Page 59 of Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)
“What more could I want?” Her chest flame flares with a fresh burst of ire. “I want what you promised me! I will serve the wolves of Lukos to the best of my ability, but they aren’t my wolves. The North Dakota kingdom. Fensa and my fathers. My insanely large family. They’re my wolves. And I want us to get married in front of them. Like you promised.”
“No, that is what he promised,” I remind her. “That is what that weakling who was riddled with Widower’s Madness promised you. Not me.”
“So, I’d have to die for you to love me like he did? To pay me Reverence? To forgive my—”
“Stop this. You are nearly as bad as the pretender. Drakkon do not forget, nor do we forgive! Your fathers killed my father. Your sister’s mate betrayed our race. For those transgressions, they all must die. You are as delusional as that addled fool you keep referencing if you thought our story would end any other way.”
And so am I, I silently note. For I knew from the moment I decided to bring her here that we were living out a tragedy, not the happy ending she’d envisioned.
“I’m not delusional!” she screams back at me. “I believe in us. Just like he believed in us. So why can’t you?”
“I…” there’s no way to answer her question. Not without revealing the secret that could destroy the ultimate revenge I plan to take on the morrow.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says out loud, her voice soft. “Okay, well…”
She turns away from me. And without another word, exits the antechamber, leaving me to follow behind her.
When we arrive back to the stage, we find the dragons all reshelled and once again dressed in their clothes.
“Change of plan. No wedding ceremony.” It was impossible for them to hear our argument, silent as it was. But Ola’s flame is fully blue now with sadness and disappointment. For that reason, no one flares with surprise at Ola’s announcement.
However, their flames do startle when Ola continues on.
“But this is still a coronation,” she says, her voice projecting all the way to the back of the room. “So, you are all going to go out there and show those wolves you know how to get it turnt up too.”
She extends both her arms and palms up and lowers her crowned head to say in an exceedingly queenly tone. “That is my first decree as your ruler. You will go forth and dance! And just in case you think I’m joking, anybody who doesn’t will get sent straight to the bottom of my introductions list.”
With those words, she jumps off the stage. Leaving me to watch her lead my drakkon horde out of the throne room.
Back in the ballroom, the servants have set up a feast of meats, various Greek delicacies, and champagne fountains underneath the windows. Ola must have spotted the feast, too. For she runs up to the DJ booth and uses his voice amplifier to tell the gathered crowd. “This is a coronation and we gotta beast feast. So y’all know you better eat, drink, and be merry!”
Of course, I do none of these things. I turn to leave the party. But by the time I make it to the top of the stairs, Ola, the Lukos wolves, and my fellow dragons are eating from the sumptuous buffet, drinking from golden chalices overflowing with wine, and indeed making merry, just as their queen commanded.
I want to leave. I wish to be free of both this fete and the delusional thinking that led me to throw it. But I find myself rooted to the spot, unable to take my eyes off the she-wolf who has cast so many of the things I’ve believed most fervently into doubt.
Look at her…
I observe how my she-wolf interacts with both the wolves and drakkon in attendance. She is comfortable with her new power I see. But also willing to challenge the much larger males. More than one of the more imperious drakkon, including Hwedo, the Lead Researcher who’d dared to interrogate her, get shoved onto the floor when they refuse to dance. Yet she appears easy to talk to and fun—though as queen she has no need to entertain.
As I watch her dance with both our wolf and drakkon subjects, I realize that the other drakkon’s requests to be matched with she-wolves similar in nature to her was foolish. For Ola has no equal. I have never met her match in a drakki, human, nor wolf.
As if to punctuate my conclusion, Ola once again invades the music stand. This time she borrows both the amplifier and the DJ’s turntable touch screens to announce, “Here’s something my dads always insisted we do at our parties. So everybody bring yo’ best folk dance heeeeeeeat!”
