Chapter 28
Zenevieve
The first and likely only Dragon Games of my lifetime, and I am dragonless.
There’s a painful lump in my throat as I watch the other dragonriders making their preparations and excitedly choosing which events to enter.
There are several ones for swift, agile dragons, and Minta and I would have been in with a strong chance of winning all of them.
We should be training together. Planning together.
I should be grinning with happiness as I feel the giddy excitement bubbling up inside her.
A well of loneliness and despair lives inside me now. I will never again know the joy of flying on a dragon. I will never belong to a mate.
I will only ever ache.
I lie awake at night, and blankets irritate my skin, and my formerly cozy bedroom feels cavernous and terrifying.
I have strange urges to get off the mattress and squash myself beneath the wooden bed frame.
The summer heat is bothering me like it never has before, and I always feel feverish and uncomfortable.
I wonder if the climate has changed in five hundred years.
It never used to be this hot and sticky.
One afternoon, as I’m wandering listlessly across the dragongrounds, sweating and missing Minta, I come face to face with Stesha, who’s lovingly tending to Nilak.
I think about turning around and walking back the way I came, but it’s not Stesha’s fault that I feel so terrible. He tried his hardest for me and Shar.
“Are you excited for the Dragon Games, dragonmaster?”
He’s smoothing a polishing cloth over Nilak’s pristine scales, and he pauses to look at me. “Nilak is looking forward to proving her skills.”
“But what about you?”
He hesitates, and for a very rare moment, he looks uncertain.
I make myself smile through the agony in my chest. “You don’t wish to seem excited for the games because I am dragonless. But I am happy for all of you. I mean it. I want to catch your excitement, so please, tell me how you feel.”
After a moment, he admits, “Nilak would like to win.”
I glance up at the majestic white dragon with her fierce eyes. “I have no doubt she will.”
He smiles briefly, revealing a hint of his dragines, and a jolt goes through me.
The sight of his teeth has always thrilled me, but now I feel a near-irresistible impulse to twine my arms around his neck and beg for him to sink his teeth into my lower lip.
The world disappears in a pink haze, and I don’t hear a word he says.
“Zen?”
Stesha has stepped toward me, and he’s reaching for my arm. I blink and shake myself. “Sorry, what? I mean, I beg your pardon, dragonmaster?”
He gives me a pained look. “You don’t have to do that.”
“What?”
“Call me dragonmaster.”
“But we’re on the dragongrounds. All the riders are supposed to call you…” I feel like I’ve been punched in the guts. I’m not a rider. I have no right to be here. In a choked voice, I manage to say, “I’ll stop coming here. Of course. I’m sorry. There’s no need for me to address you at all.”
His eyes widen in shock, and he seizes my hands. “No, no, no. You are a rider, Zen. These are your dragongrounds, always and forever. I meant that you don’t have to call me dragonmaster. Call me Stesha, please, because we are friends. Aren’t we?”
I look at his large, callused hands holding mine, a storm of emotions swirling in my chest and making it impossible to breathe.
“Aren’t we, after all this time?” he implores, squeezing my hands.
It was not that long ago, for us at least, that we were up in that mountain cave together.
We weren’t friends then. I thought we were lovers.
Mates. But then he told me he’s waiting for someone else, and I nearly died.
I went through hell while I suffered from lavish sickness.
I’ve never been anything so distant as his friend. I’m not his godsdamned friend.
I think I hate the word.
“No, we are not friends,” I say fiercely, yanking my hands from his. He’s no longer my guardian, and if he’s not my mate, then he’s just the dragonmaster. Yet I have no dragon, so he is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him.
I can’t accept anything less than Stesha’s whole, adoring heart, which he will never give me.
“Good luck in the games,” I mutter, walking away. The hollow ache in my chest is worse than ever.
I want to make friends with Ravenna, but every time I see the red-haired witch, I remember Stesha holding her in his arms, her Omega perfume thick around them both.
I wonder if he longed for her to be his, even for a moment.
It’s impossible for me to be at ease in her presence, and so I keep out of her way as much as I can.
Then I see how she flinches when she sees Kane, and I feel sorry for her. I’m jealous of a woman who’s been hurt by her Alpha in the worst possible way. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.
