Page 29 of The Diamond Dragon Prince
“Who are these people?” I murmured, pushing myself to stand and balance as best I could in the wagon. My heartraced. As weak and sore and sick as I felt and as much as the lifeforce within me wanted to find my dragon so it could get out, I felt as though we’d stumbled onto something important, and I wanted to know more.
“Hullo there!” the man driving our wagon called out to a small group who had broken away from the main camp and were on their way to meet us.
Our wagon was flanked by four armed men on horseback. The two closer to the front reached into their saddlebags and brought out flags of their own. They were simple, half red and half green, but they clearly meant something to the men from the camp who came out to meet us.
“What took you so long?” an alpha with a cheery face and long, graying hair asked, his arms flung wide as if he would embrace all of us. “Osric has been on pins and needles all night.”
It was a small thing, just a name, but it tickled something in the back of my mind.
“Osric?” Rumi asked, glancing to me as if the name meant something to him as well.
“Where have I heard that name before?” Obi asked, almost as if talking to himself.
The wagon continued forward to the edge of the camp, where the grey-haired man met us. I should have been completely on my guard, since these people had bought us from Baylin. I should have been looking for a weapon to defend myself or a way to escape. But there was so little tension in the servants who rushed forward to take the horses from the guards when they dismounted, and instead of hurrying in to yank and jostle us out of the back of the wagon, a pair of servants came forward to help us down as if we were honored guests.
“What’s going on?” Obi asked one of the young betas who helped him to the ground and who rushed to undo his binds. “Who are you all and where are we?”
I desperately wanted to hear the answer to that question, but as I struggled down from the wagon and my feet hit the ground, I cried out and doubled over with a sudden burst of desperation.
“Are you alright, Your Highness?” the beta who had been helping me down asked. He knew who I was.
I couldn’t answer at first. My insides felt like they were on fire, but it was more than that.
Diamant had just returned to this world.
“You’d better take them straight to Osric,” the man with long hair said, coming around to inspect us as the rope binding us was removed. “He’s been worried sick about them.”
“Speaking of worried sick,” another alpha said, stepping around to join the one with long hair. “This one doesn’t look too good.”
He tried to touch me, but I jerked and thrashed and bared my teeth at him.
“Careful, Keegan,” the long-haired alpha said. “He clearly has an alpha, and he might have just finished heat.”
It was embarrassing that an alpha could see something like that about me, but it was the least of my worries.
“Right this way, Your Highnesses,” the long-haired man said. “I’m Daniel, Osric’s steward. He really has been anxious to meet you all.”
I was so confused that I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I knew Diamant was close. I was walking away from him instead of toward him, and it was painful.
Even that pain was banished from my mind a minute later as my brothers and I were walked into the center ofthe camp. We were taken straight to a man of early-middle years…who bore a shocking resemblance to my father.
The resemblance hit home with particular strength when the man smiled at us and said, “My dear cousins, we meet at last.”
Chapter
Nine
Diamant
Ididn’t see why we couldn’t assume our dragon forms to fly or use magic to follow my sense of where my omega was.
“We would be faster in the air,” I grumbled to Emmerich as the three of us ran down the side of yet another hill we’d had to cross over to follow my innate sense of connection to Leo.
“We would have been faster if we’d borrowed horses,” Azurus added, though whether he was on my side or not was hard to tell.
“Flying would have brought too much notice,” Emmerich said, barely winded from our chase. “And there weren’t any horses to borrow.”
“We could have found some,” Azurus insisted.
