Chapter 17
Rook
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kill her or fuck her.
I have a preference.
You’re a horny fucking lizard, I mentally spat, raking my hand through my hair. Your preference is irrelevant.
I’m not the one who terrorized her village.
For Uther’s bene—
Fuck it. I wasn’t having this argument again.
At least I knew where my desire to bend her over the table and fuck her until she screamed my name was coming from.
Because I sure as hell didn’t want that.
She spat at me. If anything, I wanted to bend her over this table and spank her disrespectful ass until she screamed for mercy.
Same thing.
I ignored the beast, pacing the room with my hands curled into fists.
I’d tried to make things pleasant for her here.
I’d tried to be understanding of the fact she’d been taken from everything she’d ever known.
I tried to punish her pack for the way they’d treated her.
I’d even given her a book from my personal hoard—and this was how she repaid me.
No. I’d never allowed anyone—human, shifter, or even dragon—to insult me the way she had, and I wasn’t about to start now.
Then kill her and claim a new Tribute.
“No!” I slammed my fist down on the table, making the barely touched plates leap from its surface, and a small crack spiderweb its length. Fuck.
My dragon’s smugness rang through my skull, clearly reading more into my reaction than there was.
Clearly.
I didn’t want to kill her because I’d invested enough time training her already.
I had no intention of squandering more time collecting and training a new Tribute.
And anything else I might be feeling, that tightness in my chest, the pulsing in my gut, was purely my dragon’s reaction.
Her death would be an inconvenience to me, nothing more.
Stop lying to yourself.
I’m not ly—
I silenced the thought with a shake of my head, and stalked from the room, making for the front door. For the first time in my existence, I wished there was some way to separate myself from my dragon’s soul, his incessant opinions.
You couldn’t fly without me.
He wasn’t wrong, and right now that was exactly what I wanted: to fly. In silence. I shucked my human form as soon as my feet touched grass, and launched myself into the sky, letting the darkness embrace me.
My dragon was grating on me like he never had before, not even after he had first become verbal—a rarity in my kind.
And did I ever envy the others, not that I would ever let that on to them.
Any sign of weakness, and even Gaheris would turn on me, seizing my lands for himself.
There was a reason I chose a solitary existence.
Dragons were warlike by our nature, but something had changed in me after the war.
I would never run from a fight, never back down to an aggressor, but I no longer had the same urge to find trouble, to attack when I saw weakness.
We’re getting old, my dragon said wryly.
I snorted in amusement, sending puffs of smoke around us.
We’re immortal, I pointed out. Or close to it, at least. Not indestructible, but when we fell—and I had no doubt that one day we would—it wouldn’t be age that killed us.
I soared around my castle, high enough above the earth that it was a dot on the landscape below. My powerful wings let me slice through the night sky, soaring in near silence between beats. This could not go on. I couldn’t be at war with one half of myself. It’d drive me mad.
You are already.
If I am, you are, too, I retorted, and then, mentally shrugging off the probable truth of his words, I added, We need to make peace with each other.
We need to make peace with Kaylee.
The girl. Always the girl. I never should have claimed her as my Tribute.
I disagree.
Which is exactly my point, I ground out mentally.
He fell blissfully silent at that, leaving me alone with my thoughts as I flew.
I had to find my focus. My territory was at risk from invaders, my way of life at risk from the rebels in the east, and my very existence at risk if another war broke out.
And yet all I could think of was one mouthy shifter girl.
Perhaps the best—safest—thing to do was send her away.
Free myself from distraction at a time I could absolutely not afford to be distracted.
It wasn’t just for my own benefit. She might have been born a shifter, but without an animal, she was not much less vulnerable than any human.
Her heritage did nothing but put a target on her back, and her presence did nothing but cause me irritation.
Not to mention creating a rift between me and my inner beast, something we could ill afford if we had to fight.
No. Safer—better—for everyone if I found some way to be rid of her.
Things were better before she came, and they would be again once she was gone. I just had to find a way to dispose of her without arousing suspicion—or my dragon’s ire.