The Dragon Prince's Obsession

THREE

I sat beside him with my knees drawn up to my chest, my hands around them as I rocked back and forth, surrounded by the silence of the vast emptiness that according to the unconscious man beside me, was not actually empty.

Are you blind?

I occupied my mind with that question rather than focus on the fact that I was in an unknown territory. Danger lay a few kilometres away while I sat in an open field, with no cover or plan of escape. I put my life in an unconscious man’s hands just because he was a dragon.

I could run but I could not fly. I would rather soar on a beast's wings than try to run with my growling stomach.

Another problem I tried to take my mind off. My stomach felt like a hollow pit, clenching and demanding to be filled.

I scanned the area for the hundredth time in a minute. I could stand but I chose not to. I saved up my energy for the long flight home; the only consolation I had in an otherwise bleak time. Whenever Mikhail regained consciousness, he would take me back to his brother’s castle and this would be another unfortunate event in my list of unfortunate events.

The first thing he did when he woke was to strangle me.

One minute, I rocked back and forth with a pit in my stomach and my eyes as big as an owl’s, and the next, I had a dragon shifter on me, crazed red eyes searching my face.

“What are you doing here?” He rasped, crushing my windpipes. I slapped at his hands, over and over, until he let me go. I sat upright with a winded gasp, scrambling to stand, my hands rubbing my throat.

“Do you" –I sounded more breathless then he did, – "try to strangle everyone who saves your life?” I wheezed, stumbling. My throat hurt. The bastard really tried to kill me this time!

“Do I try to strangle everyone who saves my life?” He mused, standing too. “I cannot say. If it makes you feel better, there are more reasons why I want you dead. I want to smother you for putting your filthy human hands on me.”

“You would have died if I did not put my ‘filthy human hands' on you. Now you are in my debt. I want you to take me out of this place as repayment.” I raised my chin. My stomach chose that moment to announce my hunger.

He laughed.

A deep, loud, mocking sound that bounced about where we stood and made me feel like a fool. When he finished, he raised his head. He did not look like a man who understood mirth.

“Look at me.” My eyes jumped away from him when he said this. My worn sandals fascinated me then. “Look at me.” Same pitch. Same voice. Same man. But different anger. I looked at him.

Then I shrunk away.

“Do I look like a beast of burden?” I shook my head. My left foot shuffled. He took two steps forward. I tried to move away again. His grip on my chin forced me to stay. It forced my eyes to meet his. “A horse?” I dropped my eyes from his face. They landed on his pronounced Adam's apple.

“N – no?” I swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed. I dropped my eyes again. Blood painted his heaving chest. He forced my face up to his.

“So how am I to ‘take' you out of this place?”

“Y – your dragon?” I took another step away from him just as he burst into another bout of loud laughter.

The sound terrified me more than the curses that had been flying over my head a few hours prior. It echoed around us. I took a step back. Then another. Pausing to consider how something that was supposed to be a representation of happiness could sound so angry.

I turned and I fled. I tried to. He caught my arm.

“You want to ride on my back and soar the skies, human?” He sneered. His breath whispered against my skin. My neck hurt from looking up at him.

“Adela,” I whispered, unable to say anything else. To think anything else. He frowned, brows meeting in angry curiosity.

“What?” He lifted his head, no longer staring down at me.

“My name – it is – My name is Adela.”

His frown deepened. I expected him to burst into loud, scary laughter again but he continued to stare at me like a bug he wanted to squash. A bug that both fascinated and annoyed him. Funny, I felt that exact way.

I put my trust in him for no reason. I saved him for no reason. Risked my life for him for nothing. He would kill me now. Or maybe he would leave me here to starve. I said I felt a sense of security around him. He did not make me feel safe. But a the shield around him made him safe.

How would I explain the prickling on my skin from being close to him? Magic affected all the senses. It even had a sound like a soft wind. This man wore magic. I did not know anything more than that, but I could sense it.

“So?” He breathed. Right. Why did my name matter in this situation?

“I just – you keep saying human in that – I thought – It feels unpleasant. I felt maybe you could stop it.”

“It feels unpleasant to be human?” He finally let go of me. I rubbed at the dark bruise forming where he held me.

“No – I mean –“

“I never wondered about that. I suppose it would be unpleasant to be something so weak.” He frowned. He crossed his hands on his chest and spread his legs, looking far away.

“I meant it is unpleasant how you say human as though it is a curse.”

“Is it not?”

