Page 43 of Creatures of War

“I spent all day at the library because Aylia remembered something from where she grew up. About a legend of a rider with more than one dragon. An elder told her about it as a kid, so she doesn’t remember too much of the details.”

“So you’re here to try to find it.”

I nodded. “Apparently there was something about divine powers.”

“Divine powers? What the heck is that? What kind?” Landers asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. And she can’t remember too much about it. But if there is a story out there about a rider and multiple dragon mates, we need to find it. Maybe we can find more answers about what is going on between us, and why it’s happening.”

“Does it matter?” Landers asked. “Why should we care about the story? We need to just make a new story for people to tell.”

“Because if we know, then we may know what the king is thinking,” I said. “He wants me. After our first lesson, I was brought back to him.”

Growls erupted from all three of them, and I smiled to calm them down. “He asked me again to join him, to bond with him.” I shuddered at the thought. “Maybe he knows about the story, but I’m not about to ask him that. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“We don’t want you near him,” Landers snarled out.

“Calm down,” Philit said. He rubbed at his jaw briefly. “We can try to look into it too, but frankly, the priority here is to get the fuck out of here, not to stick around. We need to behave for them, so that when we have the chance, we can leave. It’s too dangerous to stay here much longer.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to Captain Corniz or Tanja, but they’re hard to talk to alone,” I said.

“Why do you want to talk to them?” Landers asked.

“They helped us once,” Zilon said. “They seem open to helping us again.”

I nodded in agreement. “I think they’d be willing to help us again.”

“We might be able to use them to get these locks off our wings,” Philit said. “It’s not a bad idea. Or at least they can clue us into how to do it. We tried ourselves, but only ended up hurting our bodies instead.”

“Okay, we have a plan then,” Landers said. “We corner the captain and his mate and make them talk.”

“Nicely,” I snapped at him.

Landers rolled his eyes. “Of course. Nicely.” There was still violence in his voice as he said it. “This place is pissing me off too much. We need to get out of here before I begin breaking walls down and throwing around the fucking riders. Even after our dragons obviously rejected them, they were still determined to try.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Right.” Philit gently herded me to the exit. “You better get back before others than just Aylia realize you’re missing. We’ll see you again.”

He leaned down and gently captured my lips with his, giving me a brief kiss before opening the door, checking to make sure it was all clear, and then kicking me out of the passageway. The secret door was closed before I could even turn around to say anything to them.

I stared at the door for a long moment before turning around and heading back to Aylia. She didn’t say anything when I sat down, just handed me a book to look over, telling me to get back to work. So I did with a heavy sigh.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The rest of the weekend and week flew by, and the whole time, nothing could bring me down. Not even Coral and the one attempt she tried to start shit with me. I was too happy. I got the confirmation I needed from the guys that they were truly mine. While there was still that feeling our bond was blocked, once and in a while, I swore I could hear them in my mind. Then, I’d try to reach out to them, and get nothing back.

But then I’d feel an emotion that wasn’t mine, and I knew they were there. While I wasn’t sure why, I knew that our bond was strengthening. Or maybe whatever was muting our bond was weakening.

Either way, I wasn’t as alone as I had felt. Even the ache in my spine had disappeared.

“You’re still grinning,” Aylia said, also smiling as she spoke.

“You are too.”

She shrugged. “I can’t help it. You’re happy, and it’s infectious. I hope you can keep up this mood. You realize we’re heading to our next riding lesson, right?”

I nodded, my smile slipping away. The guys warned me to behave, so I needed to do that. I didn’t want to make things harder for them. Maybe it would be easier today, knowing that they were mine, and their dragons saw me as theirs. They weren’t going to bond with anyone. So we just needed to get through it again for this lesson. Earlier in the week, we were told the next lesson was going to be much of the same, checking to make sure there were no more dragons and riders to be mated.