The Alphas & The Heiress

Magnolia (Syble)

“You’ve got a little something on your neck there, Mags.” Incandis gestures to his own neck pointing out where it’s located on me.

I swipe at my neck lazily, stretching out my arm to get a look at what Incandis is referring to. A scarlet streak of blood stains my fingertips causing a smirk to tug at my lips.

My possessive Alphas.

“Are those bite marks?”

My grin widens and a warm glow radiates through my chest. “Yeah, they’ve got their tails in a twist over Xander. They’re very territorial.”

“How did Xander take the news?”

“He was sweet about it, he’s happy for me.” A laugh escapes my mouth. “But his new mission in life is to rile them up.”

“I can’t imagine that’s hard to do.” He says with a hint of sarcasm.

“No, not at all. Hence the biting — marking what’s theirs.” My voice trails off at the memory of their canines sinking into me and how surprisingly good it feels.

“Alright, that’s about all I can stand to hear about my baby sister and her boyfriends. Let me bring in Elder Rimori.”

It’s not long before Incandis escorts in a weathered looking woman. She’s tall and slender, black hair pulled back in a braid with several rogue strands framing her hollowed cheeks. I shake her hand, quickly masking my shock at her frigid skin. Like the fire within her is dying out.

“I appreciate you coming out again on short notice. We had an unfortunate run in with some other dragons yesterday, and I’m hoping you’ve brought me the answers you promised.”

“Yes, my child, I am sorry for departing the way I did when last I saw you. When your father called on the Elders, he reported that he was contacted by the king of Drow Hollow. This was extremely alarming as the Drow have long since been considered…eradicated.” Her face remains neutral as she speaks.

“What do you mean eradicated?”

“Over two millennia ago the Drow were rapidly rising in power. They lived in underground strongholds containing a labyrinth of caverns, perpetually shrouded in darkness. Souls born to darkness became corrupted by it, soon they began waging war on other colonies. They were skilled fighters, using shadows to conceal their movements in battle. They also had a high resistance to poison and magic making them nearly impossible to kill.”

“Then how were they eradicated?”

She locks eyes with me, unblinking, like she wanted to stare straight through to my soul.

“The Drow weren’t the only dragons thought to be extinct. There was one other — The Fey. Each existed to balance the other. At our last meeting, I saw in your eyes something I haven’t seen since the first wars. It shows in your eyes even now...” Her words are but a whisper towards the end, conspiratorial.

“The only thing the Drow couldn’t escape were the Flames of the Fey. When the Drow died out, so too did the Fey gene. I left you last week because I needed to confirm my initial suspicions. I pored through the ancestry archives…”

An odd expression flashes across her face, like guilt, remorse.

“You’re the last of the Fey, the last Fey female. It’s why your eyes harbor those green flames — Fey Fire.”

I’m not sure how she expects me to react to this news, but I am certain she’s disappointed by mine. She sits at the edge of her seat, eyebrows raised expectantly. But my green flames are not a mystery to me by any means, they’ve been a part of me since I was born. Incandis and I learned together how lethal they are, and he helped me along the way to control them. Unless being the last of my kind helps rescue my family, I really don’t fucking care.

“What did this king want? Why did he write to my father?”

Elder Rimori blanches but quickly recovers. “The Drow king asked your father for your hand in marriage, as I understand it.”

Incandis has been silent this whole time, but at this comment he finally speaks up. “That makes no sense. What could he stand to gain when he already has his own kingdom? And why would he propose to the one person who could kill him on sight?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know…” I blurt out more to myself than anything else.

“I’m sorry, child, I do not have the answers to those questions. But I do not believe it to be a coincidence that your father disappeared the same night he received this letter.” Her voice drops to a chilling whisper, “and if the Drow are truly back…you’re the only one with any power to stop them.”

“What about my brother? Why doesn’t he have Fey Fire like me?”

“The gene is only passed down to female heirs by a dominant female or male carrier. Your father is a carrier of the gene because his mother and grandmother possessed it. Your daughters will have the gene as well. Your sons will be carriers whose daughters will have it. Sons of carriers do not inherit the gene, so Incandis is not a carrier. The line ends with you.”

I slump back into my chair absorbing everything she’s said. This entire situation seems unbelievable. How could a simple letter have spiraled into this?

I sit back up on the edge of my seat, elbows resting on my desk, hands clasped together in front of me. “So, you’re telling me…the king of some unkillable dragon colony wants, or wanted, to marry me — literally the one person who is capable of killing their kind?”

“Let’s assume the worst,” Incandis interjects as he begins pacing the floor, “Let’s assume this king does know about your gift, let’s assume he took dad and uncle Dex. I don’t see any other explanation for this other than he’s trying to lure you there to kill you. You’re the biggest threat to his colony, with you gone there’s nothing stopping him from finishing what his ancestors started.”

Elder Rimori stands up from her chair, extends her hand to shake mine. When I go to pull my hand away she grabs on tighter and pulls me in closer to her. “Whatever decision you make, be it to fight...or to flee…make it soon.”

Then, like a wisp in the wind, she breezes out of the door without another word.

“Well that was…interesting.” Incandis says with a laugh trying to lighten the mood.

I simply nod, too lost in thought to be able to give him my undivided attention. “What’s stopping me from teleporting over there, torching the place down, and teleporting home? Wouldn’t that be the simplest thing to do?”

“Well, for one, we don’t know for sure it’s the Drow that have dad and Dex. If they do have them, we don’t know where they’re being kept. If everyone is dead then there will be no one to lead us to them. And, I’m not convinced we won’t be walking into a trap. I’m not about to teleport us in there only to get ambushed and you go all sacrificial lamb on us.”

I don’t have to respond to him, the scowl on my face says exactly what I’m thinking.

Incandis sighs, “Mags, we will get them back. But we need to be smart about it. We need to do some research. She said they have high resistance against poison and magic, not complete resistance. Let’s figure out what hurts them. Then we can make our plan of attack.”

His words give me a glimmer of hope. Maybe if we scour the archives we’ll find something from the first wars about what they’re not resistant to. We can rally the colonies, witches, maybe even the wolves and overwhelm the Drow before they even know what’s happening. Maybe we can finally bring my family home.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it.”

— — —

Unknown

“Explain this to me once more. Explain how ten men were bested by two. Explain to me how you managed to walk away with your life while the rest of your squad burned to fucking ash on the ground!”

The warrior opens his mouth to defend himself, but before he could even breathe a sound the King swipes his arm out in front of him. A crimson line along the warrior’s throat is the only evidence of the obsidian blade in the King’s hand. Blood, hot and viscous, weeps from the clean cut. The warrior gurgles on blood through his severed trachea, no longer able to voice anything but the sounds of death.

“Not only did you dishonor your fellow men, you disobeyed orders and then slithered away through the shadows like the pathetic snake that you are. You stabbed the single most important person to me in the fucking heart!”

The King grabs him by the throat and pours flames into the dying warrior through the slit in his throat. The warrior’s eyes go wide with horror and pain but his cries are silenced by his wound. He burns from the inside out, unable to scream, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but suffer the punishment of his crime.

“Gorm!” The king’s voice booms through the cavernous halls.

Gorm simply grunts, making his presence known.

“Find out what happened to her, find out if she’s alive. If she is, I need you to get a message to her. I’m growing tired of these careless mistakes.”

Gorm takes his leave and heads through the halls to his office. He’s had this envelope on his desk for weeks, waiting for the right time. On the back of the envelope he writes the coordinates to the cave’s entrance and nothing more. With the envelope in hand, he teleports out of the caves and sets about his mission.