The Selection: Bride Of The Dark Dragon

LARA

The words sounded in my mind yet I was not sure if he was serious about what he was telling me.

“What do you mean when you say soulmate?” I asked, trying not to tremble in his arms, but was failing miserably.

“Lara,” he was clearly trying to choose words and I felt like I was going to die. He was about to tell me that he chose the wrong term and all my hopes would be crushed. The ones I didn’t know I had but now it was all I was thinking about. The seconds he was silent seemed like years to me.

His thumb brushed over my l*p and tingles erupted again. I loved and hated it in equal measures. Because nothing felt so good yet nothing made me so weak as those tingles.

“I am of mixed race,” he started explaining and I so wasn’t sure where he was going with it.

“I know,” I said, “Your father was a gerdian and your mother was an akyrian, right?”

“On the part of my mother, yes,” he smiled and pointed to the ceiling where a beautiful painting was telling a story of a man and a woman who were clearly madly in love. The woman’s long red hair reminded me of the gerdian princess. And the man… he looked a lot like Demir.

Wait! I looked at him again and he chuckled slightly, “Yes, Lara. These are my parents. Emperor Derrien Darmerion Derwood and Empress Miradora Derwood, the first rulers of the New Gerdian Era.”

“And that’s your mother’s dragon? Or your father’s?” I asked pointing at the image of the red-haired beauty flying on a black dragon.

“That’s… actually, that is my father, Lara,” he said and I wanted to laugh at first. Only that he looked too serious for that to be a joke.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I looked at him and saw dark flames dancing in his pupils again.

“Wait a minute,” I stepped back from him. Flames! He had flames! While maids in the castle and some other servant were only appearing in front of me in dark smoke. It was also written in old books that I read back at the White Archipelago that gerdians had black magic that could do a lot of things. But it mostly looked like black thick smoke. Yet I never saw Demir use anything like it!

“My father was a dragon shifter,” Demir confessed when our eyes met and before I could say or ask anything, he added, “And so am I.”

“No way!” I gasped. Yet it made so much sense! Brighta, the Goddess of Light, he was… “Smoke!” I shouted out loudly and looked at the Emperor of the Gerdian Empire in shock, “You are Smoke!”

He cleared his throat at that and then looked at me with a smile, “That’s really not how people call me.”

Oh, Goddess! I bumped into him! I treated him and spent the night in the cave with him! That’s how he appeared at that river and watched me bathe… He was the one to help me out back then. And that was why he was so interested of me from the very beginning! It was all him! Demir, Smoke, the Emperor… always the same person!

“But why?” I look at him in frustration. It was extremely hard to comprehend everything that was going on.

“Dragons are special creatures, Lara,” he came closer and took my hand into his, leading me back to the windowsill, “We are very strong. Especially the ones mixed with gerdian b***d. They call us the Dark Dragons. We breathe dark fire and dark magic is under our control. In many senses, we are the strongest species in the world…”

He stopped talking and looked at me as if he was hesitating to tell me more.

“Don’t stop now,” I whispered, clenching my fists on the fabric of my dress as I sat down, and he nodded in agreement taking the place in front of me.

“But there is a weakness as well,” he smiled dryly and looked at the weakness, “Reproduction is extremely hard. It is next to impossible to have a child and only a couple where both of them have dark magic can become real parents.”

I felt a pang in my heart. I didn’t have dark magic… There was only Light inside of me. I always knew that. That was the only thing I was always sure of…

“That’s why there aren’t too many dragons around. Although in the last couple of hundreds of years, we managed to increase our population a lot. But all that is thanks to soulmates.”

“Soulmates?” I looked at him again.

“Yes, Lara,” he smiled, “Soulmates.”

He carefully touched my hand and I let him. Somehow, I needed his closeness now.

“A soulmate is the one thing that is most sacred for any dragon,” he said softly, “It’s the one person that is the other half of you. This is someone who you already love even though you don’t know it before you met them. This is the one you are destined to spend your life with. You can be an emperor of the biggest empire, but without this person, you will never be complete… Or happy. With a soulmate, you can have an unlimited number of children. The two soulmates always will be compatible with each other.”

I swallowed. He wasn’t saying anything else and I desperately needed to hear this…

“And?” I braced myself to ask, “What does it have to do with me?”

A vague smile touched his lips.

“My soulmate is you, Lara,” he said, “You are the one for me. One and only.”

I didn’t know what to respond to a confession like that. I only knew that I needed to hear this. But what to do with all this, what to think – it was another matter. I knew that I liked him already. But I wasn’t sure that he was the one for me. How would you even know that? And what if he was just playing with me? The thought of a possibility like that hurt me and suddenly I wanted to leave him and stay alone for a while.

“I know that’s a lot for one day,” he sighed and took his hand away. I didn’t like the feeling of emptiness it left, “I also know that non-dragons need more time to feel the bond that connects us. So, I am willing to give you as much time as you need.”

“And what if I decide that I don’t want any of this?” I asked since he brought this up and notice the look of hurt in his eyes, “Will you let it go?”

“You wouldn’t want this,” he looked away, he clearly didn’t like my question.

“You don’t know that,” I tried to be reasonable, “What if?”

He crossed his hands on his chest and balled his fists, clenching them so hard that his knuckles turned white.

“I’d never do anything to deliberately hurt you,” he informed me, “So, I will let you go if you will be unhappy with me. It’ll break my heart but your happiness comes first.”

I bit my l*p and stretched my hand to touch him again. I sensed that he needed this kind of closeness and when his cheek closed relaxed in my hand, it felt so right…

“You are right,” I sighed, “That’s a lot and I need to think about everything more…Will you let me?”

“Anything you want,” he whispered and turned his face quickly so that his warm lips k**s my palm, sending a wave of heat down my body. His eyes looked at me and the dark fire was going wild in them…

I felt like I needed to escape this room. Fast. Yet I didn’t want to.

“Demir,” I cleared my throat, “Tell me, how did you get wounded so badly when we first met? You were in your dragon form and had someone else’s talon in you.”

“Oh, that,” he leaned back to the stone wall of the window behind him, exhaling heavily and breaking our contact, “I had a fight with the red dragons…”