The Dragon Tyrant’s Rejected Wife: Pregnant with His Heir

Chapter 9. Between Two Predators

I snapped my head up.

“How do you know that? Did you bring me here?”

“No.” Samael’s answer came without hesitation. “I cannot exchange one soul for another. By the time I arrived, Lillian’s body was already empty. Her soul had crossed beyond the Veil before I could interfere.”

The certainty in his voice struck harder than I expected. Somewhere beneath my own fear, a grief that did not belong entirely to me stirred for the woman whose body I now wore—a woman who had endured this castle until there was apparently nothing left of her to save.

Samael continued, watching my face with unsettling patience.

“I preserved a dying body and called to a soul standing on the same threshold. Yours answered. Your blood remembers another world, and your thoughts are too unlike those born here. No mask could conceal that from me forever.”

I drew a slow breath, though my chest felt bound too tightly.

“Then you knew from the beginning.”

“I suspected. Now I know.”

The golden traces in my palm had almost disappeared, leaving behind an ordinary red line that looked harmless enough. Nothing about it felt harmless anymore.

“What will Reynar do if he sees this?”

Samael’s mouth curved, but there was no kindness in the expression.

“Execute you?”

The word left me on a whisper. “Yes.”

He laughed softly, and the sound held no warmth.

“No, Lillian. Death would be far too simple. Reynar would lock you in the highest tower, surround you with scholars and guards, and study you until he understood every secret in your blood. Ice dragons despise mysteries they cannot control, and your husband has never learned the difference between protecting something and possessing it.”

The truth of that settled over me with frightening ease. Reynar had already annulled our agreement because my behavior no longer fit the woman he believed he knew. If he discovered that the soul inside Lillian’s body came from another world, exile would become impossible; curiosity alone would be enough to turn my gilded cage into a permanent one.

Samael covered my wounded palm with his own.

Dark magic moved through me in a wave, foreign and dry, carrying the scent of smoke after lightning. The cut sealed at once, the skin smoothing until not even a scar remained.

I pulled my hand free.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because you interest me.” Samael straightened and clasped his hands behind his back, as composed as though he had not just trespassed into another ruler’s private wing. “And because confusion looks remarkably good on Reynar.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I am offering.”

His gaze lowered briefly to the hand I had hidden against my skirt.

“Your potion is poor protection. It masks the scent of magic, but it cannot alter what you are. You are no longer the frightened girl this court remembers, and your husband senses the difference even if he lacks the imagination to name it.”

He leaned closer, bringing with him the scent of smoke and bitter chocolate. His voice softened until it seemed to belong to the shadows rather than the man standing before me.

“If the ice around you becomes too tight, remember that darkness has certain advantages.”

Before I could decide whether it was an offer, a threat, or both, the doors to my chambers burst open hard enough to shake the walls.

Reynar stood on the threshold.

His face had gone pale, while his eyes burned with furious blue light. His gaze found Samael at once, taking in the small distance between us, the open balcony, and the way my hand still hovered near the folds of my dress.

The temperature plunged so sharply that my breath turned white.

“Samael?” Reynar’s voice was little more than a growl. “What the hell is the ambassador of the Dark Empire doing in my wife’s bedroom?”

Samael turned with deliberate slowness, a lazy, provocative smile touching his mouth.

“I came to offer my condolences, Reynar. You appear to be taking very poor care of your treasures—even those you personally threw into a dungeon.”

Reynar stepped into the room.

His magic struck me like physical weight, crushing the air from my lungs. Yet he barely looked at Samael. His attention remained fixed on me—on my trembling hands, the color in my cheeks, and perhaps the traces of fear I had failed to hide.

“Leave,” he told the Dark Dragon without turning his head. “Now.”

Samael gave a quiet hum of amusement. He looked at me one final time, his expression unreadable except for the sharp intelligence behind it, then stepped onto the balcony and vanished into the gathering dusk.

I was alone with Reynar.

He stood in the center of the chamber breathing heavily, while his dragon fought close beneath the surface. Blue scales had begun to appear along his throat beneath the collar of his doublet, catching the light like shards of frozen glass.

“What was he doing here?”

Reynar crossed the room and seized my shoulders. His fingers burned with cold even through the fur of the cloak.

“What did you discuss?”

I looked down at my palm. No scar remained, yet the memory of the golden blood seemed branded into my mind. Panic rose inside me, thick and suffocating; another moment beneath that searching gaze, and I would scream, confess, reveal the child, the potion, Earth—everything.

“He was only mocking me.” I forced my voice to crack, allowing weakness to show where truth could not. “He said a Rejected wife was a disgrace to the House of Ice. Reynar, I am frightened. Please leave.”

He searched my face, his breathing uneven.

He was furious, but confusion moved beneath the anger, and perhaps that disturbed him most of all. He could not understand why the sight of Samael beside the woman he had stripped of title and dignity should feel like a personal violation.

“He will not come near you again,” Reynar growled.

Without warning, he pulled me against him.

It was not a lover’s embrace. It was the instinctive gesture of an owner who had discovered another predator circling something he had discarded and suddenly remembered its value.

“Do you hear me?” His arm tightened around my back. “You are still mine, Lillian. Until I decide otherwise.”

He almost spat the words, as though he hated himself for saying them.

My cheek rested against the cold fabric of his doublet, beneath which a dragon’s heart pounded with furious force. I was his prisoner, held between his suspicion and his wounded claim, yet the gold in my blood—and the hidden warmth beneath the Ash—told me that his ownership was temporary, no matter how absolute it sounded.

Reynar had begun the hunt without understanding what he was hunting.

Samael, however, had looked at me and calculated the value of the prey.

And now I had to survive between two dragons who had both realized, for very different reasons, that I was not the woman they had believed me to be.