Page 71 of The Last Dragon King
That red-haired girl from Jade City? The blonde with the bad breath. These were girls he was courting before he chose Joslyn.
“Why are the girls back?” I asked.
Drae sighed. “After seeing this, she thought it prudent to call them. Kendal is on her way as well.” He winced.
Kendal!My heart nearly seized in my chest.
What the Hades was he talking about? I reached out and ripped the book from his hands, looking down at the open page, and gasped.
The first line was in bold.Baby severely deformed, lived only hours.
Then I read the next line.
Hypothesis: Mother’s Eclipse clan magic consumed the Dark Night clan magic, killing the child.
I didn’t even know I was crying until the tears fell onto the page and wet the words.
“I can’t lose another child.” Drae’s voice was broken.
I nodded, folded the book, and handed it back to him.
He grasped the edges of my face and forced me to look at him. “But I still wantyou.”
I glanced over at the other girls. They were all talking to Annabeth and Dr. Elsie, waiting on the king no doubt.
“If I cannot give you a child, then you should not pick me,” I told him truthfully. “The future of all of Embergate depends on that.”
He frowned, peering over his shoulder to stare at the girls and then back at me. “What if I still married you… but I lay with them?”
I gasped.
“Purely to have a child—once pregnant I would stop. The magic of my people only needs me to have an heir. It doesn’t care if that child is a bastard or not.”
“You’re asking me to marry you knowing you will have mistresses?” I was so hurt I couldn’t even think straight.
He shook his head. “I’m asking you to spend the rest of your life with me, allowing me to bed those women once or twice in order to save thousands of lives.”
I frowned. “Bedallof them?”
Not Kendal.Pleasenot Kendal.
He swallowed hard. “Dr. Elsie thinks it will give me the best chance at success.”
I chewed the inside of my lip to keep from crying as bile rose in my throat. “What you’re asking feels impossible… but I’ll think about it. I’d like to be alone now.” I ripped my face out of his hands and then took off running through the practice fields.
“Arwen!” he yelled, but didn’t come after me.
Bed three women while married to me? And not just once. It took months to get pregnant, and then if the baby died he would continue until he had a living heir.
It was hard to believe that just hours ago he was confessing his love to me and saying he wanted me to be his queen, and now he wanted to sleep with my friends? I couldn’t process it.
But part of my mind thought back to my mother and what she told me about my father’s seed. Was this any different than what my father had allowed to get Adaline?
Not really.
My feet pounded the grass as I cut through a lavender farm, my chest heaving with grief. I mourned the loss of three people. Joslyn. Regina. And now Drae.
The pureness that a marriage between us might have held would be defiled with three mistresses. Would he bed them and then sneak in to sleep by my side? Would he fall in love with one of them in the process?
