Chapter Seventy-Six: A Dragon's Kin I
1660 Words
In motions that felt too slow to comprehend, I stood from my chair and then turned to walk out of the designated space.
“Where are you going?”
Finor asked, but I could hardly give him a reply amid the clatter in my mind.
All I could see was the exit.
As if realising I intended to give no answer, he too stood.
“Damn it! Countess, I can’t touch you for fear of what will pop out of your skin to sting me, so please grant me an answer.”
“I am going to pay for my items.”
I responded hastily, but he apparently did not notice my hurry, so he followed my answer with another question.
“Now? But we have yet to finalise our discussion?”
I threw him a card with my number, then turned to the servers dressed in black and an eerily unflattering wide smile.
“Bidder thirty-nine, I would like to collect.”
I made a show of exposing my paddle to avoid the delay that would come from the need for confirmation if it did arrive.
“Right this way, madam.”
As we crossed the ridiculously long hallway, my heart thundered against my chest.
It, for some reason, felt as though we were walking too slow for comfort.
‘He isn’t chasing me, is he?’
‘Of course, he isn’t. A kick means nothing. The eye contact was due to ‘my’ staring.’
‘It has to have been.’
‘Though, my leaving hastily does not help the situation….’
‘No, he could have disregarded this a ploy for attention…so it’s fine.’
I pressed a hand to the swell of my belly, then sighed.
‘I need to decide tonight. This can’t happen ag-,’
“In the name of the gods, you would run away from me carrying what is mine?”
The deepness of the voice sounded so livid that a shudder struck my lower back.
I didn’t want to stop, I wanted to run to the elevator, but he must have done something to still me in my steps.
The attendant next to me pressed his hand on my shoulder and the effect was lifted.
“Madam?”
‘Does the attendant know what he did? No, that doesn’t matter.’
I began moving, but this time I lengthened my steps and did my best to assume that the owner of the deep voice spoke to another, another that was neither me nor the attendant, the only ones in the hallway.
“I swear to high heavens I will; if I have to, break your legs to keep you still.”
“Listen, sir. I think you have the wrong person.”
In the most resounding voice I could muster, I spoke.
“At least turn back, look me in the eye while you lie to me, countess.”
The attendant beside me was no longer in sight.
That’s fine; the two at the elevator can help me find the pay station.
“Wait, the two?...wasn’t it empty before?”
‘Still…he followed me.’
‘F*ck! F*ck!’
I thought the book meant once the child is born, not-
“AAAGH!”
Forgetting myself, I turned to the source of the loud cry.
It was my attendant pressed to the wall by massive black scaly claws squeezing him on his neck to the point of blue pigmentation forming on his face.
“W-what are you doing?”
The question came in a different voice than the one I had faked.
“I am in a foul mood, you see.”
The first prince answered in a manner too relaxed for his actions, then squeezed the attendee’s neck tighter to the point where tears oozed from the man’s eyes.
Marching sounds trudged forward. A feeling of relief washed over me when I saw the Knights that had confronted me about Finor earlier.
‘They should deal with this, right? I can leave in goo-’
The thought barely formed when all the men in their entirety bowed to the first prince.
‘What the…ah! Fine!’
“You will kill an innocent man to get the attention of a stranger?”
“My lord, he is new in the establishment.”
“New or not, shouldn’t a dog know its place?”
My question went unanswered in favour of communicating with the knights; in fact, amid the commotion, the knights moved to surround us, to surround me.
“The next time you dispel anything I place, I will not only kill you but your entire family and their friends…I will wipe your name off this earth. Do you understand me?”
At this point, only gurgles came off the man.
“I want an answer.”
He nodded weakly as his eyes receded to the back of his head.
With that, he threw the man at the knights, then turned his gaze sharply to me.
‘Run….I need to….’
I turned to the space behind me, but it was fully occupied by knights and attendees all ready to charge under the command of the goliath before me.
‘Haha…fuck.’
“Find us a room.”
He said to the man, offering him a cigar.
I scouted the narrow hallway, but all the doors save the elevator led to the auction hall, with no doubt more attendees and knights than the ones preventing my escape.
“Sir, is it your hobby to harass strangers like this or am I special?”
“The men have found a Chalet connected to the lifts available from here.”
“Good, lead the way.”
My question, like the last one, went unanswered.
‘If I can turn to the auction hall and blend in with the crowd, then I should-’
My gaze must have followed my train of thought because, after exhaling the puff he took from the cigar, he said calmly:
“If you run away, I will destroy this entire establishment. If I don’t find you, I will sink the entire island of Clay, and when I finally find you, because I will, countess, I promise you; I will break your legs or anything you have that will even permit you to even think of escaping me.”
“You sound downright psychotic. Is that your idea of foreplay?”
“I keep warning you not to test me. Yet you find every way to….”
He took a deep breath and then exhaled loudly before moving on to the next question.
“You took birth control that night, did you not? Did you spit it out when you put me to sleep? Or what was the plan? What exactly is your plan here?”
“Put you to sleep? Me? have you lost your mind? You left me awake. I have nothing to do with your sleep cycle.”
He exhaled irritatedly.
“Now you call me a liar?”
Saying, ‘well, you started it’ would not be the most mature way to end the argument.
“That matters not; what matters is, I believe we should stick to the original arrangement we made that night. I will pretend this nev-”
He frowned as though my suggestion was too revolting even to consider, then interrupted in a louder tone than my own.
“Why? So that when the moment is ripe, you use it against me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your hi-.”
A hard slap landed on the bowing attendee trying to garner his attention.
“I mean, my lord! My lord, the lift is ready.”
Using ‘your highness’ in such an illegal setting spells nothing but trouble, but…
The first prince dropped the cigar he held to the carpet; he didn’t even bother to extinguish it, then followed the attendee who wooshed past me, utterly unaffected by the fact that mere seconds ago, he was slapped.
I took a step back from his leering frame then, in a moment of unabashed bravery, I used the momentum from my fast sprint to leap from wall to wall until I got high enough to step on the knights’ heads.
After landing safely on the other side, I dashed straight to the elevator, only the attendees had now blocked it with their bodies.
‘It’s fine; I need only to be away from the mana blocking stones to teleport.’
‘Even if my hand can get through…that will be-’
Something pulled the collar of my cloak so sharply that I felt as though the momentum would cause me to leap from my skin, only instead, it had me falling back and crushing on something hard and unyielding.
The cape of my cloak tumbled to my shoulders alongside the band that had snapped, causing the mass of my hair to follow me.
Large cold hands wrapped themselves lightly against the nape of my neck.
“Let go of me, or so help me gods, I will strip and run.”
A large hand caressed the curve of my buttocks before lowering to my thighs and sweeping me off my feet.
He was breathing heavily, a sign that he had chased me.
Yet again.
*
The lift moved horizontally instead of vertically to a designation known as ‘18th St’, a feature not present before when Finor and I rode the lift.
‘Why the hell aren’t spikes coming out of my body?
‘isn’t this discrimination?’
“You can put me down now.”
I struggled against his hold until he changed his carrying style to one where he forced my legs around his frame and his hands rested on my thighs.
I made my legs lifeless so that he would easily plop me to the ground, but that caused him to squeeze my thighs in a way too enticing to permit, especially with the largeness of his hands.
“Let go of my ass!”
- Writer
