“All of them.”
“Oh, the greedy kind.”
“No, not at all. It’s hard to choose. I’ll be happy with just one, to be honest. Then I won’t feel like such a fraud.”
“Fraud?”
“Oh, my mark is barely there.” He showed me a faint mark on the inside of his sculpted arm. The skin was hardly stained. “See what I mean?”
I looked down at the dark brown blotch that was visible on the inside of my thigh. It was weird how warm it was here. “Yet, you tried to claim the mighty beast a few times.”
“You make him sound so evil.”
“He is pre-destined to be.”
“Yeah, not anymore.”
We walked through a maze, speaking about Paegeia. I was grateful that he didn’t mention Blake and the Rubicon again. I couldn’t help but like him. He did, however, laughed at my word that I came up for dragons and teased me about that too. I told him the reason, that my mind still struggled to process the concept that dragons were real.
“I can’t imagine a world without them. It would be so dull.”
I wished I could be more like him.
He was a prince through and through, and I could see myself with him. Too bad that he felt that way about the Rubicon.
BLAKE
Two weeks had passed,and I hadn’t seen Elena yet. I hated this feeling so much. Lucian went home this weekend, and I disliked he was going to meet her. It was already Sunday afternoon, and he wasn’t even back yet.
All the crap I did to him. Taking Arianna away when he loved her was a low blow. It wasn’t even like that for me. I just needed to find out what she was afraid of. The thought about claiming me shouldn’t even have crossed her mind.
“Really, carry on as if nothing happened. That is your advice,” I spoke to Dad over the hologram as Lucian entered the room with his bag in his hand. My heart settled.
“Blake, the ancients are afraid.”
“Dad, you were there, for crying out loud,” I said through clenched teeth.
“We are back in Paegeia, Son. You can turn anytime into the Rubicon.”
“It’s horse-shit,” I said and disconnected the call, chucking my Cammy on the bed and grunted. I rubbed my face hard.
“You changed,” Lucian said.
My gaze flickered to him, and I squinted. “Changed? What makes you fucking say that?”
Lucian’s chuckle escaped through his lips.
“Fucking assholes.”
“She sunk her claws deep into you.”
I huffed. “More pathetic. She doesn’t have claws. You didn’t see her?”
“No, I did. I kept wondering how on earth she’s going to tame you? She looks like she is going to run away any second.”
“Yeah, she has that damsel in distress attached to her.”
Lucian’s lips spread as I pulled my hands through my hair.