I dream about Stesha almost every night, lurid dreams where we’re both naked, and when I wake in the morning, there’s so much slippery wetness between my legs that I have to wipe down my thighs with my sheet. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The summer heat is really getting to me this year.
The Dragon Games begin, and I try to enjoy them, but there’s so much restlessness and jealousy burning in my heart.
Kane and several riders from the wild flare insist they be allowed to compete, angering many of our riders.
Zabriel allows it, but they are as disruptive as anyone could have predicted.
I watch the first event from the castle battlements with hundreds of spectators.
They’re all cheering and waving colored banners or streamers for their chosen dragon and rider pair.
I catch sight of Ravenna, and she’s holding blue and white streamers for Stesha and Nilak.
A wave of bitter nausea overtakes me. This is what Stesha’s always wanted, an Omega fawning over him.
Will it matter to him that she’s another Alpha’s mate, or will he only care that her perfume is sweet and strong, and she can take his knot?
My eyes burn with tears, and I lose track of the event.
It’s not until I hear gasps of shock and anger that I wipe my face and realize Nilak has returned, and her tail has been bitten.
Stesha’s white riding leathers are spattered in her blood.
After he’s finished tending to his dragon’s injury, he stalks angrily over to two of Kane’s dragonriders and punches them both in the face. The crowd cheers.
Stesha and Nilak haven’t earned a place, and Zabriel comes in last. It’s not an auspicious opening to the Dragon Games for two of our best riders.
It breaks my heart, but I find little pleasure in watching the events over the following days.
Neither can I stay away. Little by little, most of the crowd begins cheering for Stesha and Nilak, but all I can notice as sweat beads on my brow and sunlight lances painfully through my skull are the young, beautiful women with open and sunny hearts admiring the dragonmaster, all of them better than me.
They haven’t had their insides ripped apart.
They haven’t been forced to betray Maledin or starved into a skeleton by lavish sickness.
I have shouted at Stesha and flung cruel words at him. I have sobbed and bled and crumbled in his presence. I’m too weak and emotional for such a stoic man. Too broken. Too scarred. There are too many dead dragons in my heart. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want me.
But he wants Aurissa and Auriana. They are a pair of yellow female Alpha dragons from the wild flare. I see him watching them hungrily between events. He’ll steal Kane’s dragons, and then he’ll steal his mate as well.
If I had a dragon, I think I would throw myself from its back.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for. The battlements are right there, and one leap over the edge would do me in.
I think I want to see it happen for myself first, for Stesha to win the games, defeat Kane, steal his dragons, and sweep Ravenna into his arms. I want to carry all that hurt into the afterlife, lay it at the gods’ feet, and demand to know why they needed me to suffer so.
I keep my misery tightly locked up inside me, and I support Isavelle and Esmeral by flying their colors. The pregnant queen is beautiful and fierce on her dragon, and applauding her successes is the one small pleasure I can find.
There’s an event where dragons must seek out enchanted chirping rocks that are hidden under various debris.
The event commemorates a group of Maledinni who were buried under snow and saved by clever dragons.
My heart is racing and making me feel slightly sick as I watch the riders prepare for the event.
I try to focus on Isavelle and Esmeral, who are determined to do well and earn some points, but my eyes keep straying to the dragonmaster.
Stesha, normally so stoic before an event, is pacing up and down.
He and Nilak win, and I understand now how they were able to locate Minta and me buried under that avalanche. I applaud along with the rest of the spectators, my smile frozen to my face as I’m battered by painful memories.
As I walk back up to the castle, I crave something to soothe my nerves and the pain in my heart, and I know where to get it.
I go straight to the rooms I used to share with Stesha.
As I open the door, I breathe in deep lungfuls of air.
His scent lingers everywhere, but I need more.
Inside his bedroom, I paw through his discarded clothes.
There are several unwashed shirts and a cloak, and I bring each of them to my face and bury my nose in them.
I wish he’d been in a rut recently because I want his rutting scent. I need his rutting scent.
The bedroom door bangs open, and Stesha catches me with my face pressed into an armload of his dirty laundry.
I freeze and my mouth goes dry, and I know guilt is written all over my face. “I-I can explain.”