Kingdom. I won’t break my promise.
The dreamscape is precisely as it was the night that the three of us shared a rut and bonded. The walls are rough with sparkling gold like dragon scales.
It is bittersweet because this is the reincarnated emperor who prowls beneath my skin’s memory, and Hadrian is darkly smug with that knowledge. Yet when I woke up the next morning in control again, it still felt like my bite that I could see on Freya’s neck.
I hoped then that there was a way to make our pack work.
For one brief moment…
I growl in frustration.
My hand wanders closer to Hadrian’s Dagger, as it has for days, as if magnetized.
Take me out, the dagger whispers, temptingly. Lay waste to the Blood Kingdom, burning it to bones and ash. Rut your mates on a sea of the dead.
I waver, before I clasp my hands smartly behind my back.
I’m shaking.
How can I hold onto my training to be emotionless and lock Hadrian’s cruelty inside, when it’s my Omega who may be dead?
Surely, I’d have felt it if my fiery Goddess was….gone?
I know that I would.
If my Omega had flown to join her ancestors in the moon, then the golden threads would have snapped, and my own soul would have screamed in agony and bled out.
Yet after Lucius’ father secretly carried out that attack in the Borderlands, breaking the peace treaty on the same night that I made it, who knows how Freya and Daire are being treated in the Blood Court?
I planned this strategy as carefully as any military campaign, only for it to fall apart because of traitors within my own kingdom.
How could I have faced either of my fated mates, or attempted to apologize, before I’d first worked out what had gone wrong?
Lies breed within my court, and I have had to tell many myself to survive.
I have become too used to wearing a mask. I had only just learned to remove it to show my consorts the truth of my heart beneath.
But why should they trust me now?
How do they know where the mask ends, and the dragon beneath begins?
On the Shadow Gods, do I?
I slam my fist into the wall, ignoring the pain that cracks through my split knuckles and up my arm.
Blood snakes down the back of my hand. Have I broken it?
When a wave of dizziness hits me, my knees buckle. I stumble to the floor.
My breathing is labored, and I struggle to keep my eyes open.
“I can’t…m-m-mustn’t…she n-needs me.” I drag myself to lean against the wall.
My pheromones are unbalanced without Freya. Her scent is fading from my nest. An Alpha dragon, once bonded, needs to be close to their Omega.
They also have a deep connection to their riders. It is agony to be parted from them.
I set my jaw.
Did Lanlin experience this same agony?
I ignore the strange twinge of…something…that thought gives me. Instead, I focus on holding onto consciousness, at the same time as intently watching the moonlight that bathes the entrance to the cavern.
“Freya,” I whisper.
I’ve worked hard to be ready for tonight.
But how will she react? How will Daire?
The golden walls glisten for a moment, wavering in and out into a swirling void.
I’m losing the connection.
I sink my golden claws into the walls, as if they are not a dreamscape but can be held together by my strength alone.
I battle against another bout of dizziness.
“I am King Aurelius,” I snarl, “and you will obey me. You are the dream bond that binds three of us by golden fate through our lives and beyond. You will not fail me, until I have seen my Omega who is my goddess.”
The dreamscape gives a final shimmer, before it solidifies again.
Sweat beads on my forehead. I draw my claws out of the wall, leaving behind deep gouges.
My wings itch beneath the skin on my shoulder blades.
“Thank the Shadow Gods.” Then I look up, and my heart stutters to a stop.
My Spark is standing above me. She is looking around the cave, bewildered.
My Omega. My wild wolf.
Mine.
My inner Alpha roars in delight.
The moonlight makes Freya’s fiery hair glow. She looks even more beautiful than I remember. How is that possible?
She is dressed in a plain linen dress with a carnelian sun in the middle.
Did Lanlin dress her in that? My lip curls into a sneer.
I am instantly distracted, however, by Freya’s scent of roses, which fills the cavern along with her pheromones.
I can’t hold back my growl, staggering to my feet.
Fuck, I need her.
“Aurelius!” Before I can take a step towards Freya, she is throwing herself into my arms. She knocks me back into the wall. “I’ve fucking missed you. I wish that you were real.”
I freeze.
She thinks that this is a normal dream.
I should tell her the truth.
