I screwed up my face. I’m not following.
What is more powerful than a species’ biological need to procreate? It’s built in. And an alpha like him, with the attraction he has for us—he’s going to feel it incredibly strongly.
So you think his desperation to procreate is somehow going to break through the curse? I asked.
She took a moment, and it felt like she was gathering herself.
This is what I know, she finally thought, and I could tell she was trying to work things out. Trying to figure out her own constraints. Of all the shifters in this whole kingdom, only one was powerful enough, and headstrong enough, to batter his way through the curse’s hold and force a change. That shouldn’t have been possible, and that dragon took great damage, but they still managed it. Their will to remain together was stronger than the curse’s magic.
She paused, and I waited for her to continue.
When I gather enough power to shift, intent on forcing your hand to do something I want, that happens by drawing on the primal urges within me. To shift. To mate. To claim and be claimed. It’s all primal. It’s all built in. The dragon showed me how, and drawing on it shaves away the hold the curse has on us. Now there is this frenzy to mate, to build a family, and the compulsion is ten times stronger for some reason. I can feel it. I know he can. He will move mountains to see it done. He will be an unstoppable force. The man needs that if he is going to survive. We need it. The kingdom needs it. Plus, I want it. I want him.
I shook my head and stared at the ceiling. Why all of a sudden is this a thing?
Because all of a sudden it became a possibility, idiot. Someone didn’t bother warding off pregnancy with the tea, and that fact has incited the dragon. I doubt he knows the details on how this stuff works, so he’s going to try to load you up with his seed to make sure it takes.
Ew, I thought. I might want a family someday, but I did not want to think of it in those terms.
It was the dragon that set me off, and now I’m buzzing with the frenzy to mate. Or maybe he’s buzzing with it and I’m all for it? It’s all one big, delicious, turbulent jumble of need and longing, and I want to sink down into it and lose myself.
I thought back to Nyfain’s anger when he realized I wasn’t taking the tea. To his outburst. To how that made me feel.
Well, don’t, I thought, another tear slipping down. I won’t try to incite him with this.
Not even to give him desperately needed access to more power?
I shook my head, suddenly exhausted. Nyfain doesn’t want to claim me. He sure as shit doesn’t want to get me with child. I’m sure I’ll bleed soon, and that’s the end of it. The way past this curse isn’t fucking with that dragon’s head. He’s crazy enough.
My animal settled down grumpily, and I continued to watch the sky.
Regardless of his reasons, Nyfain had handled that situation badly. I had to own that it had hurt, how he’d treated me. I might make allowances for some outbursts, but that one had crossed the line. I planned to make sure he knew it.
The next afternoon, after preparing everything for a harvest that night, I stepped into the garden by way of the wall. I did not plan to go through the queen’s chambers in case Nyfain was in there for some reason, probably staring at that wilting rosebush and brooding. He did that well, the brooding. It was his trademark.
“How goes it, boys?” I asked, sizing up the rosebushes. Soon I’d be ready to tackle those suckers. I wanted to attend to the everlass, but after that, these bushes were going to get my full attention.
Hadriel straightened up and grabbed his back. “Good, I think. But Jawson doesn’t think this soil is the best.”
Jawson was on his hands and knees weeding the area by the wall. He used the wall to straighten up to his knees so he could look at me.
“It’s a little too acidic, Miss Finley, if I had to guess.” He took a handful and let it run out the side of his palm.
“He is definitely guessing,” Gyril announced, hacking at a blackberry root. “He hasn’t brought out any of his little machines or anything.”
“I’ve been doing this all of my life, young man, and I know about soil.”
“Yeah, but given you are still alive, you’ve been doing a mediocre job all of your life,” Hadriel said, looking over the ground. He bent to scoop out another couple of weeds he’d missed.
“Mediocrity ends now,” I said, and power rode my words. I wouldn’t be hiding that, either. I was letting my lady balls hang out, and they were big and beautiful, and, unlike a man’s, they liked it rough.