“Nothing important in hindsight. Just an update from the northern borders.”
I latched on to that. “More scuffles with the Red King’s forces?”
Florian nodded. “No casualties or serious injuries. But this is the fourth ‘accidental’ incursion in months. The bastard is up tosomething,” he finished with a frosty snarl, not needing to hide his hatred for the Red King from me. I knew the truth there.
“Agreed. We need to be ready.”
“I will be, Alpha,” Florian replied, speaking as Warlord, not my friend, before becoming casual once more. “But that’s not our concern right now.”
“What is?”
“Getting you to your mate.” He smiled broadly. “I’m not gonna win any ladies with my teeth constantly broken because you can’t keep your cool. So let’s go get her.”
Six
Anna
I wasalone.
Isolation was emptiness, but it closed in around me like a tight box, crushing me into an ever-tighter corner of the cage.
My mate hated me and wanted nothing to do with me. There was no denying that. His rejection was clear-cut.
I shouldn’t miss something I’d never thought possible and never truly achieved, but each moment without him was a blade shoved into my skin. Turning me into one vast aching abyss. I teetered on the edge of it. Letting go would be incredibly easy. I had nothing. Even my friends couldn’t help me now.
Milly had been there with me for as long as I could remember. She’d taken me under her wing the day I woke up in a ditch with no memories and helped me to my feet—physically and emotionally. There wasn’t a better, more stalwart friend in all of Hollow Earth. Now she was gone. Torn from my side like she had been from the cage.
I missed her confident, uncaring attitude.That unwavering belief that things would work out, that we would escape one problem or another, had kept us going many a time when there was no hope. I didn’t need any hope if I had Milly. She would make it for us, bulldozing through every obstacle to create it. I could use some of that right then because I was feeling utterly hopeless.
If I couldn’t have that, though, I would take Ella’s logic and rationale. She rarely was perturbed, keeping her cool in almost any situation. Always thinking ahead, planning. We’d crossed paths with her a year or so after I had woken up while still searching for anyone who knew me or anything about my past.
Hunters had been after her, and her efforts to avoid them had dumped her in our lap. It hadn’t taken long for the three of us to realize we worked well together. It had been even less time than that for us to become friends. Since then, we’d spent years running from the hunters out in the wilds, living free as best we could.
Until now.
I tried not to let my thoughts go down that route. Thingshadn’tchanged. They were still my best friends. We were all still clippys, weakest of the dragon shifters, hunted and sold to the elites. I still didn’t have a mate.
My dragon bared its teeth. It didn’t like being confronted with the truth. We were matelessand would always be so. Whoever Emerald-Eyes was, he was never coming back. Why would he? Who would want a clippy for a mate? That was just asking for ridicule.
Nobody wanted me. And now I didn’t even have my friends. They were gone, taken somewhere else in the market. If they were even still here. After all the commotion of earlier, many of the hunters had begun packing up their “wares” and moving out. They didn’t want to risk being there when the authorities came. But none of them had come for me.
Nobody was coming for me.
So do it your orb-damned self.
I sat up as Milly’s voice filled my head, her biting words clear enough to be coming from right there next to me.
She was right. Nobody was going to do this for me. Nobody was going to help me, and theycertainlyweren’t going to do it if I wasn’t willing to help myself. It was time to stop the brooding and start taking action.
My dragon was awake. Things hadchanged.
Maybe I had changed with it. I started fiddling with the strips of wood tied around the cage bars to secure them together, filing away with my nails as before. The hardwood resisted the same as before, slowly wearing away my nails until I had to pause. Prying at the bars themselves was useless. The faerie-enhanced wood would holdall but one of the elite. But I tried it anyway, just in case. The wood laughed off my attempts, not even budging a tiny bit.
“Come on, think,” I urged myself out loud, growing impatient. There had to besomethingI could do besides simply sitting around and waiting to be sold to some abusive elite for amusement and servitude. But what?
My eyes settled on the latch to the door itself. It too was made of brellwood. Metal and faerie magic did not mix, so it wasn’t used. But unlike the bars, the latch on the door would be used a great many times. I moved slowly to the other side of the cage, taking my time so it didn’t start swinging and alert anyone nearby that I was moving around. The less attention, the better. I examined the latch and immediately discarded it. The thing looked brand new. Of course they would replace it often.
But what about the hinges of the door?