Yet I can feel the simple happiness that is flowing through the bond, as Freya nuzzles me. Her touch along my scent gland and her pheromones are curing me, and I take as many deep breaths as I can.
Who knows when I will be able to again?
As soon as I tell her that I am real, I know my Freya.
She’s as likely to stab me as to nuzzle me.
“You’re shaking.” Freya peers up at me, and my chest tightens at the genuine concern in her eyes.
“If this wasn’t a dream, then I’d be worried that you were close to feral from lack of my pheromones again.
This is probably what this dream is all about.
Fuck a troll, after I’ve seen how tough things have been for Lanlin, it’s made me terrified about what you must be suffering, despite everything. ”
I attempt to not react at Freya’s mention of Lanlin.
I pull her closer to my neck, stroking up and down her back.
“I’d suffer anything, as long as you aren’t.
I have been protecting both Daire and you from the beginning, even if I had to hide it from others by making it look like hurting you.
I simply didn’t know how best to protect myself or the entire kingdom, when there was so much at stake.
Yet I have been plotting toward that my entire life.
Give me time, and I will give you an empire. ”
It’s strangely easy to talk to her, when she doesn’t believe that I am myself.
Freya pulls back to study me, as I stroke through her silky hair; I like that my blood from my injured hand is marking her.
“What if I don’t want an empire? What if I just want my pack?” She asks.
“Pack? And who would it include?” I narrow my eyes, suspicious.
Freya settles against my chest with a sigh. “Keep playing with my hair. I hope that I dream about you every night. Although, you’re nothing like the real Aurelius. He’s never like this.”
My expression hardens. “Hmm?”
“Oh, he walks around with this huge stick up his ass, as if it would break him to show a single emotion. He’s not gentle. He doesn’t say what he thinks but banters like a cold hardass. The Alphahole sent Daire and me into danger.”
My cheeks redden.
Tarquin used to say to me only listen at keyholes if you want to hear in excruciating detail what people hate about you.
I didn’t know if it was advice to spy…or not to.
Now, I am learning that I would rather not have known.
“I’m sure that he had his reasons,” I say, stiffly.
Freya laughs, drawing away from me. Instantly, I miss her touch.
“Now you sound more like the real him. You’re learning.” Freya kicks a rock, and it skids across the floor. “Real you is a knotless coward who has a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
I swallow.
“Freya,” I lick my dry lips, “actually, I am—”
“I didn’t think that I’d be able to fall asleep the night before the Hunt. But here I am, in the place where we bonded. This is brilliant.” Daire is silhouetted against the streaming moonlight in the mouth of the cavern.
Freya grins. “Of course you’d be here too.”
When Daire swaggers into the cave, my shoulders slump in relief.
They both made it.
But what Hunt?
Also, what in the fuck is Daire wearing? Why would Lanlin dress a precious Blood Lover in a plain fawn colored tunic, which is embroidered with antlers? A bronze stag brooch is pinned to the front, when the emblem for the House of Sin is a black bat.
“What are you wearing?” I demand.
“Rude.” Daire twirls across the cavern, spreading out his wings like a maple’s helicopter seed on the breeze. “I pull it off.”
He wraps his arm around Freya, dipping her as he kisses her deeply. “Hey, love. I missed you.”
Then to my shock, Daire twirls to me, looping his arms around my neck, as if he needs to feel out the touch of me, taking a breath of my scent. “Missed you too, arsehole.”
“Even if I’m a cold, emotionless fucker with a stick up my ass…?” I say, dryly.
Daire smirks. “Huh, this is a realistic dream.”
Freya crosses her arms. “This is my dream.”
“Sorry, sweet as you smell, I’m no one’s figment.”
I sigh.
This is when I shatter the most calm I have had for weeks, holding together the power struggles between the army, Guilds, Council, and enduring the too soft reeducation of my uncle to stop him from growing suspicious.
I have been playing the long game for years. I can’t stop now.
It takes more strength than anyone can understand to pretend to be weak.
“Actually,” I unloop Daire’s arms from my neck, “you’re both in my dream.”
Daire groans. “I knew that your ego was so large you’d say that.”
Freya, however, is now staring at me with large eyes. “The Dream Bond, right?”
“I created this dreamscape,” I explain. “It means we can meet. I am sorry that I couldn’t before but—"