Chapter 502

Nina

“Nina, Enzo. Please, come in.”

Enzo and I exchanged a wary glance with each other before we stepped into my father’s study. He was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk, leaning back in his leather chair with one leg crossed widely over the other.

Hardly a moment ever passed when I wasn’t reminded of my father’s Alpha King status. He was certainly born for the role, with a tall height, muscular frame and a regal appearance about him.

But something about him today seemed different. Despite his confident stature, he seemed almost… sheepish when he looked me in the eyes. It almost felt as if whatever he had to tell us was information that he wasn’t easily giving up.

“Sit,” he said. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be good,” Enzo said with a slight laugh as he rubbed his hand over the back of his neck.

“Say no more.” My father waved his hand and a servant almost seemed to materialize out of the corner. She poured us two steaming hot cups of coffee; I wasn’t really supposed to indulge in caffeine, but after everything I had been through lately… I figured one cup of coffee would be fine.

And as I took my first sip, it felt almost as if my body was lighter the moment the warm liquid poured down my throat. Yet another one of my father’s medicines, no doubt. Enzo and I certainly needed it after all we had been through.

“You two look much better than you did yesterday,” my father admitted, shooting me an apologetic look.

“We feel much better,” Enzo replied. He set his coffee cup down and placed his hand over mine. I gave it a squeeze.

“Good. I sent for the best ointments and medicine. You two should both be right as rain by tomorrow. Those damn silver ropes…” He shook his head in disappointment. “I didn’t think Mila would stoop so low.”

There it was again; my father mentioning Mila as if he knew her personally. I met his gaze squarely. “Tell us how you know her,” I said slowly.

My father paused, opening his mouth and closing it a few times before he finally nodded. “Yes. I suppose I should cut right to the chase, shouldn’t I?” He ran a hand through his hair and stood. As he walked past us, toward the window, I could see that look of sheepishness in his eyes once more.

“Mila and I… We go way back,” my father began. “It all started with an unlikely alliance…”

…

Aldric stepped into the dimly lit tavern and shook the water off of his hood. The storm outside had been raging on all day, but he couldn’t delay any longer; after all, the woman who he was meant to meet was already here, waiting for him at the table in the corner—just as the witch had foreseen.

“It’s you.” Aldric stopped next to the woman’s table and peered down at her. She had long, dark hair that peeked out from beneath her cloak, and she smoked a pipe. But there were two things that revealed to him that she wasn’t like the others.

For starters, she lit the pipe with a flick of her finger.

And second, those eyes… When she looked up at him, they were like cat’s eyes; yellow with a black slit down the middle. No, not like a cat. Like a lizard.

Like a dragon.

“It’s me.” The woman pushed back her hood to reveal a beautiful face and gestured for him to sit across from her. “The soothsayers told me we would meet tonight, so I’ve done my part. And so, it seems, have you.”

Aldric swept his cloak aside and sat across from the woman. “Indeed.” He met her gaze squarely, unlike so many others who saw her. Mila liked that; to feel like someone’s equal.

“So,” she said. “Shall we get straight to business?”

Aldric nodded and took the pipe that she offered him. “We shall.”

…

“We needed each other,” my father explained, now sitting back in his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I required assistance restoring my kingdom to its former glory after my father’s horrendous reign. Mila required protection for her people, and she was a damn good advisor. We were a match made in heaven.”

There was a long silence. Enzo and I were both on the edges of our seats as we listened to his story. Neither of us dared to breathe a word for fear of interrupting.

“Over the following years, Mila and I became not only allies, but… friends,” he continued. “Confidants, really. I’d never had a friend quite like her. Nor did she have a friend quite like me. We didn’t just plot out our political plans, our battles, our schemes together, but rather…”

My father’s voice trailed off at that point. He dropped his head a bit, as though the memories pained him to recount.

“We shared secrets with one another,” he said. “Secrets that no one else—not even your mother, Nina—ever discovered.”

“But it all went south, didn’t it?” Enzo whispered.

Aldric nodded slowly. “Mila had a small tribe of her kin; the last of her kind. It was my job to protect them in exchange for Mila’s expertise. And I failed.”

…

Mila burst into Aldric’s chambers, the doors swinging outwards in front of her. Her hair was wild, and her eyes glowed like two emeralds. Aldric had gotten used to the dragon’s frazzled appearance, and he went to wave her away.

“I’ll speak with you in a moment—”

“No.” She stormed forward and slammed her fists on the table, causing Aldric’s werewolf council to jump in unison. Fire flickered on her fingertips; without a word, the others got up and scurried out of the room in fear of the dragon’s strength.

“What the hell, Mila?” Aldric rose from his chair once they were alone. Another one of Mila’s episodes, perhaps, he thought. But no—when he saw the tears in her eyes for the first time in twenty years, he knew that something was terribly wrong.

For the first time since Aldric had known Mila, she sobbed. Openly.

“They killed them all,” she said through her choked screams. “I went back to the village, and they’re all dead. They fucking killed them, Aldric.”

“Who?” Aldric ran around the table to meet her. He reached for her shoulders, but she pulled away with a fierce snarl.

“The poachers. And I’ll fucking kill them, too.”

…

The sun was high in the sky by now, but Enzo and I hardly felt the passage of time. My father traced his finger around the rim of his whiskey glass as he spoke.

“Those poachers had been a problem for years,” he explained. “Seeing as there were so few dragons left, their scales—and especially their eggs—caught quite the price on the market. We staved them off as much as we could, but their underground networks ran deep. They got her kin in the end. Mila would have been killed, too, had she not been visiting my estate.”

“So you failed in your end of the deal,” I said slowly and deliberately.

Aldric swallowed. “I did. I got lazy, too full of pride. I thought that with the threat of my men on the horizon, the poachers would leave them alone. But they just got better at hiding themselves.”

There was a long pause before my father continued. “She kept true to her word,” he whispered. “She killed every last one of those poachers. She found their hideout and spread her fires through the caves in which they hid.”

“The obsidian palace,” I whispered. “She created it when she burned them all.”

“Indeed she did.” My father stood and crossed over to the window yet again. “I still remember exactly what she said that day, while the mountain was still smoldering: ‘Their grave shall become my throne, Aldric. And I shall turn this mountain into my horrid kingdom.’”

“And she did just that, didn’t she?” Enzo murmured. “She turned that entire mountain into a place of unimaginable monstrosities.”

Aldric nodded solemnly. “It certainly seems so. I remember watching her walk into that cave mouth, into the fire, and… and I didn’t stop her,” he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. “I just let her go. I didn’t even know if she would live.”

“So you left her to die?” I asked.

“I did.” My father swallowed hard and took a big swig of his whiskey. “And there hasn’t been a day I didn’t regret it. Over the years, I heard whispers of a dragon queen gone mad off the noxious fumes inside the mountain, but…”

“But you never went to her. Not even once.” I was standing now without even realizing it. “And now she’s out there with a cult following her every whim.”

My father was silent for some time, his hand gripping his whiskey glass so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Then, finally, he knocked back the rest of the amber liquid and slammed his glass down on the windowsill.

“This is my fault,” he said. “But I intend to end her reign of terror. And I’d like to recruit the New Peacekeepers for this cause.”