“Why – of course –“

“A – de – la.” He dragged out the name. He said it again, then again under his breath. The more he said it, the deeper he frowned. The final time he said it, it was with as much venom and disdain as he said human. “Adela. What an awful name.” He sat back down, a slight wince marring his expression as he did so.

I nursed my wounded pride as he cursed my name. “What does it mean?”

“I cannot say. My mother died before I thought to ask her,” I said, managing to keep from snapping.

He laid back down, closing his eyes and putting one foot atop the other, his hands on his stomach. “Are you going back to sleep?” I queried. In response, I got nothing.

After a beat, I sat with my legs crossed beneath me. No one understood Mikhail Pendragon so I knew better than to task my brain about his behaviour. He was as odd as he was wicked.

“You saved my life for your selfish purpose. You expect Mikhail Pendragon to act as your stallion. Do you have no idea who I am, Adela?” He asked, humming an unfamiliar tune afterwards.

“I know who you are, prince. As for saving you, yes, I saved you for selfish reasons. What else could it have been?” A took in a deep breath and let in out in a huff. “Certainly not your glowing personality or charming smile. The first time I got to you, you tried to kill me.” Frustration ate at me. Frustration and tiredness and anxiety.

I could only feel safe in my king’s castle back in the Dragon Mountains, with a roof over my head, dragons guarding the highest point of the house and my king close by. Not in an open place, with a damned prince stretched out beside me and invisible objects tripping me.

Are you blind?

“You talk too much for a human,” He mumbled.

I kept my mouth shut.

I wondered if he was falling asleep or if the poison from whatever the witches put in him still affected his system. He sounded like Olivia had one time when she was given medicine for cold.

Remembering Olivia made my eyes sting.

You are not like a sister to me, Addy. You are my sister.

She got on my nerves more than anyone else could. I loved her more than anyone else. My sister.

The beast sat up, his red eyes gravitating towards me. “Have I hurt your feelings?” He mocked. He had larger irises than usual, even more unusual, his were a deep red, like a demon's.

Rumour had it that his mother was a demon. No one knew her. Not even him. Only his father had and he took that secret with him to his grave. Maybe he really was a demon spawn. He looked like one. A demon with flawless tan skin and a sadistic smile.

“Did you want to hurt my feelings?” I shot back. He smiled and it did not soften his looks.

When he stood, I stood too. It made no difference if I sat or stood. I did not come up past his chest at my full height. Dragons were tall. The royal dragons were taller.

“You are like a cat.” I blinked at him. I never saw being likened to an animal as a compliment but it was the first thing he said to me without it sounding like an insult.

“A cat?” I asked, watching him as he stretched. I waited for him to shift, to become five times his original size and breathe fire, but he did not.

“You think you are fierce but are you really?” Lions were cats. Lions were fierce. But not to dragons. “I wanted a cat once.” Once, he kidnapped my friend, Missy, the Dragon King’s mate. She told us he liked to ramble about nonsensical things. “Now, I hate cats,” He finished.

Wonderful. I did not need to be likened to a cat to know he hated me.

My humanity made me his enemy. Humans killed his brother and closest companion. If he could kill us all, he would. Mikhail Pendragon hated humans and unfortunately for me, I was human.

“If you will leave me here, then at least, tell my king where to find me.” He stretched again, a movement I had seen many times before men turned to beasts. But when he stretched, bones cracked but nothing happened.

“I am no more a messenger than I am a stallion, Adela. I will sooner take you with me than deliver a message for you.” He sighed, sitting back down.

I kept silent after that but when he stood for the third time, performed that absurd gesture of stretching as if to grow taller and nothing happened, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Are you trying to shift? Did the witches do something to hinder your shift?” I asked. His eyes fell on me. The distaste radiating from them almost pulverised me.

“What do you think the witches can do to hinder a dragon’s flight?” He demanded. I blinked at his sudden ire. If magic affected the senses, then anger did too. The prince’s anger tasted and felt like my doom.

I heard a sound like boots crunching on stones in the otherwise quiet place. My heart raced as goosebumps exploded on my skin. Someone was out there. Again, I could not see and it made my heart pound a faster rhythm. My heart beat from my mouth but this man, this crazy man, he thought it the best time to rage.

“What do you think the witches can do, human? It seems you got kicked in the head by a horse but even then, you should know better than –“ I cut him off, rubbing at the goosebumps on my exposed bicep.

“My Lord?” I whispered. He paused his rant to glare at me.

“Adela?” If looks could kill, I would be cold in the ground.

“Please, shut up.”