Rorik grunted softly. “Yes. I slept there, alongside the other omegas. I always took the bottom bunk because of my size.”
My stomach lurched. Rorik wasn’t the only one who’d suffered in the tundra clan. By the sound of it, there were many omegas left behind in that wretched place. A little part of me wondered if, when Rorik was emotionally healed, we could do something about it...
“How many alphas are in charge?” I asked.
“Now? Two. Sheba and Knox.” Rorik paused gravely. “There used to be a third. Konrad.”
“What happened?”
Rorik turned to meet my gaze. “He was killed by a dragon.”
I gasped, startled. “What?”
Rorik lifted his face to the ceiling, staring past it as he slowly recounted. “It was many years ago. I was barely a teenager when it happened. Out of nowhere, a dragon attacked our clan, razing buildings and destroying everything in sight. It murdered Konrad in cold blood.”
I stared at him, unable to believe what I heard. My heart pattered in a rapid, unsteady rhythm. As far as we knew, therewereno other dragons. The seven of us—and our children—were the only dragons in existence.
But if that was true, then who attacked Rorik’s clan?
“It couldn’t have been one of us,” I insisted. “We would never do something like that.”
Rorik turned towards me. His expression was serious, yet resigned. He knew he couldn’t change the past, and that I had no involvement in that tragedy, but it still hurt him.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Because I wouldn’t—we wouldn’t…”
Suddenly, I bit my tongue. Moments earlier, when looking at Rorik’s scars, I’d fantasized about biting the perpetrators’ heads off. Maybe I wasn’t so different from this mystery dragon after all. My shoulders slumped and I quieted down, ashamed of myself.
To my surprise, Rorik ran the back of his finger comfortingly down my cheek.
“We all make mistakes,” he said softly. “We all have the capacity to do terrible things.”
I tensed my jaw and nodded. We both understood that. But it didn’t make it any easier to hear that a dragon—one of my own kind—had committed such an atrocity.
Rorik waited, then continued his tale. “Our village stood at the base of a mountain. It was deep winter, when the snow piled at its thickest. The dragon’s onslaught caused an avalanche. Many people were buried. Lost.” He swallowed a thickness in his throat. “Dead, we assumed.”
“Assumed?” I asked hopefully. “Does that mean some of them lived?”
“Only one.” Rorik’s eyes flashed. “And he’s here.”
My mind reeled. I was frazzled by this cascade of information. “What are you talking about? Who?”
But as Rorik stared at me, waiting for me to come to the conclusion on my own, the pieces fell into place. My jaw dropped.
“Poppy?” I breathed.
“Yes.”
I felt dizzy. I put a hand to my temple.
“That’s how you knew each other,” I mumbled. “But then, why were you two so distant?”
Rorik’s mouth pulled into a shameful grimace. “He has misconceptions about me. I can’t say they’re misplaced. He begged me not to hurt you, or Aurum, or any of your brothers. But I did. In the end, I earned Poppy’s resentment. All I can do is hope he forgives me.”
I couldn’t imagine Poppy not forgiving anybody. But then again, Rorik knew him on a deeper level. They shared a history I would never understand.
My skull swarmed with questions. “How did Poppy survive the attack? How can he still trust dragons after that?”
