Page 3 of Dragon's Revenge

“Kinda hard to do a trial if you don’t have a way to test Oliver’s theory.”

“Tell me about it. I’m an idiot for even agreeing to it in the first place, but I find it so damn hard to refuse Adar anything. Which says a lot about me and is absolutely something I’ll need to work on, but here I am.”

They’d almost finished the loop, hitting the little brook that was a bit wider after the rain. Delton carefully picked his way across, stepping from stone to stone until he’d made it safely, then waited for Duer to do the same.

“Maybe you could go on a date?” Duer suggested. “Yitro, Fallon, and I did that when we figured out we were mates. Just to get to know each other.”

Oh, Delton remembered that all too well. Every triad in the pack, including some from the Hayes pack, had shown up for dinner at the barn. Sivney and a few others had turned it into a restaurant for one night. It had been magical, according to everyone who’d reported back to Delton, who had spent the evening alone in his cabin, reading for hours to distract himself. He’d never felt more painfully single than that night.

“I suppose. I’m not really sure what we could do though. We don’t have a lot in common.”

“Neither did we, and look where we are now.”

Duer did have a point there. He’d ended up with two omegas, a very unusual combination, yet it worked wonderfully well for them. “True.”

Part of Delton wanted to believe more than anything that Adar, Oliver, and he belonged together, but the rest of him was so, so scared to even harbor hope. Hadn’t he said it himself to Oliver? Hope was a dangerous thing because believing meant opening yourself up to the possibility of more pain and rejection. Yes, that was exactly what Delton had done. Agreeing to this trial meant being vulnerable, which was terrifying.

“If you truly don’t believe you’re a triad and don’t want to do this, you shouldn’t,” Duer said after they’d spent a few minutes walking in silence.

“I’m so on the fence. I want to believe it so badly, but that’s my heart speaking. My brain is convinced there’s zero evidence.”

“Did Oliver explain why he thought it?”

“Something about the strength of my conviction that Adar and I were mates. They’re not questioning the mated bond between them, mind you. Just how I fit into the whole thing.” His throat tightened. “I feel like I would always be the third wheel, you know? The odd one out, the add-on. The one who doesn’t belong.”

He angrily wiped away a tear that spilled. Why did he feel this so strongly? The whole thought of not belonging ripped him apart on the inside. Wasn’t that proof he should’ve never agreed to it?

Maybe Duer was right. Maybe he should change his mind and announce he was walking away after all. He always told his clients to listen to their intuition since it often predicted trouble. Well, his intuition was screaming at him that he would get hurt. Or was it his brain? Either way, he’d better heed that warning. He wasn’t sure he could survive his heart getting broken yet again.

“I think you’re right that I shouldn’t be doing this if I don’t want to…and I don’t. This thing has disaster written all over it, and I’m only going to end up even more hurt than I am now. I’ll talk to them.”

ChapterTwo

If only he could turn back time.

Oliver couldn’t count how often that thought had popped into his head in the two days since everything had gone so horribly wrong. If only he’d kept his mouth shut and hadn’t suggested Adar and Delton have sex. If only he’d been honest with Adar and told him his suspicions. If only he hadn’t tried to manipulate both his mates, causing pain for all of them…

If only he could turn back time.

If only.

But he couldn’t. No matter how much he wished, it was impossible. He had to live with the consequences of his actions, no matter how much it hurt.

And not just him. If he’d been the only one suffering, he could’ve borne it. He’d caused it, after all, so that would’ve been justice on some level. But Adar and especially Delton had been hit hard, and so had their trust in Oliver.

And maybe that part had wounded him more than anything else. They no longer looked at him the same way. The adoration that had shone from Adar’s eyes for so long had been replaced by cautious friendliness. Not hate—thank the gods for that because Oliver wasn’t sure if he could’ve endured that—but a far more distant kindness. He’d forgiven Oliver, but he sure as hell hadn’t forgotten. Nor could Oliver expect him to. It would take time to rebuild that trust.

Delton’s pain hurt Oliver even worse than Adar’s. Due to Oliver’s actions, the beta had been rejected all over again, and Oliver’s heart ached every time he thought about how that must’ve felt. Delton had already endured months of watching Adar and Oliver together without him. He’d been forced to observe Adar helping Oliver through his heat, for fuck’s sake. And now Oliver was the reason he’d been slapped in the face all over again. It had gotten to the point where Delton wanted to leave the pack. All because of Oliver.

How could they ever move past that? What could Oliver do to make up for what he had done? He wracked his brain, but no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t come up with anything.

“I don’t know how to make this right,” he lamented to Fallon as they hung out after spending time with some of the other dragon omegas in Fallon’s living room, which had become their unofficial hub. Yitro was still there as well, holding a sleeping Ainle.

Fallon let out a deep sigh. “I got nothing. This is not the kind of thing you can fix with flowers or baking a pie or something.”

Oliver bit his lip. Fallon sounded irritated with him. Was he? “Are you angry with me?”

A brief hesitation, then another sigh. “Yeah, but that’s on me. I feel stupid for defending you and coming at Delton when I didn’t have all the facts.”

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