Page 3 of The Gold Dragon Prince
As soon as I picked up my favorite golden mask, onethat fit magically well over my glasses, from the table at the perimeter of the pavilion and fastened it in place, one of my new friends, an omega named Billi, rushed up to me.
“You’re here!” he exclaimed, grasping my arm. “You have to come join the conversation,” he rushed right on, his lilting voice filled with excitement.
“What conversation?” I laughed. I nodded and waved to my brothers, each of whom now had their masks and dispersed through the pavilion to dance or find the particular friends that they had made.
“There is much happening in the magical world that you’ve missed,” Billi told me, his large, purple eyes bright with excitement.
I didn’t know for certain, because the topic had never come up, but I suspected Billi was a unicorn. All of the books I’d been able to find indicated purple eyes meant someone was a unicorn.
“I know time passes differently in the magical world than it does in our world,” I told Billi, “but I didn’t think it was that different.”
Billi laughed in the unique way he had that sounded like a delicate horse’s whinny, which seemed to confirm my theory about him being a unicorn, and said, “Time magic is the trickiest magic. Our worlds don’t run concurrently, but they’re close. In any case, the talk of the day is about missing ogres!”
We’d just reached a group of Billi’s friends, all of them omegas, who I’d been becoming friends with as well. They turned to us as if we’d been there for the conversation from the beginning.
“It’s true,” one of them, a dryad named Maeve, said, her leafy hair fluttering as she spoke. “An entire clump of ogres has gone completelymissing.”
“A clump?” I asked, laughing before I could stop myself.
“That’s what a village of ogres is called,” Gandy, a beautifully fae-like omega who I was reasonably certain was an actual fae said, their voice musical. “Not that ogres are very good at organizing themselves into any sort of society.”
“Ogres wander off and get lost all the time,” Billi said, “but for an entire clump to go missing all at the same time is extraordinary.”
“They get lost?” I asked, reflexively trying to push my glasses up my nose before realizing my mask was keeping them where they needed to be anyhow.
“Ogres are unforgivably dumb,” Maeve said, rolling her eyes. “They hate everyone different from them, think they’re better than everyone else, but they’ll dribble all over themselves to follow the first idiot who tells them what they want to hear as if they’re that person’s slaves with no minds of their own.”
“The only thing they love is violence,” Gandy confirmed with a wary expression, as if they had experienced that violence themself.
“And you say an entire clump has gone….”
I was interested in the conversation, truly, I was. But my statement faded off into nothing as I glanced across the pavilion and saw the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on entering from a bridge that had appeared on the castle side of the lake.
Instantly, my heart stood still, and when it began to beat again, it was for one thing and one thing only. It beat for the man who had just arrived at the dance. I’d never seen him before. He was a particularly tall alpha with broad shoulders and a trim waist. His hair was golden blond, its highlights catching in the magical light that illuminated the pavilion. He was dressed in an elaborate white suit richwith gold embroidery and braid around his collar and cuffs, and he wore golden-brown breeches that hugged his strong legs.
My womb shivered with longing as I watched him walk over to a group of other alphas and greet them. I could already feel slick dripping from my hole, as if I were going into heat, and the second the man turned, scanned the crowd with a curious, urgent look, then met my eyes, that slick truly began to flow.
“Ooh! That’s Prince Gildur!” Billi exclaimed, nearly prancing with excitement. “It looks like he’s seen you, too!”
“He’s coming over here,” Maeve whispered, grabbing Gandy.
“Did you see the way he looked right at Selle?” Gandy giggled.
“I’m not certain it’s me he’s looking at,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. I felt hot all over and…ripe. That was an embarrassing word to use to describe my feelings, but it was so right.
“It’s definitely you,” Billi said. He glanced to the others and said, “We should leave you to it.”
“What? It? Me?” I blabbered. “Don’t go!”
It was too late. My friends dashed away as Prince Gildur drew closer. Worse, or maybe better, still, Prince Gildur noticed the others fleeing and his smile grew. He slowed down his pace, approaching me with a devilish arrogance in his stride that I reacted to at once, even though I usually found arrogance completely off-putting.
“Well, well. What have we here?” Prince Gildur asked as he came close.
I breathed in his alpha scent and immediately my mouth began to water. He smelled of rich linensand fine cedar, like the sort used to make boxes that stored delicate and naughty pieces of clothing.
“You’re Prince Gildur,” I said, embarrassed by how weak my voice sounded. I was not weak, and I was not silly or stupid either. But something about the man who stopped in front of me and raked me with a gaze made me feel…squiggly.
“You have an advantage over me,” Prince Gildur said. “I don’t know who you are.”
