“Are you alright?”
“If this is a diplomatic meeting, I ought to have my advisors with me,” he said, not liking how harsh his voice suddenly sounded. Lana shrank back from him a little, surprise and hurt clear in her face.
“No, I—well, I wanted to—to talk with you simply, as—” He could see her struggling with the language again, the frustration vivid in her eyes. She uttered a sharp, unfamiliar syllable that he had a strong suspicion was a profanity, then tried again. “I wanted to speak as friends.”
“Are we friends?” he asked, keeping his voice level. “I’m the Alpha of the valley pack. You, it seems, are Queen of the dragons of the peak. Our people are on the verge of war.”
“I…” She trailed off, then muttered something under her breath that he didn’t understand—though it definitely featured the expletive she’d uttered earlier. “I’m not Queen yet. Not until the coronation.”
“All the more reason to save this meeting,” Seth said firmly, setting down his fork and rising to his feet. “Until we both have our advisors present. Agreed?”
“Fine,” she said faintly, sitting back in her chair with a look of defeat on her face that almost made his heart split in two. “I apologize, Alpha. We’ll reconvene on the morrow.”
Had she chosen that archaic phrasing just to insult him? He hadn’t realized she was that familiar with the language. Seething, he gave her an abrupt little nod then turned on his heel and left the room, striding through the absurdly large, empty throne room with guilt and anger battling it out in the pit of his stomach. To his surprise, there was a sizable dose of sadness in there, too… and it was coming from his wolf.
“You too, huh?” he muttered, scowling as he stormed through the palace. It seemed every single part of him was falling under this woman’s spell. Well, he wasn’t going to let that happen. Not when his pack was depending on him to keep them safe.
Even if it did make him feel like his heart was going to sink right through his feet and vanish without a trace.
Chapter 9 - Lana
“Well, that went terribly,” Lana muttered as she shoved open the door to the palace’s offices. Conrad was here at a desk piled high with paper and ancient ledgers, a look of guarded sympathy on his face as he looked up. Did Draconic have a phrase for ‘I told you so’? She was about to find out.
“I hope I was clear when I said that may be the case.”
Of course they did, and of course it was unnecessarily ornate. “Dammit,” she muttered in English, dropping into a chair and rubbing her forehead exhaustedly. “Conrad, you have to teach me how to swear in this foolish language.”
A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “Your father didn’t cover that in his lessons?”
“Maybe if he had, I’d have studied harder and ended up with a less ridiculous accent.”
“Your accent is charming. It’s unique.” Lana groaned. “What happened with the Alpha?”
“I told him I was the Queen, we talked for a second about whatever’s been causing these disappearances, and then he got stiff and said we shouldn’t talk without our advisors present.”
“Wolves,” Conrad said with a sympathetic shake of his head. “They can’t do anything alone.”
“I mentioned that I wasn’t officially Queen yet, too. Maybe that was it. I thought—” She bit her lip, frustrated. “I thought we were… friends.” It was more than that, of course, but she had no idea how to describe the feelings she had about Seth in English, let alone Draconic. She couldn’t evenswearin Draconic.
“For wolves, the pack always comes first. Always.” Conrad sighed, setting down the ledger he’d been studying and giving her a sympathetic look. “I can arrange for a meeting tomorrow, if you’d like. Something official. We’ll ensure all of the wolves are invited.”
“Good.” She hesitated for a moment, gnawing at her lower lip. “I won’t attend, though. You take the meeting, along with… whoever you’d take to a meeting.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. You’re the one who knows what’s going on. I don’t need to be there.”
“Very well.”
And with that, she bid the Prince goodnight and retired to her quarters. The palace architects had really outdone themselves here. The entire top floor of the three-story building was dedicated to quarters for the royal family, and the architect seemed to have had trouble knowing where to stop. Lana had spent a full hour wandering through the rooms, and if it hadn’t been for the ball of string she’d insisted on unwinding behind her, she would genuinely have gotten lost—all without even finding the end of the labyrinthine accommodations. Every time she thought she must have found the back wall, another little door or hallway would reveal itself, and there’d be yet another set of rooms large enough to house an entire family. It was ridiculous.
So she’d taken the room closest to the front, one with a window that looked out into the cavern beyond. As rooms in the palace went, it was rather modest, but it was the one that made her feel the least claustrophobic and deranged, so she’d insisted on it. To her exasperation, she’d soon discovered that the adjoining room—itself the size of a small bedroom—was in fact a walk-in wardrobe, that within hours of her selecting the room was filled to the brim with beautiful dresses. It made sense, she supposed, that the palace staff was excited to actually have something to do for a change. Prince Conrad seemed like a low-maintenance kind of guy—and from what she could tell, he didn’t even use the official palace living quarters, preferring the strange little bed he’d set up in one of the palace offices.
Lana was beginning to suspect that the stereotype of the eccentric old dragon was more accurate than she’d given it credit for, back home.
God, she missed home. That was an unfamiliar feeling to her. She’d always felt restless if she stayed in one place for too long… if she yearned to be somewhere else, it was always forward she wanted to go, not back. The next unexplored place, the next big adventure, the next town or city full of new people to meet, new stories to hear. She’d felt that way about this place, for a moment. But all of this Queen stuff had ruined it. She wasn’t some charismatic stranger here, now—she was being loaded up with responsibility and duty. It was making her feel the familiar itch to move on, to ghost everyone she’d gotten to know and go. But at the same time, something else was tugging at her, telling her she needed to stay. Something that had more to do with the handsome wolf who’d saved her life than she was happy to admit.
Sighing irritably, Lana turned over in her ornately carved stone bed. She didn’t like how their evening had gone at all. Why had he acted like that? Why had he gotten so distant, so formal? Sure, she was a dragon and he was a wolf—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get on. If anything, he should have been nicer to her. After all, she was the Queen now—and Lana sighed, catching herself. That was the problem, wasn’t it? She was the Queen. It was on her orders that Seth and his wolves had been brought here. Then she’d ordered him brought to her, alone, for a meal. If she’d been trapped in a foreign, hostile environment, she might not have taken kindly to being forcibly escorted to a dinner date, either. But what else could she do? Didn’t he realize that she was just as lost and confused here as he was?