Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(90)

“Any other friends,” Branok mocked.

“I know, I know you’re not my friends. You keep making that clear. The thing is, I don’t have any friends, I don’t have any family, so you don’t have to be my friend, but I’m still going to be your friend.”

Talisyn cringed sympathetically. Jaik watched me with a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read.

“Oh my gods,” Branok muttered to himself. “This is getting embarrassing.”

I met his gaze evenly. “Eventually you’ll realize that maybe things were more complicated with Alina than you realized.”

“Don’t say her fucking name,” Branok interrupted, his voice almost shaking. “You don’t get to talk about Alina.”

I stared at him. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening. Tal gave me a quick shake of the head. He was trying to protect me, trying to shut me up.

But I was done with Branok. “Does she want to be exiled to Northern Territory?”

“You don’t get to fucking talk about her,” he said again.

“Fine, but I care about what happens to her. And when you see I care about her, I don’t understand why you won’t give me a second chance.”

Branok’s hands were fisted at his sides, and Jaik moved close to his shoulder, ready to intercept him. Branok snarled, “You should have thought about what she needed before you took something from her that can never be replaced.”

I stared at him. “Tell me you’re not talking about her virginity.”

Even Talisyn groaned. I couldn’t believe that these guys were really so upset about her virginity though. If she was happy, why shouldn’t they be happy?

“Shut up,” Branok said again, tightly.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m really the bad guy in the story. You take all your hatefulness out on me, but I don’t see you rescuing her from the north.”

Branok jumped forward, but Jaik put his hand on his chest and shoved him back.

“Enough,” Jaik interrupted. “This has been fun, but I’d really like to focus on the corpses now, because I actually enjoy their company—a lot more than all of you, when you’re feuding.”

“Eventually, we have to get to the bottom of this,” I said. “You have to admit that we’re not working together very effectively when these guys hate me.”

“I’m not saying that we should trust him,” Talisyn said, “but Lucien has a point. He watched Lynx’s back today, and given the way things have been going in the training yard, I think that says something.”

Lynx looked deeply offended by that thought.

“Branok and Lynx have really done me a favor in training,” I agreed.

The air around the golden twins felt absolutely icy.

“Maybe it’s time that came to an end,” Jaik said. “Time that we just trained, without any drama or any payback.”

I beamed my brightest smile around at them all. “But we’ve been having so much fun. I’m in no rush to quit.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to us,” Branok flared up at Jaik. He said it as though he wanted to storm off, but we were still in the woods tracking down hybrids. So, the best he could do was walking a foot further away from all of us. From the look on his face, it wasn’t very satisfying for him.

“The gods saw fit to make Lucien a dragon shifter,” Jaik said. “He is what he is.”

“But if you don’t want to track down the hybrids with me here,” I asked no one in particular, “Does that mean I get to go home? There’s a warm, comfortable bed just calling my name.”

“I think we’re going to trust you with this,” Jaik said.

“Just because it will make you miserable too,” Talisyn added, slapping me on the back.

They intended to use an ancient tracking spell, the kind that had been developed before the time of the shifter enchantments spreading like wildfire throughout the people.

“Do you ever think about the fact that the shifters rose at the same time as the Scourge?” I mused out loud as Jaik and Lynx knelt over a corpse, working the spell.

“What are you trying to say?” Arren demanded.

“I just think it’s a funny coincidence. What if the two curses are tied together somehow?”

“Well, people have been trying to solve the Scourge for the last two-hundred years,” Branok said, “but I guess you’ve got a brand new take.”

“You never know,” I said, “sometimes you just need a new idea, a new way of looking at the world.”

No one seemed very impressed by my way of looking at the world.

We tried to find the hybrids, but we were unable to even detect them.

As we camped that night, everyone was in poor spirits. We’d spent the day hunting the hybrids. We’d tracked in what seemed like endless circles through the forest. There was no sign of where they’d originated. It seemed they’d suddenly burst into existence.

We could find where they’d slept, where they’d hunted, where they’d fed. We could even, and this made me shudder, find traces of where they’d fucked. But we couldn’t find where they’d come from.

“What are we missing?” Jaik demanded, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “There’s something that we’re not understanding.”