Everything was for sale here. Clippys for servitude. Electro-crystal pleasure addicts, trained to do nothing but satisfy your darkest desires. Any weapon you could imagine made from dragon scales, the only thing that could pierce our hide. Weapons to kill one another.
But one of the worst things, in some ways worse even than the slaves for sale, were the heart scales. I followed the trace of the elite to that room.
It was faint, to the point I knew they were gonenow. My distraction had allowed them to put too much space between us. But they had come here. To this room.
I struggled to contain my reaction to the sight of the heart scales. The large, plate-sized scales taken from over the heart of a dead dragon, imbued with its power.
When placed on the chest of a non-dragon, they could assume our form and become a dragon. They lacked the innate dragon soul that a true dragon possessed, and as such needed to learn how to use their new form like a baby would learn to move. But they could take our form on command.
I hated scale dragons. They were a stain on our race. And illegal.
So why was the elite down here? What could they have wanted? I scanned the tables, looking for gaping holes that might indicate a purchase, but nothing stood out.
I followed the echoes of their power through the room and out the other side. I didn’t know who they were, but when I found out, when I brought them to face justice, I intended to make an example of them.
Perhaps I would put them in the same cage that held the woman I had seen earlier. See how the elite felt to be treated like one of the wing-clipped. To be called clippy by those who sneered down at them.
If I treated some of the powerful the way they treated the weakest of our race, perhaps I could begin to effect the change I wanted. One would not be enough. But it would be a start.
My mind wandered back along my path through the market to the slave cages and one slave in particular. My blood heated at the memory of her. Of her smooth-skinned limbs and soft belly just begging to become swollen and round. To carry young.
I clamped my jaws shut as my fangs started to slide down, eager at the idea of biting her, claiming her as my own. I could do it. Tear the market down and take her out of there.
But it would ruin so much more, and for what? To rescue one wing-clipped, one grounded dragon too weak to even shift?
Mate.
The call came again. I couldn’t shrug it off, but I didn’t let it control me either. I couldn’t. Not here. If the ice tyrant came out, there would be chaos. My monster was the most powerful tyrant in a dozen generations or more. Perhaps the most powerful true dragon in Hollow Earth.
The Red King would surely dispute that, but it wouldn’t change things here and now. Unveiling my alpha power fully would flatten everyone. And then as soon as I was gone, the market would be too.
Like a hydra, I could shut this one down, buttwo more would take its place. No, I had to start at the top. Cull the elite who were used to doing whatever they wanted in places like this without fear of getting caught.
I grinned at the idea, the look sending more than one person careening from my path as I left the market, angry at myself for letting a prime opportunity to catch an elite in the act slip by.
No matter how far I went, though, the smell of cinnamon and vanilla continued to tickle my nostrils …
Four
Anna
Rejectionhurt.
Literally. My dragon bellowed in futile effort to bring our mate back. She called to him over and over as I pressed myself to the brellwood bars of the cage. But he was gone. He’d left us.
The physical agony hit a moment later, slamming me to the ground, my body and face burning with the shame and humiliation of being so utterly and painfully rejected. I’d been told all my life I wasn’t good enough, that I was too weak, too pathetic, because I was a clippy. That I could understand. I’d grown used to it, hardened against the insults and the sneers.
But this was something different, something else entirely, and I wasn’t ready. How could I ever have been ready for something that should never have happened to me? I couldn’t, and now I lay on the floor of the cage, moaning in pain because of it. My stomach was hollow and empty, devoid of anything.
In no uncertain terms, I had just been told that I truly wasn’t good enough. My mate, my fated mate, the other half of my soul, had taken onelook at me and fled in disgust rather than accept my offer.
“Anna, what the hell was that? Are you okay?”
Careful not to get between me and the corridor my mate had run away down, Ella came to my side, scooping me up into her arms and holding me.
Milly was there on my other side, brushing away the tears and doing her best to shield me from the audience that had gathered. “It’s going to be okay, Anna. You’re fine now.”
“Was that what I thought it was?” Ella asked in a low voice, not wanting to draw more attention to what had just happened.
