Page 96 of The Ice Prince's Fated Mate
“Hello, Three-Eyes,” I rumbled as the Hunter inside backed up against the far wall.
The Hunter—a century or two older than me but not showing any signs of aging—was able to look at me without going unconscious, but he could do little more.
“What do you want with me? I don’t know you,” he forced out, the long scar down the side of his face twisting wildly. From within the eye-socket the polished piece of marble seemed to bulge, the pair of eyes inked on to it that gave him his name staring sightlessly just a little to my left.
I laughed once more. “Oh, but we do know one another.”
The Hunter shook his head. “I’ve never dealt with royalty before. I would remember that.”
I sneered, my right hand shifting and my fingers stretching into claws as I came closer. “I wasn’t royalty back then. Just like you didn’t go by your first name.”
The man with the thick beard and a perfectly formed set of teeth marks on his forearm that had never healed properly frowned as he stared at me.
“You might recall better if you still had both eyes. Though they didn’t help you much the night we met. I see the rage-Fae marks never healed either. Pity.”
Jiricek “Three-Eyes” Grange sat up straight, his remaining eye opening wide with horror.
“Y-you?You’re C—” he started to say as I lunged forward, slamming him back against the wall. My claws stopped an inch from his working eye as he trembled in fear, my alpha power still rendering him all but helpless.
“You swore to me that you would never traffic Grounded again. That you would see the error of your ways. I took your eye, but I let you live, on your word,” I rumbled, losing control of my anger the more I talked. “You lied to me, Grange. Youlied!You sold a Clippy to humans!I let you live and you sold my mate to human scum!”
Grange tried to speak. More lies, I was sure, so I broke his jaw.
“I should never have let a single Hunter live that day,” I whispered, my face inches from his. “I will carry that guilt with me for the rest of time. But I can ensure no one else will be hurt by you. I am done making mistakes.”
Claws flashed.
Forty-Five
Ella
“Where can weget records older than the Unification Wars?” I asked as Milly and I left the library. My stomach was rumbling, a reminder it had been far too long since I’d eaten.
“I don’t know.” Milly echoed my frustration.
Through our research, we had established that Clippys went as far back as the wars, but finding anything from before was proving difficult, at least in Caz’s private library. I intended to ask him if there were older records anywhere, but we had to wait for Anna’s heat to be over before that happened.
“Maybe we can ask Caz when he comes back.”
I laughed gently. “I was just thinking the same thing. We must be friends.”
“So does that mean you were also thinking that soon you will be going into heat?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head as we exited the tyrant wing and headed for the kitchen. Durion and Kolar fell in behind us. It was nice to have a pair of friendly faces on guard duty. “I wasn’t.”
Would I still go into heat since I could not get pregnant? I had no idea if the two were interlinked in any way. The physiology of mated dragons had never been important since, until recently, Ihadn’t needed to care. Now all sorts of questions were popping up, and I didn’t like not knowing.
If only we could find some answers.
A subtle flow of satisfaction trickled through me. It took a moment to identify that it did belong to me. Dirk, then? What was that all about? I’d not felt much from him since we parted, stating he had to see to running the kingdom.
Regardless, I was glad he was feeling good. I knew Mirko was giving him a hard time, constantly demanding for things to proceed, even though law stated it would not until Anna’s heat was finished. He was just being a dick to frustrate Dirk.
Up ahead, a quartet of palace guards rushed through the intersection, one of them barking at the others to hurry up.
Kolar slipped past us, immediately on high alert at the unexpected commotion.
“What’s going on?” I asked, glancing back at Durion, who was watching our rear.
