Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“No,” she whispered. “I want to partially travel in my mother’s footsteps. I want to walk up to a stranger, like she would have. I’ll ask if I am suppressed. I want to look them in the face like I looked at Granny and hope they say yes. And then, finally, assuming they do, I want to experience a dream come true.”
She fell silent after that. I could tell she was done talking. She needed time to reflect.
I asked if I could see the note, and she handed it over wordlessly.
Some fucking note.
The last lines sent a rush of rage through me. Granny planned to snatch Aurelia back.
Over my dead fucking body. Literally. That was the only way Granny would get her hands on my true mate again.
I’d make Aurelia want to stay in my kingdom. I’d show her what love could really feel like, what non-blood family could mean. I’d give her unlimited reasons to stay, and end Granny if she didn’t leave Aurelia alone.
I just hoped my efforts, the efforts of a man who had never bothered with romance or wooing, could accomplish what I needed to. With my pedigree, I’d never needed romance. Now I’d need to overcome Granny’s conditioning while tangoing with the dragons to prevent Aurelia from being thrown in the dungeon.
Easy as pie.
Come morning, I wasn’t sure if Aurelia had slept. She’d been awake when I roused in the middle of the night. She hadn’t uttered a peep. It killed me to watch her go through this, but she wouldn’t accept comfort.
“I want all my journals,” she said after breakfast. “Every single one.”
I complied, telling Nova to bring them, and then raiding the infirmary for a healing elixir. It would help Aurelia speed up her recovery.
After taking the elixir, she got right into her journals.
For the next three days, she stood along the railing on the deck or sat in our room, a chair pulled up to a little table, not speaking to anyone. Sometimes when I walked by to check on her, she was staring out at the ocean, letting the salty sea air dry wet streaks on her cheeks. Other times, there was anger in her expression.
On the fourth day, after her face had cleared of bruising and her ribs no longer hurt—that elixir was pretty incredible—she stopped me as I passed. The clouds sat heavy above us, gray and forbidding, threatening a storm.
“May I please have something to write with, and something to write on?” she asked, and it was almost as if she was addressing a stranger.
My stomach clenched in unease. “Of course,” I said, not showing it.
That and “I need more paper, please” comprised the sum total of her interactions with me. Hadriel and the others didn’t fare much better, everyone on the ship cut off as she internalized her situation.
At night she crawled into the sheets, but always with a layer of clothing. She never curled up close to me. She was distancing herself, creating an island of emotion.
The unease within me grew, but her resolve hadn’t changed. She would stand in front of the dragon royalty. I had time to bring her around. To crack whatever shell she was erecting around herself.
Fucking Granny. She was the unrelentless bane in so many people’s existence.
On the fifth—and what I thought was the last—day, I stood on the deck and looked over the bow. I’d thought we’d have time to connect on the ship, for our wolves to form a bond, and to deepen our knowledge of each other without my duties interrupting. That had not come to pass. I knew as we headed into the kingdom that things would only get more complicated.
Chapter 3
Aurelia
The pages of my journal fluttered before a burst of wind flapped the pages against my hand. My hair whipped around my head. I slapped my palm onto my notes before they could blow away and looked up from the little table at which I sat. Dark clouds boiled overhead, having gathered in the distance and raced closer. The first smattering of rain splatted against the wooden tabletop through the window of my room and pelted my forehead. The sounds of metal dinging and sails snapping overhead, billowing and straining against the rigging, filtered in alongside the rain.
Nervous flutters danced within my belly at the natural but turbulent violence quickly escalating around me. I’d never been on a ship before. I’d never seen limitless azure ocean stretching for as far as the eye could see, the land drifting away and leaving the vessel an isolated floating island. If something went wrong, no help could reach us in time to save us from a watery demise. We couldn’t seek shelter or hide from the elements around us. At no time was that so evident as when the storm bore down on us.