Page 1 of The Gold Dragon Prince
Chapter
One
Selle
It was incredibly hard to find books about dragons and magic in my father’s castle. It was nearly impossible to find any books at all in the castle, since Father thought they were useless.
No, that wasn’t true. Father knew that books were not only useful, they were dangerous. They led to revolutionary things, like learning and forming ideas. That would inevitably cause the people of our kingdom to notice how vicious my father’s intentions to rule over them all and to make war on our neighboring kingdoms were, so he couldn’t have that. He hadn’t reached the point of gathering up all the books in the kingdom and burning them yet, but he’d levied taxes on paper and the supplies that were needed to make books.
The fact that I’d been able to find a book thatcontained information about magical worlds at all was a small miracle.
“It’s just a book of fairy tales,” I told my brothers as we bided our time in our bedchamber prison, “but it’s the closest I’ve been able to find to anything resembling reference material about the magical world.”
“Does it say anything about how dragons find their mates?” my younger brother, Misha, asked with his usual, adorable sweetness.
I smiled at the look of hope in his eyes. Our brother, Tovey, had been claimed by a dragon only the month before. Tovey and the ruby dragon, Rufus, were fated mates. They’d met at one of the fantastical dances we omega brothers had attended in the magical world, an entirely different realm which was accessible through an enchanted door hidden under our eldest brother Rumi’s bed.
Tovey and Rufus had fallen in love almost instantly, which Tovey had described to us as the strangest and yet the most natural feeling he’d ever experienced. They were fated mates, and the moment they’d met, their bond began to form. Shortly after they’d met, Tovey had gone into heat, and much to his and all of our amazement, he’d immediately become pregnant with Rufus’s…eggs.
I adjusted my glasses, then flipped through the pages of my book, searching once again for anything that could explain the phenomenon of a dragon’s omega mate producing an egg instead of a live child. My book was mostly filled with tales of omegas in distress, evil sorceresses who fell in love with good princes and were jealous of the love that those princes had for their beloved omegas, and all the adventures involved in vanquishing evil. It wasn’t exactly reference material.
“As near as I can figure,” I said, answeringMisha’s question, “dragons and their omega mates just meet, as if by accident. When they meet, they know they are fated. It’s written into the fabric of their souls.”
“Rubbish,” Leo sniffed as he paced the perimeter of the room. “There’s either magic involved or the dragon and their mate meet the way everyone else meets.”
Misha and I exchanged wry grins, then looked at Leo like he was being silly.
“Don’t you believe in things like fated mates and love at first sight?” Misha asked him.
“I do!” Obi, our youngest brother announced, jumping away from our room’s single window, where he’d been gazing longingly out into our papa’s garden, the only other place the five of us were allowed to spend any time these days. “I believe in love at first sight. I fell in love with that dashing alpha I danced with the other night, when we were celebrating in the magical pavilion.”
Rumi, who was sitting on his bed with a needle and thread, repairing the hem of one of his shirts, laughed. “You fell in love with that handsome beta who helped you retrieve your mask when it fell into the lake the week before,” he said.
“And weren’t you desperately in love with the alpha attendant who served that fruity punch last month?” I asked.
Obi blushed and shrugged. “I love falling in love. Especially now that I believe it might actually happen to me for real.”
He wasn’t trying to be serious, but his statement felt like a sobering reminder of the life we were almost trapped in.
The six of us, when Tovey had still been with us, had become virtual prisoners of our cruel and conniving father,King Freslik. Father hated omegas. He’d married Papa because Papa had been the only omega in a large family of alphas and he’d been certain he could get many alpha sons from him.
But Father had treated Papa with more and more cruelty after each new omega son was born. After Obi, he’d cast Papa aside entirely and attempted to get an alpha heir with one concubine or another. But none of those unfortunate mates had ever produced any sort of child. Father was stuck with six omega sons as his heirs, and throughout the kingdom, people whispered that it was because Papa had actually been some sort of magician who had cursed Father for stealing him from the alpha he’d actually loved.
Whatever the case, the six of us had grown up clinging to ourselves and Papa as our true family, and when Papa had died when Obi was ten, we’d only had each other.
Except now we had the magical world, thanks to the enchanted marble Rumi’s mysterious beau had gifted him. And Tovey had Rufus and their twin eggs now as well. Tovey had moved fully into the magical world a month ago to be with them, which had enraged Father, who thought?—
No sooner had my mind started to wander over my brother’s story when the door to our large, round bedroom flew open and our father marched in, flanked by four guards.
“Ah ha!” he shouted, then looked around, hoping he’d caught us doing something we shouldn’t have been doing.
We were doing nothing unusual. I had been reading, Rumi was sewing, Leo was pacing, and Misha and Obi had been talking. Once again, Father’s attempts to prove that we were all nefarious villains hiding Tovey’s whereabouts from him deliberately failed.
“Good morning, Father,” Rumi said with a smile of false sweetness. He set aside his sewing and got off his bed.
“Good morning, Father,” the rest of us said as well, all smiles and benign welcome.
Father scowled at us all. He knew we were teasing him, but he couldn’t figure out how. “You should all be miserable,” he muttered, frowning. He then shook his head and said, “I’m giving you another chance to reveal the whereabouts of your wretched, lying brother, Tovey.”
