Page 1 of The Diamond Dragon Prince
Chapter
One
Leo
Imight have been an omega, but I wasn’t afraid of anything. I was a prince, for one, despite the fact that my father treated me and my omega brothers like we were lower than the lowest servants in the castle’s scullery. I had royal blood in my veins. Not only that, I had goodness and fortitude, I hoped, that I’d inherited from my beloved Papa. I missed Papa every day of my life, and from the moment he’d died, I’d vowed to live my life in a way to make him proud.
Even if there was nothing particularly proud or dignified in being constantly locked in the bedchamber I shared with now three of my brothers.
“You will tell me what happened to the other two,” our father, King Freslik, growled and huffed as he paced back and forth on one side of our large, circular room. “I refuse to believe that they have simply vanished and that you pitifullot do not know where they are,” he went on, the four guards standing near the door behind him looking stiff and uncomfortable. “And I most definitely refuse to believe that there have only ever been four of you, not six.”
I tried to hide the wicked grin that pulled at the corners of my mouth as I peeked across the line my brothers and I stood in at my youngest brother, Obi. In the month since our brother Selle had mated with his gold dragon, Gildur, birthed a beautiful, golden dragon egg, and made the decision to move into the magical world full-time, my remaining brothers, Rumi, Misha, Obi, and I had amused ourselves by concocting as many different stories as we could about what had happened to Selle and our other brother, Tovey, who had also met his fated mate and birthed twin eggs, and who had chosen to move entirely to the magical world. Obi had come up with the idea of pretending that Selle and Tovey never existed. Father didn’t believe it, but it had been fun trying to convince him.
“You are hiding them,” Father said, pausing his pacing to stare first at the four of us, then around our bedchamber. “Yes, that is it!” he gasped, as if struck by inspiration. “You’re hiding those wretches somewhere in this room, I know it. Guards! Search the room!”
My smirk vanished and I snapped straighter, alarmed. My brothers and I exchanged anxious looks as the lumbering guards shook out of the near stupor they’d fallen into as they listened to my father’s daily admonishments.
“Search the room?” one of the dull guards asked, blinking.
“Yes! The room, the room! Search it at once!” Father shouted and huffed.
I met my brother Rumi’s eyes before both of us glanced quickly to his bed off to one side of the great room. Rumiwas the eldest of my brothers and something of a leader to us. But more than that, he had a mysterious beau, who he’d thought was just an ordinary man when they’d met, but who he’d discovered much later was, in fact, a dragon, who had gifted him with a bit of magic in the form of an emerald marble. That marble had rolled under Rumi’s bed and formed a doorway into the magical world.
In the months since that fateful night, my brothers and I had used the doorway to escape into a world that was filled with wonders. We’d begun by making our way to an enchanted pavilion in the middle of a crystalline lake in order to dance the nights away with any number of fantastical new friends, but our adventures had expanded in exciting ways from there.
The magical world was where Tovey and Selle had met their fated mates, dragons who were princes in their own right. They were kin to Rumi’s emerald dragon, and my absent brothers had fallen very much in love with their mates.
I had met a dragon at those dances as well, and although as of yet, all we’d done was dance and flirt. As far as I could tell, my dragon was a clever rogue who loved nothing more than dancing and enjoying life. He was handsome and amusing, and I could feel our time to be together approaching.
But none of that would happen if Father’s guards found the door under Rumi’s bed.
“You cannot search our things as though we are criminals,” I said, scowling at my father. “We have rights, you know.”
As expected, Father did not take my defiance well.
“You have no rights,” he insisted, eyes going wide with offense. He marched right up to me, using his natural alphaheight to tower over me. I despised being shorter than I felt I should be. “You are criminals, as far as I am concerned. You are a lot of disobedient, conniving, ungrateful criminals who have stolen two sons from me. I could have married those two off to some of the wealthiest alphas in the land in order to secure their riches and support.”
I so badly wanted to reply by telling him if he really had the ability to marry us to men we despised to enrich himself that he would have done so already. I knew better, though. I knew he could trade us like commodities whenever he wanted, but for the time being, we were of more use to him as lures to dangle over the heads of the noblemen he wanted to woo.
“The only reason you would object to me searching this room is if you truly have something to hide,” Father went on.
He gestured to the guards to get on with their search. Unfortunately for my brothers and I, they did as they were instructed.
I held my breath and Misha, who stood next to me, reached for my hand for comfort as the four guards spread through the room, opening wardrobe doors, ripping bedcovers from our beds, and upsetting the tables beside each of our beds. They focused their efforts on Tovey and Selle’s things at first, but they didn’t stop there.
I held my breath and squeezed Misha’s hand in return as one of the guards reached Rumi’s bed and began tearing it apart. Magic, as I had learned, was a funny thing, and there was as much a chance as not that if the guard pushed the bed aside, the door into the magical world wouldn’t be there. But if it disappeared now, would it ever reappear?
There was a dragon in the castle, disguised as one of Father’s councilors, I knew. If Rumi’s magical doorvanished, perhaps we could search him out for help. But we didn’t know who he was specifically, and without the door, we would be locked in our bedchamber for real without any way to seek the other dragon out.
“Um, Your Majesty, there’s nothing here,” the guard searching Rumi’s bed said at last with a shrug, stepping away.
I wasn’t ready to breathe in relief yet. The oaf could still bend over to check under the bed.
Fortunately, Father had very little patience.
“I know you’re hiding something from me,” he growled at the four of us, eyes narrowing. “It has something to do with that sorceress, doesn’t it.”
I did as good a job as I could of looking blank and confused, and so did my brothers. There had been a sorceress in our castle a month ago. She had come from the magical world with the intention of conquering my father’s kingdom and our entire world. Fortunately, she’d been defeated. Selle and his dragon had something to do with it all.
