She looked away, unwilling to meet my eyes.
“Apparently he became engaged a few months ago. The wedding is in a few weeks, a little while after the gala.”
Of course they’d set the date for then. The one time of the year when all wolf and dragon shifters came together with the fae to mingle and talk. It was the only place where violence was forbidden. There’d been no outbreak of fighting at a yearly gala in over eight centuries. All the way back to when it had been called the banquet rather than the gala. I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t been to one since before my exile. My parents would want an even bigger event right after the gala to show off and one-up everyone. Hence my brother’s wedding.
“I think the courier said it’s set for the first week of November,” Delphine continued, glancing up at me. “Why?”
Tossing the letter down in disgust, I said, “Oh, no reason.
Mom
“-I sneered the word-“sent me this letter to let me know she was sending me out of the country during the exact week my baby brother is getting married.”
“What?” The look of pure devastation on her face wiped away some of my anger.
No matter how many years went by, Delphine had always held out hope my family would see the error of their ways and bring me back into the fold. Sometimes her optimism got under my skin. I’d come to grips with the world and my place in it a long time ago. Part of me thought Delphine was still pining away for the days she’d served the Laurent family. She was unequivocally in my corner and the most dedicated companion I could have, but I knew she missed her old life-even if she never admitted it. If it weren’t for her love of me and her wish that I not turn into a hermit, I was sure she’d have gone back as soon as I came of age.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound as blasé as I could. “It’s fine. I figured something like this would happen. Come on.” I smiled at her. “Let’s finish our cheesecake, then we can order some delivery. How about Chinese? I could go for some General Tso’s.”
Delphine smiled weakly and sat down. “Sure. Yeah. That sounds good.” After a second, she opened her mouth again, most likely to apologize, but thank god, she didn’t. I don’t think I could take that. Instead, she closed her mouth and went back to eating.
Delphine, I’m sure, thought I was living in some awful purgatory, but really, I had a pretty cushy life. I didn’t have to worry about money, my job wasn’t in the least bit stressful, and I could pursue my own interests at my will. The only real issue was my lack of friends. Other than Delphine, I had no close acquaintances apart from the ladies at the sewing shop. I had nobody to really hang out with. For one thing, even though I couldn’t shift, I still had shifter genes, which meant I aged much slower than humans. At twenty-seven, I’d pretty much stopped showing signs of age a couple years before. I would probably be in my fifties, like Delphine, before I started aging physically again. That wasn’t easy to explain away to humans.
“I’m going to call in the order,” Delphine said. “Anything you want me to add before I do?”
I thought for a moment, then said, “Egg rolls. Oh, and crab rangoon.”
She smiled and headed for her room. “You got it.”
When she closed the door, the smile slipped from my lips. Not only did I have no human friends, I had no shifter friends either. Part of the stipulation of my exile was that I not bring attention to myself or meddle in the world the Laurent family tried to control. They were always worried about what the dragons were doing. The Decimus royal family was our mortal enemies. I never really understood why. You’d think two magical species would be better off as allies than enemies, but what did I know? I was the worthless, rejected eldest child of a great house. Who cared. I had Delphine and my cheesecake. What else did a girl need?
Delphine went to bed early after dinner. I said goodnight to her, then scooped up a thick, wool blanket and walked out onto the balcony. The sun had fully set, and the city lights and car headlights below looked like diamonds flickering across the inky blackness of the night. Whenever I stood out here, I appreciated how nice my apartment was. The high-end penthouse would have been impossible to afford on the meager salary I received at the sewing shop.
I wrapped myself up in the blanket and sat in one of the patio chairs. I’d tried all night to forget my mother’s letter, but now it crept back to the forefront of my mind. What would it be like to be back in the world of shifters? I’d been gone so long that I wasn’t even sure I could fit in again, even if my family changed their minds. While my thoughts worked through a hundred different possibilities of how I’d make my way in that world, my eyelids slowly slipped lower and lower until sleep claimed me.
I flinched awake sometime later and glanced around, completely discombobulated until I realized where I was. Sitting forward, I winced at the ache in my neck and back. I must have been asleep for a few hours. Below, the city was quieter. Fewer cars moved down the streets, and most businesses were dark.
“Jesus,” I muttered as I stood. “I need to go to bed.”
Before I could grab the door handle, a strange, musky scent caught my attention.
“What is that?” I whispered as I sniffed the air.
A silky, nearly silent sound rang out above.
Fwap-fwap.
Before I could look up to see what caused it, something dropped onto my head. Letting out a yelp of surprise, I tried to shove at the thin ropes woven into a web.
A net
?
Panic shot through my heart as the net cinched around me, and I was lifted into the air. I never even had time to scream for help as I was carried away into the night.
BRIELLE
The sudden lurch of not having my feet on the ground lifted had my stomach flipping madly. My stomach wasn’t the only thing that flipped. With the sway of the net, I was turned upside down, my face pressing painfully into the rope. Below, the city passed by, calm and serene, oblivious to the fact that I was being hauled through the sky against my will.
Fwap-fwap-fwap.
That sound again. It was deep and sonorous, yet somehow also subtle. The only thing I could imagine that would make such a sound was broad, thin, membranous wings.
Dragons! The thought slammed into my skull like a sledgehammer.
A dragon shifter had kidnapped me? What the actual fuck? Thousands of thoughts rippled through my mind as I tried to figure out why they would have done this. Had tensions escalated between the wolves and the dragons? My exile had kept me blind to the politics of the magical world. Had my family pissed the dragon clans off enough that they’d do this? I’d assumed my exile and separation from my family would keep me safe from any aggression between the species. It appeared I had been wrong about that.
Twisting and turning, I tried to look up through the net and see if I could spot my captor. Unfortunately, they were too far up to see. The rope attached to the net must have been pretty long. That distance plus the black and cloudy night sky made it impossible to see them.
The cold wind roared in my ears as we flew along, my body dipping slightly each time the creature above me flapped its massive wings in that slow and pendulous up-down-up-down. If I hadn’t known how powerful and strong dragons were, I would have been terrified of being dropped.
As the initial shock faded, my panic increased. Would the dragons hurt me? Hold me hostage? Assault me? God, there were any number of awful things that might happen.
For one psychotic moment, I thought about trying to gnaw or tear my way through the ropes of the net, but a glance at the ground some thousand feet below sent that thought hurtling into the furthest reaches of my mind. Even a wolf shifter couldn’t survive that fall.
“Sir!” I shouted. “Sir, I think you have the wrong chick.”
If the dragon heard me, he didn’t respond. Of course, he wouldn’t.
Dumbass, I thought, chastising myself. How would he respond in his dragon form?
Idiot.
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