Wrong Bond: Your Omega Is Driving Me Crazy novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Courting Flight

Ivor didn't come back that day.

Or the next.

By the third morning the whole keep had opinions.

"He's gone to find you a bigger crown," said the cook.

"He's gone to the southern kingdoms to steal you a prince," said one of the kits, and the others shrieked.

"He's fine," Prim said, every time, in the voice she used on spooked horses.

Linden wasn't fine.

Osric's second load of carts came on the second day, the way he'd said.

He drove the first one himself, to the foot of the goat path, and unloaded every sack with his own hands while his steward stood by looking ill.

He sent a note up with the stableman that said only: Three hundred more. The same next week.

Linden put it in the ledger and didn't answer it.

On the third evening the snow on the battlements started to drip.

The thaw had come.

Linden was standing on the east wall watching the glacier go pink, when every kit in the yard started screaming at once.

A shape was coming in over the ice.

Silver, catching the last of the sun.

The dragon landed badly.

He came down in the yard in a spray of slush, skidded, and took out half the woodpile with his tail.

Then he shifted, and Ivor stood there in the wreckage in his old coat, with ice in his braid and soot all down one side of his face.

He was holding a long, dented box under one arm.

"Where have you been?" Linden said.

It was meant to come out angry. It came out wobbly.

"Courting," Ivor said.

"For three days?"

"It was buried." Ivor was out of breath. "My mother's old roost. Past the glacier, under the ice. Where she kept the things too old for the hall. I had to melt my way in." He looked down at himself. "And out."

The whole keep had come into the yard.

Ivor saw them all and went a little red under the soot.

He held the box out to Linden anyway.

"Open it," he said. "Here. They should see."

Linden opened it.

Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a roll of old vellum, brown at the edges, with a great seal of red wax hanging off it on a cord.

The seal was a dragon.

Linden unrolled it and read the first lines twice.

"It's the Hollow," he said.

"It's the deed to the Hollow." Ivor shifted his weight. "The valley was dragon land, before the clans. My great-grandmother let the white foxes settle it, for as long as there were dragons to keep them. It was a loan."

← Chapter 29 · All chapters · Chapter 31 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend